Maggie Rowe

October 29, 2025 Today is the twenty-ninth day of the government shutdown, and the House of Representatives is still on break as House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) continues to try to force the Senate to pass the House...

October 29, 2025

Can we just scream about it being cuts to corporate welfare so that they turn it back on? That all the companies not paying people a living wage might be forced to shell out backs so their employees don’t starve?

Donald Trump deleted this from the government website.

Let's be clear: there's funding available to cover SNAP benefits next month. Trump is stopping SNAP benefits because he wants to. He is forcing mommas and babies to go hungry.

“Unlike Wikipedia, social media platforms have no purpose beyond selling eyeballs to advertisers, so there was nothing steering the development of norms toward civility & constructive conversation.”—Jimmy Wales addresses how factual neutrality means people can make up their own minds:

Gallego: "It's murder. It's very simple. If this president feels they are doing something illegally, then he should be using the Coast Guard. If this is an act of war, then you use our military and then you come and talk to us first. But this is murder ... it's disgusting."

It has been said before, but it bears repeating: the elderly who’ve worked their entire lives to get $800 a month on Social Security aren’t bankrupting America. It’s tax-evading billionaires like Trump who are bleeding this country dry.

The economic disaster that is Brexit The chancellor admitted last week that Brexit has hit productivity and the economy much harder than previously thought, a fact that the budget - courtesy of the OBR - would recognise. In a little-reported speech last week, Bank of England monetary policy committee member Swati Dhingra gave a hint at official thinking, citing recent independent research suggesting that Brexit had lowered Britain's output by between 6% and 8% and investment by between 12% and 18%, compared with what it would have been had the UK remained in the EU. Worse, these losses are permanent. The devastating numbers, much worse than the OBR's earlier official estimates, are the single most important cause of weakened productivity. They also mean that the exchequer has lost not £40bn but up to £80bn of tax revenue every year. Outside wartime, no leading country has ever committed so much economic self-harm.

"The economic disaster that is Brexit"

(A lot worse than I had thought)

Will Hutton in @theobserveruk.bsky.social

Democrats should hold a press conference and announce that if Mike Johnson has no interest in running the House they'd be happy to do it for him

Longtime HCR readers will know that “What are we doing here, folks?” is basically her screaming profanities at the current situation. It’s dire.

Unfortunately he is abusing his power in a way our country has never seen before, and is very busy burning the voting bridges behind him to try to stop future democratically elected office-holders from reaching the positions of power they are supposed to have to restrain his overreach.

YouTube video by Heather Cox Richardson What Can We Do to Stop Him?

Heather Cox Richardson: November 2025 elections are what we need to focus on right now, and outcomes for issues like preserving mail-in ballots and appointing state supreme court members will depend heavily on voter turnout. @hcrichardson.bsky.social
#elections2025
youtube.com/shorts/PoUVk...

Nine months ago I put most of my hope in major institutions continuing to hold fascism in check, but had little expectation that regular people with little to no power would step up and put themselves at risk.

I had it exactly backward.

When the president is destroying national landmarks, murdering fishermen, raising prices because he's angry over a Reagan video, and kidnapping parents in front of their crying children is probably not an ideal time to have a lazy, completely incompetent legislative branch perpetually on vacation.

I think one of the most important jobs that the next wave of media under a different political party does is call out the complicity from colleagues during this moment.

Rolling Stone needs to call out the NYT explicitly, you, Andrew, et al need to call out Jake Tapper explicitly, etc.

I don’t really think the framers intended for a president to have the power to slap a tariff on products from a particular country because he didn’t like a TV commercial they ran about him, but I suppose it is presently up to the Supreme Ct to decide how far the Mad King can go.

Too Good To Go (app) works with over 175,000 businesses for surplus food management. People can find restaurant food at half price or less and restaurants can reduce food waste. Win win! #foodassistance #reducewaste #giveback

Every day, it seems like we tick a little bit closer to midnight.

Would be great if the GOP Congress would quit sleepwalking through this.

'Solar System' quilt by Ellen Harding Baker of Cedar County, Iowa, US in 1876, she used her textile work as a teaching aid for her lectures on astronomy in the small towns of her state.
Find out more in the first Womensart book, Unravelling Women's Art on textile artist rebels and pioneers!

This is amazing!!

“According to a 2019 USDA report, every dollar in new SNAP benefits increases GDP by $1.50 in a weak economy.”

“SNAP benefits are one of the fastest, most effective forms of economic stimulus because they get money into the economy quickly during a recession.”

~Center for Budget and Policy

a photograph of the interior of a church. Several people are visible sitting in pews. In the pew immediately in front of the photographer, a black human-sized cardboard cutout in the outline of a woman is visible, as though a shadow is sitting in the pew in front of you.

Went to a prayer service tonight at St. Mary of the Lake, where they have cardboard cutouts throughout the church representing parishioners afraid to come to Mass because of ICE.

Shutdown Assistance

The Civil Servants Coalition, which authored the letter asking Congress to support a shutdown if the legislation to end it did not include reigning in the illegal actions of the administration, has put together this Google doc of resources. Please share it widely so Feds can hold the line longer!!✊✊

🧵 Paul Klee (1879-1940) was a Swiss-German painter & is one of my favourite expressionist artists. Here are the Golden Fish (1925), Landscape with Yellow Birds (1923) & Castles & Sun (1928) [1]

October 22, 2025 “It’s not his house.

The destruction of our White House, and all the other lawless acts of the day:
hcrichardson.bsky.social
heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-22...

Just a thought: How about we stop shaming the poor for buying things that may not be essential, and start shaming the rich for making a profit off things that are essential?

The big tech founder who has a 256-foot $75 million superyacht to "shadow" his 417-foot $500 million superyacht, because the bigger yacht lacks a helipad, is very worried about his newspaper's financials

If you're in Washington, DC, don't forget to visit these four structures that attest to the legacy of each president:

Newsom is deploying the National Guard into California, not to help Trump, but to help the Americans.

Newsom: "The Republican Gov Shutdown is about to delay food benefits for MILLIONS of California families. I am deploying the National Guard on a humanitarian mission to support CA's food banks"

This is really what it comes down to.

I'm holding the Senate floor to say HELL NO to Trump destroying our We the People government.

🔗 www.youtube.com/live/bE37g0m...

NYT eliminating their public editor was such a bad call with real long term damage to the institution