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UNBIASED Politics
Your Questions About the No Kings Protests Answered, Why Republicans Won't Invoke the Nuclear Option, Trump's IVF Announcement, Bolton Indicted, Santos' Sentence Commuted, and More.
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Head to cozyearth.com and use my code UNBIASED for up to 20 off. That's cozyearth.com code UNBIASED for for up to 20 off. And if you get a post purchase survey, make sure to let them know you heard about Cozy Earth right here. Because home isn't just where you live, it's how you feel. Let's go home with Cozy Earth. Welcome back to Unbiased, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. Welcome back to Unbiased Politics. Today is a Monday, October 20th. Let's talk about some news. Just as an FYI, we are going to take today's stories in order of how they happened. So we we'll start with the story, or a few stories actually, from Thursday, and then we'll do some Friday news and then we'll get into the weekend. So with that in mind, on Thursday, former national Security advisor to President Trump, John Bolton, was indicted on 18 counts by a federal grand jury for allegedly mishandling classified information. On Friday, he pled not guilty. So as we have talked about in the past, an indictment is the document that formally accuses someone of committing a crime. It doesn't mean that the defendant is guilty. It just means that the grand jury was presented with evidence of alleged crimes and the grand jury felt that there were sufficient grounds to charge the defendant with those crimes. Before we get into the allegations in the indictment, I just want to talk a little bit about John Bolton himself to kind of paint the full picture and sort of, I mean, this all goes into what he is accused of doing right we have to talk about the position that he held under Trump's first administration, and that'll kind of lead us into the accusations against him. So before ever being appointed Trump's National Security Adviser, he held many other roles within the federal government, including Assistant Attorney General, Undersecretary of State, as well as US Ambassador to the United Nations. Then, in April 2018, he was appointed to serve as Assistant to the President of National Security affairs, or also known as the National Security Advisor. He remained in that position until September 2019. Trump says that Bolton was fired. Bolton says he offered to resign. So Trump wrote on X in 2019, quote, I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House. I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the administration. And therefore I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service. I'll be naming a new National Security Advisor next week, end quote. Bolton, however, took to X just a few minutes after Trump's post and wrote, quote, I offered to resign last night, and President Trump said, let's talk about it tomorrow, end quote. Now, regardless of how it actually went down behind the scenes, Bolton and Trump, and actually not even entirely behind the scenes, this came out in the. In the. In the public sphere as well. But Bolton and Trump clashed pretty heavily on policy. So Bolton had more hawkish views than President Trump on matters like Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan, whereas President Trump had more of an America first mentality. Now, to give you just one example of where they clashed, Trump had wanted to broker a peace deal with Taliban leaders at Camp David who. But Bolton didn't necessarily like that idea. Bolton would have rather US Forces remained in the Middle east to combat the expansion of the Taliban regime. Trump ended up telling NBC News shortly before Bolton's termination that Bolton, quote, is absolutely a hawk. If it were up to him, he'd take on the whole world at one time, but that doesn't matter because I want both sides, end quote. Eventually, Bolton started getting left out of some pretty important diplomatic meetings, including Trump's historic visit to North Korea during his first term. Later, Bolton opted out of certain talk show appearances because he wasn't comfortable defending some of the administration's plans. The President was not thrilled with this, and Bolton was soon removed from his post. So he ends up leaving as National Security adviser whether he was fired or whether he willingly resigned. But while he was in that position, he helped Trump in managing the National Security Council, which meant that he had access to copious amounts of top secret information. Because of that access, he had to sign non disclosure agreements that legally prohibited him from sharing this information with non approved sources. And as we know, sensitive secret, top secret information. You can't go disclosing those to people. They're classified in secret and top secret for a reason. So when Bolton went on to publish a memoir in 2020, the Trump administration actually launched an investigation to determine whether Bolton had violated the law by including classified information in that memoir. But that investigation was closed in 2021. Then in 2022, during the Biden administration, a criminal investigation was launched after Bolton's emails were hacked by Iran. And, and this new indictment is a result of that 2022 investigation. With that context, I want to review what the indictment actually alleges. It says, quote, from or about April 9, 2018 through at least on or about August 22, 2025, Bolton abused his position as National Security Advisor by sharing more than a thousand pages of information about his day to day activities as the National Security Advisor, including information related to the national defense, which was classified up to the top secret level, with two unauthorized individuals, end quote. Those two unauthorized individuals referenced in the indictment are two of Bolton's relatives, neither of which has ever held any sort of security clearance. Now keep in mind the specifics of the leaked information are not mentioned within the indictment because that information is classified information. But the indictment does specify that the materials that Bolton retained and transmitted detailed information that Bolton learned from meetings with senior members of the US Government, intelligence briefings from members of the intelligence community and military, discussions with foreign leaders and foreign intelligence and military organizations, and intelligence products and reports, end quote. So basically the indictment says that Bolton would allegedly take handwritten notes from his workday and then go ahead and rewrite them on his computer. And after rewriting them on the computer, he would allegedly print them and keep them on his personal devices that were used by himself and others in his home. Not only would he keep them for his personal keepings, but he would also keep transmit these documents that he typed up and send them to his two relatives in this group chat. Bolton's notes would often describe the secure setting or environment in which he learned the national defense and classified information that he was memorializing in his notes. So for example, a description of classified information learned during a military briefing might start with, quote, while I was in the situation room, I learned that dot, dot, dot. The indictment further alleges that Bolton sent diary esque writings to his relatives. In the group chat we talked about that he created the day before he officially began his duties as nsa, one individual in that group chat allegedly asked, why are we using this now? Is it for the encryption? Bolton replied, quote, for diary in the future, end quote. Over the next year and a half, Bolton would allegedly send multiple pages of writings to this group chat. Sometimes the writing would span 10 pages. Other times the writings would span 25 plus pages. On days when no writings were sent to the group chat, Bolton's relatives would sometimes allegedly ask whether a diary was coming that day. Bolton would also allegedly warn his relatives when he had more information coming in the group chat. Importantly, the indictment does reference the Iranian hack and states that Bolton's team notified the the government the hack had occurred, but didn't mention that within the hacked information was the top secret information that he had shared with his two relatives. In total, Bolton is facing 18 counts. So there's eight counts of transmission of national defense information and 10 counts of retention of national defense information. Those counts all reflect certain dates and certain documents. So, for example, four. For the eight counts of transmission, there were eight specific dates where Bolton allegedly sent his relatives top secret or secret information. He allegedly transmitted information on many, many different dates throughout the year and a half that he held his position. But those eight dates specifically are the days in which he sent either secret or top secret information in the family group chat and therefore allegedly violated the law. Then, for the 10 counts of retention each, each of those counts relates to a certain document that he had typed up which contained either top secret or secret information and that he kept within his home. So, as examples, count nine relates to a specific document that he typed up, which includes top secret information about a future attack by an adversarial group in another country. Count 10 relates to a specific document he typed up, which includes secret information about a liaison partner and sharing sensitive information with the US Intelligence community, so on and so forth. Since the news of the indictment, Bolton released a statement saying, quote, donald Trump's retribution against me began then referring to Trump's first administration, continued when he tried unsuccessfully to block the publication of my book before the 2020 election and became one of his rallying cries in his reelection campaign. Now I have become the latest target in weaponizing the Justice Department to charge those in he deems to be his enemies, with charges that were declined before or distort the facts, end quote. It is worth noting that Bolton is the third of Trump's adversaries to recently be indicted by Trump's administration. However, it is also worth noting that Bolton's indictment is reportedly being looked at a bit differently by those within the doj. Meaning inside sources are are saying that career prosecutors and investigators have maintained support for the prosecution of Bolton, whereas the support isn't necessarily as high for the indictments of New York Attorney General Letitia James and FBI Director James Comey. So that's what's going on with the indictment. Let's move on to some more Thursday news. President Trump made two announcements related to ivf. One announcement is related to lowering the cost of some IVF and fertility medications, while the other is meant to expand access to IVF for employees. We'll take these one at a time, starting with the first one. The administration says it's reached a new agreement with a pharmaceutical company called EMD Sirono to apply what the administration calls most favored nation pricing to certain fertility drugs. This essentially means US Prices will match the lowest prices paid by other developed countries. One of the first drugs under this agreement will be made available to women who purchase directly from TrumpRx.gov at a discount equal to 795% of the retail price of 2500 gonal F. By the way, which is this medication we're talking about? It is an injectable medication and that signals the body to either induce ovulation in women or produce sperm in men. Now, despite the medication being for both men and women, the discount will only be made available to women and then additional savings will be available for lower income women earning up to roughly 550% of the federal poverty level. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimate that women could save up to $2,200 per IVF cycle on on fertility medications. The agreement also provides that EMD Serono will offer other other medications at a deep discount when selling directly to American patients, guarantee most favored nation prices on all new innovative medicines that come to market, repatriate increased foreign revenue on existing products, provide every state Medicaid program in the country access to most favored nation drug prices on EMD Sirono products and will invest in manufacturing IVF drugs in the United States for the first time. There is no other company that has made this same type of investment in the manufacturing of IVF drugs. The Administration is estimating that the discounts for these fertility medications will be available starting in January. Then the second part of this announcement is that the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and the treasury announced plans to create a standalone fertility benefit option called the New Benefit Option. The New Benefit Option will allow employers to offer separate fertility care packages apart from traditional health insurance to cover the full continuum of fertility services, everything from diagnostics to ivf. In other words, it'll make it easier for employers to offer fertility medical coverage, including IVF treatment, by allowing employers to offer standalone benefits packages that cover fertility specifically, as opposed to only offering these larger packages that cover a variety of services, sometimes even unnecessary services, and are therefore more expensive. Per a White house fact sheet, 42% of employers currently offer some form of fertility benefits, and 32% offer coverage of fertility medications, and 32% cover IVF. Notably, though, 70% of large employers do currently offer IVF coverage. So this push by the administration is to get these more smaller companies, who don't necessarily have enough money as larger employers, to offer IVF coverage as well. Okay, let's take our first break here. When we come back, we'll finish Thursday's news with this military funding bill that died in the Senate and and then we'll dive into some Friday news. The kids are back in school. Summer vacations have come to an end. It's officially the start of cozy season, which means it's time to slide into some bombas. You've heard me talk about bombas before. They make incredibly cozy socks, but also slippers, T shirts and underwear. However, the socks are really special to me because my husband goes through socks like no one I've ever seen. I've talked about this before. His bomba socks are the only ones that stay stand the test of time. Now for the fall season, Bombas has spe. I don't want to say special socks, but they kind of are special socks because they're made with special materials that make them extra cozy for fall. So for instance, they have a merino wool blend sock which keeps you warm when it's chilly, but cool when it's hot. 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As we've talked about in the past, Congress has to pass 12 appropriations bills every fiscal year to keep the government funded. So back in June, an appropriations bill for the Department of Defense was introduced in the House. It then passed the House roughly a month after it was introduced from the House. It has to go to the Senate and pass in the Senate. Now the Senate received this bill in July, but it hasn't yet been voted on. So the vote that we saw on Thursday was a procedural vote in the Senate. Basically The Senate has this rule, we've talked about it before. It's called the cloture rule, where 60 senators have to vote to end debate on a bill and, and advance the bill to a floor vote. This is a rule that is special to the Senate. The House does not have this rule. So that is the vote that we had on Thursday. Ultimately, it did not get the 60 votes that it needed, which means it'll continue to be, quote, unquote, debated and the Senate cannot yet vote on it. The procedural vote was 50 to 44, with all but three Democrats voting against advancing the bill to a vote. So let's now talk about what the bill includes and then we'll talk about why most Democrats voted against it first. This is a funding bill, right? So it proposes roughly $852 billion in funding for the Defense Department for this fiscal year. This includes appropriations for pay allowances, travel, meals, and basic living needs of military personnel. It also contributes to the military retirement fund for active duty and reserve components across all military branches. It includes 193 billion in pay and benefits for service members and their families, as well as a 3.8% pay raise for all service members. It covers day to day operations of the Defense Department, maintenance, training, administration costs, environmental costs across all military branches. It provides funds for purchasing and modifying aircrafts, missiles, weapons, ammunition, vehicles, vessels. It also provides about 171 billion for the procurement of weapons systems, 141 billion for research, development and testing of, of platforms, and much, much more. I mean, this is to fund the whole Defense Department. So amid the government shutdown, Majority Leader John Thune brought this bill to a vote to see if the Senate could get this one appropriations bill passed since the House has already passed it. Because since the House has already passed it, it's now just in the Senate's hands. If the Senate can pass it, then it goes to the President to be signed, and the Defense Department is now funded for this fiscal year. So again, the final vote here was 50 to 44, not enough for the 60 vote threshold. There were three Democrats who voted with all Republicans to advance this bill to a vote. Now, the reason that most Democrats opposed this bill is because of certain provisions included in the bill, which are sometimes referred to as poison pills. A poison pill is the name given to a provision that relates to policy rather than purely funding. So in this case, the poison pill provisions included certain restrictions on gender affirming care, rollbacks of COVID 19 vaccine requirements, as well as limits on service members, access to abortions. So specifically, section 8145 of the bill addresses the use of appropriated funds for gender affirming care. It says that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this bill can be used for surgical procedures or hormone therapies for the purposes of gender affirming care. Section 8142 says that none of the funds appropriated or made made available by this bill can, can be used to implement, administer or otherwise carry out a Defense Department memo. That memo specifically refers to a memo that was put in place in the wake of Dobbs vs Jackson Women's Health Organization, and it was meant to ensure access to reproductive healthcare and abortions. And Then finally, Section 8136 discusses COVID 19 vaccine requirements. It says that none of the funds appropriated or made available by this bill can be used to require a member of the military or an employee of the Department of Defense to receive a vaccination. A vaccination against COVID 19. Now, keep in mind that poison pills are very common in appropriations bills from both parties. Abortion related riders are fought over almost every year. COVID19 riders have appeared several times since the pandemic. Social policy riders like those for gender affirming care, dei, et cetera. Those have also been included several times in the recent past. So these, these poison pills are not new and they're utilized by both parties. Outside of these poison pills, though, Democrats have criticized this appropriation bill as a piecemeal approach that funds the military but leaves the rest of the government closed. So they argue that the Senate should instead be focusing on reaching a deal to, to end the shutdown and reopen the government entirely, rather than passing bills to fund portions of the government. They think that these appropriation bills should come after the, the Senate decides or negotiates or, you know, comes together to reopen the government. Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer said in part, quote, it's always been unacceptable to Democrats to do the defense bill without other bills that have so many things that are important to the American people and in terms of health care, in terms of housing, in terms of safety, end quote. So the main issue for the Democrats are one, the poison pills, and two, they don't want to only fund the military while not reopening other areas of the government. Keep in mind also that about a week before this appropriations bill was blocked in the Senate, Republican leadership in the House blocked a vote on a bill called the Pay Our Military Act. Now, this is a bill that would have allowed active duty military members to continue to receive pay during the ongoing shutdown. The presiding Republican Representative, Mike Bost of Illinois, gaveled the session to a close before the representative that introduced this bill could make a procedural move to pass the legislation. After the session, Boss explained that he didn't allow the motion because the House was in a perfunctory session and, and he was simply representing the Speaker. He said, quote, sometimes when you stand at the helm, it doesn't necessarily mean you're in charge of the ship, end quote. Meanwhile, the Democratic representative who introduced the bill said, quote, it's unacceptable that House Republicans chose to play political games rather than ensuring the men and women who serve our country receive their paychecks. Passing my bipartisan Pay Our Military act would have ensured that no service member misses a paycheck. As the Republican government showdown drags on, I will continue working to support our brave men and women in uniform who put their lives on the line every day and should never have to worry about going without pay, end quote. Notably, Speaker Mike Johnson has said time and time again that it's on the Senate Democrats to move forward with the stopgap spending bill that the House passed last month. And he's made clear that he is not on board with Pennsylvania passing a separate bill just to pay the troops. At the same time, the Trump administration has reportedly been looking into ways to keep service members paid without needing Congress to take additional action, including by tapping into roughly $8 billion in unspent defense Department research and development funds. Now also too, another thing to just kind of note here is even if this bill would have passed the House, it still had to go to the Senate, right? So the likelihood of it passing the Senate right now, when the Senate hasn't, hasn't been able to negotiate a stopgap measure. And Democrats in the Senate have already said they're not focusing on just kind of funding one area without funding the whole government, the likelihood of this bill passing in the Senate, even if it had gone to a vote in the House, would have been slim. And the House, by the way, hasn't actually been in full session since September 19th. It's been over a month since that point, since September 19th. Democrats have tried to use these quick pro forma sessions that are happening to, to take certain actions, including to swear in a representative in Arizona who won a special election last month. We've talked about her in the past, but Republicans have continually said she will be sworn in once the House officially returns to session. So it just kind of seems as if the House isn't really doing much of anything at this point in until the Senate is able to agree on a stopgap measure to reopen the government. Now, speaking of the government shutdown, many of you have asked me whether the Senate can invoke what is called the nuclear option to end the shutdown. And technically, Senate Republicans can, but they won't. So let's talk about this. Because of that rule we just talked about in the Senate where 60 senators are needed to end debate on a bill and send send it to a floor vote, the Senate has sometimes invoked what is called the nuclear option. The nuclear option allows the Senate to override its usual rules with a simple majority of 51 votes, rather than the 3/5 super majority of 60 votes. In other words, the nuclear vote lets the majority party in the Senate change the rules or set new precedents so that only a simple majority is needed to. To end a debate and send something to a vote. As the name implies, it is usually the very last resort because of its almost permanent effect. In fact, the nuclear option has never been used to pass regular bills, not even during previous shutdowns. In the past, the nuclear option has only been invoked for nominations. In 2013, Democrats used it to eliminate the filibuster for executive branch and lower court judicial nominees, and in 2017, Republicans used it to confirm the Supreme Court nomination of Justice Gorsuch. Now that it's been invoked in both of those instances, or I guess I should say in all three of those instances, the Senate only needs 51 votes to confirm executive branch nominees, lower court judicial nominees, and, and Supreme Court nominees. Whereas before, 60 votes were needed in the Senate to end a filibuster and, you know, allow those nominations to go to a floor vote. Now, why did I say the nuclear option has an almost permanent effect? Because technically, the Senate could reinstate the old cloture rule after using the nuclear option, but it's highly unlikely they would do so. No Senate has ever reversed a nuclear option precedent once it's. Once it's been used. Because you have to think about it like this. Once the majority party gets accustomed to having fewer procedural hurdles, there's very little political incentive to bring them back. Plus, restoring the old cloture rule would limit the majority's own power. So you would need a very broad bipartisan consensus, which we know is rare. All this to say that if the Republicans were to invoke the nuclear option to end the shutdown and therefore only require a simple majority of 51 votes to pass a stopgap measure and reopen the government, it's highly unlikely the cloture rule would ever come into play again when it comes to shutdowns. And Democrats could do the same thing in the future if there was a shutdown under their watch and and Republicans were holding out. By invoking the nuclear option, the minority party loses a very powerful tool for obstructing legislation and influencing negotiations. So some Republican senators worry that if they remove the filibuster now, it could backfire when they're in the minority in the future because it's only a matter of time before things flip and Republicans are in the minority and Democrats are in the majority. Also, once the cloture rule is gone for funding bills for stopgap measures, it would likely be gone for all legislation. And that would fundamentally change the Senate because while the cloture rule is controversial, it is a huge component of how the Senate functions. So while Republicans technically can invoke the nuclear option to end the shutdown for all of these reasons we just mentioned, they likely won't. Okay, moving on. On Friday, President Trump commuted the federal prison sentence of former New York Representative George Santos. President Trump made the announcement via Truth Social writing, quote, george Santos was somewhat of a rogue, but there are many rogues throughout our country that aren't forced to serve seven years in prison. I started to think about George when the subject of Democrat Senator Richard Danang, Dick Blumenthal, came up again. As everyone remembers, Danang stated for almost 20 years that he was a proud Vietnam veteran, having endured the worst of the war, watching the wounded and dead as he raced up the hills and down the valleys, blood streaming down his face. He was a great hero. He would leak to any and all who would listen. And then it happened. He was a complete and total fraud. He never went to Vietnam. He never saw Vietnam. He never expressed the battles. He never experienced the battles, the battles there or anywhere else. His war hero status and even minimal service in our military was totally and completely made up. This is far worse than what George Santos did. And at least Santos had the courage, conviction and intelligence to always vote Republican. George has been in solitary confinement for long stretches of time and by all accounts has been horribly mistreated. Therefore, I just signed a commutation releasing George Santos from prison immediately. Good luck, George. Have a great life. End quote. As you might be aware, Santos had been serving a sentence of more than seven years after pleading guilty to multiple charges including wire fraud, aggravated identity, identity theft, and campaign finance fraud. This commutation, however, ordered Santos's immediate release from prison. Now to understand exactly what Santos received. It's important to clarify the different types of claims clemency that a president can grant under constitutional authority. So clemency is the umbrella term for all forms of presidential mercy granted for federal crimes, specifically federal crimes, not state crimes. Under the President's power, a president can issue four different types of clemency. A pardon, a commutation, reprieve, and remission. And they're all slightly different. So a pardon is a complete forgiveness of a federal crime. It erases the conviction and it restores full civil rights. The right to vote, the right to hold office completely restores those. A pardon basically treats the crime as if it never happened. A commutation is a reduction in the severity of a sentence that is currently being served, whether it's reducing prison time or reducing fines. A commutation does not erase the conviction. It. It does not restore civil rights. The person who receives a commutation still has a criminal record. A reprieve is a temporary postponement of punishment. And then remission is simply forgiveness of fines or other financial penalties. So Santos receiving a commutation means that his prison sentence has been eliminated. And he was, you know, he went home immediately, but his guilty plea and criminal conviction will remain on his record. He will have to pay the restitution that he was ordered to pay. And his civil rights have not been restored. He still does not have the right to vote. He still does not have the right to hold office. So that is the deal with that. That's what a commutation is. Now. Now I want to quickly give you a little background on Santos himself so you have the full picture here. Santos represented New York's 3rd congressional district after being elected in 2022. Investigations later revealed that he had lied about pretty significant portions of his work history and background, and he had misused campaign funds. So to give you a few examples of things that he lied about, he had falsely claimed that he graduated from Baruch College and New York University nyu, despite attending neither. He claimed to have worked for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, despite neither company having records of his employment. He claimed to have founded an animal charity, though no. No evidence of such an organization existed. He claimed to have family members who died in the Holocaust. And 9, 11. Those claims have never been verified. Despite attempting to be verified, they have not been verified to this day. He also claimed to have been a volleyball star at Baruch College despite not having attended the college at all. Aside from these false claims, he was also found to have defrauded campaign donors by soliciting contributions under false pretenses and using those funds for personal expenses, things like designer clothes, personal credit card payments, car payments, an only fans subscription, botox, and much, much more. He was accused of stealing the identities of campaign donors and using their credit card information without authorization. He was accused of fraudulently applying for and receiving unemployment benefits while receiving a $120,000 annual salary. He was also accused of making false statements on financial disclosure forms about his income, assets and liabilities. So ultimately, federal prosecutors charged him with 23 criminal counts. He eventually pled guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity identity theft. And as part of part of his plea agreement, he admitted to the fraudulent schemes and he was sentenced to more than seven years in prison along with orders to pay restitution to his victims. In December 2023, the House expelled Santos by a vote of 311 to 114. He became the sixth member in U. S. History to be expelled from congress. So that's a little bit about George Santos, his conviction and his commutation. And in his first interview since his commutation, Santos said he will now be advocating for prison reform and specifically solitary confinement, since he spent 41 days in solitary confinement leading up to his commutation. Let's take our second break here. When we come back, I'll be answering some of your questions about the no kings protest. And we'll finish the episode with some quick hitters and critical thinking. A I had the time of my life. Life. Hey, I never felt this way before. From building timelines to assigning the right people, and even spotting risks across dozens of projects, Monday Sidekick knows your business, thinks ahead, and takes action. One click on the star and consider it done. And I owe it all to you. Try Monday Sidekick AI you'll love to use on Monday.com. welcome back. On Saturday, protesters nationwide gathered to protest actions taken by President Trump and his administration. What I want to do for this story is answer some of your most frequently asked questions about the protests. So I had asked Instagram followers to submit the specific questions they had about the protests, and that's what I will be using to do this. I'll start with the most frequently asked questions and work my way down the list to the less but still frequently asked questions. The first question is, what are the protesters protesting? If we start at the top, these individuals are protesting, protesting what they see as increasing authoritarianism under the Trump administration. Kingsmanship. Okay, so the name no kings stems from a rejection of a presidency or government that they believe is wielding too much power. Right? A king is a ruler that holds all the power. When there's a king, there's no democracy, it's just a king. So some of the specific actions that they are taking issue with is Trump's deployment of National Guard troops in various cities across the country. The Trump administration not abiding by certain court orders. The DOJ announcing that it was going to start prosecuting hate speech and flag burning. The DoD instituting a new press policy, which we talked about last week. Trump blocking the Associated Press from accessing certain areas of the White House after it refused to use the name Gulf of America. The DOJ targeting Trump's adversaries. ICE raids, including the detention of US Citizens, as well as these large scale deportations we're seeing. So really what it all boils down to is them seeing the executive branches having too much power. These people are concerned that democratic institutions are under pressure and the executive branch is becoming too dominant. That is the purpose of their protest. Now, the administration and its supporters argue that these moves are just about enforcing the law and protecting national security and doing what you have to do, not consolidating power. So there are definitely conflicting views on these actions, depending on who you ask. But the question was, what are the protesters protesting? And that's the answer. Next question is how many people turned out? According to organizers, approximately 7 million people attended more than 2700 total protests across the country, which they say was a significant increase from the previous no Kings protests in June, where an estimated 5 million people showed up. However, independent crowdsourcing analysts are estimating a slightly lower figure, somewhere around 5.2 million as a median, with plausible turnout up to 8.2 million. Either way, definitely a big turnout by modern protest standards here in the United States. We know that the NYPD said more than a hundred thousand people across all five boroughs were taking part in the protests. And then protests also took place in other major cities, of course, like Chicago, Louisiana, Houston, Boston, Atlanta, Portland, Austin. And then, of course, there were protests across, you know, smaller cities across various states. Ultimately, the variation in estimates comes down to how the counts are done, what's included in those counts, and whether the analysts are relying on volunteer reports or satellite imagery. So when you hear the 7 million figure or the 5 million figure, both of them have reasons behind them. They're just using different methods. Next question is, who is funding the no Kings protests? These protests were coordinated under the 50:51 movement. That's the group that came up with, you know, 50 states, 50 protests, one movement. It was a concept that was first launched on Reddit. And when I say these protests plural, I'm referring to not only this most recent no Kings protest, but also the no Kings protest that took place in June on Trump's birthday. 50:51 does not work alone. So the protests themselves are organized through a much larger coalition called no Kings, which includes about 281 different groups, all of them on the left side of the political spectrum. According to the coalition's website, it is funded collectively by its partner organizations. One of the more significant contributors is the Indivisible organization. And public filings show that Indivisible receives donations from both small and large donors, including roughly $8 million for the open Society Foundations, which is the network founded by George Soros. So critics on the right often point to that connection as proof that the movement is partisan or backed by major liberal donors, while organizers, you know, counter that the protests are grassroots driven, led and funded by everyday volunteers who say their goal isn't to back any party, but rather to hold the government, you know, the government or the executive branch's power in check. But as far as who is funding these protests, the money mostly comes from non profits and donors who support the organizations that help 5051 coordinate them. Second to last question, were the protests mostly peaceful? Yes, there were a few arrests across a few cities, but the protests were definitely mostly peaceful. In fact, Fox News reported, quote, while some leaders feared the marches could devolve into violence, there were no reports of violence or arrests at the afternoon rallies amid the ongoing government shutdown, end quote. We do know that one person was arrested and booked into jail in Portland following an alleged assault related to the protest. There were a few arrests also made in Denver, and there were some arrests in other smaller cities. There were also some arrests made of those opposing the protest. So an alleged Trump supporter was arrested in Kent, Ohio, for reportedly shoving a woman. And a man in Colorado who was driving a Jeep with Trump flags was taken into custody after reportedly flashing a gun to protesters. So, yes, there were, there were some arrests, but for the most part, the, the, the protests were peaceful. And then the last question, did the president really share an AI video of him dumping some sort of brown sludge on no Kings protesters? This is true. On Saturday night, the president reposted an AI generated video of him flying a fighter jet displaying the words King Trump. And the fighter jet then proceeds to dump brown sludge on the protesters. Now, some people have said Trump is dumping poop on the protesters. I will leave that up to you to determine because it's not explicitly, explicitly clear from the video what the brown matter is, but again, I will leave that up to you to figure out. Let's do some quick hitters Cloud computing platform Amazon Web Services experienced a major outage that caused widespread disruptions today across the Internet. The outage affected hundreds of major apps and websites, including Venmo, the New York Times, Robinhood, Snapchat, Disney plus, Reddit, Canva, United Airlines, even some of Amazon's own services that rely on AWS infrastructure like Alexa and Ring. According to Amazon, the issue was not a result of a cyber attack, but rather a technical failure involving internal load balancing systems. Many services were restored within a few hours, but as of this afternoon, problems were still being reported. Now, AWS is the world's leading provider of cloud infrastructure technology. It accounts for about a third of the cloud infrastructure market, even ahead of Google and Microsoft, so hopefully that gets completely 100% sorted out soon. The FBI is investigating a hunting stand with a direct line of sight to the area at Palm Beach International Airport where President Trump exits Air Force One. Agents found the stand during a security sweep on Thursday, and an investigation has since been launched. But FBI Director Cash Patel says the stand has not been connected to a specific individual. A law enforcement source told Fox News the stand appeared to have been set up by months ago, and the DHS will hire more than 40 doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, pharmacists and health administrators. The push follows reports of nearly 20 detainee deaths since Trump took office in January, which is the most in a single year in decades, and follows the fact that the number of detained immigrants is at a record high. Currently, most of the people providing health services to ICE detainees are private contractors. But these new jobs that are opening are only open to current members of the U.S. public Health Service Corps, or which is one of the country's eight uniformed services. For more quick hitters, make sure you're subscribed to my newsletter. It goes out every Tuesday and Friday morning. All you have to do is click on the show Notes of this episode, click the free newsletter link, enter your email address, and you are in. Now for some critical thinking. Let's Revisit the nuclear option. Okay, so if you support invoking the nuclear option to end the shutdown, I'm going to ask you this Is it truly democratic for the majority to silence the minority by invoking the nuclear option, even if that majority was elected by the people? Why or why not? For those that oppose invoking the nuclear option to end the shutdown? If the filibuster is is being used not to actually encourage debate, but to block progress. Is it still serving its original purpose? Why or why not? And then, for those that might be undecided on this issue, here's a general question for you. Is it more dangerous for democracy when nothing gets done, or when one party can do everything without the other? And whichever answer you go with, make sure to be sure to answer why as well. That's what I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here. As always, have a great next few days and I will talk to you on Thursday.