alternet.org

After more than a month, the partial shutdown of the United States' federal government drags on. President Donald Trump is calling for Senate Republicans to "get rid of the filibuster" in order to get a spending bill passed and end the shutdown, but many conservatives are uncomfortable with that idea. Frustrated Americans were hoping that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) had found enough votes to get a bill passed in the Senate. But Punchbowl News' Andrew Desiderio, in a November 5 post on X, formerly Twitter, reported, "Thune on the filibuster post-

Appearing unmoved by voters’ message and showing no sign of changing course, President Donald Trump brushed off Democrats’ sweeping wins in Tuesday’s elections during a Wednesday White House breakfast for Republican senators, where he compared Democrats to World War II Japanese suicide bombers.“I heard it after ‘Kings,’ you know, they said I was a king, and I heard it after ‘Kings,'” he said, referring to last month’s highly attended nationwide “No Kings” rallies and protests. “I heard it after a couple of other moments in time. And I said, ‘No, I don’t believe so.’ And

Wednesday's Supreme Court "showdown" over President Donald Trump's tarriffs is putting America's highest court in a major bind, Politico reports.Trump is asking the justices to overturn lower-court decisions that declared many of his tariffs "an illegal overreach" as they found that a 1977 law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, did not authorize the president to

Kevin D. Williamson tells the Dispatch that President Donald Trump is increasingly making a fool of the court that granted him widescale immunity.“More or less open corruption in the White House. Pardons for sale. Wanton murder on the high seas. Using the Justice Department as a political hit squad. Chief Justice John Roberts’ creation, ex nihilo, of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution looks dumber every day,” said Williamson, adding that Trump was the last person who deserved it.“Donald Trump is by nature a corrupt man, the sitting patriarch of a long line of lowlifes and miscreants, born fo

When Democrats enjoyed a sweeping blue wave in the Tuesday, November 4 elections, political strategists were shocked not only by the many Democratic victories, but also, by the margins of those victories. The New Jersey gubernatorial race was expected to be close, based on polls. But the Democratic nominee, Rep. Mikie Sherrill, won by double digits — as did Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, a key swing state.During a November 5 appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" the next day, journalist David Drucker argued, "It's not the Democratic victories; it's the breadth of the victories." And he got no argument from conservative host Joe Scarborough,

During the government shutdown of President Donald Trump's first term, he "wanted the world to know he was making sacrifices," CNN reports, but not so this time around, when he is busy partying at his posh Palm Beach country club Mar-a-Lago, seemingly unmoved by the mess.The current government shutdown, which began on October 1, is the longest in U.S. history. As of November

Look, Zohran Mamdani is not the future of the Democratic Party. I know this is true, because the same was said of Eric Adams. New York City’s outgoing mayor did not live up to his billing. Its incoming mayor (presumably) is almost certainly not going to live up to his. The reason isn’t because Mamdani will become as corrupt as Adams became (though who knows?). The reason is that New York is New York. Yes, it’s the largest urban center in the country. Yes, its influence cannot be overstated. But what’s good, or bad, for New York isn’t necessarily what’s good, or bad, for America. It may no longer be entirely true that all politics is local, but most of politics still is.Once you accept the truth of this, all other considerations of Mamd

One year and a day after Donald Trump won a second term as president – and on the 35th day of the US government shutdown, which has tied a record for the longest in history – the Democrats swept to victory in key races across the county.Democratic candidates won the governorships in the states of Virginia and New Jersey, while Zohran Mamdani became New York City’s next mayor.The Democrats may have just become the winners of the fight to reopen the government, too.Trump’s ratings dropping sharplySixteen years ago, then-President Barack Obama was staggered by Rep

President Donald Trump is drafting an executive order aimed at rolling back voting rights, a measure that may include attacks on mailed ballots, a top administration official said Tuesday.“The White House is working on an executive order to strengthen our elections in this country and to ensure that there cannot be blatant fraud, as we’ve seen in California with their

For more than a decade, Silicon Valley venture capitalists have poured enormous sums of money into newfangled technology companies seeking to disrupt, and even supplant, the traditional financial system and sidestep its burdensome regulations.At the same time, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has policed that effort, going after such businesses for deceiving, overcharging or otherwise taking advantage of their customers by enacting rules, filing lawsuits and shutting down the worst offenders.This cat-and-mouse game has long rankled tech leaders, but it has especially irritated Marc Andreessen, one of America’s most well-known investors and an outsize figure in the so-called fintech industry.His firm has seeded eight companies since 2016 that landed in the crosshairs of the small watchdog agency that Con