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Senate advances plan to end historic shutdown in bipartisan breakthrough

(Politico) The Senate voted to break the shutdown stalemate Sunday, paving the way for the government to reopen as soon as later this week. The 60-40 vote to take the first step toward ending the shutdown came hours after enough Democrats agreed to support a package that would fund multiple agencies and programs for the full fiscal year, and all others until Jan. 30, 2026.

Ghislaine Maxwell plans to ask Trump to commute prison sentence, House Democrats say

(CBS News) Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking co-conspirator, is planning to apply for a commutation of her federal prison sentence, which is set to run through 2037, according to documents obtained by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee and seen by CBS News. In a letter to President Trump on Monday, also seen by CBS News, Judiciary Committee Democrats wrote that Maxwell "is preparing a 'Commutation Application' for your Administration to review, undoubtedly coming to you for your direct consideration."

Trump pardons Rudy Giuliani, other key figures allegedly involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election

(ABC News) President Donald Trump issued a sweeping pardon to key figures allegedly involved in the plan to arrange an alternate slate of electors and "expose voting fraud" during the 2020 election, according to U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin. Trump pardoned high-profile individuals allegedly involved in his attempt to overturn the election, including Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Boris Epshteyn, John Eastman and Mark Meadows -- and 72 other individuals allegedly associated with the effort to challenge the 2020 election results.

'Outraged' Trump voter says he feels 'completely swindled'

(Raw Story) A Pennsylvania Trump voter says he regrets his vote and that the president's conduct in office is a "complete betrayal" of his vote, reports The Daily Beast. Morgen Morgus, a self-described Libertarian, writes in a letter to the editor of USA Today that "A year after the president election, I feel completely swindled. If the presidential election were held today—with the same candidates—I would sit it out,” he went on. “There was a hope that they would be willing to listen to us, but unfortunately that is not happening.”

Trump's assault on voting intensifies as midterms loom: 'a wholesale attack on free and fair elections'

(The Guardian) A year out from the 2026 midterms, with Republicans feeling the blows from a string of losses in this week’s elections, Donald Trump and his allies are mounting a multipronged attack on almost every aspect of voting in the United States and raising what experts say are troubling questions about the future of one of the world’s oldest democracies. While Democratic leaders continue to invest their hopes in a “blue wave” to overturn Republican majorities in the House and Senate next year, Trump and some prominent supporters have sought to discredit the possibility that Republicans could lose in a fair fight and are using that premise to justify demands for a drastically different kind of electoral system.

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'The whole thing is imploding': Chaos erupts inside America's top right-wing think tank

(Raw Story) Founded in 1973, the Heritage Foundation has become what its president, Kevin Roberts, now hails as the “intellectual backbone” of the conservative movement. It crafted the policy blueprint that powered President Ronald Reagan’s right-wing revolution — and today, under Roberts’s leadership, it’s once again shaping the machinery of power. Through its highly controversial Project 2025 — a plan widely credited to Roberts as its chief architect — Heritage laid out a road map for President Donald Trump’s second-term agenda. But Roberts’s recent missteps have rattled the institution, raising strong questions about his leadership — and the future direction of the conservative movement itself.

Reagan-Appointed Federal Judge Resigns to Speak Freely Against Trump

(NOTUS) Mark Wolf, a senior federal judge first appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan, resigned this weekend in order to freely speak out against what he called the Trump administration’s “assault on the rule of law.” “President Donald Trump is using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment,” Mark Wolf wrote in a Sunday letter published by The Atlantic. “This is contrary to everything that I have stood for in my more than 50 years in the Department of Justice and on the bench.”

Judge to ponder challenge to West Virginia National Guard deployment in the nation's capital

(AP) A court in West Virginia is set to hear arguments in a lawsuit challenging the deployment of the state National Guard to patrol the streets of Washington, D.C., as part of President Donald Trump’s push to send the military into Democratic-run cities. The hearing Monday afternoon is the third in the past three weeks in Charleston over the state’s response to Trump’s crime-fighting efforts, which have unleashed a whirlwind of lawsuits and overlapping court rulings.

Democrats seek investigation into agency messages blaming Democrats for the shutdown

(NBC News) A group of Senate Democrats is pushing for an investigation into the Trump administration’s use of federal agency websites and emails to post partisan messages blaming Democrats for the government shutdown. In a letter obtained by NBC News, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and other Democrats ask the Government Accountability Office to open a probe into whether the political messages violated federal appropriations laws.