November 12, 2025 Democrats are reveling in the wake of last Tuesday's Sweet Blue Sweep of the elections of 2025 -- and resounding victories in the governors' races in Virginia and New Jersey, the New York City mayoral, and California's Proposition 50, as well as mayoral, judicial, initiatives and other elections nationwide. In a clear […] The post The Sweet Blue Sweep. Where Else We Won! appeared first on DemList.

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President Trump is not stopping with the East Wing. On Friday, Mr. Trump said he had renovated the bathroom in the Lincoln Bedroom, posting two dozen photos on social media as he continues to remodel the White House in his own style. Mr. Trump said the new design of black and white marble with gold faucets and light fixtures was “very appropriate for the time of Abraham Lincoln.” The White House did not say, in response to questions, who paid for the renovation, how much it cost or which contractor built it. The bathroom is only the latest remodel that Mr. Trump has undertaken at the White House, including the demolition of the East Wing. He has wide latitude as president to make changes, although critics have raised questions about the funding and lack of transparency. President Harry Truman redid the bathroom in 1945, and Mr. Trump has repeatedly criticized its style. Speaking to donors this month, Mr. Trump called the bathroom’s style “not good.” “Art Deco doesn’t go with, you know, 1850 and civil wars and all of the problems,” Mr. Trump said. “But what does is statuary marble. So I ripped it apart and we built the bathroom. It’s absolutely gorgeous and totally in keeping with that time.” Edward Lengel, who served as the chief historian of the White House Historical Association, said of the photos Mr. Trump posted: “It doesn’t look anything like 1860s interiors to me.” Michael F. Bishop, the former executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, said the bathroom was a sitting room in the president’s day and was unlikely to have included marble. “The present-day bathroom only takes up a portion of the Lincoln sitting room,” Mr. Bishop said. “They created a bathroom in the corner of this room. Trump’s change to the bathroom is not remotely a crime against historical preservation or anything like that. It was just a fairly dated-looking bathroom.” The historian Harold Holzer, the author of many books about Mr. Lincoln, said that when Mr. Lincoln moved into the White House in 1861, there were two water closets on the second floor, including one adjacent to the rooms where he lived with the family. When Mary Todd Lincoln complained about the overall poor condition of the White House, Mr. Holzer said, he reminded her that it was better than any other house they had ever lived in. “Lincoln had an outhouse in Springfield, and heaven knows what when he lived in log cabins with his parents, so the plain bathroom was fine with him,” Mr. Holzer said. “He thought it was a majestic step up.” During his second term, Mr. Trump has wasted no time making changes to historical elements of the White House, arguing that parts of it are dated or too small. He tore down the entire East Wing, which had stood for more than a century, to make way for a planned 90,000-square-foot, $300 million ballroom that he said was necessary for receiving dignitaries. His plans for the size of the ballroom continue to expand. Mr. Trump has said that he and a group of donors — not the taxpayers — are footing the bill for the ballroom. His staff has released a list of donors, but has not said how much each one has given. The money is being deposited in the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit, tax-exempt entity that is not subject to transparency laws. He also has added gold moldings and gold decorations throughout the Oval Office, and gold ornaments to the Cabinet Room. He cut down the White House’s historic magnolia tree, which President Andrew Jackson planted in 1829 in memory of his wife, Rachel. He removed a photo of Hillary Clinton and replaced it with an image of his own face colored with the American flag. He added marble floors and a chandelier to the Palm Room. He paved over the Rose Garden grass to add a patio. Along the West Wing colonnade, he added gold-framed photos of every American president except his predecessor, Joseph R. Biden Jr., whom he depicted as an autopen. Mr. Trump and White House staff members say the president is granted wide latitude to make renovations on the property. Mr. Trump has said he is not subject to zoning regulations or permitting requirements. Jennifer Schuessler and Zachary Small contributed reporting.

President Trump and his team have been working to get GOP Reps. Lauren Boebert (Colo.) and Nancy Mace (S.C.) to remove their names from a discharge petition that would force the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, Axios has learned. Why it matters: On Wednesday, the petition will hit the critical 218 signatures needed to force what would be a politically tough vote for House Republicans. Rep-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) will be sworn in at 4pm Wednesday. She plans to provide the decisive signature. Trump and GOP leadership have opposed the discharge petition, led by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). If any GOP member were to remove their name, the petition would no longer have the support needed to proceed to the House floor. Driving the news: Boebert met Wednesday with Justice Department and FBI officials who tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade her to withdraw her name, according to a source familiar with the meeting. Trump was not present at the meeting. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed during a briefing Wednesday that the meeting happened. Mace and Trump had not spoken yet, but they have been playing phone tag for the last 24 hours, a source told Axios midday Wednesday. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who has clashed with GOP leadership and the White House in recent weeks, has not been lobbied by the administration, a source told Axios. What they're saying: "I think they're solid," Massie told Axios Wednesday, referring to the other Republican members who have signed his petition. "President Trump can still be a hero by meeting with the victims himself and announcing he will release the files before the vote even happens," he added. A spokesperson for Mace told Axios that it's "purely speculation" that Mace plans to remove her name from the petition. "Rep. Mace has never indicated any plans to remove her name from the discharge petition," the spokesperson added. Between the lines: The vote poses a political dilemma for House Republicans. Their base wants to see the files released, but doing so would defy Trump and GOP leadership. The petition "will have enough votes for it to hit the floor today with" the addition of Grijalva's signature, a House Republican told Axios, adding that they would trigger a House floor vote. The lawmaker said they'd been told that many members "in swing districts are going to support it." Speaker Mike Johnson has urged his conference to stay clear of the petition, saying that the Oversight Committee's probe will ultimately yield more information. What's next: Once Grijalva signs the petition, it is set to ripen for seven legislative days. Then, leadership has two legislative days to set a vote. That would likely tee up a vote for early December, after the House returns from its Thanksgiving recess. Though, Johnson could opt to bring it up earlier. The legislation would still have to be taken up by the Senate and signed by Trump, each of which is highly unlikely to happen. Axios' Alex Isenstadt contributed reporting.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ vote and new national campaign to support migrants are the group’s first responses to the Trump administration’s crackdown.

One of the emails from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein recently released by the House Oversight Committee reportedly shows correspondence with Steve Bannon — one of President Donald Trump's longtime advisors — about getting Trump's embattled second Supreme Court nominee through a major contro...

The House on Wednesday passed a sweeping spending package to reopen the government, setting the stage to end a marathon shutdown — the longest in U.S. history — that churned economic turmoil around the country and sparked an internal battle among Democrats over the future of the party and how best to take on President Trump. The vote in the lower chamber was 222-209, almost strictly along party lines. Only two Republicans opposed the measure, to protest deficit spending, while six Democrats hopped the aisle to support it, citing the importance of getting federal funding flowing again. The legislation survived an 11th-hour revolt from some House Republicans who balked at a provision, inserted by the Senate days earlier, to empower GOP senators to sue the federal government for hundreds of thousands of dollars if they were among the people whose phone records were seized by federal investigators during their probe into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. In the end, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) defused that outcry with a promise to fast-track a separate bill to overturn the Senate language, with a vote expected next week. The spending package now heads to the White House, which has already indicated President Trump is ready to sign it into law. The vote was the last hurdle in ending the protracted budget impasse, now in its seventh week, that left federal workers without paychecks for weeks, cut off food aid to families across the country and delayed and canceled scores of flights. That impasse featured a new fight over an old law — the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — and the future of health care tax credits scheduled to expire at the end of the year. Democrats had demanded an extension of those subsidies as a condition of ending the shutdown. Republicans had demanded an end to the shutdown before any health care talks would begin. And the deadlock dragged on for weeks with neither side budging — a 43-day standoff that shattered the record for the longest shutdown, which occurred under Trump’s first term in 2018 and 2019, by more than a week. In the end, it was a surprise deal struck by a group of bipartisan senators last Sunday that broke the stalemate. But the compromise did nothing to address the expiring ObamaCare subsidies, prompting a fierce backlash from liberal Democrats against not only the eight Democratic senators who endorsed the agreement, but also Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has been under fire from the Democrats’ base since he supported a similar Republican spending bill in March. This time around, Schumer opposed the bill to reopen the government, siding with most Democrats by holding firm in his demand for an extension of the health care tax credits. But that position did little to insulate him from outraged voices on the left, who maintain that his failure to keep his troops united is evidence that he shouldn’t remain at the top of the party. “I respect Chuck Schumer. I think he had a great, long-standing career. But I’m afraid that it may be time for the Senate Democrats to get a new leader,” Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) said this week. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the former head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, also endorsed Schumer’s ouster on Wednesday. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) raced to Schumer’s defense, saying the Senate leader put up a “valiant fight” to protect health benefits. Still, the liberal backlash highlights the frustrations of Democrats as they scramble to locate an effective strategy for countering Trump, whose second term has featured aggressive efforts to expand his presidential powers, gut the federal workforce, enrich his own family and prosecute his political enemies. Against that backdrop, the fate of the ObamaCare subsidies has become a symbolic fight in the Democrats’ larger battle against the president and his Republican allies in the Capitol. And Democrats were encouraged by the blue wave in last week’s off-year elections — huge victories that made the Democrats’ cave on health care a more bitter pill to swallow. “A deal that doesn’t reduce health care costs is a betrayal of millions of Americans counting on Democrats to fight for them,” said Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), the head of the Progressive Caucus. Fueling the tensions between the parties, Trump had also leaned on the shutdown to advance parts of his government-gutting agenda, including mass firings of federal workers. When money for the nation’s largest food aid program ran dry, he refused to use an emergency fund to pay out those benefits. Republicans in the Capitol defended those moves, saying the administration was forced to make unpleasant decisions given the scarce resources available to them during the shutdown. If Democrats wanted those workers paid and programs funded, GOP leaders argued, then they should vote to reopen the government. “I just want to apologize to the many American families who were made to go hungry over the last several weeks, our troops and other federal employees who were wondering where their next paychecks would come from,” Johnson said Wednesday morning. “All of that’s on the Democrats.” Democrats fired back, accusing the administration of going out of its way to maximize the pain on people — especially low-income and working-class Americans — as leverage against Democrats. “Imagine that the president of the United States goes to the Supreme Court to deprive kids of food,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.). “And in addition to that, depriving their parents of health care. Staggering.” “This is the reality that we’re in right now, and we need to act like it,” echoed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). “And we cannot enable this kind of cruelty with our cowardice. Period.” The spending package now headed to Trump’s desk is a hybrid bill, providing funding for large chunks of the government — the Agriculture Department, Veterans Affairs Department, military construction and the legislative branch — through the entirety of the 2026 fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30. The remaining agencies and government functions will be funded only short-term, through Jan. 30. GOP leaders hailed the passage of the bill as a victory for federal workers, low-income families on food assistance and other groups who were affected disproportionately by the shutdown. They blamed Democrats for refusing to back the GOP spending bill that might have opened up the government weeks earlier. “They knew that it would cause pain, and they did it anyway,” Johnson said. “The whole exercise was pointless.” In a concession to Democrats, the package also reverses the federal layoffs orchestrated by the Trump administration during the shutdown — a provision that will reinstate thousands of fired workers — while prohibiting future layoffs before February. That provision was no compensation, however, for the absence of the health care subsidies. And even Jeffries was forced to acknowledge his “disappointment” with the deal cut by the Senate Democrats. The fight over health care, however, is hardly over. With the ACA subsidies set to expire, a number of moderate Republicans are urging Johnson to find a legislative fix to ensure that the premium hikes don’t take effect — a tough spot for the Speaker given the pressure from conservatives to let the tax credits expire. Looking further ahead, the next funding deadline is Jan. 30, and already a number of Democrats are vowing to demand an extension of the ACA subsidies if the issue hasn’t been resolved before then. Another shutdown, they say, is not out of the question. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

EXCLUSIVE — Graham Platner’s Maine Senate campaign is paying his wife a biweekly salary, according to a recent filing with the Federal Election Commission.

Bombshell release of emails from disgraced financier by House Oversight Committee rocks president as White House insists scandal is ‘fake narrative’ and a ‘Democrat hoax’

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Jeffrey Epstein told Ghislaine Maxwell that an alleged victim had "spent hours at my house" with Donald Trump, according to emails released by Democrats on Wednesday.

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Mitt Romney's at it again -- shading the truth on CBS News' <i>60 Minutes</i>. He's perpetuating the false Republican narrative that President Obama should have gotten more done during his first two years in office because he had a supermajority in the Senate.

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