Raw Story

Donald Trump Thursday night took a swipe at Fox News and the GOP debates, calling on an end to the primary and on those in the media to "stop with the bad debates and negative ads."

Trump on Thursday suggested that some of the GOP candidates did better than others at the recent Republican debate, even giving a report card for his rivals.

After that, he called for an end to the debates altogether.

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Trump, who has skipped the first two debates and said he plans to avoid them all, had this to say late Thursday.

"The second Republican Primary Debate on FoxNews had the Lowest Viewership since 2016. Their overall Ratings are down 30%," he added. "FOX NEEDS MAGA, THEY JUST DON’T KNOW IT YET. STOP WITH THE BAD DEBATES & NEGATIVE ADS, NO MORE. GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE! DJT."

A group of youth climate activists occupied House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's office in Washington, D.C. on Thursday to condemn the Republican leader and his caucus for pushing the U.S. government to the brink of a destructive shutdown as they demand draconian cuts to food aid, housing assistance, and environmental programs.

"We are fed up and we won't take it anymore," said Adah Crandall a 17-year-old Sunrise Movement organizer who joined a number of other climate activists inside McCarthy's (R-Calif.) office. "As storms rage stronger, fires grow hotter, and heatwaves grow more deadly, Kevin McCarthy is playing political games with our futures. We're facing a climate emergency and McCarthy can't even do his job."

The Sunrise Movement said around 150 students from across the nation traveled to Capitol Hill Thursday to take part in the protest, which comes just two days before the federal government is set to shut down.

Eighteen youth activists were arrested outside of McCarthy's office during the demonstration, according to the climate group.

Earlier Thursday, the Biden administration began notifying government employees that they could soon be temporarily furloughed after McCarthy rejected a bipartisan short-term funding proposal put forth in the U.S. Senate this week.

"Speaker McCarthy is a coward," Shiva Rajbhandari, a 19-year-old Sunrise Movement organizer. "McCarthy and Republicans can either do their jobs, act on the climate crisis, and fund our schools, or they can risk our economy to appease a few extremists. Our generation is watching and we will hold them accountable for their actions."

The impacts of a shutdown on critical government functions and programs—and the overall U.S. economy—could be massive.

"With each passing day, Washington would further deplete federal safety net programs that carry over their unused money from past years," The Washington Post's Tony Romm reported earlier this week. "Eventually, the government might not be able to provide some poor families with childcare, nutrition assistance, housing vouchers, or college financial aid. The longer a shutdown persists, the greater the blow it could ultimately deliver to an economy that has teetered for more than a year on the precipice of recession."

Food & Water Action warned Thursday that "in the event of a shutdown, serious and specific threats to food and water safety could immediately arise," noting that Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulators "could be forced to suspend critical safety inspections at drinking water sources, hazardous Superfund waste sites, and chemical facilities."

Additionally, the group noted, the EPA "would be forced to shut down the $15 billion project to replace dangerous lead water pipes throughout the country, putting impacted families at continued risk."

"By driving this country to the brink of a shutdown, congressional Republicans are proving once again, in stark relief, that they simply don't care about the health and well-being of the American people," said Mitch Jones, deputy director of Food & Water Action. "Nowhere is this more obvious than in their willingness to shut down critical food and water safety inspections that occur every day across the country."

"Rather than working with Democrats to responsibly fund the government, Speaker McCarthy and his slim majority are catering to the most extreme right-wing members in an already extreme caucus," Jones added. "House Republicans should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves, and they must be shown the door in 2024."

According to a former White House correspondent who spent the Donald Trump years trying to get straight answers out of the ex-president's press secretaries, the media has been covering the ex-president wrong.

In a column for Salon, journalist Brian Karem argues that members of the press have been "moral cowards" by not properly covering Trump, who Karem says is "a fraud, a cheat and a rapist, facing 91 felony counts."

Karem famously asked Trump if he would honor a peaceful transition of power if he lost the election.

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?

"Trump is truly delusional. 'Brick by brick, Donald Trump is a fantasy. He's the biggest fraud there is,' political commentator Danielle Moodie told Mary Trump. Every bit of reporting we do on him should stress that," Karem wrote Thursday. "It's not like his delusion is a secret. 'We in the family knew it,' Mary Trump said, explaining the fraud perpetrated by her uncle — before describing him as the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on America."

The journalist then added:

"But don't count on the press to inform you about any of that. We're too busy pretending, and entertaining you by treating Trump as if he were a charmer, or a savior." It's not just the media, according to the reporter.

"It isn't just the press that is filled with cowards. The Republicans in Congress are repugnant criminal cowards. The Democrats are eunuchs and moral cowards. While the Republicans pursue Hunter Biden — and if he's guilty of something, so be it — the Democrats have not said one word about Jared Kushner, Eric Trump or Donald Trump Jr. There is more than enough evidence to investigate those three for trading White House access for billions in foreign investment. Yet so far, nothing."

He goes on to say, "The Democrats don't want to look like they're gutter-fighting quite as dirty as the GOP, and seem to lack any desire to pursue obvious corruption. Thus it appears to millions of American voters, including many potential voters still on the fence, that the Bidens have the most to hide"

"I cannot say it enough. We have two political parties in this country: One has no heart. One has no head," he added Thursday. "And the press? We have neither."

Read the full report here.

The Minnesota Supreme Court has scheduled a hearing to determine if the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution can be used to keep Donald Trump off of the 2024 presidential ballot.

Earlier this month, a coalition led by Free Speech For the People sued to prevent Trump's name from appearing on the ballot because of a Civil War-era constitutional amendment that said insurrectionists could not serve in office.

The state's high court said this week there would be a Nov. 30 hearing on the case.

The group argues that Trump participated in an insurrection by inciting a riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

In setting the hearing date, the state Supreme Court allowed the state Republican party to respond to the lawsuit. The Trump campaign and Secretary of State Steve Simon are also expected to respond, according to the Star Tribune.

"The Republican Party of Minnesota believes that voters in Minnesota should ultimately decide through voting which candidates are qualified to represent them in public office," GOP state party Chair David Hann said in a statement.

A judge is scheduled to hear a similar effort to keep Trump off the ballot in Colorado on Oct. 30.

In contrast to her uncle, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) — a frequent critic of former Donald Trump — Republican National Committee Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel has been a strong supporter of the former president.

But in a biting op-ed published on September 20, the New York Times' Frank Bruni stresses that Trump has singled McDaniel out for abuse and humiliation. And Bruni doesn't have any sympathy for McDaniel, arguing that the RNC chair lacks her uncle's backbone.

Trump, Bruni observes, is not only skipping the second 2024 GOP primary debate — he is also insulting McDaniel by "competing with her debate" via "counterprogramming" in the form of a speech to striking United Auto Workers (UAW).

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?

Bruni argues, "Here's one endeavor at which (Trump) really is peerless: Nobody dishes out humiliation in such heaping, merciless measures…. When Trump snubs you, he snubs you in neon."

McDaniel, Bruni adds, "richly deserves" her fate.

"Right after the 2020 presidential election," Bruni notes, "she was alternately squishy about and indulgent of Trump's bogus claims that it had been stolen…. How faithful she has been. How little it has netted her. She is being reduced to a laughingstock."

READ MORE: Former Trump megadonor joins No Labels leadership

Read Frank Bruni's full New York Times opinion column at this link (subscription required).

Donald Trump's increasing statements that the Supreme Court's Dobbs ruling that, for all practical purposes, overturned Roe v. Wade hurt Republicans in the 2022 midterms is setting off alarms with anti-abortion leaders who feel he is no longer on their side and that they are being played.

In a speech last week the former president took credit for putting in place three new members on the Supreme Court who had no qualms about throwing out Roe after fifty years which, in turn, created a firestorm and became a rallying point from Democrats in the 2022 election.

Likely with that in mind, in that same speech, the former president seemed to hint that abortion talk should be taken off the table until after the 2024 general election and that has anti-choice activists feeling betrayed.

POLL : Should Trump be allowed to run for office?

According to a report from Politico, "As his GOP opponents have seized on the comments, hoping to close a wide polling gap by attacking Trump as a fair-weather conservative, the anti-abortion movement finds itself at a crossroads — afraid of alienating the presumptive nominee but loath to let his remarks go unchallenged."

Patrick Brown of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center’s Life and Family Initiative complained, "Are pro-lifers going to allow themselves to be a cheap date? Are they going to sit back and take it when candidates are denigrating the cause they dedicated their life to?”

Kristan Hamrick, the 38-year-old chief policy strategist with Students for Life of America warned the former president that her group plans to hold Trump's feet to the fire on the issue.

"He won’t feel pressure until it’s applied, and we’re willing to apply it,” she bluntly stated. “You cannot ignore the human rights issue of our time and still get our vote.”

Billy Valentine of the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which plans to invest $78 million to get out the vote effort said Trump may lose some of those very voters they are reaching out to.

“Looking at a general, he’s going to need all Republicans to come home if he’s going to beat Joe Biden," Valentine explained. "He’s going to need the base in order to win ultimately, and he’s going to need a clear position. In the absence of a clear position, the Democrats are going to define him.”

Top Trump rival Gov. D Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is warning anti-choice activists that Trump is preparing to "sell them out."

“I don’t know how you can even make the claim that you’re somehow pro-life if you’re criticizing states for enacting pro-life protections for babies that have heartbeats,” he charged.

You can read more here.