‘Gen Z Is in the House!’ and Other Cringe Moments in the Democrats’ Shutdown Marathon

pure KEK

Democrats promised to livestream the shutdown battle until (almost) the bitter end. We watched so you didn’t have to.

Adam Wren

I binged more than 14 hours of the occasionally awkward, repetitive — if mostly on message — programming on YouTube (there was also an X stream).But even if it was a physically exhausting and mentally taxing process, it was a revealing window into the Democrats’ larger plight: a struggle to get their message through in an attention economy that prizes watchability and entertainment, making it almost impossible for them to break through the din of President Donald Trump’s neverending newscycle.

“Trump is gonna do something crazy as soon as the go[vernment] shuts down and that’ll be the story,” lamented one House Democratic aide. (I granted anonymity to Democratic and Republican insiders alike so they could speak candidly.)

The party in power historically loses the shutdown.But no party in power has had a leader with a megaphone likeTrump does now.

In launching the livestream, which featured the feel of athrowback telethon with none of the charisma or surprise, Jeffries and his allies seemed to tacitly acknowledge that they needed to be fighting, and sounding and looking as if they were. (“Y’all, I ain’t scared,” Jeffries said at one point. “I’m from Brooklyn.”) But few Dems seemed willing to fight on camera. The livestream featured just four frontline Democrats of 26 in competitive districts — and few of the party’s brightest stars like AOC or Jasmine Crockett — a possible tell that they see some risk here. (Rep. Sarah McBride, the 35-year-old from Delaware, did join briefly at the beginning.) Notably, Democrats could not field live programming for three hours in the middle of the night, from 2:30 a.m. to 5:30 a.m., despite an internal email desperately seeking participants. (A spokesperson for Jeffries declined to comment on the three hours of recorded re-run content). And it showed that while Democrats are clearly listening to a lot of people online urging them to fight, a lot of people online may not be listening to them.

House Democrats also got hit from the left, as the Sen. Bernie Sanders-led livestream of Senate Democrats on the shutdown scored some 90,000 viewers in real time, racking up 357,311 views by Wednesday morning. To be fair, creators clipped the livestream and distributed portions across X and other social media views, some of which drew tens of thousands of views, far more than the livestream itself.

“There are Democrats who are attracting more eyeballs and enthusiasm,” Rebecca Katz, the founding partner at Fight Agency which has produced ads for New York City mayoral contender Zohran Mamdani, told me as she fumed at how few viewers Jeffries was landing. “The problem is party leadership is shunning many of them.”

In a statement to POLITICO Magazine, a spokesperson for Jeffries said his three separate livestreams on X generated over 60,000 views and that “clips from the livestream are continuing to also generate hundreds of thousands of views and we still have more coming.”

“As Leader Jeffries has consistently said and done, Democrats are in a more-is-more environment,” said Christie Stephenson, Jeffries’ spokesperson.“Apparently for some, that means more is more snark and that’s their choice as to how they want to spend this pivotal moment. While Republicans canceled votes, vacationed and fundraised at steakhouses, Democratic Members of Congress, stakeholders and everyday Americans united to define the stakes of the Republican healthcare crisis and the Trump shutdown.”

Here, in excerpts from the livestream, Democrats spent their online air time swapping candy from Hawaii, troubleshooting tech issues and searching for ways to attract attention during the shutdown’s earlier hours.

2 p.m.:Aside from a countdown clock, the walkup to the first government shutdown to be live-streamed — quasi-continuously — isn’t the exciting fare you might think: It’s two guys sitting in leather chairs with microphones.

“Good afternoon, everybody,” says Jeffries, appearing on a livestream in front of a podcast mic, an American flag draped behind him. He was sitting next to Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), whom Jeffries hails as “one of the rising stars of the United States Congress.”

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/10/01/democrats-shutdown-livestream-00591178

FBI fires agent trainee who displayed Pride flag, sources say

By Josh Campbell, Jamie Gangel, CNN

Updated: 4:32 PM EDT, Thu October 2, 2025

FBI Director Kash Patel has fired a longtime bureau employee who displayed a Pride flag in his workspace during a past assignment, according to multiple people familiar with the termination.

The employee was undergoing new agent training at the FBI’s academy in Quantico, Virginia, when he received a letter from Patel ordering his immediate dismissal.

In a previous non-agent role with the FBI, the employee, who received multiple awards for service during his career, had also been a field office diversity program coordinator and displayed a Pride flag at his workstation, sources said.

In notifying the individual of their dismissal, Patel did not specifically mention the Pride flag by name, but said the agent trainee was being summarily dismissed forpast “poor judgment” and “an inappropriate display of political signage,” sources said.

Two FBI veterans told CNN displaying the flag at one’s desk historically would not violate any past FBI policy. However, since taking office, President Donald Trump has vowed to rid the federal government of what he calls “woke” ideology.

The FBI didn’t immediately return a request for comment from CNN.

The firing comes less than a week since Patel fired over a dozen other FBI employees who took a knee while conducting crowd control in 2020after being confronted by a group of demonstrators in the nation’s capital. The act of taking a knee, which appeared to de-escalate the situation, drew sharp criticism from some conservatives, including people inside the FBI. Previous FBI Director Christopher Wray concluded that it did not violate bureau policy.

Since assuming office, Patel has fired or forced the resignation of numerous FBI personnel,including three senior executives who filed a lawsuit claiming their terminations were driven by the White House at the urging of Trump’s political allies.

https://lite.cnn.com/2025/10/02/politics/kash-patel-fires-fbi-trainee-for-displaying-pride-flag

Washington Post's new opinion chief says ‘tough decisions about staffing’ are looming

Fox News

BRIAN FLOOD

Wed, October 1, 2025 at 3:40 PM EDT

FIRST ON FOX – Washington Post opinion editor Adam O'Neal on Wednesday informed colleagues that "tough decisions about staffing" are looming, while reiterating social media guidelines and announcing a trio of new opinion writers.

O'Neal, who joined The Post in July after being selected to carry out billionaire owner Jeff Bezos’ mission statement to promote "personal liberties and free markets," sent a memo to opinion staffers that detailed the next steps of his plan to overhaul the opinion section.

"We’ve already started the hard work of making our workflows more nimble when publishing editorials, op-eds and columns. Soon we will introduce a new org chart that will require us to make tough decisions about staffing. While it is never easy, restructuring the page is critical to making the opinion section more competitive and capable," O'Neal wrote in the memo obtained by Fox News Digital.

"In the past, our columnists often served as a rapid-response team to breaking news. Unsigned editorials, on the other hand, stood outside the news cycle. Recently we have increased the number of unsigned editorials and have emphasized speed while improving quality," he continued.

"We will eventually begin to publish three editorials a day, and our columnists will begin writing on scheduled days. Together these changes can help give our section a more distinct voice and help readers form habits around consuming our content."

O’Neal also announced three new hires. National Review economics editor Dominic Pino, The Spectator U.S. deputy editor Kate Andrews and Boston Globe columnist Carine Hajjar will all join The Post next month and report to deputy opinion editor James Hohmann.

All three currently work for or have backgrounds with right-leaning publications, a noteworthy development given the paper's historically left-leaning opinion roster.

"We’ll have more announcements in the coming months as we continue hiring contributors with diverse backgrounds to strengthen our section," O’Neal wrote.

O’Neal recently told Fox News Digital the current state of the editorial pages was a "work in progress" and reshaping them would take time. He conceded the paper’s readers are "overwhelmingly liberal" from a handful of blue states and hopes to expand its reach with a non-partisan approach.

"My mission is to hire the kinds of people from throughout the U.S. with different kinds of backgrounds, intellectual diversity, who can appeal and rebuild that trust. And I think that a lot of folks have a poor view of The Post because they don't feel that they've been well served by it," O'Neal told Fox News Digital in his first interview since landing the job.

"If there are people who had a perception that subscribing to The Post was like a form of activism and that they had to do it to oppose a particular politician or party now that we're opening up our lands and writing more widely in a nonpartisan way, I don't know, maybe you'll lose people that way," O'Neal continued. "But I think the upside of where the growth is by appealing to many more Americans in rebuilding that trust, to me, that's a pretty clear decision."

The Washington Post lost a reported 250,000 subscribers when it elected not to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 for the White House.

In his memo to staffers, O’Neal also reminded that "management mandated all Washington Post employees based in the region return to the office five days a week," and everyone is expected to comply. He also attached the company’s ethics guidelines and social media polices, urging staffers to cooperate.

Karen Attiah, a former progressive Washington Post columnist, was terminated last month following social media posts related to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, a move that drew criticism from media freedom advocates. (She was condemned by anyone that read it, she was disgusting)

https://www.aol.com/articles/washington-posts-opinion-chief-says-194046124.html

Oct, 2025 20:13

Trump’s ‘paper tiger’ remark possibly misunderstood – Putin

The US President may have used the term “ironically” in describing Russia, the Russian leader has said

US President Donald Trump’srecent description of Russia as a “paper tiger” may have been used “ironically,” President Vladimir Putin has conjectured.

Responding to a humorous suggestion by Valdai Discussion Club host Fyodor Lukyanov that the Russian president shouldgive his US counterpart a literal paper tiger as a gift, Putin said: “No, we have our own relations; we know what gifts to present each other.”

“I don’t know the context in which this [comment]was made – maybe it was made ironically,” he added.

Trump made the remark in a post on his Truth Social platform in September, after a meeting with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky. In an apparent shift in rhetoric, the US president referred to Russia as a “paper tiger,” arguing that it had failed to defeat Ukraine in three and a half years. He also suggested that Kiev is “in a position to fight and win all of Ukraine back,” as long as the EU and NATO continue to support it.

Contrary to the US president's comment, the Russian military has been steadily advancing on the front lines for months. Moscow’s forces had taken control of 4,700 square kilometers and 205 settlements this year, Chief of the General Staff General Valery Gerasimov reported in late September.

”Go ahead and take on this paper tiger,” Putin joked.

(I swear Trump and Putin are communicating through the news.)

https://www.rt.com/russia/625831-putin-trump-russia-paper-tiger-remark/