What Happened Today - 28 Nov 2025
What Happened Today – 28 November 2025
DC Shooting Update
Market Update
Escalation of Violence
Epstein Update
ICE Update
Measles…MAHA…not working
Specialist Sarah Beckstrom (Army) and SSgt Andrew Wolfe (Air Force)
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DC Shooting Update
Trump is using this D.C. National Guard shooting as an excuse to crank his nativist agenda to eleven, but the facts on the shooter’s timeline and vetting blow up the whole “this is Biden’s fault” story he’s pushing.
Shooter’s timeline since 2021
The suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, is a 29‑year‑old Afghan who came to the U.S. in 2021 as part of the Afghan evacuation after Kabul fell and the Taliban took over, brought in under the Operation Allies Welcome pipeline that moved tens of thousands of Afghan allies out of danger. He had worked with U.S. forces and in a CIA‑run counterterrorism unit in Afghanistan, fighting on America’s side in the war, which is exactly why he got priority for relocation in the first place.
After he arrived, he lived here for several years under that evacuee status and then formally applied for asylum in 2024. Multiple outlets have confirmed he was actually granted asylum in April 2025, squarely under Trump’s administration, not Biden’s, so when Trump and his people pretend this guy somehow “slipped in” because of Biden, they’re conveniently deleting the part where Trump’s own government signed off on giving him permanent protection.
What checks he went through
This dude was not some random “unvetted” stranger off a boat. To work with U.S. forces and a CIA‑backed unit in Afghanistan, he would have gone through vetting during the war itself: identity checks, biometrics, and security screening handled by U.S. military and intel partners. When Afghan allies were evacuated in 2021, DHS described the process as “rigorous and multi‑layered,” involving biometric and biographic screening by multiple agencies—State, DHS, FBI, intelligence, and counterterrorism units—before people set foot in the U.S.
On top of that, ABC’s reporting and DHS sources say people like Lakanwal likely had a special immigrant visa or similar clearance because of their work with U.S. agencies, which requires even more background checking. And then, before he was granted asylum this year, Trump’s own DHS and DOJ would have re‑vetted him again, since asylum adjudications under Trump have been heavily framed around “security risk” reviews.
How Trump’s team is spinning it
Trump, Kash Patel, and Kristi Noem are out there screaming that Biden “did zero vetting” and that this all traces back to a “disastrous” Afghan airlift, claiming that millions of “unknown and unvetted foreigners” flooded in and that this is proof the entire Biden‑era refugee intake is rotten. But their own intel and refugee briefings from 2021 bragged about those same layers of vetting, and now U.S. officials are telling reporters the suspect was “clean on all checks” when he was screened by intelligence agencies.
The key point they never mention: this guy didn’t just get waved through by Biden and then left alone—Trump’s administration looked at his record again and then granted him asylum in 2025, which is a concrete, affirmative decision signed off by Trump’s team. So the line that “Biden caused this” falls apart on its face; Biden’s people handled the emergency airlift in 2021, but Trump’s crew had two more years and another full review cycle to say no and chose to say yes.
How Trump is exploiting the shooting
Instead of owning that reality, Trump is using the attack as cover to roll out his “permanently pause migration from all Third World countries” stunt—a sweeping, racially loaded policy announcement that he blasted out on Truth Social after one of the Guard members died. He’s promising to:
• “Permanently pause” migration from all “Third World countries.”
• Terminate what he calls “millions of Biden illegal admissions.”
• End all federal benefits and subsidies for noncitizens.
• Denaturalize migrants he says “undermine domestic tranquility.”
• Deport anyone he labels a public charge, security risk, or “non‑compatible with Western civilization.”
DHS officials say he’s ordered a massive review of asylum cases approved under Biden and of green cards issued to people from 19 countries, meaning hundreds of thousands of people who did everything by the book are now being dragged back into uncertainty because Trump wants a big, dramatic scapegoat.
Why the Biden blame game is garbage
The bottom line: yes, Lakanwal first entered the U.S. under a Biden‑era program in 2021, but every stage since then—ongoing monitoring, the 2024 asylum application, and the April 2025 asylum approval—happened under Trump’s watch. He was vetted at least three times: once as a CIA‑linked asset in Afghanistan, again during the 2021 evacuation screening, and a third time during the Trump‑era asylum process this year, which they publicly bragged was “carefully scrutinized.”
So when Trump gets onstage and acts like Biden just flung open the doors with no checks and that he’s now the hero “fixing” it with blanket bans and mass reviews, he’s rewriting a story where his own administration approved the final step that let this guy stay. Blaming Biden is not just ridiculous—it’s deliberate misdirection to justify a broader, ideological crackdown Trump wanted anyway, using one horrific incident to punish an entire universe of refugees and immigrants who had nothing to do with it.
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Market Update
The market’s trying to wobble higher into month‑end, riding pure Fed hopium, while everyone quietly knows the vibes are off because prices still feel high, growth feels fragile, and Trump’s chaos politics are adding one more layer of uncertainty on top.
What the indexes are actually doing
The S&P 500 S&P 500 is up a hair in this short Black Friday session, around 0.2–0.4%, but it’s basically fighting to avoid its first red month since April, not ripping to new highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average Dow Jones Industrial Average is up modestly—tens of points, not some monster rally—while the Nasdaq Composite Nasdaq Composite is also green but only by a few tenths of a percent, which is more “limping along” than “everything’s fine.”
Most of this week’s move has been a grind higher after an ugly first half of November, especially for big tech that got smacked for being too expensive and too AI‑frothy. Earlier in the week you had that 0.7% pop in the S&P 500, a similar 0.7% move in the Dow, and something close to 0.8–0.9% on the Nasdaq in a single session, which makes the tape look good on paper, but it still doesn’t fully erase the drawdowns from earlier this month.
Fallout from the CME outage
That overnight futures freeze at CME Group CME Group Inc. was one more “what now?” moment for traders already on edge. Futures on the S&P 500, Dow, and Nasdaq were halted for hours because of a data‑center issue at a third‑party provider, and while everything came back online and cash trading opened fine, it reminded everyone how fragile the plumbing is under all this money sloshing around.
The fact that the cash market shrugged it off with only tiny gains tells you this is not some euphoric risk‑on environment; people are tiptoeing, not charging. Liquidity’s thinner on a half‑day, algos are doing most of the work, and human traders are more worried about what happens next week than whether today finishes up 0.3% or 0.5%.
Fed hopium vs. real‑world stress
Under the hood, a lot of this “green” is just the market front‑running the Federal Reserve. Traders are pricing in a very high chance—somewhere between roughly 70% and nearly 90% depending on the gauge—that the Fed does another 0.25% cut at its December meeting after already trimming rates earlier in the fall. The Fed itself has signaled at least one more cut this year in its projections, which is why rate‑sensitive stuff and speculative tech perk up every time a Fed governor sounds slightly less hawkish.
But the macro picture is messy: the job market is clearly cooling, inflation is still sticky, and corporate earnings are “okay but not amazing,” which is code for “this can break either way.” That’s why the mood feels jumpy—people are piling into anything that benefits from lower rates, while still knowing one bad data print or one dumb political stunt can yank the rug out.
Politics, Trump, and the mood on Main Street
Layered on top of all that is Trump running the country like a permanent campaign rally. His approval just slid to new second‑term lows—high‑30s approval, high‑50s disapproval—and he’s bleeding hardest with the very working‑class base he brags about, sitting roughly 25–30 points underwater with lower‑income voters. Instead of focusing on cost‑of‑living and stability, he’s spending political capital on immigration theatrics, Epstein drama, and Fox‑bait culture‑war garbage that doesn’t lower anyone’s rent or grocery bill.
Markets care about that because political dysfunction shows up as shutdown risk, policy whiplash, and tariff noise, all of which hit growth, earnings, and consumer confidence. Regular people just feel the disconnect: Wall Street can squeak out a green week on Fed hope, but out in the real world, it still feels like prices are high, services are getting cut, and the guy in charge is more interested in scapegoating immigrants than stabilizing the economic backdrop everyone actually lives in.
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Escalation of Violence
The violence and threats are ramping up because Trump and people in his orbit keep playing with matches around a giant pile of gasoline, then acting shocked when things catch fire.
Where the escalation is coming from
Trump is openly flirting with execution talk again, reposting calls to put Democratic lawmakers to death and labeling them “traitors” engaged in “seditious behavior, punishable by death” just because they told troops to follow lawful orders and the Constitution. Mark Kelly, whose wife literally survived being shot in the head in a political massacre, is straight up saying this is incitement, that Trump has millions of followers who take him seriously, and that his words can get people killed.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is the perfect example of how this toxic loop works. For years she’s pushed conspiracies, liked posts calling for violence against Democrats, talked about executing Pelosi, and poured gasoline on the 2020 election lies that fed January 6. Now that Trump has turned on her and called her a “traitor,” she’s suddenly crying about how that kind of language can radicalize people and put a target on her back, and she’s on TV half‑apologizing for the same “toxic politics” she helped build.
How Trump’s agenda and rhetoric feed real‑world danger
Trump’s second‑term immigration crusade is drenched in “invasion” and “enemy within” language, treating migrants and political opponents as existential threats instead of people. His new orders talk about using the military at the border, loosening use‑of‑force rules, and even dragging the death penalty into immigration cases, exactly the kind of dehumanizing framework that has historically led to vigilante violence and state abuse.
Republican leaders are split: some like Mike Johnson and the usual MAGA chorus defend Trump’s “sedition” attacks as justified outrage, while a handful of Republicans warn this is how you get another January 6 or another Giffords‑style shooting. Meanwhile, the White House tries to condemn “violence on all sides” without ever telling Trump to knock it off, which only emboldens his most unhinged supporters.
Why it’s so dangerous and what could actually help
This is dangerous because it normalizes the idea that political opponents, immigrants, and even disobedient generals are not just wrong but enemies who deserve prison or death, and history is crystal clear: once that mentality sets in, someone eventually acts on it. You can already see the spillover—threats against members of Congress, attacks on election workers, and violent clashes around ICE raids and deportations are all happening in a climate where top politicians talk about “traitors” and “invasions” on loop.
To dial this back, a few things are obvious even if the people in charge don’t want to hear it:
• There has to be a hard line from both parties that calls to execute opponents or talk of “punishable by death” for routine dissent are disqualifying, full stop, not just “heated rhetoric.”
• Platforms and media outlets need to stop amplifying the worst clips as entertainment and start treating explicit incitement and dehumanizing language as a security threat, not just “engagement.”
• Law enforcement and Congress need real, enforceable consequences for people who threaten or incite violence against officials and communities, whether they wear a MAGA hat or hold high office.
This isn’t just “spicy politics” anymore. When the president and his loudest allies keep toying with execution fantasies, “traitor” labels, and invasion talk, they’re lighting fuses in a country that has already seen where that road leads—and pretending it’s just words is exactly how things get worse.
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Epstein Update
The Epstein files are finally, officially on a countdown clock now, and Trump only got on board after getting dragged there kicking and screaming by Congress and his own base.
Where things stand legally
Congress has passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and Trump has signed it, which means DOJ now has 30 days to dump the government’s Epstein records in a searchable, public format. The House vote was 427–1, the Senate cleared it by unanimous consent, and the only “no” came from GOP Rep. Clay Higgins, so this was basically as close to a political wipeout as you’ll see in this era.
The law requires DOJ to release federal investigative files related to Epstein and his network but still lets them hold back pieces tied to live investigations or highly sensitive victim privacy issues. The rough timeline everyone is working off is mid‑December 2025—around December 19 is when the full government tranche is supposed to hit, assuming DOJ doesn’t slow‑walk or bury it in redactions.
Trump’s flip‑flop and GOP drama
For months, Trump and his people did everything they could to stall this, calling the push to release the files a Democrat “hoax,” leaning on House leadership, and trying to water down or sit on legislation. After a revolt from his own base, a discharge petition threat from weird ideological alliances, and public pressure from both right‑wing influencers and survivors, he flipped and suddenly told House Republicans to vote yes, then turned around on social media and tried to brand himself as the transparency hero.
The House GOP leadership whiplash was obvious: Mike Johnson went from trying to tack on “protections” and slow things down to sprinting the bill to the floor as it became clear he was going to lose anyway. MTG and other MAGA figures are caught in the middle—on one hand screaming “release everything,” on the other hand nervous about how much of this touches donors, party grandees, and possibly Trump himself.
What’s already out and what’s likely coming
This law sits on top of a big pile of stuff that’s already been dribbling out. DOJ did a “first phase” declassification in February 2025—around 200 pages, heavily caveated—with promises that thousands more pages exist. On top of that, the House Oversight Committee and the Epstein estate have already dumped tens of thousands of pages of emails, records, and other documents, including a 20,000‑page estate release and a mid‑November email dump.
Those materials name a lot of big public figures—politicians, businessmen, academics, celebrities—often in the form of emails, travel logs, and contacts, not always direct criminal allegations. Some of the latest estate emails include messages where Epstein talks about Trump “spending hours at my house” with one of the trafficked victims, and other references that contradict Trump’s claim that he barely knew the guy, even though just being named in a file is not the same thing as being charged with a crime.
What to expect next
The next big milestone is that 30‑day DOJ deadline: a larger, more systematic release of investigative material instead of piecemeal court filings and estate dumps. Expect a mess—huge volumes of documents, heavy redactions, conflicting interpretations, and immediate cherry‑picking by every partisan outlet trying to weaponize whichever names and quotes fit their narrative.
The one thing that’s clear is this: Congress and public pressure forced Trump into doing what he could have done months ago. He’s now trying to spin it like he led the charge, but the timeline shows the opposite—delay, obstruction, then a last‑minute U‑turn once it became obvious even his own people weren’t going to cover for him forever.
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ICE Update
ICE is on a full‑blown rampage this year, and the receipts are brutal: more people dead, more people locked up, and less oversight than we’ve seen in decades.
Deaths and conditions inside
2025 is literally the deadliest year in ICE custody in about 20 years, with at least 20–24 people dead already and around 60,000 people locked up in immigration detention on any given day, the highest population in years. Former ICE officials and outside watchdogs are all saying the same thing: you crank detention numbers that high, keep scaling up arrests, and starve medical and mental‑health staffing, and people are going to die—especially when you layer in filthy facilities, bad food, and people with serious health issues being dumped into cages.
Oversight is basically asleep at the wheel. During the government shutdown, DHS even admitted that the Office of Detention Oversight wasn’t working, meaning the very office that’s supposed to investigate deaths and abuse was effectively shut off while deaths spiked. Reports out of multiple centers talk about overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, solitary confinement being used more, and ICE quietly changing or “scratching” paperwork in ways that make it harder to track what’s actually happening inside.
Adelanto and specific horror stories
Adelanto in California is ground zero for how grim this is. In September, 39‑year‑old Ismael Ayala‑Uribe, a Mexican national and former DACA recipient, died after being held at Adelanto with an untreated abscess—ICE’s own report says he was evaluated, given meds, sent back, then later referred for surgery, only to die at a hospital before it could happen. In October, 56‑year‑old Gabriel Garcia‑Aviles, picked up in a raid near Costa Mesa and taken to Adelanto, died days after being detained, triggering a congressional letter demanding answers about medical care and conditions at that facility.
Local and national reporting say these cases are part of a pattern—not random flukes. Advocates and even former ICE medical staff point to delays in hospital transfers, pressure to discharge people back to detention too soon, and staff being stretched so thin that serious symptoms get shrugged off until it’s too late. Lawmakers like Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are saying flat‑out that the death rate in detention this year is the highest on record since the mid‑2000s and that ICE’s own public death list is lagging reality.
Street raids and “Operation Midway Blitz”
Outside the fences, the enforcement side is getting nastier too. ICE is doing more “at‑large” raids in communities instead of just transfers from local jails, which means more home bust‑ins, traffic stops, and big‑splash operations in cities. In Chicago, “Operation Midway Blitz” turned into such a mess—tear gas in neighborhoods, aggressive crowd control around protests, a woman shot in the chaos, and agents rolling around masked and unidentifiable—that a federal judge had to step in.
Judge Sara Ellis has now ordered ICE and CBP agents involved in that operation to wear visible badges, stop using certain riot‑control tactics on peaceful protesters, and, crucially, to wear body cameras that must actually be turned on during operations. She’s also ordered the government to preserve all video of agents using tear gas and warned that if ICE keeps ignoring her orders, she’s ready to use contempt powers—up to and including fines or jail—for federal officials.
Trump’s second‑term “detain and deport harder” obsession isn’t just numbers on a spreadsheet. It’s bodies piling up in detention, families getting torn apart in ever more violent raids, and federal judges basically saying, on the record, that ICE is out here doing whatever it wants until a court physically yanks the leash.
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Measles…MAHA…not working
MAHA is supposed to be Trumpworld’s big “Make America Healthy Again” push, but it’s colliding head‑on with a measles mess that their own mixed signals and anti‑vax pandering helped supercharge.
Where MAHA is at right now
MAHA is the health umbrella the White House and HHS are using to say they’re tackling childhood chronic illness, nutrition, and “toxins,” with a big glossy report outlining 100‑plus ideas on food policy, chemicals, and “personal choice” in health care. On paper, the official MAHA documents say vaccines like MMR are “available” and decisions should be made between families and doctors, but they lean hard on “personal choice” language instead of a clear, strong “go get your kid vaccinated” message.
That soft‑pedaling is exactly what public health folks have been freaking out about. Experts are warning that in 2025 the U.S. has seen the biggest measles outbreak in more than 30 years, plus more kids dying from whooping cough and flu, and they’re connecting that directly to the way MAHA and RFK Jr. talk about vaccines as something the government should stay “neutral” on. Polling even shows that a big chunk of MAHA‑aligned parents say they don’t trust the health secretary’s vaccine guidance, which tells you the movement is feeding its own hesitancy loop instead of breaking it.
How bad the measles spike really is
The numbers this year are ugly. By early summer, the U.S. had already blown past 1,000 measles cases across 30‑plus states, and by July CDC data showed more than 1,288 confirmed cases—higher than 2019 and the most in any year since measles was declared eliminated in 2000. At least three people in the U.S.—two unvaccinated school‑age kids in Texas and one unvaccinated adult—have died from measles in 2025, the first measles deaths here in a decade and the highest annual toll since the 1990s.
This isn’t some random fluke; it’s exactly what happens when vaccination rates slip. National kindergarten MMR coverage has dropped to about 92.7%, below the 95% threshold needed to really stop measles from spreading, and in some hotspots like parts of West Texas communities are down in the low 80s or worse. Almost all the 2025 cases—around 90%—are in people who are unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown, with kids under 5 and teens making up the bulk of infections, which is textbook “pockets of refusal” behavior.
How MAHA and the measles surge feed each other
Public‑health folks keep saying the quiet part out loud: you can’t run a national health campaign that winks at anti‑vax rhetoric and then act shocked when an old killer like measles walks right back in the door. MAHA events and RFK Jr.’s roadshow have spent way more time hyping things like fluoride removal, “clean living,” and vague detox messaging than they have backing up MMR, and the official line that vaccines are “a personal choice” lands like a dog whistle in already skeptical communities.
The result is exactly what experts predicted: measles cases spiking to their highest level in decades, outbreaks seeded in under‑vaccinated, ideologically resistant pockets, and local health departments scrambling to do the hard, unglamorous work of catch‑up clinics and school exclusions while the folks in D.C. tiptoe around saying the one sentence that actually matters—go get your kids vaccinated.
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Specialist Sarah Beckstrom (Army) and SSgt Andrew Wolfe (Air Force)
One of the two Guard members has now died, and the other is still hanging on by a thread in critical condition.
Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, from the West Virginia National Guard, died on Thanksgiving after being shot in the head and chest; her father has said she had a “mortal wound” and was not going to recover. Trump and Pentagon officials confirmed her death publicly, and she’s already being honored across the Guard and in the media as a fallen soldier who volunteered to cover the holiday so others could be home with family.
The second Guardsman, 24‑year‑old Andrew Wolfe, is still in the hospital in critical condition after multiple surgeries and is described as “fighting for his life.” Officials say both were ambushed at close range near the White House and that doctors are not yet willing to say Wolfe is stable, only that he remains in intensive care with life‑threatening injuries.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of all affected. As a retired veteran, it is heartbreaking to think about losing a wingman during this holiday season…and even more heartbreaking to think that in reality, they BOTH should have been at home with their families to begin with.
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Have a good weekend everyone. Let’s hope for some brighter days ahead!
Speak Truth! Keep speaking TRUTH!
Don’t Give up the Ship!
Go Cause Good Trouble, with Your Elbows Up!
These are facts that I researched and verified – AI helped put together some sentence structure, but the words and tone are mine. These are my views based upon facts, research and thoughtful consideration using logic. I own the copyright to any images used. I’m comfortable to stand alone to uphold truth. Feel free to check me, but do not attack me. I am only causing good trouble.