☕️ MONKEY BUSINESS ☙ Wednesday, November 5, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Democrats sweep yesterday’s elections; Trump eyes the Senate filibuster; shutdown breaks records; impeachment articles hit Judge Boasberg over Arctic Frost; Mississippi mom flips the script; more.

Good morning, C&C family, it’s Wednesday! Your roundup today includes: democrats sweep the field in yesterday’s elections and we have thoughts; Trump reacts by aiming at filibuster rules in the Senate; government shutdown officially sets record for longest-ever; articles of impeachment filed against TDS suffered and DC federal judge James Boasberg for Arctic Frost subpoenas; and —defying horror movie conventions— Mississippi mom takes out the trash.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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Democrats swept all their high-profile races yesterday, as expected, given they were all in safe blue areas and progressive voters are so fired up. The New York Times ran a series of gleeful stories that could fill a small bookshop. One of the many entries was headlined, “New York Muslims Exult in Mamdani’s Victory: ‘Now This Is Our Time.’”

Despite widespread claims of various elections “irregularities” —such as independents in a critical Pennsylvania swing county who discovered they’d been erased from voter rolls— the margins of victory were wide enough that it was never really even close.

In Pennsylvania, all three woke supreme court judges were retained, and Democrat candidates were elected up and down the ballot. In New Jersey, former Navy pilot Mikie Sherrill (D) was elected governor. Likewise, in Virginia, former CIA agent Abbie Spanberger (D) was elected governor in that state. Virginia Democrats also easily elected Jay Jones as their new state attorney general, in spite of an ugly text message scandal involving Jones talking about murdering his political foes.

The explanation isn’t complicated. It was turnout. In New York City, more than 2 million people voted— double the last mayoral election four years ago and approaching presidential levels. The inexperienced muslim socialist got more than 1 million votes for mayor, a benchmark not met since 1969.

Likewise, Virginia set a new turnout record for an off-year election, with +300,000 more voters casting ballots than in 2021, the last governor-only election cycle. In California, where voters approved Governor Newsom’s goofy redistricting measure, record off-year turnout also approached presidential levels. In New Jersey, the story was also about turnout, but in the other direction: low. Only 20% of Jersians turned out to vote, compared with 40% in the 2021 off-year cycle.

Trump-deranged Democrats are riled up. They can’t wait to get back into power, or at least cause trouble. “There’s a lot of anger on the left,” Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tx.) recently warned Republicans. “And elections can be dangerous when one side is mobilized and angry.”

President Trump posted that he thought the government shutdown was to blame:

Two hours later, he enigmatically posted, “and so it begins!”

📉 Yesterday’s races aren’t necessarily a sign of anti-Trump sentiment. In New York, the opposition to Mamdani was, technically speaking, a train wreck. Voters’ options included a beret-wearing Republicand and disgraced former New York Governor —who just a few years ago resigned under a cascade of “Me Too” claims and a horrifying nursing home scandal, and who ran on a split alternative ticket. In spite of that baggage, Cuomo still got 855,000 votes. Absent the record turnout, one suspects New Yorkers might have held their noses and elected the former Luv Gov.

Mamdani promised his low-information voters to transform the City into a socialist utopia, with free everything. After he takes the office in January, he must start delivering by making complicated excuses. Since he can’t deliver utopia, he’ll probably blame it all on President Trump. But I digress.

Apart from California’s redistricting proposition (which still faces legal challenges), none of the other races were politically significant, since Democrats in blue states were just replaced with other Democrats.

More than anything, this is a klaxon for next year’s midterms: Democrats are not dispirited. They have spirit. Lots. The various elections reforms have not, as some had hoped, yet produced structural advantages. The 2026 midterms are just as likely to see record turnout, if not more so, as Democrats seek to stymie Trump’s Agenda.

We’ll need a very smart strategy next year.

📉 Yesterday, President Trump also put on blast his calls for the Senate to end its filibuster rule. Axios ran the story under the headline, “Scoop: Trump readying “living hell” for GOP senators over nuking filibuster.”

The “filibuster” is a rule the Senate passed around a hundred years ago for convenience. As originally designed, Senators could delay a vote on a bill by talking endlessly and hogging the podium, since there was no rule to stop it. This resulted in important Senators being greatly inconvenienced by having to sit around for hours and hours listening to a lot of political grandstanding that went absolutely nowhere.

The word “filibuster” is an old Spanish word for “piracy” or “hijacking.” After Senators complained that their peers were “hijacking” the debates by overtalking, the word “filibuster” came into common parlance. It sounds fancier than “blah-blah.”

Old-time Senators filibustered by reading out entire newspapers and reams of sports scores. In the 1930’s, Senator Huey Long became famous for his ‘entertaining’ filibusters. He read entire passages from Shakespeare, recited recipes for “pot-likkers” (a type of Southern casserole), mixed in with plenty of folksy stories and down-home jokes. Long set the then-record by filibustering for 15 straight hours.

Senator Strom Thurmond (D-S.C.) holds the all-time record for the longest filibuster of all time, when in 1957 he hogged the floor to oppose the Civil Rights Act for nearly 25 straight hours. One imagines it involved the use of adult diapers.

🔥 During World War I, Senators addressed the loquacious problem by devising a rule called “cloture,” which let interminable debate be cut off by a two-thirds vote (67 Senators). But between 1917 and 1975, there were only five successful cloture votes. So in 1975, they lowered the threshold to 60 votes, and added that “filibustering” could be done just by saying the word, thereby sparing the Senators from having to sit around the chamber listening to a whole lot of nothing.

So the modern “silent” filibuster is relatively new, having been added to the Senate’s repertoire in 1975. The new rule flipped the script from the original design. Now, virtually every major bill is filibustered. Rarely, Senators dip back into the speaking filibuster, sometimes producing comedic results.

In 1986, Senator Alfonse D’Amato filibustered by reading the entire Washington, D.C. telephone book out loud. I am not making that up. During a different filibuster, he sang “South of the Border (Down Mexico Way)” on the Senate floor. You can easily understand why they prefer the silent filibuster.

In 2013, Democrats made the first major change to the rules since 1975, and ended the silent filibuster for all judicial nominees except the Supreme Court. (Speaking filibusters are still allowed.) Since then, Republicans have also chipped away at it, most recently in September, when they nixed the filibuster for presidential nominees. (Democrats had filibustered nearly all Trump’s nominees.)

Curiously, only a simple majority vote is needed to change the Senate’s filibustering rules. In other words, rule-change proposals can’t be filibustered. In 2022, Democrats tried to kill the silent filibuster but lost narrowly (48-52).

🔥 Starting early yesterday, President Trump several times posted strongly worded messages encouraging the Republican Senators to do what the Democrats couldn’t, and end the silent filibuster once and for all.

He’s not wrong. With the silent filibuster removed, Congress could start passing new laws like a five-armed bill-printing machine. But alas, it is a long shot. Senators are unenthusiastic about ending the filibuster rule, since the Senate would then revert to a speaking filibuster. And that means a lot more work and having to listen to midwit Senators reading phone books again, or maybe their Twitter streams.

Still. Given what we learned yesterday about Democrat voter enthusiasm, now would be a terrific time to end the filibuster and start passing election integrity laws (for just one example).

Reports said Trump has invited all of the GOP Senators to a White House breakfast this morning. Presumably, the topic of ending the filibuster will be on the menu. Keep your fingers crossed.

🔥 Speaking of filibustering, USA Today ran a story this morning headlined, “It’s official. The government shutdown is the longest ever.” Today marks a grim milestone: the 36th day of federal government shutdown, edging past Trump 1.0’s previous record of 35 days. The next longest was a 17-day stretch under Barack Obama.

Yesterday, the Senate tried again —for the 14th time— to end the shutdown by passing a “clean” continuing budget resolution. But they were, again, unable to “invoke cloture,” which means that Democrats invoked the silent filibuster, and there weren’t 60 votes to override it.

So. If Republicans stop the filibustering, they can pass the CR, reopen the federal government, and start feeding SNAPpers.

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Yesterday, Representative Brandon Gill (R-Tx.) introduced articles of impeachment against Lurch-like TDS judge James Boasberg. Charlotte affiliate WGXA ran the story yesterday, headlined, “Texas Rep. Gill files Articles of Impeachment against Judge James Boasberg.”

Among other run-ins with the President going back to Trump 1.0, and after overseeing a whopping 47 January 6th cases, DC Circuit Judge Boasberg was revealed this week to have surreptitiously signed off on FISA warrants against ten sitting US Senators and most of the GOP —over 190 secret subpoenas— in the chilly “Arctic Frost” investigation. Not only that, but he approved yet more orders keeping the warrants secret and undisclosed to Congressional oversight.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tx.) blasted Arctic Frost as “worse than Watergate” and called it a gross violation of prosecutorial powers. “In terms of abuse of government power, it makes Watergate pale in comparison,” he snarled.

The articles go next to the House Judiciary Committee. If the Committee approves them, the House will vote on impeachment, requiring only a simple majority. Assuming that happens, the impeachment would then travel to the Senate, where a trial would be held, and Judge Boasberg could be removed by a two-thirds vote.

The betting odds aren’t good for removal, since 15 Democrats would have to join. It could conceivably happen if enough Democrat Senators are mad about their Republican fellows being secretly wiretapped. But nobody seems optimistic.

Boasberg was the judicial enabler of what, as Senator Cruz said, was a massive Democrat wiretapping scandal. President Nixon was hounded from office after a single allegation of wiretapping one hotel room where DNC operatives (not even Senators) were meeting.

But as I’ve previously pointed out, nothing sharpens the attention of lawmakers better than finding out the legal system was weaponized against them. I think there will be some kind of fireworks, even if Boasberg can’t be removed.

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Yesterday, the Associated Press ran a very encouraging story headlined, “Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine sales tumble after government guidance on the shots narrows.” Who could have seen this coming?

The covid vaccine season is “starting slowly,” the AP reported, “with U.S. sales of Pfizer’s Comirnaty shots sinking -25% after federal regulators narrowed recommendations on who should get them.” Yesterday, Pfizer also reported that sales of its useless covid treatment drug Paxlovid fell by half “due to lower infection rates.”

Last month, Kennedy’s CDC canceled its standing recommendations for annual covid boosters, leaving the decision up to patients and doctors, and recommending against the shots for healthy adults, pregnant women, and kids.

Sebastian, Florida pharmacy owner Theresa Tolle told the AP that, “I’ve had people tell me they are afraid of it— when they’ve had it many times.” They should be afraid. Very afraid.

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More monkey business! On Monday, the AP ran another great story headlined, “Mississippi mother kills escaped monkey fearing for her children’s safety.”

On October 28, a truck filled with experimental Rhesus monkeys overturned on a highway in Mississippi, and two dozen animals escaped. Alarming initial reports from the truck drivers —later denied by Tulane University, which had provided the animals— told sheriffs on the scene that the monkeys were infected with covid, Hepatitis C, and Herpes.

Which sounds like the opening act of about sixteen different horror movies.

Defying the apocalyptic movie cliches, on Sunday, alert Mississippi mom and professional chef Jessica Bond Ferguson, 35, called police to come remove the corpse of one of the lost monkeys. She explained that her son had heard the dogs barking and ran to get her, saying he thought he saw “a monkey.” Ferguson grabbed her cell phone and pistol and “did what any mom would do.”

CLIP: Mississippi mom explains “taking care of” lab monkey in her yard (1:08).

Apparently, Jessica is a decent shot. Scratch one simian. Only two remain at large. They shouldn’t monkey around with Mississippi moms.

Amusingly (and unsurprisingly), many of the article’s reader comments seemed skeptical about Tulane’s denials that the monkeys were infected with anything. I guess people aren’t giving the institutions as much grace as they used to. It might have something to do with the fact that so little information has been provided (like the drivers’ names, the trucking company, where the monkeys were headed, and so on).

I’m not saying Tulane is lying since the story doesn’t make any sense and they are refusing to provide any confirmable details— even though you would think they’d be tripping over themselves trying to reassure the public. I’m just saying.

Somebody should give Jessica some sort of award, maybe a marksmanship prize or something. American mothers don’t mess around.

Have a wonderful Wednesday! Come back tomorrow morning for more delicious Coffee & Covid and a new roundup of essential news and commentary.

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