Good morning. It is October 6. It's a humid morning in New York City on another October day forecast to reach into the 80s, and this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host. Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news.

A federal district court judge last night issued a restraining order barring President Trump from sending National Guard members from other states to Portland, Oregon, where the President continues to falsely insist that radicals are burning the city to the ground. Judge Karin Immergut, who was appointed by Trump in his first term, was following up on an order that she'd issued Saturday, which blocked the Trump administration from federalizing the Oregon National Guard to use those troops in Portland. In yesterday's hearing, she said that the news that California and Texas guard troops were supposed to be sent to Oregon "does appear to be in direct contradiction of my order." In that Saturday order, she had ruled that the Trump administration's claims about the necessity for sending troops to Portland were unsupported by the facts. Last night Oregon Public Broadcasting reports, she asked one of the administration's lawyers, "aren't defendants simply circumventing my order, which relies on the conditions in Portland, nothing has changed. Why is this appropriate?"

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is trying to send federalized members of the Illinois National Guard and 400 members of the Texas National Guard into Chicago, Illinois and Chicago filed suit in federal court this morning to try to stop that deployment.

In other takeover news, Paramount, having been bought by David Ellison, son of Larry Ellison, made its much rumored purchase of the right wing grievance blog the Free Press official this morning, and with it the appointment of the free press's founder, the collegiate pro censorship activist turned crusading anti-leftist opinion journalist Bari Weis as editor in chief of CBS News, a job to which she brings essentially zero reporting experience, let alone television News experience. The deal is reportedly for $150 million in what the press keeps calling "cash and Paramount stock," which are two rather different items lumped together, given that Paramount stock has lost two thirds of its value in the past six years. Still, Barry Weiss was rich. She'll now be even richer. She was influential, or at least a conduit for the influence that powerful people wished to see applied, and now she has a much, much more powerful platform from which to serve those interests. 

On the front of this morning's New York Times, the lead story is a story about how the lead story isn't a story under the CONGRESSIONAL MEMO rubric. The headline is, As Shutdown Grips U.S., Parties Mostly Shrug / Each Side Sees Advantage in Deadlock."

"At the White House," the Times writes, "President Trump is posting AI generated memes about the government shutdown, depicting his wonky Budget Director dressed as the Grim Reaper and ready to visit death on the federal bureaucracy." That's certainly one way of writing about Donald Trump's embrace of Russell Vought, the project 2025 architect, after denying any desire to pursue votes agenda during his presidential campaign. It's also one way of talking about the fact that the President's daily activity seems to consist mainly of gorging himself on AI slop. But fine, let's take the President's cynicism and disengagement as some sort of tactical posture on the political events of the moment. The story continues "in the Senate. Democrats"— now we're looking at how the shutdown is the work of both sides— "Democrats show no sign of backing down from their demands in the shutdown fight, while Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the Majority Leader, has given verbal shrugs to reporters who ask about the status of his non existent negotiations with the other party about how to bring the crisis to an end. 'I don't know that there's a lot to sort out' Mr. Thune said on MSNBC on Friday before sending senators home for the weekend. And in the house, Speaker Mike Johnson has canceled votes for this week, telling his members they could stay home for the third straight week, given the shutdown logjam. "The Times goes on to write. "It all reflects the reality of two parties so convinced that they have the political advantage in their partisan battle that a shutdown has seemed inevitable for weeks, and a quick resolution feels out of reach. Republicans, who hold a governing trifecta, have adopted a mostly passive posture in the shutdown fight, insisting the Democrats accept their short term government funding bill without concessions. Staring down the shutdown deadline, they did not even bother engaging in the typical political theater that often precedes such crunch time crises on Capitol Hill in shutdown showdowns passed, lawmakers worked late into the evening or the early hours of the morning to at least appear as if they were doing everything possible to head off disaster. This time around, Mr. Thune did not keep the Senate in session much past the dinner hour last Tuesday, after a pair of failed votes, made it clear that Congress would surely miss the midnight deadline for funding the government "The weekend break" the Times continues "was more evidence that they felt little pressure to reassure Americans they were on the job and working hard to break the logjam. Mr. Trump's trolling has only underscored the blase attitude."

This just all seems like extremely strange framing for a CONGRESSIONAL MEMO in 2025. Are the House and Senate really blase about the shutdown exactly or or have they just ceded all their power to a president who can't be made to care? There isn't really much point in working late into the night or even performing the role of working late into the night, when the only person who has any control over the process is sundowning. After the jump, which arrives accompanied by a sly little postage stamp photo of the Capitol dome with an out of focus, DON'T WALK sign in the foreground. The story delivers a revealingly garbled analogy. "Former representative Patrick McHenry, The Times writes, The North Carolina Republican who helped steer the house away from a shutdown in 2023 predicted that the gridlock would continue until lawmakers felt more consequences from their voters for doing nothing. He compared it to a professional wrestling match, where both sides need to force the opposition to submit. 'It's not goodwill that brings policymakers together,' Mr. McHenry said 'it's pain. There's no urgency until the political pain increases.'"

Buddy, that's not how pro wrestling works at all. That said, the inability to distinguish between the scripted simulation of a struggle and an actual struggle might be the key to understanding Donald Trump's entire system of governance. 

Elsewhere in page one, below that story and below the fold, there's a look at one case in the upcoming Supreme Court Term. "Is a Ban on Conversion Therapy Infringing on Protected Speech? Justices Will Hear Case on Law in Colorado." The story begins very much on the plaintiff's side. Dateline, "Colorado Springs, Colorado. When Kaylee Chiles," The Times writes "welcomes therapy clients to her tranquil bungalow of an office, she offers loose leaf tea and asks what brings them to counseling, what's causing distress and how she can help them meet their goals. Under a 2019, Colorado law, if clients under 18 tell her that their same sex attractions are causing them stress. As a licensed therapist, she is forbidden from counseling them to change their sexual orientation. If they want to talk about their gender identity, she cannot advise them to change it." Now, those concrete details of the tranquil bungalow and the loose leaf tea make it sound as if the Times is reporting from the world of the actual but then that word "if" pops up. "If" clients tell her that their same sex attractions are causing them stress, "if" they want to Talk about their gender identity, well, have they? Once again, as the Alliance Defending Freedom brings another complaint before its six allies on the Supreme Court about whether forbidding harmful discrimination infringes on the Exercise of conscience by someone who professes that their bigotry reflects their sincerely held religious and moral beliefs, the infringement in question seems not to have actually occurred. You have to go long past the jump past the Times saying that Kaylee childs says the law has forced her to turn away patients, before, in the 21st paragraph, the Times writes, "Colorado officials have never enforced the measure, which includes fines up to $5,000 for each violation and possible suspension or revocation of a counselor's license. The law permits treatments that provide acceptance, support and understanding. It includes a religious exemption for those engaged in the practice of religious ministry." The story goes on to say Colorado's attorneys also say "Mrs. Childs has not cited instances of therapy sessions or conduct that she previously engaged in that would violate the law. Asked in an interview if she had ever practiced conversion therapy with a minor before the ban, Mrs. Childs said she has worked with young people struggling with gender dysphoria and unwanted sexual desires. 'I'll just have to let everyone else decide what that is as a label,' she said. Colorado's Attorney General" the Times then writes, "said the Supreme Court would be ill advised to take up what he characterized as made up or hypothesized controversies. 'We're hypothesizing about what type of therapy she might do, given that she hasn't actually shown to have done any of this therapy, he said.'" 

But the same Supreme Court that just refused to stop the Trump administration from forcing people to show their citizenship papers with Brett Kavanaugh arguing that someone being jacked up repeatedly by the authorities was an improbable hypothetical complaint that merited no remedy, somehow keeps finding in favor of the ADF's clients when they worry that this or that civil rights law might force them against their will, in theory, to have to treat people equally.

And down at the bottom of the page, the Times News department's complete dissociation from the reality that an overwhelming majority of Democratic primary voters said they want Zohran Mamdani to be the next mayor sends the newspaper all the way across the country to try to illuminate the future of its home city's municipal politics. "In Portland, Socialists Blaze Trail for Mamdani / Political Outsiders Fight to Budge City Hall." The idea here is that the election of four members of the Democratic socialists of America to Portland's 12 person City Council presents a cautionary tale about political outsiders ability to upend the status quo. "The socialists" The Times writes, "have been limited by the same barriers that snarl more traditional politicians, a finite budget, the votes needed to pass legislation and an occasionally dysfunctional government, although moderates are spooked by their talk of higher taxes and social housing, government owned units, not subject to fluctuations in rental prices, the socialists have not yet tried to muscle through such policies." Yeah, because they have four seats on the council, but also, wow, politics is politics. Municipal politics is municipal politics. Maybe you could write about Mamdani by sending some reporters to New York City.

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The indignity morning podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca Ho. You the listeners. Keep us going through your paid subscriptions to indignity and your tips. Keep sending those along if you are able, and if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we will talk again tomorrow. You.