THE WAR ROOM: President Trump’s “Department of War” is behaving like it is preparing to go to war against Venezuela.

  With an aircraft carrier battle group sent to the Caribbean off Venezuela and Marines practicing amphibious assaults, President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are reported to have been presented with battle plans to strike or invade Venezuela to topple the regime of  President Nicolás Maduro.

  Much of the war preparations have been happening out of sight of Americans as they were under the duress of the longest federal government shutdown in history.

  Trump says Maduro is behind the drug trade that’s been under US missile fire in recent weeks. American forces have blown up 19 suspected drug boats and killed 75 occupants.

  Asked on “60 Minutes whether he thinks Maduro’s days are numbered, Trump replied, “I would say yeah, I would think so, yeah.” 

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: While President Trump claims contrary to fact that he has brought down food prices, the administration is preparing exemptions to certain tariffs to bring down prices on imports. This would involve in particular beef and citrus.

  President Trump’s order to roll back tariffs originally involved products not made, grown, or mined in the US including metals and minerals, antibiotics, plane parts, and foreign agricultural products including coffee, pineapples, avocados and vanilla beans.

THE REGIME:

— The Agriculture Department is moving to fire Ellen Mei, a program specialist at the Food and Nutrition Service, for giving an interview to MSNBC in which she warned that a federal shut would harm millions of Americans who depend on food benefits as well as impacting her team. The agency accuses Mei of discussing USDA programs and funding “without prior approval.”

— National Institutes of Health employee Jenna Norton, who signed a group letter denouncing what it described as the degradation of American medical research under President Trump, was placed on “non-disciplinary” leave  after returning to work from the federal shutdown.  She said in a TikTok video that the move “was designed to scare and silence me.” 

— Former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James are contesting their respective federal indictments on the grounds that Acting Attorney Gen. Lindsay Halligan in Virginia was not legally appointed to bring indictments against the two Trump “enemies.” 

  The previous acting AG refused to indict Comey and James and Attorney Gen. Pam Bondi sent in someone who would. Lawyers for Comey and James say you can’t just keep appointing acting AGs without having them approved by Congress.

— Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, said the 43-day federal shutdown cost the country about 60,000 private sector jobs, but he did not provide the underlying data. The government was shut down so we don’t know who, if anyone, was collecting the numbers and had them ready to announce the day the government re-opened.

—  Federal  Judge Jeffrey Cummings ordered the release of 615 people detained by immigration authorities between June and October because they had been arrested without a warrant.

  Many of the 615 may already have been deported and Cummings said he does not want the release of anyone considered dangerous.

  Noting that dozens of the people covered by his release order were arrested while working as landscapers, drivers, commuting to work or looking for work at Home Depot, Cummings said, they were unlikely to be members of gangs, “assorted other ne’er-do-wells” or the “worst of the worst.”

— Secretary of State Marco Rubio told foreign governments that their citizens could be denied visas to enter the US for such things as obesity and a list of chronic diseases and mental health conditions that  “can require hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of care.”

AFFORDABILITY: President Trump this week floated the idea of a 50 year mortgage to make it cheaper for Americans to own a home amidst a crisis in housing affordability. He said, all it means is you pay less per month.”

  Just to run some numbers, if at age 25 you are able to put down $30,000 on a $350,000 house with a 6% fixed mortgage, you’d be paying $1,684 a month. Not terrible.

  If you keep that house for 50 years, you would be 75 when you are done paying for it, having paid a total of $1,010,697 of which $690,692 would be interest. Essentially you would be renting your house from the bank … for life.

CLASS CONSCIOUS: Texas A&M University says it will ban teaching and advocacy of “race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity” without prior approval of the course and its materials. The A&M regents also approved a rule saying that that faculty members could not “teach material that is inconsistent with the approved syllabus for the course.”

  Texas A&M is a public university in the country’s most populous conservative state.  Just two months ago, A&M fired a lecturer after a student accused her of teaching a course that recognized more than two genders.

THE SPIN RACK: This doesn’t make for a trend … yet … but after a democratic socialist was elected mayor of New York, Katie Wilson, a community organizer and first-time candidate who campaigned for higher taxes on the rich, won the race for mayor of Seattle, unseating the incumbent, Bruce Harrell. Wilson is a co-founder of the Transit Riders Union, a group that has pushed for expanded transit access, renter protections, and new housing paid for with higher taxes on the wealthy. — Extremist Israeli settlers burned a mosque in the occupied West Bank yesterday as violence against the resident Palestinians increases. 

BELOW THE FOLD: Here’s something we hadn’t heard before  from the tabloids … A porn star is known as a “mattress actress.”

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