🏳️ BREAKING: Democrats Surrender. Again
Mehdi's Monday morning update on the senators voting to reopen the government without a guarantee on healthcare; the BBC rolling over for Donald Trump; and Kathy Hochul's clash with Zohran Mamdani.
🏠 On this day in 1989, one of my favorite Christmas movies premiered in Chicago: Home Alone! Eight-year-old Kevin McAllister, aka Macaulay Culkin, takes out a pair of burglars with home-made booby traps. The 1992 sequel was a disappointment, however, and not just because it featured the man who would become our 45th and 47th president.
Good Monday morning to you all! Mehdi here, writing from London, where I am prepping for two of my Al Jazeera English ‘Head to Head’ shows later this week. I’m also getting ready for this week’s ‘Ask the Editor’ chat with Prem, live on YouTube and Substack, at 11 am ET today. As ever, we’ll be taking YOUR questions on the big stories of the day.
In today’s ‘First Draft,’ Democrats inexplicably raise the white flag on the government shutdown; the head of the BBC resigns over Jan. 6 coverage; more Trump pardons for election deniers and fake electors such as Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows; and an 800-year-old school reopens in Gaza.
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Why Can’t We Have a Proper Opposition Party?
“This fight is about ensuring that we are not going to see 20 million Americans have their health insurance become unaffordable.”
That was Sen. Jeanne Shaheen speaking on the MeidasTouch podcast less than two weeks ago. The centrist Democrat from New Hampshire was so proud of her strong and defiant statement that she posted the clip of it on her own Twitter account.
And yet, on Sunday, the 40th day of this government shutdown, Shaheen joined independent Angus King from Maine, who caucuses with the Dems, to negotiate a deal to end the longest shutdown in US history and fund the government.
It was a dramatic moment last night as the Senate voted 60-40 to advance a stopgap funding bill to reopen the government through Jan. 30, with eight Senate Democrats joining their Republican colleagues.
The impasse is over! Good news, right?
WRONG.
Yes, the deal does contain provisions that would restore jobs to federal workers laid off during this shutdown, ensure furloughed federal employees get paid, and prevent any further mass layoffs of government workers for the next three months.
But those 20 million Americans whom Jeanne Shaheen said she was fighting for just 13 days ago? They’re screwed. There will be no extension of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits. All that the GOP Senate Majority Leader John Thune has promised the Dems is a vote in December on whether to extend ACA subsidies that are due to expire at the end of the year. Yes, a pinky promise from Thune! That’s it.
Do you trust Trump, Thune, and the GOP to keep to their word? To guarantee a meaningful vote on healthcare that goes anywhere? If so, do you have a brain injury? (Okay, fine, yeah, one of you does.)
What is wrong with the Democrats? Seriously?
Is there a more feckless, spineless opposition party anywhere in the democratic world?
A more self-defeating, self-destructive force anywhere in the political world?
Why do they insist on repeatedly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?
This is a party that just had a great week, with gubernatorial wins in New Jersey and Virginia, a mayoral win in New York, and other key victories in swing states like Georgia and Pennsylvania. This is a party that is not currently being blamed for this damn shutdown. This is a party that is up against a president with insanely low approval ratings.
And yet… these eight Democrats just caved, again, to Trump and the Republicans:
Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.)
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine)
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.)
Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.)
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.)
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.)
Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.)
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.)
Rather conveniently, none of these Dems face an election or a primary challenge next year, while two of them have announced their retirement from the Senate. Their actions are truly inexcusable – even the most vulnerable Democrat in the Senate, Georgia’s Jon Ossoff, refused to put his name on this. As for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, he said he was a ‘No’ on the deal, but given the reporting that he may have signed off on the Gang of Eight’s negotiations behind the scenes, his future is under question again, with centrists like Rep. Seth Moulton and progressives like Rep. Ro Khanna calling on him to resign. (“We need a politics of morality and truth telling… I’ll take whatever arrows are slung my way,” Khanna told Zeteo last night.)
Progressive groups are still working out how to respond, but activists are discussing plans to encourage more primary challenges within the party.
My colleague Andrew Perez spoke last night to Ezra Levin, co-founder of the progressive group Indivisible, which helped organize the ‘No Kings’ protests against Trump. “This is not a deal – it is a surrender,” Levin said. “If this goes through, the last month of pain has been nothing more than a performative act of defiance…What comes next is up to us, all of us. We can demand a party that fights back in the primaries, or we can accept a feckless leadership, and that’s up to primary voters around the country in the coming months.”
The Dems’ resistance efforts ahead of last week’s elections now “looks like a cynical election ploy,” Lindsay Owens, executive director at the progressive advocacy group Groundwork Collaborative, told Andrew. “It’s going to be difficult to exploit Trump’s vulnerabilities on prices and affordability if Dems ostensibly hold identical views to the president.”
Yes, it is.
🗞️ What You Need to Know
More Trump J6 pardons: The president who pardoned 1,600 Capitol rioters on his first day in office decided to pardon a long list of election-denying associates and fake electors late on Sunday night, including lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows, and unhinged conspiracist Sidney Powell. (A reminder: these pardons protect against federal, not state, charges.)
SNAP update: In yet another baffling act of cruelty to keep Americans hungry, the Trump administration ordered states not to hand out food benefits and threatened to withhold funds if they didn’t comply. Meanwhile, on Sunday, Air Force One served a grilled skirt steak salad.
FAA fiasco: Over 2,100 flights were canceled yesterday amid the Federal Aviation Administration flight cuts. Up to 10% of flights are expected to be canceled across major airports by the end of the week if the shutdown doesn’t end, heightening concerns about mass delays and cancellations ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.
Obergefell in jeopardy: The Supreme Court met on Friday to discuss a case that could overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage. The Court could announce as soon as today what it will do with the case.
Hochul responds to Mamdani policies: Governor Kathy Hochul is ready to go up against Zohran Mamdani’s proposed policies, telling reporters that she does not see a plan for funding fare-free buses.
Yup, another Jan. 6 arrest: A Jan. 6 rioter, who shot a gun at the Capitol during the attack, was recently arrested for “aggravated kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault” charges. Add that to the growing list of insurrectionists pardoned by Trump, only to then be arrested again.
📺 Media Roll Over for Trump, Part 664
First, it was ABC News, paying out $15 million to Donald Trump to settle a defamation lawsuit, after anchor George Stephanopoulos merely repeated what a judge in the Trump sexual abuse case said was totally fine to say.
Then it was CBS News, paying out $16 million to Trump to settle a defamation lawsuit, after ‘60 Minutes’ dared to do what every TV show on Earth does: edit a televised interview with a politician. (In fact, CBS News just last week aired an edited interview with… Donald Trump.)
Now it’s the BBC. On Sunday, the BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, and head of news, Deborah Turness, resigned after criticism – including from the Trump White House – that a ‘Panorama’ documentary misled viewers by editing Trump’s infamous speech at the Ellipse in Washington, DC, on Jan. 6, 2021. As the BBC itself reported, “a leaked internal BBC memo… suggested the Panorama programme edited two parts of the US president’s speech together so he appeared to explicitly encourage the Capitol Hill riot of January 2021.”
Sorry, what? Donald Trump did “explicitly encourage the Capitol Hill riot.” Edits or not, we all saw him do it. What is this gaslighting?? As The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell pointed out yesterday, “A slew of Jan. 6 riot defendants told judges that they interpreted Trump’s call to ‘fight like hell’ against the results of the 2020 election as a command to storm the Capitol.” And as LBC’s Lewis Goodall reminded us, “On Jan 6th itself Trump over roughly 70 minutes used the words ‘fight’, ‘fighting’ or ‘fighters’ more than 20 times.”
The House of Representatives literally impeached him for a second time in 2021 for “incitement of insurrection.”
And yet the BBC caved to pressure from the right-wing media and from the Trump administration. So I ask the same questions of our mainstream media that I ask of the Democratic Party: when do you plan on growing a spine? Or standing up to the bully in the White House? Or defending free speech and a free press?
The president and his cronies, of course, were delighted at this latest act of media self-flagellation. Last night, Trump denounced the outgoing BBC bosses as “corrupt” and “very dishonest people” while his press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the BBC is “dying” and encouraged people to watch right-wing British channel GB News.
🧠 Pop Quiz!
As reports suggest that disgraced former governor and defeated mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo may run for the House of Representatives next, who is the only person to serve as president of the United States and then proceed to be elected as a member of the House?
Keep your eyes out for the answer below!
🇵🇸 Don’t Forget Gaza
Israel’s ceasefire violations: At least two Palestinians, including a child, were killed in Israeli air raids east of Khan Younis today, Al Jazeera reports. More than 240 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire began a month ago.
800-year-old school reopens: The UN is resuming schooling for thousands of children who lost two years of education because of Israel’s genocide. In Gaza City, volunteers are teaching Palestinian students at a historic school building.
Kushner in Israel: Trump envoy and son-in-law Jared Kushner met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today to discuss the US president’s 20-point “ceasefire” plan.
And in the occupied West Bank, Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian villagers, activists, and journalists who had gathered to harvest olives. Among the injured were a Reuters journalist and an accompanying security adviser. Reuters reported the settlers attacked the group using sticks, clubs, and large rocks in an area near the Palestinian village of Beita.
BOOOOOOOO!
On Sunday, Donald Trump became the first sitting president since Jimmy Carter in 1978 to attend a regular-season NFL game – and he got booed by the crowd! This is the guy that a group of Senate Democrats is currently rolling over for…
💬 Quote Unquote
“Silence, for me, is now intolerable.”
That’s District Judge Mark Wolf, a Reagan appointee, who announced he is resigning after 40 years on the bench, so that he can freely speak out against Trump’s assault on the rule of law.
🧠 Trivia answer: John Quincy Adams. He served in Congress from 1831 until his death in 1848, after serving as the sixth US president from 1825 to 1829.
🌏 Anywhere But America
Climate crisis: Over the past decade, 250 million people have been forced from their homes due to climate-related disasters, according to a new report from the UNHCR. That’s around 70,000 people a day.
Typhoon Fung-wong: As the Philippines reeled from Typhoon Kalmaegi, which killed more than 200 people, the northwestern part of the country was hit by another deadly storm that killed at least two people and forced more than 1.4 million people to evacuate.
Rohingya missing: Hundreds of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are missing, and seven are confirmed dead after a boat sank near the Thai-Malaysian border. More than 5,100 Rohingya have tried to flee Myanmar and Bangladesh via boat so far this year, with nearly 600 reported dead or missing, according to the UN refugee agency.
Israel strikes Lebanon: An Israeli drone strike killed at least one person in southern Lebanon, as Israel continues to ramp up its attacks on the country in violation of a ceasefire.
📺 Sunday Show Roundup
On NBC’s ‘Meet the Press,’ Republican Senator James Lankford said claims that Republicans are “weaponizing hunger” over SNAP benefits is a “painful spin.” The truth hurts, Jim.
Centrist Democrat Abigail Spanberger, the soon-to-be governor of Virginia, told CBS’s Margaret Brennan that she does not see recent democratic victories as “permission” to hold out on the shutdown. With all due respect, governor-elect, you are part of the problem.
FAA flight cuts are already causing chaos for travelers and airlines. But, even so, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy seemingly does not care if families are able to see each other for Thanksgiving. He told Jake Tapper that “many of them are not going to be able to get on an airplane.”
Throughout this shutdown, we have seen the Trump administration take advantage of the situation to hurt the lives of working Americans, including those in the federal government. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin told Fox News that he is anticipating “drastic” furloughs at the agency and plans to cut a quarter of the EPA’s workforce.
🗓️ Mark Your Calendars
Monday, Nov. 10: The Senate will reconvene later today to continue to work toward full passage of the shutdown deal. Meanwhile, Trump is set to host Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, the former leader of Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate. Sharaa will be the first Syrian head of state since the country’s independence in 1946 to visit the White House. Plus, the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments from a Rastafarian man seeking to sue Louisiana prison officials who forcibly shaved his head in violation of his religious freedom.
Tuesday, Nov. 11: Iraqis will head to the polls to vote in a parliamentary election, with over 7,700 candidates competing for a seat in the 329-member legislature. The results will help determine whether Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani will serve a second term.
Friday, Nov. 14: Climate protesters are set to mobilize across major UK cities as COP30 takes place in Brazil, urging stronger climate action.
Sunday, Nov. 16: Chile will hold a high-stakes presidential election with a communist, centrist conservative, and far-right contender on the ballot.
🧐 WTF?!
On Trump’s so-called ‘Truth’ Social, he reposted a claim about DOGE halting “royalties on Obamacare” to former President Barack Obama, adding “Wow.” Just one problem: his source is a satirical news site. The platform’s own website reads: “Everything on this website is fiction… If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined.” That’s our president, folks.
ICYMI From Zeteo
Zeteo’s Melanie Riehl, Akshay Gokul, and Minnah Arshad contributed to this newsletter.
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Senate Democrats never would have caved without the encouragement and a final green light from Chuck Schumer.
The Senator from Jerusalem voted against it because he doesn't want the blame, but make no mistake, this is another Schumer betrayal and capitulation.
Schumer must go. Perhaps in retirement, he can spend more time with his imaginary Republican friends and constituents from Long Island - the Baileys.
Thank you Zeteo and Mehdi for today's perfectly accurate headline. As a Virginian voter, I'll be banging my head against my desk wondering why I voted for Tim Kaine. 😖