House Republicans voted to block to Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-KY) effort to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a Tuesday procedural vote, referring the impeachment articles to the House Judiciary Committee in a 211-204 vote. No Republican besides Massie supported the impeachment effort.
Earlier today, House Republicans also selected pugnacious brawler, Jim Jordan (R-OH), to be the next House minority leader; Mike Johnson said last week he would step aside. Senate Republicans reelected current Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) to lead them next year.
House Democrats’ offices have been getting bombarded with calls for a new leadership but, so far, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) doesn’t seem to face any real threat for the gavel. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) has discussed the possibility that he would run for Senate Majority Leader against Chuck Schumer. On Tuesday, some influential senators, including Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), said they would not support Schumer.
Follow along with us as we navigate the lame duck session:
For 48 hours, Stephen Miller did not tweet. His last message — “get to the polls and protect the ones you love” — lingered on top of his timeline, which, on most other days, produces a steady stream of anti-immigrant vitriol.
President Donald Trump since the election has been restrained, almost meek. He has reverted to a kind of pre-presidency state, talking with great affection about construction projects and renovations while occasionally providing color commentary on national politics as if he is not at all involved.
Democrats had a big night on Election Day. The bluenami was also filled with tons of nationwide firsts, with many candidates breaking the so-called glass ceiling.
Two years into President Donald Trump’s unruly presidency plagued by endless lawlessness, corruption, self-dealing, executive branch overreach, a lethal immigration enforcement operation and an unauthorized war that has tanked the economy, House Democrats successfully took back control of the House, and, as a result, Congress.
The Associated Press made the call at 1:25 a.m. EST after Democrats officially secured 218 seats and the majority, hours after Democrats’ flip of the Senate became official.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) — who has repeatedly questioned the polls showing Democrats flipping the House of Representatives — insisted Tuesday there will be a “peaceful transfer of power” following the midterm elections.
Johnson called the question asking him to commit to a peaceful transfer of power in January regardless of what the results are “silly,” saying the Constitution will be followed.
As soon as former president Barack Obama described Donald Trump’s aesthetic assault on the White House as “looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory,” the current president did what he does best: seethe. Ever since Obama’s weekend joke at an Ohio rally, Trump has been complaining non-stop. On Sunday, he posted on Truth Social that Obama was “a grossly incompetent President” and accused him of “campaigning for a Muslim Brotherhood Jihadist.” The following day, he told reporters that Obama is “not a smart guy.”
At a campaign rally to shore up Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith’s fledgling re-election bid in Mississippi, Trump chewed on his grievance even more. After calling the Cheesecake Factory a “successful company,” he launched into a confusing defense of his garish White House redecoration. “A guy like Obama,” he said, “doesn’t understand the White House has to be clean, pristine, beautiful.”
There are a lot of words for what Trump has done to the White House, but “clean,” “pristine” and “beautiful” are not among them. The president has covered every corner of the Oval Office with cheap-looking gold-paint and elaborate carvings. The once-stately decor now has a cluttered and claustrophobic feel — an embarrassing departure from the dignified appearance that all modern presidents, regardless of party, adhered to, which had a simplicity meant to reflect the sober responsibilities of the citizen-leader.
But to understand why Trump clings to words like “clean” to describe his chaotic and overwhelming design impulses, it helps to look at how authoritarian movements like MAGA relate to kitsch. As I wrote in 2019 about Hallmark films, schmaltz creates a safe space the right can escape to — a cavern where they can wallow in fake feelings and nostalgia, without having to face complex realities that might challenge them. What makes something “clean” or “pristine,” then, isn’t actual clean lines or even a lack of clutter. It’s a conformist fantasy where everyone is white and straight and knows their place in the social pecking order. For Trump in particular, “clean” and “pristine” are racially charged words, building on his long history of equating whiteness with purity and diversity with disorder.
Trump and his fellow MAGA leaders are engaging in performative outrage over Obama’s comments. On Monday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, whose net worth hovers around $600 million, ventured to a Cheesecake Factory in suburban Maryland, where he participated in a photoshoot. It was just the latest in a series of MAGA’s long list of kitsch-related tantrums, which have seen them feign enthusiasm for middlebrow corporate products as evidence of their identity as “real” Americans, unlike those snooty Democrats with their fancy mustards.
This schtick has worked plenty of times to rally the MAGA base because, in this world, “elitism” has nothing to do with money or status. Instead, it’s a code word for the racialized paranoias that unite small-minded white people across the class divide.
Just last year, MAGA propagandists got a huge boost when another restaurant chain, Cracker Barrel, tried to change its logo from the overly busy image of a man leaning on a barrel to something more minimalist — or, one might say, “clean” and “pristine.” This update was spun as a subterranean assault on white culture, an effort to smuggle in those “elite” and urbane values into the restaurants cornpone comforts, a place Fox News Grandpa used to feel safe from having to hear hip-hop music in the parking lot.
This time around, my sense is that the Cracker Barrel Panic of 2025 cannot be remade into a Cheesecake Factory October Surprise that will save the Republicans in this midterm cycle. I’m a Cheesecake Factory virgin, but my gracious Bluesky followers and old-fashioned internet research revealed that the restaurant’s marketing is a lot different from the white-bread Christian brunch vibe that Bessent and other MAGA leaders seem to assume it must have. Apparently, it’s a deliberate, self-aware camp rather than dime-store kitsch, appealing to a younger, more modern audience that doesn’t take itself seriously. The Cheesecake Factory is supposed to be silly, which is why its fans don’t think its look is appropriate for the White House. Its famously long and decadent menu is also part of the joke. But at the same time, it reflects the expanding tastes of a diversifying nation, borrowing flavors from all over the world.
It’s not just that the Cheesecake Factory’s wonton chips and chicken shawarma appeal to a different crowd than the chicken-and-gravy offerings at Cracker Barrel. The distinction is a sign of the way that middle America is moving on in general from the rigidly white, rural and suburban conformity so valorized by the Trump administration. The president and his acolytes, particularly during his second term, have been explicit about narrowing their view of what a “great” America should look like. The administration puts out a steady stream of propaganda envisioning a country composed solely of Aryan-looking nuclear families dressed in old-fashioned clothes. But it’s not clear if this has much appeal beyond some elderly white conservatives at Trump rallies, nostalgic for childhoods spent watching “Leave It To Beaver,” or the small number of bitter young men who let social media tell them it was easier to get a wife in the bygone days.
After his narrow win in 2024, Trump and his aides like Stephen Miller convinced themselves that the result was a resounding victory for his fascist fantasy. The president’s rapidly plummeting approval ratings, though, tell a different story: He mostly won because swing voters have short memories and thought he might make good on his promise to bring down prices. Instead, they got more inflation. Likewise, Trump and Miller thought they won on a “no more tamales” platform. But as it turns out, Americans just want those tamales to be a little more affordable. In fact, Trump’s policies are now even threatening to take away free chips and salsa. In the process, we’re learning that, for most Americans in 2026, this traditional Tex-Mex appetizer is considered as all-American as, well, cheesecake.
During the 2024 campaign, Trump’s love of kitsch mostly endeared him to his voters, who saw themselves in his corny preferences for the musical “Cats” or faux-baroque interior design. The president may be rich, but he connected with his fans in their shared resentment of smarter tastes, which require the very curiosity and intellectual engagement that the president fears. Instead, as Sam Adler-Bell wrote in New York magazine at the time, they craved the “evocative empty calories” of “[s]chlock and sentiment and melodrama.” Real art, on the other hand, makes you think and can even inspire empathy for people who are different. Trump promised an opportunity to sink deeply into a bath of nostalgia for an imaginary past.
As the popularity of Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl reminded us, the escapist fantasies of authoritarians don’t appeal to most Americans. It was just easier for some to look the other way when there wasn’t a war in Iran, rapidly rising gas prices and paramilitary troops grabbing grandmothers off the street. In good times, kitsch feels like harmless fluff, making its long history of being used for fascist propaganda easier to ignore. But when the president is more worried about redecorating the White House in his schmaltzy self-image than he is about the real struggles of Americans, the kitsch stops being so funny.
Love it or hate it, the Cheesecake Factory cannot save the MAGA movement — no matter how many Cabinet officials get photographed in front of it.
Donald Trump’s new White House “pep secretary,” Katie Zacharia, introduced herself to America in the Brady Briefing Room this week, to anticipated criticism from Democrats and some unexpected criticism from Republicans.
At first, the press pool acted like that was just business as usual. It didn’t last long. As of Friday afternoon, multiple news reports indicate that Trump has already seen enough, and has asked Zacharia to step down from her role at the White House after just five days on the job.
According to a post on X by reporter Aaron Rupar, Trump told the press corps he had said to Zacharia that “she was treated very, very unfairly by the news. Let’s call it the fake news. I said, ‘Katie, do you need this? I don’t think you need this.’ We’re talking about doing something. I want her to have a good life. She’s being brutalized by the media.”
In all likelihood, that will end one of the shortest tenures of any Trump White House official, only about half the length of the notorious Anthony Scaramucci during Trump’s first term.
Maybe Zacharia was just unlucky. After all, she made her debut on Oct. 13. She showed up 15 minutes late. She spent the next eight minutes telling us how great Trump was. She took questions from just three people. She was gone 15 minutes later. In her praise of Trump, Zacharia sounded like former press secretary Sean Spicer talking about Trump’s inaugural crowds nearly a decade ago as she made dubious claims about the number of attendees at the president’s recent campaign rallies in high school gymnasiums and small arenas.
“Attendance is at record highs as enthusiastic, hard-working Americans are lining up and packing arenas to support President Trump,” she said with a straight face. Yep. The lies have already begun. Don’t act surprised.
When she finally took questions, only Breitbart (which lavished her with praise for allowing them in the building), Fox News and the Daily Mail got to ask questions. She dropped one legitimate piece of news: The president had asked for Kimberly Guilfoyle’s resignation as U.S. ambassador to Greece, based on her evident corruption and widely reported misbehavior, which even Trump didn’t try to defend. The punchline to that incident came a short time later as Trump was departing the White House, when he barely acknowledged Guilfoyle’s existence: Kimberly? Kimberly who?
A handful of defenders noted that the new press secretary had only a day to get ready for her debut. “Katie Zacharia had less than 24 hours to prepare for her inaugural briefing, as she juggled a cross-country move, and only received briefing materials this morning,” the Wall Street Journal reported. OK, so who forced her to go on stage, and why?
She could have taken all the time she needed. It’s not like we were getting press briefings every day anyway, and Trump always says he’s his own best press secretary. So there was no pressure from the press, although more reporters than usual showed up to be part of Zacharia’s inaugural standup routine.
Zacharia didn’t take the time to get to know us, and as a result we once again got a low-grade sideshow at the White House. Don’t expect anything more, and don’t expect the press to push back.
I’ve worked with incoming press secretaries at all levels, from City Hall to the White House. The best of them took the time to study policy briefings, meet department heads and the most active beat reporters before holding their first briefing. By doing that, they avoided being criticized for a lack of preparation and having to look for names on an index card. They also got a feel for the issues and questions they needed to address. Getting to know someone is the key to any long-term relationship, whether professional or personal.
That sort of protocol has long since been forgotten and abandoned, at least at the White House. Today we can’t get into the upper press area of the West Wing to talk with the press secretary. She didn’t take the time to get to know us, and as a result we once again got a low-grade sideshow. Don’t expect anything more, and don’t expect the press to push back. The White House Correspondents’ Association is in “go along to get along” mode. It’s cringeworthy to watch and heartbreaking to endure.
There was no reason to expect much of Zacharia’s first staged appearance, and that’s why no one should be surprised to see her draw as much criticism for her attire and demeanor as for the content of the information she provided. She appeared nervous, at one point calling her husband “my president.” She giggled at herself for that: “That’s a good one.” That was self-deprecating, which I appreciate. As for her attire, it was professional, but not something I would wear. As for being nervous, that’s to be expected. But again, why did she feel the need to brief us on her first day in the office?
She called on Trump-friendly media exclusively, and then excused herself, saying she had to travel to Alaska with the president, who’s hoping to shore up support for incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan, one of many struggling Republicans this fall.
Mind you, if Zacharia had arrived on time, she could have doubled her time with us. Why start late and then cut it short? If she knew she was going to leave with Trump, there was no reason to soil her laundry doing a shortened briefing. Either show up on time or do it upon your return, after you get settled. Nobody would have said anything about that — and nobody would care if they did. That might have given the president another excuse to belittle the press.
I know some Republican lawmakers and even some reporters who believe that Trump set up Zacharia for failure by ordering her first appearance. That certainly isn’t beyond Trump. He’s the best when it comes to lowering expectations.
Those expectations at the moment are so low as to defy measurement.
Just this week Trump has announced his pleasure with a DHS investigation into Rep. Ilhan Omar’s immigration papers, a deal to import diesel fuel from Russia, and possible new air strikes on Iran, while Vice President JD Vance made a weird homophobic joke about Texas Senate candidate James Talarico and Speaker Mike Johnson claimed to have no idea why gas prices are spiking. Meanwhile, Trump blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for not ending a war that began with Russia’s invasion of his country.
Of course, none of these issues were brought up in the new pep secretary’s very short briefing, the strangest of those issues being the bizarre deal made with Russia. In an attempt to lower prices at the pump, which have spiked because of the war Trump started, the president now says he’s ready to buy diesel from Vladimir Putin’s government.
In essence, Trump has agreed to pay an enemy government that is helping those trying to kill Americans in a war that’s entirely his doing. All to eradicate a supposed threat that he claimed he had “obliterated” a year earlier.
Just to refresh everyone’s memory, Russia is backing Iran in its war with the U.S., reportedly providing intelligence on U.S. bases to the Iranian military. In essence, Trump agreed to pay an enemy government that is helping those trying to kill Americans in a war that’s entirely his doing. And all this to eradicate a supposed threat that Trump had claimed didn’t exist at all because he “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year earlier.
Come to think of it, a two-hour briefing on just that subject wouldn’t have been enough to explain that insanity. How do you tell the press that we’re paying our enemies to attack us?
Even so, that wasn’t the peak of insanity this week.
A few days earlier, a judge in Virginia ruled that the Trump administration had misled the public with a long list of false accusations about Mary Comans, the former chief financial officer of FEMA.
“Armed only with false statements, high-ranking government officials undertook a premeditated campaign to impugn the personal and professional integrity of Ms. Comans, a non-partisan, career public servant,” U.S. Magistrate Judge William E. Fitzpatrick said. “Their intent was to disseminate false and derogatory information about Ms. Comans as widely as possible.”
Comans was accused of money laundering, willfully violating a presidential executive order, undermining public safety and misspending federal funds. As the judge found, none of that was ultimately true. He added that “high-ranking” government officials accused her of such things while “knowing they were false.”
Dealing with that insanity might also require a two-hour press briefing.
Finally, there’s the matter of the lawsuit filed by CNN, MSNOW and Politico against the Trump administration. Judge Timothy Kelly ruled Tuesday night that the temporary restraining order preventing Trump from banning those outlets from the White House would remain in force while their lawsuit proceeded.
Trump had also engaged in “unlawful viewpoint discrimination” by banning those reporters, Kelly said. The president also apparently never gave those news organizations any meaningful list of standards they had to comply with or risk losing their press passes. Trump’s actions, the judge said, “likely did not … come close to satisfying Karem.”
Yes, that’s me. He was referring to the Karem v. Trump case in 2019, when I beat the administration in court on three occasions and got my press credentials back. And the judge is right, by the way: Trump’s actions don’t satisfy me. But unpacking my own victory over Trump would be a tough task for the best press secretary. So would dealing with any of this week’s issues, let alone dealing with a president who seems to have reached peak insanity, especially for a brand new press secretary who just moved to town with questionable credentials.
To be completely fair, Trump threw Zacharia to the dogs with no prep time, no knowledge of the issues she would have to handle and no readiness to handle even the straightforward questions about her own legal background. (She graduated from law school but is not a licensed attorney in any state.)
Zacharia read a bunch of lies off a written statement, smiled at us and got out of there. It now seems possible that her first day briefing the White House press will also be her best day, as well as her last day. The aforementioned Anthony Scaramucci publicly mused that she may not last as long as he did at the White House (which was 11 days). I’ve heard some reporters saying they won’t even bother to learn how to spell her name.
But what we saw in the briefing room this week was far more troubling than one woman falling on her face. It was a panicky president approaching peak insanity throwing a scapegoat on stage in an effort to deflect attention from his ruthless and corrupt conduct. True to form, the press corps took the bait, and seemed more interested in what Zacharia was wearing and whether she’d exaggerated her qualifications than in the important issues facing this country as a result of the president’s insanity.
I have plenty of empathy for anyone working in the Trump White House, but no sympathy for anyone who willingly joins the lunacy, particularly at this late date.
The midterm elections are at hand. Trump is criminally negligent and mentally unwell. Anyone who goes to work for him now is just asking for trouble.
The American presidency is one of the most stressful jobs there is. Presidents famously age during their terms, often starting off looking hale and hearty and, by the time they’re finished, appearing tired, more lined and a whole lot grayer than when they started. So it’s understandable they would need to recharge by getting away from Washington from time to time.
Donald Trump has made a habit of this, regularly jetting to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, and his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, for extended periods of time in lieu of Camp David, the famous presidential getaway nestled in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains. Now, according to a recent report by the Washington Post, he is seeking to create a permanent official presidential retreat in Florida at his Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.
This would be an unprecedented move, even though it isn’t unusual for presidents to crave time away from Washington. According to the White House Historical Association, many of the early presidents left the White House in the summer because they believed that the white fog that formed on the nearby marshes was a deadly white gas; they wanted to get away for their health. In fact, James K. Polk is the only president to have stayed in the White House for each of the three summers he was president, and since he died shortly after leaving office, his fate was attributed at the time to those white gases.
Presidents, of course, have to keep working wherever they are. Some have wanted to escape Washington’s notorious humid summers, while others longed to flee the cold and create a “winter White House” in warmer climes. Harry Truman reportedly liked his Key West winter home so much that he called it the “Little White House” and spent 175 days of his presidency there. Richard Nixon was also fond of Florida, but he also frequently jetted back to his native California, as did Ronald Reagan. George W. Bush spent as much time as possible at the West Texas ranch he bought just before assuming the presidency.
The first official presidential retreat was the Old Soldiers Home, which was commandeered by President James Buchanan as a summer getaway since its location in leafy Northwest Washington was cooler and quieter than the White House. It was subsequently used by Abraham Lincoln and his family, and he was said to have written the Emancipation Proclamation there. Some subsequent presidents enjoyed the retreat as well, but it was soon out of fashion as they began to travel further afield for their vacations.
From 1880 until 1977, when President Jimmy Carter sold off the last one, there was always a presidential yacht for the chief executive to unwind on and entertain guests, but there wasn’t another official presidential retreat until 1942, when President Franklin Roosevelt visited a Works Progress Administration project in Maryland called Camp Hi-Catoctin and selected it as the location for a future presidential retreat he dubbed Shangri-La. Roosevelt used the property to relax, but he also saw it as a perfect place for high-level diplomacy. His successor, Harry Truman, made it a permanent federal facility and then, after he took office in 1953, Dwight Eisenhower renamed it Camp David in honor of his young grandson. Since then, the property has been the site of many meetings with foreign leaders, including the diplomatic negotiations hosted in 1978 by Carter between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin that culminated in the Camp David Accords.
Its location — just a 30-minute helicopter ride but many spiritual miles away from the White House — makes it a convenient spot for important domestic matters to be dealt with outside the bustle of the White House. Richard Nixon famously fired his trusted aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman at Camp David in 1973, while 12 years earlier John F. Kennedy received counsel there from Eisenhower after the Bay of Pigs disaster.
While some presidents have clearly enjoyed Camp David more than others, Trump has made no secret of his deep dislike of it. He has used it only rarely, and the one time he has been known to propose having any high-level talks there was in 2019 when he inexplicably invited Taliban leadership to join him there just days before the anniversary of Sept. 11, a meeting which was mercifully cancelled after the group killed an American in a car bomb attack in Kabul.
Even on his official trips, if he’s unable to return home Trump will sleep at one of his own hotels, a move that is always profitable for him personally since the government pays for much of the huge entourage trailing the president.
Trump only wants to visit his own properties. According to the independent watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), as of June the president has spent 37% of his second term at his own properties, with Mar-a-Lago receiving the most visits. Even on his official trips, if he’s unable to return home Trump will sleep at one of his own hotels, a move that is always profitable for him personally since the government pays for much of the huge entourage trailing the president. In fact, one of the perks Trump has given himself is that his various winter and summer retreats are also his commercial properties, and his visits not only promote the properties, they also provide opportunities for paying customers to have access to the president. His behavior has become so commonplace that few even remark anymore that the president lives a good part of the time at clubs with members who pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend time in his presence.
The grift will apparently continue even after he leaves office. Trump recently announced that his proposed presidential library in Miami will double as a hotel, making it yet another profit center for the family. (He is also being sued by various interested parties who are upset that he was given the valuable land, worth a reported $330 million, for only $10 by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, with the understanding it would be used for a nonprofit organization.) Now he has big, unprecedented plans for the new Camp David.
According to the Washington Post, “a parcel” of his West Palm beach golf resort will “be designated a permanent, official sanctuary for foreign leaders and future U.S. presidents, designed to host international summits and house presidents when they take vacations in Florida.” Trump’s generosity is such that he also plans to throw in complimentary members for presidents. It’s obvious that there is a lot of money to be made, which will be accompanied by ongoing access to him and his family. If foreign dignitaries were there to meet with the president and take in some golf, you can imagine that Trump would be at the club next door waiting to hold court. As Rick Reilly, author of “Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump,” told the Post, “I suppose he wants to make a power play with these people and show them who is the king of America.”
Trump claims there would be no cost to the government, since he plans to pay for the housing himself. But as we’ve seen with the rapidly increasing costs to American taxpayers for his ballroom money pit at the White House, that’s unlikely to be the case. Taxpayers will almost certainly be on the hook for many millions, if only for the enhanced security that would be necessary. After all, this is the golf course where a would-be assassin was caught last year hiding in the bushes.
Trump leases the land for the golf course from Palm Beach County, which is seriously considering his proposal. If it is approved, the only course of action for the administration that follows Trump is to offload it — just as the federal government did with Mar-a-Lago after the socialite Marjorie Merriweather Post left it to the government when she died in 1973 to serve as a winter White House. Eight years later, citing exorbitant annual maintenance costs, the government returned the property to the Post Foundation, which put it for sale in 1985 before it was bought by Trump.
No name has been chosen for the property. But I don’t think there’s any mystery about what it’s going to be, do you?
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