So far, the people who own the biggest news media outlets in the country have not been doing a notable job of standing up to Donald Trump. The television and cable networks have largely knuckled under, with several of them paying what can only be called multimillion-dollar medieval tributes to the king. Print journalism has had its exceptions -- organizations which are still standing firm and suing Trump in court (and being countersued) -- but some have also adopted "go along to get along" policies (most notably the Washington Post, which has seen an enormous exodus of longstanding journalistic talent leave, after the paper decided their editorial board had to be more friendly to Trump). But today, virtually all of them stood together and said "No!" to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

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Donald Trump actually achieved something worthwhile this week. A ceasefire deal that will result in all the hostages being released was hammered out between Israel and Hamas, and the guns have gone silent in Gaza. Whether this results in a long-lasting peace deal remain to be seen (there are a lot of details that are still "to be determined" in the deal), but progress has definitely been made. However, Trump did not achieve what he really wanted in all this, as the Nobel Peace Prize was announced today -- for someone else. Maybe he'll be considered next year, but so far the petulance and anger from the MAGA crowd has already begun.

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As the government shutdown enters its second week, Democrats appear to have the upper hand. It's not an overwhelming advantage, but it does seem like the Republicans are losing the battle for public opinion. This strengthens the Democrats' position -- for the time being. Public opinion is a fickle thing and could easily shift as the impacts of the shutdown become more widely felt, but for now Democrats seem to be the ones winning the battle for hearts and minds.

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Normally, on a Friday following the end of a month, we would all be talking about the new jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics right about now. We can't do that today, because the report didn't appear on schedule. This was due to the government being shut down, of course.

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Donald Trump has apparently realized he's going to have to bail out American farmers who have been hit hard by his tariffs and other economic policies. And, true to form, he's going to try to do it without getting Congress to approve the funding, according to an article in Politico today:

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So the shutdown has now begun. The blame game is being played by both sides. The news will be full of which government services have been halted, and which are still running (by employees who are not getting paid). And nobody knows when it is going to end, as both sides seem fairly dug in, at this point.

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Eric Adams, the current mayor of New York City, ended his Democrat-turned-independent re-election campaign this weekend. This has scrambled the race somewhat, but only at the margins. Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, has such a big lead over the two remaining major candidates that even if one of them dropped out Mamdani would still be the frontrunner, possibly by double digits.

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The United States of America now seems to have officially become a banana republic. That's really the only conclusion one can draw, after the events of the past week (and the past eight months, for good measure).

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Donald Trump, true to form, just rolled out a surprise new federal policy -- which then caused immediate chaos for those affected by it. There was no warning and it took effect almost before the ink was dry, which created the immediacy. The White House then had to go through several iterations of what exactly it all was going to mean before that immediate chaos subsided somewhat. But the long-term effects of Trump's new H-1B visa policy could end up being rather significant. This could wind up being good news, but it could also wind up being no more than chaotic and counterproductive to Trump's own goals.

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We are now one week away from a government shutdown. At this point, the safe bet would be that one is going to happen. And as always in such situations, the blame game has already begun in earnest. While the center ring of the circus that passes for politics these days was today undoubtedly Donald Trump making a complete fool of himself on the world stage during his address to the United Nations' General Assembly, the shutdown sideshow seems to deserve more attention than parsing Trump's idiocy (which, if I had gone that route, would have prominently featured the phrase "tilting at windmills," just for the record).

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