Heather Cox Richardson draws together the seams of a story that is unfolding piece by piece. Trump’s popularity is plummeting; he is obsessed with his poll numbers. At the same time, he is assembling military forces to control Democratic-run cities where there are no riots, no disorders that can’t be handled by local police. Does he really believe that the nation’s cities are engulfed by a massive crime wave?

The only terrifying development that she did not include in her summary is Trump’s declaration that he intends to resume nuclear testing, a practice abandoned in 1992.

As I read her piece below, I was reminded that Trump said at a rally, “Vote for me now, and you will never have to vote again.” He often says the quiet part out loud.

She writes:

House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) continues to try to pin the upcoming catastrophic lapse in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funding on the Democrats. But with the U.S. Department of Agriculture sitting on $6 billion in funds Congress appropriated for just such an event, the Treasury finding $20 billion to prop up Trump ally Javier Milei in Argentina, Johnson refusing to bring the House into regular session to negotiate an end to the government shutdown, and President Donald J. Trump demanding $230 million in damages from the American taxpayer, bulldozing the East Wing of the White House to build a gold-plated ballroom that will dwarf the existing White House, and traveling to Asia, where South Korean leadership courted him by giving him a gold crown and serving him brownies topped with edible gold, blaming any funding shortfall on Democrats is a hard sell.

According to a Washington Post–ABC survey, more Americans blame Trump and congressional Republicans for the shutdown than blame Democrats by a margin of 45 to 33, and Trump’s approval rating continues to move downward, with the presidential approval average reported by Fifty Plus One at 41.3% approval and 55.1% disapproval, a –14 split. G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers noted on October 24 that polls show Americans now trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle the economy well.

Trump ran in 2024 with a promise to bring down inflation, which was then close to the Federal Reserve’s target of 2.0%; now core inflation is at 3%, having gone up every month since April. Halloween candy—on people’s minds today—is at 9.8% inflation and costs 44% more than it did in 2019. Federal Reserve Board chair Jerome Powell sure sounded like he was describing stagflation—a condition when the economy stagnates despite inflation—when he said yesterday: “In the near term, risks to inflation are tilted to the upside, and risks to employment to the downside, a challenging situation.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said today that while the stock market has done well this year, a better economy is going to “start flowing through to working Americans next year.”

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, in a rambling and disjointed speech in Japan, Trump told U.S. military personnel that he is federalizing National Guard troops and sending them into Democratic-led cities “because we’re going to have safe cities.” In the same speech, Trump repeatedly attacked former president Joe Biden and insisted yet again that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. (It was not.)

When asked by a reporter later to clarify his remarks, Trump referred back to the Insurrection Act, saying that if he invoked it, “I’d be allowed to do whatever I want. But we haven’t chosen to do that because we’re…doing very well without it. But I’d be allowed to do that, you understand that. And the courts wouldn’t get involved. Nobody would get involved. And I could send the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. I can send anybody I wanted.”

In fact, a president can invoke the accurately named Insurrection Act only in times of insurrection or rebellion. Neither of those conditions exists.

But the administration is working hard to create the impression that they do. Drew Harwell and Joyce Sohyun Lee of the Washington Post reported yesterday that the videos the Department of Homeland Security has been publishing to demonstrate the administration’s triumph over crime in U.S. cities as its agents work “day and night to arrest, detain and deport vicious criminals” have been doctored. They do not represent current actions, but rather are a hash of video from different states and different times.

When the reporters asked the White House about the misleading footage, spokesperson Abigail Jackson told them that “the Trump administration will continue to highlight the many successes of the president’s agenda through engaging content and banger memes on social media.”

There are signs the administration is not just trying to give the impression that Americans are rioting, but is trying to push them to do so.

Aaron Glantz of The Guardian reported yesterday that on October 8, Major General Ronald Burkett, who directs the Pentagon’s National Guard bureau, ordered the National Guard in all the states, U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia to form “quick reaction forces” trained in “riot control.” Most states are required to train 500 National Guard personnel, for a total nationwide of 23,500. The forces are supposed to be in place by January 1, 2026.

In his order, Burkett relied on an executive order Trump signed on August 25, calling on the secretary of defense to “immediately begin ensuring that each State’s Army National Guard and Air National Guard are resourced, trained, organized, and available to assist Federal, State, and local law enforcement in quelling civil disturbances and ensuring the public safety and order,” and “ensure the availability of a standing National Guard quick reaction force that shall be resourced, trained, and available for rapid nationwide deployment.”

In August the administration planned for two groups of 300 troops to be stationed in Alabama and Arizona as a “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force.” Now that number is 23,500, and the troops will be in every state and territory.

The establishment of a domestic quick reaction force to quell civil disturbances at a time when there are no civil disturbances that can’t be handled easily by existing law enforcement suggests the administration is expecting those conditions to change.

That expectation might have something to do with Monday’s story from Anna Giaritelli of the Washington Examiner that the White House is reassigning ICE field officers and replacing them with officers from Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). Greg Wehner and Bill Melugin of Fox News reported that the shift will affect at least eight cities, including Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Denver, Portland, Philadelphia, El Paso, and New Orleans.

White House officials, presumably led by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who has said the administration intends to carry out “a minimum” of 3,000 arrests a day, are frustrated by the current pace of about 900 a day. So those officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, special government employee and Noem advisor Corey Lewandowski, and Greg Bovino, a Border Patrol sector chief who has been overseeing the agency’s operations in Los Angeles and Chicago, have decided to ramp up those deportations by replacing ICE officials with far more aggressive CBP leaders.

Tripling arrests will likely bring pushback.

Michael Scherer, Missy Ryan, and Ashley Parker of The Atlantic reported today that political appointees Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have moved onto military bases.

The designs of the anti-immigrant leaders in the administration dovetail with Trump’s political designs. Trump has talked a lot about serving a third term in the presidency, most recently talking about it to reporters on Air Force One earlier this week. The Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution prohibits a third term, but Trump ally Stephen Bannon told The Economist last week that “Trump is going to be president in ‘28 and people just ought to get accommodated with that.” Bannon claimed, “There’s many different alternatives” to get around the Twenty-Second Amendment. Trump keeps “Trump 2028” campaign hats on bookshelves outside the Oval Office.

Janessa Goldbeck, the chief executive officer of the nonprofit Vet Voice Foundation, told Guardian reporter Glantz that Burkett’s recent order shows “an attempt by the president to normalize a national, militarized police force.” Such a force has not just military but also electoral power: it could be used in Democratic-led states to suppress voting. In a worst-case scenario, Goldbeck said, “the president could declare a state of emergency and say that elections are rigged and use allegations of voter fraud to seize the ballots of secure voting centers.”

Today, Buckingham Palace announced that King Charles has “initiated a formal process to remove the style, titles and honours of Prince Andrew” over his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and participation in activities surrounding Epstein. Andrew will be stripped even of his title of “prince” and will be forced to leave the home he has shared for more than 20 years with his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, at Royal Lodge, a 30-room mansion located in Windsor Great Park. The palace said: “These censures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him.”

Today Jim Acosta reported that survivors of Epstein’s sex trafficking enterprise have written a letter to Speaker Johnson demanding that Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) be sworn into office. Voters elected Grijalva on September 23, but Johnson has steadfastly refused to swear her in. Grijalva has said she will provide the last signature necessary on a discharge petition to force a vote on the public release of the Epstein files, an outcome that threatens to expose how and why Trump was named in those files.

The survivors write that Johnson’s “continued refusal to seat her is an unacceptable breach of democratic norms and a disservice to the American people. Even more concerning to us as survivors, this delay appears to be a deliberate attempt to block her participation in the discharge petition that would force a vote to unseal the Epstein/Maxwell files. The American public has a right to transparency and accountability, and we, as survivors, deserve justice. Any attempt to obstruct a vote on this matter—by manipulating House procedure or denying elected members their seats—is a direct affront to that right and adds insult to our trauma.”