For the second month in a row, the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates. This move was expected, but the Fed chair is now warning that there might not be a third drop when they meet again in December. A big part of his hesitancy stems from the fact that the Fed is now essentially flying blind, because the government shutdown has caused the flow of economic data to halt. Jerome Powell used a different transportation-based metaphor to describe this, saying: "If there is a high level of uncertainty, then that could be an argument in favor of caution about moving.... What do you do if you are driving in the fog? You slow down. I'm not committing to that. I'm just saying it's certainly a possibility that you would say, 'We really can't see. So let's slow down.'"

The government shut down at the beginning of October. This meant that the jobs report for September was not published. Worse, it also means that new data has not been collected all month long, which may make it impossible to even calculate the jobs numbers for this month. If the shutdown persists into November, it could be early January before these numbers start flowing once again. That's a big gap, obviously. And it's not just the jobs numbers -- the inflation rate is also put out by the same agency:

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Donald Trump has never cared all that much what the U.S. Constitution actually says. He certainly has never read the whole thing -- he makes this painfully obvious whenever he attempts to talk about it in any detail. And he has been actively trying to dismantle parts of it already. So it's no real surprise that he has trolled everyone again by flirting with the notion of possibly running (or otherwise somehow becoming) president for a third time, using the 2028 election to achieve this goal.

The typical reaction to this, of course, is to think that he can't possibly do so, because after F.D.R. died an amendment was passed which limits presidents to only serving two terms in office. Unfortunately, however, this isn't exactly what the Twenty-Second Amendment actually says. Here is the pertinent text:

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At the end of this week, the federal government will have been shut down for a full month. As things stand currently, few people expect anything to change before then. No viable exit ramp has appeared yet, and none is likely to do so until Donald Trump returns from his foreign trip. This will push the shutdown into November, which will dramatically increase the pressure to come to some sort of agreement, because while some money has been shuffled around to keep certain things funded (like military salaries), it's going to get substantially harder to do so in November. This means many programs are just going to completely grind to a halt, which is going to mean more and more of the public becomes directly affected by the shutdown.

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So, let's review, shall we? Last weekend, seven million Americans took to the streets to protest Donald Trump, in the biggest political protest this country has ever seen. The theme of the protest was: "No Kings!" So this week, Trump responded by acting in what can only be described as kingly fashion, in as many ways as he could dream up -- including a rushed demolition of one-third of the White House, without consulting anyone or even attempting to get anyone's permission. He sent the demolition crews in, and within a few days the entire East Wing was nothing more than a pile of rubble. All because a royal decree had been issued.

Trump also demanded $230 million in personal tribute money, to be paid to him by the Department of Justice, using (of course) taxpayer dollars. The reason the public should hand him almost a quarter-billion dollars? Because his feelings were hurt when the justice system tried to hold him accountable for his many crimes. So now, according to the king, the public must pay fealty to him in a very tangible way.

Meanwhile, a U.S. aircraft carrier is heading to the Caribbean, so that Trump can kill whomever he wishes with more ease. Think that's an overstatement? Think only a king would do something like that? Here is Trump, after being asked whether he was going to ask Congress to approve of such actions: "I think we're just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We're going to kill them, you know? They're going to be like, dead."

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Finally -- after way too long spent grovelling on the world stage -- Donald Trump didn't chicken out. For the first time in the nine months he has been in office, Trump actually moved to punish Russia. Hopefully, this represents a shift in his thinking that will be hard for him to easily reverse. Because for the first time, Trump is no longer acting like Vladimir Putin's lapdog.

Trump just announced sanctions on two of Russia's biggest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil. This will prevent them from access to Western banking systems, and the sanctions theoretically will extend to anyone doing business with them anywhere in the world. Such sanctions are not a new thing -- Joe Biden, on his way out of office in January, slapped sanctions on two other large Russian oil companies (Surgutneftegaz and Gazpromneft). So Trump's move is really an expansion of the previous strategy of sanctioning the Russian oil industry.

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We are now entering Week 4 of the government shutdown, with no end in sight. There aren't any compromise solutions on the table, the two sides aren't even talking to each other in any noticeable way, and Donald Trump is getting ready for a weeklong trip outside the country. This has so far been the second-longest shutdown in American history, and it certainly looks like it is on track to top the record and become the longest.

So far, neither side has been willing to budge. Trump has held one fruitless meeting with the Democratic leaders and then turned his attention to other issues. The Republicans continue to insist that they won't even negotiate until the government is reopened, and the Democrats continue to insist on striking a deal on healthcare subsidies before they will allow the government to reopen. This stalemate shows no signs of movement yet.

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Alas, I had too much real-life stuff to deal with today to write a column. My apologies for the interruption in service.

If I had written something today, I would have been tempted to write about Vladimir Putin yanking the rug out from under Donald Trump by now refusing to even consider a summit meeting any time soon. That seems to prove the point I was making yesterday, at any rate.

But in any case, regular columns will resume tomorrow, and mea culpa again, for not writing a new one today.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Donald Trump now seems to now be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Russia's Vladimir Putin. That's an extraordinary thing to say, but it is the inescapable conclusion to what the world has witnessed over the past week. Trump started off firmly on the side of Ukraine, musing about allowing European countries to provide American-made Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, which could strike deep within Russian territory. But by week's end, he had essentially become the chief negotiator for the Russians, trying to force the Ukrainian leader into the exact terms dictated by Putin.

A summit meeting between Putin and Trump is now being arranged, but one wonders what the point of it really is. After all, Trump has completely rolled over and accepted the Russian point of view and is arguing for all the Russian demands. So the summit meeting will take place so that Putin can personally deliver marching orders to Trump? That seems like the most likely outcome, at this point.

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Tomorrow could be the biggest day of mass protest America has ever experienced. The "No Kings" rallies planned for Saturday could, collectively, add up to more than the five million who turned out earlier this year for the same reason: to protest that America was founded on the idea that we do not want to be ruled by a king who holds himself above the law, but instead by laws that all people -- even the country's highest leaders -- have to follow. That's a pretty basic premise, really. And the organizers of the rallies have reportedly gotten a much larger signup than occurred at their earlier rally, so the signs are pointing to tomorrow breaking records as well. There will be over 2,500 locations of these rallies across all 50 states, so go to their site and check out where the closest one to you is!

The funniest commentary about this protest movement we have yet seen came in the form of a political cartoon. It shows the bottom of the Declaration of Independence, with John Hancock and all the rest of the signatures, and it has a small caption at the bottom which reads: "NO KINGS PROTEST (original version)" -- which sums it all up very nicely. America was founded on the concept of "no kings."

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Donald Trump ran on the slogan "America First," but more and more it is looking like he's morphing his foreign policy into the second coming of the Monroe Doctrine. The United States meddling in the politics of Central and South America has a long and mostly ugly history, and Trump seems to want to write a few new chapters of that history. This is already causing some blowback among his MAGA supporters, since it runs so counter to what he promised them on the campaign trail.

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