Congress members came back to Washington, D.C., yesterday after the midterm earthquake.
asserted
members → come → earthquake
The membership of the current Congress remains the same, but the mood of the country and the momentum of the parties has shifted so completely it feels like the country lived through a decade of change in the past week.
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country → remain → week
As if in illustration of that change, Democrats have announced they are going to move the plaque honoring the law enforcement officers who defended the Congress and the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021—including 250 who were injured—to a more prominent spot.
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who → announce → spot
Congress authorized the plaque, but House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) refused to put it up, and Republicans in the Senate finally buried it on a basement wall.
Yesterday morning, Trump tried to resurrect the Big Lie—that any election he loses is rigged—for the midterms, but the power of that lie to conjure news reports is apparently gone.
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power → authorize → reports
Right-wing personality Megyn Kelly posted a response: “Just stop.”
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Kelly → post → response
Today pictures of the big incoming class of new Democratic senators circulated on social media.
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pictures → circulate → media
While the Democrats will remain in the minority in Congress until January, they are making it clear they intend to hit the ground running.
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they → remain → ground
Already they are putting forward measures to address both affordability and accountability.
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they → put → affordability
Yesterday a group of sixteen Democratic senators reiterated their determination to get rid of the dramatic cuts Republicans made to Medicaid in their so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” of July 2025.
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Republicans → reiterate → July
In the short term, they asked the Republican chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Mike Crapo of Idaho, and the Senate majority leader, John Thune of South Dakota, along with their Democratic counterparts, to delay the Medicaid work reporting requirements set to go into effect on January 1, 2027.
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they → ask → January
They note that such work requirements have never increased participation in the workforce.
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requirements → note → workforce
Instead, they have caused eligible people to lose coverage when they can’t navigate the new red tape.
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they → cause → tape
New inflation numbers today showed prices rising faster than economists expected.
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economists → show → ?
Carl Quintanilla of CNBC reported that by Schwab’s estimates, the year from October 2025 to October 2026 saw consumer prices rise 12%.
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prices → report → October
Inflation is a direct result of Trump’s tariffs, war on Iran, and deportation of undocumented immigrants, and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) today called Trump’s economic agenda “a failure.”
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Warren → call → agenda
In a speech today, she called for a higher federal minimum wage and banning congressional stock trading and “surveillance pricing,” the practice of tailoring prices to individual consumers.
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she → call → consumers
Expected to become the chair of the Senate Banking Committee, Warren said she will push back against bad actors in the financial industry and in crypto ventures.
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she → expect → ventures
Louise Radnofsky, Emily Glazer, C. Ryan Barber, and Lindsay Ellis of the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Democrats from a variety of committees have already asked certain corporations, including Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, to produce records concerning their ties to potentially corrupt administration schemes—including Trump’s legacy projects—by January 4, the first day of the new Congress.
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Democrats → report → Congress
Administration figures are already trying to distance themselves from possible wrongdoing.
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figures → try → wrongdoing
Yesterday, Trump told reporters that he had not heard about the relationship between Nvidia chief executive officer Jensen Huang and a Chinese spy who was transmitting information about the company and its protected chips directly to Beijing before he invited Huang to travel to China with him aboard Air Force One in May.
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he → tell → May
But in the New York Times today, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, Julian E. Barnes, Ana Swanson, and Tripp Mickle reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had indeed informed Trump about the intelligence concerning Huang and that Rubio’s conversation with Trump “marked at least the second time in seven months that the president had been told of intelligence about Mr. Huang’s involvement with the woman.”
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president → report → woman
As political scientist Elizabeth N. Saunders pointed out, the Trump administration’s refusal to do anything about the Nvidia case follows directly from Judge Aileen Cannon’s dismissal of the case concerning Trump’s mishandling of classified documents.
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refusal → point → documents
Between that and his willingness to employ people who could not get security clearances, he has demonstrated his contempt for national security.
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he → employ → security
Yesterday Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) filed eight articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
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Massie → file → Hegseth
Speaker Johnson sent the House home in October rather than having to bring Massie’s articles to a vote, but Massie has not backed down.
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Massie → send → vote
The first three articles accuse Hegseth of violating the War Powers Act, not only by continuing the conflict for longer than the 90 days the law permits without obtaining congressional authorization, but also by launching the war without congressional authorization or an immediate threat, the language the law requires for the president to act on his own.
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president → accuse → own
Article IV accuses Hegseth of ignoring laws to limit civilian casualties; Article V accuses Hegseth of extrajudicial killings of at least 221 people with the strikes on small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.
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Article → accuse → Caribbean
Article VI accuses Hegseth of illegally suppressing free speech with his retaliation against Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) for questioning unlawful military orders.
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Article → accuse → orders
Article VII accuses Hegseth of kidnapping a sovereign leader—Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro—and Article VIII accuses Hegseth of launching an unlawful war in Yemen.
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Article → accuse → Yemen
Hegeseth held a press conference today, his first in about six months.
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Hegeseth → hold → months
Lara Seligman and Michael R. Gordon of the Wall Street Journal noted that he didn’t talk about the ongoing war on Iran, but about his own impeachment.
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he → note → impeachment
He claimed the impeachment effort was political and that criticism of his management of the military was an attack on the troops.
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criticism → claim → troops
While he tied himself closely to Trump, he did note that everything he did was “ordered by the commander in chief.”
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he → tie → chief
According to Aidan McLaughlin of Vanity Fair, before the briefing, an official told reporters that if anyone “gets out of line” they would be “removed physically.”
uncertain
they → accord → line
Journalist Dan Lamothe reported that Hegseth would only take questions from right-wing media.
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Hegseth → report → media
The Trump administration is rushing forward with his legacy projects in Washington, D.C.—the triumphal arch, changes to Lafayette Square, the East Potomac Golf Links, and development of the Tidal Basin—to get them far enough along that they will be hard to stop when Democratic oversight begins in January.
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oversight → rush → January
Sunlen Serfaty and Annie Grayer of CNN reported today that “multiple” whistleblowers have warned the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, Jared Huffman of California, that administration officials are already destroying records.
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officials → report → records
The House Natural Resources Committee oversees the national parks and federal lands Trump is trying to take over for his projects.
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Trump → oversee → projects
While a spokesperson for the Interior Department said the whistleblower claims were “100% false,” Huffman has sent letters to the many different agencies involved in the various construction projects reminding them they must “preserve existing records collections and productions,” “[i]dentify and recover any deleted information,” and “suspend any destruction and deletion practices.”
uncertain
they → say → destruction
“Everything is coming; it’s all coming,” Huffman told Serfaty and Grayer.
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Huffman → come → Serfaty
…and 33 more, not listed.
The Aporia
