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Caller: "So you won't help me refill my prescription?"
Me: "What sort of prescription?"
Caller: "My birth control pill."
Me: "Okay, well, we're a hardware store, so we don't have birth control or any other medication."
We have a regular shoplifter, and today we've managed to catch him in the act. Security is standing behind him as we watch him unload nothing but expensive body washes, deodorants, and toothpaste from multiple compartments and pockets all over him.
Some homes receive mail, others receive packages. Then there are houses like this one, where the Cat Distribution System apparently delivers full citizens. Hector arrived first, an orange tree-dwelling stray who slowly decided indoor life wasn't such a terrible idea. He became part of the family, king of the yard, and resident yowler.
Then his voice took on a new purpose. After a week of nonstop yelling, Hector finally revealed why: a tiny grey kitten hiding under the juniper, scared, starving, and trying his best to disappear. That was Norris. One gentle paw on a hooman leg was all it took for everyone to know he needed a home.
Poor Norris was barely six pounds and somehow surviving on two broken back legs in coyote territory. With surgery, months of rehab, and Hector's patient big-brother supervision, he slowly rebuilt his strength. Now he's double the weight, full of confidence, and loudly demanding snacks like any proper house cat. He may never jump like a typical cat again, but he climbs, cuddles, and thrives. Some deliveries arrive right on time.
Arch-conservative Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was once one of President Donald Trump’s biggest allies. Now she is the subject of Trump’s scorn and ire, as he turns on her for breaking with Republican leadership and pursuing the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Daily Kos’ Alex Samuels has already dug into the Georgia Congress member’s about-face, concluding, “Whether Greene is actually breaking from MAGA or simply navigating a particularly messy public rupture remains an open question. What’s clearer is that the man who once empowered her is now targeting her—and Greene is discovering that stepping away from Trumpism can be far more dangerous than embracing it.”
That question does remain open, but let’s look at Greene’s transformation from a different angle. And to do so, let’s go back to her Sunday interview on CNN.
“The most hurtful thing [Trump] said, which is absolutely untrue, is he called me a traitor, and that is so extremely wrong,” Greene told Dana Bash. “Those are the types of words used that can radicalize people against me and put my life in danger.”
Bash countered by asking: Wasn’t that language that Greene herself had used for years against her political enemies?
“I would like to say, humbly, I’m sorry for taking part in the toxic politics; it’s very bad for our country,” Greene answered somewhat surprisingly. “It’s been something I’ve thought about a lot, especially since Charlie Kirk was assassinated.”
Great, she learned! We will accept steps toward civility wherever we can. But let’s note for a moment that Greene didn’t fear for her life when it was the left that hated her. It was only when Trump went after her that she was suddenly scared about her safety. Maybe we can dispense with the “left is violent” nonsense the right has been trying to sell.
More importantly, we’re once again watching a conservative discover a moral principle only after it landed directly on her own head. This is the defining pattern of modern conservatism: Empathy arrives only when the pain becomes personal.
Conservatives aren’t exactly quiet about their disdain for empathy. World’s richest man Elon Musk has said, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” Conservative podcaster Josh McPherson declared, “Empathy is dangerous. Empathy is toxic. Empathy will align you with hell.” Before he became a right-wing political martyr, Charlie Kirk said, “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that—it does a lot of damage.”
There is even science behind this. One Finnish study that scanned participants’ brains while they conducted an empathy evaluation concluded that “this neural empathy response was significantly stronger in the leftist than in the rightist group.”
Conservatism has always reserved its compassion for the in-group and weaponized fear against everyone else. Outsiders must be othered, vilified, dehumanized—immigrants are cast as invaders, trans people as threats, and anyone unfamiliar as an existential danger. It’s the same playbook every time.
Those tactics were devastatingly effective against gay people for decades, until the marriage equality movement’s breakthrough: coming out. Suddenly conservatives discovered their children, siblings, and coworkers were the very people they had been taught to despise. And once it touched them personally—once the “outsiders” became insiders—public opinion shifted. Not because the right found empathy, but because their self-interest finally collided with reality.
Liberals, for all the caricatures about “coastal elites,” never balked at their tax dollars flowing to rural communities or to disaster relief in red states battered by hurricanes, floods, or tornadoes. Blue states have subsidized red states for generations without resentment, because the instinct is simple: They’re our fellow Americans, and we don’t abandon people in need. That’s what empathy looks like—giving help even when the people you’re helping might never vote like you, think like you, or thank you. It reflects a worldview grounded in the idea of a shared national community, not a transactional one.
Rural America, frankly, only exists at the scale it does because of that empathy. Decade after decade, Democratic-led states and urban taxpayers have propped up rural hospitals, rural schools, rural infrastructure, rural broadband, and the postal routes no private company would ever bother to serve.
In a striking twist, Greene recently signaled a break with her own party’s anti-ACA agenda because “when the tax credits expire this year my own adult children’s insurance premiums for 2026 are going to DOUBLE,” she wrote. Her concern wasn’t about principle—it was about her kids’ pocketbooks.
Empathy is what kept those rural communities afloat. By embracing Trumpism, they’ve endangered the very lifelines they depend on. Only now, when the cuts land on their own doorsteps, do they suddenly rediscover concern.
They say, “This isn’t what I voted for,” and they’re right—they voted for other people to get hurt, not them. Now everyone else is supposed to care.
And that brings us back to Marjorie Taylor Greene. Because what we’re watching with her isn’t just a political rupture or a messy MAGA divorce: It’s the same dynamic playing out yet again. She didn’t care when Trump’s attacks were aimed outward at immigrants, Democrats, journalists, LGBTQ+ people, or anyone else in his long parade of supposed enemies. She didn’t care when the threats, the dehumanization, and the violence were directed at someone else’s family, someone else’s community, someone else’s life. She was an enthusiastic participant.
But now that Trump has turned the machine on her, suddenly the stakes are different. Suddenly the rhetoric is “dangerous.” Suddenly she fears for her safety. Suddenly she wants civility and responsibility. Because it affects her.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia speaks at a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on June 9, 2024, in Las Vegas.
This is the core difference between our politics and theirs. Empathy doesn’t require experiencing personal harm in order to kick in. Empathy doesn’t wait until the wound is on your body. Empathy doesn’t need the fire to reach your house before you grab a hose. They only care when it affects them; we care because it affects anyone.
And so Greene has stumbled into the truth the hard way: The cruelty she once championed was never a tool she controlled—it was a force she fed. And once you unleash a movement built on vengeance and grievance, you don’t get to choose its targets. Not even if you were once favored by it.
What she’s experiencing now isn’t an aberration. It’s the logical end of a political philosophy that believes empathy is weakness, cruelty is strength, and community is something that only applies to the people in your own corner. This is what happens when a movement defines “us” so narrowly that eventually everyone becomes “them.”
In the end, Greene finally found the right answer: dial down the hate, tone down the threats, stop treating politics like a blood sport. But she arrived there due to the only reason her party’s movement ever changes—because it finally hurt her. Empathy wasn’t the revelation. Self-preservation was.
There are a few remaining copies of the 25th Anniversary edition of Little, Big or, The Fairies' Parliament, by John Crowley, with art by Peter Milton. More information here.
While you are there, there is also a 15% off coupon for the trade edition and/or posters, as well as an invitation to make a donation in support of horticultural conservancy.
We all need to destress. Life is full of confusion, decision making, and difficulties coming at us from all facets. There's nothing better than being able to compartmentalize the chaos by scrolling playfully destressing cat memes. When you're after a long day at work when your boss micromanages every little move you make, or when you've just had a fight when your boyfriend about his time consuming job, or when you simply feel at full capacity of stress accumulated from years of things not going your way, cat memes have their own way of comforting us and making us smile in the face of opposition.
What is it about these hissterical, adorable, and playful kitties that just lift the stress off our shoulders? It's really easy to pinpoint actually, and doesn't require any intellectualizing. Their cute, sweet faces, their adorable meows, and their rambunctious zoomies surely strip away the tumult of life's constant and pressing responsibilities.
Regret is like a tidal wave, you see it before it falls and your body goes into fight or flight. To run in or run out? Caught between two decisions, two feelings, a reality you're living and an alternate fantasy that you could have been living, it can be dissociating to say the least when you're caught in the cold grasp of regret, wallowing your choice.
Getting a cat is a big choice. Not everyone is cut out for it, despite its seemingly low maintenance work compared to other pets. But it's still a living creature who needs a lot more care past food and water. In the story below, the protagonists question their decision to adopt a 4-year-old orange cat from a shelter. It's been a week, but the woman can't stop crying or feeling anxious. She wonders when the feeling will pass, or if it will pass, an understandable notion for new pet owners. It can be jarring to realize that you've made a decision you can't easily or light hearted get your way out of. They question what they've done, but remain determined not to let their initial first week anxiety dictate the life and future of their little one.
I'm texting my boss.
Me: "I just left the doctors. I can't come in this week as I have a bad rash and I need a few days for it to heal."
Boss: *Almost immediately.* "Pictures of the rash or you're lying."
Me: "Excuse me? I literally just said I came from the doctor. I have a note."
Me: "The remainder owed is "$20.02, ma'am."
Customer: "I don't give out my pennies because they're going out of circulation."
She then spends a minute rummaging through her PENNY-filled wallet to find a nickel.
Customer: "Hmm, no nickels."
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Or, more to the point, what’s bad for the goose is very bad for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s gerrymander.
Abbott and his fellow Republican lawmakers are probably currently digesting this 160-page mic drop from the United States District Court in El Paso. Turns out that Texas’ attempt to rig elections with a mid-decade redistricting turned out to be a racial gerrymander. Which, it turns out, is still illegal! Even for Texas! Who knew?
Tuesday’s ruling throws out the 2026 congressional maps that Texas Republicans pushed through to preserve their slender majority in the House of Representatives at the behest of President Donald Trump. Hey, if you can’t win over voters with your policies, you’re going to have to go with these sorts of shenanigans, designed to dilute or entirely suppress the votes of people who tend to vote for Democrats, because we can’t have that.
Protesters gather in the rotunda outside the House Chamber at the Texas Capitol as lawmakers debate a redrawn U.S. congressional map during a special session on Aug. 20.
Since this is a redistricting case, it is a bit weird in terms of how it is handled. Where federal district court cases are usually presided over by a single judge, redistricting cases are heard in the lower court but with a panel of three judges. Any appeal goes directly to the Supreme Court, which is where this will inevitably end up. But for now, until the Supreme Court finds a way to say that what Texas did was fine—lol, who are we kidding? They won’t find a way to say it. They’ll just put it on the shadow docket.
But it’s gonna leave a mark that the author of this district court decision is Judge Jeffrey Brown, who Trump appointed to the bench. Brown had previously served on the Texas Supreme Court after being appointed by then-Gov. Rick Perry. No wild-eyed racial justice warrior is he, but here he goes hard—and Texas is so mad.
At root, what Brown held here is that while Texas Republicans certainly made clear they were doing this for political reasons—to benefit the GOP by drawing a more favorable map—in the end, it was just a racial gerrymander, albeit for white people. Brown is, uh, not subtle about the administration’s role in this either:
But when the Trump Administration reframed its request as a demand to redistrict congressional seats based on their racial makeup, Texas lawmakers immediately jumped on board.
There’s no love lost between Brown and the Department of Justice here either. The agency fake-threatened the state, saying the existing map had unconstitutional “coalition” districts. This gave Texas Republicans cover to redistrict, waving the DOJ letter as evidence that the existing maps had to go.
But turns out all the suspect districts that the DOJ identified were majority non-white. So, the demand to redistrict those, while leaving intact and never mentioning majority-white Democratic districts, means we’ve got ourselves a good old-fashioned racial gerrymander demand.
And Texas delivered, with Brown noting that the new maps achieved all but one of the racial objectives “demanded by the DOJ.”
In the meantime, the DOJ intervened in a lawsuit by California Republicans over that state’s new maps, arguing that because California Democrats basically mentioned Latino voters, it was a racial gerrymander. Gov. Gavin Newsom ran around the whole state stumping for this, saying it was explicitly a partisan gerrymandering designed to counter Texas.
So, to recap: The maps the DOJ pushed through in Texas are out while we wait to see what happens in California.
Fun fact! It does not appear that Proposition 50 contains any language saying that California will drop its new maps if Texas’ maps are no longer allowed. In other words, if California survives its lawsuit, it gets to redistrict and keep that electoral advantage.
Indeed, Trump’s whole redistricting scheme might be falling apart. Indiana isn’t on board any longer despite multiple threats from the president.
There’s no way this doesn’t get to the Supreme Court ASAP, and let’s be honest: The chance that Chief Justice John Roberts and his merry band of hard-right jurists will find a way to say Texas’ maps are fine and California’s are not is pretty high. They might even do it on the shadow docket with no explanation.
But for now, let’s point and laugh at the DOJ and GOP henchman Abbott being furious that even Trump-appointed judges know that the law applies to them. We gotta take the wins where we can.
President Donald Trump has spent years belittling women reporters, but his latest outburst stands out even by his standards.
Calling a Bloomberg correspondent a “piggy” while aboard Air Force One, the insultbarely registered at first. By Tuesday, it was everywhere, drawing sharp pushback from journalists who’ve clashed with Trump before and others who recognized the familiar dynamic.
CNN correspondent Kaitlan Collins is no stranger to President Donald Trump’s demeaning comments toward women reporters.
White House correspondent Catherine Lucey had used a rare moment with the president to press him on the escalating Epstein scandal and the House vote to release the files on Tuesday. But when she asked why he was acting like he had something to hide, “if there’s nothing incriminating in the files,” Trump cut her off.
“Quiet. Quiet, piggy,” he said, pointing at her.
CBS correspondent Jennifer Jacobs first reported on Trump’s outburst, though she didn’t name Lucey at the time.
The blowback came quickly.
“Disgusting and completely unacceptable,” CNN anchor Jake Tapperwrote on X.
Gretchen Carlson, the former Fox News anchorwho has her own rocky history with Trump, called the remark “disgusting and degrading.”
Trump’shostility toward the press is hardly new, but his defensiveness around the Epstein files has been building for weeks.
After months of calling the files a “hoax” and trying to delay or block their disclosure, he now faces bipartisan pressure to make them public. And while Trump long opposed the release, he abruptly changed course Sunday when it became clear that the resolution would pass in the House.
Former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson called President Donald Trump’s comment to Catherine Lucey “disgusting and degrading.”
Notably, this wasn’t the first time that he used this specific insult. Alicia Machado, who was crowned Miss Universe in 1996, has long said that Trump called her “Miss Piggy” and ordered her to lose weight when he owned the pageant.
In 2018, Lynne Patton, then a Trump administration official, aimed the same slur at veteran reporter April Ryan. Patton apologized, but Trump never did. That same year, Trump called Ryan a “loser” who “doesn’t know what the hell she is doing.”
Even on Tuesday—while the “piggy” remark was still spreading—Trump snapped at another woman reporter after she asked why he was waiting on Congress to release the Epstein files instead of just doing it himself.
“It’s not the question that I mind. It’s your attitude,” Trump told her. “I think you are a terrible reporter. It’s the way you ask these questions. You start off with a man who’s highly respected, asking him a horrible, insubordinate question.”
“You’re a terrible person and a terrible reporter,” he added.
This pattern didn’t start recently. At a joint appearance with Argentine President Javier Milei last month, a woman journalist asked about China’s growing influence in Latin America. Trump turned to Vice President JD Vance and said, “I just like to watch her talk.” The two laughed.
“Good job. Good job. Thank you, darling,” Trump told the reporter.
He also unloaded on CNN’s Kaitlan Collins after she asked about his decision to pardon Binance founder Changpeng Zhao. In a clip she later posted, Trump said that she knows “nothing about nothing” and is “fake news.”
A cartoon by Jack Ohman.
Even when he’s not outright insulting women, he often veers into condescension about their looks or intelligence. During a July briefing, he fixated on African reporter Hariana Verás.
“That’s so beautifully stated,” he said before pivoting to how “beautiful” he found her.
“I’m not allowed to say that. You know that could be the end of my political career, but you are beautiful—and you’re beautiful inside,” Trump said. “I wish I had more reporters like you.”
The problem with these dynamics has been raised before. In 2018, the International Women’s Media Foundation urged the White House to curb Trump’s treatment of women journalists, especially women of color.
“While name-calling may seem harmless, coming from the head of our government, it often sets in motion a torrent of abuse towards the journalist,” Executive Director Elisa Lees Muñoz told The Guardian.
If the Epstein saga continues to dominate the news cycle, Trump may lash out even more. But this isn’t a departure from who he is; it’s the continuation of a well-worn script—one he reaches for when he feels the walls closing in.
Both the House and Senate acted decisively Tuesday to pass a bill to force the Justice Department to publicly release its files on the convicted sex offenderJeffrey Epstein, a remarkable display of approval for an effort that had struggled for months to overcome opposition from PresidentDonald Trumpand Republican leadership.
When a small, bipartisan group of House lawmakers introduced a petition in July to maneuver around House Speaker Mike Johnson’s control of which bills reach the House floor, it appeared a longshot effort — especially as Trump urged his supporters to dismiss the matter as a“hoax.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene speaks during a news conference on the Epstein Files Transparency Act on Nov. 18.
But both Trump and Johnson failed in their efforts to prevent the vote. Now the president has bowed to the growing momentum behind the bill and even said he will sign it. Just hours after the House passed the bill, the Senate agreed to pass the bill with unanimous consent once it is sent to the Senate.
The bill passed the House 427-1, with the only no vote coming from Rep. Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican who is a fervent supporter of Trump. He said in a statement that he opposed the bill because it could release information on innocent people mentioned in the federal investigation.
The decisive, bipartisan work in Congress Tuesday further showed the pressure mounting on lawmakers and the Trump administration to meet long-held demands that the Justice Department release its case files on Epstein, a well-connected financier who killed himself in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial in 2019 on charges he sexually abused and trafficked underage girls.
“These women have fought the most horrific fight that no woman should have to fight. And they did it by banding together and never giving up," said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as she stood with some of the abuse survivors outside the Capitol Tuesday morning.
“That’s what we did by fighting so hard against the most powerful people in the world, even the president of the United States, in order to make this vote happen today,” added Greene, a Georgia Republican and longtime Trump loyalist.
The bill's passage would be a pivotal moment in a yearslong push by the survivors for accountability for Epstein's abuse and reckoning over how law enforcement officials failed to act under multiple presidential administrations.
A separate investigation conducted by the House Oversight Committee has released thousands ofpages of emailsand other documents from Epstein's estate, showing his connections to global leaders, Wall Street powerbrokers, influential political figures and Trump himself. In the United Kingdom, King Charles III stripped his disgraced brother Prince Andrew of his remaining titles and evicted him from his royal residence after pressure to act over his relationship with Epstein.
The bill forces the release within 30 days of all files and communications related to Epstein, as well as any information about the investigation into his death in federal prison. It would allow the Justice Department to redact information about Epstein’s victims or continuing federal investigations, but not information due to “embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity."
Still, many in the Republican base have continued to demand the release of the files. Adding to that pressure, survivors of Epstein's abuse rallied outside the Capitol Tuesday morning. Bundled in jackets against the November chill and holding photos of themselves as teenagers, they recounted their stories of abuse.
“We are exhausted from surviving the trauma and then surviving the politics that swirl around it," said one of the survivors.
Another, Jena-Lisa Jones, said she had voted for Trump and had a message for the president: “I beg you Donald Trump, please stop making this political.”
That's because Johnson kept the House closed for legislative business for nearly two months and refused to swear-in Democratic Rep.Adelita Grijalvaof Arizona during the government shutdown. After winning a special election on Sept. 23, Grijalva had pledged to provide the crucial 218th vote to the petition for the Epstein files bill. But only after she was sworn into office last week could she sign her name to the discharge petition to give it majority support in the 435-member House.
It quickly became obvious the bill would pass, and both Johnson and Trump began to fold. Trump on Sunday said Republicans should vote for the bill.
Yet Greene told reporters that Trump's decision to fight the bill had betrayed his Make America Great Again political movement.
"Watching this turn into a fight has ripped MAGA apart,” she said.
How Johnson is handling the bill
Rather than waiting until next week for the discharge position to officially take effect, Johnson held the vote under a procedure that requires a two-thirds majority.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson attends a news conference on the Epstein Files Transparency Act on Nov. 18.
But Johnson also spent a morning news conference listing off problems that he sees with the legislation. He argued that the bill could have unintended consequences by disclosing parts of federal investigations that are usually kept private, including information on victims.
“This is a raw and obvious political exercise," Johnson said.
Still, he voted for the bill. “None of us want to go on record and in any way be accused of not being for maximum transparency,” he explained.
Meanwhile, House Democrats celebrated the vote as a rare win. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries described it as “a complete and total surrender.”
Senate plans to act quickly
Even as the bill cleared his chamber, Johnson pressed for the Senate to amend the bill to protect the information of “victims and whistleblowers.” But Senate Majority Leader John Thune showed little interest in that notion, saying he doubted that "amending it is going to be in the cards.”
Thune said he would quickly assess senators' views on the bill to see if there were any objections. He said the bill could be brought forward in the Senate as soon as Tuesday evening and almost certainly by the end of the week.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer also indicated he would attempt to pass the bill Tuesday.
“The American people have waited long enough,” he said.
Meanwhile, the bipartisan pair who sponsored the bill, Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif., warned senators against doing anything that would “muck it up," saying they would face the same public uproar that forced both Trump and Johnson to back down.
“We've needlessly dragged this out for four months,” Massie said, adding that those raising problems with the bill “are afraid that people will be embarrassed. Well, that's the whole point here."
It can feel absolutely crucial to wake up and need that first brew to touch your lips. The rustic aroma that incites coziness right off the bat, the warmth from the mug, and the deliciously bitter taste in your mouth that coffee brings, it can feel like the most innocent addiction. Now, don't knock it till you try it, but have you ever tried waking up to cat memes instead of coffee?
Yes, it can work just as well or better than coffee. When you're in need of a quick pick-me-up, doing a little few minutes scroll of hilarious cat memes can make you wide eyed and bushy tailed. If your morning coffee hasn't quite kicked in yet, or if you're simply searching for a warm, fuzzy reason to smile, these 22 wholesome cat memes are about to become your new emotional support system. Truly, this collection is so absurdly adorable that your heart might sprout tiny cartoon sparkles and do a little somersault. Consider yourself warned: you are entering dangerous levels of cuteness.
The store closed a minute or two ago, but I don't feel too guilty as I've just tapped my card to pay and am about to be out of everyone's hair.
Maybe it's because it was Halloween today, or maybe the workers were feeling a little extra playful, but as I was wheeling my cart toward the exit, I heard on the speakers: