• Shutdown Schumer calls for a 30-day bandage: “If this is a shutdown, it’ll be the Schumer shutdown.” So said Florida Republican Senator Ashley Moody as the two political parties position themselves to be blameless should Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer make bad on his promise to torpedo the House Republicans’ budget bill. It’s wash, rinse, and repeat, as failure to pass the bill would defund the government at midnight Friday. “Funding the government should be a bipartisan effort,” Schumer whined on X. “But Republicans chose a partisan path, drafting their Continuing Resolution without any input from Congressional Democrats.” Instead, he’s proposing a 30-day CR, which would merely buy the Democrats more time. A recent Quinnipiac poll should give them pause, though. Their congressional job approval is at 21%, while Republicans are nearly double that at 40%.

• Tariff escalation: Following Donald Trump’s 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports, the European Union responded with reciprocal tariffs on U.S. goods. Canada also responded by imposing a 25% tariff on steel, aluminum, and other U.S. imports for a combined total of $20.6 billion. The problem for the EU and Canada is that both have trade surpluses with the U.S., reducing their leverage in negotiations. Trump is now threatening to raise a 200% tariff on all alcohol from the EU in response to its 50% tax on all U.S. whiskey. Who will blink first in this game of chicken?

• Russia hints at “no deal” on 30-day ceasefire: Trump envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Moscow today and was greeted with some bad news: An aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Russian TV that the 30-day ceasefire deal being brokered by the Trump administration — which Ukraine has already agreed to — “is nothing other than a temporary respite for the Ukrainian military, nothing more.” In addition, Putin donned his military garb and urged his forces to press their attack and undo some tenuous gains that the Ukrainians have made into Russian lands. This might just be posturing, of course, and a means for Russia to achieve more military gains before signing a deal, but there’s still plenty of work to be done if the dying is going to stop anytime soon.

UPDATE: According to Vladimir Putin: “We agree with proposals to cease hostilities, but this cessation must lead to a long-term peace and eliminate the root cause of the initial crisis. We also want guarantees that Ukraine will not mobilize, train soldiers, or receive weapons during the 30-day cease-fire.”

• Shaheen won’t run in NH; Pothole Pete won’t run in MI: Perhaps having read the writing on the wall, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the 78-year-old three-term New Hampshirite, has decided she’d rather spend more time with her family than subject herself to six more years of Chuck Schumer. Thus, the Democrats’ chances of retaking the Senate in 2026 just got even slimmer, especially if popular former Republican Governor Chris Sununu decides to run for the seat. Shaheen thus joins Michigan’s Gary Peters and Minnesota’s Tina Smith in calling it quits and forcing the Dems to defend three open seats, as well as that of Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff. Further complicating matters for the Dems, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is expected to announce today that he’s not running for Peters’s seat in Michigan, which would clear his deck for a failed 2028 presidential run.

• Judge saves Hillary’s money-laundering firm: A federal judge on Wednesday issued a restraining order against Donald Trump’s executive order that canceled government contracts with and revoked the security clearance of the Perkins Coie law firm. Trump targeted Perkins Coie because it aided Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign. Judge Beryl Howell, an Obama appointee, agreed with Perkins Coie’s emergency relief request on the grounds that Trump’s order would inflict irreparable harm “on multiple fronts.” Recall that Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS, the outfit that produced the bogus Steele dossier upon which the Russia collusion hoax was built. Chad Mizelle, Attorney General Pam Bondi’s chief of staff, defended Trump’s order by arguing, “Perkins Coie represents a threat to the national security of the United States.”

• COP30 begins with deforestation: If only there had been an elite committee to discuss what to do about the dwindling Passenger Pigeon population at the turn of the 20th century, then maybe they would have been saved. Well, fear not, Amazon Rainforest — the United Nations has set up such a committee to discuss deforestation and many other environmental issues. Where would we be without elites from all over the planet flying in to discuss what to do? Sure, the COP30 meeting in Bélem, Brazil, this coming November is precipitating a new eight-mile-long, four-lane highway being driven straight through a previously verdant section of the rainforest. But at least global elites can talk about how bad that is.

• Biden misled the nation on immigration arrests: What the Biden administration had been reporting as illegal alien arrests was no such thing. It was “cooking the books on ICE data,” according to Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons. “They were purposely misleading the American people by categorizing individuals processed and released into the interior of the United States as ICE arrests.” This practice was known as “pass-through” arrests. Thus, few of the Biden administration’s reported 113,431 arrests of illegal aliens were actually taken into custody. Meanwhile, just six weeks since Donald Trump took office, his re-empowered ICE will soon surpass the total number of illegal aliens arrested in the last year under Joe Biden.

• Army attrition spiked under Biden; Hegseth calls for review of fitness standards: Fresh off posting its best recruiting number in 12 years, we learn that the Army has been beset by a Biden-era attrition crisis. According to internal Army data, nearly one-fourth of soldiers recruited since 2022 have checked out before completing their initial contracts. Maybe, just maybe, the Army’s emphasis on wokeness had something to do with this. In better news regarding military readiness, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered a Pentagon-wide review of military standards regarding physical fitness, body composition, and grooming. “High standards are what made the United States military the greatest fighting force on the planet,” wrote Hegseth in a memo to senior DOD leaders, adding that our military is “made stronger and more disciplined with high, uncompromising, and clear standards.”

• Judge weighs trans troop ban: A Biden-appointed federal judge who doesn’t believe the scientific reality of the binary nature of human sexuality to be “biologically correct” just heard arguments in a case against the Pentagon’s policy barring “transgender” individuals from serving. U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes didn’t take kindly to an X post by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, which read, “Pentagon says transgender troops are disqualified from service without an exemption.” She wondered aloud why she would side with him over, for example, an affected service member with “more commendations than books in our library.” She also compared the $42 million spent on Viagra in one year with the $52 million spent on gender treatments over a decade. In short, Reyes is downright antagonistic to the idea that the secretary of defense has the latitude to set Pentagon policy if she doesn’t like how it affects favored “victims.”

• Is change coming to Greenland? “I have a message tonight for the incredible people of Greenland,” said Donald Trump in his address to Congress last week. “We strongly support your right to determine your own future, and if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America.” Greenland held its parliamentary elections this week, and the Demokraatit party won 10 seats and 30% of the vote, while Naleraq, the second placer, won eight seats and 24% of the vote. Both parties favor independence from Denmark, though with differing ideas of when. The only party that does not seem to favor independence in one way or another is the Atassut party, which came in dead last among the five parties with only 7% of the vote. Does this result mark a new era in U.S.-Greenland relations? Time will tell.

Headlines

• White House withdraws Dave Weldon’s nomination to lead CDC (Just the News)

• U.S. deficit sets record with $1.1 trillion in first five months of fiscal year 2025 (Just the News)

• Monmouth University to shut down its renowned polling institute (The Hill)

• USAID, State Department failed to monitor NGOs to ensure they weren’t funding Taliban (Daily Wire)

• Russia says it has retaken Sudzha, biggest town in the Kursk region controlled by Ukraine (AP)

• Angela Merkel covered up explosive German intel report blaming Chinese lab for pandemic (Daily Wire)

• Humor: Layoffs delayed as Department of Education unable to calculate what 50% of employees would be (Babylon Bee)

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