Bad Bunny will headline the Super Bowl LX halftime show (screenshot from NBC's Saturday Night Live). Turning Point USA will host an alternative halftime show (scroll down this column for details).
FRIDAY 10/10/25
Gaza Ceasefire Commences – The Trump administration-brokered peace deal between Israel and Hamas began midnight Friday, Haaretz reports, after the Israeli Knesset voted to accept the permanent ceasefire. The Israeli Defense Force is now taking positions around Gaza agreed to by Hamas, and 600 humanitarian aid trucks per day as equipment to repair infrastructure begins to enter Gaza. Israel will allow residents to enter and return from Egypt, subject to security supervision.
The US will send about 200 troops to supervise the region without entering Gaza, NPR’s Morning Edition reports. President Trump plans to visit Israel on Sunday.
And the Peace Prize goes to … The Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded its Peace Prize to Venezuela’s María Corina Machado, the right-leaning activist who ran against President Nicholás Maduro in last year’s elections, which were widely believed to be rigged, NPR’s Morning Edition reports. Machado has been barred from running for president again and lives in hiding in her country, keeping “the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness,” in Maduro’s “brutal, authoritarian” Venezuela, the Nobel Committee said.
Though there was much expectation and hope especially among the pro-MAGA contingent that Trump would win the Nobel Peace Prize, the peace deal in Gaza came too late for the committee’s standard process.
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Not in Chicago – US District Judge April Perry issued an oral bench ruling Thursday in Chicago that blocks for two weeks the Trump administration from deploying National Guard within Illinois, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Perry said she would issue a written opinion Friday and will conduct another hearing October 22 to determine whether the order should be extended by two more weeks.
An appeal from the White House is expected.
The Trump administration had claimed a “brazen new form of hostility” targeting ICE officers in Chicago, but Perry said that “perception of events” around the city “are simply unreliable.”
She said there is “no credible evidence that there is a danger of rebellion in the state of Illinois.”
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Retribution Part II – A federal grand jury in Virginia has issued a two-count indictment of mortgage fraud against Letitia James, the New York attorney general who pledged in her 2018 Democratic campaign pledged to pursue charges against President Trump, Politico reports.
Trump had fired his first acting US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Seibert, after he refused to seek fraud charges against James, as well as other charges against former FBI Director James Comey.
Trump replaced Seibert with White House aide and insurance attorney Lindsey Halligan despite her having no experience as a prosecutor. Halligan indicted Comey last week on charges of making false statements to Congress and obstruction of justice. Comey issued a plea of not guilty at his arraignment this week.
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Maybe Kid Rock and Lee Greenwood? – Turning Point USA, the youth-oriented MAGA-right group co-founded by the late Charlie Kirk, Thursday announced The All-American Halftime Show as an alternative to the Super Bowl LX halftime show starring Puerto Rican music superstar Bad Bunny, The Hill reports. Precious few details were made available other than plans to time it against the Big Game’s halftime show, February 8, 2026 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.
Shades of Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl.
There is some precedent for Turning Point USA’s upcoming show. Al Hirt and the University of Arizona Marching Band played the first NFL-AFL Championship game – later called Super Bowl I – in 1967. By Super Bowl X in 1976, the halftime show featured Up With People. In 1992, the Super Bowl XXVI halftime show featured Gloria Estefan and the next year, for XXVII, it was pop superstar Michael Jackson.
Kid Rock has performed at the official halftime show, in 2004 for Super Bowl XXXVIII, the same show at which Janet Jackson suffered her costume malfunction. –TL.
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THURSDAY 10/9/25
Trump Forges Gaza Ceasefire – Israel and Hamas have agreed to the first phase of President Trump’s permanent ceasefire in Gaza, the president told Fox News Wednesday. Israel’s Knesset is expected to vote for the deal by the end of Thursday.
Trump’s deal returns 48 hostages of Hamas to Israel, 20 of them alive, and Israel will release 250 Palestinians held in its prisons, plus 1,700 Palestinians detained in Gaza, according to The Wall Street Journal. Israel will withdraw its defense force from 70% of Gaza and the Rafah crossing with Egypt will reopen.
The peace deal advanced last week when White House special envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, traveled to Egypt to finalize negotiations. Key to the deal’s advancement is said to be an apology from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for the Israeli Defense Force’s September 9 air attack on a Hamas leadership headquarters.
Coincidentally … September 9 also was the date of the announcement that Kushner and the Saudi sovereign wealth fund would purchase gaming industry behemoth Electronic Arts for $55 billion, largest public-to-private takeover ever.
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Meanwhile, in Chicago – A federal judge hears arguments Thursday over whether President Trump has authority to send Texas National Guard troops to Chicago over objections by Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) (per the Chicago Sun-Times). Trump on Wednesday threatened on Truth Social to arrest Johnson and Pritzker, who filed suit on Monday to halt the National Guard deployment to Chicago.
Trump claims that by refusing the Guard, the mayor and governor are failing to protect ICE agents in the city.
Johnson said Wednesday that this “is not the first time that Donald Trump has called for arresting a Black man unjustly.”
Meanwhile, in New York … In its Politics & Policy newsletter, The Wall Street Journal notes that Trump and Pritzker have a family feud going back at least to the 1990s, based on a Manhattan real estate fight between Trump and the governor’s uncle, Jay Pritzker. Trump reportedly recalled telling the governor’s uncle; “You’re a bad guy, Jay. I’m going to kick your ass. …”
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Who’s Winning the Shutdown? – Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) tells Punchbowl News that his party is winning the federal government shutdown, now in its second week, in an interview published early Thursday, and that it’s getting better every day.
“It’s because we’ve thought about this long in advance and we knew that health care would be the focal point on September 30 and we prepared for it,” Schumer said.
Indeed, President Trump spent the whole four years of his first term trying to kill “Obamacare.”
“Their whole theory was,” Schumer said of Capitol Hill Republicans, “threaten us, bamboozle us, and we would submit in a day or two.”
As of Thursday morning, Senate Republicans took seven straight losses in seven votes over the House-passed continuing resolution that would reopen the government.
Flashback … Even earlier Thursday morning – very late Wednesday night, in fact – Axios scooped that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) was considering bringing standalone appropriations bills to the floor. Even in bundles, it would be a “long, tortuous process.” But Thune could bring, say, defense appropriations, which already has been passed in the House, to the floor individually with virtually guaranteed Senate passage.
Flash forward … By midmorning Thursday CQ Roll Call reports the tide is shifting away from Thune in favor of Schumer. Democrats say that in the face of opposition from GOP leadership, some Republicans have expressed support for extending health care subsidies.
The math … With its 53-seat majority, Republicans need seven Democratic senators to reach the filibuster-resistant 60-vote threshold, which means that Democrats will need 13 Republican senators to get their way on health care subsidies. –TL
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WEDNESDAY 10/8/25
‘Joliet’ JB? – President Trump Wednesday morning issued a threat against Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) for their resistance to deployment of Texas National Guard troops meant to “protect” Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
“Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers!” Trump Truth Socialed, obviously referring to ICE agents and not protectors of frozen water. “Governor Pritzker also!”
Texas National Guard arrived at the US Army Reserve Training Center in Elwood, Illinois, about 50 miles outside Chicago, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Pritzker, who calls the deployment an “invasion,” says he will not allow the National Guard to use state facilities.
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Threat to Back Pay – President Trump in 2019, during his first term, signed legislation guaranteeing back pay for federal workers furloughed during a government shutdown. Now the Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget says in a memo circulated around the White House Tuesday there is no such guarantee, USA Today reports.
The OMB memo says back payment must be provided by Congress as part of its bill to fund the government and get it up and running again. –Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa