CROSSFIT CHECK

MTG’s dire warnings for the GOP are sending Republicans into a doom-spiral about their party’s midterm prospects.

• Lawmakers have this funny habit of waiting for retirement to say what they really mean. And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has a lot to get off her chest. The fire-breathing right-winger shocked the political world by announcing plans on Friday evening to resign from Congress, effective Jan. 5. She then spent the next three days issuing stark warnings about the future of the Republican Party — and predicting its House majority is going down in flames in next year’s midterm elections.

• “Now that House members are switching gears into campaign mode and will be fighting for their lives, our legislative majority has been mostly wasted,” Greene tweeted today. “Our best shot was the first 6-9 months. And when Republicans likely lose the midterms it will become total and complete political war and gridlock once again.” MTG predicted voters will ask: “What tangible thing have you done for me and how did it or will it make my life better?”

• Her colleagues are listening — and freaking out. Republican lawmakers rarely criticize President Donald Trump, even privately. But the vibes are shifting, and not in Trump’s favor.

• “This entire White House team has treated ALL members like garbage. ALL. And Mike Johnson has let it happen,” one House Republican anonymously told Punchbowl News. “More explosive early resignations are coming. It’s a tinder box … Members know they are going into the minority after the midterms.”

Trump has effectively rendered the House powerless by threatening GOP lawmakers who dare oppose his agenda. His powers appear to be fading.

• The party in power traditionally takes a thumping in the midterms. Trump is desperately scrambling to defy history, and urging red states to redraw their congressional districts to gain more Republican seats. His efforts have been even more widespread than was previously known: The president has been phoning candidates, endorsing early and trying to shape economic messaging since the summer, Reuters reports.

• Trump’s actions are unprecedented for sitting presidents, who normally hop into races much closer to the midterms. But while his own approval ratings hit record lows, Trump understands that his party is in big trouble. “The reality is, when a president is unpopular, he takes seats away from his party,” Doug Heye, a GOP strategist, told Reuters. (It’s worth noting that Trump will still wield an incredible amount of influence during the midterms by using his $2 billion war chest to fund races.)

• Republicans are well aware of this dynamic. Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who represents a battleground that Democrats want to win next year, issued his own warning. “If we are where we are today in the beginning of the second quarter [of 2026], then I think we’re in for a really rough time in November,” he told The Hill.

This chaotic conundrum begs another question: Is MTG gonna go back to being a CrossFit instructor, or is she leveraging the drama to launch a presidential bid? She denies any ambitions… but you can’t convince me she wouldn’t wanna do burpees on the Resolute Desk.

WHAT ELSE?

How much did Trump hate that video of six Democrats urging service members to follow the law (even if Trump gives them illegal orders)? So much that the Pentagon just announced an investigation of Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), a retired Navy captain, for “serious allegations of misconduct.” It is Trump’s latest blatant attempt to intimidate the lawmakers for speaking out. “The video made by the ‘Seditious Six’ was despicable, reckless, and false,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a statement. Are you sure you wanna persecute the astronaut whose wife, Gabby Giffords, was the victim of political violence???

The U.S. and Ukraine are reportedly making progress in talks on a framework for peace with Russia, producing a new draft that Ukrainians officials call much more favorable to their country than the last one. That could mean that Moscow will be less receptive to the plan now, which Trump wants finalized by Thanksgiving. (Side note: That’s not a holiday in Russia or Ukraine. Just imagine Russia and Ukraine trying to push the U.S. into a diplomatic agreement by “Maslenitsa,” their mid-winter pancake holiday. That would feel weird, right? I’m just sayin’.)

Only 36 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, down from 51 percent in March, according to a new poll. Only 18 percent of Americans say that Trump is spending the right amount of time on the economy.

Former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema tripped on a novel psychedelic drug called ibogaine on a trip to Mexico last spring — and now she’s on a mission to convince the FDA to approve the drug for mental health treatments. “There was a noise in my head for the entire 15 hours that sounded like a little machine clunking around,” Sinema told Politico. “Clunk clunk clunk clunk clunk.” I kinda figured that might be the sound of her inner monologue in the normal times too, tbh.

Trump personally urged Paramount executives to reboot “Rush Hour,” a buddy-cop comedy featuring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, according to Semafor. It’s another bizarre example of the president’s attempts to reshape American culture, and his obsession with a bygone era before political correctness and, y’know, woke. Also: Doesn’t he have better things to do???

The Atlantic profiled HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his controversial conquest to reshape American public health. This kooky article is an Aladdin’s Cave of weird details, but this line stood out to me: “Although Kennedy says he has not taken heroin since he got clean, he still considers his brain to be a sort of ‘formulation pharmacy,’ able to transform anything — rock climbing, falconry, sex — into a drug.” Kennedy also admitted that he has… issues. “I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote, I could run for king of the world,” he told the outlet. Imagine a world of walking skeletons run by the Brainworm God King? Hell no.

This headline says it all: “The ‘ShamWow guy’ is running for Congress in Texas.” And yes, you guessed it, he’s a Republican who wants to “destroy wokeism.”

LIGHT AT THE END OF THE EMAIL…

A federal judge dismissed the Trump administration’s cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, ruling that Trump’s hand-picked U.S. attorney, Lindsay Halligan, was illegally appointed. Trump’s team will likely appeal, but this is a good sign for the rule of law, and a terrible omen for the president’s imperial efforts to fling his enemies into jail on a whim.

Scientists in the Amazon rainforest are building a “time machine” that will help them predict climate change. They plan on using metal towers to release CO2 into the treetops, one scientist said, which will simulate conditions of future climates. Any changes in the ecological process can then be studied before it happens IRL.

American sculptor Alma Allen will represent the U.S. at the 2026 Venice Biennale, often called the Olympics of art. Allen is a self-taught artist who makes “abstract, biomorphic sculptures … using a hybrid process that can involve both preindustrial methods of hand-carving and robot-assisted fabrication,” the Washington Post writes. I’m very impressed at how someone can teach themselves how to do that. His work is so cool.

An elephant at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, D.C. is pregnant and may give birth early next year. It would be the zoo’s first elephant birth in 25 years. What’s more, the mother is an endangered Asian elephant. “Every single elephant makes a difference in the world,” the zoo’s director said.