Our top story today. The Justice Department is running out of lawyers. In the week since the election, the heads of the Civil Division, the Civil Rights Division, and the National Security Division have all resigned. Three of the department’s seven litigation divisions have nobody confirmed in charge. We’ll get into why they’re leaving and why the career people this administration pushed out are about to become a very big problem for the White House.

We’ll also get into Pete Hegseth getting scolded by a soldier at the Tomb of the Unknowns on Veterans Day, the president suddenly discovering he cares about corruption, Mississippi electing a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in four decades, and Lauren Boebert getting fired by her voters and refusing to concede.

So do me a favor. Like this video, share it with someone who needs to see it, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Let’s get to it.

1. Trump DOJ Collapses

According to the New York Times, the principal associate deputy attorney general got on a call with dozens of U.S. attorneys on Monday and told them the department is now “a wartime department.” The enemy is local officials in Democratic cities who won’t help with immigration enforcement.

There’s just one problem with that. A lot of the people who’d have to fight that war have already left. Three division heads have quit in the week since the election. So has the U.S. attorney in Miami who was running Trump’s revenge investigation into Obama-era officials. And whoever replaces them has to get through a Democratic Senate.

That leaves what one former prosecutor calls the Four Guys: Blanche, his deputy, the associate attorney general, and the weirdo who’s calling the DOJ a wartime department. According to the Times, the Four Guys are signing court filings themselves because the lawyers who used to do it are gone. In Seattle, the acting U.S. attorney told a judge he doesn’t have enough staff to show up in all the immigration detention cases.

But being short on lawyers isn’t the department’s only problem. As the Times put it, the DOJ has created “a small army of disgruntled department veterans” who were fired or driven out, and who are about to be the star witnesses in oversight hearings.

Look, a Justice Department works because career people stay through administrations. They’re the institutional memory and the ones who know how to win a case. This department spent two years driving them out. And now the political appointees are following, because nobody wants to spend 2027 under oath trying to defend this chaotic administration. Hopefully some of them decide to testify against it instead.

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2. Hegseth Shamed On Veterans Day

I did a video on this for social media yesterday right when it happened. But it’s so outrageous that I wanted to cover it on the show too.

Yesterday was Veterans Day. And the president and his cabinet visited Arlington to lay a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Trump finished the ceremony and left, but Hegseth and his group stuck around to take photos. As they walked off, they burst into laughter. The tomb is the most solemn place in our national cemetery: there’s no chatter allowed, and certainly no laughter. So the sentinel on duty did his job.

That young man is part of the Old Guard, the oldest active infantry regiment in the Army. They stand guard at the tomb 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Part of their job is to make sure visitors respect the tomb and the unidentified soldiers buried there. Usually that means scolding tourists, not the Secretary of Defense.

The Pentagon issued a statement on the hiccup: “a soldier correctly and respectfully reminded everyone to maintain decorum,” and the secretary “will always honor” the sacrifices of the fallen. The fact that I’m relieved they didn’t go after the soldier for doing his job tells you a lot about this Pentagon.

But this whole thing highlights a broader problem with Hegseth’s approach to the job. He is a TV guy. He made his name as a culture warrior on Fox News, ranting and raving about masculinity and lethality in the military. His obsession with the so-called warrior culture has defined his tenure, becoming the force behind testosterone tests and his boneheaded push to livestream a military execution.

War is an aggressive business. But it’s also a solemn one. Leading the military requires both virtues. Hegseth has spent his whole time in this job showing us he doesn’t understand that. He needs to go.

3. Trump Abandons Iran Deal

This morning on Truth Social, the president was ranting about corruption.

And before that, a portfolio shakeup:

So what happened here? Well, clearly, the president was reading the midterm exit polls, where 90% of voters said corruption was a major or crucial factor. But instead of cracking down on the self-dealing and influence peddling in his administration, Trump is trying to turn the issue on Democrats.

He’s also announcing another flip-flop on the war. Just last week Vance was leading a new push for a ceasefire and a return to nuclear negotiations. But now? No deal needed! We’ll just keep our ships in the area forever, guiding ships through a passage that was open before our war closed it. Wonder how the sailors feel about that one.

But let’s go back to corruption, because this is a pretty pathetic attempt to flip the issue. Anything Vance finds in blue states will be pennies compared to the dirty money his boss has stacked up over the last couple years.

The numbers are staggering: roughly two billion dollars added to Trump’s net worth since the 2024 election. More than a billion came from crypto. In 2025 alone, he earned 710 million from his memecoin, 240 million from his stablecoin, and 340 million from World Liberty tokens. His own SEC decided memecoins aren’t securities a month after he took office, and he signed the stablecoin law a few months later. When a 60 minutes anchor confronted him on his exploding net worth, he had the gall to tell him “you should’ve had stock.”

So don’t be fooled. The Vice President can do what he wants. But the corruption isn’t in Michigan or California. It’s right there in the West Wing.

4. Mississippi Elects Democrat To Senate

Yesterday, the AP finally called Mississippi’s Senate race for Democrat Scott Colom, a 43-year-old district attorney. On election night, Colom led his opponent Cindy Hyde-Smith by just a razor thin margin of a few hundred votes. With 99 percent of ballots counted, he now leads by more than 5,600.

Colom’s victory is historic. He’s the first Democrat Mississippi has sent to the Senate since 1982. He’s also the state’s first Black senator since Reconstruction. And he won in a state Trump carried by 23 points just two years ago, without serious funding from the national party.

There’s some poetic justice here too. In 2022, President Biden nominated Colom for a federal judgeship. Mississippi’s other senator signed off. Hyde-Smith didn’t. She used a Senate courtesy called the blue slip to kill his nomination. So he ran against her. And won.

But Colom’s campaign wasn’t just about payback. He told Mississippians he could forgive her for the judgeship. What he couldn’t forgive was her record. Hyde-Smith had voted against the infrastructure law, the CHIPS Act, and federal money the state badly needed. To Colom, that was a broken promise to Mississippi.

He also argued she’d lost touch with her constituents. She hadn’t held a public town hall in about six years. Then she gave him the perfect example. On national television, she told people who couldn’t afford beef to pick another protein. Colom turned that line into a famous ad.

That ad not only resonated in Mississippi but across the country, drawing over 20 million views on X. Her tone-deaf advice became his campaign’s clearest message. She’s out of touch. Pick another senator. And Mississippi did.

5. Bye Bye, Lauren Boebert!

In Colorado’s 4th District, CNN projects that Boebert has lost to Eileen Laubacher, a retired Navy rear admiral and former National Security Council official. Laubacher leads by more than 3,000 votes with over 97 percent counted. That’s more than three times the margin for an automatic recount.

For Boebert, the writing is on the wall. But she refuses to see it. When asked about her loss, she has insisted that she wouldn’t yet concede the election. Then she posted this PSA:

Yeesh. How long did it take her to come up with that one? But fine, let’s run with her terrible metaphor. Because voters already baked this cake. She just doesn’t like how it came out. So she’s reaching for the same old excuse. Yet again.

Boebert helped push the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Now she’s running the same play in her own race. Her fundraising email told supporters the recount threshold is half a point. What it left out is that it’s half a percent of the winner’s total, and she’s nowhere near it. Meanwhile, her lawyer says they’re investigating “very unusual voting patterns.” Asked what those patterns are, he didn’t say. That silence tells you everything. Doesn’t the GOP ever get tired of this game?

Colorado’s secretary of state has already dismissed those concerns. She says the state’s elections are “safe, secure and accurate.” That shouldn’t need saying, but here we are. Her office also hasn’t heard a word from the Boebert campaign. When it does, let’s hope it’s a concession.

Not that anyone’s waiting on one. People are already celebrating Boebert’s loss. Even Hillary Clinton joined the party, posting “Bye Felicia.”

That’s about all the send-off Boebert deserves. She was a nightmare in Congress. She fled her own district after nearly losing it. And she tweeted the Speaker’s location during the Capitol attack. The more Trump loyalist, election-denying Republicans we fire from Congress, the better off this country is. And she’s just the latest to go.

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Some other stories that caught my eye:

• Ukraine says its military Starlink service is being throttled again, just as Trump’s envoys sit down with Putin. On Thursday, Zelenskyy said his army has faced several days of speed restrictions on Starshield, the Pentagon-funded version of Starlink built for military use. The limits cap the service at 100 mph over the front line and in Russian-occupied territory. “These are not random errors, but systematic speed restrictions,” Ukraine’s president said. He also explained that the cap makes it much harder to intercept Russian jet-powered drones. Senior Ukrainian officials told the Financial Times they believe the slowdown is meant to pressure Kyiv during peace talks. Those talks are currently taking place in Moscow between Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and Vladimir Putin. Musk, SpaceX and the White House did not respond to requests for comment. The European Commission called the reports “deeply concerning and, if confirmed, unacceptable.” Kyiv first raised the problem last month. Musk and the Trump administration blamed each other, and service was partly restored.

• Former FDA Commissioner Marty Makary says Trump aides pushed him to serve industry special interests instead of public health. Former FDA Commissioner Marty Makary says Trump aides pushed him to serve special interests instead of public health. Makary told POLITICO that pressure from White House and HHS aides focused on “getting more vapes approved and catering to lobbyists.” He called it corruption. “Every time I saw government corruption, I rejected it, just as voters did last week,” he said. It’s the first time he has publicly described the pressure since he resigned in May. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Makary’s account matches what Calley Means, a former adviser to Health Secretary RFK Jr., said days earlier. Means blamed senior Trump officials, including former chief of staff Susie Wiles, for stalling MAHA policies on food and pesticides. The White House has pushed back on his claims.

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Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Donald Trump thinks the mere act of investigating him and his Administration could be illegal. In fact, yesterday we learned he had his lawyer send a letter to the next chair of the House Oversight Committee threatening retaliatory legal action against Democrats. White House Counsel Will Scharf wrote the following in a letter obtained by Punchbowl News:

“Beyond being inconsistent with the clear, well-recognized constitutional limitations on your investigative functions, threats to executive branch officials designed to deter them from public service, or process designed merely to abuse or instill fear in the recipient may cross the line into blatant criminality.”

Forget the fact that Congress is a co-equal branch of government. Ignore for a second that the American people just swept in this historic majority because they were fed up with the blatant corruption of this Administration. Donald Trump, Stephen Miller and the rest of the White House goon squad don’t want to answer all these pesky questions. Not because they’re laser-focused on the issues, and not because they actually believe Democrats are overstepping. They simply think they’re above the law.

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Now, they’re laying the groundwork to avoid answering any questions, turning over any documents and providing any cooperation to questions ranging from ICE terrorizing communities, administration officials placing bets on impending military actions or simply how the President’s wealth exploded by billions while serving in office.

The White House counsel letter warns that Congressional investigations must have a “legislative purpose” to be legitimate. While technically correct, the fact that this administration is suggesting that everyone needs to play by the rules is laughable. This Administration finds new ways to shock us with their corruption almost daily. Republicans during the Biden Administration stretched the “legislative purpose” precedent so thin it was see-through. Think about the two years they spent concocting a sham impeachment case against Joe Biden, all because Trump wanted revenge.

So to turn around now and warn about the constitutional limits of congressional oversight is taking yet another page from the dictator’s playbook. Rules for thee, but not for me. Trump’s corruption is so normalized, so necessary to who he is and what he does, that he sees any attempt to curb his behavior as illegal.

It’s the reason he gets up in the morning: to enrich himself, to impose his image and his ego on the rest of us, and to avoid any consequences for his actions no matter the cost. They’re not even trying to claim that the President did nothing wrong. They’re saying that even asking questions is off limits.

The goal here is to delegitimize every avenue of inquiry and make everything the Democrats do come across as pure partisanship, a signal that Trump’s base and right-wing news outlets will surely amplify. That turns real investigations into typical DC insider nonsense that ordinary Americans can tune out.

Now, I think it’s absolutely fair to say that Democrats can’t go overboard and lose sight of their responsibilities, or constitutional obligations, in performing necessary oversight. The American people didn’t sign up for fishing expeditions or vanity hearings. It’s going to require a great deal of discipline and strategic thinking to structure these investigations to maximize their impact. That’s incredibly challenging because there’s so much corruption to choose from.

And we’ve seen this movie before. Every step we took on the January 6th Committee was decried as outside the limits of our Congressional authority (it wasn’t) or illegal (it definitely wasn’t). The President himself said that we should be jailed and we were sent death threats as a result of his public attacks.

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People with nothing to hide showed up. People with plenty to hide called us illegitimate, ignored the subpoenas, and dared us to enforce them. Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro were both convicted of contempt of Congress and served time. The process was legal. That’s exactly why they were so desperate to discredit it.

So when I see the White House start throwing out these threats, it is eerily familiar. This time, though, we know how to fight back.

The good news is that it won’t work. Democrats have a clear mandate and there is bipartisan consensus and legal precedent that Congress has broad investigative authority. Perhaps this compels House and Senate Democrats to simply pursue a path of least resistance by going straight to issuing subpoenas. That will prompt the typical faux-outrage from the Republican minority, but they’ve forfeited any opportunity to claim the moral high ground. I’d support it.

It’s worth pointing out that the true audience for this letter likely isn’t House Democrats. This was made clear by the fact that every reporter in Washington seemed to have a copy of it before the incoming Chair of the committee had officially received it. This letter is also aimed at everyone who might be asked to testify: the career civil servants, the staffers, the officers, the former officials who get a subpoena and have to decide whether doing the right thing will cost them everything.

I watched witnesses weigh exactly that decision when testifying. There might be people working in the Trump Administration today thinking about coming forward. They’re thinking about the fact that telling the truth could cost them their jobs, their reputations, or even their safety. A letter like this, which is aimed at the person with a mortgage and a conscience, makes that choice even harder.

That’s why we can’t just gloss over this latest effort to chill dissent and make it harder for people to tell the truth. They want to make you tired, to make you believe it’s all just politics, and that nothing will ever come of any of it. Don’t give them that.

So here’s my question. Democrats are about to have a lot of tools and a limited amount of time. What do you think they should investigate first?

—Adam

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We’re back at it with another Ask Me Anything! This week we will leave the topic wide open to whatever is on your minds.

Hegseth impeachment? Jim Jordan? Trump’s 60 Minutes interview? Drop your questions in the comments!

Thank you for being a part of this community. You’re the reason I can keep speaking the truth about what is happening in our country.

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Our top story today. The 2028 Republican primary for president has begun, but right now it’s mostly about survival. Everybody who wants that nomination is tied to what happened last Tuesday one way or another, and they’re each trying to cut that tie before it sinks them. Every one of them has a story about why the party lost, and every one of those stories happens to leave them out of it.

We’ll also get into the ICE hiring scandal that just got exposed, House Republicans handing the keys to Jim Jordan, how the Hegseth impeachment vote fell apart, and some good news on accountability finally catching up with Alina Habba.

So do me a favor. Like this video, share it with someone who needs to see it, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Let’s get to it.

1. GOP 2028 Hopefuls Run From Trump

Every one of them put out their own explanation for the blue wave. And in the process, they gave us a sneak peek at their campaign strategies.

First up is JD Vance, who had the most to lose. Before the midterms, he was the heir to a Republican trifecta. Now he’s the heir to a movement and a president that the American people just disavowed.

That puts him in a lose-lose situation. On one hand, he’s trying to distance himself by blaming everything on the war. It’s a tidy story: one bad decision, and a year from now he’s cleared of everything else this administration did. But it’s not so simple. In the exit polls, only 34 percent called the war crucial. And Vance has said nothing about everything else, from corruption to tariffs.

On the other hand, even breaking on the war is too much for Trump’s hardline base. A Florida congressman just said he won’t back Vance in 2028 because criticizing the war is disloyal. So he’s stuck. MAGA sees him as a traitor. Everyone else sees him as Trump’s guy.

Marco Rubio is making the opposite bet. He still defends the war. He calls it “the right thing to do,” even though voters hate it. Otherwise, he’s kept his head down, hoping none of this administration sticks to him. Some Republicans are calling him the real winner of the midterms for exactly that reason. In this administration, the less you’re seen, the less toxic you appear.

Then there are the two Republicans outside the administration: Ron DeSantis and Ted Cruz. They have it much easier. They don’t have to hedge like Vance or hide like Rubio. They can go after this administration for its failures from the outside.

Ron DeSantis called the midterms “close to an extinction-level event.” He also said Republicans “really were fighting yesterday’s battles,” even though he has built his whole career on those battles. And Ted Cruz? He called it “a Watergate-level repudiation,” blaming both the tariffs and the war. By his own account, he’s the only Republican left holding statewide office in Texas, only because he wasn’t on the ballot.

So both DeSantis and Cruz are making the same pitch. This administration led the party into one of the worst defeats in history. The future of the party has to come from someone outside it.

Where is the president in all of this? He told CBS he might sit out the 2028 primary: “Maybe I’m better off not getting involved.” How about that for a welcome change? The midterms made clear that Americans are tired of him. But nobody would be more grateful than the Republicans running in that primary.

And listen, that’s where the GOP is right now. A year ago, everyone in the party was fighting to stand next to Trump. Now they’re trying to stand as far away as they can without getting in trouble.

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2. ICE Exposed Hiring Disgraced Cops

In late October, hackers broke into a DHS database and leaked the names of about 1,500 ICE officers hired since the president took office. The Washington Post ran background checks on 300 of them, most of them former police officers. Nineteen had red flags that should have kept them far away from another badge.

Five had use-of-force incidents. Another five were named in lawsuits that ended in settlements. And six had been fired, decertified, or quit before they could be fired.

Cruelty isn’t a disqualifier for DHS, and neither is incompetence. Among the names was a Mississippi officer who threatened to arrest a man for holding a sign, then admitted in deposition that he didn’t know the First Amendement. He resigned on December 30th and was an ICE deportation officer the following Monday.

The administration wants you to believe that immigration enforcement has to be cruel and violent. It doesn’t. The mayhem ICE has caused across the country is the direct result of choices to prioritize deportation numbers over public safety and proper vetting. Voters knew it. That’s why so many people who initially supported deportations voted for Democrats last Tuesday.

DHS clearly didn’t get the memo. Here’s the secretary last night.

First of all: the worst of the worst? Is he talking about his own deportation officers?

And what about the president? Just days ago he admitted that his deportation policy was too tough, and floated an amnesty deal with Democrats. But then Stephen Miller got promoted, and now the DHS secretary is directly contradicting what we heard from the president just a couple of days ago.

Look, the President knows this policy hurts him. He said it out loud and on camera. But he can’t afford to alienate the immigration hard-liners that elevated him to power, and a lot of them are in the Oval Office with him every day. They’re not going to let him change his tune without a fight.

3. House GOP Doubles Down on MAGA

Yesterday, by secret ballot, a bruised house GOP picked Jim Jordan over Steve Scalise. Both ran for Speaker in 2023 and both came up short. So what was Jim’s pitch to the conference this time around? Apparently, he’s “battle-tested on the oversight front” and knows “the Democrats’ playbook.”

His job, as he described it to colleagues, is to defend the president, his family, and his administration from the investigations coming in January. I’m not so sure he’s up to the task. Listen to how he defended the Iran War when gas prices were spiking.

What? With that kind of pitch, no wonder the GOP got clobbered.

The choice to make Jim Jordan minority leader says a lot about the total lack of reflection in the GOP. This is the guy who founded the Freedom Caucus. He defied a subpoena from the January 6th committee. He once told Anderson Cooper he had never heard the president lie. If you asked voters to draw a picture of what they turned down last week, a lot of them would draw Jim Jordan.

For the next two years, Republicans have a choice to make. They can break with the president and start earning back the people who left them last Tuesday. Or they can hunker down, circle the wagons, and shield Trump against the tide of accountability coming his way. Picking Jim Jordan to lead the way tells you which direction they are headed. They are going all in on MAGA, once again.

4. Hegseth Escapes Impeachment

On Monday, Republican Congressman Thomas Massie filed eight articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth. He filed them as what’s called a privileged resolution, which means the House has to deal with it within two legislative days.

Speaker Johnson has been trying to avoid an up-or-down vote on Pete Hegseth for months, so Republicans called a procedural vote to send the articles to the Judiciary Committee. If it passes, that’s where they would sit until this Congress ends. If it fails, the House would have to vote on the articles themselves.

Procedural votes are usually where leadership plays its games. But this one wasn’t a secret. The floor schedule for the day reportedly listed a possible motion tied to the impeachment resolution, with votes as early as 5:30. So every member was on notice. Or they should have been.

Unfortunately, the motion passed and sent Massie’s articles to the Judiciary Committee. The final count? 211 to 204. Eleven Democrats missed the vote. So where were they? Several of them say there was a police escort that blocked the way into the Capitol.

The Democrats who did show up weren’t pleased with their colleagues. Take Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove from California. Here’s what she said on the Capitol steps after the vote.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries tried to spin it. He says that, come January, Democrats will “run Pete Hegseth out of town.” And that additional articles of impeachment are already drafted.

Fine. But this was the chance to impeach Hegseth with Republican votes, in a Republican House. That would have been a bipartisan rebuke. Now Republicans get to call any future impeachment a Democratic witch hunt.

Look, things happen. I’ve been there. But we are only one week removed from an election that gave Democrats a mandate to hold this administration accountable. And on their first real opportunity to do so, they dropped the ball.

5. Accountability Catches Alina Habba

Over the past few weeks, we‘ve been following a corruption scandal involving Alina Habba, the president’s former personal lawyer.

While serving as a senior adviser at the Justice Department, Habba took a general counsel job with a company tied to a Venezuelan banker. The contract was worth 50 million dollars, paid out over four years. That kind of money screamed conflict of interest. As it turns out, the banker was seeking a pardon in a case that started as felony bribery charges. A few weeks later, he got one.

When the news broke, the president called the deal “totally obnoxious and outrageous,” possibly because he wasn’t in on the cut. He even suggested she donate what she’d been paid to his presidential library or one of his other causes.

Now two new reports add to the plot. According to the New York Times, the company has terminated her contract, citing a “failure to perform duties.” That’s rich. If her job was getting the banker a pardon, she certainly delivered. And Habba still walks away with plenty. She keeps the six and a half million already paid and an eight million dollar signing bonus.

And there’s more. Yesterday, the Washington Sun reported that the New Jersey Supreme Court’s ethics office filed formal charges against her. Not over the pardon. Over a separate ethical nightmare.

In 2021, a server at the president’s Bedminster golf club was preparing to sue her manager for sexual harassment. She had a lawyer. But Habba saw an opportunity. As a member of the club, she befriended the server and talked her into dropping her lawyer. Then Habba negotiated the settlement herself. Less than a month later, the president hired Habba’s firm.

The complaint says that agreement violated New Jersey law. It says Habba already admitted in June that her conduct broke the rules. It also cites her “cavalier attitude toward the disciplinary process.” Now her law license is on the line.

Habba’s arc sums up this administration. She landed the president’s business after settling a harassment case against his club. She got a U.S. attorney job from him, until the courts threw her out. Then she took 50 million dollars from a man who needed a pardon.

And look, this administration doesn’t just tolerate people like Habba. It rewards them. When Democrats hold the gavel in January, it’s time to close the book on every one of these stories.

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Some other stories that caught my eye:

• Democrats’ midterm sweep could put the national popular vote plan within reach of 270 electoral votes. In last week’s elections, Democrats won full control of six state governments worth 71 electoral votes: Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. That matters because of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Member states agree to give their electors to whoever wins the national popular vote, but only once the compact reaches 270. Today, it sits at 222. Adding Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan would get the compact to 266, leaving either Arizona or Nevada to push it over the line. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro says he will work with his new legislature on it. Wisconsin Gov. David Crowley says he’s open to it too. Governors in Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada have not committed. Republicans argue the plan would let other states override their own voters. Conservative groups and legal scholars expect a constitutional challenge that could reach the Supreme Court. The push took off after George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016. Each won the presidency while losing the popular vote.

• Nine members of the Kennedy family are going to court to stop President Trump’s planned triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery. Children and grandchildren of Senators Robert F. Kennedy and Edward M. Kennedy moved to join an existing lawsuit in Washington. They argue the 250-foot arch would cast a shadow over their relatives’ graves. They also say it would block the sightline from the eternal flame at President John F. Kennedy’s grave, “destroying an essential element of the gravesite’s design.” A White House spokesman called the move “unfortunate,” explaining that the project is meant to honor the heroes buried at Arlington. The Kennedy family’s involvement marks the latest development in an ongoing battle. The arch already faces lawsuits from veterans, a historian, Virginia and Arlington County, and the District of Columbia. Last Thursday, the National Capital Planning Commission gave it final approval despite the lawsuits. But Judge Tanya Chutkan paused construction for 14 days, writing that the arch needs congressional approval.

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Go deeper at AdamKinzinger.com

You know what happened last week. Republicans got walloped in the midterms. And like anyone who’s suffered a big loss, the party is now working through its grief.

So today, we are going to look at the five stages of grief, MAGA edition.

You probably know them:

• Denial

• Anger

• Bargaining

• Depression

• Acceptance

They don’t always arrive in order, but the framework has stuck around because they describe something real. Grief is supposed to go somewhere. You work through it, you face the truth, and eventually you move on.

Over the last seven days, the Republican Party has hit every one of those stages, practically on schedule.

Well. Almost every one.

Denial

Three days after the elections, Donald Trump named Stephen Miller his new White House chief of staff.

If you wanted to send voters a message that said “we heard nothing,” you’d be hard pressed to find a better messenger.

Miller is the architect of this administration’s immigration crackdown, which happens to be one of the biggest reasons Republicans just got crushed. For years, immigration was the GOP’s home-field advantage. Then America got a good look at what Miller’s version of enforcement actually looked like, and recoiled.

It didn’t just cost them independents. It cost them their own people. In Texas, months of raids on construction sites caused delays and labor shortages that helped Democrats win up and down the ballot. Farm groups that helped elect Trump watched their members lose workers they couldn’t replace.

My favorite detail: when the head of Pennsylvania’s leading farm industry association first got word that something had happened with Stephen Miller, his first thought was, “Thank goodness he was let go.”

Then he found out Miller had been promoted.

Anger

On Sunday night, 60 Minutes aired Trump’s first sit-down since the election. Ross Douthat asked whether immigration had hurt Republicans, and Trump, to the surprise of just about everyone watching, didn’t dodge.

His deportation push “might be too tough,” he said. He floated an immigration deal with the new Democratic majority. He even pinned part of the blame on “a group of people that I would say on the sort of pretty far right that would like everybody taken out.”

For Donald Trump, that’s practically a therapy session.

His own movement did not take it well.

“If President Trump softens on immigration enforcement, it will be a disaster,” warned former Trump adviser Steve Cortes.

Nick Sortor, the same right-wing influencer who brought you the fake story about James Talarico in a mental hospital, demanded that Stephen Miller “CLEAN HOUSE of advisors, because this is a HORRIBLE take.”

So, to recap. A week after voters rejected their agenda, the right’s loudest anger wasn’t aimed at the agenda. It was aimed at the President, for admitting, ever so slightly, that maybe it went too far.

Bargaining

Next up: bargaining. The results are too painful to accept, so maybe, just maybe, they aren’t real.

On election night, Trump told The New York Times he was “absolutely willing” to accept the results and was looking forward to working with Democrats.

That lasted six days.

On Monday, the day after his base revolted over his immigration comments, he dusted off his greatest hit. “Does anybody really believe that this ‘Election’ was honest,” he posted. “It’s all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter!”

Funny timing. One day the base is furious with him, the next day the old election lies are back. Call it a peace offering: don’t blame me, don’t blame Stephen Miller, don’t blame the policies. Blame the machines.

None of this is new, of course. In Trump’s world, every loss is fraud and every win is proof of how great he is. That’s the bargain MAGA made with him years ago: you never have to admit you lost, no matter how many voters tell you that you did.

Depression

Here’s the problem. It isn’t working, and they know it.

In 2020, the stolen-election lie spread like wildfire. This time, it’s barely a birthday candle. Megyn Kelly, who is no enemy of Trump, summed up her reaction in two words: “Just stop.”

Even DC_Draino, a right-wing influencer who has been pushing stolen-election claims since 2020, admitted that whatever fraud he imagined was “not enough to explain what happened.” When you’ve lost DC_Draino on election fraud, you’ve lost the entire argument. He took his post down on X, but his comments are immortalized in the quotes pulled by the Washington Times:

A researcher who studies online misinformation put her finger on what’s missing this time: there’s no “widespread shared grievance.” Voters aren’t buying it, because they know exactly what they did and why they did it.

For a movement that runs on grievance, it doesn’t get much more depressing than that. The go-to lie fell flat, and not just with the rest of the country. With the base.

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Acceptance

Which brings us to Tuesday, and to the twist.

Yesterday, I published an open letter to my former Republican colleagues ahead of their vote for new House leadership. This was their chance to do what they should have done in 2021, and finally break with Trump and his enablers.

A few hours later, they chose Jim Jordan. He’s the man expected to lead the charge defending Donald Trump against the new Democratic Congress.

So Republicans did reach acceptance after all. Just not the kind where you learn anything.

They didn’t accept that voters rejected them, or that they need to change. They accepted that they can’t. They looked at the worst midterm defeat in half a century and chose more of the same.

For years, Republicans told me privately that they went along with Trump because they were afraid. Afraid of primaries, of his voters, of the threats. That excuse died yesterday behind closed doors. This isn’t fear anymore. It’s who they’ve decided to be.

My Own Five Stages

Now, something personal. I went through my own version of these stages after January 6th.

At first, I believed the party would come back to its senses. Then I was angry, at the people who knew better and folded anyway. I spent a long time convinced I could help fix it from the inside. There were some hard, lonely months. And eventually I reached acceptance: the party I joined wasn’t coming back, and the only thing left to do was to help build something better for the country I love.

That’s what acceptance is supposed to do. It frees you to move forward. The Republican Party has chosen the opposite. It’s accepted that it would rather stay stuck than change.

I’d love to be wrong about that someday. But until then, don’t mistake their paralysis for permanent defeat. A party that can’t change doesn’t simply disappear. It waits.

Our job, for the next two years and beyond, is to make sure the country has better choices than the one they keep making.

— Adam

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Our top story today. Pete Hegseth is about to potentially face impeachment in a Republican-led House, and he’s calling it a punishment for winning. Republican Congressman Thomas Massie filed the articles of impeachment yesterday, 34 pages, eight counts. The vote could come this week. This morning Hegseth held his first Pentagon briefing since May to say he’s being punished for victory. The president says he’ll stand by him either way, and calls Iran a win. Ask anyone buying gas right now whether Iran feels like a win and I think you’ll hear a different answer.

We’ll also get into Republicans breaking with the president over the Nvidia CEO and his alleged Chinese spy lover, peace talks on Ukraine that are underway in Abu Dhabi with Putin asking for the same thing he’s always asked for, whistleblowers telling House Democrats the Interior Department is destroying records on the president’s building projects (which Interior denies), and the president back to claiming the election was rigged but this time to an audience that has started to stop listening.

So do me a favor. Like this video, share it with someone who needs to see it, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Let’s get to it.

1. GOP Congressman Begins Hegseth Impeachment Process

Here’s where things stand. Congressman Massie filed his resolution as privileged yesterday, which means the House has to deal with it within two legislative days and reports are that the vote will take place by Wednesday. The articles: waging a war with Iran without authorization, violating the rules meant to protect civilians, the boat strikes, and more. Here’s the secretary this morning.

And here’s Massie, before the briefing, predicting the general gist of those words.

And finally, the president, on Truth Social:

Two victories. Well, let’s check one. The Strait of Hormuz is still largely blocked. Ships are still being hit. Oil was over 100 dollars a barrel until last week. More than 20 Americans are dead and the Pentagon has slow-walked publishing updated casualty numbers.

On impeachment, the Hegseth aides are calling it a “politicized spectacle” and are telling Republicans to push back “while we still hold the trifecta.” That’s the strategy. Not that the war went well, but that there’s still time to protect him before January.

Look, I’ve never seen a Secretary of Defense describe an unfinished war as a victory while the casualty list is incomplete. If this were a victory, the president wouldn’t need Fox to go to bat for him on the issue, the Vice President wouldn’t be blaming the war for the election, and the Pentagon wouldn’t be writing talking points about the trifecta.

Massie’s impeachment vote is set to arrive, and I think the war will whip the votes for him, even those from some members of the president’s own party.

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2. Trump AI Ally Mired in National Security Scandal

Jensen Huang runs Nvidia, which became the most valuable company in the world by making the chips every AI company needs. U.S. intelligence believes that a woman he had an affair with was passing information along to the CCP. Her company had already been suspected of smuggling banned Nvidia chips into China. This weekend, Huang finally admitted to the affair and apologized to his family and employees in an email. The Nvidia board is opening an investigation, but Huang will stay on as CEO in the meantime. So what did his friend in the White House think of the whole controversy?

Of course Huang will be in good shape. His company donated $25 million dollars to Trump’s precious ballroom. And if Kash Patel is the guy in charge, the president’s opinion will be the only one that matters.

Other Republicans aren’t so willing to let this one slide. Politico reports the Republican chairs of House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, and the Select Committee on the CCP have asked Huang to come in for a closed-door briefing next week. Brett Guthrie said “we need to do an investigation,” and John Cornyn said Congress should “absolutely” have a role in probing him. Even John Thune chimed in, telling the press: “We want to be responding in a serious way to any big threat to America’s national security interest.”

This isn’t the first time Trump has played fast and loose with Nvidia. Congressional China hawks have been frustrated with the president since he approved the sale of the company’s advanced chips to China over their objections. Politico reported that staff at the Commerce Department flagged the risk of Nvidia chips being diverted to China in “dozens” of reports that Howard Lutnick ignored.

The favorable treatment has extended to Huang personally. In September, he got an invite to a state dinner with Xi. In October, he was awarded the National Medal of Science. He’s been a symbol of Trump’s alliance with big tech and the face of the argument that tech companies can police themselves. Meanwhile, the woman at his side was working for Beijing. I can’t wait for the new Congress to sink their teeth into this one.

3. Ukraine-Russia Talks Underway in Abu Dhabi

In Abu Dhabi, American, Ukrainian, and Russian delegations are sitting down for the first trilateral talks since Trump started the war with Iran. A U.S. official said both sides have shown “a little bit of flexibility” in private. They’re back at it today.

The sticking points haven’t changed. Russia still wants all of Donetsk, including the cities Ukraine holds. Putin also refuses a simple ceasefire. Meanwhile, the American side is floating a security guarantee for Ukraine modeled on NATO’s Article 5, plus a U.S.-European draft reportedly includes a timetable for lifting sanctions and energy access for Russia.

Zelensky has explained many times why he can’t accept the land swaps Trump seems to prefer: “Ceding Ukrainian land for peace is just abstract words…Nobody trusts Putin to stop if we leave Donbas. He will pause. Then he will come back in one year, two years, or five years.”

As talks continued, the head of Ukraine’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee criticized Trump’s handling of the negotiations, telling the BBC he wants “a quick deal at the expense of Ukraine.” He explained that the only way to get Putin to negotiate for real is more pressure, sanctions and deep strikes: “While Putin has a war machine up and running, he has no incentives to negotiate.” On the other hand, he said agreements like Trump’s Russian diesel deal “only encourages Moscow to continue the war.”

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I’ve seen the destruction of this war with my own eyes. I would love to see a deal. But Putin will only make real concessions when he feels the pressure. Lifting sanctions does the exact opposite.

So negotiate. Talk. But show up strong. Put the pressure on. Make a deal with the future of the Ukrainian people in mind instead of chasing a headline.

4. Democrats Receive Interior Dept. Whistleblower Complaint

According to CNN, multiple whistleblowers have told House Democrats that the Interior Department is getting rid of records in anticipation of oversight investigations. The records relate to Trump’s makeover of Washington, D.C.

The president has pushed through many building projects on federal land, turning a historic city into his own tacky vanity project. There’s the golf course on East Potomac Park, promising a world class experience for Trump’s billionaire friends. There’s the Tidal Basin redevelopment plan, which makes room for Trump’s National Garden of American Heroes. And there’s the towering triumphal arch, complete with military snipers and drones.

The whistleblowers say some of the paperwork behind those projects has already been destroyed.

The Interior Department denies it. It said the whistleblower claim is “100 percent false.” A spokesperson added “the Department follows all federal records management obligations as directed by its ethics officials.”

But the timing tells its own story. CNN reports the administration is racing to push these projects through federal approvals over the next 60 days, before Democrats take control of Congress in January. A Trump ally even said: “It is going to be like a storm.”

Democrats aren’t taking any chances either. Representative Jared Huffman is expected to chair the Natural Resources Committee. He’s already sending preservation letters to everyone involved: the Interior Department, the Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Agriculture Department, and any company that donated to the projects.

The recipients have to certify that they’re preserving records. They also have to “identify and recover any deleted information.” Huffman is confident his committee will get the records, deleted or not. His message to the administration? “Everything is coming; it’s all coming.”

The committee isn’t waiting long. Working with the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees, it’s already planning early hearings on the golf course and the arch. It says it’s ready to issue subpoenas if the administration stonewalls them.

And here’s the thing. Innocent people don’t usually need a shredder. If these projects are on the level, the paperwork should be the easy part. Interior says nothing is being destroyed. Fine. In January, it’ll have to prove it. Under oath.

5. Trump Blames Voting Machines for Midterm Drubbing

Presidents don’t have to sign off on elections to determine if they’re fair. And this one left no room for fraud claims. He got crushed.

By yesterday morning, the shock had worn off. Trump went back to his favorite lie, posting on Truth Social.

There’s a lot to unpack here. First, bad polls don’t make a rigged election. They make bad polls. And besides, these polls weren’t even bad. They projected the Democrats to take both chambers.

Second, those early voting “dumps” he’s so worried about? That’s just counting. Election officials count ballots in batches, and some batches are larger than others. Trump made this same complaint in 2020. He and his allies took it to court more than 60 times, and they lost almost every case.

And lastly, is he really going back to the machines? Because that conspiracy did even worse. Fox News paid Dominion Voting Systems more than 787 million dollars to settle a defamation suit over it. The theory has been tested in courtrooms and by hand. It failed both times.

This proves one thing: Trump is desperate. The wheels are coming off his presidency, and he’s trying to burn the country down on the way out. He’s naming Stephen Miller chief of staff. He’s offering Dana White the press secretary job. And he’s back to claiming election fraud.

And here’s the bottom line. In 2020, this post would have launched a thousand lawsuits and a riot. In 2026, it got a two-word reply from far-right commentator Megyn Kelly: “Just stop.” That’s the change. It’s not that he’s stopped. It’s that the movement that used to carry it for him has put it down. They’re embarrassed, and they should be.

Because the machines didn’t beat him. The people did, and everyone but him has accepted it.

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Some other stories that caught my eye:

• Democrats haven’t even been sworn in yet, and they’re already coming after corporate America. Two days after last week’s election, Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal sent dozens of letters to companies that donated to President Trump’s White House ballroom project. The list includes Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, BlackRock and Coinbase. Blumenthal is set to chair the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He gave the companies until Jan. 4, the first full day of the new Congress, to produce records. Missing that deadline, he warned, would leave him “no choice but to consider alternative measures to obtain compliance.” The House Judiciary Committee is also looking into the Live Nation antitrust settlement. And the committee’s incoming chair, Jamie Raskin, says he’s ready to subpoena the law firms that cut pro bono deals with the White House. Such investigations come after strong voter mandate. Exit polls showed that anger over affordability and corruption drove voters to hand Democrats both chambers. But companies saw this coming. Many have spent months hiring congressional-investigations lawyers and running “wargame” simulations to map their exposure.

• Washington grand juries keep denying prosecutors from the Justice Department who are trying to push Trump’s agenda. The New York Times reports that D.C. federal prosecutors have failed to get indictments in at least three cases in the past two weeks alone. The latest came Friday. A grand jury refused to indict someone accused of voting in two jurisdictions in 2024. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office declined to comment. But Pirro has had to brush off such losses before. She said in March she was “willing to take a no true bill,” meaning that a grand jury votes not to indict. That used to be almost unthinkable. Grand juries hear only the government’s side, and prosecutors just have to show probable cause. Trump’s first term produced one high-profile rejection, in the case against former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe. This term, D.C. grand juries have turned down cases against a man who threw a sandwich at a federal officer and against six Democratic lawmakers over their illegal-orders video. Last week, a federal magistrate judge threw out charges Pirro’s office had filed without going to a grand jury at all. He accused prosecutors of deliberately avoiding grand juries.

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To my former House GOP colleagues,

This past week has probably not been very fun for you. The American people sent a clear message about the corruption, incompetence, and cruelty of the modern GOP. You’re probably ashamed, angry, and looking for someone to blame.

Today, you’ll vote on who will lead House Republicans for the next two years. Your choices are Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan, two of the President’s most loyal defenders, both of whom voted to object to certifying the 2020 election.

A week after voters rejected Donald Trump in overwhelming fashion, you’re about to take the first step toward cementing his control of the party. Again.

You’ve Been Here Before

You remember 2021 as well as I do. For a couple of weeks after January 6th, a lot of you were done with Trump. Members who’d defended him for four years were stopping me in the hallway to say it was finally over.

That lasted right up until the impeachment vote. By then most of you had decided he was finished anyway, so why take the heat? Fifteen days later, Kevin McCarthy was posing for a picture with him at Mar-a-Lago and gave permission to the party to welcome Trump back with open arms. And the ten of us who voted to impeach quickly became the problem instead of him.

Pushing him out back then would have given you four years to rally behind new leaders and new ideas. Instead, you waited for him to go away. He didn’t. He came back stronger, and he took the party with him. Please don’t make the same bet twice.

You told yourselves in 2021 that voters would never forgive you for crossing him. But last week, voters took that excuse away from you.

This wasn’t a normal midterm loss. Democrats flipped Senate seats in Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kansas, and Texas. Greg Abbott, who had won every one of his previous races for governor by double digits, lost Texas by seven points. Ken Paxton lost by about twelve. It was the worst midterm defeat either party has suffered in half a century.

And yet listen to how people are explaining it. Scalise told you last week that “we were unable to defy history,” as if this were the normal swing of the pendulum. Vice President Vance says it was the Iran war, and only the war. The President says it happened because he wasn’t on the ballot. Others will blame weak candidates, or bad turnout operations, or the media.

But voters didn’t reject one decision or one candidate. They rejected the whole package.

Here’s what I’d urge you to be honest about. The country didn’t turn liberal overnight. Voters in Texas didn’t suddenly stop believing in low taxes and a secure border. Voters in Kansas didn’t wake up on Tuesday wanting to be California. Those voters rejected something else.

They rejected a war they were told would take weeks and that drove up the price of everything they buy. They rejected pardons for donors, stock trades in companies the administration regulates, and a gold ballroom built while families struggled to fill their gas tanks.

They rejected a party that defends every cruelty its leader commits and calls anyone who objects a traitor or a whiner. They rejected the idea that loyalty to one man is the only qualification that matters.

To his credit, Scalise also wrote that Republicans “will need to be honest with ourselves about what happened.” He’s right about that.

But the honest version is simple. Voters understood exactly what the GOP has become, and they walked away from it. In historic fashion.

The Party You Could Build

Here’s the good news: there is a real Republican Party waiting to be rebuilt, and, believe it or not, millions of left-of-center Americans are desperate for you to build it. They know this country can’t survive if one party exists at the whim of a deranged authoritarian.

Imagine a party that takes the debt seriously again, instead of passing tax bills that pile trillions onto it. A party with real conservative answers on the things families are actually worried about: building more housing so young people can afford a home, producing more American energy so gas prices come down, and making health care cheaper instead of just complaining about it.

A party that stands with our allies and against dictators, the way Ronald Reagan did, instead of cozying up to Putin and leaving Ukraine to fend for itself.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? But, as always, there’s a catch.

Nobody is going to build that party for you. And rebuilding starts with the leaders you choose. That means picking someone who doesn’t treat last Tuesday like it was just a bad night. Someone with a plan for the next two years that isn’t just defending the President. Someone who wants this party to end up somewhere it hasn’t been. Neither of the two men asking for your vote fits that, and you know it.

The President knows it too, because he’s staying out of the leadership race. When has he ever stayed out of anything? He’s not staying out because he wants to respect the process. He’s staying out because he already knows what he gets either way. Another leader who’ll defend him no matter what.

Last Tuesday, millions of your voters stood in a booth alone and did the thing you’ve been afraid to do for years. Now it’s your turn to refuse the two-man race you’ve been handed and choose someone who will take the party in a different direction.

You can stay quiet and go down with Trump, or you can start saying in public what you’ve been saying to each other in private.

I walked away from Trump’s madness in 2021. It cost me my party and my career in Congress, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Most people in politics never get a second chance at a decision like that. You’re getting one.

You balked once. Don’t miss this one.

- Adam

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Our top story today. Voters said last week that corruption was their top issue, and now a former Trump adviser is describing it from the inside. Calley Means helped build the MAHA movement and he’s one of RFK’s closest allies. He ran the health agenda at the White House until he quit last month. Now he says the people around the president were making policy based on who was funding the midterms. And he said it on Joe Rogan’s show, to an audience full of Trump voters. We’ll walk through all of it.

We’ll also get into the Republicans who are furious that Stephen Miller is the new chief of staff, the president admitting on 60 Minutes that he hates his enemies and always will, the latest shady deal tied to the Trump sons, and the blame game that has former Trump aides threatening each other with lawsuits.

So do me a favor. Like this video, share it with someone who needs to see it, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Let’s get to it.

1. Trump Adviser Exposes Pay-to-Play

Calley Means ran health policy in the White House until last month. He’s a top Kennedy ally, and one of the main faces of the Make America Healthy Again movement. He says he quit because the people around the president were working against the voters who put them there. Here’s Means on Face the Nation:

He also went on Joe Rogan, where he explained how decisions are made in Trump’s White House:

He told the Journal that conversation happened in June, over a letter Kennedy wanted to send about ultra-processed food. The answer from Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, was that the sugar industry was funding the midterms.

Means says James Blair, her deputy, was the top advocate inside the building for fruit-flavored vapes. He says the kratom limits got loosened after the industry lobbied, which we covered a few weeks ago. And he says any company that hired Wiles’s daughter “was getting a high priority.” In his words, if you wanted something done, “you pay Susie’s daughter.” He says her daughter’s firm went from almost zero to 30 million dollars a year under Trump.

Ron Johnson, Republican senator from Wisconsin, went on Fox and told people to listen to the whole thing, calling it “the corruption that Calley Means lays out in gory detail in government, I’m sad to say within the Trump administration.” Robert Garcia, the incoming Oversight chairman, says he’ll investigate. Wiles told CBS that Trump did more for MAHA than any president. Blair calls it all “scurrilous, false, and defamatory.”

But the sad part is that nothing he’s describing is surprising. Nobody watched that interview and thought, wow, I can’t believe this White House would do that. This administration is pay to play and everybody knows it. The people paying know it and the people getting paid know it. Voters know it too, which is a big part of why Tuesday went the way it did.

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2. GOP Furious Over Miller Pick

Friday afternoon, the president announced longtime loyalist Susie Wiles is out, and Stephen Miller is in as the new chief of staff. This is the architect of mass deportations who pushed ICE towards brutal enforcement. He’s called the Democratic Party “a domestic extremist organization.” Even for MAGA, he’s a pretty nasty and divisive guy. So it was no surprise how some Republicans reacted to the news.

Here’s Thom Tillis on CNN:

The worst of all possible choices. He also called it “a colossal mistake, and the last thing we need 72 hours after the whooping we got on Tuesday.” He pointed out that Miller’s brutal policies helped lead Republicans to disaster in the midterms. But it’s not just policy. Many voters can’t stomach Miller on a personal level. Marlin Stutzman, Republican congressman from Indiana, told reporters: “I think it was a bad mistake. He’s not liked out here in the Midwest by people. They don’t like his tone.” When Politico broke the news to another house republican, he said: “Please tell me you’re lying to me right now, just to get a reaction.”

Oddly enough, the man who just elevated Miller seems to share these critiques. The day he made the switch, he sat down with 60 Minutes and told them this about illegal immigrants whose only crime was crossing the border.

“Too tough.” Those are words I’ve never heard from this President’s mouth. He then said he would be open to an amnesty deal with Democrats, and pinned the harsh deportations on “far-right” elements in the administration. It’s an obvious and pathetic attempt to deflect blame from the person who elevated those advisors and listened to their advice.

And that brings us back to Miller. Just an hour after that interview was taped, Trump announced Miller’s promotion to the top job in the White House. Trump acknowledged that deportations were toxic in the midterms, but doubled down on the man who pushed them.

So don’t be fooled by Trump’s new attitude. The power is in the same place.

3. Trump Chooses Hate Over Heaven

Ross Douthat got spiritual with the president, posing what should’ve been an easy hypothetical: could he forgive and feel love for enemies like Comey and Pelosi to get into heaven? Could he let go of his hate for eternal paradise? Of course, the answer was no. Ross pressed the question. Have a listen.

The strange question was prompted by Trump’s comments at Charlie Kirk’s memorial. That day, Erika Kirk did something remarkable, forgiving the man who murdered her husband. But in Trump’s remarks following her speech, he said he couldn’t do the same for those who had wronged him.

It’s a remarkable contrast. These are Trump’s political enemies. And whatever they did to him, he brought on himself through his own conduct. And the people in question suffered plenty for their attempts to hold him accountable. Comey has been charged multiple times. Nancy Pelosi’s husband was literally attacked and almost killed by a man with a hammer.

The President can’t see it that way, because it’s not about logic or proportionality for him. He needs hatred for his enemies. It fuels him more than any policy platform or sense of loyalty to the American people.

And then there’s the money. Ross asked Trump about his refusal to divest from his crypto venture World Liberty Financial, pointing out heavy investment from the UAE. Trump played dumb, saying there couldn’t be a conflict of interest because his sons run the company, not him. But that’s exactly the problem: Don and Eric are the worst of the worst when it comes to corruption.

4. Trump Sons’ Ebola Deal Exposed

This comes from new reporting by ProPublica, and it’s about a company called XWELL. Most of its money comes from spas and waxing salons. It also owns a small subsidiary that used to run COVID testing at airports. Waxing and Covid tests? Unsurprisingly, the business wasn’t working. By the CEO’s own account, the company was close to bankrupt.

Then it got a lifeline. A fund dumped about 30 million dollars into it. That fund is run by Dominari, a firm where Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are advisers. They were given more than 10 percent of Dominari when they signed on. That investment paid off fast.

This year, an Ebola outbreak hit Congo and its neighbors in central and east Africa. The Trump administration went looking for a company to screen travelers at American airports. They settled on XWELL. Shocker. In June, the CDC gave XWELL’s subsidiary close to 19 million dollars for “Ebola entry screening services.”

But that’s not all. The State Department then gave it an additional 20 million for outbreak response in Congo. The subsidiary, mind you, has never worked on Ebola. It has never worked abroad. The CEO just about admitted it wasn’t ready. “This is a risky contract,” he said. “I’m not sure we can do it.”

That’s hardly inspiring when lives are on the line. In Congo alone, the disease has killed more than 5,000 people this year. The official who led USAID’s response to the 2014 outbreak responded in kind: “There are countless organizations in the world that have decades of experience doing this work.” Organizations that could actually save lives.

But it’s not the lives that matter to this administration. It’s the money.

The State Department claimed its contract was awarded competitively. And a spokesperson for the Trump sons said they’re “merely passive, minority investors in a fund that invested in this company.”

But here’s the reality. This administration pulled us out of the World Health Organization and shut down USAID. Those organizations were built for exactly this work. And what did it pick instead? A spa company. And the president’s sons just happen to have a stake in it. But we’re supposed to believe that had nothing to do with it.

5. Trump Aides Threaten Each Other

The Wall Street Journal got access to text messages that show a feud between two former Trump officials: Calley Means and James Blair, the former deputy chief of staff.

Before Means gave the interviews we covered at the beginning of the show, Blair sent him a direct threat. “If you are gonna try to knife me, I’m happy to return the favor.” But Means went ahead anyway. He accused White House officials of blocking access to the president and keeping information from him. He also directly accused Blair of putting corporate and industry interests ahead of the American public.

So Blair upped the ante. He texted, “You just dragged me in a very public forum with scurrilous half baked accusations and you know what you were doing.” Means didn’t back down. “If I said something factually inaccurate about you, please let me know.” Blair answered with a legal threat. “I’m not sure if you’ve been through a defamation lawsuit, but I have. And I know how it works well.”

It’s unclear whether this feud actually ends up in court. Blair told the Journal he’s weighing a lawsuit, and he called Means “a failed political operative and wedding dress salesman.” But Means is swinging back. He says he may sue Wiles and Blair to get their communications. He asked them to preserve their records. That includes anything involving Ballard Partners, Wiles’s old lobbying firm, and Bayer, the company that makes glyphosate and is one of MAHA’s top targets.

But it isn’t surprising. Last week, we talked about how the midterms gave conservatives, from media figures to Republican politicians, the green light to speak out against this administration. Now it’s coming from people who worked inside the administration. And people like Blair sure seem nervous about what the public might find out.

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Some other stories that caught my eye:

• Pete Hegseth’s office used internet searches to block promotions for senior Navy officers who had already been selected by merit-based boards, according to three military officials. One senior official who spoke to MS Now said staff printed the search results into paper-only files that the officers never saw. Instructions on the new criteria came by phone, not in writing. Officers were flagged for supporting diversity programs, enforcing the Covid vaccine mandate, working on the Afghanistan evacuation, or having ties to Gen. Mark Milley. Nine of the 31 officers picked by the one-star board were withheld, including every woman and minority except for one. At the two-star level, the only woman and every officer of color were pulled. Under federal law, only the president can strike individual names from one- and two-star lists. Officers facing a delay are also entitled to written notice and a chance to respond. The official called it the most names withheld in Navy history.

• Republicans are racing to pass as much of their agenda as they can before Democrats take control of Congress on Jan. 3. Lawmakers return to Washington today for the first time since the midterms, and only five weeks are left on the calendar. Sen. Rick Scott wants his colleagues to work through Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s. “Let’s get everything done,” he told Fox News. The most urgent job is avoiding a shutdown when funding runs out after Dec. 11. Republicans also want to pass the annual defense bill, overhaul federal permitting, and confirm as many Trump judges as they can. Some are pushing a reconciliation bill to restock munitions used up in the Iran war. That process alone would take weeks. And Republicans currently can only afford to lose two votes in the House.

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Donald Trump’s remarkable 60 Minutes interview was taped at the White House on Friday, three days after Republicans suffered their worst midterm defeat in half a century. For most of the interview, Ross Douthat pressed the President on the things you’d expect: the election, his deportation policy, how his net worth had grown by billions while he was in office. Then, near the end, Douthat, a Catholic who writes often about faith, changed the subject.

What did Donald Trump think would happen to him when he died?

“I hope I’m missed,” Trump said.

Not your memory, Douthat pressed. Yourself.

“Well, I’m a religious person, so in theory I go to heaven,” Trump said. Did he think he was going? “I hope so. I don’t want to go to hell.”

So Douthat asked the question that mattered. He brought up the remarks Erika Kirk had given at her husband’s memorial about Christian forgiveness, and about forgiving your enemies. Then he asked the President to imagine that getting into heaven required forgiving his. People like James Comey. Nancy Pelosi. Could he do it?

“Sure, the easy answer to that is, oh yes, I could forgive,” Trump began.

“No, I don’t think that’s an easy question at all,” Douthat said.

Trump called his enemies “very bad people” and “very dishonest.” To pretend to forgive them, he said, wouldn’t be real.

“Is the answer no then?”

“The answer is no.”

“Before the judgment throne of God?”

“Before the judgment.”

“You are telling me you couldn’t find it in your heart to forgive some of your enemies, after all that’s been given to you?” Douthat asked.

“I probably cannot do that, no, because I do hate some of my enemies, and I always will.”

Donald Trump knew the easy answer. He just couldn’t bring himself to mean it.

Think about the moment he was in. A week earlier, voters across the country had rejected him in historic fashion. He’s facing two years as a lame duck, with a Congress that can subpoena him and a party already fighting over what comes after him.

If there was ever a time for a politician to show a softer side, this was it. He could have said, “Honestly, it would be hard. Some of these people did terrible things to me. But I’d like to think I could. I’d try.” It would have cost him nothing. It might even have helped.

He couldn’t do it. Not for his political fortunes. Not for his legacy. Not even, by his own account, for his soul.

If you’ve been paying attention, none of this should surprise you.

In September of last year, at Charlie Kirk’s memorial, his widow, Erika Kirk, publicly forgave the man accused of killing her husband. A few minutes later, the President took the same stage and said that Charlie hadn’t hated his opponents. “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie,” Trump said. “I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them.”

Douthat was pointing straight back at that moment. More than a year later, with time to think about it and a whole country watching, Trump gave the same answer.

The interview didn’t reveal anything new. For Donald Trump, the grievance always comes first.

The Weight He Chooses to Carry

I’ll be honest that I also find it deeply sad.

Donald Trump is 80 years old. He has survived two attempts on his life. Someone sat across from him and asked, in effect, what he wants to bring with him into eternity, and he clung tightly to his grudges. He’d rather hold on to the hate than let it go, even with everything at stake.

Forgiveness isn’t weakness. In my faith, and in just about every faith I know of, it’s freedom. It’s how you set down a weight you were never meant to carry forever. It doesn’t mean pretending wrongs weren’t wrong, or that anyone escapes accountability. It means refusing to let the people who hurt you decide who you become. Trump has made the opposite choice, and he seems to have made it for good.

Trump claims to be a religious man, and I am in no position to judge a man’s soul. But Jesus addressed this very topic directly, right after teaching his disciples the Lord’s Prayer:

“For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

(Matthew 6:14-15)

I won’t pretend to know exactly what happens to any of us after we pass. But I know what it looks like when a man tells the whole country he’d rather hold on to his hatred than let it go.

And there’s a lesson there for the rest of us who don’t want to live like that.

In a couple of weeks, a lot of us will sit down for Thanksgiving with people we’ve argued with for the better part of a decade. The relative who stopped returning your calls. The neighbor whose yard signs you’ve glared at since 2016.

We need to be abundantly clear about something: this country isn’t going to heal on grievance. And we can’t surely wait for this President to show us how to forgive, because he just told us that he won’t.

So it’s on us. Not to forget. Not to excuse what was done. But to choose, where we can, to let go of the hate before it decides who we are.

— Adam

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Last week, American voters fired the Republican Congress. But here’s the catch: the people voters just rejected still control Congress until January 3. And those final eight weeks could be some of the most consequential—and chaotic—we’ve seen in a long time. I know something about being a lame duck. I was one in 2022, and I can tell you firsthand that something changes when you’re no longer worried about reelection, a primary challenge, or an angry president attacking you on social media. Suddenly, you have the freedom to do what you actually believe is right. Now, dozens of Republicans are returning to Washington after losing their seats, retiring, or watching their party get crushed at the ballot box. Many are angry. Many blame Donald Trump. And for the first time, some of them may realize they have absolutely nothing left to fear from him.

In this video, I break down four major battles to watch as Congress returns: a potential impeachment vote against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the Iran war, the fight between Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan for Republican leadership, a December 11 government funding deadline that could trigger another shutdown, and a last-minute Republican scramble to push through judges, nominees, and controversial legislation before Democrats take control. Each fight will tell us something important about where the Republican Party is headed, how much power Trump still has, and whether the members who spent years falling in line will finally find the courage to stand up.

Here’s the bigger question: When politicians no longer have to fear losing their jobs, will they finally start doing their jobs? Or will they spend their final weeks giving Donald Trump everything he wants, even after voters delivered a clear rejection of his agenda?

Watch my full breakdown below, and tell me in the comments which of these four battles you think will matter most.

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In the aftermath of the tragic plane crash near Palm Beach, something deeply disturbing happened. Before investigators could even begin determining what went wrong, social media was flooded with people blaming the woman heard on the air traffic control recording. The accusations were predictable: DEI, unqualified female pilots, and the usual garbage from people who have never set foot in a cockpit. There was just one problem: She wasn’t even the pilot flying the airplane. She was doing her job, communicating an unfolding catastrophe to air traffic control with extraordinary professionalism, even as she was falling to her death. Instead of recognizing that courage, people who knew absolutely nothing about the situation turned her final moments into ammunition for their political agenda.

I sat down with fellow pilot and aviation influencer Gary Baumgardner (@GARYBPILOT) to talk about why this made us both so angry, what actually happens in a cockpit during an emergency, and what it really takes to become a professional pilot. We discuss the rigorous training, testing, and standards every pilot must meet, why the DEI accusations are so fundamentally ignorant, and the growing tendency to turn every tragedy into a political culture war before the facts are known. This is about more than one terrible crash. It’s about basic human decency, respect for people who dedicate their lives to aviation, and the responsibility to know what you’re talking about before opening your mouth.

Watch our full conversation below.

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Note: For the thousands of new subscribers who have joined since Tuesday, every Sunday we focus on a story that bring us hope. We call it Good News Sunday. I hope you enjoy it.

Happy Sunday, everyone. What a week.

There’s been more good news since Tuesday than I could ever fit in one column. And if you’re like me, you’ve probably heard most of it already. After the past two years, it’s hard to stop reading when the headlines finally give us hope.

But with so much to celebrate, there’s one moment I want to make sure we don’t miss. And it’s about normal Americans who decided enough was enough.

Chuck Hubbard grew up in the mountains of North Carolina. He started working at his hometown newspaper when he was still a kid, and spent his career as a journalist. This year, he ran for Congress against Virginia Foxx, a Republican first elected in 2004 who now chairs the powerful House Rules Committee. Trump won her district by about 18 points in 2024.

At one campaign stop, he was asked about the issue closest to his heart. Just listen to what he said:

He answered by remembering the day Trump was first elected. His daughter Meredith, a member of the LGBTQ community, called him crying. “These people hate me,” she told him. “They’re coming after me, and they’re coming after my job.” And for Hubbard, there was no issue more important. “Everybody deserves to be able to live their lives the way they want to,” he told the room.

That answer stunned the cynic in me. In a district like his, the safe answer was anything else. Every political consultant in America probably would have told him to talk about grocery prices or the war in Iran. Instead, he talked about his kid. And it wasn’t an answer he’d practiced in the mirror. He just said what any loving parent would: that he was willing to do whatever it took to keep his daughter safe.

And as of now, against all odds, it looks like that proud dad is heading to Washington. Foxx hasn’t conceded, and there may be a recount. But however the final count shakes out, his neighbors showed up for him. Plenty of them probably didn’t share all of his views. Still, it’s hard to vote against a man for loving his daughter.

And he’s far from the only one who won this week by running for people they care about. After Pete Hegseth removed her without cause, retired Vice Admiral Nancy Lacore spoke up for the officers still caught in his politics.

Zach Dembo spent years as a federal prosecutor until he resigned to fight for Americans who paid the price of DOJ corruption.

Firefighter Sam Forstag watched DOGE cuts leave the crews who protect America’s forests and towns stretched thin and decided to do something about it.

All three of them flipped Republican House districts on Tuesday, running on what they’d seen with their own eyes.

Look, I spent twelve years in Congress. I watched plenty of people run for the wrong reasons. Some wanted a title. Some wanted to get famous. Some just wanted to win. You can usually tell the difference within about five minutes. Every person I just mentioned brings something deeper and more meaningful to Washington. You can hear it in every story they tell.

So yes, it’s good news that the Democrats’ message worked on Tuesday. It’s great news that Americans spoke so clearly on the cost of living and the corruption of this administration. But above all of that, what gives me the most hope is who actually gets to serve now.

After the darkness of the past two years, and the bitter division that came long before that, we’re about to have a lot of leaders who were everyday Americans who got into this because they care about somebody. They didn’t run to make deals or climb a ladder. They ran for a daughter, a congregation, a patient, a crew.

A politician who’s in it for himself answers to whoever can help him next. A dad who’s in it for his daughter answers to her, and everyone else like her. I know which one I want writing our laws. And come January, that’s exactly who we’re sending.

That, my friends, is very good news for your Sunday.

— Adam

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As a reminder like I do on Saturdays, our store at Wear Them Out has a bunch of new designs. S…

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As I sat down to record this, we got information that the new White House Chief of Staff is Stephen Miller. Now, what does that tell me? That tells me that any idea that Donald Trump recognized the mistake he made is clearly not the case. They are going to double down. And that means that the next couple of years are going to be pretty rough.

Tuesday was a massive victory. But we’re ultimately going to have to continue to fight this fight. So thanks for continuing to do this with me. I thought there was a chance Stephen Miller would actually be fired since he’s largely an architect of the reason they lost. But in fact, they’re doubling down. And I guess in hindsight, what would we expect differently from Trump? Anyways, let’s get to the show.

We have our first big resignation since the election, and it’s the Justice Department official behind Trump’s whole election strategy. Her name is Harmeet Dhillon, and she’s the one who has spent the last year unsuccessfully suing states to get access to their voter rolls. She’s also the one who sent out a thousand federal monitors to the polls on Tuesday. She says she quit three weeks ago and the White House asked her to keep it secret until after the election. But the Times says the White House was angry at her for not pushing back hard enough on 60 Minutes when she was told noncitizen voting is rare. Whatever the case may be, her departure from the DOJ is great news for the country.

We’ll also get into yet another Trump cabinet secretary caught in a massive conflict of interest, the tech billionaires who spent hundreds of millions on this election and came away with nothing, the White House warning Republicans who are starting to speak up, and Pete Hegseth going on offense as his own party lines up against him.

So do me a favor. Like this video, share it with someone who needs to see it, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Let’s get to it.

1. Trump’s Election Enforcer Quits

Harmeet Dhillon is out as head of the Civil Rights Division. If you watch this show you’ve heard her name a lot these past few weeks. She’s the one who’s been running Trump’s whole effort to put pressure on the election. Her office sued about two dozen states for their voter files and tried to get ballots thrown out right before the election.

But she’s been at this a lot longer than that. The Civil Rights Division at the DOJ was created to protect people’s right to vote. Under her it became something else. She ended dozens of school desegregation cases and dropped the police reform agreements in Minneapolis and Louisville, and most of the career staff walked out. Then she spent the past year aiming what was left at the voting system and calling it election integrity.

So did she jump or get pushed off? Her story is that she jumped. She told Fox she resigned three weeks ago and the chief of staff, Susie Wiles, asked her to hold off until after the midterms. She says nobody asked her to go.

But the New York Times is reporting that Trump and his inner circle were annoyed with her after she went on 60 Minutes and didn’t push back hard enough on how rarely undocumented immigrants vote. In other words, she didn’t sell the story hard enough for them.

She was also having trouble delivering for the president. Department leaders were frustrated that her campaign to compel states to hand them voter data “had failed time after time.” Her team also built the two big election lawsuits in California and Alaska, but she never showed up in court to back them, probably knowing they were no more than legal hail marys. And it was her operation that drummed up a list of supposed illegal voters in California, only for it to flop when the state found that over 40 percent of the names weren’t even registered.

Kristen Clarke, who held the job before Dhillon, had this to say: “From Day 1, Harmeet Dhillon abdicated her responsibility to enforce our nation’s federal civil rights laws and destroyed the crown jewel of the Justice Department.”

This was a division created to protect Black voters. She turned it into a tool of intimidation dedicated to soothing Trump’s ego. When that turned out to be an impossible task, she left. She’s not the first, and she definitely won’t be the last.

Want to listen on the go?

2. Burgum Caught Cashing In

ProPublica got the financial disclosure for the interior secretary, Doug Burgum. This is the guy who runs national parks and public lands, which is roughly a fifth of all the land in the United States. He’s been pushing for data centers on federal property, where citizens can’t stop them.

For Doug, the push is personal. He has tens of millions of dollars invested in AI companies through a firm he co-founded. In 2025, his first year in office, he sold AI holdings for gains of between two and a half and 15 million dollars. He resigned from the firm when he was confirmed, but he didn’t take out the money.

He’s certainly a friend of the industry. Last year he met with Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet more than 20 times. A government survey recently found 91 million acres of Interior land eligible for data centers, and the department is reviewing permits for 15 right now. Some are being waved through and skipping regulatory steps.

And this is not how it used to work. Richard Painter, George W. Bush’s ethics lawyer, told ProPublica: “In the Bush administration, the answer would’ve been ‘he has to recuse,’ I can guarantee you that.” The department says Burgum has met every disclosure obligation and that his investments have nothing to do with his decisions.

In August, Fox News asked the Secretary about its own poll showing 70 percent of voters oppose data centers. He blamed “foreign influence.” Turns out, the only undue influence involved might be coming from his stock portfolio.

3. Voters Revolt Against Data Centers

In September, the president hosted a lunch at the White House with big tech royalty. They’d given to the ballroom and the inauguration. Amazon made and promoted the Melania movie. For two years, the Times writes, “it had been that easy to get what they wanted.”

But this election wasn’t so easy to buy. Look at their three biggest bets. Musk spent hundreds of millions trying to get Ken Paxton elected to the Senate in Texas. Marc Andreessen’s crypto group spent tens of millions trying to take out Sherrod Brown. And Musk backed a fellow billionaire, Vivek Ramaswamy, for governor of Ohio. They lost all three.

It wasn’t only the candidates voters rejected. It was AI itself, and that started last year when Republicans snuck a provision banning states from regulating AI into their big tax bill. The Senate killed that version 99 to 1. The fight sent both sides scrambling to make their case to midterm voters, but one clearly came out on top.

In the midterm exit polls, 56 percent of voters said AI and data centers were a major factor in their vote, and three-quarters said they didn’t want one in their community. Annie Andrews beat Darline Graham in South Carolina with ads calling her “Data Center Darline.” Newsweek went through the 23 House Republicans who lost, and 19 were AI boosters. Nearly 40 local data center measures were on ballots, mostly in Ohio and Illinois, and all but one ended with new limits on data centers.

The GOP’s embrace of AI hurt them up and down the ticket. Here’s Ron DeSantis on why.

He’s right. Trillions of dollars’ worth of AI money is flowing through the economy and the stock markets. But for the most part, that cash is landing in the pockets of big money investors. A Democratic strategist put it well, telling Politico the data center issue was “a connective point between cost of living and corruption.” Your electric bill goes up and all of a sudden the air is buzzing. But the developer gets a tax break, and the guy approving the permit is making money from the companies.

The good news is that many of the Democrats who won on Tuesday are cracking down. Gina Hinojosa says she’ll maintain a moratorium in Texas until the legislature protects water, land, and education. Amy Acton in Ohio wants one too.

Look, big tech tried to buy the president and his cabinet. But they couldn’t buy your vote, and that’s something to celebrate.

4. White House Threatens Its Own

The hallmark of the Trump presidency is loyalty. Republicans passed that loyalty test with flying colors. They stood silently by the president, even as he sank the party and abandoned the American people. At least until now.

The midterm shellacking has given many conservatives the green light to speak out. Ron DeSantis warned of an “extinction-level event” for the party. Ted Cruz gave an equally honest assessment, calling the election a “Watergate-level repudiation.” Both blamed this administration, even if indirectly.

The White House insists everything is under control. It even posted a photo of Trump glaring into the camera, fists pressed against his desk. The caption read: “PSA: Trump is still your president.” But here’s the truth. They’re terrified.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the White House Office of Public Liaison sent a memo to more than 3,000 conservative organizations. It listed the president’s accomplishments. It promised to prevent Democrats from reversing them. And it closed with one sentence, highlighted in yellow: “As always, we are monitoring statements, press releases, and media engagements from your organizations.”

Yikes. That sounds like it came straight out of Orwell’s 1984. And it’s a step further than even this White House has gone before. The Journal pulled previous emails from the same office. None of them mentioned “monitoring.”

To be clear, threats against free speech are nothing new. The White House has weaponized the FCC against talk show hosts. It has tried to ban news outlets from the White House and Air Force One. All because of coverage the president didn’t like.

Now they’re giving conservative groups the same treatment. That says it all, really. Trump’s own coalition is speaking out. And the White House is having to use threats to keep it in line.

5. Cornered Hegseth Lashes Out

Yesterday, we told you the party had picked its fall guy. Really, it had one viable candidate: Secretary Hegseth. But Hegseth isn’t going down quietly. He released a defiant six-minute video, filmed right in front of the Pentagon.

And trust me, there’s a lot to unpack. He called his war a “courageous and historic effort.” That’s the same war that has cost the country 47 billion dollars, the lives of at least 23 service members, and his boss control of Congress.

Hegseth also called Thomas Massie a “disgruntled, defeated congressman” with “sham articles of impeachment.” Let me remind you why those articles never got a vote. Speaker Johnson sent the House home because he was scared they would pass.

But my favorite part is when he attacks the Democrats:

Give me a break! It is astonishing that he doesn’t realize that line describes his entire tenure. Hegseth has practiced the very “politics of personal destruction” he accuses Democrats of. He has gone after minority groups serving in the military. He has blamed others in the Pentagon for military blunders. And when people challenged him, he fired them. That’s his own game.

And that culture of fear is on full display. A Pentagon spokesperson promised “the most aggressive defense of Secretary Hegseth and the President’s agenda ever assembled.” Meanwhile, several Hegseth appointees each posted the same three phrases: “Stand. Fight. Defend the Republic.” But if they could blink in Morse code, they might’ve said: “Please. Fire. Hegseth.”

For now, President Trump isn’t budging. He recently told ABC’s chief correspondent he has “every intention” of keeping Hegseth. In a separate interview, he said Hegseth has done “a fantastic job.” His evidence? Not the Iran War. But his firing of the generals. “Many of those people were woke,” Trump said, “and I don’t like woke generals.” Glad the president has his priorities straight.

But Trump won’t get the final say. Plenty of Republicans and Democrats agree that Hegseth is a cancer for the Pentagon and for the military. Massie has already said he’s bringing the articles of impeachment back. Hegseth’s clock is running out. As Representative Jason Crow put it: “Tick tock, Mr. Secretary.”

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Some other stories that caught my eye:

• President Trump signed a proclamation declaring the Oval Office and Cabinet Room a national monument, but the order does far less than he claims. It was his first official act since Republicans lost control of Congress in Tuesday’s midterms. The proclamation puts the Interior Secretary in charge of both rooms. And it requires review of alternatives before anyone substantially alters or demolishes them. Trump described it in sweeping terms, saying the office “will not be allowed to be touched by anybody.” He also said major changes would need approval from Congress. That requirement is not in the text. The document explicitly protects a president’s right to redecorate and choose furnishings. A successor could also simply revoke it, as Trump has done to monument designations made by his predecessors. This is the same president, for example, who demolished the East Wing to make room for his ballroom.

• President Trump says he met with a senior Russian envoy at the White House and promised a Ukraine peace deal that “might involve all of Europe.” The envoy appears to be Kirill Dmitriev, a Putin ally who was in Washington for an event hosted by Melania Trump. Dmitriev runs Russia’s main state investment fund. He has used these talks to pitch business deals to the administration and to seek sanctions relief for that fund. Trump said he couldn’t share what they discussed, but he insisted “there’s going to be an agreement, it’s going to be a big agreement, and it’s going to involve more than Ukraine.” Dmitriev has not confirmed the meeting. Asked about Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians, Trump blamed both sides. “The other way, they kill, too,” he said. U.S., Ukrainian and Russian officials are scheduled to hold peace talks in the United Arab Emirates next week.

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Go deeper at AdamKinzinger.com

In June of 2015, Donald Trump stepped onto the golden escalator at Trump Tower and rode it down into a lobby full of cameras. A few minutes later, he was telling the country that Mexico was sending us “rapists.” A lot of people laughed. A lot of people assumed it would be over in a few weeks.

It wasn’t over in a few weeks. It took over the next decade of American life.

On Tuesday night, more than eleven years after that escalator ride, the country finally delivered its clearest verdict yet on Donald Trump. Democrats took the House. They took the Senate. They won up and down the ticket in every part of the country. It was the kind of midterm wipeout neither party has suffered in half a century.

The next day, the President of the United States spent his time talking about his ballroom.

The Exhale

I want to name something I suspect a lot of you felt on Wednesday morning, because I felt it too.

Relief. Not giddiness, not gloating. Just relief. The kind you feel when you’ve been holding your breath so long you forgot you were doing it, and then, all at once, you let it out.

If you felt that, you’re allowed to.

Because the last ten years have been heavy for those of us who care. Think about what so many of us carried. The early shocks of the first term, when every week brought something we’d never seen a president do and the feeling that everything we knew about what held our country together was ripped apart overnight.

Then, January 6th, when a mob stormed the Capitol and I watched from inside the building as the peaceful transfer of power nearly broke.

And then the second term, which was somehow worse. DOGE, tariffs, and eye-watering corruption preceded a foolish war which was the final straw for millions of voters who gave Trump a second chance.

For a lot of you, it was more personal than that. It was the Thanksgiving dinners that turned into arguments. The relative you stopped talking to. The friend who was afraid of what would happen to her family. The constant, low hum of dread every time you picked up your phone. That weight was real. And on Tuesday night, for the first time in a long time, it started to lift.

And I want to talk about something else that’s been on my mind this week.

When I stood up against Donald Trump after the 2020 election, when I voted to impeach him and spent more than a year investigating January 6th, I lost a lot. My party. Friendships I’d had for years. A career I loved. And I believed, maybe naively, that the country would get there with me pretty quickly. That once Americans saw what happened at the Capitol, they’d turn the page.

It took a lot longer than I hoped. There were years when it felt like the country was going the other way, when being right early mostly felt lonely.

So I don’t feel vindicated this week. I feel relieved. Relieved that the country I believed in was still there, waiting for its moment. Relieved that so many Americans, including a whole lot of Republicans, finally looked at the same thing I saw and decided they’d had enough. I’ve had people stop me on the street over the last year to tell me they’re Republicans, but they’re done with this. On Tuesday, a lot of them backed it up with their votes.

The Next Step

Now, a word of caution, because I’d be doing you a disservice if I let the celebration run too long.

Donald Trump is still the President for two more years. He still has the power to pardon, to sign executive orders, to run a war. A lame duck is still a duck, and this one has a way of lashing out when he’s cornered.

A lot can change in politics, too. Two years is a long time. But I’m confident of this much: Tuesday was the beginning of the long goodbye for Donald Trump. He’ll spend his final two years as the lamest of lame ducks, facing a Congress with subpoena power and a country that has made up its mind.

Which brings me to the people who won.

To every Democrat headed to Washington in January: congratulations. You earned it. Now remember why you were sent.

Voters didn’t hand you this majority so you could settle scores. They sent you to do two things. Check a President who has refused to check himself. And bring down the cost of living for families who are tired of being squeezed. Hakeem Jeffries has already said Democrats will move to end the Iran war as part of a broader push on affordability. Good. Don’t forget it.

Because if the new majority spends the next two years bickering about intraparty policy squabbles, the voters who just gave them a chance will take it away, and the worst of the Republican Party will be waiting to step back in.

That’s not a threat. It’s just how this works. Dance with the one that brung ya.

Breathe, Then Get Back to Work

So here’s what I’d ask of you this week. Celebrate. Call the friend you knocked doors with. Thank the poll worker down the street. Sleep in, if you can. Let yourself feel it.

And then, when you’re ready, get back to work. Because the long goodbye has only just begun, and how it ends is still up to us. The country we hand our kids won’t be shaped by one election night. It’ll be shaped by what we do with it.

It started with an escalator ride. It ends the way it was always supposed to: with the American people, voting him out of our lives one election at a time.

Take a breath. Then let’s finish this.

— Adam

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