November 17, 2025 – News Briefs

The small return to Morro Bay!

Sometimes nature creates moments that begin so quietly you almost miss them - and yet they stay with you for a long time. In Morro Bay on the central coast of California, a tiny sea otter experienced this kind of good fortune. The pup, affectionately called Caterpillar by the rescuers, had been separated from its mother, alone in the cold water, helpless and with a cry that sounded more like a human child than a marine animal. For two hours the staff members of the Marine Mammal Center searched for the mother. They kept hearing the high, urgent calls of the little one, recorded them and played them for the presumed mother - because for sea otters, vocalizations reveal who belongs together. Eventually she appeared, swam decisively toward the tiny body and pulled it close as if she had not hesitated for a single second. For the rescuers it was a moment that brought tears to their eyes.

Caterpillar and its mother then remained under observation for another hour, clinging tightly to each other like a pair that had finally been reunited. For the team this reunion means more than a single rescued pup. Southern sea otters are a threatened species - every surviving animal counts. And on this day Morro Bay returned a small piece of hope.

When a Trump starts yelling, this is what happens…!

When asked the harmless question of why his voice sounded so rough, Donald Trump gave an answer you could not make up. “I feel great,” he said. “I was shouting at people because they were stupid about some trade issue… I lost my temper with those people.”

In short - the voice suffers - and so do we all.

This is not how you solve problems!

Donald Trump stood visibly irritated in front of the reporters on Sunday evening. When asked about the new revelations in the Epstein files, he deflected, attacked and redirected - a familiar pattern. “I don’t want to talk about it because fake news like you just keeps bringing it up to deflect from the tremendous success of the Trump administration,” he said, as if he wanted to bury the past and stifle every follow-up question with a single sentence. As an aside, the success of the Trump administration is more than debatable.

But this evasion is exactly where the problem lies. Anyone who is sure of their own story answers questions. Anyone who fears transparency attacks those who demand it. Trump’s involuntary accusation toward the media therefore appears less like a defense than like an attempt to fill the room with noise before further details become public.

The Epstein file does not disappear just because a president closes his eyes to it. And questions that are not answered eventually arise on their own.

Also Noem, according to our information, now has reason to fear for her job as well!

Trump’s decision to fire the FEMA chief sends yet another signal of the growing power struggle inside the disaster agency. According to officials inside the administration and across multiple federal departments, Christopher Richardson had been on thin ice for weeks. He skipped key operations meetings, delegated core responsibilities to others, and reportedly told colleagues in early November that he “did not expect to still have his job after Thanksgiving.” He was right. Richardson had only been appointed in the spring — as a personal friend of Corey Lewandowski, Kristi Noem’s powerful chief adviser, who is widely described as wielding unchecked influence across the Department of Homeland Security. His nomination was controversial from the start: Richardson had no background in disaster management and is said to have admitted during a June meeting that he did not know the United States was in the middle of hurricane season.

His predecessor, Cameron Hamilton, had already been fired in May for pushing back against the administration’s plan to sharply reduce FEMA’s capacity. Hamilton had warned publicly that cuts of that scale could cost lives — a message the White House had no interest in hearing. Noem removed him and installed Richardson, a politically loyal but technically unqualified replacement. With Richardson’s removal, the future of the disaster agency becomes even more uncertain. At a time of escalating natural disasters, the country is left without steady leadership, while political interference inside FEMA continues to grow. But according to our information, Richardson is not the only one on Trump’s list: Kristi Noem herself is now considered vulnerable within the president’s inner circle. Behind closed doors, aides are exploring how to remove her from her position without creating the appearance of a loss of control.

A cautious truce between Trump and Mamdani!

Donald Trump surprised on Sunday evening with an announcement that would have seemed unthinkable just a few weeks ago: He said he wanted to meet with New York’s future mayor Zohran Mamdani and “work something out.” The two men who had spent months building each other up as political adversaries are suddenly talking about a willingness to engage. Trump had repeatedly disparaged Mamdani during the campaign, falsely labeling him a “communist,” predicting the downfall of New York, and even hinting that he could strip the Uganda-born, long since naturalized American of his citizenship. Mamdani, in turn, had become the face of the resistance against Trump’s second term – a senator from Queens who defeated Cuomo and campaigned forcefully against the president’s deportation policies and anti-immigrant agenda.

Yet after his election victory, Mamdani showed another side: he wanted to make New York “Trump-proof,” but said he was ready to talk to anyone if it helps the city. Trump is now seizing on precisely that statement. “The mayor of New York wants to meet. We will work something out,” he said in Florida before flying back to Washington. The White House later confirmed that he was referring to Mamdani. What this meeting might bring remains uncertain. But the signal is unmistakable: both sides know how important a functioning line of communication between Washington and New York is. And both recognize that political confrontation may draw attention – but it does not repair streets, lower rents or make a city safer. On the side, Trump noted that the United States might soon speak with Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro. “I talk to anyone,” he said. A sentence that suddenly carries more weight in Mamdani’s case than it usually does.