Trump celebrated halloween by telling Republicans to scrap something truly momentous – and then he went out to give sweets to kids
Happy Halloween and good morning from Washington DC, from where I’ll be writing the roundups for a couple of days, before heading out around the US for a little bit. Next Wednesday marks a year since the 2024 election – and I’ll be talking to as many people as I can in different parts of the country, to see if they have buyers remorse – or whether they think everything is, in fact, fine. More of that as the week goes on.
Meanwhile, in Trumpworld
- He handed out candy to kids in the one food distribution scheme the shutdown hasn’t got to yet
- He told Republicans to take the ‘nuclear option’ on the Shutdown
- Noem says she won’t stop bundling people off the streets and splitting up families, even on halloween.
- Trump slashed America’s refugee cap – and they’ll almost all be white South Africans
- And Stephen Miller’s wife got a rough ride on telly
Here’s all you need to know and more
Trick or Treat?
1. Trump hands out sweets to Trick or Treaters
Trump and Melania decided to dress up as Trump and Melania for Halloween this year. Presumably, it’s possible they were actually imposters with really good costumes.
Either way, the first family handed out sweets to youngsters on the White House lawn – a food distribution scheme even a government shutdown can’t cancel.
And yes, he did the thing again where he put candy on top of a kid’s head for some reason.
The Shutdown
2. Trump tells Republicans to take ‘nuclear option’
Once he’d finished handing out candy, Trump – finally – faced up to his Halloween nightmare. The US government is still shut down – and has been for more than a month. If it makes it to Wednesday, it’ll be the longest shutdown of all time.
Why? Well, it started when the Republicans in Congress, at the behest of Trump, set out a budget that takes an axe to a whole bunch of social spending – and in particular, doesn’t extend a crucial healthcare tax credit.
They need 60 votes to force it to a vote in the Senate with what’s called a “cloture” motion. But they only have 51 senators – so everything they do can be indefinitely held up by Democrats by deploying the dreaded filibuster – simply talking on the floor of the Senate for a very long time.
So Trump, perhaps a bit emboldened by having every world leader in Asia (with the exception of Xi Jinping) blow smoke up his a**e for the last week or so, has told Republicans to do something drastic.
“It is now time for the Republicans to play their “TRUMP CARD,”” he wrote. “And go for what is called the Nuclear Option – Get rid of the Filibuster, and get rid of it, NOW!”
3. The what now?
It takes 60 votes to end a filibuster – but it only takes 51 votes to change the rules of the Senate.
So why haven’t they done it already?
Well, because it’s a loaded gun that both parties have pointed at each other. It means both sides can protect their pet policies from being repealed or upended by the other side. For Democrats, they use it to protect civil rights, voting rights, abortion and workers rights.
And Republicans use it to protect guns, tax cuts and conservative judicial appointments.
So it really is a nuclear option for either side.
4. White House sends out the medium-sized guns to moan about the shutdown
Before Trump got off the plane, the White House did its best to defend the Republican position on the shutdown with the tools it had available.
Republicans have offered to pass a “clean continuing resolution” – effectively a temporary fudge to keep the lights on while they negotiate and reopening the government with the same spending levels as last year for a limited period. But Democrats have refused, arguing Republicans have no interest in negotiating in good faith, and that they lose leverage by agreeing to end the shutdown. And they’re right. Democrats have demanded assurances that social spending cuts – including those healthcare tax credits – will be reversed if they agree to reopen the government.
Meanwhile, government workers are going unpaid – and that includes troops, cops, air traffic controllers and other airport staff.
So yesterday Republicans rolled out the big guns. Well, the medium sized guns. Well, JD Vance and a few other people, who gave a press conference outside the White House. Vance said a bunch of things that weren’t true about how Biden’s White House handled healthcare insurance and fail to explain why they can ‘move money around’ to pay troops but not to fund food stamps and the CEO of United Airlines was there, apparently to spout Republican talking points. As was, surprisingly the boss of the Teamsters trade union – whose membership is pretty diverse, but still.
Still no sign of Trump injecting himself into the Shutdown debate…although to be fair he was on a plane for most of yesterday.
The Surge
5. Noem won’t pause ICE raids for halloween
ICE squads will continue snatching people off the streets on Halloween, despite the Illinois Governor asking for a pause so kids can trick or treat without fear of being, you know, bundled into an unmarked van by a couple of chunky guys in masks and shipped off to Cecot.
JB Pritzker asked for this not entirely unreasonable pause, relayed to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on (where else?) Fox News last night. And she said: “No. We’re gonna be out on the streets in full force and increase our activities to make sure kids are safe.”
You can almost hear her going MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
King Trump
6. Mike Johnson says the US returning to Nucear testing is “obvious and logical”
House Speaker Mike Johnson will literally just say anything the White House wants him to, no matter how preposterous.
Today’s example? Randomly restarting nuclear testing after 30 odd years is “an obvious and logical thing to ensure that our weapons systems work.”
7. Trump slashes refugee cap to almost nothing, and it’ll almost all be white South Africans
The Trump administration has announced it will slash the cap on the number of refugees coming into America to 7,500 a year – a tiny fraction of the cap under Biden, which was 125,000.
And they will mostly be white South Africans, who are not by any normal international measure an oppressed or threatened people.
We went into why back in February, you can read it here.
The White House has not consulted Congress over the change, which it is legally obliged to do.
Sen. Dick Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said in a joint statement with other Democratic lawmakers that the Trump administration is defying federal laws.
“This bizarre presidential determination is not only morally indefensible, it is illegal and invalid,” they said.
The Trump administration is “skipping over the tens of thousands of refugees who have been waiting in line for years,” and “prioritizing a single privileged racial group—white South African Afrikaners,” they said.
8. Democrats banned from military briefing on Venezuela boat attacks
Congressmen and women got a military briefing yesterday, setting out the legal and ethical case for Trump’s strikes on Venezuelan alleged drug boats.
At least…some of them were. It turns out the briefing was only available to the Republicans on the Senate Intelligence committee – with Democrats banned.
Mike Warner, the top democrat on the committee blasted the Trump administration said it was an “indefensible” decision, and warned it set a “troubling precedent.”
He said: “Shutting Democrats out of a briefing on U.S. military strikes and withholding the legal justification for those strikes from half the Senate is indefensible and dangerous,”
“Decisions about the use of American military force are not campaign strategy sessions, and they are not the private property of one political party,” he added. “For any administration to treat them that way erodes our national security and flies in the face of Congress’ constitutional obligation to oversee matters of war and peace.”
9. Stephen Miller’s wife has a car crash TV appearance
Stephen Miller’s wife, Katie, appeared on Piers Morgan’s TV….well, internet TV show last night and it could have gone better.
At one point in the discussion, another guest accused her of lying, and of taking hints from her husband on not telling the truth. Miller responded to his attack by saying he had been “anti-Semitic”. After a few minutes of complaining about this, other members of the panel interjected and said she was clearly wrong.
“Somebody criticising you personally is not an anti-Semitic attack,” the guest noted. “If somebody says ‘you are lying’, that is not an attack on Jews, it’s an attack on you…this is all the snowflake behaviour the right is supposedly criticising the left for…yes, Stephen Miller is a destructive force in society…”