11/04/25
Good morning! It’s Tuesday, November 4th.
Election Day.
Have you voted?
And now, the news.
Bend and SNAP
Starting with the government shutdown!
Welcome to Day 35 – we are now officially tied as the longest shutdown in American history. Who on earth would have also led the country into such a torturous 35 day stretch?
It says here… Donald Trump.
This may be news to him because sometimes he says things like “no other president before me” or “I don’t know why no other president has ever done this before” and I’m not kidding… I’m not always totally sure that man knows he’s been president before.
Then again, they haven’t released the results of the cognitive test either, so we also don’t know if he can draw hands on a clock.
On Monday, after Friday saw two judges ruling that SNAP funds must be released because the 42 million Americans who rely on the program for survival didn’t decide to shut down the government, Brooke Rollins, the Agricultural Secretary, announced: "the U.S. Department of Agriculture is complying with the Court's order and will fulfill its obligation to expend the full amount of SNAP contingency funds today."
Today? Great!
Well…
The problem is that they later noted the changes that the states have to make for these benefits to roll out could "take anywhere from a few weeks to up to several months."
The reason, by the by, that the judges ruled that the money needed to be made avail, is because the Trump administration hadn’t given a strong enough reason for not making the funds available in the first place. And here’s the best part, they argued they couldn’t fund SNAP during shutdown, and the evidence used against them was that every shutdown funded SNAP – including the one that happened during his first term!
That’s so funny to me. He’s not smart enough, or self-aware enough, to get it. But imagine if he could! He’d be mortified.
Meanwhile, over in the Senate, Senate Majority Leader John Thune says, based on his tummy, this shutdown may be wrapping up. “I just think, based on, sort of, my gut of how these things operate, I think we're getting close to an off-ramp here."
So no one worry, John Thune’s tum tum is on the case!
Election Day
-via The Guardian
And of course, it’s election day!
Tonight I’ll be watching the returns come in and likely posting on Instagram and TikTok.
Instagram is @hereswhatshappeningnews
TikTok is @hwhnews
And then of course I still don’t know what the graphics will look like here but I’ll try and make it a fancy for ya on YouTube
But if you’re listening on the podcast. If you’re watching with your ears… it’ll be the same. I’m sorry. I don’t… I don’t know how to make it different.
In New York, Trump tried to put his secretly bruised and we don’t get to know why hand on the scales (I know the saying is thumb, okay, but the joke’s gotta work) and tell voters to vote for Cuomo. Elon Musk did the same. Must then went on to threaten to stop sending federal funds, beyond the minimum requirement, to New York City, if Mamdani wins the mayoral election.
Hey, so that’s illegal.
Not the endorsement, but the threatening funds thing.
It’s an empty threat though. And if he tries something, it’ll end up in court.
But they clearly see Mamdani as a threat.
More than that, they see democracy as a threat. That’s why they are working so hard, at every possible moment, to squash it.
I said this yesterday because, well frankly because I lost track of the airdates and Election Day and all that and I sort of used my voting speech on the wrong day but they wouldn’t be trying so hard to silence our voices if they didn’t matter.
Nothing is decided until today.
No one decides anything except voters.
Democracy is decided by those who show up, and today is the first big chance we have to show this fascist, authoritarian dictatorship that perhaps that is their plan for America, but that is not ours.
We see these stories all the time in the news. We read about countries where voters went out and the party in charge saw a massive loss at the polls, and what a win it was for the country. The hope is gave them as they continued to fight back against the dictators.
That’s us. Right now.
Donald Trump was really bad the first time but he is inarguably worse this time and this is the first really big election where we are going to show the world that just because he represents us, he doesn’t represent us.
He is not the sun.
Go vote.
It’ll make you feel strong and powerful.
And that’s it. That’s the news.
It’s Election Day in America. It’s a day of possibility.
Fill out your ballot and then come back here tomorrow for as many results as there are available.
We’re in this together.
And because it’s you and me. And that includes you… I’m proud of you.