It sounds like some of the first challenges to Trump from the Republican Party are showing up.

He'll hold the White House, but I dunno whether he'll retain a lot of influence in the party's broader direction.

https://www.axios.com/2026/11/06/rnc-kc-crosbie-joe-gruters-chairman

Scoop: White House furious over surprise challenge to Trump's RNC chair

The White House was blindsided by RNC co-chair KC Crosbie's decision to challenge President Trump's handpicked party chairman, Joe Gruters — a move that has infuriated administration officials days after the GOP's midterm drubbing, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: Sitting Republican presidents traditionally choose the RNC chair, making leadership elections little more than a formality. Crosbie is challenging that arrangement — despite owing her own position to Trump.

Trump moved quickly to back Gruters, issuing a lengthy Truth Social endorsement Friday calling on Republicans to support the incumbent chairman.

Driving the news: Crosbie announced her candidacy Thursday in a letter to the RNC's 168 members obtained by Axios. It called for changes to the party following Tuesday's elections, which cost Republicans control of both chambers of Congress.

"Tuesday's results were a serious setback," Crosbie wrote. "We owe ourselves an honest account of why."

She questioned whether the party had adequately addressed voters' concerns, supported its candidates and nominated Republicans capable of winning competitive races.

"I believe the RNC has fallen short of that responsibility, and I hope to see that change," she wrote.

The big picture: Crosbie's call for a change in direction is the first significant challenge to Trump's authority within the Republican Party after the midterms.

My understanding is that Chief of Staff is actually quite a powerful position, as it is responsible for determining who gets access to the President, which can have quite a lot of indirect control over the direction of presidential policy.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_Chief_of_Staff

The chief of staff is the most senior political appointee in the White House. The position is widely recognized as one of great power and influence, owing to daily contact with the president of the United States and control of the Executive Office of the President of the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Miller

Miller's politics have been described as far-right,[1] and anti-immigration.[2][3] Author Jean Guerrero characterized his agenda as white nationalist.[207]

I'm not sure that that's a great move for Trump politically, but...shrugs I guess we'll find out.

Someone in the White House “probably installed a sketchy free app on their phone"

And that's the White House. I wonder how many situations there are out there where hardened-toward-the-Internet, squishy-on-the-inside home networks have some random kid with an Android phone or something punching holes to let any number of unsavory characters onto the LAN.

If he doesn't want to fight, I'd say that he can flee back to Latvia if he can manage to evade Russian authorities, but it sounds like he pretty much screwed himself over on that front.

https://en.bb.lv/article/politics/2026/02/26/five-ways-to-strip-a-person-of-latvian-citizenship-not-counting-voluntary-renunciation-of-passport-89699

The procedure for losing (stripping) Latvian citizenship is defined by the Citizenship Law. In what cases can a person be stripped of their Latvian passport?

Secondly, one can lose Latvian citizenship if a person "without the permission of the Cabinet of Ministers voluntarily serves in the armed forces or military organization of any other state, except in cases where the person serves in the state armed forces or military organization of a member state of the European Union, a member state of the European Free Trade Association, a member state of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Commonwealth of Australia, the Federative Republic of Brazil, New Zealand, Ukraine, or in the armed forces or military organization of a state with which the Republic of Latvia has concluded an agreement on the recognition of dual citizenship."

Finally, the fifth reason. A couple of months after the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine, that is, in 2022, the previous Saeima provided for another reason for the deprivation of citizenship of the Republic of Latvia: "a person has provided significant financial, material, propaganda, technological, or other support to states or individuals carrying out actions, including genocide, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, war crimes undermining or threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence of democratic states or the constitutional order, or if the person themselves participated in the implementation of such actions and in the case of deprivation of Latvian citizenship, this person does not become stateless. Information that the relevant person has committed any of the mentioned actions is provided by state security institutions. Challenging and appealing the decision does not suspend its effect."

So, there are at least 5 grounds for stripping a person of Latvian citizenship. But with one significant caveat — Latvian citizenship can only be stripped if the person does not become... stateless (a stateless person).

This means that, for example, Mamykins cannot be stripped of Latvian citizenship until he obtains a second passport — for example, that of a citizen of the Russian Federation.

So he went to Russia, got Russian citizenship, and now is in the Russian armed forces fighting against Ukraine, which probably is two of the paths for loss of Latvian citizenship.

Maybe he makes it back and can argue that his involvement wasn't voluntary or something.

EDIT:

https://nashaniva.com/en/408611

In February 2025, Mulivanov participated in Moscow in a scientific and practical conference "Ethnocide of Russian compatriots in the Baltic countries." There he called for the liquidation of the statehood of the Baltic peoples and stated that he personally participated in the recruitment of Russian-speaking residents of Latvia to participate in the so-called "special military operation." Now he has gone to it himself.

Okay, so going back to the first link, that probably also means he went down another path for having Latvian citizenship stripped:

The law also provides for the possibility of stripping Latvian citizenship if a citizen of the Republic of Latvia "has engaged in activities aimed at the violent overthrow of the state power of the Republic of Latvia, publicly called for the violent overthrow of the state power established by the Constitution of the Republic of Latvia or the violent change of the state system, publicly called for the implementation of organizational actions aimed at eliminating the state independence of the Republic of Latvia. And this is confirmed by a court ruling."

And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist.

Ehhh...is Sherlock Holmes an underdog?

He's still got two more years. You could make a community on the Threadiverse!

I don't really see how that can stick. Even if the next president is Republican, he's not going to want to be limited like that in decorating his office. That's not even talking about how unpopular Trump probably is with a lot of Republican politicians right now, much less Democratic ones.

Even if he gets this through in the next few weeks, even if the current Congress is inclined to go along with it, as soon as Trump leaves office, how does it stay? Not like even a Republican Congress is going to care about retaining Trump's Oval Office decor.

I saw Nate Silver speculating—I don't know how seriously—that Trump might, at this point, just toss the GOP under the bus and cut a deal with the Democrats to get his triumphal arch and ballroom in exchange for giving them policies that they want. Silver's point was that Trump really cares about his legacy, and there's not much that the GOP can give him at this point (well, after January 3). But even in that scenario, which I dunno if I buy into, I can't imagine that future presidents would be handcuffed on their Oval Office decor. We've always let presidents recorate it.

EDIT: Oh, wait, I hadn't read the article. He's doing it via presidential authority alone. It does look like that's possible for a national monument. It does look like current precedent, though, is that a later president can just remove protection without going to Congress, so if that precedent stands, I think that it has basically zero functional impact; if a subsequent president wants to redecorate his office, he just removes protection and then redecorates it, and he'd be the one wanting to do so anyway.

No one could have possibly predicted that Trump’s tariffs and his war on Iran would hit rural America so hard with rising fuel costs, shrinking profits, and bankruptcies.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/23/464129029/donald-trump-i-could-shoot-somebody-and-i-wouldnt-lose-any-voters

"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" Trump remarked at a campaign stop at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa. "It's, like, incredible."

Trump had, however, only considered the political impact of minor actions like murder, not that of more consequential moves, like increasing fuel prices.

I just went to look at Ted Cruz's YouTube channel to see what he had to say about the GOP moving forward (as I believe that he's considered the most-likely Republican 2028 presidential nominee not in the Trump cabinet, so I assume that he'd have to basically craft something to appeal to a coalition of potential Republican voters).

He didn't have a lot of specifics, so that was a bust, but one thing that I saw was that he said that he was the only remaining Republican elected statewide official in Texas. I also saw some news outlets make the same statement. I don't think that that can be correct, though.

I assume that the Republican officials on the Texas state board of ed are elected and statewide (unless Texas uses some weird split partially-elected partially-appointed system).

I also dug up Texas's list of elected statewide officials, and it looks like there are a few elected Republican judges with terms that don't expire in 2026, like, uh...looks Scott Walker.

Now, granted, these aren't very high-profile, but they are real.

Not sure if both Cruz and news outlets made the same error or if I'm missing something.

Also, the Texas webpage doesn't list the state board of ed positions as being statewide and elected.

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Oh, okay. Apparently the state board of ed doesn't have statewide positions, but rather districts that each represents.

https://sboe.texas.gov/state-board-of-education/sboe-board-members/sboe-members

There are 15 state Board of Education members who are elected by Texans to two or four year terms of office. Each member represents about 1.8 million Texans. The board members are listed by district below.

I still don't know what's going on with the Republican judges, though.

EDIT: Actually, OP's article briefly mentions a district belonging to a board of ed member, so if I'd have read it more carefully, I'd have caught that.

autoplayed videos

I mean, that's basically what television is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koro_(disease)

Koro is a culture-bound delusional disorder in which individuals have an overpowering belief that their sex organs are retracting and will disappear, despite the lack of any true longstanding changes to the genitals.[1][2] Koro is also known as shrinking penis, and was listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

EDIT: This is a new one on me. Apparently Russia has a penis-theft disinformation campaign targeting France...in the modern day.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, newspapers reported incidents of genital shrinking in Western Nigeria. Since late 1996, a small-scale epidemic of genital shrinking was reported in West African nations. Affected individuals in the African outbreaks often interpreted the experience as genital theft, accusing someone with whom they had contact of "stealing" the organ and the spiritual essence, causing impotence. The perceived motive for theft was associated with local occult belief, the witchcraft of juju, to feed the spiritual agency or to hold the genital for ransom. Social representations about juju constitute consensual realities that propose both a means and motivation for genital-shrinking experience.[17]

The epidemic began in Nigeria and Cameroon, and spread to Ghana, Ivory Coast and Senegal by 1997.[17] Cases were reported in Cotonou, Benin where mobs attacked individuals accused of the penis theft and authorities ordered security forces to curb the violence, following the deaths of five people by vigilantes.[55] Later reports of outbreak suggest a spread beyond West Africa, including the coverage of episodes in Khartoum, Sudan in September 2003; Banjul, Gambia in October 2003;[17] and Kinshasa, DR Congo in 2008.[56]

Comparing West African genital-shrinking epidemics with koro in Southeast Asia, the latter has symptoms centered on genital retraction (instead of shrinkage) and fear of death (which is absent in African cases).[17] A study analyzing the West African epidemics from 1997 to 2003 concluded that rather than psychopathology, the episodes were the product of normal psychological functioning in undisturbed individuals, who were influenced by the local cultural models or social representations.[17]

In 2025, rumors spread in the Central African Republic and Mali that certain people were stealing the penises of men who shook hands with them. A Russian-linked disinformation website attempted to capitalize on these beliefs by claiming that French intelligence services were using handshakes to steal African penises, then shipping the organs to France by boat in order to combat decreasing fertility rates in Europe. This claim was part of an ongoing effort by Russia to supplant French and Western influence in Africa.[57]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daveigh_Chase

I wasn't aware.

Apparently a bunch of really solid roles, but drug addiction, then breaking away from her family, then AIDS, then AIDS-related death at a young age.