One briefing. Five days. Katie Zacharia is out.
Katie Zacharia was fired as White House press secretary after just five days in the role, TheWrap reported, following her first and only briefing. Fox described her as transitioning out after Trump publicly suggested she reconsider the job. Our reaction says it all: she did not even last one Scaramucci—a striking measure of the turmoil around the White House’s public-facing operation.
TheWrap: Zacharia’s dismissal after five days
The martial-law talk surrounding the midterms
Our reel examines Trump allies’ calls for martial law and other extraordinary intervention if they dispute the midterm results. The Brennan Center’s analysis explains that emergency powers do not let a president take over elections or displace the rules governing them. Our concern is the willingness to entertain overriding voters instead of accepting their verdict; that is why this rhetoric deserves attention before ballots are counted.
Brennan Center: emergency powers and elections
Axios: reporting on the allies’ proposals
They lost campus voting sites. They marched anyway.
More than 100 students from North Carolina A&T and UNC Greensboro marched to early voting after their campuses were denied polling sites, according to WFDD’s reporting carried by WUNC. The October 15 march took A&T students roughly 45 minutes in 85-degree heat, with missing sidewalk sections and branches complicating the route to Union Square. We highlighted their response in our October 16 reel: when access gets harder, these students get organized and show up together.
WFDD / WUNC: reporting from the students’ march
Trump’s ‘four sides of ocean’ geography lesson
In his Newsmax interview, Trump described Crimea as having “four sides of ocean” while praising its value as real estate. Our reel places that remark alongside the geography: Crimea is a peninsula bordered by the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. The contrast is the point—when the president discusses Ukraine’s territory and future, basic knowledge of the place matters.
Roll Call / Factba.se: full Newsmax interview transcript
Gallego’s two-word answer to Trump and Musk
We ended our Ruben Gallego interview with a lightning round, asking for his immediate reaction to a name or phrase. When Elon Musk and Donald Trump came up, the Arizona senator gave the same blunt two-word response, bleeped in the original clip. It is a brief, candid moment from our longer conversation, linked below, about AI, work, and the political choices ahead.
Watch our full Ruben Gallego interview
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Creased laughing at this last night. I pondered on Bluesky earlier in the week whether anyone was taking bets on how long she would last. The supposed conversation with Trump shows he still wants his hands in her knickers.
Thanks. Alas, poor Katie.
Katie, Do Ya Need This?
Katie, do ya need this?
I really don’t think you do.
I think you should reconsider this mess
you’ve gotten yourself in to.
It takes a special person
to lie with a straight up face.
And I can see right away, baby girl,
that you ain’t got what it takes.
So do us both a favor
I know that you’ve barely been hired
But give me your resignation now
So I don’t have to say, You’re Fired!
Dale K. Nichols
https://nevertrumppoetry.substack.com/