Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of November 3

DOJ tells Republicans that Epstein files even worse for Trump than they thought: report

A few GOP house members say they’ve heard from FBI/DOJ contacts that the Epstein files (with copies in different agencies) are worse than Michael Wolff’s description of Epstein photos showing Trump with half naked teenage girls

Heritage staff in open revolt over leader’s defense of Tucker Carlson (Washington Post)

The furor began after Carlson invited Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist who routinely espouses antisemitic views, onto his popular podcast. Roberts then posted a video that castigated a “venomous coalition” and “the globalist class” for attacking Carlson, whom Roberts called “a close friend of the Heritage Foundation.” Numerous Heritage staffers and conservative figures said the comments played on antisemitic tropes.

A staff meeting Wednesday — Roberts’s latest attempt to quell a week of resignations and condemnations over his defense of Carlson — was marked with calls for him to resign and squabbles over whether Christian employees would be forced to participate in Jewish rituals.

At least five members of Heritage’s antisemitism task force have now resigned in protest, and distinguished fellow Chris DeMuth left the organization. On Thursday afternoon, senior visiting fellow Stephen Moore also announced he was resigning his position with Heritage.

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At the meeting Wednesday, Roberts said Heritage was “wordsmithing and workshopping” language over how to distance itself from Carlson, though Roberts said he would remain a personal friend. He called Fuentes an “evil person” but one who “has an audience of several million people, and at least some of that audience might be open to be converted” to mainstream conservatism.

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Wednesday’s revolt reflected longer-running tensions with Roberts’ four-year-old tenure atop the $335 million foundation. During the 2024 campaign, he antagonized Trump’s team by initially favoring his top primary rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and then by promoting Heritage’s “Project 2025” as a Trump-aligned initiative, fueling Democratic attacks. Roberts stunned traditional conservatives with policy positions that spurned long-standing orthodoxies, such as his opposing aid to Ukraine in its defense against Russian incursion. And he is facing complaints from female staffers that they face demeaning treatment.

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[…] Heritage convened a coalition of other think tanks and policy shops — eventually more than 100 in all — to produce an agency-by-agency plan presented as a movement-wide consensus, known as Project 2025. A notable exception was the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), which housed many alumni of the first Trump administration and declined to participate — a split that would later prove consequential.

Heritage released its coalition’s 900-page policy at a conference in 2023 with DeSantis as its headliner. Trump was not invited. But as Trump ran away with the GOP primary the following year, Roberts started discussing the project in more pro-Trump terms, even as his personal press secretary left to work for DeSantis.

Trump’s advisers, however, would not so quickly overlook how Roberts had contributed to DeSantis’s campaign. They repeatedly objected to Heritage purporting to speak for Trump’s agenda without his approval.

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The conflict escalated as Democrats made Project 2025 central to their campaign messaging, highlighting (and sometimes misrepresenting) unpopular proposals and tying them to Trump. Trump aides announced that Heritage employees would be unwelcome in the next Trump administration, and Project 2025’s director, Paul Dans, left Heritage in a messy dispute with Roberts.

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After the 2024 election, AFPI officials had the edge in the Trump transition, and its affiliates went on to fill eight Cabinet-level positions. Many Heritage alumni also joined the administration, but usually with more recent stints at other think tanks, such as Stephen Miller’s America First Legal or Russell Vought’s Center for Renewing America. Miller is now Trump’s deputy chief of staff, and Vought runs the powerful Office of Management and Budget. Even with Heritage on the outs, the administration has implemented numerous ideas in Project 2025.

Several Democrats side with Republicans to pass deal aimed at ending US government shutdown

Democrats flip 29 towns in Connecticut

Marjorie Taylor Greene Knows Exactly What She’s Doing (The Atlantic)

The “Jewish space lasers” lady may be positioning herself to lead the MAGA movement.

What I want to know is when will this government shutdown will end. So far I've seen no movement by anyone. At least this past election cycle I see no incentive for Democrat in Congress to give in to what Republican and our beloved leader want.