Daily Dispatch, 2025-10-27

Fall is in the air, finally, after a long Texas summer. (They’re all long, really, so nothing unusual here.)

The federal government has been shut down for nearly a month (time is so warped right now that I originally thought we were two weeks in), at least in part because Speaker of the House Mike Johnson refuses to bring the House back in session. Doing so, and swearing in a Democratic representative from Arizona who was elected last month, would force him to confront the specter of the Epstein files. Presumably, a full release of those files would implicate Trump, among others, and the GOP seems hellbent on not displeasing Dear Leader. The Republicans are calling it the “Democrat Shutdown,” but anyone with reasonable levels of intelligence understands that is not the case. Unfortunately, reasonable levels of intelligence are in short supply, while (willful) ignorance is off the charts.

Trump has prioritized the demolition of the east wing of the White House over resolving the shutdown, and as a result, millions of people will lose SNAP benefits. Some will die of hunger.

My email client just notified me of a new email from Democracy Docket, with a title along the lines of “The warning signs for 2026 are already here.” Marc Elias and his team at Democracy Docket are doing their best to fight election chicanery being perpetrated by the regime, but it’s an uphill legal battle. My hopes so low at this point that they’re underground, and the more of these notifications I see, the further my hopes burrow into the ground.

Yesterday, my wife and I voted in local elections, and it feels like a futile exercise, as if we’re actors in a performance produced by Greg Abbott and the Texas GOP.