The Gov Hub Newsletter: October 21, 2025

RFK Jr.’s wife Cheryl Hines took after her husband in sharing a rather weird story [guess they make sense together??] on Fox News. She shared that when he was running for president that he suggested that they tell people that they were “separated.” The “funny” thing is, Cheryl’s not the only one on a book tour – Olivia Nuzzi dropped news that she’s going to be releasing a tell-all book about her secret relationship with RFK Jr. which occurred during his presidential campaign.

More insane Nazi-loving texts have dropped from a Republican and this time, they’re from Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel, Paul Ingrassia. Politico has the full scoop that features the man proclaiming he has “a Nazi streak” and that MLK Jr day should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell.” Oh, and mind yall, these texts sent to fellow Republicans of his. This sorry excuse for a man’s confirmation is this week.

The current president of the United States took to Truth Social in the wee hours of the night to post an AI-generated video of him flying over American cities dropping piles of shit. 

Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary, responded to a journalist’s question about Trump and Putin’s upcoming meeting with the response “your mom.” She also went on a rant where she said, “The Democrat Party’s main constituency is made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.” Unfortunately for her, the snippet of bologna is now a viral TikTok audio [find it in #VIRAL this wk]. 

The firing of artillery shells over California’s Interstate 5 “in celebration of the 250th birthday of the Marines,” resulted in metal shrapnel from one of the explosive artillery shells prematurely detonating and hitting a California Highway patrol car. In advance of the live-fire training aka firing live explosives over one of the busiest highways in America, Gov. Gavin Newsom preemptively shut down the highway out of incredibly valid concerns about safety.

Senator Jim Justice [R-WV] who is well-known nationally for his pup “Baby Dog” that gets wheeled around the Senate, is well-known in WV for questions around the finances of himself and his businesses. Now, the IRS has filed a federal tax lien against the Senator.

Trump announced that he’s building the “Arc de Trump” in D.C. in celebration of the country’s 250th birthday. The desired location for the arch is across from Lincoln Memorial, although there are many hoops in which the plans will have to go through [in theory] before ground can be broken on the project. The project will be privately funded by Trump supporters and likely will feature his favorite of the three models…the biggest arch.

DHS is apparently purchasing two new luxury pjs for Kristi Noem and crew to use, with estimates on cost ranging from $172M - $200M. The purchase made with taxpayer dollars has questions swirling over where the money came from, how a prior budget request for one jet became two, and the timing of this happening during a gov shutdown.

Known pathological liar, fmr Congressman George Santos is out of jail, after Trump commuted his sentence late last week. The $370K he was supposed to pay in restitution? Yea, that’s toast.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio in cahoots with AG Pam Bondi sold out DOJ informants that had been working on gathering information on MS-13 gang members. Those same informants also had information on El Salvador’s President Nayik Bukele. Rubio agreed to sell out those informants [have Bondi remove their protections] in order to seal the deal on sending deportees from the U.S. to the El Salvadoran gulag known as CECOT. The move is likely to have long term consequences that include an inability or serious delays in being able to go after actual violent MS-13 gang members.

60 Minutes sat down with Ryan Goodman from the law journal, Just Security, which took a magnifying glass to over 400 lawsuits filed against the Trump Admin. What they found was that in over 35 of the cases, judges [from both sides of the aisle] claimed that the government is providing false info, possibly with intent, as well as false sworn declarations, consistently. 

A former GOP operative and election director in Missouri, Scott Leiendecker, has purchased Dominion Voting Systems – the second leading provider of voting machines across the country. Under its new ownership, Dominion is apparently going to be renamed “Liberty Vote” and be focused on hand-marked paper ballots. The impact is TBD, but the immediate need-to-know is that an individual Republican now owns and controls election infrastructure that runs in 27 states.

SCOTUS has added a 2nd Amendment-focused case to its docket. The case puts a spotlight on whether a federal law that bans gun possession for drug users is constitutional or not; state-level laws of similar contents will also be impacted by what the court decides, which is a decision that can be expected late spring-early summer 2026.

Another core pillar of the Voting Rights Act is in jeopardy, with SCOTUS hearing arguments in Louisiana v. Callias. The case centers around Section 2 of the VRA and whether or not its mandate of banning discrimination in voting systems is constitutional. If SCOTUS were to rule that it’s unconstitutional, representation, especially in the south, would be upended and the GOP would be expected to gain double digit numbers of House seats.

Three former FBI agents, including a former top dog for the FBI in South Carolina, Steven Jensen, filed a lawsuit against the FBI and its current Director, Kash Patel, the DOJ, AG Bondi, and the Exec. Office of the President. The lawsuit alleges that their firings were politically motivated and have caused harm to national security.

In Missouri, the state’s GOP AG and Secretary of State are trying to block a campaign to repeal Missouri’s newly gerrymandered congressional map, which has garnered over 106,000 signatures statewide. SoS Denny Hoskins has tried to block the referendum by claiming that the signatures not only don’t count because his office didn’t approve of gathering them, but that doing so actually equates to a misdemeanor election offence. Then, over at  AG Catherine Hanaway’s office, she filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to stop the referendum under the guise that it’s unconstitutional.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is suing the Trump Admin over the new H-1B worker visa fee, which clocks in at a whopping $100,000 per year. The lawsuit that the fee is illegal and in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

In New Hampshire, for the first time ever, a convicted criminal is serving on the state’s Supreme Court. The first is the result of NH Supreme Court Justice Barbara Hantz Marconi returning to the bench after striking a plea deal surrounding accusations that she tried to get former Gov. Chris Sununu to interfere in a criminal case against her husband, Geno Marconi. Interestingly, Hantz Marconi is age limited come February, and GOP Gov. Kelly Ayotte will be tasked with replacing her.

ICE has continued to amp up their surveillance capabilities with the purchase of facial recognition software. Other purchases according to reporting from WashPo, include “an iris-scanning app that agents plan to use in the field, spyware that can hack into smartphones remotely and cellphone location software that can enable the tracking of a phone’s movements without a court warrant.” 

An investigation by ProPublica has found that more than 170 U.S. citizens have been held by immigration agents [ICE], often detained for days, beaten, dragged from their homes, tased, tackled, and experienced other horrors at the hands of ICE agents. Amongst the citizens included in this count so far, are two children with cancer.

What is believed to be an SUV driven by an ICE agent, was caught on video ramming into a U.S. citizen’s truck while he was driving in Oxnard, California. The citizen, who was monitoring ICE activity, was taken into custody before being released on “pending charges” but has not been told what these apparent charges are.

Earlier this fall, SCOTUS green lit racial profiling [special shoutout to Justice Brett Kavanaugh on this one], and to the shock of absolutely no one, has had devastating consequences for citizens like Maria Greeley, who was zip-tied and questioned by masked federal agents for over an hour, who refused to believe that she was a citizen and accused of her of having a fake passport.

The Trump Admin is getting the ball rolling on utilizing the IRS to stand up criminal investigations against left-learning political groups and organizations, and realistically anyone it doesn’t like. The plan centers around installing loyalists within the IRS criminal investigative division according to Fox Business.

In Texas, it appears the Governor is scared of rainbow crosswalks. Following a state-wide directive from GOP Gov. Greg Abbott to remove “political ideologies on crosswalks,” cities including Houston began removing rainbow crosswalks… Protestors tried to block the removal of the crosswalks.

This past weekend, the No Kings protest, which is believed to be the largest protest in American history, hit record breaking numbers from coast to coast. A few from the highlight reels: in New York, in Seattle, in San Francisco, in Little Rock, in Minneapolis, in Boston, in Madison, and even in Wyoming.

One could say they were sat for this Reel from Team Newsom that dropped, trolling JD Vance and his rumored love of couches. 

The White House is getting a glow down, as demolition began on the East Wing to make way for Trump’s ballroom.

Eric Trump referred to himself as a “good boy” – yes, it’s as creepy as it sounds in the news clip.

A feud has begun to unfold in Arlington, Virginia between Stephen and Katie Miller and their neighborhood association have gotten into it, allegedly leading to the couple putting their builder’s style mcmansion on the market. Whoever buys that house…may we recommend saging it?

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear’s dog Winnie played a star in their own version of Home Alone. Looks like the woof got more screen time in this version than the cameo made by Trump in the old school edition.

New numbies are out from S&P Global, which projects that Trump’s tariffs will cost global businesses at the very least, $1.2 trillion. Those extra costs are expected to be taken on by consumers.

A new AP poll is out and it shows that of those polled, 47% of U.S. adults are “not very” or “not at all confident” that they could find a good job right now if they wanted to. The same poll also found that 36% of U.S. adults are majorly stressed about their electricity bills.

The Guardian is also out with a new poll that found that tariffs were viewed as the second largest threat to the economy by those that participated in the poll.

The goal post on how weird it can get keeps moving, and that’s all the more evident with RFK Jr.’s latest moment at the podium where he made unfounded claims about teenagers and their sperm counts.

Maternal mortality rates in the U.S. rank the highest in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas, which mirror similar stats in countries like Azerbaijan, El Salvador, and Belize, according to new analysis shared by Axios.

New research – albeit in its early stages – is showing hope that the mRNA COVID vaccine is able to boost the immune systems of those undergoing cancer treatment, enabling those patients to better fight tumors. Specifically, and as reported by NBC News, researchers have found so far that cancer patients that are undergoing immunotherapy and get the mRNA COVID vaccine within 100 days before starting their treatment, lived longer.

Politico: Meet the man who built RFK Jr.’s kitchen cabinet

USA Today: US passport weakens to record low as global mobility shifts

Slate: Democrats Have One Brutal Path to Survival if the Supreme Court Kills the Voting Rights Act

Time: When Everything Is Fake, What’s the Point of Social Media?