Recently in the news… Zachary “Zac” Segal, president of the Boston University Young Republicans, bragged on X that he turned (legal) immigrants into ICE. They were kidnapped by ICE in broad daylight. In 2024 he posted to a Colorado fb housing connect group that he was born in Miami, lived in London, studied at BU, intended to spend time in Colorado. Currently listed on BU athletics site as junior year track & field, originally from London. All photos line up. Data lines up. Current phone registration area code is Boston.

https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2025/11/13/bu-college-republicans-president-says-he-called-ice-for-months-before-allston-car-wash-raid/

Democrats are furious after folding like a lawn chair as they got substantively nothing from the protracted Democrat Shutdown except for now holding the record for longest shutdown
https://thehill.com/newsletters/morning-report/5599865-house-democrats-oppose-spending/
Democrats rage as funding bill heads to House

Democrats from both chambers of Congress and differing wings of the party are furious after eight Senate Democrats voted with Republicans to advance a measure to reopen the government.

The Senate passed the spending bill Monday night, and House leaders said they would vote on it as early as 4 p.m. on Wednesday. President Trump said he would “abide by the deal” once it reaches his desk.

House Democrats are widely expected to oppose the bill, while a few moderate members may buck the party and vote for it. Republicans will be operating with an ultranarrow majority to get it to Trump for a signature.

The agreement has also reignited a debate among Democrats over the party’s direction and the right leaders to chart the path forward, with several progressive House members and those running next year calling for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to be replaced.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) released a statement declaring his opposition to the agreement before it passed a procedural vote on Sunday. The House will return from an extended two-month recess to vote on the measure.

“We will not support spending legislation advanced by Senate Republicans that fails to extend Affordable Care Act tax credits,” Jeffries said. “We will fight the GOP bill in the House of Representatives, where Mike Johnson will be compelled to end the seven week Republican taxpayer-funded vacation.”

The Hill’s Mike Lillis and Sudiksha Kochi report tensions are boiling over within the Democratic Party, just a week after the party was riding high off its sweeping success in last Tuesday’s elections.

A measles investigation amid a large, ongoing outbreak at the Arizona-Utah border has hit a roadblock as the first probable case identified in the Salt Lake City area refuses to work with health officials, the local health department reported this week.

There have been over 150 cases collectively across the two states, mostly in northwestern Mohave County, Arizona, and the southwest health district of Utah, in the past two months. Both areas have abysmally low vaccination rates: In Mohave County, only 78.4 percent of kindergartners in the 2024–2025 school year were vaccinated against measles, according to state records. In the southwest district of Utah, only 80.7 percent of kindergartners in the 2024–2025 school year had records of measles vaccination. Public health experts say vaccination coverage of 95 percent is necessary to keep the disease from spreading in a community.

While the outbreak has largely exploded along the border, cases are also creeping to the north, toward Salt Lake County, which encompasses the city. Utah County, which sits just south of Salt Lake County, has identified eight cases, including a new case reported today.

>https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/10/measles-outbreak-investigation-in-utah-blocked-by-patient-who-refuses-to-talk/

Abandoning all pretense of wanting to help Americans in need or being forced to cut funding to food programs by law, Donald Trump has gone mask off and has taken the audacious step of actively working to prevent Americans from receiving SNAP benefits in defiance of a court order mandating the program be funded in full.
This occurs after Donald Trump's record breaking government shutdown (having broken his previous record) drags into it's 38th day

https://apnews.com/article/snap-food-government-shutdown-trump-a807e9f0c0a7213e203c074553dc1f9b

BOSTON (AP) — President Donald Trump ’s administration asked a federal appeals court Friday to block a judge’s order that it distribute November’s full monthly SNAP food benefits amid a U.S. government shutdown, even as at least some states said they were moving quickly to get the money to people.

The judge gave the Trump administration until Friday to make the payments through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. But the administration asked the appeals court to suspend any court orders requiring it to spend more money than is available in a contingency fund, and instead allow it to continue with planned partial SNAP payments for the month.

The court filing came even as the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a memo to states that it’s working to make funds available Friday for full monthly SNAP benefits.

California and Wisconsin said some SNAP recipients already received their full November payments overnight on Thursday.

“Food benefits are now beginning to flow back to California families,” Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. A spokesperson for Democratic Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin also confirmed that full SNAP payments had gone through.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/12/jeffrey-epstein-donald-trump-russia-emails-00648919

Nearly a month before President Donald Trump met Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in 2018, Jeffrey Epstein attempted to pass a message to Russia’s top diplomat: If you want to understand Trump, talk to me.

“I think you might suggest to putin that lavrov can get insight on talking to me,” Epstein wrote in a June 24, 2018, email to Thorbjorn Jagland, a former prime minister of Norway who was leading the Council of Europe at the time of the exchange. Lavrov was an apparent reference to Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s longtime foreign minister.

In the email exchange, one of hundreds released Wednesday by congressional investigators, Epstein indicated he had previously talked about Trump with Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s forceful ambassador to the United Nations, before Churkin died in 2017.

“Churkin was great,” Epstein, the late convicted sex offender, wrote. “He understood trump after our conversations. it is not complex. he must be seen to get something its that simple.”

The exchange was among dozens that showcase Epstein’s extraordinary network of international associates, whom he often corresponded with about Trump’s first-term policy decisions.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/09/senate-democrats-shutdown-vote-00644146

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois
Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania
Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire
Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia
Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire

The 8 Senate Democratic Caucus members who voted to end the shutdown

Eight members of the Senate Democratic Caucus broke ranks Sunday and voted to advance a deal to reopen the federal government.

That’s fewer than the 10 Democrats who broke ranks in March to advance a previous GOP-led stopgap funding bill — a move that sparked a huge backlash against Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

There are few obvious threads connecting the group who broke the partisan impasse this time. Some of them helped broker the agreement with Republicans over the opposition of Schumer and most other Democrats, who wanted a guaranteed extension for expiring federal health insurance subsidies.

Most, but not all, previously held state-level office — including four former governors. Most, but not all, come from presidential swing states. Two have announced they are retiring from the Senate after their current terms end, and two are senior members of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

None are up for reelection in 2026.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/b1681efe-06d3-459b-8a2a-8d352c4eb20d?shareToken=0ff4c221fec45c63a6ba21fe55449f54
The International Olympic Committee is set to announce a ban on transgender women in female competition early next year after a science-based review of evidence about permanent physical advantages of being born male.

The IOC’s guidance to Olympic sports has until now been that transgender women can compete with reduced testosterone levels but leaves it up to individual sports to decide. That is now set to change under its new president, Kirsty Coventry, who has promised to protect the female category.

The committee’s medical and scientific director, Dr Jane Thornton, last week presented to IOC members at a meeting in Lausanne the initial findings of a science-based review into transgender athletes and competitors with differences of sexual development (DSD) competing in female sport.

Sources said the presentation by Thornton, a Canadian former Olympic rower, stated that scientific evidence showed there were physical advantages to being born male that remained with athletes, including those who had taken treatment to reduce testosterone levels.
“It was a very scientific, factual and unemotional presentation which quite clearly laid out the evidence,” one source said. Another IOC insider said there had been hugely positive feedback from IOC members about the presentation.

It is understood the IOC is likely to announce its new policy early in the new year, possibly around the IOC session at the Milan-Cortina winter Olympics in early February.