🚨 Cold Capitol, Warm Salute – November 11 2025

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 5:00 AM.

Lead: Government Back Open. Democrats Left Holding the Bag

Photo credit: AI-generated image (ChatGPT/OpenAI) 

The United States Senate passed the funding bill on Monday to end the longest U.S. federal government shutdown in history. That was fun but unless some miracle happens, we’ll do it again at the end of January when this package expires!

The package at least funds the government through the holidays and ensures retroactive pay for furloughed workers. It also halts further layoffs for the time being. The funding will run through January 30, 2026.

The bill does not extend the expiring health insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act which Democrats really wanted. Republicans say that they’ll try to get to that before the end of the year. Key word: Try.

The bill now heads to the House of Representatives where it will likely clear enough votes to pass before heading to the President’s desk. He is expected to sign it as early as Wednesday.

HHS Removes Warning Labels from Menopause Drugs and Starts Selling Them as Safe

Photo credit: AI-generated image (ChatGPT/OpenAI) 

The Department of Health and Human Services announced Monday that it will remove long-standing warning labels from hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for menopausal women, saying the previous cautions were based on outdated studies.

By removing the warning labels, HHS is effectively rebranding hormone therapy as safe and, dare I say, marketing it to women.

Do they have new data to do this? No. They had an FDA Panel though where experts re-examined the evidence and decided that earlier cautionary labels were “misleading.”

The previous warnings date back to the Women’s Health Initiative study from the early 2000s, which linked combined hormone therapy to an increased risk of breast cancer. HHS now says that research was outdated and overly broad. But the association between HRT and breast cancer has not been disproven. Newer studies have refined the risks by age, timing, and formulation, yet none have definitively shown that long-term HRT use is without danger.

HRT also carries other well-documented contraindications, including an elevated risk of blood clots, stroke, and cardiovascular events, particularly in older women or those with certain preexisting conditions.

Another issue is that there’s no medical consensus on if or when a woman should stop taking it. While the North American Menopause Society and the Endocrine Society emphasize individualized care, there’s still no evidence-based protocol for safely discontinuing therapy, only the general recommendation to “use the lowest effective dose for the shortest duration.”

This is a profitable change for Pfizer and Novo Nordisk. Just last week, the Trump administration announced a deal to expand access to their weight loss drugs too. How great for them! Another windfall wrapped in the language of “women’s health.”

Of course, loss of estrogen comes with its own set of risks, which is why women deserve to be told the full story and I am here to give it to you straight ladies. Here is what the data says about HRT: You may be screwed if you don’t. You may be screwed if you do.

Your Money’s Tired. Time to Put It to Work.

Olympic Committee: No Men in Women’s Sports

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will change its policy on allowing trans-identifying men to compete in female sports after reportedly “finding scientific evidence of advantages to being born male.”

The word “finding” doing some heavy lifting in that sentence. They have all of a sudden had breaking scientific discoveries showing that men have different bodies than women. Wow. How DID they go about that research?

Previously, the IOC allowed men to compete in women’s sports based on testosterone levels and the age at which they transitioned. It was nonsense. It ignored well-established biological differences like men’s greater lung capacity, muscle mass, bone density, and overall size.

Now, the IOC is expected to finally end that experiment and prohibit men from competing against women altogether. Took them long enough.

What is unclear is if this change will affect women born with differences of sexual development (DSD) like Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan who both won boxing gold medals in the Paris games. These athletes were born female but have intersex traits, making them totally different than the men who “identify” into women’s sports.

News By The Numbers

Photo credit: NY Post

30 pounds. That is how much weight Sydney Sweeney lost in 7 weeks between movie roles that required her to be bulked up and then thin.

18. That is how many people were hospitalized when a mobile lounge at Dulles International Airport in Virginia struck a docking platform while transporting passengers.

$2,500. That was the bail set for a 20-year-old Mississippi State University student arrested after yelling “F*** the Jews” at Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy during a campus pizza review. Police charged him with disturbing the peace, not for the antisemitic remark itself. Police said this about it: “Offensive words alone are protected, but when behavior disrupts a public event or risks violence, the Starkville Police Department will take steps to help maintain safety and security.” Video shows the guy being a jerk, not a threat. Calling that a “risk of violence” is pure CYA from the police department, trying to rationalize an arrest they likely know won’t stand up in court.

SCOTUS Leaves Gay Marriage As the Law of the Land

Photo credit: Reuters

As expected, the Supreme Court did NOT overturn gay marriage! There was never really any risk that it would. Still, social media worked itself into a panic over the idea.

In August, Kim Davis, the former Kentucky clerk that refused to issue marriage certificates to gay couples, petitioned the Supreme Court to review a lower court decision that found that she had violated the gay couples’ rights.

Her petition argued that government employees shouldn’t be forced to act against their religious beliefs. In that petition, she also asked the justices to overturn gay marriage as a federal right.

The court on Monday declined her appeal, which we knew they would. Still, human-rights groups framed the decision as a fresh victory.

“Today, love won again,” said Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign. “When public officials take an oath to serve their communities, that promise extends to everyone – including LGBTQ+ people. The Supreme Court made clear today that refusing to respect the constitutional rights of others does not come without consequences.”

The court didn’t rule that at all actually. It just declined a fringe appeal and left its earlier ruling in place.

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