Trump has a plan – and he’s implementing it – to destroy our economy and our government, to create a crisis that allows him to hand our government over to his billionaire friends and to suspend our democracy. I wish that weren’t true, but it is. The question then is this: does the funding bill make it easier or harder for Trump to implement that plan? I judge that it makes it easier, and so I can’t support it.

“The basics here are this. Republicans are in charge, [and] they need Democratic votes to pass a funding bill. But they never negotiated with Democrats. They didn’t even try. They wrote their own partisan bill. They filled it with all sorts of right-wing shit. This isn’t a ‘continuing resolution.’ It doesn’t just continue last year’s funding, even though the press is reporting it that way. It makes big changes to law. And they’re all changes designed to make it easier for Trump to implement that plan to destroy our country.

“For instance, it makes massive cuts to housing programs, to Social Security, to programs for health care for working families. That paves the way for Musk to advance his illegal assault on those government services. It gives Trump brand new spending powers – for instance, the ability to start new military programs that haven’t even been authorized by Congress. At this moment of crisis, that sounds like a really dangerous idea. And it takes key guardrails off of presidential spending authority that allows Trump and Musk to more easily move money from one account to the other.

“Now listen, Trump and Musk are going to keep acting illegally, no matter what this funding bill says. Whether we stop them – that’s going to be up to the courts and up to our ability to mobilize people all over this country against their agenda, which is deeply, deeply unpopular. But by passing a bill that makes their plan easier to implement, Democrats risk putting a bipartisan veneer of endorsement on their campaign to give our government to the billionaires and to destroy the rule of law. And I just won’t be a part of that.”

The Trump administration has asked the U.S. military to draw up options for retaking the Panama Canal.

President Trump has been pushing for retaking the canal since December, and repeated his desire in a joint address to Congress last week, without any elaboration. The rest of the Trump administration hasn’t attempted to explain what he means, either.

U.S. officials familiar with the planning said options for "reclaiming" the vital waterway include close cooperation with Panama's military and, absent that, possible war.

Sen Markey (MA): telling constituents he is against Musk but will vote yes on Elon/Trump bill.

It's the go-to social media app for users around the world, but it appears that X (formerly Twitter) has crashed this morning.

Users have been left unable to log in to their accounts, meaning they also can't post or view tweets on the platform, owned by Elon Musk since 2022.

Those already logged in on the app and website have been presented with the message: 'Something went wrong, try reloading.'

DownDetector, a site that monitors online outages, shows more than 9,000 reports from affected UK users shortly before 10am GMT on Monday.

"Unfortunately, my own view is the damage is done," he said of Trump's failures in foreign policy. "It's now irrevocable. There's not a shred of rational argument among European powers to trust the United States' commitment to NATO and Article Five."

"I think that's over," he confessed. "So, I think right now there's a scramble among all the European countries to include the Finns and the Swedes and others and who are borderline states, the Baltic states, Poland, etc., that they think they're under the gun."

He also said that he wouldn't be surprised if, in private, "they haven't basically committed themselves to wiping out any U.S. assurances."

"Well, I think it increases the likelihood of war," he said.

New York, NY - New York City Comptroller Brad Lander released the following statement:
"This morning, my financial team shockingly uncovered that President Trump and his crony Elon Musk illegally executed a revocation of $80 million in congressionally-appropriated FEMA funding from New York City's bank accounts late yesterday afternoon. This is money that the federal government previously disbursed for shelter and services and is now missing. This highway robbery of our funds directly out of our bank account is a betrayal of everyone who calls New York City home.