Against his better judgement, David Waldman returns today. He lived, so he'll probably return tomorrow.

Greg Dworkin fished a couple more polls out of the fetid recesses of ex-Twitter. Zohran is Mamdaniminating the competition, while Andrew Cuomo is barely eking out enough votes to become a panel regular on Fox. Zohran is earning each vote, while Eric Adams isn't worth a bus fare bribe. In Virginia, Abigail Spanberger is sprinting ahead, right down the middle to the finish line. The Times of London wanted to speak to Bill DeBlasio, but weren't picky on which one, and took what they could get. 

Donald K. Trump has shuffled through Asia with each leader assuring him that he's a winner, handing him a little something, and sending him on his way… now we have to take care of him again. Someone has to break the news to grandpa about the government shutting down. All of Donald's pals get to play with their nukes, why can't he?

No Kings protests were so joyous that the Pentagon is training 20,000 national guard troops to take them down. Meanwhile, ICE'S breaking ribs and taking names of Antifa suspects, and deporting journalists out of any place they might be reporting from. Central casting fascist Greg Bovino kept his cyanide capsule in his pocket as he got out of daily questioning by enemy judicial forces.

Merrick Garland woulda shoulda coulda.

A truck full of deadly virus-infected "aggressive" lab monkeys were released in a crash in Mississippi. It's about time, right? In fact, doesn't it feel a little late in this disaster of a timeline for that kind of event? Anymore, a thing like that feels like some sort of shitshow oasis. David Waldman has already shown some signs of infection this morning, but Greg Dworkin remains hale, and hearty enough to dredge another a raft o'stories from the dismal fen of Ex-Twitter.

Fewer people like Donald K. Trump. More like him less. Tariffs that were to hurt the other guy, foreign and domestic, have been discovered to hurt them as well.  Generic Democrats come to the rescue of the American economy.

Gops have ways of dealing with those nasty polls, and one way is to simply cease to be and allow the scum to float to the top.  Judges are now the last line of defense. A federal judge has decided that Bilal Essayli can't be U.S. attorney for the Central District of California just because the Senate has never selected anyone for the job. Another federal judge demands that violent recidivist Greg Bovino wear a camera and report to her each day. The Ninth Circuit en banc bench continues to block Trump's Portland invasion. 

The House is trying to fund SNAP because having the National Guard put down food riots might image badly heading into the midterms.

South Korea takes satire further than South Park would ever dare, handing Trump a gold crown and a bottle of ketchup.  Satire can never catch an administration that keeps male veterans from getting coverage for breast cancer,,, What, hasn't Pete Hegseth banned nipples in the armed forces yet? Meanwhile, Ken Paxton sues Tylenol until he can figure out how to jail mothers of autistic children.

In local news… maybe not local to you, but local to somebody, Jay Jones' texting scandal hardly hurts him, let alone Abigail Spanberger. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, on the other hand, hopes the Zohran Mamdanimentum always rolls her way. Andrew Cuomo not only hopes people will remember him next week, but he also hopes they can find him on the ticket.

David Waldman returns to explain more.

Sadly, the "Kavanaugh stop" won't even slow down Brett Kavanaugh. It's just another move to self-obsolescence made by the Trump Supreme Court, autographed by Brett. If you don't look right, sound right, aren't in the right place, or you cross the wrong ICES, you get your ass beat. Now that use of unnecessary violence has been approved, ICE'S leadership is being rotated out to more bloodthirsty troops and strategies.

That's been working in sniffing out the sea drug suspects/corpses. We don't need skin color or accents, just the number of motors on a boat and missile coordinates.

It's Tim Mellon's turn to rent the troops this week.  You know Tim, don't you?... Jeffery sure did. You remember Jeffery Epstein, don't you? Donald K. Trump sure… well, maybe he remembers. Donald might not remember which way his Depends go on anymore. Donald tried to wander off in Japan but unfortunately was captured and returned to his handlers.

Trump's seventy-year decline into madness is reflected in his foreign policy approach. Hey, how about Charlie Kirk's widow as editor-in-chief of NBC and CNN? It's amazing what you can do with Grok these days.

Another guy working hard to make his position and branch of government obsolete is Mike Johnson, who works hard to be hardly working.

The Trump boys can attest that there's a whole lot more to becoming a success in life than putting any effort into things.

A catch-up Monday! Pop quiz: Did you already know about the three presidency-ending corruption scandals… just from last week?

Greg Dworkin gets us grounded with his Abbreviated Pundit Roundup. All the news you can eat in one hour!

All the pre-game punditry comes to an end soon enough in Virginia, New Jersey and New York City. That VA AG race remains tighter than most of the other ones.

Canada is soory, not soory, eh? But the bottom line remains that Trump is wrong about Reagan and tariffs. He just is. In fact, he's just wrong about tariffs in general. But then again, he's wrong—well past the point of lunacy—about a lot of things. He's even wrong about how he targets "enemies" for his special punishments. Maybe that's why he had to have his head examined.

As the government shutdown continues, ACA insurance premiums are set to become the source of the first widespread pain delivered to the middle class by this intentional Republican failure. They just don't care. And it's not clear that debate is a real tool for changing that.

Stephen Miller and Pam Bondi ended last week with new threats to investigate and prosecute Democrats they don't like, claiming it's a felony to hold federal officers accountable if they break state laws. But no, it's not.

Are you still using AI? The Russians won't stop, but you should!

Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead, and so is the East Wing of the White House. Melania is actually said to be unhappy about it. But Michael Wolff may make her unhappier still, by turning the litigation tables on her.

A catch-all Friday!

Tops on the list for the day: the continued destruction at the White House. HuffPost documents the donors who thought they were signing up for ballroom construction, only to find out Trump was saddling them with East Wing demolition, instead.

Next up: We've always been at trade war with Canada! Or at least, we are now. Again. Because something, something, Ronald Reagan. Speaking of which, "something, something, Ronald Reagan."

Third: Trump says he has no intention of asking Congress to authorize his Caribbean (and now Pacific) strikes. Even though it would give the tacti-cool set lots of lingo and jargon to toss about.

Israeli hard-liners are talking about annexing the West Bank, now. JD Vance makes it about him.

Happy Diwali! MAGA makes that about Kash Patel.

Ronny Jackson is so dumb, not even Matthew Kacsmaryk can save his "case!"

Neither can anyone save the MAGA "cases" of supposed "left-wing violence." The right has never learned—and never had to learn—the lesson of The Case of the Backwards B.

New bootstrapping theory dropped! The "reason" Trump thinks he's entitled to reparations from the DOJ is that they should have foreseen in 2022 that in 2024, SCOTUS would invent a new theory of "presidential immunity," and that he would totally have been entitled to it.

Heading out to vote early in Virginia? Do you feel like you need some context on Jay Jones? Or nah?

David Waldman talks about the things you wanted to hear about on today's KITM!

Greg Dworkin found some polls floating in the sewage over at ex-Twitter. They indicate that Dems are way up. Now, people still hate Democrats, but they despise Republicans, which could lead to midterm wins if Republicans allow voting to happen. R Paul LePage is winning in Maine, but D Jared Golden is putting the effort in. In the Senate race Graham Platner will be getting his past lasered off and is presently doing quite well. To guess at who will win in Virginia, watch who is resigning now.

Zohran Mamdanized Andrew Cuomo in their second debate and gave him a kick out the door.

Donald K. Trump opens his Pacific theater of operations in order to serial murder fisherfolk and possibly curtail "the ocean drugs and the sea drugs, drugs by sea they call it also". (The president was of course referring to the deadly drug "chloroquine") After the trawlers are cleared out, Trump can pump the Pacific on to the Portland fires.

The mind-rot algorithm destroys minds around the world, including those doing the rotting. Mike Johnson thinks inflatable frogs have it in for Hakeem Jeffries. Lindsey Halligan wants this, and everything prior to this, off the record.

John Fetterman must have meant to say that Trump is stealing $230 million because of his small balls, it just doesn't make sense any other way. 

Trump will demolish anything to put his thing in its place. The East Wing is the thing he is demolishing this week. Planning only gets in the way of the demolishing. Demolishing will become easier once the economy is out of the way. Don't worry, Democrats have a word they've been focus grouping and are almost ready to deploy. Senator Jeff Merkley had 22 hours and 36 minutes of words to say against Trump doing such things.

David Waldman is back to sort out the weekend chaos.

Belated RIP to Ace Frehley, yet Greg Dworkin is back in his New York groove today, presenting links from Ex-Twitter, which, alas, is still with us. Not long for this New York mayoral race world is Andrew Cuomo, whose absence won't be felt like Curtis Sliwa, world's easiest interview subject. Silwa voters aren't part of the Mamdanimentum, btw.

No Kings rallies had a very nice day. Several million pleasant people at a few thousand locations made their presence known to everybody other than the New York Times. Sadly, in these days and times, terrorists will inevitably show up wherever large groups of patriotic Americans gather. Terrorist in Chief, Donald K. Trump wishes he could have been at all of them. Kenny Loggins is pretty certain that Trump is more of a bottom gun, but Mike Johnson believes that Donald is just perfect the way he is.

Trump notes that the Constitution plainly states that he's allowed to be king, just like 50 or 60 of his predecessors did 1000 to 1500% of the time.  Unfortunately, he could be right. It turns out that the test for enemy terrorist drug runners is the same as the test for witches: If they float, they are innocent.

Marco Rubio betrayed drug gang informants to get the El Salvadoran prison deal. Trump is betraying American ranchers to pay off Argentina. Australia discovers that they aren't on the good end of the kickback seesaw.

JD Just Dance Vance was almost taken out by a Marines artillery shell. No way could his ear have withstood that.

David Waldman drops us off in time for our weekend fun, but not without some parting words of wisdom.

We're so sorry, Uncle Albert, but Admiral Alvin Holsey has notified the US Southern Command that he will be departing only a year into his 3-year mission of slaughtering Trinidadian fishermen.

Pete Hegseth will drown his sorrows this weekend with Jeanine Pirro, who also hasn't been able to catch a break or a conviction. Multiple judges have shut down multiple Chicago attempts at military takeover and harassment of citizens. Karoline Leavitt wants to throw judges and their laws in jail. Schools are actually winning their cases against Trump, but that's just not as fun for retail media to report.

Now, shooting missiles across California Interstate 5, that's a media event. So is indicting John Bolton, who probably deserves indictment, maybe for what he was indicted for.

Russian drones and jets keep wandering into NATO countries. Now little green men are reemerging along the border.