It's beginning to look a little like...let's not go there

So many things passed through my inbox in the last day and a half:

• The Minnesota Star Tribune reported that an assistant to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was observed over the weekend discussing plans over Signal with an aide to Reichsminister Stephen Miller to send the 82nd Airborne to Portland.
• Paul Krugman breaks from his usual economics beat to lambast the OAFPOTUS and his Reichskabinett der Nationalen Rettung for the horrifying ICE raid* on a Chicago apartment building last week: "What do we learn from the Chicago apartment raid plus the growing number of incidents in which ICE agents have physically attacked people who posed no conceivable threat? To me, it says that even 'alarmists' who warned about the threat a Trump administration would pose to democracy underestimated just how evil this administration would be."
• Adam Kinzinger draws a straight line between the OAFPOTUS really, really not wanting anyone to read the Epstein files and the Republicans' not caring really one whit about "protecting kids."
• Jamelle Bouie suggests that if Hegseth and the OAFPOTUS want to see "the enemy within," they should glance at the nearest mirror. Jen Rubin concurs.
• In his latest column on the OAFPOTUS's bullshit, Glenn Kessler mocks the TACO King for "crying 'witch hunt' while stirring the cauldron."
• Josh Marshall applauds California governor Gavin Newsom and Illinois governor JB Pritzker for being willing to use the power they have to prevent the rending of our nation.
• Matt Yglesias wants to shake some sense into the "groups" who have clearly learned nothing from Kamala Harris's embarrassing loss last November.
• Pilot and journalist James Fallows once again reminds people that it's safe to fly during a government shutdown. Of course, since all the air-traffic control trainers were furloughed...
• The Times has yet another essay about craft breweries shutting down because there are just too darn many of them. (Since the Brews & Choos Project started in February 2020, 22 of the 146 breweries I've visited have closed—plus another 7 I didn't get to.)

Finally, Illinois State Climatologist Trent Ford goes over the numbers: September was warm and very dry. October is shaping up to be as well, despite the forecast calling for rain tonight and cooler temperatures through Saturday.

* Seriously, doesn't anyone in ICE realize that people will talk about them 30 years from now the way we talk today about the Schutzstaffel?