![\"burning](\"https:\/\/kewus.net\/yesterday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/burning-banknotes.jpg\" "\\"burning")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Donald Trump and his minions endlessly rail about \u201cwaste, fraud, and abuse\u201d in the federal government. Meanwhile, he and his regime are the most prodigious generators of \u201cwaste, fraud, and abuse\u201d in American history.<\/p>\n
First and foremost, no president has ever used his office to rack up anything close to the estimated $5B<\/a> Trump has hauled in for himself, selling everything from tacky gold sneakers to crypto. He has mastered the art of trading on access and enticing foreigners to pony up big bucks (and even an airplane). The most pro-corruption president<\/a> in history also has stopped enforcement<\/a> of foreign corruption<\/a>, crypto fraud and other white collar crimes.<\/p>\n Beyond all that<\/em>, in just over nine months the MAGA regime has been more egregious in its misuse of taxpayers\u2019 money than any administration in memory.<\/p>\n Flying top brass into Quantico, Va., to hear an obnoxiously partisan pep talk from Defense Secretary (and wrinkle warrior<\/a>) Pete Hegseth and Trump: $6M<\/em>. That qualifies as both waste and abuse (i.e., politicizing the military).<\/p>\n Multiple unnecessary and unconstitutional deployments of national guard around the country (which have triggered adverse court rulings, costing a fortune in taxpayer-funded legal fees): 2\/3 of a billion dollars<\/em>. … Living in the world the president dreams up. \u201cWhat a SCAM,\u201d the president raged. \u201cDO SOMETHING!!!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n I regret glossing over it. Not only because it was an objectively insane thing to tweet\u2014given it was Trump, not Biden, who was pretty famously president on January 6th\u2014but because the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me to be a keystone text of Trump\u2019s second term.<\/p>\n Start with the double standard here. Imagine that last year, during the perennial (and understandable!) news cycles around Joe Biden\u2019s age and fitness for office, Biden himself had claimed in passing to have been president during the January 6th attack. It would have been a field day for the opposition and a multi-day story for the press. Reporters would have demanded answers for how the president could be laboring under such a delusion. Yesterday\u2019s assumptions can\u2019t make sense of today\u2019s storm. One party learned to ride that backlash like a wave while speaking in simpler slogans, addressing older fears, and promising a mythic past. The other tried to keep its balance, talking like accountants while the world demanded prophets. Each carried its own contradictions, its own debts to the century that made them.<\/p>\n The result is what we see now: one side turned into a paranoid juggernaut, haunted by its own creation. The other became an exhausted caretaker, managing decline and calling it stability. Refugees from that juggernaut now wander toward the caretaker, hoping to shape it in their image, but without facing how their own blind spots helped build the fire they\u2019re fleeing. The government shutdown, which started on October 1, is entering its third week. As Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) explained this morning, the Senate is in session, and it keeps voting on two bills to reopen the government. Majority leader John Thune (R-SD) keeps having the Senate vote on the measure passed by Republicans in the House. That measure funds the government until November 21. It has failed repeatedly to get past the 60 votes necessary to avoid a filibuster. The Democrats have offered an alternative measure, which extends the healthcare premium tax credit\u2014without which health insurance costs on the Affordable Care Act market will skyrocket\u2014and restores nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid. That measure, too, has repeatedly failed to pass.<\/p>\n Murphy notes that normally the two sides would negotiate. But, he says, President Donald J. Trump is telling Republican senators to \u201cBOYCOTT NEGOTIATING,\u201d and they are \u201cfollowing orders.\u201d<\/p>\n The House of Representatives is even more dysfunctional … Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape. … Republicans\u2019 latest attempt to win the shutdown fight shows they still don\u2019t get it on Obamacare.<\/p>\n Welcome to the Rocket Docket, Lindsey Halligan!<\/p>\n A remarkable statement about the $20 billion plan that will greatly benefit a well-connected hedge fund manager.<\/p>\n Now he’s detained 500 miles away from his Massachusetts home.<\/p>\n Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said \u201c(T)he most threatening thing I\u2019ve seen yet was the naked bicyclers in Portland who were protesting ICE down there. I mean, it\u2019s getting really ugly.\u201d
\n
\n(Jennifer Rubin more…)<\/a>
\n![\"2025](\"https:\/\/kewus.net\/yesterday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/2025-October-12-1238-AM-DJT-post.webp\" "\\"2025")
<\/a><\/p>\nBulwark: Is He Lying or Crazy? Does It Matter?<\/a><\/h2>\n
\n…
\nYesterday, we briefly mentioned Trump\u2019s weekend Truth Social claim<\/a> that the \u201cBIDEN FBI\u201d had \u201cPLACED 274 AGENTS INTO THE CROWD ON JANUARY 6.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n(Bulwark more…)<\/a><\/p>\n
\n\n
Steward Beckham: The Ghost of Yesterday’s Consensus<\/a><\/h2>\n
\n
\n![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/kewus.net\/yesterday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/does-anything-matter-any-more.webp\" "\\"Photo")
<\/a>
\n<\/center>
\n…
\nIn the last half century, we came close to something this country had only dreamed about: a truly multiracial democracy. Not perfect, of course, but real enough to frighten the ghosts of the old order. Civil rights cracked open the imagination of America, and with it came a double-edged energy, a politics of progress, and a politics of backlash.<\/p>\n
\n(Steward Beckham more…)<\/a><\/p>\n
\nHeather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – October 14, 2025<\/a><\/h2>\n
\n(Heather Cox Richardson more…)<\/a><\/p>\n
\nPolitico: \u2018I love Hitler\u2019: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans\u2019 racist chat<\/a><\/h2>\n
\n
\n![\"Texts](\"https:\/\/kewus.net\/yesterday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Texts-and-reactions-from-Young-Republicans.jpg\" "\\"Texts")
\n<\/center>
\n(Politico more…)<\/a><\/p>\nJay Kuo: Keystone Klansmen<\/a><\/h2>\n
\nJames Eagle: Russia\u2019s drone-and-missile surge<\/a><\/h2>\n
\nThe near-term pattern is clear. Russia is testing air defences with mass drones and punctuating attacks with fewer but smarter ballistic shots. But as I said, aerial bombardment does not win wars. Russia has already lost. It should have captured Kviv by now.
\n
\n![\"missles](\"https:\/\/kewus.net\/yesterday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/missles-launched-against-Ukraine.webp\" "\\"missles")
<\/a>
\n<\/center>
\n(James Eagle more…)<\/a><\/p>\n
\nBulwark: There\u2019s Something Weirdly Familiar About This New GOP Argument<\/a><\/h2>\n
\nJoyce Vance: Jack Smith speaks<\/a><\/h2>\n
\nLiz Dye: The 1,287,923 defects in the Comey case … so far<\/a><\/h2>\n
\nJudd Legum: Trump admits Argentina bailout will not benefit the U.S.<\/a><\/h2>\n
\nMarisa Kabas: ICE took a 13-year-old they said had a gun. Local cops say he didn\u2019t.<\/a><\/h2>\n
\nBorowitz: Qataris Reject Trump\u2019s Idaho Offer and Demand Airbase at Mar-a-Lago<\/a><\/h2>\n
\nSarah Jones: Mike Johnson Feels Threatened by Portland’s Emergency Naked Bike Ride<\/a><\/h2>\n
\n
\n