Politics

The surprising thing is not that the federal government has shut down. It would have been surprising if it did not. Each side thinks it has the cards and that it has put the other in a bad position. The result is that the budget feud could last for months, ending with a temporary armistice that satisfies no one. There is little incentive for either side to shut down the shutdown. Washington Post columnist Paul Kane notes that most Senators have little reason to compromise: “very few senators feel the political pressure that usually comes with calamitous events like a federal agency shutdown. Most sit in safe seats, many with reelection campaigns a distant concern.

“Today we end the War on Warriors,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, author of the book The War On Warriors, tweeted this morning. Today was the day that Hegseth really became Secretary of War, addressing, along with President Trump, a full gathering of top military brass in Quantico, Virginia.  “This is only an esprit de corps,” the President said, as he set sail from the White House for the event. “Do you know what that is, an esprit de corps? This is only a spirit. These are our generals, our admirals, our leaders, and it's a good thing, a thing like this has never been done before, because they came from all over the world. And there's a little bit of expense, not much, but there's a little expense to that. We don't like to waste it.

When news broke that the head of Iowa’s largest school district was in ICE custody as an alleged illegal alien, the response from all quarters was disbelief. A school superintendent undergoes intense vetting, and every rung on the career ladder requires background checks. How could such a man possibly have slipped through?Anyone hoping the full story might provide a sensible explanation was quickly disappointed. The more you dig, the more absurd it becomes. Although we don’t yet know the full truth about his immigration status, there is already plenty in his record that raises red flags about the biographies he’s offered. Ian Andre Roberts' life reads less like a CV than a pitch for a Hollywood script in the classic tradition of the charming conman.

Florida Representative Randy Fine and Texas Representative Keith Self introduced the “No Sharia Act” last weekend in the U.S. House of Representatives “to ensure that no U.S. court, public agency, or legal institution can ever enforce or legitimize Sharia law. On X, Congressman Fine wrote, “You don’t get to come to this country and demand that our legal system accommodate your oppressive laws.” Meanwhile, Texas has operated as ground zero for the fight. On September 12, Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared on September 8 that Sharia law was illegal in Texas. In a post on Facebook the Governor wrote: “In Texas, we believe in equal rights under the law for all men, women, & children. Any legal system that flouts human rights is BANNED in the state of Texas.

"My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump," says James Comey, the former FBI director, in a video statement on – naturally – Bluesky. "We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either." The Resistance is strong in that one. To a dwindling number of hardcore NeverTrumpers, Comey is a sort of godfather figure. He seems to love the attention, too. He wrote a self-aggrandizing memoir called A Higher Loyalty, about his fall-out with Donald Trump and the start of the Trump-Russia, Russia, Russia business. Earlier this year, moreover, he was even accused of elliptically threatening Trump’s life, when he posted and then deleted on Instagram an image showing the numbers "86 47" written in seashells on a beach.

Days before the five-year statute of limitations was due to expire, the long arm of the law finally has caught up with the slippery former FBI Director James B. Comey. A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, has indicted Comey for leaking and lying about his role in the Russian hoax that President Trump’s enemies tried to hang around his head like a noose even before he was inaugurated in 2016.Count one of the federal indictment charges Comey with making a false statement during a September 30, 2020 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Specifically, Comey claimed he had not “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports” regarding FBI investigations into President Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.