Fear and Loathing: Closer to the Edge
Ralph Steadman’s eagle looks like it just clawed its way out of a nightmare and lit a cigarette to talk about it — feathers slicked with chaos, eyes full of disbelief, and that wounded frown that says America’s wings aren’t what they used to be. It’s grotesque and glorious all at once, a national self-portrait drawn by someone who loves the idea of democracy enough to scold it.
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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
November 4, 2025 (Tuesday)
Heather Cox Richardson
Nov 05, 2025
So much for obeying a court order, even if begrudgingly and with manufactured delay. At 8:00 this morning, President Donald Trump announced that “SNAP BENEFITS…will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!”
U.S. District Judge John McConnell of the Rhode Island District ordered the administration to fund Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for 43 million Americans at least partially by using a reserve fund Congress set up for emergencies. The judge also suggested using a different reserve to fund SNAP fully. But the administration is using the hunger of Americans to pressure Democrats to agree to send healthcare premiums skyrocketing, so it dragged its heels as deeply as possible to delay the payments. It said it would fund SNAP only at 50% and that the money could take “weeks or months” to go out.
Trump’s social media account announced that the White House intends to ignore the court’s order, but hours later White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said “the administration is fully complying with the court order.”
Myah Ward, Alex Gangitano, and Dasha Burns of Politico reported last Friday that Trump expected the Democrats to fold and accept Republican terms to reopen the government no more than ten days into a shutdown. His frustration that they are not doing as he expected is showing, especially as more Americans blame Trump and MAGA Republicans for the shutdown than blame Democrats. Last week, Trump demanded that Senate majority leader John Thune of South Dakota end the Senate filibuster, enabling the Republicans to pass the House Republicans’ continuing resolution with a simple majority vote. This was a nonstarter, since the filibuster has become central since 2009 to the ability of Republicans to block most Democratic legislation.
So Trump is railing at the Democrats—“It’s their fault. Everything is their fault,” he told reporters last week—and ratcheting up pain on the American people.
Adding to the administration’s pressure is Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who has been hitting the media to insist that the shutdown is the Democrats’ fault. Today he warned that another week of the shutdown could lead to “mass chaos” that would force him to close some of the nation’s airspace. Air traffic controllers are federal employees and thus have been working without paychecks. Many are calling in sick or not showing up for work, forcing significant flight delays and cancellations.
Today the administration sent notices to federal employees suggesting that furloughed staff won’t be paid when the shutdown ends. Hannah Natanson, Jacob Bogage, and Riley Beggin of the Washington Post note that a 2019 law guarantees they will.
Just a reminder: What the Senate Democrats are insisting on before agreeing to a continuing resolution is the extension of the premium tax credits that support the Affordable Care Act healthcare insurance marketplace. The Republicans neglected to extend those credits in their July budget reconciliation bill—the one they call the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”—although they extended tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. Without the credits, millions of people will be unable to afford healthcare insurance and will go uncovered, and coverage costs will skyrocket for millions more.
Seventy-eight percent of Americans want those tax credits extended. That includes 59% of Republicans. Only 22% don’t want them extended.
So Trump is refusing even to negotiate with Democrats to end the shutdown when almost 80% of Americans want what the Democrats are demanding.
Trump says the Democrats should back down. “It’s so easily solved,” he told reporters. “All they have to do is say, ‘Let’s go. Let’s open up our country.’” While this course would entrench Trump further as an autocrat who can dictate to the country, the true easy solution seems to be for the Republicans simply to agree to a policy that a solid majority of their own constituents—as well as more than three quarters of the country—want.
This fight is bonkers, but it reflects Trump’s determination to assert his power over the country. That determination showed today in an Axios story by Marc Caputo, Stef W. Kight, and Stephen Neukam. They quoted a Trump advisor as saying that if Senate Republicans don’t pass the continuing resolution without the Democrats by nuking the filibuster, Trump “will make their lives a living hell.” “He will call them at three o’clock in the morning. He will blow them up in their districts. He will call them un-American. He will call them old creatures of a dying institution. Believe you me, he’s going to make their lives just hell.”
Today was Election Day, with crucial elections on the ballots across the country.
In New Jersey, someone emailed bomb threats to precincts this morning. Election officials directed voters to other polling places.
With an approval rating under 40%, Trump spent the day panic-tweeting to suggest the elections are “rigged,” just as he did in 2020. He posted that should New York City voters choose Democrat Zohran Mamdani as mayor, “[i]it is highly unlikely that I will be contributing Federal Funds, other than the very minimum as required, to my beloved first home.”
California voters were considering Proposition 50, which would redistrict the state to add five more Democratic-dominated districts until 2030 to counteract Texas’s unusual mid-cycle redistricting that adds additional Republican-dominated districts. Although Trump pushed Texas’s initiation of this partisan redistricting, he seemed surprised that Democrats were retaliating. Today he posted: “The Unconstitutional Redistricting Vote in California is a GIANT SCAM in that the entire process, in particular the Voting itself, is RIGGED. All ‘Mail-In’ Ballots, where the Republicans in that State are ‘Shut Out,’ is under very serious legal and criminal review. STAY TUNED.”
Mail-in voting does not shut out Republicans. It makes voting accessible. Asked about Trump’s statement, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters today: “It’s absolutely true that…there’s fraud in California’s elections. It’s just a fact.” The fact is, there is no evidence of any such thing.
It seems likely that the administration was preparing to declare a vote in favor of Proposition 50 fraudulent.
Tonight the results came in. American voters have spoken.
Democrat Abigail Spanberger won the governorship of Virginia by 15 points, becoming Virginia’s first female governor. Every single county in Virginia moved toward the Democrats, who appear to have picked up at least 12 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates. Democrat Mikie Sherrill won the governorship of New Jersey by more than ten points (the vote counts are still coming in as I write this).
Pennsylvania voted to retain three state supreme court justices, preserving a 5–2 liberal majority on the court. Democrats in Georgia flipped two statewide seats for public service commissioners by double digits. Mississippi broke the Republican supermajority in the state senate.
Maine voters rejected an attempt to restrict mail-in voting; Colorado voters chose to raise taxes on households with incomes over $300,000 to pay for meals for public school students.
California voters approved Proposition 50 by a margin of about 2 to 1, making it hard for Trump to maintain the vote was illegitimate.
And in New York City, voters elected Zohran Mamdani mayor.
Tonight, legal scholar John Pfaff wrote: “Every race. It’s basically been every race. Governors. Mayors. Long-held [Republican] dog-catchers. School boards. Water boards. Flipped a dungeon master in a rural Iowa D&D club. State senators. State reps. A janitor in Duluth. State justices. Three [Republican] Uber drivers. Just everything.”
Trump posted on social media: “‘TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT,’ according to Pollsters.”
But in fact, today voters resoundingly rejected Trump and Trumpism, and tomorrow, politics will be a whole different game.
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
