From Los Angeles …

BEYOND MIDNIGHT:  Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, one of the leading conservative extremists of his party, made his promised move late yesterday to remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy from his post.

  McCarthy said he’s going to call for a vote today and not ask the Democrats to help him survive. The Democrats “haven’t asked for anything” in exchange for voting to support him, he said, “and I’m not going to provide anything.”

  One of the concessions McCarthy made to become speaker was agreeing to a rule that allows a single member to vacate the speakership, and Gaetz had warned he would invoke it if McCarthy used Democratic votes to pass the stopgap spending bill over the weekend.

  “It is becoming increasingly clear who the speaker of the House already works for, and it’s not the Republican conference,” Gaetz said earlier yesterday. He charged that the speaker had allowed President Biden to take his “lunch money in every negotiation.”

  Only two previous speakers have ever been removed and even if McCarthy survives, the politics of the fight are likely to jam up the House while it should be working on business. It won’t be easy for Gaetz to muster the 2018 votes he’ll need to dump McCarthy.

ORANGE ALERT: Donald Trump left a Manhattan courtroom yesterday complaining that the civil fraud trial for himself and his company is interfering with campaigning for president.

  “This was for politics. It has been very successful for them — they took me off the campaign trail,” Trump said. “Because I’ve been sitting in a courthouse all day long, instead of being in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina or a lot of other places I could be at.”

  But Trump chose to attend … he’s not required to sit in on a civil case.

  The former president claims to be the victim of a grand federal conspiracy. “It all comes down from the DOJ,” he said to reporters before the day’s proceedings began. Although the federal government does not control state courts or legal proceedings he said, “They totally coordinate this in Washington.” 

  Trump is accused of pumping up the value of assets to get favorable loans. A former Trump accountant was asked about the Trump Park Avenue apartment of Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter, that was listed for sale at $8.5 million, but valued in 2011 and 2012 financial statements as worth $20,820,000.

  Trump claims in his defense that he committed no fraud because the banks that loaned him money earned a profit from him. At the lunch break he said, “They waste their time with this, with banks that were very happy that got all their money back. They weren’t defrauded. I’ve been defrauded.”

  The prosecution says Trump saved millions in costs by lying about his assets. His defense is also positing that asset valuations are an art, not a science, and can vary considerably.

  There’s also this, Trump’s contractual warning to people with whom he’s doing business: “We have a clause in the contract, it’s like a buyer beware clause,” he said outside the courtroom. “It says, ‘When you take a look at the financial statement, don’t believe anything you read’ — this is up front. ‘Don’t believe anything you read.’ Some people call it a ‘worthless clause,’ because it makes the statement, and anything you read in the statement, worthless. “ 

THE JUSTICE RECUSES: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas surprisingly recused himself when the Court turned down an appeal from an architect of a plan to overturn the legitimate 2020 election. It’s the first time he has bowed out of a vote on the election. 

 The case was filed by John Eastman, a conservative lawyer and so-called Constitutional expert who had advised Trump on the 2020 election and appeared on the podium with him whipping up the January 6^th crowd. Thomas gave no reason for disqualifying himself, but Eastman had once served as Thomas’s law clerk and the justice’s wife, Ginni, had taken part in efforts to overturn the election.

PAPAL BLESSINGS: Pressure by the liberal practices of the Catholic church in Germany, Pope Francis seems to be preparing to back off the Vatican decree that same-sex unions should not be celebrated or recognized.

  The Vatican yesterday released a document that appears to be an opening to the blessing of same sex unions. If they do this, it’s huge for the church.  

  In a letter dated September 25th, Francis wrote that there are “situations” that may not be “morally acceptable” in which a priest can decide whether blessings may be given, so long as such blessings are separate from the sacrament of marriage. “We cannot be judges who only deny, push back and exclude,” Francis wrote. “As such, pastoral prudence must adequately discern whether there are forms of blessing, requested by one or several people, that do not convey a wrong idea of a matrimony. Because when one seeks a blessing, one is requesting help from God.”

THE SPIN RACK:  Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty today to three counts related to lying about his drug use when he bought a handgun in 2018. If convicted he could face up to 25 years in prison and $750,000 in fines. — Negotiators for striking Hollywood actors and the studios met yesterday for the first time in two months. They are expected to talk again today. 

BELOW THE FOLD: Jamie Dimon, the CEO of financial giant JPMorgan Chase promises that artificial intelligence will cut the work week to three-and-a-half days, make cancer a thing of the past, and enable people to live to 100. 

  Of course, artificial intelligence has the potential to put millions, if not hundreds of millions of people out of work, but they might live longer to look for a new job.

-30-