The nationwide ground stop caused by an air traffic telecommunications failure lasted more than four hours, stranding hundreds of thousands of people at airports and disrupting thousands of flights, at enormous economic cost. In 2023, when a nearly two-hour ground stop occurred, Republicans were calling for Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to be fired, even as problems with aging infrastructure were already well known—problems the first Trump administration also failed to fully address. But Donald Trump, his officials and the GOP were quick to point fingers last night at the Biden administration, Democrats and the current Republican-controlled Congress—anyone but their own incompetent administration…
We’ve seen Republican leaders responding to the massive landslide by Democrats by going Dark MAGA, digging in on a losing movement and voting for Jim Jordan as their leader. They were following Trump’s lead in elevating the white supremacy-promoting Stephen Miller to be chief of staff. Miller is planning to draw on MAGA’s “ideological roots” and go to war against the Democrats, using every lever of government to stop Democrats from investigating the president, including the Justice Department and the White House counsel’s office. It shows how afraid Trump and his administration are, as they brace for investigations and possible defections…
JD Vance seems to be getting iced out by Trump, at least on the Iran war and foreign policy. Vance’s X post blaming the midterm slaughter of the GOP on the war looks like it bothered Trump more than he’s letting on. Much of the media focused on Trump shifting Vance’s attention to fighting “fraud” by Democrats in the states. But the fact that Trump took Vance off the Iran war negotiations, along with the cancellation of his international travel to meet right-wing, Trump-friendly leaders, seems more like Trump’s attempt to diminish him further, just as his prospects for becoming president have been damaged by last week’s rout..