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Editor's Note: Please scroll below for Part 1 of our our monthly blend of mainstream and alternative October 2026 news and views, with clips beginning Oct. 1 and extending forward in reverse chronological order. See our Home Page for more recent coverage during this unusually heavy news period, and other  News Reports sections for coverage of earlier dates, months and years.

Excerpts below are from the authors' words except for subheads and occasional "Editor's notes"

Oct. 19

Top Headlines

 

Presidents Trump and Putin, United As One

Presidents Trump and Putin, United As One

 

President Trump warmly greeted Russian President Vladimir Putin last summer in Alaska with red carpet treatment rolled out by the U.S. military in honor of a longtime adversary of the United States highly active in disrupting elections, media and other institutions to help his allies operating in the United States (New York Times photo by Doug Mills).

The reporters explained that a three-way summit with China and the U.S. would cement Russia’s status as one of the world’s three great powers, a status Putin has sought since 2000 when he entered the russian flag wavingKremlin. Such a summit would formally acknowledge that the U.S. had broken from Europe and allied with Russia, a goal for Putin as he tries to take control of Ukraine.

A former Russian intelligence officer told the reporters that the summit would replace the rules-based international order established by the United States and its allies and partners after World War II with a system that divides the globe into spheres of influence.

After ten years of Trump insisting that reports of his cooperation with Russia were a hoax, here we are, watching one profoundly unpopular man tear apart the global system under which we have lived for eighty years in order to climb into bed with Vladimir Putin.

The new arrangement that Putin and Trump were negotiating in Alaska is exactly that which is described in Professor HCR's letter today [Dr. Heather Cox Richardson]. Europe would be conceded to the Russian sphere. The US under such a new power sharing arrangement would have total hegemony over the western hemisphere, and China over all of Asia.

And on Ukraine, it keeps getting worse. Trump said today it’s “time for somebody else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine,” his Treasury secretary refused three times to say whether Ukraine is even an ally, and Zelenskyy told senators that Ukraine still doesn’t have full access to U.S. intelligence or its military satellite network.

  • marcy wheelerEmptywheel, Analysis and Opinion:  Ten Years Later: Right Wingers Finally Admit Hillary Was Right, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, Ph.D), right, Oct. 19, 2026. A bunch of right wingers are speaking up against Trump’s capitulation to Russia. The WSJ — the news side of which describes that Vladimir Putin is dangling a conference at which Russia, China, and the US (I imagine they would carve up the world) — posted an op-ed demanding that, “When the election is over there needs to be a bipartisan reckoning for Mr. Trump’s budding alliance with the Kremlin against Ukraine, Europe and American interests.”

PPR GLOBAL, MOSCOW IN FLAMES as Trump Pushes to "Peace"—Ukraine HITS Russia's Capitals with Surprising STRIKE, Staff Report, Oct. 19, 2026.. Video report on Ukraine's massive and remarkably effective drone attacks on Russian assets in Moscow and St. Petersburg, hitting data centers, warehouses, oil refining and a key bridge in defiance of Putin and Trump -- but with the support of major European nations that fear Russian aggression.

  • The Contrarian, Opinion: The MAGA crackup has begun, Jennifer Rubin, right,jennifer rubin new headshot Oct. 19, 2026.  🚨 15 Days to the Midterms 🚨 Donald Trump’s lawlessness, incoherence, cruelty, and desperation are increasing as we approach a blue wave election that appears increasingly likely to sweep out Republican majorities in the House and Senate, flip numerous governorships, and deliver significant blows to Republicans in state races. In the latest Washington Post-ABC poll, his approval hit a new low of 33 percent, with a dismal 22 percent among independents. 
  • Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Donald Trump is Politically Bankrupt. Be Very Afraid, Paul Krugman, right, Oct. 19, 2026. What will he do when he has nothing left to lose? According to CNN, all-out war with Iran may be about to resume. paul krugmanYou see, it’s a well-understood proposition that the owners of businesses that are on the verge of going bust often engage in destructive behavior. And Trump is about to go bankrupt — not financially (he’s made billions through corruption) but politically. So he, like a failing businessman, has strong incentives to wreak havoc.
  • New York Times, Trump Is Pushing Ukraine to Surrender to Russia, Zelensky Says, Constant Méheut, Oct. 19, 2026. President Volodymyr Zelensky said he didn’t want to believe that Washington wanted an end to the war at Ukraine’s expense. “But that’s how it looks,” he added. President Trump is trying to force Ukraine to surrender in the war, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in an interview published on Sunday, as a deepening feud between the two leaders drives their relations to new lows.
  • Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Happy Birthday, Vlad. Yours, Always.’ - DJT, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Oct. 19, 2026.bulwark morning shots logo In Donald Trump’s telling, he wins everywhere, from Florida to California, when the votes are counted properly, and his campaign rallies do nothing but juice the Republicans he deigns to share the stage with. “MY RALLIES ARE SAVING THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, AGAIN!!!” he wrote this month.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance 

 

High Tech Trump Allies Shutting Off Facebook, TikTok To Trump Critics?

  • meta logono kings bannerPopular Information, Accountability Journalism: Meta shuts down "No Kings" account during major anti-Trump protest,Judd Legum, right, judd legumOct. 19, 2026. On Saturday, thousands of “No Kings” events were held around the country. It was a critical day for the anti-Trump protest group, which has attracted millions of participants since 2025. Saturday’s events focused on early voter activation ahead of the midterm elections. Then, at around 1:30 p.m. Eastern, No Kings’ Instagram account was taken offline. It left the organization without its biggest megaphone during the height of the protests. Another social network with close ties to the Trump administration, TikTok, is censoring ads promoting "Musk," the critical documentary. After briefly feuding with Trump, Musk has once again emerged as a key ally.

News Roundups

And overnight, Ukraine was hit again. Sixteen ballistic missiles struck Kyiv, more than half a million homes lost power, and Ukraine says it once again got no warning from the United States before the first wave hit. Meanwhile, Putin is floating a summit with Trump and Xi Jinping to decide Ukraine’s future, without Ukraine in the room.

  • The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Russia Declares ‘Checkmate’ as Trump Pushes Ukraine to Capitulate, Vance Confronted by Grieving Husband, GOP in Free Fall, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 18, 2026. Today may go down as one of the most alarming days yet for Ukraine. Hours after Zelenskyy said the Trump administration is pushing his country to capitulate, Trump went on Truth Social to attack him, claiming Zelenskyy doesn’t care about ending the war and mocking Ukraine as a country “in shambles.” All of this while Russia has spent the past week launching nearly 2,700 drones at Ukraine’s power grid, Washington paused the intelligence Ukraine relies on to spot incoming ballistic missiles, and Putin’s own envoy is bragging that the “ice has begun to break” with the United States. Tonight, the Russians are celebrating.

Special Report: Huge Riots In France. How Much Russian Influence Aimed To Disrupt West? 

 

russian influence on european street politics wrmr

Trump circle foreign elections wmr

More On Trump Sellout To Putin, Backstabbing Ukraine, Europe, NATO

  • Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Speedrunning Abandoning Ukraine, Andrew Egger, right, andrew eggerOct. 19, 2026. Almost two weeks ago, on October 7, Donald Trump mentioned offhand that it was Vladimir Putin’s birthday and the two of them had a call set up. The call went ahead two days later, and Trump has been snuggling closer to Russia and taking a sledgehammer to Ukraine ever since. You could tell the birthday chat was trouble from the jump. Russian media cheerfully reported on the “substance” and “warmth” of the phone call, with Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov reporting that “nobody wanted to hang up first.”
  • New York Times, Under Siege, Ukraine Uses F-16s to Shoot Down Russia’s Jet-Powered Drones, Lara Jakes, Oct. 19, 2026. The fighters are a key tool against Moscow’s latest weapon of choice. But deploying the multimillion-dollar planes to counter drones is an imperfect fix.
  • Hope for America, Opinion: The President of the United States is being played, Heather Delaney Reese, helen delaney reese djtright, Oct. 19, 2026. After spending most of today at his private club in West Palm Beach, Florida, the president of the United States posted on his personal social media platform, Truth Social, at 4:36 this afternoon to share his perverted reasoning for refusing to implement sanctions on Russia.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance 

 

  • U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsMorning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Power of Negative Thinking, William Kristol, right, william bill kristol imdbOct. 19, 2026. A note on two findings in the new ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll that came out yesterday. First, the generic congressional ballot has moved decisively in the Democrats’ direction. In July, Democrats had a 3-point advantage when voters were asked whom they intended to vote for in November. They now hold a 50 to 42 percent lead among registered voters—and one should probably add another point or two for a likely disproportionate Democratic turnout. But there’s another finding in the poll that suggests they could end up in even better shape.
  • New York Times, Republicans in Ohio Are Worried About Turnout. Here’s What They’re Doing About it, Emily Davies, Oct. 19, 2026. To boost Senator Jon Husted, who is in a tight race to keep his seat, some Republicans who were making a jobs pitch have pivoted to focus on socialism.
  • New York Times, That Huge Republican Cash Edge? It’s in Senate Races, Not House Races, Shane Goldmacher, Oct. 19, 2026. With Republicans seen as less likely to hold their majority in the House, the party is focusing more on the battle for the Senate, where it is vastly outspending Democrats on ads.
  • PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: Republicans Are Crumbling And Pointing Fingers At Trump For Midterm Failure, Jason Easley, right, jason easleyOct. 19, 2026. It s never a good sign when the election is two weeks away, but the blame game is already starting, but that is what is happening as Republicans are already blaming Trump.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes of Washington DC and East Potomac Park Links Map.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes of Washington DC and East Potomac Golf Links Map.

Israel, Middle East Wars 

Special Report: Child Abuses In African Gold Mining

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

More On U.S. Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets

More On U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Religion

Top Stories

 

Presidents Trump and Putin, United As One

Presidents Trump and Putin, United As One 

 

President Trump warmly greeted Russian President Vladimir Putin last summer in Alaska with red carpet treatment rolled out by the U.S. military in honor of a longtime adversary of the United States highly active in disrupting elections, media and other institutions to help his allies operating in the United States (New York Times photo by Doug Mills).

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Oct. 18, 2026 [Trump, Russian, Chinese Summit To Carve Up The World?], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 19, 2026. Tonight Lingling Wei, Alex Leary, Thomas Grove, and Josh Dawsey of the Wall Street Journal reported that Russia’s president Vladimir Putin has proposed a meeting next month with Trump and China’s president Xi Jinping to decide the fate of Ukraine.

The reporters explained that a three-way summit with China and the U.S. would cement Russia’s status as one of the world’s three great powers, a status Putin has sought since 2000 when he entered the Kremlin. Such a summit would formally acknowledge that the U.S. had broken from Europe and allied with Russia, a goal for Putin as he tries to take control of Ukraine.

A former Russian intelligence officer told the reporters that the summit would replace the rules-based international order established by the United States and its allies and partners after World War II with a system that divides the globe into spheres of influence.

After ten years of Trump insisting that reports of his cooperation with Russia were a hoax, here we are, watching one profoundly unpopular man tear apart the global system under which we have lived for eighty years in order to climb into bed with Vladimir Putin.

russian flag wavingIn just over a week, Trump has lifted sanctions on the sale of Russian oil on the global market, a way both to send desperately needed money to Russia to fund its war on Ukraine and to begin the process of reintegrating Russia into the global economy. Either Trump or Musk or both appear to have slowed down Starlink and Starshield—the two systems that manage communications for defense and offensive drones, respectively—making them inoperable during one of the worst Russian bombardments of the war. And on Friday, Trump waived additional sanctions Congress demanded in a recent law named for the late Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) two days before the sanctions were to go into effect.

european union logo rectanglePutin confidant Kirill Dmitriev, who manages Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, reposted an AI-generated image of the U.S. eagle standing next to a Russian bear, snarling at a British lion standing next to the flag of the European Union—the U.S. and Russia standing shoulder to shoulder against the United Kingdom and Europe—with the caption “Things Have Changed…”

Over the post, Dmitriev wrote: “Together.” He cheered on Trump’s waiving of the sanctions imposed by the Graham Act and, in response to a post claiming that Trump’s move to bolster Russia had caused panic in Europe and Ukraine, posted: “Checkmate” (as shown below).

russian chess stooge

In The Atlantic, national security scholar Tom Nichols noted with evident disgust: “The American commander in chief has abandoned the Western order, the most successful—and powerful—security arrangement in human history.” This decision, Nichols wrote, appears to have had nothing to do with the national interest of the United States. Instead, Trump appears to have thrown out the world order because of his own personal interests, his admiration for Putin, his resentment of Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, “and quite possibly other factors that so far have remained obscured from the American public.”

Outrage over Trump’s actions has come from across the political spectrum. Nichols notes that former federal prosecutor turned conservative commenter Andrew McCarthy, right, wrote that Trump is giving Putin “aid and comfort.” Those words echo Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution, which defines treason against the United andrew mccarthyStates, as “levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”

McCarthy’s blistering article in the National Review on Saturday reminds readers that Putin is a murderous dictator who is actively supporting Iran’s military operations against the United States with both intelligence and drones and provoking U.S. allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). And yet Trump is siding with him against Ukraine, a U.S. ally. McCarthy demanded Congress hold “immediate hearings about this week’s shocking escalation of the Trump-Putin alliance.”

The backlash appears to have pushed Trump to try to justify his gutting of the Graham Act, at least. This afternoon, he posted on social media: “My decision on Russia is a very simple one.” He went on to claim that he didn’t want “to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table” in the quest for a peace deal with Ukraine. He shrugged off Russia’s support for Iran in its war against the U.S. by suggesting it “is doing very little, if anything, to help the Islamic Republic of Iran, compared to what they could be doing, and I want to keep it that way.” And then he attacked Zelensky, blaming Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries rather than his own war on Iran for the high cost of diesel in the U.S. and claiming that Zelensky “doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did.”

Nichols tore through this screed, calling it a pathetic admission of Trump’s weakness “in his relationship with the Kremlin boss.” “The leader of the most powerful nation on the planet,” Nichols pointed out, “is trying to get everyone else, including the American Congress, to avoid antagonizing Putin, instead of warning Putin not to even think about aiding Iran.”

Until now, Nichols wrote, “[a] world in which the White House is allied to the Kremlin was…the stuff of paranoid fiction. Manchurian candidates and red presidents were fantasies.” Now that alliance exists. Nichols laments that Trump and Putin have fulfilled the dreams of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and the Cold War leaders who followed him, humbling and humiliating the mighty United States.

The Framers of the Constitution thought they had designed a system that would prevent the rise of a tyrant. They believed U.S. representatives would be so fearful of a leader’s abuse of power that they would impeach any president who overstepped his authority, and that U.S. senators would be so jealous of their own power they would convict, and tyranny would not be able to take root. The Framers especially did not anticipate that senators, to whom they deliberately gave longer terms than they gave the president, would put party over country and stand aside as a president and his appointees captured the prerogatives of the Senate.

And yet, here we are.

But even given the evidence of the past ten years, it is truly astonishing to see Republicans, who for more than forty years have championed President Ronald Reagan for his stance against the Soviet Union, stand aside as Trump trashes the post–World War II system of global security in order to ally the United States with a Russian dictator.

Lance’s Substack, Opinion: If Trump Accepts Putin Proposal For Summit To Dismember Ukraine, He Is Outing Himself As A Russian Agent, Not Just Their "Asset," Lance F Rosen, right, lance rosenOct. 19, 2026. This proposed summit is what most of us following the global strategic crisis expected he might do along these lines. Our column assessed this threat extensively in our coverage over many years. For example, our analysis of the Alaska summit meeting in 2025 was explicit that the purpose for it was to start the process of dividing up the world into new spheres of influence, which meant ending the post-World War II order.

The new arrangement that Putin and Trump were negotiating in Alaska is exactly that which is described in Professor HCR's letter today [Dr. Heather Cox Richardson, left]. Europe would be conceded to the Russian sphere. heather cox richardson cnnThe US under such a new power sharing arrangement would have total hegemony over the western hemisphere, and China over all of Asia.

There is no law per se which makes it illegal for a US President to attend a summit meeting with two heads of state, Putin and Xi, each of whom he has already met with in the last two years. That is unless an unresolved state of war exists among them. There is no officially declared state of war between the United States and the russian flag wavingRussian Federation which would be a legal tripwire for treason charges. However Russia is arming and giving logistical support to Iran with whom we are currently engaged in military conflict, and Ukraine has security guarantees from NATO, for which the US has been the leading guarantor.

Most certainly, treason it would be if Trump accepts the invitation. And in reality, Putin would not have made the proposal public had not the meeting already been agreed to, either through personal discussions between them or diplomatic channels. And this insanity does have all the indications of coming out of a Trump-Putin phone call. So unless we derail it, this will happen.

Russia has acted as our strategic enemy and Trump is giving them "aid and comfort." If the Trump Cabinet does not immediately act to block his actions they are also complicit in treason, therefore every single one of them must be removed from office with him and be put on trial.

It would mean that the US has for all intents and purposes walked out of the NATO military alliance.

It means he is in effect conceding Europe and its economic resources to the Russian geopolitical sphere of influence, repudiating the Article Five mutual defense provision which is the backbone of our strategic defense alliances.

It means unilaterally voiding the NATO Treaty which served to keep the peace in Europe for 80 years.

While only the Senate has the expressed powers of "advise and consent" to pass ratification resolutions for treaties negotiated by the President, there is no constitutional provision for repudiation of treaties. It has in fact been done by a President before and upheld as lawful in the case of Taiwan. (Goldwater vs. Carter) Therefore, were Trump to end the US membership in NATO, it would not be technically unconstitutional or a high crime. "Technically."

As Professor HCR noted in today's summary of Trump's actions over the recent weeks, he voided the Lindsey O. Graham sanctions Act by purchasing approximately two billion dollars worth of Russian diesel fuel, clearly intended as an attempted pre-election market rigging stunt. (Which of course fizzled within minutes.) He issued an executive order exempting Russia from US sanctions laws. He has called for the removal of Ukraine's president Zelenskyy, and if they go ahead with this summit without Zelenskyy's presence and participation, Trump is giving Putin a green light to remove his government from power through any means necessary. He has acted to restrict Ukraine's access to the military grade Starlink comms vital to their defense.

For many years intelligence professionals have characterized Trump as a "Russian asset" based upon his personal history of shady dealings with Russian government leaders, crime syndicates, and oligarchs. Trump has done nothing but lie and deflect, by droning on about "Russia, Russia, Russia," mainly for the purpose of gaslighting his own supporters and fueling Fox's damage control propaganda. Now he is exposing himself as their full-fledged agent.

Meaning there can be no doubt (as if there ever was) that he is willfully serving Russian interests in violation of US national interests. An "asset" of a foreign intelligence service is someone who is used by them, whether consciously or not, but might have other loyalties and is not necessarily always bound to follow their orders. An asset can be profiled and played without their realizing it. Whereas a conscious agent is a full time deployable asset operating with cover.

He is not just helping Putin. He is working for him. This is not news to most people here. However if he goes to this meeting he is making it official that he is a Russian-controlled actor if not an actual spy, and is acting in a way harmful to US national security interests on their behalf.

This all means the end of virtually every existing collective security agreement between the US and its allies and economic partners.

It means the likely dismantling of the United Nations and all of its vital global functions, including the mediation of international agreements on human rights, peacekeeping, climate, and various kinds of international disputes.

It also means that Trump is asserting his "new Monroe Doctrine" to be able to install and remove governments in Central and South America as he sees fit. Which only a deluded idiot would not recognize will mean the US is planning for a horrific bloody long war with Mexico.

Here is an excerpt from my coverage days prior to the Alaska meeting:

["So we have an illegal summit between and indicted war criminal and a convicted felon who happen to control the world's two largest nuclear arsenals. Their plan is to divide up the world in the fashion of mafia kingpins carving up turf, under terms which are, in effect, agreements to leave each other's criminal syndicates alone to conduct business within redrawn boundaries or spheres of influence.

...Let's get real. Trump's perfidy is not just about Ukraine. He is giving Putin a green light to seize geopolitical and economic control of all of Europe. What do people think Russia will grow into once they have possesion of Ukraine's industrial heartland, agricultural sector, strategically vital ports, and a part of their labor force? What will happen when Putin has taken Odessa, through which a significant chunk of the world's food supply is shipped? And how long before he moves against Poland or the Baltic states? Will Europe go against both Russia and the US in order to defend Ukraine and the rest? Will European democracies go the way of ours in the aftermath of these crises." August 9, 2025]

And this quote from a week later, right after the summit, which failed to consolidate the secret Trump-Putin protocols due to a unified European opposition;

["On one hand the Europeans are stepping up and that is good. But someone needs to state that the main thing which has kept Russia at bay for decades has been Article 5 of the NATO Charter, which states that an attack on one member is an attack on all. Which means that the ultimate guarantor of peace in Europe has been the US nuclear triad. Trump, Vance, and Hegseth all but made clear at the Munich meetings earlier this year that Article 5 is a dead letter, and that the US no longer sees Europe's defense as its primary strategic role, because Trump is "tired of paying for it," and as he said during the campaign, "Putin can do whatever the hell he wants" in Europe." August 15, 2025]

In addition, a quote from our coverage of that year's Munich security conference where Rubio and Hegseth unveiled their new racialist security doctrine of reversing the "white blight" in Europe;

["Trump’s handlers are in fact pushing something entirely different, which is a redivision of the world between two nuclear armed mafia kingpins into new imperial “spheres of influence.” (This still takes into account China having autonomy within their sphere, which mostly consists of their internal market, but is centered on the “one belt-one road” transportation corridor, the “New Silk Road” project.)

...I feel that I need to elaborate on just what such a world order would look like. The criteria for the proposed realignment of US global alliances is to throw out the entire rules based post-war order, and replace it with a business deal in effect, between two oligarchs who are mapping out a series of agreements for looting rights of the world’s dwindling raw material wealth. This pertains mostly to access to non-renewable energy such as fossil fuels, precious metals, and rare earth minerals. This division of the world into hemispheric looting grounds by these two fascist would-be Emperors, is rooted in the twisted ideologies of oligarchical “gangster capitalism,” religious fundamentalism, and white supremacy. Racially-driven culture war and wars fought militarily are two flip sides of the same coin. We have been writing about precisely this policy agenda, which we used to term “Fortress America,” since Trump was first elected in 2016." December 6, 2025]

According to multiple sources, there is massive pushback against Trump's perfidy coming from all across the political spectrum because most Americans support Ukraine, so the meeting itself is not yet set in stone. Many in fact see this as a desperate act of self-preservation by Trump on the eve of the midterm elections.

 

donald trump money palmer report Custom

There are three things which Trump cares about, each of which are symptomatic of his malignant narcissism. His money, the market indexes, and his approval rating, each of which are all about him.

His response to his poll ratings cratering is simply to say they are fake, which he knows they aren't and is consciously lying about them, not just delusional. His explanation for all economic problems is to blame Joe Biden for them. His solutions? Deploy the military someplace, whether it means bombing Venezuela or Iran, or occupying Washington DC, then declaring victory in a lame attempt to hype both the polls and the markets

If somehow GOP blowback against this Putin proposed summit prevents it from happening, my assessment is that Trump will lash out like the madman that he is by hitting Iran with either a nuclear weapon or a "MOAB" conventional WMD before the election. I agree in principle with the statement by Marjorie Taylor-Greene yesterday warning about this as a likely scenario. I don't trust her personally given that she is just a sock-puppet for her new guru Tucker Carlson, but she is known to be "wired in" to various networks from her days on the Homeland Security committee where she had access to classified material and briefings. If she is putting out this warning, it is coming from someone who is right smack in the middle of it.

So, what can we do about it? I'll tell you, but most of you won't like it and probably are too cynical to even try it. But I'll say it anyway.

Call, text, email, and even visit Republican Congressmen and Senators, or intervene at their town meetings if any, and deliver a very loud and clear simple message. They have to tell Trump to not go, and that if he does he will be impeached. That's it. Now is the time they actually might listen, because Trump is sinking the careers of most of them.

Don't worry about what they say. It means nothing. Remember that every German officer during the Nazi period greeted each other and signed their letters with the salutation "H__l H____r," yet it was the same German officers who in the end plotted to overthrow him when it was clear he intended to take his whole country down with him. Let your message register, what they say is not what they are thinking, and that is a default setting of theirs.

Or, you can disregard all of this, go with the flow, and just post a meme about Susan Dell's face like so many others on social media are doing. At least we'll get an "lol" out of it.

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Comment: Alarm as Trump Ordered Voting Machine Hack, Vance Mocks Epstein Files Protester, Trump Completely Turns on Ukraine, and More, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 19, 2026. Two weeks before the midterms, we just learned that Trump appointees asked the nation’s top election security agency to secretly get their hands on a voting machine and hack it, and told staff not to alert the manufacturer if they found any flaws. At the same time, the agency meant to protect our elections has been gutted, and election officials from both parties, including a Republican in deep-red Utah, are now being targeted by their own federal government.

And on Ukraine, it keeps getting worse. Trump said today it’s “time for somebody else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine,” his Treasury secretary refused three times to say whether Ukraine is even an ally, and Zelenskyy told senators that Ukraine still doesn’t have full access to U.S. intelligence or its military satellite network.

I have some news of my own. On election night, I’m going live from 6 PM to 12 AM EST on all platforms, including right here. I’m still working out the details and should have final information within the next week, but get ready, because big guests are coming. You won’t want to miss it.

Between now and then, I’ll be working around the clock to bring you everything you need to know, from what this administration is doing to our elections to real-time updates from people on the ground in Ukraine. I’ve faced attacks for doing this work, and I’m not going to stop.

But I can only do it because of you. There’s no corporation, no billionaire, and no politician behind this newsletter.

Let’s get into it.

Trump Appointees Asked Federal Cybersecurity Agency to Secretly Hack a Voting Machine as Pressure on Elections Mounts

Political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security asked the nation’s top election security agency to secretly obtain a voting machine and hack it, according to a new ProPublica investigation. Two former administration officials told ProPublica that a few months into Trump’s second term, appointees wanted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA, to acquire a machine, examine it, and report the findings so they could be passed to the White House. CISA staff were also told not to alert the voting machine company if they found any flaws, which goes against the agency’s standard practice. Career staffers were shocked, and one former official said they feared the results would be kept “in their back pocket to invalidate any [election] results they don’t like.” Staff told the appointees the request was impossible, partly because the agents capable of it had just been laid off by Elon Musk’s DOGE, and the appointees eventually stopped pushing. The White House said Trump has done more than any president to ensure free and fair elections, while DHS and CISA did not respond to ProPublica’s questions.

The administration has gutted the very agency responsible for protecting elections, leaving states to fend for themselves heading into the midterms. More than 1,000 CISA employees have been laid off or pushed out, shrinking the agency by about a third, and Trump’s 2027 budget would cut another $700 million. State officials told ProPublica that CISA was “literally nonexistent” during the critical planning period for the midterms, offering no help and no explanation. Trust was further shattered when the administration released confidential information states had shared with CISA about the 2020 election to support Trump’s debunked fraud claims. When CISA’s new acting director, a former Trump White House adviser who is also a Virginia GOP district representative, finally reached out in August, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes told him directly that he didn’t trust him. CISA released a last-minute election security plan in late September, which Maine’s secretary of state called “too little, too late.”

A White House task force created to find election fraud hasn’t found any, and has instead turned to releasing records targeting people who investigated Trump. The task force, led by pro-Trump journalist John Solomon, has published 113 documents from probes including Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and Jack Smith’s classified documents case. Trump allies see the releases as helpful to a Florida-based “grand conspiracy” case aimed at indicting former officials, though that probe has produced no indictments and its lead prosecutor recently resigned amid reported pressure to move faster. One release showed the FBI used a routine, court-approved technique to track phone numbers from calls by Susie Wiles, now Trump’s chief of staff, during the documents investigation. Legal experts say the records show investigators following normal procedures. Solomon openly acknowledged the goal is to serve “the court of public opinion,” even though the documents are posted on the White House website under the heading “election integrity.”

Pro-democracy groups are racing to prepare for possible federal interference before, during, and after Election Day. Before the vote, the administration has pushed to restrict mail voting, demanded states’ voter rolls, and pressed for tougher voting laws, though it has lost every one of the more than 25 lawsuits it filed seeking voter rolls. On Election Day, FBI Director Kash Patel and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin have refused to rule out sending federal agents to polling places, despite a 150-year-old federal law barring armed agents at the polls. After the election, groups are preparing for scenarios ranging from ballot seizures to Trump invoking the Insurrection Act or declaring a national emergency, which he has not ruled out. Advocates have recruited volunteers to serve as “election first responders” at polling sites nationwide and say they will sue immediately over any attempt to seize ballots. Trump has cast doubt on U.S. elections on more than 70% of the days of his second term, according to one analysis.

Election officials from both parties are now facing direct pressure from the federal government, 60 Minutes reports. Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican, said threats to elections now come “from within our own government” after the Justice Department told her in writing she is under investigation for refusing to hand over voters’ Social Security numbers and other private data. Officials in 29 other states also refused, and DOJ has sued all of them, while just last week it threatened to prosecute California officials who count ballots from 20,000 people it labels “likely noncitizens.” The administration claims without evidence that 278,000 noncitizens are registered, but Henderson found just 52 questionable voters out of more than 2 million in Utah. In Georgia, the FBI seized more than 600 boxes of 2020 election records and reassigned 260 analysts to the probe without any result. DOJ civil rights chief Harmeet Dhillon called concerns that Trump might challenge the midterm results “paranoia,” as surveys show only about half of Americans expect the elections to be free and fair.

“It’s Time for Somebody Else to Negotiate on Behalf of Ukraine”: Trump Slams Zelenskyy and Defends Lifting Russian Sanctions

Trump escalated his attacks on Zelenskyy Monday, suggesting someone else should negotiate on Ukraine’s behalf. Responding to Zelenskyy’s warning that he is on the “wrong side of history,” Trump told reporters that if the Ukrainian leader had listened to him, he would have made a much better deal long ago and saved a million lives. “I think it’s time for somebody else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine,” Trump said, adding that very little land has changed hands while a tremendous number of people have died. He again rejected the idea that waiving sanctions on Russia handed Moscow a win, insisting he is supporting an end to the war. Trump claimed Zelenskyy “is not helping matters much” and doesn’t want the war to stop, while saying he simply wants to see people stop dying. In a TV interview Friday, he went further, saying Zelenskyy “is not a good guy for us to deal with” and that he is “not a big fan.”

Zelenskyy told a bipartisan group of senators that Ukraine still lacks full access to U.S. intelligence and its military satellite network. On a call hosted by Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, Zelenskyy said intelligence sharing and access to Starshield, the military version of Starlink, remain partially degraded, according to Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who called the update “highly alarming.” That contradicts claims from the administration that service has been restored and intelligence sharing was never paused. Blumenthal said senators from both parties are preparing to take immediate action to show their displeasure. Four Republican senators have already joined a bipartisan letter asking the Pentagon’s inspector general to investigate whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or other senior officials ordered or knew in advance about the Starshield restrictions. The senators also warned that cutting Ukraine’s intelligence access may have put American personnel on the ground in danger.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent refused three times to say whether the United States considers Ukraine an ally. Asked repeatedly on “Meet the Press,” Bessent first pointed to the intelligence, satellite support, and weapons sales the U.S. provides, and then said, “I’m not the secretary of state. I’m not the president.” He called it “very reckless” for Zelenskyy to accuse the U.S. government of restricting Ukraine’s satellite internet, insisting no one in the administration did that. Bessent also claimed Trump had not lifted Russia sanctions, describing the move as a 60-day pause, while acknowledging the diesel embargo had been lifted. He accused Zelenskyy of presenting a “false binary” that Ukraine must win, saying the war must end through a negotiated settlement. Bessent also blamed European NATO members for not supplying more Patriot missile systems to Ukraine.

Rolling Stone reports the White House pressured Ukraine with an ultimatum to stop striking Russian oil refineries or lose U.S. intelligence. Multiple officials described hours of heated phone calls after the White House ordered its people to ramp up pressure on Kyiv, according to the outlet. The piece argues Trump is turning the U.S. into an enemy of Ukraine and an ally of Russia, noting he has repeatedly blamed Zelenskyy rather than Putin for the war continuing. It points out that most Americans still support Ukraine, and that the Graham Act sanctions Trump waived passed the Senate 86-11. Rolling Stone also reported the administration worked with Elon Musk to throttle Ukraine’s satellite access, though both the White House and Musk deny responsibility. The author warns that removing Zelenskyy would not end the war, because Ukrainians are fighting for their national identity, not for any one leader.

Ukraine says it carried out the world’s first drone evacuation of a wounded soldier from the front lines. Ukraine’s 92nd Separate Assault Brigade shared a video showing an injured infantryman strapping himself into a large drone and being flown to safety at low altitude. The brigade said heavy Russian drone activity and landmines made evacuation by ground vehicle impossible, so its specialists tried something that had never been done before. The aircraft was a heavy-lift hexacopter originally designed as a bomber, and engineers had to ensure it could carry a person without flipping or swaying. The soldier is now receiving treatment, and the unit’s squad leader called him a hero for agreeing to the mission. The breakthrough comes days after Ukraine’s government approved a pilot program to use drones to transport medicines, blood samples, and donor organs between hospitals.

Trump Wants to Rename New Mexico, Vance Mocks Epstein Files Protester, and More

Trump called on New Mexico to change its name to “New America.” In a Truth Social post Monday, Trump wrote that “We are not Mexico, we are the United States of America!” and claimed the new name would raise the state’s prestige, home values, and incomes. He also took a swipe at the state’s elections, suggesting the name change might make its “Crooked Elections” honest again, without offering any evidence of fraud. New Mexico has voted Democratic in eight of the last nine presidential elections, and Democrats hold every statewide office and its entire congressional delegation. The post follows Trump’s executive orders renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” and Lake Ontario “Lake America.” It came just two weeks before the midterms, as Republicans face a difficult political landscape.

JD Vance suggested a protester demanding the release of the Epstein files was an undocumented immigrant. During a rally in Hendersonville, North Carolina, a man standing directly behind Vance shouted “God bless our children! Release the Epstein files!” before being removed by security as the crowd chanted “USA.” Vance then joked that he had to amend his earlier claim of zero illegal border crossings, adding with a smile, “But one isn’t bad, right?” Critics noted that releasing the Epstein files was a promise Trump himself campaigned on and that supporters have demanded for years. California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office called it insulting to suggest only undocumented immigrants care about justice for victims. The administration has faced continued criticism from survivors over its handling of the files.

Trump ally Ric Grenell is facing accusations that a nearly $6 million donation meant for the Kennedy Center never arrived. Alina Habba, Trump’s former attorney, reportedly stormed into the Oval Office earlier this month to tell the president that a donation her husband, Turkish businessman Turhan Mildon, made in 2025 never reached the center. According to documents from Mildon’s lawyers, he transferred $17.6 million to an account Grenell supplied for a separate business deal, with the understanding that $5.6 million would go to the Kennedy Center. Kennedy Center staff told Axios they never found the donation and that Mildon actually owed a $270,000 pledge. Grenell, who has served as acting head of the Kennedy Center and special envoy to Venezuela, vehemently denied the allegations, saying he never asked for money and never received any payment. White House counsel Will Scharf is now reviewing the matter, including texts allegedly sent by Grenell.

ken paxton mugA Black conservative influencer says she was kicked out of a Ken Paxton rally in Texas without explanation. Thelma Louise, a pro-Trump TikTok creator with more than 200,000 followers, said she drove two hours to the Senate candidate’s San Antonio event on Sunday before being told Paxton’s campaign manager wanted her to leave. Her videos show no disturbance before her removal, and she says she still has no idea why it happened. A visibly emotional Louise said she left the Democratic Party two years ago, volunteered for Trump’s campaign, and has worked hard promoting Republicans. She showed press credentials from past GOP events, including the party’s midterm convention in Dallas. She said she does not blame the Republican Party, but holds Paxton’s campaign manager responsible for what she called disrespectful treatment.

Trump’s border czar hinted that the FBI may be investigating Rep. Ilhan Omar. Asked on Fox News whether the administration was investigating any other alleged misconduct by the Minnesota Democrat, Tom Homan declined to elaborate, saying, “I know things, but that’s a question for the FBI.” It was not clear what the FBI would be investigating or whether it was connected to the existing Homeland Security case. Federal agents searched Omar’s Washington home last week in a probe reportedly focused on whether her father listed an incorrect age on her citizenship paperwork when she was a child. Omar’s attorneys have demanded the return of her seized belongings, arguing there is no legitimate basis to claim she violated any citizenship law. Justice Department guidelines prohibit timing investigative steps to influence an election, and early voting in Minnesota began last week.

MeidasTouch reports that Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s records list two different home addresses. According to the report, Ramaswamy’s New York attorney registration, renewed this year, lists a home address in West Chester, Ohio, while his Ohio voter registration lists a residence in Columbus. New York requires attorneys to list their home address and update it within 30 days of a change, and Ohio law requires voters to register where they actually live. MeidasTouch argues that one of the two records appears to be inaccurate, which could raise issues under either state’s rules. The report notes the discrepancy is striking given Ramaswamy’s vocal campaigning against voter fraud and his push to add voter ID to Ohio’s constitution. Ramaswamy, who has lived in Ohio since 2019, has never registered for the Ohio bar.

Other news:

aung san suu kyi 2011 myanmar Myanmar’s military government released rare photos of detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, shown at left in a 2011 photo, receiving books sent by King Charles III. Officials from Myanmar’s Home Affairs Ministry delivered two books, a sealed envelope, and diplomatic correspondence to the 81-year-old Nobel laureate in the capital, Naypyitaw. The books focus on soil health and environmental issues, reflecting the king’s longtime advocacy for sustainable agriculture, and the two met in London in 2017. Suu Kyi has been detained since the military seized power in February 2021 and is serving her sentence under house arrest on charges her supporters and rights groups call politically motivated. Her whereabouts and condition have been largely hidden from public view, making the photos a rare glimpse of her. The release comes as Myanmar’s military-backed government tries to end its international isolation, though it continues to reject calls from neighboring countries to free her.

Trump signed an executive order creating a new women’s health division at the National Institutes of Health and a White House task force on the issue. Joined by first lady Melania Trump in the Rose Garden, the president said the effort aims to close research gaps and modernize care for women. The task force will be led by Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Melania Trump spoke about using artificial intelligence to speed up women’s health discoveries and improve access and affordability. The initiative comes after the administration pushed for cuts at NIH, sought to slash grants for diversity-related research, and downsized the federal health workforce. It has also launched a safety review of the abortion pill mifepristone that medical groups call politically motivated, and moved to require family planning grant applicants to align with Trump’s political priorities.

Christiane Amanpour is leaving CNN after more than 43 years. CNN chief executive Mark Thompson announced in a memo that the network’s chief international anchor will scale her show back to once a week early next year before it ends in May, with her final day at the end of June. Amanpour, 68, has covered nearly every major global conflict of the past four decades, from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Bosnian War to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza. She also confirmed she is leaving PBS, where she hosts “Amanpour & Company.” In a statement, she thanked her colleagues for working to report “the truth about the world and to the world, without fear nor favor.” Her departure comes just weeks after David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance formally took over CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.

Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts is likely out for the season after doctors found blood clots in his leg and lungs. The team said Hurts was diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis in his calf along with clots in both lungs, though he is clinically stable and is expected to have no long-term effects. He was first diagnosed with a less serious superficial clot before the team’s game in London, where he still played the full game after doctors cleared him. A follow-up scan in Philadelphia showed the clot had moved, prompting the team to sit him Sunday and order more tests. Hurts is now on blood thinners, which typically last three to six months and bar athletes from contact sports because of the risk of dangerous bleeding. The Super Bowl MVP will be replaced by backup Tanner McKee, as Eagles fans hope for a repeat of Nick Foles’s backup-led Super Bowl run in 2018.

Elon Musk and Anthropic are both promising to give the public a stake in their companies as concerns about AI’s economic impact grow. Musk posted that next year he will give one SpaceX share to every child in America, a pledge currently worth about $10.8 billion, though he provided no details. His announcement came a day after Anthropic said it would commit 5% of its shares to a public benefit fund to address the labor market impacts of AI. Anthropic, which is preparing for a public offering that analysts say could value it at over $1 trillion, said the fund could make charitable donations or direct money to specific populations. The pledges come as public opinion sours on AI, with 64% of Americans telling an AP poll it is developing too fast and 70% telling NBC News they are more worried than excited. Musk has a history of bold announcements that never materialized, including his 2018 claim that he had secured funding to take Tesla private.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear a new case challenging school admissions policies aimed at boosting diversity, this time in Maryland. The case targets the lottery-based admissions process for magnet middle schools in Montgomery County, a large, diverse suburb of Washington, D.C. Challengers argue the policy unfairly elevates Black and Latino students and disadvantages Asian students in high-performing schools, in violation of the 14th Amendment. The court is not expected to rule directly on the constitutional question, but rather on what evidence challengers must show to bring such a claim. Since the court struck down race-conscious college admissions in 2023, conservatives have accused schools of trying to achieve the same goals through race-neutral policies. Lower courts ruled in favor of the school district.

The Supreme Court will decide whether to strike down a 150-year-old federal ban on distilling liquor at home. The law, passed in 1868 to fight tax evasion, bars distilling spirits in any home or surrounding structure, with penalties of up to $10,000 in fines and five years in prison. Challengers, including the Hobby Distillers Association, argue Congress exceeded its taxing power because the ban doesn’t actually raise any revenue. People have long been able to make beer and wine at home legally, and some states, including West Virginia, have legalized home distilling. Federal appeals courts reached conflicting rulings in cases from Texas and Ohio, so both sides asked the Supreme Court to settle the issue nationwide. Even if challengers win, home distillers would still have to register their stills and pay excise taxes.

Khalid Shaikh MohammedThe Supreme Court rejected an attempt by alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, left, to revive a plea deal that would have spared him the death penalty. Mohammed and two other alleged plotters had reached an agreement with military prosecutors in 2024 that would have given them life sentences, and a military judge approved it. Days later, then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin withdrew the deal, saying he had the authority to override it. Military courts disagreed, but a federal appeals court sided with the government in August. The Supreme Court’s decision clears the way for the men to stand trial before a military commission in 2028, where they could face the death penalty. The case has been delayed for years, partly because of concerns over evidence obtained through CIA torture.

 

 


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Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton is shown denouncing her Republican rival Donald Trump as a Putin "puppet" in a presidential debate in 2016, as Trump denied the allegation and instead claimed that Clinton was the "puppet."

Emptywheel, Analysis and Opinion:  Ten Years Later: Right Wingers Finally Admit Hillary Was Right, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, Ph.D), right, Oct. 19, 2026.marcy wheeler A bunch of right wingers are speaking up against Trump’s capitulation to Russia. The WSJ — the news side of which describes that Vladimir Putin is dangling a conference at which Russia, China, and the US (I imagine they would carve up the world) — posted an op-ed demanding that, “When the election is over there needs to be a bipartisan reckoning for Mr. Trump’s budding alliance with the Kremlin against Ukraine, Europe and American interests.”

At NRO [National Review Online], Andrew McCarthy was even more shrill.

Since the start of Trump’s second term, it has been excruciating to watch America’s president blame the victim, our ally Ukraine, for Putin’s war of aggression. Reagan and Poland this is not. As Ukraine fights for its survival against Moscow’s would-be hegemon, today’s president of the United States hectors it to surrender territory that Putin has been unable to take on the battlefield after four years of barbarism.

[snip]

Now, we have what Congress — Republicans and Democrats, together — should regard as the last straw.

I’m not as sanguine as WSJ and McCarthy that Republicans in Congress will act. Don Bacon has promised that Ukraine supporters will scotch any effort to push through reconciliation or confirm judges (the latter of which he can’t control, but John Cornyn could).

Six Republicans have signed a letter calling for more pressure on Putin — again, enough to halt any Trump agenda in the lame duck — but people like Katie Britt and Roger Wicker are still playing coy.

The Republican signatories included Senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, John Cornyn of Texas and Alan Armstrong of Oklahoma

[snip]

The letter also highlighted divisions among Republicans over how aggressively to confront Moscow. Notably absent from the signatories was Senator Darline Graham of South Carolina, who championed the Russia and Iran sanctions legislation that Mr. Trump signed into law last month. Her brother, Senator Lindsey Graham, had been the leading proponent of the legislation before his death in July.

Also missing were Senator Katie Britt, Republican of Alabama, who has sought to play a more forceful role on national security issues, including Ukraine and Russia policy; and Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee and a staunch supporter of Ukraine. Mr. Wicker was meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Kyiv around the time Mr. Trump announced the agreement on Friday.

In a statement to Alabama Daily News on Monday, Ms. Britt expressed support for continuing to “apply maximum pressure on Russia to end its unlawful war against Ukraine.” But she has not gone as far as some of her G.O.P. colleagues in denouncing the president’s move.

The absence of Ms. Britt, Ms. Graham and Mr. Wicker from the letter was particularly notable given its explicit appeal to the sanctions law, which the senators said was intended to strengthen Mr. Trump’s negotiating position by increasing economic pressure on Russia and countries helping sustain Moscow’s war.

I’m a bit at a loss by all this: people are finally admitting that Trump is in the tank for Russia but cannot go back and see that the current attempt to bribe Trump to betray Ukraine — and the United States — is a seamless continuation of the quid quo pro started 10 years ago.

The Contrarian, Opinion: The MAGA crackup has begun, Jennifer Rubin, right,jennifer rubin new headshot Oct. 19, 2026.  🚨 15 Days to the Midterms 🚨 Donald Trump’s lawlessness, incoherence, cruelty, and desperation are increasing as we approach a blue wave election that appears increasingly likely to sweep out Republican majorities in the House and Senate, flip numerous governorships, and deliver significant blows to Republicans in state races.

Trump has tried everything in his playbook: attempting to sabotage mail-in voting, effectively bribing voters with contrarian logoa ludicrous promise of a $5,000 check if they keep Republicans in power, and traveling to red states to deliver rants intended to pump up his base. And yet, his own conduct further undercuts Republicans’ already-dismal election prospects, with Republican candidates straining to run from policies in which they have been complicit (e.g. tariffs, the war, ICE’s reckless blitz).

In the latest Washington Post-ABC poll, his approval hit a new low of 33 percent, with a dismal 22 percent among independents. His handling of the economy has plunged to 28 percent and all the way to 21 percent on affordability (which he says is a hoax). Under Trump, “the Republican Party is worse at 28 points underwater (35% favorable and 63% unfavorable),” while large majorities “call Trump and the Republican Party ‘too extreme’ — 66% and 55%, respectively” (vs. just 36 percent for the Democratic Party). And a key finding: “By a wide margin, Americans prefer that the next Congress be controlled by Democrats, to act as a check on Trump (59%) than by Republicans, to support Trump’s agenda (35%).”Demonstrators at an Oct. 1. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

Democrats, understandably, are therefore thrilled Trump keeps insisting voters pretend he is on the ballot. In just the past week, his total capitulation to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin on sanctions relief and his psychotic ramblings out on the stump might instead convince voters Democratic majorities are urgently needed to keep him on a short leash. (His treacherous betrayal of Ukraine and unabashed cheerleading for Putin triggered an unusual bipartisan backlash, demands for investigation, proposals to countermand the diesel bailout, and further questions about his personal and financial motives.)

Trump’s behavior on the campaign trail has only intensified the sense that the country is rudderless, careening from one disaster to another without a sentient leader. “Trump, 80, has used his appearances to muse about animals’ opposition to the second amendment, to call one Republican candidate ‘nerdy,’ and to demonstrate a hitherto unexpressed fascination with ‘asses’ — men’s and babies’, in particular,” The Guardian reported. “Along the way Trump has repeated his lie that 2020 was a rigged election, claimed, falsely, that he has secured $21T in foreign investment in the US, and issued dark warnings about Democrats.”

As happens when a regime is hurtling toward defeat and popular support plummets, the wheels seem to be coming off the already-rickety Trump regime bus. The forced resignation of grifter Kimberly Guilfoyle, revelations about the donors who forked over $330 million for the East Wing destruction/ballroom monstrosity, the firing of disastrously incompetent Katie Zacharia (replete with leaks from insiders disparaging her), and the possible ouster of Chief of Staff Susie Wiles mean the knives are out as Trump flunkies search for scapegoats. (“Staff upheaval is expected as officials brace for a blame game over Republican performance, with some distancing themselves from what they see as a fading political movement,” the Los Angeles Times confirmed.)

Most disastrous for Republicans, Trump’s policies have created the perfect storm. On the economic front, consumer and producer numbers released last week confirm that prices have soared, reminding voters that Trump’s toxic brew of tariffs and soaring energy costs resulting from his calamitous war have made ordinary life unaffordable for millions. (His fiscal trainwreck has contributed to soaring interest rates, raising the potential for stagflation like we saw in the 1970s and ’80s.) Trump’s illegal, reckless war continues to drag down Republican candidates who are forced to defend their acquiescence in this strategic, military, moral, and economic debacle.

Trump can no longer rely on his go-to issue: immigrant fearmongering. His violent, lawless assaults on immigrants have killed scores of people on the streets and in detention, separated families, inflicted economic hardship, and undermined the rule of law, alienating even Republicans. His latest, outrageous effort to deport a political opponent, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), laced with racism and devoid of any legal basis for violating the 60-day pre-election moratorium on political-related prosecutions, reflects white nationalists’ desperation and political tone-deafness as they make a single controversial congresswoman into a national political martyr.

While lashing about like a wounded animal, he is also getting slapped down by courts in a wide array of cases (e.g., dismissal with prejudice of the Reflecting Pool prosecution, rejecting demands for state voting roll data, stopping the Kennedy Center threatened shutdown/teardown, complete defeat in the effort to exclude certain news outlets from the White House, the vindication of smeared FEMA employee Mary Comans) as they recognize his lawlessness and express outright fury, as Judge Ana Reyes put it in the East Potomac golf course case, over the Justice Department’s frivolous filings, gamesmanship, and outright defiance of court orders.

The paranoia on the left runs deep, with many insisting Trump is “more dangerous than ever.” But they should not confuse desperation with danger, nor impulsiveness with potency. Though Trump’s nutty rhetoric may intensify and his executive edicts may multiply, democracy forces should refrain from treating him as a political colossus. Swinging and missing does not make Trump more powerful; it convinces his congressional allies to distance themselves, judges to forcefully rebuke him, and his former supporters to turn the page. More frequent retreats (e.g., halting public financing for ads, calling off the live-streaming of the Fort Hood murderer’s execution, resuming Starlink connection for Ukraine, firing his spokeswoman) suggest criticism is eroding his resolve.

As Trump’s losses mount and his power drains away, and as both congressional allies and courts deny him deference, Democrats must not let up. Once in power, Democrats must not only seek to reverse policy debacles (e.g., take back tariff authority, reverse Medicaid and SNAP cuts, reinstate Affordable Care Act subsidies, defund ICE) but also pursue every avenue of accountability.

In sum, we are seeing the political death spiral of a regime under the tutelage of a mentally decrepit narcissist. Decisive, overwhelming Democratic wins up and down the ballot can disabuse Republicans of the notion there is any benefit or future in continuing to align themselves with a fascist movement that has done extraordinary damage to our economy, democracy, and social fabric.

The full impact of an election loss of the magnitude we expect will play out over months as regime figures get thrown overboard or run for the hills and surviving Republicans in Congress race to create space between themselves and a failed presidency. For Democrats and all pro-democracy forces, it will be vital to take advantage of the disarray in MAGA ranks to begin reversing policy blunders, holding wrongdoers responsible, and erecting reforms to restore democratic institutions and place our constitutional system on firmer footing.

Meanwhile, Democrats would be wise to echo Trump’s call for voters to pretend Trump is on the ballot. He certainly is — and the country is in desperate need of protection from the mad wannabe king.

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Donald Trump is Politically Bankrupt. Be Very Afraid, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 19, 2026. What will he do when he has nothing left to lose?

According to CNN, all-out war with Iran may be about to resume:

The US military has developed new strike plans that include potentially using the so-called “mother of all bombs” to target Iranian energy infrastructure and nuclear sites should President Donald Trump give the order to resume combat operations either before or after the midterm elections, according to multiple US officials familiar with the matter.

Trump says that he won’t order a strike before the midterms. But Robert Pape, author of the Substack Escalation Trap, argues that we shouldn’t believe him — that the bombs may well drop before the midterms. And while I am not a strategic expert, I believe that Pape may well be right, because his analysis of Trump’s political position is something I recognize from financial economics.

You see, it’s a well-understood proposition that the owners of businesses that are on the verge of going bust often engage in destructive behavior. And Trump is about to go bankrupt — not financially (he’s made billions through corruption) but politically. So he, like a failing businessman, has strong incentives to wreak havoc.

Pape’s argument is basically a version of the phenomenon — a particular form of moral hazard — often called “gambling for resurrection.” When a company is on the edge of failure, it makes sense for the company’s owner to make highly speculative, even crazy investments that are highly likely to fail but might, just might, make enough money to pull the company back from the brink. After all, for the owner it’s heads he wins, tails his creditors lose.

In Trump’s case, all indications are that his party is heading for defeat in the midterms. And while a normal president might be able to live with a Congress controlled by the opposing party, there has been so much corruption and malfeasance over the past two years that Democratic control of Congress, and the subpoena and investigative power that will bring, will have catastrophic consequences for Trump and everyone around him.

So Trump has an incentive to do something, anything, that might shake up this election. Attacking Iran would probably lead to an even bigger Republican defeat, but it might, just might, rally Trump’s base enough to change the outcome. True, a president who cared at all about what is good for America wouldn’t pursue disastrous policies for the slim chance of saving his own political skin. But this is, after all, Trump we’re talking about.

Pape’s argument, then, makes a lot of sense. But I suspect that Trump’s impending political bankruptcy will have even worse consequences than Pape suggests — and that these consequences will continue and intensify after the midterms.

When I read Pape’s analysis, I found myself thinking about a classic 1993 paper by George Akerlof and Paul Romer, “Looting: The economic underworld of bankruptcy for profit.” Akerlof and Romer were inspired by several historical episodes of widespread bankruptcy, including the U.S. savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. In these episodes, they argued, owners of banks and other companies on the verge of failure didn’t gamble for resurrection. Instead, they simply took the money and ran, transferring as much of their companies’ assets as possible into their own pockets before the hammer came down.

So what would looting by a politically bankrupt Trump administration look like? I don’t mean financial looting — Trump has been doing that all along, on an epic scale. What may be about to happen — indeed, is already happening — is what we might call policy looting: Trump using his remaining power to take actions that are both deeply unpatriotic and deeply unpopular but fit his own preferences and prejudices.

Freedom, wrote Kris Kristofferson, is just another word for nothing left to lose. Once the midterms are over, Trump, with nothing left to lose, will be free to be his worst self — a malignant narcissist who instinctively supports authoritarians and is preoccupied with revenge against anything and anyone that threatens his fragile grandiosity.

We can already see that happening in U.S. policy toward Ukraine. It has long been obvious that Trump loves dictators and despises democracy, and that he has special affection for Vladimir Putin and hatred for Volodymyr Zelenskyy. However, as long as there was some chance of limiting the damage in the midterm elections, Trump was cautious about explicitly taking Putin’s side. Over the past few weeks, however, Trump has grown ever more open about supporting Putin’s attempted war of conquest — buying Russian diesel, canceling sanctions, and most recently by attempting to sabotage Ukraine’s defenses by degrading its access to Starlink.

Something similar has been happening on domestic policy where, for example, Trump has increasingly stopped pretending that he cares about illegal immigration or immigrant crime, and is veering into flat, open racism — so far specially directed against Somalis, but it won’t stop there.

So will Trump resume the bombing of Iran before the midterms? Obviously I don’t know, but Pape is surely right that normal political logic, under which a deeply unpopular president would avoid resuming a deeply unpopular war, no longer applies. And anyone who believes that Trump will become more cautious, more moderate in the aftermath of midterm defeat just doesn’t understand the new political reality.

The truth is that political bankruptcy will free Trump to pursue his true desires. And those desires are horrifying.  

New York Times, Trump Is Pushing Ukraine to Surrender to Russia, Zelensky Says, Constant Méheut, Oct. 19, 2026. President Volodymyr Zelensky said he didn’t want to believe that Washington wanted an end to the war at Ukraine’s expense. “But that’s how it looks,” he added.

President Trump is trying to force Ukraine to surrender in the war, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in an interview published on Sunday, as a deepening feud between the two leaders drives their relations to new lows.

“I believe steps have been taken to convince Ukraine to capitulate,” Mr. Zelensky told Bloomberg News. He was referring to a string of measures in recent days by the Trump administration that could bolster Russia’s war machine while squeezing Ukraine’s ability to fight.

Mr. Zelensky added that he did not want to believe that Washington was seeking a quicker end to the war at Ukraine’s expense. “But that’s how it looks,” he said.

His comments capped a week in which the leaders traded some of their harshest words yet. Mr. Zelensky said that Mr. Trump had an instinctive affinity for autocrats, a pointed allusion to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, while the U.S. leader urged Ukrainians to vote Mr. Zelensky out of office.

Mr. Zelensky on Sunday appeared to tell the NBC show “Meet the Press” that he would run in a wartime presidential election, if one took place. It was the first time he suggested this publicly, after leaving the question open for months.

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Happy Birthday, Vlad. Yours, Always.’ - DJT, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Oct. 19, 2026.bulwark morning shots logo In Donald Trump’s telling, he wins everywhere, from Florida to California, when the votes are counted properly, and his campaign rallies do nothing but juice the Republicans he deigns to share the stage with. “MY RALLIES ARE SAVING THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, AGAIN!!!” he wrote this month.

bulwark logo big shipBut Punchbowl News notes this morning that Trump’s actions tell a different story. Even though Trump said in September that he’d spend the last month before the midterms rallying the faithful in battleground districts, Trump has been steering well clear of competitive House races, preferring to play defense in parts of the country where voters are friendlier (and his crowds are larger).

This is worth remembering, ahead of whatever stolen-election nonsense Trump tries to pull next month: Deep down, even Trump knows he’s not as popular as he pretends to be. Happy Monday.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance 

U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsHopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion: Prominent Rs Call For An Investigation Into Trump’s Putin Ties, Another Calls His Closing Campaign Performance “Insane,” Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 19, 2026. Lots of states turning on early in-person voting this week:

  • Monday, Oct. 19 - Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, South Carolina, Texas
  • Tuesday, Oct. 20 - Hawaii, Louisiana, Missouri, Utah, Wisconsin
  • Wednesday, Oct. 21 - West Virginia
  • Thursday, Oct. 22 - Delaware, Maryland
  • Saturday, Oct. 24 - Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, New York

With 15 days to go Trump is fighting for his political life as he frenetically campaigns in Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Iowa, Florida, and Georgia this week. As Punchbowl News notes this morning when Trump campaigns he often travels to the reddest parts of the state - not the swing, contested areas. That way he isn’t harming House Republicans in competitive races.Subscribed

Politico is featuring two stories this morning with wild reporting from freaking out Republicans:

Let’s check out a few excerpts from these two Politico stories (here, here):

Republicans are playing whack-a-mole with President Donald Trump in the final two weeks of the midterms.

GOP candidates are desperate to stick to tax cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill, Trump accounts for children and the president’s work to lower the cost of prescription drugs.

Instead, in the midterms’ final stretch, Trump and his administration have forced Republicans on the trail to respond to live streaming the firing squad execution of the Fort Hood shooter, his taxpayer-funded political ads promoting his achievements and an announced deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to try to bring down diesel costs. His latest move, exempting Russia from a new sanctions law sponsored by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, even provoked mild criticism on Saturday from South Carolina Sen. Darline Graham, the late senator’s sister who is running for re-election.

He’s also attacking Republicans: Rep. María Elvira Salazar for her ad targeting his immigration policies; Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) for holding up a daylight saving time bill and, on Thursday, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, whose political career Trump effectively ended, as well as veteran GOP strategist Karl Rove, for hurting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Senate campaign.

The deluge has left many Republicans rudderless as they stare down the prospect of losing Senate seats in Republican strongholds like Alaska, Iowa, Kansas and Texas, and feeling increasingly despondent about their chances of keeping the House……….

“He has constantly been distracted,” said one GOP operative working on multiple midterm races, “and not focused on what the voters care about. It’s insane.”

A slew of troubling internal GOP polling in recent weeks set off a new level of panic across House GOP leadership, political operations and individual campaigns. It didn’t just reveal a harsh environment for the party in power on par with typical midterms, but potentially catastrophic scenarios in formerly safe red seats across the country. Even top House Republicans expect to lose the House majority at this point.

A growing group of Hill Republicans argue the blame rests with Trump, and his decisions to get the U.S. into an open-ended war with Iran that has driven up fuel prices, while enacting a slew of tariffs and other policy moves that have riled farmers………

“No one in the world expected that the Senate would need as much money as they did,” said one national GOP operative working on multiple competitive House races. “All of this money that was expected to go to the House, for the most part, is now being wasted on the Senate because they fucked up so bad.”

Additional Trumpian “distractions” in the home stretch of the campaign include savage internal regime infighting spilling out into the press, the firings of Kimberly Guilfoyle and his ridiculous Press Secretary, his unhinged attempt to turn a popular public park adjacent to The National Mall into a luxury golf course:

And a dramatic and dangerous escalation of his efforts to help Putin defeat Ukraine. Here’s a new editorial from the Wall Street Journal. 

Meanwhile, the evidence compounds that Mr. Trump wants Ukraine to surrender on Mr. Putin’s terms. He’s dropped sanctions on Russian sales of diesel oil, a $4.5 billion windfall for Russian energy companies. He’s threatened to cut off U.S. intelligence to Kyiv. And the Trump Administration still hasn’t come clean on who ordered speed limits on SpaceX’s Starshield satellite service that has compromised Ukraine air defenses and strikes on Russian positions in occupied Ukraine.

Reuters reported Friday that the order to throttle Starshield “came from inside the White House.” Mr. Trump said Friday “I don’t know if it was anybody because it wasn’t me and I don’t think it was Elon” Musk, the SpaceX CEO. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that some restrictions on Starshield were still in place, so someone is ordering it.

Congress is preoccupied with the Nov. 3 election, but Mr. Trump may not appreciate the anger he’s courting if he keeps aiding Mr. Putin. When the election is over there needs to be a bipartisan reckoning for Mr. Trump’s budding alliance with the Kremlin against Ukraine, Europe and American interests.

The venerable conservative publication the National Review has called for Congress to launch a formal “investigation” into Trump’s relationship with Putin. Just read this passage from their editorial that implicitly accuses Trump of treason, Congress Must Investigate Trump’s Aid and Comfort to Putin.

Republicans and Democrats, together, should regard this week’s developments as the last straw.

There’s serious competition, but the Soviet Union could claim the title of modern history’s most monstrous regime. It killed tens of millions and enslaved hundreds of millions more. In the post–World War II era, it emerged as the mortal enemy of the United States in the Twilight Struggle that lasted four decades — during which nuclear war was barely averted in 1962 and the Kremlin sponsored proxy wars against our nation and our allies, killing thousands of Americans. As President Ronald Reagan declaimed, the Soviets were “the evil empire.” His Cold War solution was simple — “We win, they lose” — because peaceful coexistence with an enemy committed to our destruction was too precarious a prospect.

Vladimir Putin, the former KGB agent, is a born and bred devotee of the Soviet system. He solidified his despotic status by orchestrating a series of bombings inside Russia as a pretext to crushing Chechnya. We’re now well into his third decade as Russia’s murderous dictator. He openly regards the 1991 fall of the USSR — America’s foe in modernity’s greatest triumph for liberty — as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [twentieth] century.” Putin’s war of aggression and hoped-for conquest against Ukraine, like his war of aggression and conquest in Georgia (swaths of which he has occupied for nearly two decades), is part of his quest to reconstitute America’s Soviet enemy.

And President Donald Trump is giving him aid and comfort.

The #2 Republican in the Senate agrees:

The other investigation we need is one that starts in the states. The vast election protection efforts we’ve set up in the states should challenge the large social media platforms to prove and commit under oath that they are not tipping the scales for Trump and the Rs right now (see here for my full Bluesky thread):

So if you are inclined there are two sets of calls you can make today:

  • Call your Senators and House Member and demand they stop Trump from giving Ukraine to Putin
  • If you have a Dem governor, AG, Secretary of State, or state legislature call them and demand they open up an immediate investigation into the social media platforms support of the global right, including here in America

Brent crude starts the day at $108 a barrel, up from $60 a barrel earlier this year:

In that Washington Post poll we reviewed yesterday only 61% of Republicans said they want their party leaders to follow Trump. 37% said they should seek a new direction. This is a very, very high number that is likely to grow if Rs get wiped out in the midterms. Through their terrible governance, unprecedented corruption, and ongoing betrayal of the West and our democracy, Trump and MAGA are losing their grip on the country, and the Republican Party too.

Which is why, my friends, it’s time to go…

Kick These Corrupt Traitors’ Asses, Win The Midterms, And Fight The Fuckery That Is Already Here

Two things you can do today in addition to supporting our intrepid candidates and state parties:

  • Become an Early Vote Champion in your networks, communities, and organizations.
  • Sign up to become a Democracy Protector too. Our next trainings are Wednesday at 8pm ET and Saturday at 2pm.

High Tech Trump Allies Shutting Off Facebook, TikTok To Trump Critics?

meta logono kings bannerPopular Information, Accountability Journalism: Meta shuts down "No Kings" account during major anti-Trump protest,Judd Legum, right, judd legumOct. 19, 2026. On Saturday, thousands of “No Kings” events were held around the country. It was a critical day for the anti-Trump protest group, which has attracted millions of participants since 2025. Saturday’s events focused on early voter activation ahead of the midterm elections.

Then, at around 1:30 p.m. Eastern, No Kings’ Instagram account was taken offline. It left the organization without its biggest megaphone during the height of the protests.

The account remained offline for approximately 90 minutes. Even after the account was restored, it took until after 5 p.m. before No Kings could post new content to the account. Common Cause called Meta’s actions “an alarming act of corporate censorship,” accusing the company of deplatforming “grassroots voter mobilization efforts.”

Just after 6 p.m., Meta spokesperson Andy Stone released a statement, claiming the suspension was an “error”:

When accounts post, share or comment at very high frequencies it can trigger automated systems. That’s what happened with the No Kings IG account in the lead up to today’s day of action. Unfortunately, that automated action was clearly taken in error. Everything is now working as it should and we sincerely apologize.

No Kings cast doubt on this explanation. “In the 24 hours before our account was shut down, we posted only a handful of times and livestreamed to thousands,” the group said. “Meta’s ‘high-frequency’ excuse doesn’t add up.”

Meta’s action against No Kings is the latest in a series of “errors” impacting the accounts of Trump critics. On October 15, a Brazilian court ordered Meta to stop throttling the accounts of President Lula, a Trump critic who is facing Trump’s preferred candidate, Flávio Bolsonaro, in a runoff election. Meta acknowledged that Lula’s accounts faced restrictions but, according to the Associated Press, blamed the issue on “unrelated global technical glitches.” In September, Instagram suspended the accounts of Albanian groups protesting Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is planning to develop a luxury resort in the country. A Meta spokesperson said the accounts were “disabled by mistake.” Meta also initially rejected ads for the film Musk, a critical documentary of Trump’s political ally, calling it “an error.”

In other cases, Meta has shut down accounts at the explicit request of the Trump administration. Last October, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Department of Justice (DOJ) contacted Meta and asked it to shut down a Facebook page called “ICE Sighting-Chicagoland.” Meta complied with the request. The Trump administration has been targeting anti-fascist and other left-wing groups through a controversial presidential memorandum, NSPM-7.

The censorship of Trump critics comes as Meta has sought to establish a close relationship with Trump and his administration. Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s second inauguration and $5 million to Trump’s White House ballroom, and paid $25 million to settle a lawsuit Trump filed over his suspension from Facebook after January 6, 2021. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appointed UFC CEO Dana White, a top Trump ally, to the Meta board and named Dina Powell McCormick, a deputy national security advisor during Trump’s first term, as Meta’s president.

Zuckerberg has visited the White House frequently and reportedly talks to Trump regularly on the phone. He has been influential in shaping the administration’s AI policy.

Popular Information contacted Meta for comment and asked a spokesperson if it had received any communications regarding No Kings from the Trump administration or allied groups.

The company did not answer that inquiry but referred us to another post on X from a Meta spokesperson which claimed that the No Kings Instagram account was suspended after “our network security systems detected the use of a Claude tool reading profiles, posts, and hashtags, the rate of which sharply increased (~4x volume) in intense bursts on October 17.” This differs from the initial explanation by the same spokesperson which claimed the suspension was due to No Kings posting, sharing, or commenting at high volumes.

tiktok logo CustomAnother social network with close ties to the Trump administration, TikTok, is censoring ads promoting Musk, the critical documentary. After briefly feuding with Trump, Musk has once again emerged as a key ally. (Trump awarded Musk with the “National Medal of Science” earlier this month.) Musk has become the largest donor to groups supporting Republican candidates in the 2026 midterms by a wide margin, contributing over $300 million so far.

Musk has called Alex Gibney, the filmmaker behind Musk, an “idiot,” a “horrible human,” and a “tinfoil hat crackpot.” X has banned all ads for Musk on the social network he owns, X.

On Friday, Bleecker Street, the company distributing Musk, revealed that TikTok has permanently banned it from advertising the film. TikTok’s policies prohibit ads “referencing, promoting, or opposing” any “current executive, legislative, or judicial public officials.” Musk, however, is a private CEO and has no current public position. The policy also prohibits “[a]dvocacy for or against” any “past, current, or proposed elections.” These ads, however, promote a film, not any candidate.

The executive chairman and co-founder of Oracle, which owns 15% of TikTok and controls a board seat, is Trump-supporting billionaire Larry Ellison. Further, Ellison was a member of Tesla’s board, where Musk is the CEO, from 2018 to 2022. Oracle also provides some of the infrastructure to train Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok.

Special Reports: Huge Riots In France. How Much Russian Influence Aimed To Disrupt West? 

 

russian influence on european street politics wrmr

Trump circle foreign elections wmr

New York Times, News Analysis: France’s Far Right Seizes the Moment as Rioting Stuns the Country, Catherine Porter, Oct. 19, 2026. The National Rally, already ahead in the polls, presented itself as the party best placed to restore law and order.

After riots erupted this weekend in cities across France, its centrist government blamed the main far-left party, accusing its politicians of inciting the violence. That party blamed the government, accusing it of stirring public anger through years of bad governance and heavy-handed policing.

What did the main far-right party do? It blamed both, and launched into campaign mode.

“We are paying for decades of being soft on crime, of weak authority, of the moral, psychological, and material disarmament of our internal security forces,” Jordan Bardella, the president of the far-right National Rally party, said after emerging from a police station in central Paris on Sunday. He said had gone there to support police officers.

Then he addressed France’s “honest citizens” who were stunned on Sunday by the smashed storefronts and burned-out businesses destroyed by rioters the night before. He said they had a vital role to play in reinstating national stability. And that would be by voting in the coming election for his party.

“People need to wake up now,” Mr. Bardella said. “They need to make the right political choices, and in any case, we stand ready to restore order in the country.”

Sunday was a day of mourning, shock and finger pointing in France. The day before, huge peaceful protests for better school conditions and against rising living costs were overshadowed by black-clad and often masked agitators of unclear affiliation who attacked government buildings and shops across the country, sometimes stealing wine or electronics.

For the National Rally, which bills itself as the party of law and order as well as an advocate for expelling unauthorized immigrants, Sunday was also a day of political opportunity. It is six months before a presidential election that the party’s candidate, Marine Le Pen, is the favorite to win.

“The picture of France emerging this morning, in light of all the destruction, plays well into their hands,” said Bruno Cautrès, a political scientist at Sciences Po, a university in Paris. “We can clearly see that the National Rally is not a loser here.”

The party’s approach mirrors how far-right groups across Europe are presenting themselves as the solution to different kinds of social and governmental challenges. In July, Spain’s government briefly lost control of the borders of a Spanish territory in North Africa, allowing a surge of migrants and handing the country’s far-right party, Vox, a new issue to campaign on. In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, is leading national polls, in part by channeling anxiety over the country’s identity.

In France this week, as Mr. Bardella criticized the government’s policing, Ms. Le Pen seized the moment to criticize Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the main far-left party, France Unbowed, and one of her main rivals for the presidency. She said “legitimate social demands” had been “hijacked by the far left and the rhetoric of Jean-Luc Mélenchon” and his colleagues, whom she accused of fostering chaos by “legitimizing violence” — an accusation that the party denies.

The riots arrived at a sensitive time in France, with the country already dealing with a daunting budget deficit and a deadlocked Parliament in which no party has a majority.

“The far right are sure to gain from this,” said Alexis Veller, 53, a filmmaker, who stopped his motorcycle on Sunday morning to take photos of broken storefront windows and tagged walls in central Paris. “We are a very fractured country,” he said. “The situation is very, very worrying.”

Political analysts cautioned that the six months until the election is a long time in politics, and that voters’ motivations are complex and rarely focused on a single issue.

Still, the violence perfectly aligned with the image the National Rally has long painted of a France divided into two and battling for survival, said Vincent Martigny, a political science professor at the University of Nice, Côte d’Azur.

The party has portrayed the country as split between the France of the city centers — filled with woke students and rioters, it says — and the “good France” in the quiet countryside, he said. 

New York Times, France to Impose Curfews After Nationwide Rioting, Catherine Porter and Ségolène Le Stradic, Oct. 19, 2026. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu defended police efforts and pledged to restore order as government ministers acknowledged failures.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu of France said he had ordered localized curfews for Monday night in some French towns and neighborhoods, as the government moved to reassert control after the worst riots in decades hit cities around the country.

While ministers in Mr. Lecornu’s government acknowledged failures in handling the weekend riots, the prime minister struck a different tone, saying that the police had done a good job against a “shadowy network” of far-left instigators who he said were seeking to orchestrate “a profound disorder in the country leading up to the presidential election.”

“While we witnessed very difficult scenes involving violence against property, no one was killed, and that is a miracle,” Mr. Lecornu said, emerging from an emergency meeting of ministers on Monday afternoon.

He told reporters that a massive police operation was underway — with “practically” 200 investigators in Paris alone working to track down the looters.

“My determination to restore order is absolute,” Mr. Lecornu said, vowing to use “whatever tools are at the government’s disposal.”

He did not provide specifics on where the curfews were expected, saying only they were for places that had been especially affected by unrest and that a map would be provided later on Monday.

Earlier in the day, France’s interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, offered a mea culpa on national radio, saying that the police had been underprepared to deal with the scale of the riots that spun off from the mostly peaceful protests held across the country. Mr. Nuñez said he had offered his resignation to President Emmanuel Macron but that it had not been accepted.

New York Times, ‘A Failure’: French Officials Issue Mea Culpa Over Weekend Riots, Catherine Porter and Ségolène Le Stradic, Oct. 19, 2026. The interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, acknowledged that the police had been underprepared and said he had offered to resign.

The French government acknowledged on Monday a failure in handling the rioters who attacked the police, ransacked public buildings and looted stores in cities across the country over the weekend.

France’s interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, offered a mea culpa on national radio, saying that the police had been underprepared to deal with the scale of the riots that spun out from planned protests on Saturday night. He said he had offered his resignation to President Emmanuel Macron but that it had not been accepted.

The justice minister, Gérald Darmanin, also acknowledged that the authorities had “undeniably failed” in the face of the violence — the biggest unrest to hit France in years — and said on French television that there had been “a failure in intelligence.”

With many people in France still stunned on Monday by the scale of the damage, mayors and councilors gathered outside their city halls to show that they were still standing and to demand answers from the national government.

Benoît Payan, the mayor of Marseille, has accused the government and the police of “delivering” that city — France’s second largest — to “looters and rioters.”

Speaking to French radio earlier on Monday, he accused the region’s prefect of inflating the number of rioters that had attacked city hall and local stores, and said that he was seeking “explanations” and “the guarantee that this will not happen again” from the government.

News Roundups

 

Democratic-Republican Campaign logosThe Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Early Voting Shatters Records, Trump Labeled ‘Traitor’ and Increases Aid to Putin, Trump Increases Election Interference Effort, Aaron Parnas, right, Oct. 19, 2026. aaron parnas new headshot Early voting is shattering records across the country, and that is the best news I’ve had to share in a long time. Georgia, North Carolina, Iowa, Ohio, Virginia: turnout is surging. At the same time, the federal government is ramping up pressure on the very officials who run our elections, to the point that a Republican election chief in deep-red Utah says she’s now under federal investigation for refusing to hand over your private data.

And overnight, Ukraine was hit again. Sixteen ballistic missiles struck Kyiv, more than half a million homes lost power, and Ukraine says it once again got no warning from the United States before the first wave hit. Meanwhile, Putin is floating a summit with Trump and Xi Jinping to decide Ukraine’s future, without Ukraine in the room.

I have been talking with people on the ground in Ukraine throughout all of this, and I’m bringing you their updates in real time, as it happens, not filtered through press releases or White House talking points. I’ve faced attacks for doing this work. I’m not going to stop.

Let’s get into it.

Early voting is off to a record-breaking start across the country, with turnout up sharply in key battleground states compared with the last midterms. Georgia saw a 40% jump in first-day turnout over 2022 and more than double its 2018 opening-day numbers, while early ballots are up 38% in North Carolina and Maine and 61% in Iowa. In-person early voting has more than doubled in Ohio, and Virginia is seeing nearly twice the turnout of the previous midterms. Democrats currently hold an early voting edge in North Carolina, Iowa, and Pennsylvania, though analysts caution that early trends don’t necessarily predict Election Day results. Mail voting is moving the other way, down 58% in Georgia and also falling in Florida, as polls show declining confidence in the Postal Service’s ability to deliver ballots on time. Early voting begins Monday in Texas, South Carolina, Colorado, and several other states, meaning most of the country will be voting by the end of the week.

A Republican election chief in deep-red Utah says she is now under federal investigation after refusing the Trump administration’s demand for voters’ private data, as 60 Minutes reports federal pressure on elections has reached an unprecedented level. Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson told 60 Minutes that threats to elections used to come from outside the country, but now they are “coming from within our own government.” She refused to hand over voters’ Social Security numbers, birthdates, and driver’s license numbers, as did officials in 29 other states from both parties, and the Justice Department has sued all of them. Henderson found just 52 questionable voters out of more than 2 million in Utah, and while the administration claims without evidence that 278,000 noncitizens are registered, DOJ has charged just over 100 noncitizens with illegal voting during Trump’s second term. In Georgia, a Fulton County commissioner said she never imagined the FBI would raid her county, after agents seized more than 600 boxes of 2020 election records in January with Tulsi Gabbard watching, and the FBI later reassigned 260 analysts to the probe without any result. DOJ civil rights chief Harmeet Dhillon dismissed concerns that Trump might challenge the midterm results as “paranoia,” as surveys show only about half of Americans expect the elections to be free and fair.

Trump Described as “Treasonous” as Putin Floats Ukraine Peace Summit With Trump and Xi, Without Zelenskyy; Kyiv Gets No Warning Before Missile Barrage

Putin has reportedly proposed a three-way summit with Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to negotiate an end to the war, with Ukraine left out. The Wall Street Journal reported that Putin raised the idea during his October 9 phone call with Trump, the same call that produced the diesel deal, citing a former Russian intelligence officer briefed on the matter. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday that the three leaders could meet next month in Shenzhen, China, which is hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said there have been “talks of a meeting” but that he didn’t know if it had been finalized, adding that Trump is open to anything that could end the war. Zelenskyy would not be at the table. The news has deepened fears in Kyiv that Trump and Putin could try to impose an unfavorable settlement on Ukraine.

Russia pounded Kyiv overnight with 16 ballistic missiles, and Ukraine says it once again got no warning from the United States. Russia also launched nearly 270 drones, with Ukraine’s Air Force saying it downed more than 240 of them. Zelenskyy said the strikes hit more than 10 energy facilities and left about 550,000 households without power, while a medical clinic, a school, a metro station, and residential buildings were also damaged. At least one person was killed. Ukraine’s Air Force confirmed no early warning came before the first salvo hit at 11 p.m., though warnings did arrive before a second wave around 3 a.m. Kyiv has stopped releasing interception rates for ballistic missiles as it runs low on Patriot interceptors, and residents say they now mostly hear missiles hitting their targets rather than air defenses firing back.

Washington and Kyiv are openly contradicting each other over whether U.S. intelligence sharing was cut off. Zelenskyy said Sunday that intelligence was blocked for three days before being restored, but Rubio flatly denied any pause, saying he doesn’t know where Zelenskyy is “getting these things.” Rubio attributed missed warnings last week to a software problem with Ukraine’s early warning system and said he could not speak to what happened Sunday night. He added that Zelenskyy should focus on ending the war instead. The dispute follows a separate fight over restrictions on Ukraine’s military satellite internet, which Elon Musk has blamed on the U.S. government, and which The Telegraph reported Musk proposed and Trump approved. Trump has denied ordering any restrictions.

The feud between Trump and Zelenskyy has reached new lows, with Zelenskyy saying Washington appears to want Ukraine to surrender. Zelenskyy told Bloomberg he didn’t want to believe the U.S. would end the war at Ukraine’s expense, “but that’s how it looks.” Over the past week, he suggested Trump has an instinctive affinity for autocrats, while Trump urged Ukrainians to vote Zelenskyy out and claimed he never wanted peace. Zelenskyy also indicated for the first time that he would run if a wartime election were held, though he downplayed the prospect since Russia refuses a ceasefire that would allow voting. A Ukrainian deputy minister told CNBC that Kyiv does not believe the U.S. is abandoning it, but hopes Washington will keep helping or at least stay in the middle. Ukraine’s Patriot shortage is being worsened by surging demand in the Middle East, and Zelenskyy says the U.S. is delaying deliveries Ukraine has already paid for.

Ukraine’s strikes on Russian data centers have left millions of ordinary Russians locked out of their money, taxis, and even their homes. Attacks earlier this month on facilities run by Yandex, Russia’s equivalent of Google, knocked out services deeply woven into daily life, including its digital payment system. One St. Petersburg blogger told NBC News she couldn’t access her money for four days, leaving her unable to pay rent or buy food for her child, while others said digital keys to their apartments stopped working. Taxi drivers couldn’t withdraw their earnings, and one said he stopped working entirely until it was fixed. Ukraine has also hit data centers belonging to Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, and tech giant VK. Analysts say the goal is to bring the war home to ordinary Russians, and that Russia’s data centers are easy targets because they are concentrated in a handful of large facilities.

Trump Calls Judge a “Crazed Lunatic,” Says Golf Course Work Will Begin “Immediately”

Trump attacked Judge Ana Reyes in an early-morning Truth Social post and declared that work on the D.C. golf course would start right away, despite her court order. Just after 6 a.m. Monday, Trump called the judge, without naming her, “a crazed lunatic” who “may be insane,” and claimed that courthouse tapes would prove it. He insisted the Interior Department has an “absolute right” to renovate East Potomac Golf Links, doesn’t need any approval, and that the golfer who brought the lawsuit has zero standing. Trump said work was scheduled to begin “IMMEDIATELY,” a sharp change from his Sunday post saying construction would start November 15. Reyes has already ordered the government to give at least three days’ notice before making any irreversible changes to the course and has barred further tree removal through October 26. Another hearing in the case is set for later Monday.

Reyes rejected the Justice Department’s demand that she step aside from the case. In a 13-page opinion issued late Sunday, she wrote that it is easy to weaponize selective quotations to bring a baseless recusal motion, but much harder to meet the legal standard against a full record. She concluded that by any objective measure, the government failed to meet that standard. The Justice Department had accused her of bias, pointing to her heated remarks at a hearing, including asking a government lawyer whether they were unable to use a phone or drive a car. It also objected to her ordering officials to testify on a federal holiday. Reyes responded that the government created an emergency situation and the court simply responded to it.

The clash traces back to a holiday weekend when the government cut down hundreds of trees before the judge could intervene. On a Friday evening earlier this month, the Justice Department notified the court it planned to remove 529 trees, and by Saturday morning, crews were already cutting, with the government later acknowledging more than 400 were felled in one weekend. At an emergency four-hour hearing, Reyes said the episode cost the government all of its credibility and that she needed to determine whether she had been lied to. She ordered a chain of officials to testify on the spot, and a National Park Service deputy director revealed he had formalized the renovation plans with Gregory Wischer, a Trump appointee at Interior, and had discussed Trump’s ideas for a championship course. Reyes warned that if her order to halt work was violated even by two seconds, there would be contempt proceedings. She said she felt betrayed after repeatedly giving the government the benefit of the doubt.

Critics fear Trump’s plan will take away one of the few affordable public golf courses in the nation’s capital. The lawsuit was filed in February by the D.C. Preservation League and two local golfers, who argue the redevelopment is unlawful. Trump was photographed touring the grounds in June with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and architect Tom Fazio, who has designed courses for the Trump Organization. The renovation could cost between $20 million and $49 million, according to CNN. Trump’s latest posts appear to undercut his own lawyers, who have argued in court that no final plan exists. Whether the administration actually moves ahead before Reyes rules could set up a direct confrontation over whether it is willing to defy a federal court order.

Semafor: Bari Weiss Has Pushed CBS News to Dig Into Abdul El-Sayed’s Alleged Muslim Brotherhood Ties

bari weiss cbs profileCBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss, left, has personally pushed the network’s journalists to hunt for a link between Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and the Muslim Brotherhood, according to an exclusive report from Semafor. The questions trace back to a 2012 tweet by El-Sayed’s younger half-sister describing a conversation with her mother about the mother’s activism in the Islamist movement in Egypt in the early 1970s. Semafor reports that Weiss has raised the topic on editorial calls, advocated for numerous story angles, and tasked CBS’s investigative unit with combing through El-Sayed’s background. That team is set to publish a story in the coming days, though two people familiar with the reporting told Semafor it was unclear as of Sunday whether it would include any new revelations. Weiss was also directly involved in an earlier CBS story about El-Sayed’s posts comparing the COVID-19 death toll to 9/11, which critics said falsely insinuated he had ties to the attacks. With control of the Senate potentially riding on Michigan, Semafor notes the media’s focus on the issue in the final weeks could matter enormously.

El-Sayed has strongly denied any ties to the group, and some CBS staffers say Weiss is chasing thin theories about progressive candidates. El-Sayed told Semafor it was “insane” to draw a connection, explaining that his parents divorced when he was 3, he didn’t see his mother for years, and to his knowledge no one in his family has been a member of the organization. His campaign and allies say the attacks are thinly veiled Islamophobia. Two CBS staffers told Semafor that the network pursues weak theories about progressives that originate on X or in right-leaning outlets but doesn’t treat conservatives the same way. Semafor reports Weiss also had staff chase a rumor that Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico was in a mental health facility, when he was actually home with the flu, though CBS never gave the theory public credence. One staffer said Weiss’s ideas routinely come from social media influencers or opposition research placed in conservative outlets.

Semafor reports the El-Sayed coverage is part of a broader fight inside CBS over Middle East coverage. Staff have repeatedly clashed with editors Weiss installed, including foreign editor Shayndi Raice, and London bureau chief Claire Day was reportedly forced out over friction with Weiss on the region. Semafor notes that while CBS has not become a Trump mouthpiece and has aired critical reporting on the administration, its coverage of Israel and Gaza has shifted more dramatically. The report also points to CBS legal correspondent Jan Crawford’s deleted post praising the town hall questioner who pressed El-Sayed, which she apologized for after internal and external complaints. A CBS spokesperson pushed back, telling Semafor its midterm and Middle East coverage has been rigorous and that it is reporting as aggressively on El-Sayed as on candidates in other competitive Senate races. Semafor also notes that NBC News journalists have pressed El-Sayed on alleged family connections as well.

Other news:

Trump’s approval has hit a record low of 33%, and two-thirds of Americans now believe he is using the presidency to enrich himself. The Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found 66% disapprove of Trump’s performance, with 52% disapproving strongly, and 72% say the country is headed in the wrong direction. Among Republicans, 34% say Trump is enriching himself, a 12-point jump from last September. Nearly half of Americans, 48%, say they are financially worse off since he returned to office, the highest share for any president in the poll’s history dating back to 1986. Majorities also said Trump is not committed to protecting press freedom or free and fair elections. Despite the numbers, Trump told a Georgia rally Friday that voters should “pretend I’m on the ballot.”

The Trump administration is quietly preparing to impose financial penalties on millions of student loan borrowers in default, but plans to wait until after the midterms, according to The Washington Sun. Five sources told the outlet that the Treasury Department is moving ahead with hiring private debt collectors as soon as November, though the plans are unlikely to be announced before Election Day. Officials are also weighing seizing tax refunds, Social Security payments, and child tax credits, as well as garnishing wages, possibly starting with the April 2027 tax deadline. One source said it would be “politically insane” to do this before the midterms. Treasury officials previously blocked the effort, warning that many of the nearly 10 million borrowers in default are struggling Trump supporters, telling senior leaders the demographics “are not good for us.” Borrower advocates called the timing political opportunism and warned that seized refunds and garnished wages will be a catastrophe for families already struggling with high inflation.

A former Trump aide warned that Stephen Miller replacing Susie Wiles as chief of staff would be “a terrifying prospect.” Politico reported that Trump has been calling around to sound out possible replacements for Wiles following the Katie Zacharia debacle, with Miller, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Bill Pulte, Kevin McCarthy, and Yankees executive Randy Levine among the names floated. Trump reportedly hired Zacharia over Wiles’s head, undermining her effort to bring in CNN commentator Scott Jennings for the role. Former White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews told MeidasTouch’s Jack Cocchiarella that while Wiles is complicit in the administration’s actions, she doesn’t think Wiles is crazy, but called Miller dangerously extreme. Matthews warned that a lame-duck Trump could spiral and pardon everyone, making someone like Miller in charge especially scary. The White House insists Wiles is going nowhere, and Trump told Politico she has his “COMPLETE confidence.”

A National Guard member was shot in the leg in Washington, D.C., while trying to break up a street fight late Sunday. Police said seven or eight Guardsmen were monitoring a group near the Eastern Market Metro station when a fight broke out around 11:10 p.m. As the troops got out of their van, one man drew a gun and fired, and three Guardsmen returned fire after he refused to drop it. The suspect was hit in the abdomen, and both he and the injured Guardsman are expected to survive. Investigators are seeking others involved in the fight who fled the scene. The shooting comes nearly a year after two West Virginia Guardsmen were ambushed near the White House, killing Spc. Sarah Beckstrom.

Massachusetts’s Republican candidate for lieutenant governor dropped out of the race after being arrested in a suspected drunk driving crash. Shawn Oliver, a 42-year-old New Bedford city councilor and corrections officer, was arrested late Saturday after his vehicle struck parked cars and flipped over. He was hospitalized and arrested on suspicion of operating under the influence, negligent operation, a marked lanes violation, and speeding. His running mate, gubernatorial candidate Mike Minogue, asked him to suspend his campaign and said there is no excuse for driving under the influence. Oliver withdrew Sunday, saying the election was too important to be overshadowed by personal matters. Minogue faces Democratic Gov. Maura Healey in November.

A Max Factor heir convicted of drugging and raping three women has been released after serving about 20 years, sparking outrage in California. Andrew Luster, 62, was convicted in 2003 on 86 counts after bounty hunter Duane “Dog” Chapman captured him in Mexico. He was originally sentenced to 124 years, but a judge vacated that in 2013 and his sentence was reduced to 50 years. State prison officials say he served his full sentence after earning worktime and good conduct credits, insisting it was not an early release. The mayor of Glendora, where Luster is reportedly now living, said the city is outraged that someone sentenced to 124 years could walk free after 20. Advocates note California law still classified his crimes as nonviolent, and a 2024 fix came too late and did not cover rape of an unconscious person.

France is imposing curfews after authorities admitted they “lost control” of major cities during the weekend’s riots. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said about 3,000 businesses were looted or vandalized, nearly 2,400 people were arrested, and almost 1,000 police officers and firefighters were injured, calling it a miracle no one was killed. The Louvre closed after protesters announced a blockade, Marseille banned public gatherings, and the interior minister offered to resign, though Macron rejected it. Macron blamed far-left fringe groups but has faced criticism for attending a Celine Dion concert Friday and leaving Monday on a Gulf tour to secure oil supplies. Trump blamed immigration and demanded France “CLOSE THE BORDERS,” while Vance said the riots were the future Democrats want for America. French officials have not blamed immigrants, and the movement began with students protesting crumbling schools and has grown into anger over living costs and fuel prices driven partly by the Iran war.

The UN World Food Programme is cutting food aid to 500,000 Palestinians in Gaza because of funding shortages. The agency is reducing the number of people receiving monthly assistance from 1.6 million to 1.1 million, halving food rations, and cutting cash assistance for 75,000 families. Daily hot meals for those unable to cook are dropping from 250,000 to 150,000, with some families in hard-to-reach areas getting a hot meal only every other day. About 1.4 million people, two-thirds of Gaza’s population, face crisis levels of food insecurity or worse. A year after the U.S.-brokered ceasefire, the WFP’s acting director said life in Gaza remains brutal, with no proper shelter, basic services, or security as a fourth winter approaches. The agency says it urgently needs $450 million over the next six months.

Bangladesh is battling the world’s worst measles outbreak, with more than 1,100 deaths, mostly young children. The WHO says the country has reported 202,000 suspected cases since mid-March, and 94% of the 1,147 deaths have been children under 5. Bangladesh was once a vaccination success story, but political turmoil in 2024 disrupted its immunization program, and first-dose coverage fell to 90% in 2025, below the 95% needed to prevent outbreaks. A Reuters review found the government’s emergency vaccination campaign missed millions of children, relied on flawed data, and skipped standard readiness checks to move quickly. Families in hard-hit areas told Reuters that health workers arrived only after their children had died. Experts call it a real warning to every country as vaccine hesitancy rises globally, including in the U.S. under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Survivors of major U.S. disasters are still waiting on at least $10 billion in long-term federal recovery aid. The last time the government released long-term rebuilding funds through its main disaster recovery program was for Hurricane Milton, which hit Florida in October 2024. Survivors of the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, the St. Louis tornado, and the Texas Hill Country floods have received none, because Congress must approve the money disaster by disaster and hasn’t. The program was written into law for the first time in July 2026, but no new money has been appropriated. A St. Louis tornado survivor said his insurance covered almost nothing and FEMA only helped briefly, while an Altadena resident said it’s disheartening that her own country can’t do what it has historically done for disaster survivors. Survivors have made three trips to Washington to press lawmakers for the funding.

The U.S. ambassador to Israel called a settler attack on an American photojournalist in the West Bank a “despicable act of terror.” Mike Huckabee, a staunch pro-Israel ally of Trump, demanded the arrest and prosecution of the masked settlers who beat Washington Post photographer Heidi Levine. Levine, 63, was attacked last Friday while covering Palestinians harvesting olives, and said she was beaten for more than 10 minutes with clubs and other weapons. She is recovering in a hospital after surgery on her hand and suffering broken ribs, and the attackers also stole her camera, passport, and phone. Levine has said she is shocked and insulted that Netanyahu described the attack as only “alleged.” Huckabee’s unusually blunt condemnation comes as settler violence draws growing international scrutiny ahead of Israel’s October 27 election.

The British government publicly rebuked Pete Hegseth for claiming most non-American NATO troops didn’t fight in Afghanistan. In a speech at the University of Tennessee, Hegseth said only one or two of the roughly 50 countries in the coalition were actually involved in combat by the end, joking that the mission’s acronym stood for “I Saw Americans Fighting.” Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s spokesperson said Hegseth was “wrong,” noting that more than 450 British personnel never returned home and that thousands of allied families made huge sacrifices. The spokesperson said it is wrong to diminish their role. Public criticism of Trump officials is rare from the British government, but it has drawn a firm line when the service of its troops is questioned. Separately, Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper said Trump was wrong to blame France’s riots on immigration, calling them a cost-of-living protest hijacked by malevolent forces.

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Russia Declares ‘Checkmate’ as Trump Pushes Ukraine to Capitulate, Vance Confronted by Grieving Husband, GOP in Free Fall, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 18, 2026. Today may go down as one of the most alarming days yet for Ukraine. Hours after Zelenskyy said the Trump administration is pushing his country to capitulate, Trump went on Truth Social to attack him, claiming Zelenskyy doesn’t care about ending the war and mocking Ukraine as a country “in shambles.” All of this while Russia has spent the past week launching nearly 2,700 drones at Ukraine’s power grid, Washington paused the intelligence Ukraine relies on to spot incoming ballistic missiles, and Putin’s own envoy is bragging that the “ice has begun to break” with the United States. Tonight, the Russians are celebrating.

Here at home, a grieving husband confronted JD Vance over his wife’s death in Trump’s Iran war, Trump’s approval just hit a record low two weeks before the midterms, and the president announced a plan for a D.C. golf course that his own lawyers have spent months telling a federal judge doesn’t exist.

I am working around the clock to get you news in real time from Ukraine and everywhere else it matters. The White House hates this. They would much rather you hear their version of events, filtered through friendly outlets and press secretaries who last five days. But no advertiser, corporation, or politician controls what I report. I answer only to you.

Let’s get into it.

Grieving Military Husband Confronts Vance Over “Fundamental Failures” in Trump’s Iran War

The husband of a soldier killed in the Iran war confronted JD Vance at a CBS News town hall, demanding accountability for “fundamental failures” by military leadership. Master Sgt. Nicole Amor, an Army Reservist from Minnesota, was one of six service members killed by an Iranian drone strike at Kuwait’s Port of Shuaiba on March 1, just one day after Trump launched the war. It remains the deadliest attack on U.S. forces in the conflict, and CBS has reported the facility wasn’t adequately fortified, lacked drone defenses, and that the Army chose not to move troops farther from Iran or bulk up medical support. Her husband, Joey Amor, told Vance that while an Iranian drone killed his wife, a failure of leadership led up to it, adding that his wife had told him things before she died and that other soldiers know more but are staying quiet. Vance called Nicole a precious human being who served honorably, but said this was literally the first time he had heard of the failures, explaining that as vice president he lives in a bit of a bubble. He then acknowledged there were issues with where troops were located that were a huge mistake and have since been changed, and promised not to forget.

Vance faced tough questions throughout the town hall, including from voters who backed him and Trump in 2024. A Michigan man who voted for the Trump-Vance ticket said he now plans to vote for Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and pressed Vance on soaring gas prices caused by the war. Vance blamed the situation in the Middle East and former President Joe Biden, without acknowledging the crisis stemmed from the war Trump launched, and said it’s easy to criticize something that happened seven months ago. A Catholic nun challenged him on immigration raids that separate children from their parents, and Vance conceded that some agents have really screwed up and that striking the right balance is a work in progress. A naturalized citizen who voted for him accused him of scapegoating immigrants after he called H-1B visa holders “foreign indentured servants,” and Vance admitted his rhetoric had been imperfect. At least 21 U.S. service members have now died in the Iran war, which Trump launched without congressional approval and promised would last only weeks.

Vance defended Trump against corruption concerns while saying selling White House access would be “disgusting.” Moderator Tony Dokoupil pressed him on the nearly $1.2 billion Trump took in from his crypto businesses last year and the recent resignation of Kimberly Guilfoyle as ambassador to Greece over allegations she leveraged her position, which she denies. Vance said he had never seen anything from the president that made him squeamish and insisted claims he has looked into turned out to be untrue. He did say that anyone selling access to the White House should suffer consequences. The sharp questioning previewed the challenges Vance may face defending the administration’s record if he runs for president in 2028. He told the audience there is “of course” a chance he won’t run.

Ukraine Hits St. Petersburg With 1,000 Drones as Zelenskyy Warns Trump of a “Historic Mistake”

Zelenskyy told Bloomberg he believes the Trump administration is pressuring Ukraine to capitulate to Russia. He said the U.S. is threatening to cut off some support if Ukraine keeps striking Russian oil refineries, explaining that Washington just wants Ukraine to stop attacking diesel and will “disconnect us from something” if it doesn’t. Zelenskyy said he offered a compromise: Ukraine would stop targeting Russian diesel if the U.S. provided Patriot missiles to protect Ukraine’s own energy facilities. He also accused the U.S. of slowing deliveries of Patriots that Ukraine has already paid for through the PURL program, insisting the delay is “not a technical issue.” Despite the tensions, Zelenskyy said he expects things may calm down after the midterms, describing politics as very aggressive during election time. He said the current moment feels like agony, but believes life will continue more calmly once the elections are over. Meanwhile, Russia is declaring “checkmate.”

Trump lashed out at Zelenskyy on Truth Social, claiming the Ukrainian leader doesn’t want to end the war and probably never did. Hours after Ukraine’s massive drone attack on St. Petersburg, Trump said Zelenskyy could have gotten a better deal two years ago and accused him of being enriched by European aid and money from “Crooked Joe Biden.” He described Ukraine as being in “shambles,” claiming it has lost much of its land and access to its seas, and that its male population is low, wounded, or dead. Trump again condemned Ukraine’s strikes on Russian oil facilities, saying they are seriously hurting world diesel markets as he tries to bring down fuel prices before the midterms. He said he is negotiating peace and doesn’t want to do anything that would drive Russia away from the bargaining table. The attack came the same day Zelenskyy accused Trump of pushing Ukraine to capitulate, and after he called Trump’s diesel deal with Putin a birthday present for the Russian leader. The Russians celebrated tonight:

Ukraine launched one of the largest drone attacks of the war overnight, setting a major oil terminal in St. Petersburg ablaze. Russia’s Defense Ministry said it shot down about 1,015 drones over Moscow and several western regions, in what appeared to be the biggest attack St. Petersburg has seen. Drones struck the Petersburg Oil Terminal, the Ruchyi oil depot, a data center belonging to tech giant VK, and a logistics center for retailer Ozon. The city’s governor said one person was killed and five were injured, while two substations were hit in the surrounding Leningrad region, leaving about 20,000 people without power. The strike came days after Zelenskyy ordered his military to resume attacks on Russian oil facilities, defying Trump, who called the renewed strikes “a disgrace.” Ukraine had briefly paused the attacks under Trump’s “energy ceasefire,” but says it got nothing in return.

Russia never stopped attacking Ukraine’s power grid, despite Trump’s claim that both sides agreed to an energy truce. Zelenskyy said Russia carried out at least 76 attacks on Ukrainian energy, oil, and gas facilities over the past week, leaving tens of thousands of families without electricity. Over that same week, he said, Russia fired nearly 2,700 attack drones, 1,700 aerial bombs, and 66 missiles, most of them ballistic. Overnight strikes hit substations in four regions, including Odesa, killing at least two people and injuring more than a dozen. A wiring plant in Lutsk that supplies BMW, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, and Porsche halted operations after being struck. Zelenskyy said the Russians are trying to cause a blackout, and that America should see Russia is taking no reciprocal steps in response to sanctions relief.

Zelenskyy warned on “Meet the Press” that Ukraine cannot survive if the United States sides with Russia. He called that prospect unbelievable, a tragedy, and a historic mistake, capping a week of rising tensions that began with Trump’s diesel deal with Putin and ended with his waiver of the Graham Act sanctions. Zelenskyy said Putin “feels victory” from the sanctions pause and expressed hope that Trump will change his attitude toward the Russian leader. He also revealed that the U.S. had paused intelligence sharing, leaving Ukraine blind to Russian ballistic missile attacks for three days. That sharing has since resumed, and Zelenskyy said he was very thankful. He also spoke with Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and is reportedly seeking a new peace meeting next week.

A fight over Ukraine’s satellite internet has deepened the rift, with conflicting accounts from Washington. Ukraine says drones relying on SpaceX satellite service stopped working at speeds above 100 mph, disabling interceptors meant to shoot down Russian attack drones, and that terminals worked normally when tested across the border in the EU. Zelenskyy called it “a planned operation” and said the message came from the government. Trump denied ordering any restrictions, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said nobody ordered the slowdown and that it has been restored. But Elon Musk has suggested the restrictions came from the government, and The Telegraph, citing four sources, reported that Musk proposed the limits and Trump approved them. Ukrainian officials say they still can’t confirm full service has been restored, and a bipartisan group of senators is demanding an investigation.

The fallout is spreading across Europe. NATO jets were scrambled Sunday after an unidentified object entered Lithuania’s airspace, and residents in parts of the country were told to take shelter for about an hour. Officials later said it was likely a drone that came in from Poland, and Ukraine said it regretted the possible diversion of its drones, which it blamed on Russian electronic warfare. Arson attacks have also hit Starlink ground stations in Poland and Bulgaria, with Polish authorities blaming Russian intelligence. Meanwhile, the EU is reportedly rushing to prepare new sanctions on Russia before France’s 2027 presidential election. Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, the current favorite, has vowed to end support for Ukraine within six months if elected.

A top Putin envoy says Russia and the U.S. are discussing new joint business deals, including nuclear-powered data centers, following Trump’s diesel agreement. Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s investment envoy and a key figure in U.S.-Russia talks on the Ukraine war, told an energy conference in Moscow that the two countries are exploring data center projects using small-scale nuclear power plants. He said “the ice has begun to break” and predicted several other significant initiatives will be announced soon, despite widespread resistance. Dmitriev revealed that the U.S. Treasury asked Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, which he runs, to help sort out payment issues on the diesel deal, and said brainstorming sessions are already underway on how to lift sanctions. He called the Graham Act sanctions law “misguided” and said Russia will keep pursuing projects with the U.S. until the war ends. The Kremlin has long been frustrated that Washington tied such deals to a peace agreement, but Dmitriev’s remarks, made a day before Trump waived the Graham Act sanctions, suggest that link may be breaking.

Trump Hits Record Lows as Voters Sour on GOP Two Weeks Before the Midterms

Trump’s approval rating has fallen to a record low, giving Democrats a clear edge heading into Election Day. A new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll puts Trump’s approval at just 33%, lower than at any point in his first term, with 66% disapproving and 52% disapproving strongly. Democrats now lead by eight points in the race for the House, up from three points in July. By 58% to 39%, registered voters said they would rather have a Democratic Congress acting as a check on Trump than a Republican one supporting his agenda, roughly double last year’s margin. For the first time since 2014, voters trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle the economy. Democrats are also more motivated, with 75% saying they are certain to vote or already have, compared with 67% of Republicans.

A separate NBC News poll finds Americans more pessimistic about the country than at any point in Trump’s second term. A record 71% of adults say the country is on the wrong track, and Trump’s approval has slipped to 34%, with a second-term high of 51% strongly disapproving. Registered voters prefer Democrats to control Congress by 55% to 45%. Trump’s support is eroding even within his own coalition, with approval at just 76% among Republicans, 28% among men under 30, and 31% among Latinos, groups that helped him win in 2024. A majority, 52%, say his administration is more corrupt than previous ones, and 58% say his policies are hurting the country. Americans are split almost evenly, 52% to 48%, on whether a Democratic House should pursue impeachment.

The Iran war and rising prices are driving voters’ anger. In February, before the war began, 71% of Americans said gasoline was affordable, but that has completely flipped, with 71% now saying it is not. Majorities also say groceries, health care, and home energy are unaffordable, and 48% say they are financially worse off than when Trump returned to office, the highest share for any president in Post-ABC polling since 1986. About 65% say going to war with Iran was a mistake, and Trump’s approval on handling the cost of living sits at just 27% in the NBC poll. Most Americans are also skeptical of his promise of $5,000 payments if Republicans hold Congress, with 71% saying they don’t expect to see a check. Even 47% of Republicans say they don’t believe they’ll receive one.

Instead of focusing on the economy, Trump has spent his final campaign rallies gushing over men’s bodies. At a rally in Kentucky on Saturday, he described closely examining the physique of Ohio Sen. Jon Husted, from his jawline to his backside, and claimed without evidence that the remarks boosted Husted’s poll numbers. In Georgia on Friday, he praised Senate candidate Mike Collins as “all man” while mocking Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff’s looks and comparing him to Pee-wee Herman. He also gushed about “big, strong, handsome soldiers” and said spending time with them was one of the reasons to be president. Even allies haven’t been spared, as Trump told a Dallas crowd last month that Texas Senate nominee Ken Paxton may not be the best-looking guy he’s ever seen. The New York Times notes the pattern comes as Trump might otherwise be selling voters on ending the Iran war or bringing down prices.

More On Trump Sellout To Putin, Backstabbing Ukraine, Europe, NATO

 

bulwark morning shots logoMorning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Speedrunning Abandoning Ukraine, Andrew Egger, right, andrew eggerOct. 19, 2026. Almost two weeks ago, on October 7, Donald Trump mentioned offhand that it was Vladimir Putin’s birthday and the two of them had a call set up. The call went ahead two days later, and Trump has been snuggling closer to Russia and taking a sledgehammer to Ukraine ever since.

bulwark logo big shipYou could tell the birthday chat was trouble from the jump. Russian media cheerfully reported on the “substance” and “warmth” of the phone call, with Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov reporting that “nobody wanted to hang up first.” The same day, Trump abruptly announced a dramatic swerve in his own energy policy: Far from increasing sanctions pressure on Russia, Trump now said the United States would waive sanctions in order to start buying diesel fuel from Russia directly.

One day later, on Saturday, October 10, Trump still had Putin’s assessment of Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelensky top of mind. “[Zelensky] wants to make problems for the world. He wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers, with diesel fuel,” Trump told reporters. He even called for Zelensky to be removed from office: “I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal, because he could have made many deals, and for some reason never does.” (Maybe it has something to do with Russia demanding he give it huge chunks of Ukraine as the price of peace. Hard to say, really.) The same day, Trump officials threatened that America might stop sharing intelligence with Ukraine if attacks on Russian energy infrastructure continued.

The next day, Trump placed Zelensky in an even greater bind by unilaterally announcing an “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine. Neither side had agreed to any such thing. (“They agreed,” Trump added the next day, “because I said they agreed.”) Thanks to Trump’s renewed enthusiasm for Putin’s lies about the war, this announcement created immediate and massive diplomatic asymmetries. Ukraine, desperate to get back in Trump’s good books, immediately began trying to honor the energy ceasefire; Russia, eager to capitalize, kept right on pounding Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

Zelensky’s unilateral honoring of the energy ceasefire did little to change Trump’s mood. Instead, the United States spent last week handicapping Ukraine’s war efforts in big and small ways. On Tuesday, October 13, Russian missiles pounded Kyiv without the usual advance warning provided by U.S. intelligence. That same night, Ukraine discovered that new restrictions had been placed on its Starlink satellite internet service—crucial infrastructure without which it could not pilot its drones. This service would later be partially, but not entirely, restored; subsequent reporting from Reuters said that the order to slow Ukraine’s satellite internet came directly from the White House, although Trump denied that he ordered it personally. (Subsequent reporting suggested Starlink owner Elon Musk was the one who first proposed the slowdown.)

On Friday, October 16, Trump gave Russia even more sanctions relief—preventing new sanctions on Russia and tariffs on buyers of Russian oil from going into effect, although he himself signed those sanctions into law just last month.

Over and over again since the birthday call, Trump has made his new position on the war clear: Nothing but incentives and wheedling praise for Russia, the war’s imperial aggressor, and nothing but threats and insults for Ukraine, the war’s blameless defender. And yesterday, he gave us his clearest explanation of his thinking yet.

“My decision on Russia is a very simple one,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

Why the kid gloves for Russia?

“I . . . don’t want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table,” Trump said. After all, look how nicely Russia was behaving!

“Russia is doing very little, if anything, to help the Islamic Republic of Iran, compared to what they could be doing, and I want to keep it that way, and will, unless stupid people get in the way.”

And anyway, what was so great about Zelensky and Ukraine?

“[Zelensky] is using Diesel Refineries in Russia as a target, knowing that these attacks are seriously hurting the world diesel markets, including in the United States,” Trump went on. “Farmers, ranchers, and businesses of all kinds are suffering greatly from this, but Russia is, nevertheless, sending, at a low price, millions of barrels of diesel to the World.” Zelensky, Trump added, “doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did. He could have made a better deal two years ago than he can now.”

It’s amazing how many of Trump’s psychological pathologies are here on display at once. There is, of course, his bewildering personal adulation of Putin himself, which makes it all too easy for the Russian dictator to feed him out-and-out lies about the state of the conflict and who is responsible. There’s his alpha-dog approach to geopolitics, which he believes shows great strength and in reality shows great weakness: The United States, Trump apparently believes, ought not lift a finger or offer a word of protest if the world’s other great powers decide to invade their neighbors. Instead, those great powers must be cherished and coddled, lest we “drive them away from the bargaining table” and they decide to intervene in our own imperial adventures.

Note how different this argument is from the old MAGA ones about how the whole conflict is an expensive boondoggle halfway around the world that we shouldn’t be involved with at all. Trump, fully in his own imperial era, has jettisoned such provincial “Donroe Doctrine” thinking. He just argues, openly and explicitly, that it’s better for the United States to be allied with Russia. All this is music to Putin’s ears: The Russian dictator, the Wall Street Journal reports, is now proposing a tripartite summit between the United States, Russia, and China to hash out the ultimate fate of Ukraine.

There’s another psychological need on display here, too. Over the last month, Trump has deliberately been trying to shift Americans’ focus away from his interminable boondoggle in Iran and back toward the conflict in Ukraine.

Part of the idea is to get them to blame high gas prices not on Trump, who attacked Iran, but on Zelensky and/or Putin. But it’s also a matter of presidential posture. In Iran, Trump looks feckless and weak. He doesn’t have the stomach to escalate the war further, and Iran keeps flatly ignoring his threats to do so: Remember his July ultimatum that he would blow up “ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT” for every ship Iran attacked in the Strait of Hormuz?

In the Russia–Ukraine conflict, however, Trump thinks he looks strong. After all, Ukraine needs the United States—and how better to demonstrate that need than by withholding the things they need while lecturing them that it’s really their own fault? When the focus is on Iran, Trump looks like a wimp. When it’s on Ukraine, he thinks he looks cruel, but also strong. He knows which focus he prefers. 

New York Times, Under Siege, Ukraine Uses F-16s to Shoot Down Russia’s Jet-Powered Drones, Lara Jakes, Oct. 19, 2026. The fighters are a key tool against Moscow’s latest weapon of choice. But deploying the multimillion-dollar planes to counter drones is an imperfect fix.

The skies above Ukraine now roar with the sound of F-16s targeting jet-powered drones.

Under siege and short on interceptor missiles, Ukraine is using the American-made fighter planes as a first line of defense against Russia’s deadly new weapon of choice.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine recently described the F-16 as “one of the most effective tools for shooting down” the drones, which have been menacing Ukraine’s cities. But being on constant patrol for drones that cost Russia no more than $70,000 to build is taking a toll on the multimillion-dollar fighter planes.

Ukraine’s small fleet of F-16s — about 50 in all — are in the air so often that they risk breaking down, officials and experts say. About half of Ukraine’s F-16 fleet is grounded, undergoing maintenance elsewhere in Europe, Mr. Zelensky said this month.

Kyiv is still waiting for additional F-16s that Belgium promised to donate more than three years ago. Only a few dozen Ukrainian pilots at a time can be trained to fly the jets. And running out of ammunition is a top concern.ImageA mechanic works on a large engine with tools.Working on an F-16 engine at the Fetesti base. About half of Ukraine’s F-16 fleet is grounded, undergoing maintenance, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said this month.Credit...Andreea Campeanu for The New York Times

David A. Deptula, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant general who is now head of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, a research group near Washington, said Ukraine was “forced to use a relatively small fighter fleet day after day as a substitute for an adequately resourced, layered air defense system.” He also noted that using the F-16s in that way meant Ukrainian forces were “consuming a finite resource faster than they should.”

“It’s not a sustainable long-term proposition,” he added.

Ukraine is rushing to develop other interceptors, but for now, the F-16s are among the few weapons Kyiv has that can keep up with the jet-powered drones and shoot them down without burning through costly Patriot missiles. The fighter jets have taken down as many as 90 percent of incoming cruise missiles in some attacks, said Col. Yurii Ihnat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force.

The reliance on F-16s has made them “critical for Ukraine,” said Lt. Gen. Krzysztof Krol, assistant to the chief of staff of Poland’s armed forces. But the fleet, he said, is “definitely insufficient.”Fighting for Fighter Jets

For Ukraine, getting F-16s was itself a battle.

The sophisticated fighter jets, made by the American defense manufacturer Lockheed Martin, require U.S. government approval to be sold or transferred abroad.Mr. Zelensky began asking for them soon after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Some allies were willing to donate old F-16s. But the Biden administration resisted for more than a year, worried about escalating tensions between NATO and Russia and whether Ukraine could properly maintain the jets.

When Washington relented, in May 2023, it took months to begin training Ukrainian pilots to fly the jets. The first F-16s — donated by Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway — did not arrive in Ukraine until over a year later.

Since then, the planes have been airborne almost constantly, and five of them have been damaged or destroyed in battle, according to the weapons tracking site Oryx. One was shot down, killing its battle-tested pilot, Lt. Col. Oleksiy Mes, after being scrambled against a Russian air assault just weeks after the F-16s arrived in Ukraine.

The fighter planes have also racked up successes. F-16s shot down “a significant portion” of the 1,900 jet drones that Ukraine intercepted last month, out of the 3,500 that Russia launched, Colonel Ihnat said in an interview. He also said that one F-16 pilot recently shot down 10 jet-powered drones during a single flight. 

 

djt helen delaney reese get him outHope for America, Opinion: The President of the United States is being played, Heather Delaney Reese, above right, Oct. 19, 2026. After spending most of today at his private club in West Palm Beach, Florida, the president of the United States posted on his personal social media platform, Truth Social, at 4:36 this afternoon to share his perverted reasoning for refusing to implement sanctions on Russia.

In the long and drawn-out post, he declared that because “Russia is doing very little” to help Iran compared to what it could be doing, he had decided to waive the new sanctions against the country led by his good friend, Vladimir Putin, even over the objections of our allies around the world and overwhelming amounts of criticism back here at home. He added that he wanted to keep Russia from doing any more to help Iran, writing, “I want to keep it that way, and will, unless stupid people get in the way.”

Those “stupid people” he felt the need to put on notice are lawmakers from both parties in the Congress his party controls, who wrote the very law, in honor of their fallen colleague, that he is now refusing to enforce. The Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 was named after his own dead friend, the senator from South Carolina. Someone who spent the final months of his life fighting for Ukraine, and who died not even a day after returning from visiting the country, where he stood beside President Zelenskyy and secured the White House’s backing for new sanctions against Russia. Just one month after Congress passed the law and Trump himself signed it to impose new sanctions on Russia, Trump suddenly reversed course and waived the very sanctions Graham had worked so hard to secure.Then in today’s social media post, Donald Trump had the audacity to say that he is doing this because he wants peace and that this is the best strategy to get it. He may very well believe that he is some great peacemaker, that Putin respects him, and that he is the only one who can broker a deal to end this war. But all that he is proving is what the rest of the world can clearly see. That he is Putin’s pawn, and that the Russians are playing him like a violin. Donald Trump is the guy who truly believes that the stripper at the strip club likes him. He has such an inflated sense of self-importance that he cannot see that he is being used, because his ego will not allow him to see it.

In that same post, Donald Trump tried to weaponize the devastation that Russia has inflicted on Ukraine, saying that Zelenskyy’s “country is in shambles, a large portion of his land is lost, his oceans and seas are gone, and his male population is low, wounded, and/or dead.” He included those details as some sort of proof of his argument that Zelenskyy and Ukraine have already lost and that Russia has won. He made no mention of the grave losses Russia has suffered and continues to sustain. He also didn’t add anything about how Putin, and only Putin, was responsible for starting this war and that he could end it right now by withdrawing from the country he has invaded and stopping the bloodshed. Instead, he accused Zelenskyy of having a financial interest in prolonging the war, writing that “with all of the money that Europe is famously giving him, and that Crooked Joe Biden gave him in the past, he doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did.”

Everything Trump is doing is strategic to the extent Trump is able to think strategically, because Donald Trump knows that a significant number of his own supporters actually do care about Ukraine. They see right and wrong clearly on this one. His post today was just a desperate attempt to preemptively condition them to see the aggressor as the reasonable party and the country that was invaded, that did nothing wrong, that just wants to survive, as the problem. He is laying the groundwork now so that when he eventually abandons Ukraine entirely, or worse, helps Russia in an even more direct way, his base will see it as a necessary step toward peace and the right thing to do.

This wasn’t the only post where he cozied up to people standing on the wrong side of history. In another post, which he addressed “To the Great People of Israel,” he announced his “Complete and Total Endorsement” of Benjamin Netanyahu in his upcoming race for reelection as Prime Minister of Israel later this month. But this had nothing to do with caring about the people of Israel. He was doing a favor for another authoritarian leader, someone the International Criminal Court has an active arrest warrant for. He called Netanyahu a “Great Warrior Prime Minister” and declared that he has been “Strong, Brave, and Brilliant in the face of tremendous opposition.” He wrote that if Israel had anyone other than Netanyahu as its leader, “America will have to do this work ourselves, and I am not inclined to do so.” He used the people he had just called “great” as pawns, making American support for Israel conditional on Netanyahu staying in power. Netanyahu responded with his own message thanking Trump for his “extraordinary endorsement,” adding that “Israel has never had a greater friend in the White House.”

Knowing how hard so many of us oppose what Donald Trump is doing and has done, I would never blame an entire nation for the sins of their leader. The Israeli people deserve better than Bibi, just like we deserve better than Trump, and the Iranian people deserve better than the people controlling their government.

Just yesterday Donald Trump told us exactly why he keeps standing with evil people: “I like people that like me. I just like it, and I can’t help it. It’s a character flaw. I mean, I’ve had a couple of people, really horrible human beings, horrible, horrible, terrible people, but I heard through the grapevine they really liked me a lot. So, I like them too.”

In a single day, the president of the United States refused to impose sanctions on a country that invaded its neighbor and is bombing civilians, and publicly endorsed for reelection a leader wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Donald Trump continues to carry out his campaign to deliberately desensitize us to his worst impulses and dangerous plans. He wants us to feel comfortable when he aligns our country with the worst people and the cruelty they inflict. Donald Trump wants to destroy the idea of what America is supposed to stand for, so that he can turn it into anything he wants. He is normalizing the United States as a partner with evil. And he is making it so that one day we look around and we do not even flinch when our president sides with dictators, authoritarians, and fascists, because it has simply become what we are and we don’t remember it any other way. That is how it happens. Slowly, and then all at once.

Thankfully, right now, we still remember who we are and what this country was founded on. Earlier this week, students from North Carolina A&T State University, Bennett College, and UNC Greensboro marched together for 45 minutes to cast their ballots after polling sites were removed from their campuses by the Republican-controlled Board of Elections. The board chair, a Republican named Eugene Lester, said that “voting is a privilege,” and another leader said that the campus sites “disproportionately favor one political party.” State Board member Siobhan O’Duffy Millen called it “a war on students.” The College Democrats of North Carolina filed a lawsuit, and their attorneys wrote in the filing: “Contrary to the views of Defendant Eugene Lester, the Guilford County elections board chair, voting is a right of citizenship, not a privilege.” Their attempts to make voting harder and interfere in the election didn’t work. They still voted.

North Carolina A&T students have long been pioneers in moving this country forward while not taking any nonsense from anyone. Back in 1960, four freshmen sat down at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro and refused to leave. Their brave act helped launch the sit-in movement and expand the civil rights movement across the South. Here we are all these years later, and students at the same school are once again fighting the good fight to make this country better and more just. Young people have always been at the center of the moments that change the trajectory of this country, and they are doing it again.

I think back to when I was in college in the mid-1990s, and how different the world felt. I was not worried about my rights being taken away and I was not fighting to preserve anything. I was spending my time with friends and volunteering with organizations focused on the AIDS crisis and the foster care system, because I thought the country was moving forward, and I wanted to be part of it. I thought that peace in the Middle East was possible, that racism could be driven into silence even if it could not be erased entirely, and that homelessness was just a problem that we needed to find the right solutions for, not treat as a crime. When I look at college students today, they do not have the luxury of that idealism. They can’t live in a world that offered the same hope and possibility that so many of us got to experience because they are constantly faced with threats to their rights and uncertainty about their futures. They are treading water instead of swimming toward progress and possibility.

I know how lucky I was to be living during that time in history when a better future felt within reach, when so many other generations faced struggles that made the future feel far less certain. But this generation in particular has been hit by one compounding crisis after another, with none of them resolving before the next one arrived. Their parents were trying to survive the Great Recession while still carrying the wounds of September 11th. Then came a pandemic that stole many of their most formative years, the years when they were supposed to learn how to be people in the world and figure out who they are. Some of them lost grandparents and parents during Trump’s botched 2020 response. Then came George Floyd and the reckoning with racial injustice, which, for a very short time, actually felt like it might lead to a better world for everyone. Then Trump was elected again, and they, like all of us, are watching what feels like the slow-motion dismantling of our entire country while the president does all he can to make us see each other as enemies.

This is why our vote next month during the midterm elections matters so much. It may very well end up being the most important election in modern history. And even if it all goes exactly as our country’s survival needs it to, Donald Trump may still do everything in his power to undermine it. He may look for every loophole he can find to delay certifications and challenge the results. We need to be prepared for attempts to prevent the duly elected members of Congress from being seated. If there is one thing we know about Donald Trump, it’s that he does not play by the rules because he does not believe the rules apply to him. But we cannot let any of that stop us. We have to make our voices heard at the ballot box and insist that every single one of our votes is counted and that the decision of “We the People” is upheld. Future generations are counting on us, and we can’t, and we won’t let them down.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance 

U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsbulwark morning shots logoMorning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Power of Negative Thinking, William Kristol, right, william bill kristol imdbOct. 19, 2026. A note on two findings in the new ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll that came out yesterday.

First, the generic congressional ballot has moved decisively in the Democrats’ direction. In July, Democrats had a 3-point advantage when voters were asked whom they intended to vote for in November. They now hold a 50 to 42 percent lead among registered voters—and one should probably add another point or two for a likely disproportionate Democratic turnout.

bulwark logo big shipSo two weeks out, Democrats are in good shape.

But there’s another finding in the poll that suggests they could end up in even better shape. Respondents were asked if they would rather see the next Congress controlled by Democrats to act as a check on Trump, or see a Congress controlled by Republicans to support Trump’s agenda. Fifty-eight percent of registered voters preferred a Democratic Congress, while only 39 percent preferred a Republican one (up from a 53 percent to 42 percent margin a year ago).

So the same poll that shows an 8-point margin on the question of whom you intend to vote for has a 19-point margin on the question of whom you want to control of Congress.

Now, obviously there will always be some traditional Republicans who will say they’d like to see a check on Trump—but, being Republicans, will still vote for the Republican candidate in their state or district. Not every Trump-disapprover is going to turn against every Republican candidate running for the House or the Senate. There’ll always be a gap between the ballot choice and the broader question of the direction of Congress.

But closing that gap just a little would make a big difference. Getting just a few more of the 58 percent who want a Democratic Congress to act on that wish, and thus moving the generic ballot margin from high single digits to low double digits, would turn a wave into a tsunami on November 3.

It seems to me, then, that Democrats have just one job over these final two weeks: To remind voters, over and over again, that the only way to check Trump from driving the country further into a ditch is to vote blue.

Democratic candidates can at least implicitly acknowledge that voters don’t have to love everything about the Democratic party. They can even say explicitly that voters don’t have to decide to pledge their troth to the Democrats forevermore. But they can bring home to voters that they need, at least this once, to walk away from the Republican party in order to check Trump for the rest of his time in office. It’s what the voters want. It’s also what Democrats can actually do over the next two years.

A closing argument that focuses on the need to check Trump would have the advantage, always desirable but not always achievable in politics, of being both popular and true. Democrats just need to keep on making it.

AROUND THE BULWARK

  • George Washington’s Legacy of Religious Freedom Is Under Threat in the Military… Pluralism is an important gift from our first commander in chief, observes MARK HERTLING, and it’s being squandered.
  • bulwark logo big shipThe Pro-Ukraine Right Is Running Out of Excuses for Trump… The president’s latest embrace of Putin is making their already awkward position untenable, writes CATHY YOUNG.
  • Live from Charlotte… The gang welcomes Pete Buttigieg for a night of politics among friends. 
  • Dems See Trump’s Corruption as the Grift That Keeps on Giving… Their midterms closing argument connects the president’s enrichment to the squeeze on Americans’ wallets, reports LAUREN EGAN.
  • Trump’s Own Energy Secretary Just Contradicted His Russia Story… Trump rewards Putin, Republicans squirm, and Lindsey Graham’s legacy lies in ruins. WILL SALETAN joins SAM STEIN on Bulwark Takes.

Quick Hits

FREEDOM FUEL REVISITED: Remember “FREEDOM FUEL”? In early July, with gas prices already soaring due to the war in Iran, Donald Trump and his allies began trumpeting something strange: a chain of star-spangled gas stations that had started selling below-cost gas at a number of Pennsylvania locations. White House press staffers traveled to the stations for photo ops and to credit “President Trump’s strong leadership” for “price relief at the pump.” It wasn’t until almost two months later that we learned one explanation for how the upstart chain could afford to sell the gas so cheaply: Per a lawsuit, they’d stiffed a supplier over payment for it.

Now, new reporting from Politico puts even more meat on the story’s bones: The “FREEDOM FUEL” project began in part as a political back-scratching effort from a small klatch of allies—including, bizarrely, Baltimore Ravens special teams coach Randy Brown—who were also pitching the White House on some far bigger projects, like a deal to reopen an oil refinery in the Virgin Islands. Here’s Politico:

It is . . . a high-octane metaphor for the president’s approach to governing, with all its corner-cutting and haste and disdain for regulation, its triumph of marketing over substance and consistent fights with the press. As in many such stories, the tale of Freedom Fuel features private business interests finding bizarre ways to pander to the White House. Despite the operators’ and the administration’s best efforts, and the seemingly innocent promise of cheaper gas, the tale of Freedom Fuel also shows how the administration’s free-wheeling approach to problems can create an even bigger mess.

Other than the corruption, the most notable thing about the wheeling and dealing so typical of this White House is how bizarre it all is. Read the whole thing.

FRANCE GONE WILD: We don’t spend a lot of time on French domestic politics around here, but it was hard not to notice the extraordinary riots that convulsed the country this weekend, as Emmanuel Macron’s government feebly called for order and calm. The New York Times checks in:

Mr. Macron said in an evening broadcast interview that he would seek to lower gas prices — a key complaint from some protesters — during a diplomatic trip to the Persian Gulf this week.

But he offered no concrete concessions, and appealed for “order, calm, not an escalation,” criticizing calls to “take to the streets, to protest, to create disorder.”

He also warned that “Those who looted will have to pay back, and those who sought to bring down the Republic will be held accountable.”

On Sunday, the violence and protests had largely subsided, apart from sporadic skirmishes and looting involving small numbers of rioters in Paris, as the unrest gave way to political finger pointing.

Politicians from the far left to the far right criticized the government for a police response deemed too weak or ill-prepared — with some calling for the interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, to resign.

Mr. Nuñez told journalists on Saturday that the police had not been understaffed, but that it was hard to contain rioters “when they’re scattered in small groups.”

New York Times, Republicans in Ohio Are Worried About Turnout. Here’s What They’re Doing About it, Emily Davies, Oct. 19, 2026. To boost Senator Jon Husted, who is in a tight race to keep his seat, some Republicans who were making a jobs pitch have pivoted to focus on socialism.

Just two volunteers showed up on a recent weekday at a Republican Party campaign office near Cleveland that in 2024 was brimming with activity every night.

One of the two, Tanya Karabanovs, 54, sat among stacks of untouched yard signs and brainstormed new ways to convince her neighbors to vote for Republican candidates such as Senator Jon Husted, who was appointed in 2025 to finish the term of Vice President JD Vance. Her most recent idea: stuffing chocolate bars into goodie bags with leftover campaign literature.

“This is really a weird cycle,” said Ms. Karabanovs, who recalled at least 30 volunteers packing into the office each day in 2024. “There’s no way to feel confident about any of the races, honestly.”

Many of the Republican volunteers trying to keep Ohio’s Senate seat red started the summer making the case that, despite rising prices, Mr. Husted was better suited to fix the economy than his Democratic challenger, the former senator Sherrod Brown. But when it became clear that the message wasn’t landing, they began to pivot.

Some, like Ms. Karabanovs, got creative. The political PAC for Americans for Prosperity, a prominent conservative advocacy group that deploys thousands of door-knockers across the state, switched its script to the threat of socialism — and organizers quickly noticed a difference.

“I wouldn’t like that,” said Nikki Cvetkovic, 77, after opening her door in a working-class suburb of Youngstown and inspecting a pamphlet with a picture of Brown next to the words, “SOCIALISM THREATENS YOUR FREEDOM.” She said she would cast her ballot for Mr. Husted.

Polls have shown Mr. Brown running ahead of Mr. Husted in one of the most closely watched races of this cycle. But many conservatives across the state believe they can pull off in the final two weeks what Republicans have done better than Democrats for the last 10 years: defy expectations on Election Day.

The modern-day Republican Party is built on upsets. Twice, polls showed Mr. Trump losing the presidential election only for him to triumph, cementing the MAGA movement’s staying power and underdog status. The question now is whether the G.O.P. can do it again, at a time when Mr. Trump is not on the ballot and his popularity is historically low.

The answer lies on the ground in unexpected battlegrounds, including Iowa and Ohio, which have swung to the right over the last decade but this year have shown signs of shifting back. In these states, as the Republican Party has struggled to defend Mr. Trump’s handling of inflation, the war with Iran and tariff policies, local campaigns and committees have leaned into depicting Democrats as dangerously far to the left — a last-ditch gambit to persuade their voters not to stay home or break the other way.

New York Times, That Huge Republican Cash Edge? It’s in Senate Races, Not House Races, Shane Goldmacher, Oct. 19, 2026. With Republicans seen as less likely to hold their majority in the House, the party is focusing more on the battle for the Senate, where it is vastly outspending Democrats on ads.

Republicans have an enormous financial edge in this year’s midterms. But with two weeks until the election, it is now clear that their spending advantage is overwhelmingly playing out only in the advertising battle for the Senate — not the House.

In the seven Senate races that the Cook Political Report rated as tossups, Republicans are outspending Democrats on advertising by $947 million to $625 million. That is a breathtaking advantage of more than $320 million in the key races that could determine which party wins control of the Senate, according to a tally by AdImpact of ads that have been already been shown and future reservations.

It is a very different story in the House, though. Republicans still have an advertising advantage in the closest House races, but it is relatively narrow — just a $14 million edge across the 21 races rated as tossups.

There are a number of explanations for the discrepancy.

Senate races generally attract more money and attention than congressional contests. Elon Musk’s enormous spending on the Texas Senate race is also a factor: He gave nearly $170 million to super PACs backing Ken Paxton, the Republican Senate nominee there — a huge injection of cash from one person.

But it is also appears to be an indication that both parties — and their donors — are viewing it as increasingly unlikely that Republicans will be able to hold onto their House majority.The battle to win control of the Senate, though, remains on a knife’s edge. Republican donors are accordingly spending big in key Senate races.

In six of the seven tossup Senate races, Republican ad spending is far outstripping Democrats’. The biggest gap is in Texas ($141 million), but there are chasms also in Ohio (nearly $90 million), Maine (nearly $32 million) and Michigan ($33 million).

Only in Kansas — where Republicans are engaged in a late rescue mission — is the spending even close. There, Democrats had an edge of less than $2 million.

In the House, there is not such a clear-cut edge for Republicans. Across the 21 tossup districts, Republicans are currently set to spend more on 10 seats while Democrats are set to spend more on 11.

It is worth noting that in recent years, Democrats have lapped Republicans in House spending. In President Trump’s first midterm election, in 2018, G.O.P. strategists spoke about being washed away in a “green wave” as much as a blue one.

“This cycle, that money won’t save them,” said Mike Marinella, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “Republicans have the money, the map and the message.”

Democratic-Republican Campaign logosPoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: Republicans Are Crumbling And Pointing Fingers At Trump For Midterm Failure, Jason Easley, right, jason easleyOct. 19, 2026. It s never a good sign when the election is two weeks away, but the blame game is already starting, but that is what is happening as Republicans are already blaming Trump.

Trump has been laying the groundwork for blaming Republicans if his party loses all or part of control of Congress in the midterm election. Before he changed his tune and told supporters to pretend he was on the ballot, Trump often said in public that the midterm election didn’t matter to him because he isn’t on the ballot. Trump repeated his claim that the midterm election doesn’t matter to him during his speech at the UN.

View in browserRepublicans Are Crumbling And Pointing Fingers At Trump For Midterm FailureIt s never a good sign when the election is two weeks away, but the blame game is already starting, but that is what is happening as Republicans are already blaming Trump.Jason EasleyOct 19READ IN APP

Trump has been laying the groundwork for blaming Republicans if his party loses all or part of control of Congress in the midterm election. Before he changed his tune and told supporters to pretend he was on the ballot, Trump often said in public that the midterm election didn’t matter to him because he isn’t on the ballot. Trump repeated his claim that the midterm election doesn’t matter to him during his speech at the UN.

Less than a month ago, Trump said about Iran:

But I believe we’ll make a deal right after the election, because it doesn’t make sense for them not to.

They’re waiting to see how I do in the midterm election. What they don’t realize is that I’m not running. I did that already and won in a landslide. We won in a giant landslide, and I’ll be here for two and a half years.

The Republican Party is running and I’ll be helping them, but I am not running. I gave absolutely no credence and will not give credence to the election. When it comes to Iran, it doesn’t even enter my mind.

Trump’s lack of concern or care about the midterm election reveals itself in every rally that he does for Republican candidates. 90% or more of Trump’s time at these rallies is spent rambling about whatever is on his mind. There is little promotion of the Republican Party or GOP candidates, and Republican operatives are already pointing the finger at Trump for what they view as an upcoming defeat.The Republican Blaming Has Begun

Here is a sampling of what Politico found when they talked to Republican operatives:

“He has constantly been distracted,” said one GOP operative working on multiple midterm races, “and not focused on what the voters care about. It’s insane.”

These headaches are not responsible for voter dissatisfaction or tight races in states Trump won by double digits in 2024. Republicans concede that some of their candidates are genuinely bad, Democratic ones are genuinely good — and they’re facing a brutal midterm cycle where voters are angry at the war the president started and blaming him for the higher gas prices it’s caused.…

After Trump attacked Rove and Cornyn, a Texas-based GOP consultant called it “counterproductive.”

“Not only are they turning off our voters but they’re also pissing off all of us,” the person said.

Trump is responsible for the quality of candidates in some of the Senate races, like Texas, Michigan, North Carolina, and Georgia, where he handpicked the candidates who are losing to Democrats.

Trump is the reason why voters are so angry, and while his distractions, disinterest, and attacks on Republicans aren’t helping, the president created the hostile environment that Republicans are facing.

Republicans are frantically trying to save red states like Texas and Ohio. They aren’t even bothering with a swing state like Pennsylvania.

Trump will throw the Republicans who lose their races under the bus, but what is happening is that the MAGA coalition is crumbling, and Trump is going to be blamed for the Republican defeat.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: Trump Rambles Like A Loon About Cushions At Women’s Health Event, Jason Easley, right, jason easleyOct. 19, 2026. At an event that was supposed to be about the creation of a new women’s health division at NIH, Trump could not stay on topic and showed that he doesn’t care about women by ranting about cushions.

Even when this White House tries to do simple, normal political things, Donald Trump has to be politicus usa logoweird. Republicans are complaining and finger-pointing at Trump over the midterms because he has no message and is showing up in red states and babbling about himself.

The White House held an event for Trump to sign an executive order that would create a Women’s Health Division at the National Institutes of Health. All Trump had to do was show up, sit beside his wife, sign the executive order, and say a few words.

The White House, which I suspect was Melania Trump’s press team, planted a story in USA Today about how this was all the first lady’s idea.

According to USA Today:

First lady Melania Trump pressed her husband’s administration to give women’s health greater priority in medical research, USA TODAY has learned — a push that culminated Oct. 19 in an executive order creating a new division at the National Institutes of Health.

…

The initiative comes amid a flurry of meetings set up by the first lady herself inside the East Wing including working sessions with physicians and other experts in the public and private sectors. She met with officials from Health and Human Services to establish the task force.

By the way, Trump put Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of the women’s health task force.Trump Uses His Remarks To Rant About Ballrooms And Cushions

All Trump had to do was sit there and be normal, and he just could not do it.

This is how Trump started his remarks:

 Thank you. Please. Please. And if I might, that stone is so beautiful. . I've been here when we had grass. This is built on a wetland, and the grass was always wet. If it didn't rain for two weeks, the grass was soaking wet, and many women have ruined their shoes, and they look at me. . And they've ruined many sets of shoes as we kept trying to have use that swamp, and it didn't work out. And what we did here has just been incredible. It's become the most popular place to have a news conference, and I hope you enjoy it.

I even... See the cushions, those beautiful yellow cushions? They're supposed to be a half an inch high. I said, "How about four inches?" Don't they feel nice? . They don't make them in four inches. I had them specially made four inches for everybody. . So it lifts you up higher, and it's a lot more comfortable than the one-inch deal. Enjoy it.

And outside, you have the new heliport that just opened, and behind you, you're gonna have one of the greatest ballrooms and military complexes. Very complex situation going on, I will tell you, but it's it's on time. It's actually ahead of schedule, I would say, and it's gonna be the greatest ballroom and the greatest military complex combination that's ever been built. So it's very important.

The White House has needed that for 150 years. Presidents have been saying, "Please, we gotta have some room." We had President Xi recently, and he called with a request of 350 people. In other words, 350 friends or representatives from the United States. I said, "The room holds 125. 350 is gonna tough, be tough." So we gave him 10. . And we won't have that problem anymore. Then we had King Charles came in. Likewise, he said "Would it be possible to have 293 people? We have them from the UK, all over the United States. They wanna fly in." I said it's gonna be a little possi- it's about three times more than the room holds. That means I would get none." . So we made a little compromise, but we're gonna have no problem very shortly. We're gonna have the kind of room we want.

Trump can’t stop showing his true priorities, which are cushions and the ballroom. Donald Trump has no interest in the economy, women’s health, or the American people.

Republicans are about to get smoked in the midterm election because they sold America the lie that Donald Trump cared and would do something about their problems. Trump doesn’t care. He is doing nothing, and his lunatic ballroom ramble shows why Americans increasingly can’t stand this president.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

 

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes of Washington DC and East Potomac Park Links Map.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes of Washington DC and East Potomac Golf Links Map.

New York Times, Judge Grills Witnesses About Decisions Behind Trump’s Golf Course Plan, Zach Montague, Oct. 19, 2026. The Justice Department clashed with Judge Ana C. Reyes over testimony by several government witnesses about the chain of decisions surrounding East Potomac Golf Links. 

A hearing about the fate of the East Potomac Golf Links in Washington turned into an icy standoff on Monday as a federal judge went to extraordinary lengths to learn who has been responsible for decisions about the property and whether plans to overhaul it have been kept from the court.

A day after President Trump announced that his administration would transform the municipal course into a professional golf venue, Judge Ana C. Reyes summoned a constellation of officials to testify about whether the government has been plotting the renovation even while swearing in court that no decisions had been made.

While the stakes of the case are relatively low — the fate of one municipal golf course on a spit of land not far from the monuments in Washington — it has taken on symbolic importance as the latest blowup between Mr. Trump and the federal courts. It is proving to be a test case for how far Mr. Trump is willing to go to get his way on a project that he has made clear is important to him.

Judge Reyes asked several senior officials to testify on Monday about a decision to cut down hundreds of trees at the course after providing only a few hours of notice. She had requested notice of major changes at the course, so she could consider whether the proposed actions would be legal, given a challenge from a preservationist group trying to halt the project.

The Justice Department responded by alleging that Judge Reyes, an appointee of President Joseph R. Biden Jr., has shown bias in the case and asking her to recuse herself. She declined.

Facing an army of lawyers from the Justice Department, including the department’s third most senior official, Judge Reyes made clear that her patience was running thin. She said the government’s position that the tree removal was part of routine maintenance — not in preparation for a renovation that Mr. Trump has now trumpeted on social media — made little sense.

“There is no universe in which all of this just coincidentally happened at the same time,” she told the lawyers. “There just isn’t.”

In his Sunday post, Mr. Trump announced that the course would close for a 14-month renovation on Nov. 15. On Monday, he followed up to say that work was scheduled to begin immediately.

Judge Reyes has ordered the administration to halt all tree removal until at least Oct. 26, but she is considering a more expansive block on work at the site.The hearing opened with drama, as Judge Reyes asked all of the Justice Department officials present, including junior lawyers and nonpolitical career lawyers, to raise their hands if they agreed with a filing that had been submitted on Sunday by Stanley E. Woodward Jr., the associate attorney general. If they did, she said, she would order them to add their names to it as well.

That document tried to square the government’s courtroom statements with Mr. Trump’s social media commentary. It argued that federal agencies were still studying the plan and that cutting trees on the property did not amount to a determination about the future of course.

“The plan is not final because the Park Service has not completed its review and the details of the proposal are subject to change during the review process,” it said.

Mr. Woodward told Judge Reyes that her request was “inappropriate.” He added that he would instruct his colleagues not to do as she had ordered.

“I’m the one who’s going to say how we move today, not you,” she fired back.

She then ordered Mr. Woodward to explain in writing by later on Monday why the Justice Department did not have to follow her direction.

The hearing continued with testimony by Gregory Wischer, a deputy chief of staff at the Interior Department, who was involved in meetings about improving East Potomac Park as part of larger “beautification” efforts in Washington.

Facing questions from Abbe Lowell, a lawyer representing the group suing to stop the renovation, Mr. Wischer testified that taking down the trees was a basic aesthetic decision. A 2019 report that proposed restoring the course’s original layout had recommended tree removal, he testified.

“We were just trying to find ways we could clean up the course,” he said.

Mr. Wischer’s testimony on Monday played out against a backdrop of Mr. Trump’s conflicting public statements.

Mr. Trump has attacked Judge Reyes as “a crazed lunatic whose courthouse tapes will reveal, may be insane.” The Justice Department had requested that audio be released of a hearing she conducted last week, in which she angrily took the Trump administration to task for removing trees with minimal notice.

In denying the administration’s request that she step away from the case, Judge Reyes pointed out that she had consistently rejected what she described as premature requests by the preservation group suing that she block work at the course.

Instead, she wrote that she had approached the case as a “pragmatist” who had urged the parties in July to hammer out an agreement on their own, rather than pre-emptively halt work by court order. She had instead asked the government to provide notice before undertaking major work at the course.

“Between February 13, when this case was filed, and October 11, the court had not barred the government from taking any action in East Potomac, including tree removal,” she wrote.

“It is easy to weaponize selective quotations to bring a baseless recusal motion,” she added. “But it is much harder to meet the demanding legal standard against a full record. By any objective measure, the government fails to meet the standard for recusal.”

 

all rise news adam klasfeldAll Rise News, Judge rejects recusal motion in East Potomac case, Adam Klasfeld, right, Oct. 19, 2026. Hours before an evidentiary hearing in the East Potomac Golf Course case, Judge Ana Reyes emphatically rejected the Trump Justice Department’s demand that she recuse herself.

“That is a serious charge,” she wrote, referring to claims of alleged bias. “The Court answers it. With the record.”

Donald Trump and his top Justice Department attorneys repeatedly attacked Judge Reyes over her reaction to the government’s sudden decision to destroy more than 500 trees on East Potomac Golf Course with little warning. The judge yelled at government lawyers and said that they destroyed their credibility.

In a 13-page ruling, Judge Reyes made clear that she had repeatedly praised the government’s attorneys and ruled in their favor before that moment.

“So what happened? Not sudden onset bias,” Reyes wrote.

Justice Department log circularInstead, the judge said it was a simple case of an action and a reaction: Trump Justice Department attorneys assured her that no formal order was needed to protect the public golf course because the government would provide ample notice before making any major and irreversible changes.

She said she rejected “nearly a dozen” requests to issue that formal order so that she could hold government attorneys in contempt for violating that vow.

That’s what she said sparked her outrage.

“Yes, the Court was ‘furious’ and ‘beyond disappointed,’ and said as much,” she wrote. “"But ‘[p]articularly in hard-fought litigation dealing with controversial issues, district judges must sometimes take strong actions and use strong words.’”

Since that time, Donald Trump and his highest-ranking Justice Department attorneys have personally attacked her. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward filed a disqualification motion demanding the release of audio from the hearing and denouncing what he called her “histrionics.”

In an erudite response to that insult, the judge noted in a footnote: “‘Histrionic’ derives from the Latin term histrio, meaning actor.”

“And so the Court is reminded of Hamlet’s advice to the players: ‘Suit the action to the word, the word to the action,’” she wrote.

Woodward was the sole author of the disqualification motion.

Since the courtroom flare-up, Trump repeatedly posted on social media about his intention to transform the golf course — designed to provide greater access to the general public for a nominal fee — into a championship-level venue.

Woodward claimed that Trump’s social media posts don’t represent a final agency decision.

Once again, he was the only Trump Justice Department official to sign the filing taking that legal position.

As an evidentiary hearing kicked off on Monday, Judge Reyes ordered Woodward to refile that motion with as many other signatures from Justice Department lawyers who would be willing to adopt that position for the purposes of her considering sanctions.

The hearing is ongoing. Shortly before it began, Trump took another swipe at Judge Reyes: “The judge on the case is a crazed lunatic whose courthouse tapes will reveal, may be insane? The tapes have been blocked from usage by the judge.”

The preservation group that brought the lawsuit alerted the judge to the social media post before today’s proceedings began.

Israel, Middle East Wars 

New York Times, Houthi Strikes Kill Dozens in Yemeni Desert Military Camp, Officials Say, Saeed Al-Batati and Ismaeel Naar, Oct. 19, 2026. The Iranian-backed militia struck with ballistic missiles deep in government-held central Yemen, in what appeared to be among the deadliest attacks of the renewed war.

The Iranian-backed Houthi militia killed dozens of Yemeni soldiers in a strike on a desert camp in the middle of the country on Monday, officials said, in what appeared to be one of the deadliest attacks since their war resumed.

Col. Majed al-Nuzaili, a spokesman for the Yemeni armed forces, said in a statement on social media that the Houthis had fired three ballistic missiles at the camp, Al Alam, which is in Shabwa Province. They hit what he described as a training center for security and police recruits. He told a Saudi-owned broadcaster, Al Arabiya, that at least 47 people had been killed and 53 others wounded.

Saba, a Houthi-run news agency, said the group had struck what it called Saudi “troop buildups” at the camp and made no mention of recruits.

“The number of martyrs is very high and is expected to rise,” Fahd Al-Khulaifi, the deputy governor of Shabwa Province, said in a telephone interview. He said there were dozens of casualties, some of whom were being transferred to the government-held cities of Aden and Al Mukalla.

The Saudi-led military coalition that is fighting the Houthis in Yemen has not commented on the strike.

The Yemeni government and the Houthis, a rebel group from the country’s north, have been at war since 2014, when the militia seized the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, which it still holds.

Graphic footage published on social media and verified by The New York Times shows multiple bodies and blood on paved ground at Al Alam. At least 15 bodies can be seen as the camera pans the military camp, with clothes and sandals strewed around.

The scale of the attack underscored the rapidly intensifying war in Yemen, which erupted earlier this year after the United States and Israel attacked Iran, the Houthis’ main patron.

Last month, the Houthis seized swaths of strategic territory on Yemen’s Red Sea coast in a lightning offensive, gaining greater control over a crucial choke point for global trade. In recent weeks, forces affiliated with the Yemeni government have mounted a counteroffensive to retake the territory, backed by Saudi warplanes.

Drop Site New, Israel-Backed Palestinian Militias Terrorize Displaced Families in Gaza, Abdel Qader Sabbah and Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Oct. 19, 2026. Over the past year, attacks by Israel-backed Palestinian militias have become increasingly frequent in Gaza, particularly targeting Palestinians living close to the ever expanding “yellow line.”

Youssef Al-Sheikh was asleep with his wife and eight young children in a room on the ground floor of a badly damaged building in the wasteland of northern Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp when the group of masked, heavily armed members of an Israeli-backed Palestinian militia broke down the door and stormed inside. It was around 2 a.m. on the night of September 24. Decked out in tactical gear and with their assault rifles pointing menacingly down at his family, they began shouting at Al-Sheikh to get up. The light from their military headlamps pierced the darkness, blinding Al-Sheikh.

“They came inside, and as soon as they entered, one of them raised his Kalashnikov and aimed it at me while I was here,” Al-Sheikh told Drop Site News, pointing to the only bed in the room, made up of thin mattress laid on a thin piece of wood propped up on concrete blocks.

“About seven people came in. They all had flashlights on them—bright white lights, extremely powerful flashlights,” he said. “With all the white light, I couldn’t see who was in front of me.”

The lead gunman started yelling “Qassam,” Al-Sheikh said, a reference to the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. “He said, ‘Why are you staying here? Where are the explosive devices you have? Where are the weapons you have?’” Al-Sheikh recalled. “I told him, ‘I’m a peaceful citizen. I don’t have anything.’” When Al-Sheikh asked if could put some clothes on, the militiamen grabbed him and began savagely beating him in front of his wife and children.

“I couldn’t process what was happening and didn’t know what to do,” Al-Sheikh said. “Three of them came at me, punching and slapping me and beating me. They beat me in the most brutal ways.” Angry red bruises were still visible on his neck and back two days later.

They bound Al-Sheikh’s hands behind his back and left him on the ground. Amid the commotion, one of Al-Sheikh’s brothers-in-law entered from the room next door, pleading with the men to have mercy. “They grabbed him by his hair. Three of them attacked him, threw him to the ground, and beat him with their Kalashnikovs,” Al-Sheikh said. When a second brother-in-law arrived, they also grabbed him and beat him with their rifle butts.

The militiamen took the three men into an adjacent room and made them kneel on the floor. What appeared to be the lead gunman pulled up a chair and sat in front of them. One of Al-Sheikh’s brothers-in-law, Muatasim Al-Aja, had his hands bound and his mouth gagged. The other, Hossam Tafesh, also had his hands bound. The militiamen pulled out a black T-shirt from Tafesh’s belongings and accused him of being a part of the resistance. When Tafesh said he had nothing to do with the resistance, they began beating him again and wrapped the T-shirt tightly around his face until he began to suffocate.

The other militiamen ransacked the rest of the house, going through and overturning the family’s scant belongings and confiscating all the phones they could find. “One of my children was inside the room while this was happening and he started slapping himself. He’s a little boy, a very young child,” Al-Sheikh said. “He kept slapping himself across the face, crying, ‘Dad, Dad, Dad! Where’s my dad?’ The officer told my wife, ‘Either you shut the children up—all of you be quiet—or I’ll shoot them all and kill them.’”Youssef Al-Sheikh in his home in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza that an Israel-backed Palestinian militia raided last month, beating him and his relatives and detaining one of them. September 26, 2026. Video by Abdel Qader Sabbah.

Al-Sheikh said he later learned from eyewitnesses that an even larger militia force of close to 30 heavily armed men was surrounding the house outside. “It was as if an entire battalion had come to fight us,” he said.

Eventually, the lead militiaman made Al-Sheikh and both of his brothers-in-law look into his phone camera and photographed their faces. “He photographed us and sent the pictures over WhatsApp,” Al-Sheikh said. Several minutes later, the gunman received a call and announced they could be released.

At the same time, several gunmen went upstairs and detained a third brother-in-law, Said Okasha, who had gone up to the roof in fear. “They started beating him. We could hear the blows and the screaming. He was shouting, ‘Leave me! Leave me!’ They restrained him and took him away in his underwear,” Al-Sheikh said. “They took him and left.”

Two other residents in the area interviewed separately confirmed to Drop Site that a raid by a Palestinian militia had taken place that night.“No One Comes to Help Us”

Over the past year, since a “ceasefire” agreement went into effect, attacks by Israel-backed Palestinian militias have become increasingly frequent in Gaza, particularly targeting Palestinians living close to the “yellow line”—the demarcation of Israel’s line of control that runs north to south along the Gaza Strip roughly parallel to the coastline. Israel has also imposed another boundary called the orange line, which in some places encroaches more than 1 kilometer beyond the yellow line, taking over even more Palestinian land.

On the western side of these lines, virtually the entire Palestinian population of Gaza has been corralled into an ever shrinking space. On the eastern side, the Israeli military has violently reconfigured the landscape, razing the area to the ground and building dozens of fortified bases and roads—establishing a permanent presence instead of preparing for a phased withdrawal as outlined in the ceasefire agreement.

Israeli forces regularly bomb, shell, and shoot Palestinians on the western side in violation of the “ceasefire,” killing over 1,500 men, women, and children over the past 12 months. The Israeli military has also armed and equipped several Palestinian militias that operate on the ground, conducting raids and terrorizing people mostly living close to the yellow line. Large scale raids are conducted in coordination with the Israeli military, who have backed them up with artillery and aerial support.

Many of the militia leaders in Gaza who rose to power in collaboration with Israel during the genocide are former gang leaders with a history of criminal activity, were associated with jihadi groups, or are former Palestinian Authority security forces that were all sidelined after Hamas gained control of the enclave in 2007.

At least five of these militias are operating out of compounds in areas under Israeli military control across the Gaza Strip, according to satellite imagery and videos published online. 

Special Report:

New York Times, The Coverup: How a Trillion-Dollar Industry Launders Illegal Gold, Justin Scheck, Visuals by Lynsey Addario, Oct. 19, 2026. The line between dirty and clean gold is an industry fiction. Wall Street and governments profit off gold from criminals, gangsters and those who exploit children.

In an industry riddled with abuse, the world’s banks and governments rely on one entity to keep gangsters, warlords and human rights violators from selling gold into the mainstream market.

That group, the London Bullion Market Association, is the self-described “global authority for precious metals.” With the power to blacklist companies, the L.B.M.A. is the closest thing the multi-trillion-dollar industry has to an international regulator.

Governments rely on the association’s stamp as a sign that gold has been mined without human rights abuses, environmental devastation, financial sanctions or criminality. In the most literal sense, the L.B.M.A. sets the gold standard.

But a New York Times investigation found that the association has repeatedly allowed gold into the market that has been mined by criminals, cartel members and children. Refiners lie with impunity about the origins of their gold. The rules are pocked with exceptions and vagaries, and the L.B.M.A. has repeatedly decided not to enforce them.

And in the case of Madagascar, the L.B.M.A. helped change and backdate key paperwork that certified gold as free from abuse.

As prices skyrocketed in recent years and evidence emerged that gold was financing armed groups in Sudan and polluters in the Amazon, the industry perpetuated the notion that it kept such dirty gold out of the mainstream marketplace.Map shows Betsiaka, Antananarivo and Mananjary in Madascar.

More On U.S. Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets

New York Times, Black Unemployment Hints at a Job Market in Worse Shape Than It Seems, Talmon Joseph Smith, Oct. 19, 2026. The Black unemployment rate climbed a percentage point to 7 percent in September, almost double the rate for white workers.

Gena Pemberton is a Black woman who has spent her career diagnosing a way to move forward in corporate America.

She spent over two decades in leadership roles in accounting, operations and human resources at large companies such as Johnson & Johnson. But now, at 50, she is not sure what is next.

She was the chief inclusion and impact officer at Omnicom Health until the company eliminated her position in July 2025. She has been without full-time work ever since, despite applying to dozens of jobs per week and lowering her expectations on seniority and pay.

“I’ve never been unemployed for this long,” she said.

Ms. Pemberton is far from alone. Black professionals across the country have faced a triple whammy in the labor market in recent years.

The disappearance of diversity, equity and inclusion positions in big companies has heavily affected Black women; a federal government firing spree that eliminated hundreds of thousands of jobs heavily impacted Black workers, who are disproportionately represented on federal payrolls; and the slowdown in white-collar hiring rates has felt particularly acute for some Black business people without elite networks as expansive as those of their white and Asian peers.

When unemployment for Black workers rises sharply, it can be an early signal of trouble for everyone. Rising joblessness among Black people and weak hiring rates in the business services sector are signals that the labor market is in worse shape than the overall 4.2 percent unemployment rate implies, said Jared Bernstein, who served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Hiring, for example, is proceeding at a pace analogous to the sluggish years following the Great Recession, when overall unemployment was closer to 9 percent and Black unemployment was in the midteens.

“When the economy sniffles, Black unemployment catches a cold,” he said.

In 2025, Black women experienced far greater employment losses than other women, especially college graduates and public-sector workers, according to data analyzed by Valerie Wilson, an economist. And numbers from Revelio Labs, a work force analytics firm, show that U.S. employers have cut over 2,600 roles since 2023 with “diversity” or “D.E.I.” in the job titles or descriptions.

After spiking above 8 percent in November 2025, Black unemployment fell to 6 percent by August. Then, the latest jobs report showed that unemployment for Black people had jumped back to 7 percent in September — the fastest one-month increase since 2012, not counting the brief pandemic shock. The rate is almost double the 3.6 percent rate for white workers.

“It is definitely a cause for concern,” Kevin Hassett, the generally ebullient director of the White House National Economic Council, said in an interview with CNN.+

More On U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Religion

The Hartmann Report, Opinion: Tom Cruise's Digger Exposes the Climate Fools, the Billionaires, and the Biggest Lie of All, Thom Hartmann, right, Oct. 19, 2026. thom hartmann newThe explosive new film reveals how fossil fuel billionaires concealed the truth, bought political protection, and then blamed ordinary Americans for the destruction they helped create…

Louise and I went to see Digger this weekend. Don’t believe the negative reviews coming from the rightwingers; this is a brilliant movie about one of the most important issues of our day, climate change, and the fossil fuel industry’s complicity in knowingly destroying our planet and our culture.

hartmann report newThat Tom Cruise made the movie at all blew my mind; this guy has spent his entire career being the most apolitical no-issues superstar in Hollywood. Something has shifted when that guy puts on a fat suit and a tangle of white hair to play a Texas oil baron who wrecks the planet.

Digger is directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, who made the movie The Revenant that won Leonardo DiCaprio — who is an outspoken advocate for climate action — an Oscar. Now it looks like Cruise has jumped on board, making what’s probably the best movie about climate change in a generation.

There’s been a concerted effort by rightwingers to convince you not to see the movie. Back in July, nearly 3 months before its release, a columnist at American Greatness was already warning Cruise’s “red-state base” that this was “yet another Hollywood feature warning us to treat Mother Nature with care… or else.”

Two days before it opened, Breitbart’s John Nolte, who in the same column calls climate change a “hoax,” dismissed it as an “attack on those of us who dare to use oil to better our lives” that “shames us for our standard of living, which is a direct result of the oil industry.” (He admits he’s working from other people’s reviews.) And the rightwing bots on social media have been going nuts, calling it “woke.”

It all probably parallels the Meta shutdown of No Kings this weekend, along with the billionaire-owned social media platforms’ refusal to advertise and apparent shadow banning of conversations the new movies about Musk and Zuck.

For most of the first two-thirds of Digger I was mystified about this loud, deliberately — but still entertainingly — cartoonish satire; I wasn’t sure what kind of movie I was watching, and suspending disbelief was pretty much impossible.

But the shocking last twenty minutes reorganized my entire understanding of what Cruise was doing (I’m not going to give it away) and left me — and the audience in the theater with me, who sat in shocked silence at the end — astonished at how elegantly the entire thing was put together.

The movie in many ways reminded me of Dr. Strangelove and Network (both also criticized by rightwingers): it has that kind of impact and some truly great bits of dialogue that are right up there with Slim Pickens’s character and Peter Finch as Howard Beale.

That’s mostly when the oil baron Cruise plays owns up to everything: the lies, the bought-off politicians, the decades of knowing what they were doing to the atmosphere while lying to all of us about it. But then he turns the accusation around and suddenly the entire audience for his monologue is stunned.

He lays out the fossil fuel industry’s last and best alibi — that they drilled and sold

us oil because we demanded they do it — that I’ve been pointing to ever since 1998 when I published the first edition of The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight.

The book’s premise is simple and echoes the movie: for most of humanity’s history we lived off “current sunlight” captured by plants and turned into food we ate (and food for the animals we ate) and the wood we used to build with and heat our homes.

Then about 900 years ago we found coal, and a century-and-a-half ago oil, and we started burning through sunlight that had been captured by plants literally millions of years ago, then turned by time and pressure into coal, oil, and methane. As I wrote then:

“This represents a critical moment in human history, for this is when our ancestors started living off our planet’s sunlight savings. Because our ancestors could consume sunlight that had been stored by plants millions of years ago, they began for the first time to consume more resources, in food, heat, and other materials, than the daily amount of sunlight falling locally on our planet had historically been able to provide.”

It turns out that the “cheap energy” Digger claims we all demanded was actually never cheap; it was an inheritance from our planet and instead of conserving or carefully using it we’ve been burning through it like there’s no tomorrow. I wrote in that same book that “the availability of a fuel leads to a population that depends on it and will suffer if it is taken away.”

They encouraged building suburbs around gas stations, and are now trying to blame the drivers for wanting the gasoline. They bought up the streetcar lines, lobbied rail into a mere drop in our transportation pool, and spent fifty years lying to us about what they knew their product would do to our planet.

Hell, BP’s ad agency literally invented the “personal carbon footprint” in 2004 so that you’d feel guilty about your commute instead of angry at them. When I revised the book in 2017, I put it this way:

“The ability to buy politicians and to dump billions of dollars a year into political campaigns and into a concerted disinformation campaign is a key part of the fossil fuel industry’s business model. The longer that fossil-fuel companies and the politicians whom they own muddy the waters, the longer they can reap easy profits selling cheap oil, no matter how many people die or how much it costs the public.”

As Digger says in the movie:

“If you can’t control the course of nature, at least you can control the narrative.”

Are Cruise and Iñárritu endorsing that alibi or exposing it? At times it’s hard to tell, but the importance of story — the power of story to change our culture itself — is where this movie is so important. As I wrote in Last Hours:

“Every time a culture has been transformed, since or before then and for better or worse, it’s been because of an idea, an insight, a new understanding of how things are, and of what is possible. Ideas preceded every revolution, every war, every transformation, and every invention. So, the good news is that if we redefine our cultural norms, retell the stories that make up the reality we follow, then humanity’s behaviors will change to conform to the new stories.”

Just like Dr. Strangelove prophesied Trump/Hegseth and Network predicted the Ellison’s buying up our media landscape, this movie is pointing to the next stage of our future, when fossil fuel barons both own the country and have — unapologetically — destroyed it.

So go see the movie before it’s gone, buried in rightwing slanders. Then call your elected representatives (202-224-3121) and ask them if they’re taking money from the fossil fuel industry or its apologists. And pass this “review” along to somebody who was planning to skip the film.

New York Times, Larry David Mocks the D.S.A. Some Are Not Amused, Lisa Lerer and Evan Gorelick, Updated Oct. 19, 2026. The comedian satirized the Democratic Socialists of America, its platform and its opposition to Israel in an essay that some did not LOL at.

The last time Larry David waded into politics with a satirical essay, it was to take aim at a very safe target in his liberal circles — President Trump.

Mr. David, who is known for his brand of anxious, observational comedy, mocked Bill Maher for dining with Mr. Trump at the White House in a guest essay published in The New York Times Opinion section last year headlined “My Dinner With Adolf,” in which he imagined dining with Hitler in 1939.

But Mr. David’s latest satire took aim at topics that are likely to be far more controversial within the coastal enclaves where his work is popular: the ascendant Democratic Socialists of America and its hostility toward Israel.

In a new essay published by Air Mail, the 79-year old comic channels the satirist Jonathan Swift and offers a dozen “modest proposals” for the manifesto of the socialist organization, whose actual proposals and guiding principles have been widely debated this year as several candidates aligned with the organization won primaries.

Mr. David’s suggestions start with ideas rooted in core planks of the movement, as he parodies proposals to abolish prisons and restrictions on immigration.

“In our Socialist America,” Mr. David writes, “everyone will be so fulfilled spiritually and financially that the police department will be dramatically reduced to where an officer’s only job will be to adjudicate domestic disputes.”

“Toward that end, stands will be set up at local farmers markets, where they will work to resolve marital issues in a folksy, farm-to-table manner,” he writes.

He rapidly progresses to more outlandish ideas, including national paid leave for the death of pets, mandating that employers provide cots for two siestas a day, allowing humans who identify as animals to “relieve themselves” wherever they wish and reparations that would enlist white people to serve as slaves for Black families.

Mr. David then aims his pen at one of the biggest fault lines dividing the Democratic Party, wading into the fraught debate over the line between opposition to Israel and antisemitism. Jews, he writes, will no longer be allowed to call themselves “the Chosen people” — a part of Jewish identity dating back millenniums — and will be known instead as “the Bagel People.”

“We strongly believe in a two-state solution,” the proposal says. “To this end, we propose that Palestinians should be given all the land currently occupied by Israel and that Israel should be given Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific, where the weather is beautiful and grapefruits are aplenty. We think the Bagel People will be very happy there.”

Best known for the hit TV shows “Seinfeld” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Mr. David has long been a prominent Democratic donor in Hollywood with an interest in political satire.

A national spokesperson for the D.S.A. declined to comment on Mr. David’s article. But online, some took umbrage at Mr. David’s satire of the democratic socialists. Matthew Gauna, a 29-year-old student in San Antonio who agrees with D.S.A. ideas but said he is not a member of the organization, replied online to a post comparing Mr. David to Mr. Maher by calling Mr. David “my problematic king,” with a wilted flower emoji.

Mr. David, whose comedy has made him a millionaire many times over, did not mock the D.S.A.’s economic proposals, which include universal health care, raising the minimum wage and expanding public housing and child care. The movement’s focus on economic inequality is central to its appeal for many voters, who are struggling with higher costs and a dismal view of their financial future.

Mr. David seemed to anticipate the backlash his piece would provoke, daring his socialist targets to take the joke. His last proposal mandates that any comedian who causes “emotional discomfort” be sent to be “re-programmed” to emerge with greater sensitivity.

And if that effort fails, Mr. David offers one final “modest” suggestion: “The repeat offender will be sent to Pitcairn Island to live with the Bagel People.”

Oct. 18

Top Headlines

 

 

President Trump warmly greeted Russian President Vladimir Putin last summer in Alaska with red carpet treatment rolled out by the U.S. military (working on their hands and knees at times to make it suitable) in honor of a longtime adversary of the United States highly active in disrupting elections, media and other institutions to help his allies operating in the United States (New York Times photo by Doug Mills).

President Trump warmly greeted Russian President Vladimir Putin last summer in Alaska with red carpet treatment rolled out by the U.S.russian flag waving military in honor of a longtime adversary of the United States highly active in disrupting elections, media and other institutions to help his allies operating in the United States (New York Times photo by Doug Mills).

  • Proof, Investigative Commentary:  Second Treason Scandal Hits Donald Trump and the White House, Seth seth abramson graphicAbramson, right, Oct. 16-17, 2026. A Trump-Israel Treason scandal that’s already embroiled Trump, U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee, and Huckabee deputy David Milstein has deepened—even as a new Treason scandal involving Russia blows up. Here’s everything we know about the new Trump-Russia Treason Scandal (see here for exhaustive, reliably sourced Proof coverage of the Trump-Israel Treason Scandal).
  • Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Oct. 17, 2026 ['No Kings' Focus On Localism, Voting], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 18, 2026. Around the United States of America and the world, people gathered today at more than 3,000 No Kings: Vote Early events to encourage Americans to vote in the November 3 midterm elections. The events were designed to encourage people to vote early to ensure their votes are counted in an election where the president and his party have made it clear they intend to silence their opponents.

Special Report: Huge Riots In France. How Much Russian Influence Aimed To Disrupt West? 

 

russian influence on european street politics wrmr

Trump circle foreign elections wmr

News Roundups

  • The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Russia Declares ‘Checkmate’ as Trump Pushes Ukraine to Capitulate, Vance Confronted by Grieving Husband, GOP in Free Fall, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 18, 2026. Today may go down as one of the most alarming days yet for Ukraine. Hours after Zelenskyy said the Trump administration is pushing his country to capitulate, Trump went on Truth Social to attack him, claiming Zelenskyy doesn’t care about ending the war and mocking Ukraine as a country “in shambles.” All of this while Russia has spent the past week launching nearly 2,700 drones at Ukraine’s power grid, Washington paused the intelligence Ukraine relies on to spot incoming ballistic missiles, and Putin’s own envoy is bragging that the “ice has begun to break” with the United States. Tonight, the Russians are celebrating.
  • The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Students Rise Up Against GOP Voter Suppression, Trump Branded a “Traitor” Over Putin Sanctions, Trump Threatens to Jail Election Officials, Aaron Parnas, right,aaron parnas new headshot Oct. 17, 2026. Yesterday I heard from my family in Ukraine. They told me the night Starlink was disrupted was one of the scariest nights they’ve lived through in more than four years of war. They could hear missiles and drones outside their apartment but had no idea where they were headed. All they could do was pray they wouldn’t be hit. And last night, Trump waived the sweeping Russia sanctions Congress passed, just days before they were set to take effect. Putin’s envoy called it “truly historic.” I call it a betrayal of the people living through this war, including my own family.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

  • djt helen delaney reese get him outHope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump has a serious character flaw, Heather Delaney Reese, above right,Oct. 17, 2026. At 2:18 this afternoon, Donald Trump stood behind the bright blue curtains at Truist Arena in Highland Heights, Kentucky. He opened and closed his suit coat, threw his hands out in front of him, and walked onto the stage, stopping for a moment to look out at the audience and the scattered empty seats.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

More On Russia's War On Ukraine, New U.S. Support For Russia 

  • New York Times, Trump Defends Plans to Ease Russia Sanctions and Hints at a Hostage Deal, David E. Sanger, Oct. 18, 2026. The president on Sunday justified his reversal of almost five years of sanctions against Russia as part of peace negotiations. He did not name any hostage.
  • Thinking About, Opinion: Rape as a weapon of warThe voices of Ukrainians, Sara Cincurova, guest commentator, Oct. 18, 2026. This text includes sensitive details about sexual violence during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. For about two years, as a freelance journalist, I have been documenting Russian use of rape as a weapon of war against Ukrainian civilians. As we mark four and a half years since Ukraine was plunged into war, the immense use of sexual violence remains an underreported element of this conflict. Ukrainian women and men have experienced extensive and concerted abuse at the hands of the Russian army since its initial occupation of Eastern Ukraine, including Crimea and the Donbas region, in 2014 and more intensively since the full-scale invasion in 2022.
  • To the Contrary, Opinion: Russia, Russia, Russia, Was Never a Hoax, Charlie Sykes, right, charlie sykesOct. 18, 2026. Lindsey Graham’s final humiliation? No one ever told me that vindication would feel so much like nausea. Donald Trump’s treachery was predictable and predicted. Even so, watching him throwing a financial lifeline to Putin as the monstrous mob boss murders Ukrainians is sick-making stuff.
  • Politico, Ukraine strikes oil facility in St. Petersburg as part of ‘massive’ drone attack, Jacopo Barigazzi, Oct. 18, 2026. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last week he had ordered the resumption of strikes on Russian oil refineries following a three-day pause.
  • Lawfare, Russia's Digital Detox Boomerang, Tom Uren, Oct. 16, 2026. Ukrainian drone strikes against Russian data centers are causing widespread disruption to the country's internet services.

More Global News.

More On U.S. Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets`New York Times

  • New York Times, 3 Charts That Explain the Economy as Voters Head to the Polls, Ben Casselman, Oct. 18, 2026. Inflation is high, consumer spending is strong and seemingly everything depends on what happens with artificial intelligence. Last week provided a final snapshot of the state of the economy before voters head to the polls for next month’s midterm elections. The flood of government data clarified a familiar picture — and thus a grim one for President Trump and incumbent Republicans.

More On No Kings Day / Vote Early U.S. Demonstrations

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

Top Headlines 

 

President Trump warmly greeted Russian President Vladimir Putin last summer in Alaska with red carpet treatment rolled out by the U.S. military in honor of a longtime adversary of the United States highly active in disrupting elections, media and other institutions to help his allies operating in the United States (New York Times photo by Doug Mills).

Proof, Investigative Commentary:  Second Treason Scandal Hits Donald Trump and the White House, Seth Abramson, left, Oct. 16-17, 2026. A Trump-Israel Treason scandal that’s already embroiled Trump, U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee, and Huckabee deputy David Milstein has deepened—even as a new Treason scandal involving Russia blows up.

Here’s everything we know about the new Trump-Russia Treason Scandal (see here for exhaustive, reliably sourced Proof coverage of the Trump-Israel Treason Scandal):

The Treason statute reads as follows: “Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States….adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of Treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than 5 years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”

Russia is currently a belligerent against the United States on multiple fronts.

First, the Kremlin is waging cyberwar against America’s elections infrastructure (a war that faced only “some interruption”—not as much as many thought or had hoped—during recent Ukrainian strikes on Russian data centers).

Second, the Kremlin is coordinating Iran’s missile-targeting in the Iran War to ensure that as many U.S. soldiers as possible (21 and 865 so far) are killed or injured, respectively—and as many U.S. bases (20) damaged, possibly beyond repair or reoccupation—by a nation that otherwise wouldn’t have such capacities.

Third, the United States and its longtime European allies are variously selling and gifting war material to Ukraine in the Russia-Ukraine War, with Ukraine a chartered U.S. ally for nearly 20 years now (a period covering both before and during its years-long defensive war against Russian war criminals); meanwhile, Russia has been an acknowledged major U.S. adversary for nearly 80 years.

Fourth, Russia has repeatedly and often aggressively violated the airspace of the U.S. and NATO, indeed the airspace of every American ally who shares a land border with Russia, during its ongoing invasion of Europe, and these violations have increasingly involved not just airspace-violative plane and drone maneuvers but, in several instances, actual asymmetrical warfare (as well as material assistance for seditious plots in U.S.-allied countries).

Fifth, because Congress has made clear that declarations of war and the War Powers Resolution are immaterial to whether America is currently in a war—indeed, Donald Trump has now referred to multiple conflicts that he says he didn’t need congressional approval for as “wars,” notably the wars in Venezuela (a “big war,” Trump crowed) and Iran (a war he admits he runs with domestic politics in mind)—neither Trump nor his agents can hide behind claims that the above actions by Russia don’t fall somewhere between military hostilities and open war. In other words, Russia incontrovertibly qualifies as an “enemy” of the United States under federal law—and no declaration in an executive order or in his imagination permits Mr. Trump to pretend that matters stand otherwise.

Against this backdrop, a small cadre of Trump officials and agents, including Trump himself, are cutting deals with America’s legally cognizable enemies.

In fact, the state of affairs must be expressed more strongly than this: every person Trump has designated to treat with the Russians on the Russia-Ukraine War is (i) unqualified to participate in U.S. diplomacy, (ii) a security risk who has struggled to get or not been able to get a top security clearance through the usual channels or protocols, and (iii) someone with clear conflicts of interest that suggest they’re putting personal business interests over the national security of the United States.

This includes Trump himself, Donald Trump Jr., Elon Musk, Jared Kushner, and Steve Witkoff.

 

President Trump's Russian and Iranian war negotiators Jared Kushner, left, and Steve Witkoff have business ties to two of the Middle Eastern investors involved in the deal (Pool photo by Jacquelyn Martin).

Meanwhile, as to the involvement of their potential and current Russian business partners in the Iran War, President Trump and his team have dismissed the issue by falsely claiming that Russia isn’t involved in targeting U.S. troops in the Middle East, just as Trump previously claimed that Russia was not paying bounties for U.S. soldiers’ deaths in Afghanistan (at a time the USIC was saying it was) and has openly said he trusts Russian intelligence more than U.S. intelligence.

In other words, in order to continue his own, his agents’, and friends’ clandestine business dealings with the Kremlin and its agents and associates, the president has lied to Congress, American media, and most importantly U.S. voters to try to ensure—in vain—he’s not caught cutting deals with America’s enemies amidst multiple wars in which America is engaged and Russia a clear adversary.

Until now, however, Trump’s actions weren’t broadly seen as interceding directly in any war in which the United States was participating—but that’s changed.

 

President Trump has long worked closely with top Russian officials, often in secret, as in his meeting at the White House shown above, from which U.S. media were barred, with the result that all photos as here were from Russian state media: Portrayed with Trump were Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, left, and Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak, with all concerned seeking to thwart then-current investigations into Russian influence to help Trump during the 2016 presidential elections and advance his and his allies' private business interests (Tass photo May 10, 2017).

President Trump has long worked closely with top Russian officials, often in secret, as in his meeting at the White House shown above, from which U.S. media were barred, with the result that all photos as here were from Russian state media: Portrayed with Trump were Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, left, and Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak, with all concerned reportedly seeking to thwart then-current FBI, congressional and media investigations into Russian influence to help Trump during the 2016 presidential elections and advance his and his allies' private business interests (Tass photo May 10, 2017). 

Conclusion

 

President Trump and Elon Musk (graphic via Proof).President Trump and Elon Musk (Photographic via Proof).

America can’t abide this much longer.

It’s now generally accepted that the Department of Justice and FBI are inoperative; that all Trump co-conspirators—indeed, nearly all Republican politicians writ large—will be pardoned before or after the fact for their crimes, even as Trump seeks to have his American-citizen political opponents in the Democratic Party killed or deported; and that the President of the United States and his ad hoc diplomatic corps (composed of family members, associates of dead pedophilic sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, mega-donors, and persons who fit two or more of these descriptions) are far more attuned to their own business interests than anything that involves American national security.

In other words, traitors to America are running America.

And with just two weeks left before a midterm election that Republican politicians won’t commit to honoring the results of, there’s every reason to fear that letting traitors run America will have exactly the outcome post-midterms that anyone would expect: the near-term destruction of the United States of America and its democracy.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Oct. 17, 2026 ['No Kings' Focus On Localism, Voting], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 18, 2026. Around the United States of America and the world, people gathered today at more than 3,000 No Kings: Vote Early events to encourage Americans to vote in the November 3 midterm elections. The events were designed to encourage people to vote early to ensure their votes are counted in an election where the president and his party have made it clear they intend to silence their opponents.

Since Trump launched the Big Lie that he had been cheated of victory in the 2020 presidential election by voter fraud, Republican-dominated state legislatures have restricted access to the vote. Although it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections and such votes are vanishingly rare, Trump and his allies are insisting that states must restrict the vote to prevent voter fraud. According to the Brennan Center, which works to protect voting rights, in 2021 at least 19 states passed 32 laws to make voting more difficult. Since the 2024 election, 22 states have passed 47 laws that restrict the vote.

As Bob Ortega of CNN reported yesterday, states have closed polling places in Black and Latino districts, required new paperwork to vote, reduced early voting, and restricted the use of student IDs for voter identification. Celina Stewart, the chief executive officer of the League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan organization that works to expand access to the vote, told Ortega: “In 17 years of working on voting rights, I have never seen such a widespread and coordinated effort to restrict access to the ballot.”

No Kings organizer Ezra Levin said the way to judge the effectiveness of this No Kings Day was to answer the question: “Did we drive the biggest early vote in the history of the Republic?” He added: “I think we’re gonna do it.” People turned No Kings

But just at the height of the pro-voting events, Meta took down the main No Kings organizing page on Instagram for about four hours. According to Levin, Meta didn’t respond to the No Kings team, “even as the account was offline at the peak of our national day of action and livestream.” Once the account was viewable again, “Meta told us in their response email that they made a bad call.”

Still, though, No Kings administrators had no access to the account, blocking their ability “to post about an ongoing day of mass action for early voting.” Levin noted: “This is part of a much bigger concern: activists and movements around the world are increasingly vulnerable to decisions made by powerful technology platforms that can determine who gets heard and who gets silenced.”

The League of Women Voters wrote that the timing of the blackout mattered. “When people are gathering, organizing, and seeking information about civic participation, cutting off a movement’s primary communication channel—even temporarily—is deeply troubling. This is about more than one account. It raises serious questions about transparency, accountability, and the power private technology platforms wield over public communication.”

Meta later claimed the issue was technical, saying, “When accounts post, share or comment at very high frequencies it can trigger automated systems. That’s what happened with the No Kings IG account in the lead up to today’s day of action. Unfortunately, that automated action was clearly taken in error. Everything is now working as it should and we sincerely apologize.”

The timing of the error was unfortunate. Just yesterday, Reuters reported on a story out of Brazil claiming that in internal communications, Meta employees acknowledged that the company had restricted the Instagram accounts of Brazilian ​President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva during the country’s recent election. The story says the employees’ messages also recommended accounts related to his challenger, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of Jair Bolsonaro, the right-wing ex-president who tried to overthrow Lula’s government. Senator Bolsonaro did much better than expected in the election, and the two face a runoff.

It was not until close to 6:00 Eastern time that the No Kings account could be used again. “WE ARE BACK IN! We can post again,” Levin wrote. “This was utter bullsh*t on the biggest early vote effort in history. But it will not stop what we’re building.”

“No Kings means no kings in the White House,” he wrote, “or in Silicon Valley.”

Special Reports: Huge Riots In France. How Much Russian Influence Aimed To Disrupt West?

 

russian influence on european street politics wrmr

Trump circle foreign elections wmr

Wayne Madsen Report, Mapping and Analysis: Déjà vu: Moscow’s links to street violence, arson, and larceny in France, neighboring nations, Wayne Madsen, right, wayne madsen new observerauthor of 28 books and former Navy intelligence officer, right, Oct. 18, 2026. Far-right and far-left protesters encouraged by Russian influence. 

We’ve seen this before with Moscow, as street mobs encouraged by Kremlin-directed influence operations ravage Paris, Toulouse, Limoges, and other cities. 

New York Times, Huge Riots in France Prompt Shock and Blame Game, Catherine Porter and Ségolène Le Stradic, Oct. 18, 2026. After anti-government protests devolved into chaos, leaders from across the political spectrum blamed one another for the unrest, even as it largely subsided on Sunday.

France was in a state of shock on Sunday, as citizens walked through streets lined with shattered storefronts, charred cars and burned-out government buildings after the country’s largest demonstrations in years devolved into riots and looting.

The unrest on Saturday — which led to some 2,000 arrests — caused widespread damage to several symbols of the state, including a 19th-century city hall in Limoges, a town in central France renowned for its porcelain, that was largely destroyed in a nighttime arson attack. More than 600 police officers were injured, Laurent Nuñez, France’s interior minister, said on social media on Sunday.

Rioters attacked city halls from Lille in northern France to Marseille in the south, where they broke into the local government headquarters and tipped over a bust of Marianne, a symbol of the French Republic. A fire also destroyed a tourist office in Lyon, and 1,500 shops were damaged or looted nationwide, according to Alexandre Bompard, head of the French federation of commerce and distribution, who estimated that the cost of repairs could run into hundreds of millions of dollars.

“I’ve never seen this before, I am disgusted,” said Sophie Vanpoperinghe, 47, as she gazed at ransacked shops on Boulevard Magenta, the road in Paris where she has lived for 22 years and which is frequently used for demonstrations.

More than half a million demonstrators marched on Sunday to protest the rising cost of living and poor conditions in schools, among other grievances. Many were stunned on Sunday at how rioters had used those demonstrations as a smoke screen for vandalism.

News Roundups

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Russia Declares ‘Checkmate’ as Trump Pushes Ukraine to Capitulate, Vance Confronted by Grieving Husband, GOP in Free Fall, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 18, 2026. Today may go down as one of the most alarming days yet for Ukraine. Hours after Zelenskyy said the Trump administration is pushing his country to capitulate, Trump went on Truth Social to attack him, claiming Zelenskyy doesn’t care about ending the war and mocking Ukraine as a country “in shambles.” All of this while Russia has spent the past week launching nearly 2,700 drones at Ukraine’s power grid, Washington paused the intelligence Ukraine relies on to spot incoming ballistic missiles, and Putin’s own envoy is bragging that the “ice has begun to break” with the United States. Tonight, the Russians are celebrating.

Here at home, a grieving husband confronted JD Vance over his wife’s death in Trump’s Iran war, Trump’s approval just hit a record low two weeks before the midterms, and the president announced a plan for a D.C. golf course that his own lawyers have spent months telling a federal judge doesn’t exist.

I am working around the clock to get you news in real time from Ukraine and everywhere else it matters. The White House hates this. They would much rather you hear their version of events, filtered through friendly outlets and press secretaries who last five days. But no advertiser, corporation, or politician controls what I report. I answer only to you.

Let’s get into it.

Grieving Military Husband Confronts Vance Over “Fundamental Failures” in Trump’s Iran War

jd vance oThe husband of a soldier killed in the Iran war confronted JD Vance, right, at a CBS News town hall, demanding accountability for “fundamental failures” by military leadership. Master Sgt. Nicole Amor, an Army Reservist from Minnesota, was one of six service members killed by an Iranian drone strike at Kuwait’s Port of Shuaiba on March 1, just one day after Trump launched the war. It remains the deadliest attack on U.S. forces in the conflict, and CBS has reported the facility wasn’t adequately fortified, lacked drone defenses, and that the Army chose not to move troops farther from Iran or bulk up medical support. Her husband, Joey Amor, told Vance Department of Defense Sealthat while an Iranian drone killed his wife, a failure of leadership led up to it, adding that his wife had told him things before she died and that other soldiers know more but are staying quiet. Vance called Nicole a precious human being who served honorably, but said this was literally the first time he had heard of the failures, explaining that as vice president he lives in a bit of a bubble. He then acknowledged there were issues with where troops were located that were a huge mistake and have since been changed, and promised not to forget.

Vance faced tough questions throughout the town hall, including from voters who backed him and Trump in 2024. A Michigan man who voted for the Trump-Vance ticket said he now plans to vote for Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and pressed Vance on soaring gas prices caused by the war. Vance blamed the situation in the Middle East and former President Joe Biden, without acknowledging the crisis stemmed from the war Trump launched, and said it’s easy to criticize something that happened sevenmonths ago. A Catholic nun challenged him on immigration raids that separate children from their parents, and Vance conceded that some agents have really screwed up and that striking the right balance is a work in progress. A naturalized citizen who voted for him accused him of scapegoating immigrants after he called H-1B visa holders “foreign indentured servants,” and Vance admittcbs news logoed his rhetoric had been imperfect. At least 21 U.S. service members have now died in the Iran war, which Trump launched without congressional approval and promised would last only weeks.

Vance defended Trump against corruption concerns while saying selling White House access would be “disgusting.” Moderator Tony Dokoupil pressed him on the nearly $1.2 billion Trump took in from his crypto businesses last year and the recent resignation of Kimberly Guilfoyle as ambassador to Greece over allegations she leveraged her position, which she denies. Vance said he had never seen anything from the president that made him squeamish and insisted claims he has looked into turned out to be untrue. He did say that anyone selling access to the White House should suffer consequences. The sharp questioning previewed the challenges Vance may face defending the administration’s record if he runs for president in 2028. He told the audience there is “of course” a chance he won’t run.

Ukraine Hits St. Petersburg With 1,000 Drones as Zelenskyy Warns Trump of a “Historic Mistake”

Zelenskyy told Bloomberg he believes the Trump administration is pressuring Ukraine to capitulate to Russia. He said the U.S. is threatening to cut off some support if Ukraine keeps striking Russian oil refineries, explaining that Washington just wants Ukraine to stop attacking diesel and will “disconnect us from something” if it doesn’t. Zelenskyy said he offered a compromise: Ukraine would stop targeting Russian diesel if the U.S. provided Patriot missiles to protect Ukraine’s own energy facilities. He also accused the U.S. of slowing deliveries of Patriots that Ukraine has already paid for through the PURL program, insisting the delay is “not a technical issue.” Despite the tensions, Zelenskyy said he expects things may calm down after the midterms, describing politics as very aggressive during election time. He said the current moment feels like agony, but believes life will continue more calmly once the elections are over. Meanwhile, Russia is declaring “checkmate.”

Trump lashed out at Zelenskyy on Truth Social, claiming the Ukrainian leader doesn’t want to end the war and probably never did. Hours after Ukraine’s massive drone attack on St. Petersburg, Trump said Zelenskyy could have gotten a better deal two years ago and accused him of being enriched by European aid and money from “Crooked Joe Biden.” He described Ukraine as being in “shambles,” claiming it has lost much of its land and access to its seas, and that its male population is low, wounded, or dead. Trump again condemned Ukraine’s strikes on Russian oil facilities, saying they are seriously hurting world diesel markets as he tries to bring down fuel prices before the midterms. He said he is negotiating peace and doesn’t want to do anything that would drive Russia away from the bargaining table. The attack came the same day Zelenskyy accused Trump of pushing Ukraine to capitulate, and after he called Trump’s diesel deal with Putin a birthday present for the Russian leader. The Russians celebrated tonight:

Ukraine launched one of the largest drone attacks of the war overnight, setting a major oil terminal in St. Petersburg ablaze. Russia’s Defense Ministry said it shot down about 1,015 drones over Moscow and several western regions, in what appeared to be the biggest attack St. Petersburg has seen. Drones struck the Petersburg Oil Terminal, the Ruchyi oil depot, a data center belonging to tech giant VK, and a logistics center for retailer Ozon. The city’s governor said one person was killed and five were injured, while two substations were hit in the surrounding Leningrad region, leaving about 20,000 people without power. The strike came days after Zelenskyy ordered his military to resume attacks on Russian oil facilities, defying Trump, who called the renewed strikes “a disgrace.” Ukraine had briefly paused the attacks under Trump’s “energy ceasefire,” but says it got nothing in return.

russian flag wavingRussia never stopped attacking Ukraine’s power grid, despite Trump’s claim that both sides agreed to an energy truce. Zelenskyy said Russia carried out at least 76 attacks on Ukrainian energy, oil, and gas facilities over the past week, leaving tens of thousands of families without electricity. Over that same week, he said, Russia fired nearly 2,700 attack drones, 1,700 aerial bombs, and 66 missiles, most of them ballistic. Overnight strikes hit substations in four regions, including Odesa, killing at least two people and injuring more than a dozen. A wiring plant in Lutsk that supplies BMW, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, and Porsche halted operations after being struck. Zelenskyy said the Russians are trying to cause a blackout, and that America should see Russia is taking no reciprocal steps in response to sanctions relief.

Zelenskyy warned on “Meet the Press” that Ukraine cannot survive if the United States sides with Russia. He called that prospect unbelievable, a tragedy, and a historic mistake, capping a week of rising tensions that began with Trump’s diesel deal with Putin and ended with his waiver of the Graham Act sanctions. Zelenskyy said Putin “feels victory” from the sanctions pause and expressed hope that Trump will change his attitude toward the Russian leader. He also revealed that the U.S. had paused intelligence sharing, leaving Ukraine blind to Russian ballistic missile attacks for three days. That sharing has since resumed, and Zelenskyy said he was very thankful. He also spoke with Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and is reportedly seeking a new peace meeting next week.

A fight over Ukraine’s satellite internet has deepened the rift, with conflicting accounts from Washington. space x logoUkraine says drones relying on SpaceX satellite service stopped working at speeds above 100 mph, disabling interceptors meant to shoot down Russian attack drones, and that terminals worked normally when tested across the border in the EU. Zelenskyy called it “a planned operation” and said the message came from the government. Trump denied ordering any restrictions, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said nobody ordered the slowdown and that it has been restored. But Elon Musk has suggested the restrictions came from the government, and The Telegraph, citing four sources, reported that Musk proposed the limits and Trump approved them. Ukrainian officials say they still can’t confirm full service has been restored, and a bipartisan group of senators is demanding an investigation.

The fallout is spreading across Europe. NATO jets were scrambled Sunday after an unidentified object entered Lithuania’s airspace, and residents in parts of the country were told to take shelter for about an hour. Officials later said it was likely a drone that came in from Poland, and Ukraine said it regretted the possible diversion of its drones, which it blamed on Russian electronic warfare. Arson attacks have also hit Starlink ground stations in Poland and Bulgaria, with Polish authorities blaming Russian intelligence. Meanwhile, the EU is reportedly rushing to prepare new sanctions on Russia before France’s 2027 presidential election. Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, the current favorite, has vowed to end support for Ukraine within six months if elected.

A top Putin envoy says Russia and the U.S. are discussing new joint business deals, including nuclear-powered data centers, following Trump’s diesel agreement. Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s investment envoy and a key figure in U.S.-Russia talks on the Ukraine war, told an energy conference in Moscow that the two countries are exploring data center projects using small-scale nuclear power plants. He said “the ice has begun to break” and predicted several other significant initiatives will be announced soon, despite widespread resistance. Dmitriev revealed that the U.S. Treasury asked Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, which he runs, to help sort out payment issues on the diesel deal, and said brainstorming sessions are already underway on how to lift sanctions. He called the Graham Act sanctions law “misguided” and said Russia will keep pursuing projects with the U.S. until the war ends. The Kremlin has long been frustrated that Washington tied such deals to a peace agreement, but Dmitriev’s remarks, made a day before Trump waived the Graham Act sanctions, suggest that link may be breaking.

Trump Hits Record Lows as Voters Sour on GOP Two Weeks Before the Midterms

Trump’s approval rating has fallen to a record low, giving Democrats a clear edge heading into Election Day. A new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll puts Trump’s approval at just 33%, lower than at any point in his first term, with 66% disapproving and 52% disapproving strongly. Democrats now lead by eight points in the race for the House, up from three points in July. By 58% to 39%, registered voters said they would rather have a Democratic Congress acting as a check on Trump than a Republican one supporting his agenda, roughly double last year’s margin. For the first time since 2014, voters trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle the economy. Democrats are also more motivated, with 75% saying they are certain to vote or already have, compared with 67% of Republicans.

A separate NBC News poll finds Americans more pessimistic about the country than at any point in Trump’s second term. A record 71% of adults say the country is on the wrong track, and Trump’s approval has slipped to 34%, with a second-term high of 51% strongly disapproving. Registered voters prefer Democrats to control Congress by 55% to 45%. Trump’s support is eroding even within his own coalition, with approval at just 76% among Republicans, 28% among men under 30, and 31% among Latinos, groups that helped him win in 2024. A majority, 52%, say his administration is more corrupt than previous ones, and 58% say his policies are hurting the country. Americans are split almost evenly, 52% to 48%, on whether a Democratic House should pursue impeachment.

The Iran war and rising prices are driving voters’ anger. In February, before the war began, 71% of Americans said gasoline was affordable, but that has completely flipped, with 71% now saying it is not. Majorities also say groceries, health care, and home energy are unaffordable, and 48% say they are financially worse off than when Trump returned to office, the highest share for any president in Post-ABC polling since 1986. About 65% say going to war with Iran was a mistake, and Trump’s approval on handling the cost of living sits at just 27% in the NBC poll. Most Americans are also skeptical of his promise of $5,000 payments if Republicans hold Congress, with 71% saying they don’t expect to see a check. Even 47% of Republicans say they don’t believe they’ll receive one.

Instead of focusing on the economy, Trump has spent his final campaign rallies gushing over men’s bodies. At a rally in Kentucky on Saturday, he described closely examining the physique of Ohio Sen. Jon Husted, from his jawline to his backside, and claimed without evidence that the remarks boosted Husted’s poll numbers. In Georgia on Friday, he praised Senate candidate Mike Collins as “all man” while mocking Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff’s looks and comparing him to Pee-wee Herman. He also gushed about “big, strong, handsome soldiers” and said spending time with them was one of the reasons to be president. Even allies haven’t been spared, as Trump told a Dallas crowd last month that Texas Senate nominee Ken Paxton may not be the best-looking guy he’s ever seen. The New York Times notes the pattern comes as Trump might otherwise be selling voters on ending the Iran war or bringing down prices.

Trump Announces D.C. Golf Course Overhaul as Judge Demands Answers on His Plans

Trump announced Sunday that his administration will rebuild a public golf course in Washington, contradicting his own lawyers’ claims in court that no final plan exists. In a Truth Social post, he said the Interior Department worked with golf architect Tom Fazio to turn East Potomac Golf Links into a championship course capable of hosting events like the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship, and the Ryder Cup. He said work would begin November 15 and take about 15 months. He called the current course old, broken, dilapidated, and of no further use. The project is being challenged in court by a preservation group and two D.C. residents. The announcement puts Trump directly at odds with what his administration has been telling a federal judge for months.

Judge Ana Reyes immediately took note of Trump’s post and demanded to know whether the government is abandoning its position in court. Justice Department attorneys have long argued that any plan to transform East Potomac was purely hypothetical and that no final agency action had been taken. National Park Service officials even told Reyes last week they knew of no formal renovation plan beyond what they had seen in Trump’s and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s social media posts. After Trump’s announcement, Reyes ordered the administration to say whether it still maintains that its plans are merely preliminary. She also summoned Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward to appear at Monday’s hearing, presumably to address the government’s motion to remove her from the case. The acting director of the National Park Service and a senior Interior Department official have already been ordered to testify under oath.

The administration is trying to remove the judge after she rebuked officials for cutting down trees without notice. Earlier this month, crews cut down trees at the course, which CNN reported totaled 169, before notifying the court, prompting Reyes to say she was “furious” and that the incident cost the government all of its credibility. She barred any more tree removal through October 26 and required three business days’ notice before any irreversible changes, and federal officials have said nearly 730 trees would ultimately need to be cleared. On Friday, the Justice Department filed a motion asking Reyes to recuse herself, calling her behavior “egregious” and accusing her of deep-seated hostility toward the administration. The filing also objected to her ordering high-level officials to testify, calling it a disregard for separation of powers. Reyes, a Biden appointee, previously blocked Trump’s ban on transgender service members.

 

djt doctored national park service photoOusted press secretary Katie Zacharia posted photos that appear to have been altered to hide what may be golf course plans on Trump’s desk. On Friday night, hours after being fired, Zacharia shared a photo with Trump in the Oval Office that showed a blurred image sitting atop a stack of guidebooks on the Resolute Desk, above left. Local advocacy group Save East Po said the blurred image matches the distinctive shape of the East Potomac peninsula and earlier renderings of the project. After the post drew scrutiny, Zacharia shared a second photo, above right, in which the image was gone entirely, and digital traces show the book cover itself had been modified. The Washington Post has not independently verified the image, and the White House dismissed the questions as Trump Derangement Syndrome. The episode matters because whether a final plan exists is a central question in the lawsuit.

The golf course is the latest in a string of Trump projects reshaping Washington’s landscape. Trump has repeatedly signaled his plans publicly, writing on Truth Social in June that work on the new course would begin September 1. He is also continuing construction on a White House ballroom and has pushed forward with plans for a “triumphal arch” in the capital. His handpicked Kennedy Center board voted to close the renowned arts center for renovations. The administration also moved to renovate the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, though its new lining ended up peeling. Critics say the pattern shows a president remaking public spaces in his own image, often while skirting the usual review processes.

Other news:

 

jan crawford al sayed cbs tommy

CBS News correspondent Jan Crawford apologized after a social media post mocking Democratic Senate cbs news logocandidate Abdul El-Sayed sparked backlash. At a Michigan town hall Saturday night, a young man asked El-Sayed to “disavow the Muslim Brotherhood,” and El-Sayed responded by disavowing it and then discussing Americans’ constitutional right to religious freedom. Crawford, CBS’s longtime Supreme Court correspondent, posted that he spent only a “nanosecond” disavowing before launching into a three-minute “diatribe,” calling it a spectacular self-own. By Sunday afternoon she had deleted the post, saying it violated CBS News standards and apologizing. The episode comes as CBS News, under editor in chief Bari Weiss, has embraced more opinion content and faced internal tensions over its Middle East coverage. ABC News declined to renew longtime correspondent Terry Moran’s contract last year after he called Trump adviser Stephen Miller a “world class hater” online.

An Air Force airman died after falling during a pregame rappelling stunt at a college football game, and critics are pointing at Pete Hegseth. The airman fell from the rafters of San Antonio’s Alamodome before the University of Texas at San Antonio’s military appreciation game against Navy on Saturday. According to the San Antonio Express-News, he was one of four service members in the demonstration and slid down the rope in an uncontrolled manner before hitting the ground. He was rushed to a hospital with life-threatening injuries and later died, and the Air Force says the cause is under investigation. Rappelling demonstrations have long been part of the game, but critics blasted what they called a pointless recruiting spectacle, noting Hegseth’s push for a “warrior ethos” and more high-visibility military displays at public events. The game was delayed 10 minutes, and UTSA’s coach said his players could tell the energy was gone when they returned to the field.

canadian flagFour Canadian service members were killed and dozens more seriously injured in a massive fire at a military base in Alberta. The blaze broke out Saturday afternoon at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright, one of the country’s busiest training grounds, with reports saying a live training round may have hit a gas line or gas well. Prime Minister Mark Carney called it one of the worst peacetime tragedies the military has faced at home and ordered flags lowered to half-staff. The military says there is no indication of terrorism, but the cause remains under investigation. Hospitals were so overwhelmed that patients were flown and driven to Edmonton, about 120 miles away, where a doctor called it a once-in-a-generation disaster. The tragedy comes just days before Alberta votes Monday on a referendum that could lead to a second vote on separating from Canada, which Carney has warned outside forces are trying to exploit.

Trump endorsed Benjamin Netanyahu, right, ahead of Israel’s October 27 election, breaking with longstanding U.S. tradition against weighing in on foreign elections. In a lengthy Truth Social post, Trump called Netanyahu a Benjamin Netanyahu smile Twitter“great warrior prime minister” and credited him with joining the U.S. in launching strikes on Iran in February. He warned that if Israel chose anyone other than Netanyahu, America would have to finish the job against Iran itself, which he said he is not inclined to do. Netanyahu quickly thanked him, but Israeli support for Trump has dipped amid disagreements over Iran, and polls show no candidate with a clear path to power. It will be Israel’s first election since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack. The endorsement comes as settler violence in the West Bank draws scrutiny, including an attack on a Washington Post photographer and assaults on European diplomats in a Christian village.

French President Emmanuel Macron said the country feels “anger and shame” after a day of riots that led to more than 2,000 arrests. In a national address Sunday night, Macron acknowledged that hundreds of thousands of protesters raised legitimate concerns about living costs, fuel prices, and wars France never wanted, but vowed the government would “make examples” of looters and rioters. Several hundred shops were damaged across cities including Paris, Marseille, Lyon, and Bordeaux, where a masked mob invaded the local prefect’s residence. Limoges’s mayor said there was a clear, premeditated intent to burn down the city’s historic town hall and threatened to resign if the city doesn’t receive repair funds. Officials said more than 150 police officers were injured and one person died of a suspected heart attack. Trump weighed in on social media, writing simply, “France is burning!”

  

north carolina att marchNorth Carolina AT Aggies LogoThe Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Students Rise Up Against GOP Voter Suppression, Trump Branded a “Traitor” Over Putin Sanctions, Trump Threatens to Jail Election Officials, Aaron Parnas, right,aaron parnas new headshot Oct. 17, 2026. Yesterday I heard from my family in Ukraine. They told me the night Starlink was disrupted was one of the scariest nights they’ve lived through in more than four years of war. They could hear missiles and drones outside their apartment but had no idea where they were headed. All they could do was pray they wouldn’t be hit. And last night, Trump waived the sweeping Russia sanctions Congress passed, just days before they were set to take effect. Putin’s envoy called it “truly historic.” I call it a betrayal of the people living through this war, including my own family.

Here at home, the attacks on our democracy are escalating. Trump’s Justice Department is now threatening to prosecute California election workers for counting ballots, and Trump says “they will all go to jail.” In North Carolina, students at the nation’s largest HBCU had to march 45 minutes through broken sidewalks to vote after Republicans took away their campus polling site. They showed up anyway.

Today, millions of Americans are expected to show up too, for No Kings, and I’ll be bringing you coverage all day long. This is exactly why independent journalism matters. I don’t answer to a billionaire, a corporation or a political party. I answer to you. If you believe in what we’re doing here, please subscribe today. Every single subscription keeps this work going and makes sure the truth gets out, no matter how hard they try to bury it:Subscribed

Here’s everything you need to know this morning.

Students at the Nation’s Largest HBCU March to the Polls After North Carolina Takes Away Their Voting Site

north carolina mapMore than 100 students from North Carolina A&T State University and UNC Greensboro marched to the polls on the first day of early voting, after election officials refused to give them on-campus voting sites. Students rallied on both campuses Thursday and then walked to Union Square, now the closest early voting site, carrying signs that read “They close polling sites, we keep showing up anyway” and chanting “This is what democracy looks like.”

N.C. A&T is the largest historically Black university in the country, with more than 15,000 students, and both schools had on-campus early voting in 2024. “You turned out when they took your voting site away,” state House Minority Leader Robert Reives told the A&T crowd, urging students to bring their friends to the polls too. Students from Bennett College joined the march, and many of the marchers were voting for the first time. “We will come and make our voices clear, no matter how far you push a polling site off of our campus,” said student organizer Xavier Jones. “We will organize. We will march.”

The walk to the polls took about 45 minutes, through broken sidewalks, poison ivy and debris, and some students waited in line for three hours once they got there. Students had to step into the street where sidewalks were missing or blocked by branches, and Democracy Docket reports the route also crosses train tracks and a dirt path. Most A&T students don’t have cars. More than 300 votes were cast at Union Square on the first day, according to the Board of Elections, but some students had to leave the line to get back to class or work. Democratic organizer Kema Leonard, who also waited three hours, said staff at one point ran out of registration forms. “It shouldn’t have been that hard,” Leonard said. “It almost proved our point that we need our own sites. They weren’t ready.”

This is the second time North Carolina’s Republican-controlled elections board has denied A&T students a voting site for the midterms, and one student says the board chair threatened students who asked why. The Guilford County Board of Elections first rejected the campus sites, and the State Board of Elections denied them again in August, voting along its 3-2 party lines. A&T student Shia Rozier got up at 4 a.m. and skipped class to attend that meeting, holding a sign showing the more than one-mile distance from campus to the nearest polling place. Carolyn Bunker, a Democrat on the Guilford County board, said she watched Chairman Francis X. De Luca threaten students with removal and arrest multiple times for asking why he voted against their site. “To acknowledge them and then to continue to dismiss them... it almost felt humiliating,” Rozier said. The board offered Union Square, a downtown health education center shared by A&T, UNCG and Guilford Technical Community College, as a compromise.

The A&T fight is part of a broader set of voting cuts across North Carolina this fall, including slashed Sunday voting and new mail ballot rules that are already getting votes thrown out. Only 17 counties will have Sunday voting this year, compared with 40 in 2022, which cuts into the “souls to the polls” tradition at Black churches. One Anson County board member argued against Sunday voting in part because Chick-fil-A isn’t open that day, which stunned even his Republican colleagues. The state board also adopted a last-minute rule, now being challenged in federal court, requiring voters to seal an inner envelope on their mail ballots. In Wake County, exactly 2.5% of absentee ballots were rejected three weeks in a row because the inner envelope wasn’t sealed, and Guilford County’s rejection rate has topped 2%. Mail ballot requests are down nearly 33% from 2022.

North Carolina has also been flooding voters with confusing letters about their eligibility since striking a deal with Trump’s Justice Department. Some voters have received three or more letters with different and sometimes conflicting instructions about whether they need to take action to vote. This week, the state began sending letters to 1,392 voters flagged as possible noncitizens by the federal SAVE database, telling them to “voluntarily request removal from the voter rolls” or prove they are citizens. SAVE is known to be unreliable: when Texas used it, at least 21% of the people it flagged turned out to be wrongly identified. “People do get worried when they get those letters, especially elderly folks in the eastern part of the state,” said Siobhan Millen, a Democrat on the state elections board. Voters have until Oct. 20 to request a mail ballot, and early in-person voting runs through Oct. 31.

Trump Waives Russia Sanctions Days Before They Take Effect, and Moscow Calls It “Historic”

Trump signed an executive order waiving sweeping new sanctions on Russia that Congress passed and that he signed into law just last month. The Lindsey Graham Act, named for the late senator, targeted Russia’s energy and defense sectors, Putin himself and the “shadow fleet” of tankers Moscow uses to get around Western sanctions. It also would have let the president impose tariffs on the biggest buyers of Russian oil and gas, which could include China and India. Trump waived the sanctions just days before they were set to take effect, arguing the move “is in the national interests of the United States.” The decision comes a week after Trump struck a deal with Putin to ease existing sanctions in exchange for Russia releasing hundreds of thousands of tons of diesel onto global markets. Diesel prices have jumped almost 70% since the Iran war began in February, and the midterms are less than three weeks away.

Zelensky and lawmakers from both parties blasted the waiver as a gift to Putin. “A US sanctions blackout, easing pressure on the aggressor, financial rewards for Putin, all of this only encourages him to keep attacking,” Zelensky wrote, adding that Putin “feels joy and happiness that there is such support.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal called it a “craven, cowardly action” that has “everything to do with sucking up to Vladimir Putin.” Republican Rep. Don Bacon, a strong Ukraine ally who isn’t running for reelection, said “the president is prolonging the war, not ending it.” Sen. Darline Graham, who co-sponsored the bill named for her late brother and has made it a centerpiece of her campaign, has not criticized Trump for waiving it. Graham owes her GOP primary win in large part to Trump’s endorsement.

russian flag wavingRussian officials celebrated Trump’s decision as Putin vowed to keep pushing deeper into Ukraine. “The Trump administration’s suspension of the Graham Act is an important and truly historic moment,” said Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s envoy. The Kremlin itself hasn’t formally responded, but Dmitriev claimed the sanctions would have hurt the U.S. economy more than Russia’s. On Friday, Putin told military leaders he sees “a positive trend” on the battlefield and said “one of the main objectives remains the liberation of the Donetsk People’s Republic,” using the Kremlin’s name for the eastern Ukrainian region. Russia’s military chief also told Putin the military has set aside what it needs to keep attacking Ukraine’s power grid. U.S.-led peace talks have produced no breakthrough.

The waiver came as Russia hit Ukraine with another wave of deadly attacks, killing at least eight people and knocking out power to more than a million. Friday’s strikes hit nine regions, including two shopping centers in Rivne and Sumy, according to Ukrainian officials. In Kharkiv, a 71-year-old woman and a 58-year-old man were killed and 12 people were injured, and two more people were killed in the frontline city of Kramatorsk. Drones also hit a food-processing plant and a customs terminal near Ukraine’s border with Poland, setting about 10 trucks on fire. The U.N. said at least 328 civilians were killed in Ukraine last month, 85% more than in September 2025. “The first two weeks of October were among the deadliest periods for civilians in years,” said Danielle Bell, head of the U.N.’s human rights mission in Ukraine.

Ukraine is hitting back, striking a railway bridge inside Russia and Russian military supply depots in occupied Donetsk. According to Ukraine’s General Staff, forces hit a railway bridge over the Unecha River in Russia’s Bryansk region, part of the route Russia uses to move ammunition, fuel and equipment to the front. Ukraine also struck supply depots near Novoandriivka, Nikolske and Mariupol, plus a Russian drone command post near Malynivka. On Thursday, a Ukrainian brigade used a domestically built interceptor drone to target a Russian Mi-28NM attack helicopter over Russia’s Belgorod region, the second such strike in less than a week. Ukrainian officials have not released damage assessments for any of the strikes. Zelensky has made clear Ukraine will keep fighting back, saying Friday that “the main rule of our operations is to respond.”

Trump Threatens to Jail California Election Workers as Suspicious Letters Target Election Offices and Lawmakers

The Trump Justice Department is threatening to criminally prosecute California election workers who count ballots from people the federal government claims are noncitizens. “If persons knowingly tabulate ballots cast by individuals identified by federal agencies as noncitizens, they risk becoming aiders and abettors to a federal crime,” acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter wrote in a letter to Los Angeles County officials. The letter was also sent to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and L.A. County Registrar Dean Logan, which effectively puts the whole state on notice. Trump shared a story about the letter on Truth Social and wrote, “They will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!” Any federal charges in Los Angeles would be handled by Bill Essayli, the region’s top federal prosecutor, who also helped file the DOJ’s lawsuit against the state. Logan said the DOJ “has chosen to litigate their unverified assertions,” adding, “it is best for this to be addressed in court.”

The threat came one day after the DOJ sued California to block it from counting mail ballots from 20,000 people the government calls “likely” noncitizens. The lawsuit was filed after California officials didn’t meet a 48-hour deadline to review a password-protected thumb drive the DOJ said contained the names. Weber said the administration has offered no evidence to back up its claim and called the effort a way to “cause chaos and fuel public distrust in our elections.” The administration’s track record on these claims is poor: it said Nevada had 1,500 noncitizens on its voter rolls, and after the list was checked, the real number turned out to be zero. Research and state investigations consistently show that noncitizen voting is extremely rare. This year, the DOJ has charged about 50 people with voting as noncitizens, out of more than 227 million registered voters nationwide.

Election law experts say the threats won’t hold up in court and warn that the administration is laying the groundwork to challenge the midterm results. “They’re putting a nail in the wall for something to hang their hat on later,” said Sean Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center. UCLA law professor Rick Hasen called it “deplorable” that the federal government is “making escalating threats and unreasonable demands beyond its power in the middle of an ongoing election.” Former DOJ official Justin Levitt said, “Courts haven’t been buying what DOJ has been selling,” and that election officials “are equipped to stand up to aggressive bullying.” Sens. Alex Padilla, Sheldon Whitehouse and Dick Durbin have written to Attorney General Todd Blanche demanding the DOJ commit to not seizing ballots or other election materials before results are certified. California has more than 23 million registered voters and several competitive House races that could decide control of Congress.

Letters containing suspicious substances have been sent to election offices and more than 20 members of Congress from both parties, just weeks before the midterms. Sens. Amy Klobuchar, Tina Smith, Chris Murphy, Alex Padilla, Kirsten Gillibrand, Mike Rounds, Pete Ricketts and Ted Cruz, along with more than 15 House members, have reported letters sent to their offices, and many were intercepted before delivery. In Rep. Jimmy Panetta’s Santa Cruz office, a staffer opened an envelope containing a “suspicious white powder,” cleared the office and called 911. Election offices in Delaware, Oklahoma and Louisiana also received letters with white powder, and Louisiana’s office was evacuated before law enforcement found nothing harmful. The FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service are investigating and trying to identify who sent them. “This seemingly deliberate and widespread attack on our democracy and elections is unacceptable,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal said.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

djt helen delaney reese get him outHope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump has a serious character flaw, Heather Delaney Reese, above right, Oct. 17, 2026. At 2:18 this afternoon, Donald Trump stood behind the bright blue curtains at Truist Arena in Highland Heights, Kentucky. He opened and closed his suit coat, threw his hands out in front of him, and walked onto the stage, stopping for a moment to look out at the audience and the scattered empty seats.

When he finally reached the podium, his freshly darkened hair and thick orange makeup accentuated the tired, swollen eyes he was using to read the teleprompter. Yet just seconds into his nearly hour-and-a-half-long speech, the President of the United States made it clear he would not be sticking to the script he had been given. Instead, he would be saying whatever he felt like, starting early in his remarks by telling the people in the room and those watching from home that his second presidential term is more powerful than his first and that he “can do stuff that’s unbelievable.”

He also admitted with a smug and shameless confidence that he likes even the most horrible people as long as they like him, even pointing out himself just how fundamentally flawed his moral compass really is. “I like people that like me. I just like it, and I can’t help it. It’s a character flaw. I mean, I’ve had a couple of people, really horrible human beings, horrible, horrible, terrible people, but I heard through the grapevine they really liked me a lot. So, I like them too.” The crowd laughed, and the strategically placed Trump loyalists behind him had huge smiles across their faces as he said it.

It got so bad that he even bragged for all to hear that “Google wouldn’t have taken my call in the first (presidency). Now they kiss my ass.” He said that knowing full well that just hours later he would be sitting right next to Google co-founder Sergey Brin at a “candlelight dinner” fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump just kept going today. At one point, he looked into the audience and told them that the immigrants who came into this country are murderers who will kill them in their homes. “Does anyone think those murderers would be very nice people, nice, gentle people, as your next-door neighbor? No, they’ll kill you.”

He described Jon Husted, the sitting US senator from Ohio and former lieutenant governor, as “a killer” who “takes people’s heads off,” again paying no attention to his words or how often he invokes violence. He did it again when he thought someone in the crowd might be protesting. Trump asked, “Are you friend or foe? Because being a foe in this arena can be a very dangerous thing.” That was the president once again threatening violence.

Still obsessed with Canada and seemingly unable to understand how its healthcare system works, he said that Canada should not be “allowed” to have universal healthcare and that Canadians “spend our money very unwisely.” This was a stretch even for Donald Trump and shows just how desperate his administration has become. We do not, and never have, paid for Canada’s healthcare system, yet he still said it. His goal with saying things like this is to discredit the way Canadians receive medical care, so that Americans who are suffering and struggling to afford their own should fear it instead of seeing it as something worth fighting for here at home.

When he realized the people in the room with him were not as alarmed as he needed them to be, he decided to tell them that they had been in danger of criminal investigation before he took office again. He tried to explain that anyone who had ever bought a Make America Great Again hat had been under investigation by former Special Counsel Jack Smith. “If you had a hat, if you bought a Make America Great Again, you were under investigation by deranged Jack Smith,” he said. There is no evidence that any investigation of this sort ever existed, but he doesn’t care about facts or the truth; he just wanted every person in that room to believe they had been personally targeted, and that they were and would be in danger without Donald Trump in office.

He then went off on a strange tangent, complete with different voices, to justify his weaponization of the Department of Justice against his perceived enemies, saying, “They indicted me and went after me like nobody’s ever gone after. They went after our people, probably people in this audience.” He wants his supporters to think that they are personally at risk if they do not help him hold onto power.

Late last night, hours before either of these events, Donald Trump did something even more horrific when he signed an executive order waiving nearly all of the new sanctions on Russia under the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act. This was a law he had signed into effect barely a month ago to honor his deceased friend, the senator from South Carolina. On the cusp of the October 18th deadline to put those measures into effect, Trump paused the sanctions, citing “national interest.”

By the time the news of what Donald Trump had done was made public, Kirill Dmitriev, the CEO of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and special envoy to President Putin, had already posted “Checkmate” on social media, making a public statement that Russia already knew Trump would deliver exactly what they wanted. Russia played Donald Trump, and they are not even trying to hide it. Nearly every other country and leader sees what Donald Trump is doing, how he is aiding Russia and his close friend, President Putin, and enabling the destruction of Ukraine.

To my fellow Americans, aren’t we sick of the lies? Aren’t we sick of listening to him say things that are so absurd they would be almost impossible to believe if we weren’t hearing them with our own ears? Aren’t we sick of waking up every single day wondering whether he has once again sided with a dictator and a dangerous adversary, not just of the United States, but of the entire world?

Aren’t we sick of listening to him spew hatred and divisiveness, doing everything he can to turn us against one another? Aren’t we sick of worrying about whether our kids and grandchildren will ever be able to afford a house, whether there will be jobs waiting for them, and whether climate change will leave them a world that looks anything like the one we grew up in?

Aren’t we sick of living through months of not being able to eat fresh fruits and vegetables without worrying about parasites? Aren’t we sick and tired of waking up every morning wondering what Donald Trump has done now? Aren’t we sick and tired of living as a hostage to Donald Trump?

Today my husband and I went to a No Kings event here in San Diego, and that is what I kept thinking about when I saw how many people had turned out. We are all sick and tired of Donald Trump and the billionaires who are enabling him. I saw all of the clever signs and heard the powerful chants, but it was the look in so many of the attendees’ eyes that stayed with me. They are tired, but not giving up. I had tears in my eyes as I read all the signs and felt the power of so many people spending their day resisting the evil threatening our country. It took my breath away to see young and old come together.

Thank you to those of you who support this work with a paid membership. Your $5 a month is what allows me to keep writing every day and, just as importantly, to keep these posts free and accessible to everyone. Those who can pay are the reason those who can’t still have access. And right now, with so much at stake heading into the midterms, that matters more than ever. If you’re in a position to join, I’d be grateful to have you with us.

It made me realize that the revolution so many of us have been waiting for might already be here. Maybe this time it’s not always loud, and certainly not violent. Maybe it is just people refusing to accept what is happening in their own ways and showing up when it counts on November third in numbers we have never seen before. Because Trump and his enablers can do whatever they want to try to break our spirit. They can make it harder to vote, gerrymander districts, and try to erase every memory of the country that existed before they took power. They can keep brainwashing their loyal devotees into thinking what they are doing is good for this country or try to convince us that they are going to hold onto unchecked power after the midterms, but we know the truth. They are going to lose, and they will never be able to break our spirit. We will never surrender our country to their demands. On November third, we will be voting them all out and taking back the future of this country and its true moral compass.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

 

U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsHopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion: Trump Is Limping Towards The Finish Line, Spent And Rejected. Now We Need To Drive The Early Vote, Close Strong, And Win This Thing, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 18, 2026. With 16 days to go nothing Trump has done- - not his ads, not his campaigning, not his corrupt influence over legacy and social media -- has been able to reverse or even stem his precipitous decline.

Here’s what people in the Capital are waking up to this morning. This little beauty is the lead story in the Washington Post today:

In this poll Democrats lead by 8 points among likely voters and 13 among those certain to vote or who have already voted:

A new NBC News poll has Trump at a similar 34%-64% approve/disapprove, and the generic ballot at Dem +10:

With a little more than two weeks to go nothing Trump has done - not his ads, not his campaigning, not his bribes, not his corrupt influence over legacy and social media - has been able to reverse or even stem his precipitous decline. Spent, impotent, weak, desperate he is.

We all know where this election is. We’ve seen it in our overperformances in special elections all across the country these past two years. We’ve seen it our strong performance in the 2025 elections all across the country. We’ve seen it in our incredibly strong primary turnout in state after state throughout 2026. We’ve seen it in our improving voter reg numbers, in national polls and state polls, in our robust candidate fundraising, and in all the data showing the American people putting their faith back in us to make things better and put things right.

Two graphs from our discussions this week are sticking with me this morning. The first is just how much Trump has raised prices on all of us, despite making lowering them the central promise of his 2024 campaign. Inflation has more than doubled due to his ruinous government:

The second is this encouraging graph from recent Gallup polling. People are not just leaving the Rs they are returning to us and identifying as Democrats again:

I’ve written about Meta shutting down the No Kings Instagram account on Bluesky. I will have more on that, and Trump’s treacherous betrayal of America and Ukraine, tomorrow.

While it remains early in the early vote - and we must be patient - we are starting to see states where the vote is looking like what we expected it to look like. What follows is data pulled from the TargetEarly site, using modeled party, compared to 2024 and 2022 on this day.

  • Indiana. Dems are running 13 points over 2022 now:
  • Nebraska. Dems are running 11 points over 2022:
  • New Jersey. Dems are running 9 points over 2022:
  • North Carolina. Dems are running 21 points over 2022:

If you want inspiration now that No Kings Vote Early has come and gone - great work yesterday everyone! - watch some of our recent discussions with our remarkable candidates and state party leaders who are leading the charge all across the country. We are lucky that so many compelling leaders have decided to run this cycle - it is what gives me hope today more than anything else. You’ve met these candidates and state party leaders. You’ve seen what they are made of. You know that with our help they are going to close strong, close far stronger than the corrupt betrayers on the other side who’ve lost the consent of the governed and will soon need to find some other way to make themselves rich.

So, with 16 days to go in this consequential election, we are where we hoped to be. And now we need stay steady and go finish the job by……Kicking These Corrupt Traitors’ Asses, Winning The Midterms, And Countering The Fuckery That Has Already Begun.

  

raphael warnock

PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: Raphael Warnock Drops The Hammer And Says Crook Trump Has Got To Go, Jason Easley, right, jason easleyOct. 18, 2026. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), above, said that Donald Trump is a crook and that the president and his enablers have got to go.

When Democrats are interviewed, there is a clear indication that the party has a plan for what it will do if they win back control of the House and Senate.

Two themes keep coming up. Holding Trump accountable and lowering costs and inflation to promote affordability.

These two goals merge on the issue of corruption. Corruption in the Trump administration means money that should go to the needs of the American people instead goes into the pockets of the president, his family, and those around him.

Sen. Raphael Warnock put all of these pieces together during an interview on NBC’s Meet The Press.

Kristen Welker asked Warnock, “I want to talk about the agenda. If, for example, Democrats win back the House, as you know, one of the big debates is what should be at the top of the agenda, should Democrats move to impeach President Trump for a third time? Where do you stand on this, Senator? Do you believe Democrats should impeach President Trump should they win back the House of Representatives?”

Sen. Warnock answered, “Donald Trump is a crook. And he’s got to go. And the people who are enabling him, they all have to be held accountable. And so we ought to have the investigations to get to the truth behind the most corrupt administration in American history. At the same time, we have to walk and chew gum at the same time, Americans are being crushed under these costs, which are connected to his corruption. And so we have to end this war, stop the tariffs, fix health care, and then lay out for the American people a vision that embraces all of us.”Stopping Trump’s Corruption Will Help The Economy

The Democratic agenda can’t be about impeachment. People are supporting Democrats to fix the economy. If Democrats were to win the midterms and only focus on Trump, they would be making the same mistake that Trump made in 2024.

Democrats are showing no signs that they will make that same mistake.

Welker asked Warnock if he thought a third Trump impeachment would backfire, and he said:

I can tell you that this corruption is crushing the American people. The American people are watching themselves get poorer and poorer while Donald Trump, his family, his friends, are getting richer and richer. He’s $4 billion richer than he was when he entered office.

And meanwhile, people are crushed under these gas prices, crushed under the price of groceries. I notice in your earlier sound, there he was saying they hit him with affordability. This is the problem with Donald Trump, it’s always about Donald Trump. He’s the one being hit.

Well, he should talk to my constituents. They’re being hit by his awful policies. I can’t think of a time in my lifetime when you could draw such a straight line between the policies in the White House and the economic pain that people are feeling in their houses. And so we have to deal with the costs and we have to deal with the corruption and the American people deserve no less.

This is not an either/or choice.

Democrats can get rid of Trump’s enablers, take on corruption, and help the economy. The public focus should be on the economy, and efforts to investigate and impeach Trump and his enablers should be connected back to the economy and corruption.

If Democrats take back power with a clear plan, it will greatly increase their odds of success.

Politico, Retiring GOP congressmember will 'absolutely not' vote for successor in at-risk seat, Meredith Lee Hill,Oct. 18, 2026. Retiring Nevada Republican Rep. Mark Amodei said he won’t vote for the Trump-endorsed GOP candidate vying to replace him amid a string of stolen valor and other accusations — and warned that the once-safe Republican seat President Donald Trump won by 14 points is at risk of flipping blue on Election Day.

politico CustomAmodei said in an interview Saturday he would “absolutely not” vote for businessperson David Flippo in Nevada’s 2nd District. “I think the seat’s at risk,” he added, citing a string of stolen valor and financial allegations against Flippo.

“You say, well, the president endorsed him,” Amodei added. “It’s like, well whoever was advising the president on, ‘Hey, this would be a good place for you to go ahead and weigh in,’ gave him awful advice. The vetting process — quote unquote — must have been nearly non-existent.”

Amodei specifically cited a series of allegations against Flippo as disqualifying, for reportedly lying about his military service and also failing to file financial disclosures on time.

“It’s just one thing after another. The stolen valor accusations — all that. But you’re just sitting here going, ‘What the heck?’” Amodei said. Flippo has said apparent exaggerations about his military service on campaign materials were mistakes by his staff and others. Still, GOP officials have been weighing whether Trump should campaign in the region to help boost Flippo before Election Day, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The district has never been represented by a Democrat.

Amodei said he plans to vote early in the coming days and “is looking seriously” at casting his ballot for the independent candidate.

Amid the deteriorating landscape, national Republicans are increasingly wary about Republicans like Flippo holding onto seats in once-safe red districts. Trump won the Northern Nevada seat that encompasses Reno and nearby rural counties by double digits in 2024 and Amodei has held it for 15 years.

On paper, Democrats should have no business playing there. And, national Republicans are still bullish on their chances of holding onto the seat, arguing it’s safer than other red districts they’re more worried about. But Republicans have watched Democrat Teresa Benitez-Thompson, a former Nevada Assembly majority leader, make the race much tighter than comfortable.

Limited general election polls have Flippo either up or trailing by several points. The Trump-aligned MAGA Inc. super PAC just dropped its first spending into the district in recent days, looking to boost Flippo who has self-funded a large part of his campaign.

Nevada Republicans — once bullish about flipping the Las Vegas-area 1st and 3rd Districts — are now paying increasing attention to Amodei’s Northern Nevada district. The economic headwinds that have hit farm states across the country have slammed Nevada’s so-called cattle counties, and demographic change in Reno has favored Democrats in recent years.internet. This has resulted in strict data localization requirements. Russia has deliberately put all its eggs into the domestic data center basket.

More On Russia's War On Ukraine, New U.S. Support For Russia

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine during a news conference in Kyiv on Thurday. “We have a special people, an extraordinary people,” he said (Photo by Lynsey Addario for The New York Times).

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine during a news conference in Kyiv. “We have a special people, an extraordinary people,” he said (Photo by Lynsey Addario for The New York Times).

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Defends Plans to Ease Russia Sanctions and Hints at a Hostage Deal, David E. Sanger, Oct. 18, 2026. The president on Sunday justified his reversal of almost five years of sanctions against Russia as part of peace negotiations. He did not name any hostage.

ukraine flagPresident Trump, defending his decision to ease tariffs and other sanctions against Russia, said on Sunday that he was making “great progress” in a peace deal with the Kremlin and suggested for the first time that the process included “hostage negotiations.”

He did not specify whose release he was seeking. But the only American now categorized by the State Department as “wrongfully detained” in Russia is Stephen Hubbard, a Michigan teacher who was seized from his home in Ukraine just months after Russia invaded that country in February 2022 and was charged with being a mercenary. He was sentenced to more than six years in a penal colony, on charges that the United States has said are fabricated.

“My decision on Russia is a very simple one,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media, an apparent reference to his move late on Friday to neutralize the sanctions resolution that he had signed only a few weeks earlier. “I am in the process of negotiating Peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and don’t want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table.”

Until Sunday, Mr. Trump had said little about the remarkable, rapid-fire steps he has taken over the past 10 days to side with the Russians in a conflict that has now gone on longer than World War I. Those steps amount to the reversal of nearly five years of sanctions following President Vladimir V. Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.

In that time period Mr. Trump has announced that the United States will buy diesel fuel from Russia — though the announced purchases are far too small to have a significant effect on prices, despite Mr. Trump’s claims — and that he will waive imposing tariffs on Russia under a newly signed law named for its chief proponent, Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who died in July.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

republican elephant logoBoth decisions have been criticized by U.S. lawmakers, including fellow Republicans. Senator Darline Graham of South Carolina, who was appointed to her brother’s seat and is now running for a full term, gently disagreed on Saturday with Mr. Trump’s decision on the sanctions law, saying that she “would choose to put the pressure on Russia to end the war and get gas prices down.”

The breach with Ukraine has been sudden and perhaps irreparable.

Mr. Trump has declared publicly that Ukraine needs a new leader, the first time he has called for replacing Volodymyr Zelensky, the country’s president, with whom Mr. Trump has had a contentious relationship. And he and other administration officials have declined to explain whether they deliberately cut off intelligence warnings to Ukraine about incoming missile and drone attacks, or throttled the speed of data to the country from Starlink, Elon Musk’s critical satellite network, or its military cousin, called Starshield.

Taken together, those steps amount to a major reversal in U.S. strategy, after more than four years in which, to varying degrees, the United States has sided with Ukraine as the victim of Russian aggression.

And while Mr. Trump has episodically tacked toward Mr. Putin, for whom he has often expressed admiration, the United States has largely let intelligence assistance flow and continued to sell arms to Ukraine through the Europeans, who are paying for the deliveries.

But Mr. Trump and his two leading negotiators — Steve Witkoff, his special envoy, and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, who holds unofficial status as the president’s personal negotiator — have been trying a new approach. They have scrapped the administration’s previous insistence that business deals with Russia would come only after a peace accord was struck. Now they have announced the diesel deal, and they are trying to put together a purchase of Lukoil, one of Russia’s biggest energy companies, as an early confidence-building measure to assure Mr. Putin that they are about to uncork a series of lucrative projects.

Mr. Trump on Sunday accused Mr. Zelensky of targeting diesel refineries in Russia “knowing that these attacks are seriously hurting the world diesel markets, including those in the United States.”

It is the opposite of the position he has taken in defending the blockade on Iranian oil shipments, in which he has said Americans are paying a necessary price to ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon. (Russia already has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, and at various points in the Ukraine war, Mr. Putin has hinted that it may be used.)

In his social media post, Mr. Trump praised Russia for “sending, at a low price, millions of barrels of diesel to the World,” and he accused Mr. Zelensky of ingratitude. “Zelensky doesn’t care, and frankly, with all the money that Europe is famously giving him, and that Crooked Joe Biden gave him in the past, he doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did.”

Mr. Zelensky, for his part, has lamented Mr. Trump’s decisions as “weak” — a word he knows will inflame the president — and accused the president of pressuring Ukraine to relent to Russia.

 

tim snyder thinking about logo

Thinking About, Opinion: Rape as a weapon of warThe voices of Ukrainians, Sara Cincurova, guest commentator, Oct. 18, 2026. This text includes sensitive details about sexual violence during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

For about two years, as a freelance journalist, I have been documenting Russian use of rape as a weapon of war against Ukrainian civilians. As we mark four and a half years since Ukraine was plunged into war, the immense use of sexual violence remains an underreported element of this conflict.

Ukrainian women and men have experienced extensive and concerted abuse at the hands of the Russian army since its initial occupation of Eastern Ukraine, including Crimea and the Donbas region, in 2014 and more intensively since the full-scale invasion in 2022.

Women have been detained and raped or brutalized with weapons and other objects while held captive illegally; others experienced sexual violence perpetrated by soldiers in their own homes. Still others had to watch their loved ones being killed in front of their eyes. Earlier this year, I wrote for the New York Times on the basis of testimonies of eight Ukrainian women who spoke with me about their experiences, both in occupied towns and villages and in Russian captivity.

Men have reported sexualized violence and torture in Russian captivity, with frequent use of electric shocks to their genitals, among other forms of abuse.

These are not crimes of opportunity or isolated incidents, but rather a systematic attack against both women and men under occupation or in captivity. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, which is examining violations of international law arising from Russia’s war against Ukraine, found in 2024 that “the war crime of rape had been committed, which also amounted to torture.”

The UN investigators noted that frequently “the perpetrators were Russian soldiers, who had identified women in a vulnerable situation during one or several initial searches of their houses” (my emphasis).

In other words, when Russian soldiers seek their prey, even the most defenseless people can become targeted. Rape at the hands of the Russian troops was, and still is, perpetrated against pregnant women, persons with disabilities, children, and the elderly, who often receive less media coverage, and whose stories, often too painful and sensitive, rarely make the front pages.

I keep thinking about Halyna, a kind, energetic Ukrainian retiree who was raped in her home in 2022: A Russian soldier who could have been her son or grandson forced her to walk around her garden naked in the freezing cold, raped her, and violated her with weapons, mocking her for being old. And as she was in an occupied village, she had to suffer from her injuries for a long time without access to medical care. But today, Halyna has healed.

I also met Olena Zaitseva, who was a pregnant woman unlawfully detained and imprisoned together with her then 18-year-old son Vladyslav in 2019 in their home village in eastern Ukraine, an area occupied by Russia since 2014. The Russian soldiers raped Olena and caused her ongoing gynaecological and other health issues, including the loss of her pregnancy. After nearly four years of torment in Russian captivity, Olena was freed in a prisoner exchange in 2022. But she has not seen her son since 2019, when they were both imprisoned. Vladyslav is still being held, now for the eighth consecutive year, and is likely regularly tortured, as are other civilian detainees. Olena shared the painful details of her abuse and imprisonment with the press in the hope that one day, by some miracle, she will see her son again.Olena Zaitseva holds a photograph of her son Vladyslav.

Based on my experiences gathering the testimonies of more than sixty survivors in the past two years, sexual violence has become one of Russia’s defining and systemic weapons of its war with Ukraine. We will likely never know the real number of victims in Ukraine but sexual violence is endemic to armed conflict and is on the rise globally. According to the UN, cases of wartime sexual violence rose by more than 25% in 2024 over 2023 — reflecting the scope of global warfare and conflicts erupting around the world.

Some survivors are not only victims of rape, but also of human trafficking. Another woman I interviewed, Olena Yahupova, was abducted from her home and held in a forced labor camp near the frontline of southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, where Russian soldiers forced her to work alongside male detainees by day, digging trenches in the freezing cold. By night, she and other women were victims of brutal sexual violence, she said. For two months, Olena endured torture, rape, and inhumane treatment. After her liberation, she was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury, hip and shoulder injuries, and post-traumatic stress disorder. She chose nonetheless to share her story with the media.Olena Yahupova

Unfortunately, testimonies like hers, which reveal the harsh reality of Russian labor camps and specifically the Russian use of gender-based sexual violence, are still rarely shared on account of the immense trauma they carry. The patterns of despite in the treatment of captive are however clear.

Another female survivor whom I interviewed last year told me a similarly harrowing story in the same region near the frontline. She and a Ukrainian man, both civilian captives, had also been forced to dig trenches for the Russian army, and, as a woman, she had also been forced to serve as a sex slave. “I will never be able to fully recount the scale of the horrors I went through,” she said. The silences that surround her story are characteristic of the Russian war strategy to break Ukrainians psychologically. Like so many survivors in Ukraine, she struggles with invisible injuries, though they did not come from drones, missiles, or artillery.

Hundreds of women and children, as well as large groups of detained civilian men, have officially reported being victims of sexual abuse and wartime rape since 2022 to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office. As of July 31, 2026, the office has been able to officially record 250 cases of rape committed against women, and 24 cases against children, although the real numbers are certainly far higher — this official number cannot even serve as a basis for estimates. Help is available for victims, provided by the government, the UN, and NGOs. Yet large groups of survivors live with their traumas in silence, trying to heal even as the war enters a new, more brutal phase with frequent ballistic attacks in Kyiv and elsewhere.

I have been following the story of young woman I will call Iryna (to protect her identity) for several years. Iryna had a child conceived as a result of wartime rape. She fled the violence in her frontline village, but soon found herself homeless, unable to pay the bills or rent an apartment without a stable job. Four years after the rape, she has no choice but to live with a violent man in her new village, as his house is the only place of “safety” she can afford — the landlord, albeit abusive, doesn’t ask her for large sums of money. Iryna is trying desperately to leave, which is particularly hard for a poor single mother in a war zone — and her options became even more limited since she was diagnosed with a potentially life-threatening condition.

NGOs such as Truth Hounds and International Partnership of Human Rights have also documented staggering levels of sexual violence perpetrated against men in places of captivity, including genital electrocution, rape, and castration. Based on 19 interviews I conducted with male survivors of sexual violence in captivity (imprisoned in Russia and occupied Ukraine and held between 2022 and 2026), all described the same pattern of abuse, as well as the same types of slang used to degrade and annihilate the Ukrainian people as a nation. All the men described Russian troops as being “prepared” for the captivity with specific “equipment” in advance — mostly old field army telephones (such as Tapik) or other electrocuting devices such as electric shockers, with which they would send electric shocks to the captives’ genitals, usually from the first day of detention. According to numerous testimonies recorded by NGOs that are consistent with my findings, the Russian soldiers also frequently force Ukrainian men to rape or harm fellow prisoners or threaten to castrate them in order to “stop Ukrainians from reproducing”. A doctor that I recently spoke to told me he had already treated at least one male victim of castration, while other male survivors of Russian captivity struggle to have their own children.

Anastasiia, a young woman in her twenties, spent three years searching for her father Oleksandr, a Ukrainian prisoner of war and defender of Mariupol and Azovstal, who was held in some of the most brutal prisons in Russia, such as those in Taganrog and Mordovia. He was subjected to ongoing sexual violence and electric shocks. Upon his liberation in 2025, he reunited with Anastasiia, his only daughter, whom he’d raised alone, in a beautiful family reunion. Shortly after his liberation, he agreed to sit for an interview with me: He was motivated, smiling, hopeful, and incredibly kind and open despite what he had experienced. Six months after our interview, Oleksandr died as a result of his injuries, ongoing health issues, and incessant psychoses, during which he saw and heard the voices of Russian prison guards everywhere. Despite her loss, Anastasiia is sharing her father’s story and helping to search for soldiers and civilians who remain missing.

As the war rages on, and even as ballistic missiles now regularly pummel Anastasiia’s neighborhood in Kyiv, she and many other survivors and their families cling to hope — the hope that their stories will resonate with readers around the world and perhaps bring them at least some form of justice and recognition. It is important not to forget these testimonies, essential in understanding the dynamics of this war, but also its human face and its human toll.

----------------------------------

Sara Cincurova is a journalist working on a book on the sexual violence by Russian soldiers against Ukrainian civilians. You can find her work at saracincurova.com and follow her on Instragram (@sara_cincurova). She is also the author of the two photographs, which are used with the permission of Olena Zaitseva and Olena Yahupova.

To the Contrary, Opinion: Russia, Russia, Russia, Was Never a Hoax, Charlie Sykes, right, charlie sykesOct. 18, 2026. Lindsey Graham’s final humiliation?

No one ever told me that vindication would feel so much like nausea.

Donald Trump’s treachery was predictable and predicted. Even so, watching him throwing a financial lifeline to Putin as the monstrous mob boss murders Ukrainians is sick-making stuff.

The president’s “October Suprise” was a stab in the back.

Trump and Elon Musk throttled Ukraine’s Starlink/Starshield defenses and late Friday, he twisted the knife:

“Trump waives many Russian sanctions, tariffs under new law backed by Lindsey Graham.”

The Graham Act, which Trump signed into law last month, would have imposed sanctions of up to 100% on all goods brought into the United States from the largest importers of Russian crude oil and gas to countries that knowingly bought Russian oil 30 days after the law went into effect.

nikki haley oTrump said the waiver was in the “national interests of the United ​States.”

“There are certain decisions that will go down as history-defining moments,” Trump’s former UN Ambassador, Nikki Haley, left, posted Saturday. “This is one of them. It's a terrible misjudgment of Putin, who has made it clear he wants to destroy the West. We shouldn't help him do it.”

If only she had been warned. Oh wait.

 

hillary clinton donald trump crop Oct. 19 3rd debate

Back in the distant mists of time (almost exactly ten years ago today), Hillary Clinton, above right, accused then-candidate Donald Trump of being a puppet of Vladimir Putin. “You encouraged espionage against our people,” she said. “You are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish list: break up NATO, do whatever he wants to do.”

Indeed, much of Trump’s first term was consumed by examining his fetish for and obeisance to the Kremlin butcher. Despite his claims of EXONERATION, the evidence was voluminous and right in our faces. As David Frum noted in 2018, when it came to Trump’s fealty to Putin: There were “many secrets, no mysteries.”

“With him all roads lead to Putin,” then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi said six years ago.

And yet, for years, anti-anti-Trumpers like National Review’s Dan McLaughlin sneered at the critics. “There's been a lot of hysteria over the years at Trump's posture towards Russia, which has often been worse rhetorically than practically, he posted yesterday. “But this time, the wolf comes as a wolf.”

FFS, Trump was always the wolf.

Andy McCarthy, right, who is another of McLaughlin’s anti-anti Trump colleagues at NR, didn’t deny that Russia tried andrew mccarthyto interfere in the 2016, but insisted that the “Russiagate” political narrative was exaggerated and misused and directed his fire on the investigators.

He wrote an entire book on it: “Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency.”

The real collusion in the 2016 election was not between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. It was between the Clinton campaign and the Obama administration.

The media-Democrat “collusion narrative,” which paints Donald Trump as cat’s paw of Russia, is a studiously crafted illusion.

Now? McCarthy is shocked to learn where the Trump-Putin alliance has led and is demanding: “Congress Must Investigate Trump’s Aid and Comfort to Putin.”

[In] a properly functioning republic, there would be immediate hearings about this week’s shocking escalation of the Trump–Putin alliance.

Would it help if he had the grace to admit that the critics were right from the start? Maybe. But vindication doesn’t mean we don’t feel like throwing up as we watch the United States shiv a brave democratic ally, while Ukrainians die.

The Ukrainians have no illusions about Trump’s treachery or its consequences. Here’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy: “If the United States supports Putin, it’s unbelievable, it’s a tragedy. It’s a historic mistake. If United States officially takes the side of Russia, of course we will not prevail and we will not be able to stand.”

Zelenskyy: "If the United States supports Putin, it's unbelievable, it's a tragedy. It's a historic mistake. If United States officially takes the side of Russia, of course we will not prevail and we will not be able to stand."

Domestically, the political blowback has been intense, including a growing crack in GOP support.¹ Senator Thom Tillis  [the North Carolina Republican, shown at right] called the move “unconscionable” and “beyond irresponsible.”

thom tillisWhat part of enforcing a law passed 86-11 by the Senate does the President and his advisors not understand? It’s unconscionable that this administration is capitulating to a Russian dictator who illegally invaded Ukraine and butchers innocent civilians every single day.

But it’s unclear what, if anything Tillis and his fellow senators will do about it. (As for Graham? How would he react to Trump gutting the sanction bill passed in his honor? Or would he swallow yet another humiliation, falling back into line and his wonted role as presidential fluffer? I think we know the answer to that question.)

Fallout at the ballot box?

All of this comes as Trump hits new lows in the polls: “Trump approval hits record low, handing Democrats a clear midterm edge” - The Washington Post

Trump’s approval among U.S. adults now stands at 33 percent, with 66 percent disapproving; 52 percent said they disapprove strongly. That approval rating is four percentage points lower than in July and eight points lower than at this point last year. It’s lower than at any point in his first term. Among likely voters, Trump’s approval is 38 percent, with 62 percent disapproving.

Because it is exceedingly hard to see how Trump’s latest grovel will help Republicans in the midterms, Susan Glasser offers another alternative: “What if Trump is pivoting to Putin not to help his party to win but because he really wants Russia to?”

Exit take: Max Hastings writes in the Sunday Times (of London): “the US has fallen into the hands of the most dishonest and venal leader in its history.”

Politico, Ukraine strikes oil facility in St. Petersburg as part of ‘massive’ drone attack, Jacopo Barigazzi, Oct. 18, 2026. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last week he had ordered the resumption of strikes on Russian oil refineries following a three-day pause.

politico CustomUkraine struck an oil terminal in St. Petersburg Sunday morning in what Russian state media called “one of the biggest drone attacks of the year.”

Alexander Beglov, governor of St. Petersburg, said on Telegram Sunday that the city underwent a “massive” overnight attack from Ukrainian drones. “The Ministry of Emergency Situations continues to extinguish fires at the Petersburg Oil Terminal, the Ruchyi oil depot, and industrial warehouses in the Kolpino district,” he said, adding that one person died and several others were injured in the incident.

The drone strikes come as Kyiv and Moscow ramp up attacks on each other’s infrastructure. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last week he had ordered the resumption of strikes on Russian oil refineries following a three-day pause after U.S. President Donald Trump declared he had brokered an energy ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia.

Trump repeatedly urged Ukraine to halt its attacks and blamed the country for rising fuel prices — while also calling for Zelenskyy to be replaced as president.

Writing on X Sunday morning, the Ukrainian president highlighted Moscow’s continued attacks on Ukraine. “In total, over this past week, the Russians have attacked Ukraine with almost 2,700 attack drones, 1,700 aerial bombs, and 66 missiles, most of them ballistic,” he wrote, adding that the U.S. “should see that Russia is not taking any reciprocal steps in response to sanctions relief or agreements.”

Separately, Vilnius said that a suspected drone may have self-detonated in Lithuania while on a flight path toward Latvia Sunday morning. A spokesperson for the Lithuanian armed forces said NATO air defense mission fighter jets were scrambled in response to the incident near the Latvian border.

The provenance of the suspected drone is unclear, but Robertas ​Kaunas, Lithuania’s defense minister, said the object was likely a ​drone which had entered the country from Poland, adding that he had proposed a ⁠joint investigation with his Polish counterpart.

Lawfare, Russia's Digital Detox Boomerang, Tom Uren, Oct. 16, 2026. Ukrainian drone strikes against Russian data centers are causing widespread disruption to the country's internet services.

lawfare logoUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the strikes, targeting the data centers of Russian technology company Yandex, were a "symmetrical response" to Russian attacks on several Ukrainian data centers that began in mid-September. The Russian Ministry of Defense called its strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure a "digital detox."

These tit-for-tat kinetic attacks have been far more impactful than either country's cyber operations. But Russia is more vulnerable to this type of disruption than Ukraine because of its digital sovereignty strategy.

At the time of writing, Yandex's three largest data centers (the company operates six in total) have been struck. The first was hit on Oct. 7. Speaking to the Warsaw Security Forum, President Zelenskyy claimed the strikes had led to a decline in Russian disinformation and propaganda bot activity. He said that "it suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social media platforms."

"There was less hate, less division, and fewer provocations because there were fewer bots. And it's pretty clear where those bots were coming from."

There has been anecdotal support online for this narrative, but unfortunately, the objective data we have found so far indicates that Russian propaganda bots are still out in full force.

The quality of online discourse aside, Ukraine's strikes are having real impacts within Russia, and on Monday the Moscow Times reported that they were causing "major disruptions in daily life."

Yandex is basically Russia's Google, AWS, and Uber rolled into one. It provides payment and online map services, email, and a taxi booking and food delivery app. The disruptions went beyond its own internal services, too. Businesses running on Yandex Cloud, including grocery, fast-food, and retail organizations were also affected.

With the Yandex Pay service disrupted, many customers were not able to check balances, make payments, or transfer money. Dima Pirogov, the CEO of Yandex's FinTech division, attempted to reassure customers via a statement on social media.

"All your money is safe. The money itself isn't stored in the data center."

Pirogov did not provide an expected restoration time but said, "We won't stop until the service is restored." So, you can't have your money, but it is safe. Trust me bro…

It's fair to say Yandex isn't having a great time this week, but Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure and data centers, which kicked off this whole thing, were also impactful. Attacks on telecommunications and internet service providers caused outages to around 100,000 households, according to Ukraine's digital transformation ministry. These attacks included a strike on one of Ukraine's largest data centers.

Since mid-September this year, the Russian military has launched a series of conventional attacks against Kyivstar, targeting its data centers, a warehouse, and central offices. These locations are all points of vulnerability that could plausibly result in significant impacts on Kyivstar.

Physically destroying mobile networks is a big deal, but Ukraine has some mitigations. Kyivstar users can already use direct-to-device (D2D) satellite services for texting via Starlink, for example. And many critical Ukrainian government services are already hosted outside of the country, including in Microsoft and Amazon's cloud infrastructure. That shift to cloud services occurred rapidly after the start of the war.

The Ukrainians have "lift and shift" down to a fine art. One of Ukraine's largest data centers, the 4 megawatt capacity Parkovyi facility in Kyiv, was destroyed by Russian strikes in late September this year. By Oct. 1, the company said that customer data was already in backup sites within the EU.

Russia's digital sovereignty efforts, by contrast, puts the country at a structural disadvantage.

These efforts have been motivated by the desire to maintain political control. Over the past two decades, Russia has rolled out a series of measures that have increased the government's capability for domestic censorship and surveillance.

One explicit goal of this sovereignty push has been to develop the capability to disconnect Russia from the global

More Global News.

ap logoAssociated Press via Politico, Pope Leo tells faithful in St. Peter’s Square he will gradually resume duties after cancer surgery, Staff Report, Oct. 18, 2026.  He said the experience of the last week “has made me feel especially close to those facing illness and infirmity.”

Pope Leo XIV thanked thousands of faithful in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday for their prayers while he was hospitalized for an operation to remove a malignant tumor, and said he plans to gradually return to his usual duties.

politico CustomThe crowd erupted in cheers when the pontiff showed himself in the window overlooking the square, where a week ago on the same occasion of the traditional Angelus blessing he revealed that a nodule had been located on his lung, and that it would be surgically removed.

’’Now that this delicate phase is behind me, I will gradually resume my activities, always with God’s help and your prayers,” Leo said, his voice sounding strong four days after the lower lobe of his right lung was removed.

The pontiff said the experience of the last week “has made me feel especially close to those facing illness and infirmity.” He told the faithful that he had ‘’truly felt your support,’' and expressed ‘’particular gratitude to the doctors, nurses and all the staff at Gemelli hospital’’ where he was treated.

The pope paused for a moment and waved to the crowd before retreating into his apartment in the Apostolic Palace.

A delegation from Africa in Rome for a congress danced and ululated after the pope’s blessing.

‘’He was always in our prayers when he was sick, and we are happy to see him today,″ said Alain Kalembu of the Democratic Republic of Congo. ″This is an expression of our joy.″

The 71-year-old pontiff had the lower lobe of his right lung removed on Tuesday in the first major health event of his 17-month pontificate. The surgery confirmed he had adenocarcinoma, the most common type of lung cancer.

He told a reporter in English that he was doing ‘’much better’’ as he drove away from Rome’s Gemelli hospital to return to the Vatican, after a shorter hospital stay than had initially been anticipated.

“I don’t believe it, because he was just operated on the other day,” Cosimo Mastrocinque, a retired factory worker visiting the Vatican from the southern region of Puglia, said. “It is a miracle that he recovered already.”

Politico, Trump endorses Netanyahu for reelection, Cheyanne M. Daniels, Oct. 18, 2026. Israel's longest-serving prime minister, right, said he was "honored and humbled."

Benjamin Netanyahu smile Twitter“Bibi Netanyahu has been Strong, Brave, and Brilliant in the face of tremendous opposition, including that coming from even Israel, itself,” President Donald Trump wrote.President Donald Trump on Sunday endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his reelection bid.

politico CustomIn a post to Truth Social, the president applauded Netanyahu for his continued support of the U.S., including in the war against Iran, as he praised the prime minister for being “a Great Warrior Prime Minister, and an even greater Partner for Peace in combatting the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

“Bibi Netanyahu has been Strong, Brave, and Brilliant in the face of tremendous opposition, including that coming from even Israel, itself,” said Trump. “Despite all of that, he has endured and, in fact, he has thrived! I have watched Bibi under the most trying of times. Normal men or women in such situations would have wilted under the pressure — But Bibi did not wilt, he actually got stronger, and maintains that same Strength today.”

He added, “BIBI NETANYAHU WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”

Netanyahu on Sunday in a post to social media thanked Trump for his “tremendous support” and vowed that “together we will complete the mission!”

In a second post later Sunday, Netanyahu said he was “honored and humbled” by Trump’s “extraordinary endorsement.”

“I can say — and that’s easy — there has never been a greater friend of Israel in the White House. That’s an understatement,” Netanyahu said.

He then praised Trump for his “laser focus” on eliminating the Iranian “threat” and for having “remarkable leadership” as he warned Americans that only Trump can defeat Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

Trump’s endorsement comes just nine days before Israeli citizens will decide whether to reelect Netanyahu, and only a few days after he refused to endorse any candidate during an interview with Newsmax. Netanyahu has served as prime minster since 2022 after previously serving from 1996 to 1999 and from 2009 to 2021.

The relationship between the two leaders has appeared to weaken in recent months as the war with Iran has dragged on. Tensions between the Israeli government and the Trump administration have risen over the war, the Gaza conflict and settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. In August, Netanyahu rejected Trump’s peace plan for Gaza. Before that, in June, Trump called Netanyahu “crazy.” Trump has also expressed frustration over Israel’s ongoing conflict with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, saying Israeli attacks there were hindering talks with Iran.

Politico, France says Israel must ‘stop these acts of terror’ following attack on EU diplomats, Jacopo Barigazzi, Oct. 18, 2026. Video footage of the incident in Taybeh, north of Jerusalem, showed settlers confronting a convoy of diplomats.

european union logo rectangleFrance called on Israeli authorities to take “all necessary measures” to “stop these acts of terror” following an attack by masked Israeli settlers against European diplomats in the West Bank on Saturday.

politico CustomIn a statement issued Sunday, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs said: “France calls on the Israeli authorities to arrest the perpetrators of this extremely serious assault and bring them to justice.

“Furthermore, the Israeli authorities must take all necessary measures to put an end to these acts of terror and to ensure the safety of civilian populations and diplomatic missions, as they are obligated to do under international law.”

The incident took place in Taybeh, a mainly Christian town north of Jerusalem, where diplomats and other officials from France, Poland and Belgium were watching local people harvest olives. Video footage of the attack showed settlers confronting a convoy of diplomats and a man wearing a French tricolor sash slumped beside a car.

“The mayor of the commune of Aulnoye-Aymeries was violently assaulted by extremist settlers in the West Bank,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said on X, adding that that Israel “must urgently put an end to these criminal acts.”

Belgian Foreign Minister Maxim Prévot said that in addition to the assault on the French mayor, a Belgian vehicle was damaged in the incident. He added that “Israeli authorities must protect Palestinians, ensure the safety of diplomats and journalists, and bring those responsible to justice,” and said Belgium “will continue to press for EU sanctions against those responsible for this violence and those who support them.”

On Sunday morning, an EU spokesperson said that the bloc “strongly condemns” the attacks by violent settlers in the West Bank, “including on European diplomats.”

The spokesperson added: “We take positive note of statements by several Israeli representatives who condemned the attacks but we expect full accountability as well as effective measures to prevent continued acts of violence and violent harassment against Palestinians, including during the ongoing olive harvest season, as well as against journalists.”

Writing on X, the Israel Defense Forces strongly condemned “the severe act of violence that took place in the area of Taybeh, during which diplomatic representatives were attacked by Israeli rioters.”

The IDF added that “according to a preliminary inquiry, no IDF soldiers were present at the scene at the time of the attack”.

However, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged caution “before drawing conclusions” from reports of the attack, while noting that “any violence against diplomats is unacceptable.”

More On U.S. Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets`New York Times

New York Times, 3 Charts That Explain the Economy as Voters Head to the Polls, Ben Casselman, Oct. 18, 2026. Inflation is high, consumer spending is strong and seemingly everything depends on what happens with artificial intelligence.

Last week provided a final snapshot of the state of the economy before voters head to the polls for next month’s midterm elections.

The flood of government data clarified a familiar picture — and thus a grim one for President Trump and incumbent Republicans.

True, much of the data pointed to strength, or at least stability. Retail sales rose at a healthy pace in September. Filings for unemployment benefits remained low. Industrial output hit a postpandemic high.

But there was no relief on the issue that matters most to many voters, inflation. Consumer prices rose last month at their fastest rate since May, outpacing wage growth for the sixth month in a row. Producer prices, too, came in hot, as did prices for imported goods. And gasoline — the most visible price in the economy, and one that few Americans have any choice about paying — stayed above $4 a gallon nationally, where it has been for most of the past six months.

Little wonder, then, that measures of consumer sentiment have worsened, and that polls show voters are poised to punish Republicans for failing to keep the economic promises they made on the campaign trail two years ago.

The cost of living “is going to be the first issue on the scorecard in 2026,” said John W. Lettieri, president of the Economic Innovation Group, which last week published a survey of voter attitudes on the economy. “The results are not good on that top issue.”

Still, the state of the economy is more nuanced than the dour mood of voters might suggest. Economists point to areas of weakness and others of strength, and say the outlook — for inflation and more broadly — is highly uncertain.

More On No Kings Day / Vote Early U.S. Demonstrations

New York Times, 4 Takeaways From a Voting-Focused ‘No Kings’ Day, Tim Balk, Updated Oct. 18, 2026. Saturday’s gatherings were more subdued than some past events, and many prominent Democrats skipped them.

The fourth round of “No Kings” rallies unfolded across the country on Saturday, barely two weeks ahead of the midterm elections, though they did not draw many of the Democrats running in the country’s most closely watched races.

The demonstrations, which were more subdued and in many cases smaller than past “No Kings” gatherings, were singularly focused on the election, as organizers hope to push Americans to the polls. At the same time, they were intended to be nonpartisan, organizers said.

The Focus Was on Getting People to Vote

The last “No Kings” day, in March, centered in large part on the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and on the war in Iran, which had started a month earlier.

This time, the centerpiece of the gatherings was a sprawling voter mobilization push. And unlike during the demonstrations in March, there was no massive flagship rally in Minnesota headlined by Bruce Springsteen.

Instead, organizers said there were more than 3,000 events across the country, in what they called the largest single-day voter activation in American history.ImagePeople holding signs at a rally.

“This was intentionally structured as hyperlocal events,” said Leah Greenberg, a co-executive director of Indivisible, a progressive group that helps organize “No Kings” events. “Voting takes place in neighborhoods, and so we were really leaning into asking folks to engage with their own community.”

The gatherings took many forms, including rallies, block parties and small concerts.

“It was just very different,” said Brad Hoylman-Sigal, a Democrat and the Manhattan borough president, who spoke at a “No Kings” event in Lower Manhattan. He added, though, that he thought anti-Trump fervor remained strong and focused, describing Saturday’s round of gatherings a “call to action.”

The two anchor events were held in Atlanta and Dallas. Georgia and Texas are both states with closely watched Senate races, but the Democratic Senate nominees in those states did not attend the events, according to “No Kings” organizers.

Many Prominent Democrats Skipped the Events

Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia and James Talarico, the Democratic Senate nominee in Texas, were not the only Democrats in marquee races who opted not to attend “No Kings” events.

Other Democratic Senate nominees who were absent included the Rev. Adam Hamilton, the party’s candidate in Kansas; former Senator Sherrod Brown, the candidate in Ohio; former Gov. Roy Cooper, the candidate in North Carolina; and Josh Turek, the candidate in Iowa, according to their representatives.

Candidates for office were not invited to speak at the gatherings, Ms. Greenberg said.

With some of the key races that could decide control of the Senate playing out in states that President Trump won comfortably in 2024, candidates who are trying to center their campaigns on economic issues may have seen little upside to attending events that cast the president as authoritarian.

 

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

New York Times, Times Exclusive: O.J. Simpson, a Secret Informant and a Decades-Old Mystery, Mike Baker and Tim Arango, Oct. 18, 2026. An “extremely reliable” informant told authorities about the missing murder weapon, according to newly unsealed records. The informant’s brother told The Times his sibling was at the crime scene

O.J. Simpson entered a Miami hotel suite in June 2006 and sank into a chair. His eyes scanned the room, as if looking for a way out. His fingers rapped on the armrest.

In the story Mr. Simpson told that day, later published in the book “If I Did It,” he described a version of the 1994 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman in which Mr. Simpson had help from a friend who got rid of the murder weapon and Mr. Simpson’s bloody clothes.

Prosecutors who had failed to convict Mr. Simpson of murder have given little credence to the notion of an accomplice. The police, too. Many people considered the details of Mr. Simpson’s hypothetical confession a fantasy, part of a desperate effort to cash in on his waning fame and notoriety amid growing money struggles and scrapes with the law.

But today, more than 30 years after the “trial of the century,” newly uncovered evidence suggests that Mr. Simpson’s account should not have been so readily dismissed.

A New York Times examination, based on recently unsealed court files, interviews and other evidence, details long-hidden information about the missing murder weapon, Mr. Simpson’s supposed efforts to cover up the crime, as well as the possibility of an accomplice. Together, the findings challenge the popular narrative around a case that has been dissected in countless books, podcasts and documentaries, and they stir doubts about law enforcement’s decision not to do more to pursue a promising lead.

A decades-old document filed in an unrelated, obscure criminal case in New York — recently unsealed at the request of The Times — outlines the account of a prized informant who came forward with tantalizing information while Mr. Simpson’s 1995 murder trial was proceeding.

Democrats would need Senate Republican help to get rid of Trump, but they can get rid of the president’s enablers and put the clamps on Donald Trump’s corruption.

 

Oct. 17

Top Headlines

 

President Trump warmly greeted Russian President Vladimir Putin last summer in Alaska with red carpet treatment rolled out by the U.S. military (working on their hands and knees at times to make it suitable) in honor of a longtime adversary of the United States highly active in disrupting elections, media and other institutions to help his allies operating in the United States (New York Times photo by Doug Mills).

President Trump warmly greeted Russian President Vladimir Putin last summer in Alaska with red carpet treatment rolled out by the U.S.russian flag waving military in honor of a longtime adversary of the United States highly active in disrupting elections, media and other institutions to help his allies operating in the United States (New York Times photo by Doug Mills).

  • Proof, Investigative Commentary:  Second Treason Scandal Hits Donald Trump and the White House, Seth seth abramson graphicAbramson, right, Oct. 16-17, 2026. A Trump-Israel Treason scandal that’s already embroiled Trump, U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee, and Huckabee deputy David Milstein has deepened—even as a new Treason scandal involving Russia blows up. Here’s everything we know about the new Trump-Russia Treason Scandal (see here for exhaustive, reliably sourced Proof coverage of the Trump-Israel Treason Scandal).

Special Report: No Kings / Early Voting Day  

 djt as king 11 23 2025

President Trump frequently portrays himself on his Truth Social or via White House as an all-powerful king or emporer annointed by God and backed by security forces and the military, as in this portrayal above by former Repubicans who organized the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. The political, military and economic chaos extends to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, selective tariffs helping insiders and Trump's transformation of U.S. longstanding alliances with Canada, Europe and NATO into adversaries whom he disdains while courting profitable deals from Russia, as newly documented this week, benefiting his family and allies. Separately, The New York Times published on Sunday an in-depth investigation excerpted below showing that the fascist, White nationalist themes of Trump's MAGA movement have inspired unprecendented threats of violence from both the right and left against U.S. public officials that are transforming governance.President Trump frequently portrays himself on his Truth Social or via White House as an all-powerful king (as at top) or emporer annointed by God and backed by security forces and the military, as in this portrayal above by former Repubicans who organized the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. The political, military and economic chaos extends to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, selective tariffs helping insiders and Trump's transformation of U.S. longstanding alliances with Canada, Europe and NATO into adversaries whom he disdains while courting profitable deals from Russia, as newly documented this week, benefiting his family and allies.

News Roundups

More On Elections, Politics, Governance

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President Trump and White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia talk with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House on Tuesday, October 13, 2026. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

President Trump and White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia talk with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House on Tuesday, October 13, 2026. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

  • Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Oct. 16, 2026 [White House Chaos], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 17, 2026. Trump’s new pick for White House press secretary lasted less than five days. Katie Zacharia resigned today after a series of disastrous performances and news that she had misrepresented her legal credentials. Trump said he would let her decide if she wanted to stay but added that if he were in her shoes, he would “reconsider.” 
  • The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Comment: White House in “State of Panic” as Officials Purged, Musk Pitched Ukraine Starlink Slowdown that Helped Putin, and More, Aaron Parnas, aaron parnas new headshotright, Oct. 16, 2026. It’s been a wild Friday. Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, is out after just five days, making her the shortest-serving press secretary in modern history. CNN reports Trump was embarrassed by her first briefing and decided she had to go after she didn’t defend him well enough on Sean Hannity’s show. Remember, he picked her because he wanted more people defending him on TV.

Then there’s Ukraine. The Telegraph is reporting that Elon Musk was the one who pitched slowing down Starlink in Ukraine, and that Trump signed off. That’s the same Musk who publicly blamed Trump for it two days ago. Earlier this week, I said Musk could face war crimes charges if he disrupted Starlink for Ukraine. MAGA said he should sue me. Now four sources say he pitched the very slowdown that left Ukraine nearly defenseless against Russian drones. Looks like I was right.

More On Trump Team Corruption, Obsessions

 

Entertainer Russell Brand, about to undergo trial in Great Brittain on multiple rape charges, is shown at left with his Trump-aligned political allies leading the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., center, and Centers for Disease Contral Director Dr. Mehmet Oz, all promoters of health care fads of dubious or controversial impacts.

Actor Russell Brand, about to undergo trial in Great Brittain on multiple rape charges, is shown at left with his Trump-aligned political allies leading the U.S. Health and Human Services Department: Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., center, and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Mehmet Oz, all promoters of health care fads of dubious or controversial impacts.

  • Politico, RFK Jr. and his allies are standing by Russell Brand as the comedian’s rape trial begins, Carmen Paun, Oct. 16, 2026. Actor Russell Brand appeared at a Make America Healthy Again Summit in Washington two weeks ago, standing onstage with Mehmet Oz and snapping a photo with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This week he’s on trial in London on charges that he raped or sexually assaulted six women. Tony Lyons, the head of the MAHA PAC, was in the courthouse supporting him.
  • Hope for America, Opinion: The Russian asset in the White House, Heather Delaney Reese, right, helen delaney reese djtOct. 16, 2026. At 12:56 this afternoon, the President of the United States walked out of the White House with a look of deep concern on his face and went directly to the reporters who had lined up to ask him questions about Ukraine and his troubled new press secretary. He looked at them and immediately made a 180-degree turn while he pointed away from them, and said, “So that’s one of the largest cranes anywhere in the world, brand new. And that’s lifting the beams up. And the beams are about record setting in size because it has to be a span with no column. If you look at the counterweights in the back, you’ll not find a bigger, more impressive piece of equipment than that one right there.” 
  • New York Times, Dispute Between Trump Allies Centers on Payment From Congo, Tyler Pager and Anatoly Kurmanaev, Oct. 17, 2026. The White House inquiry is focused on diverging accounts from Richard Grenell and Alina Habba Mildon about a $17 million transfer from a government account in the African country to a Texas defense firm.

Special Report: Law Firm Accountability

  • Katie Phang via Substack, Opinion: The Bill Is Coming Due, Katie Phang, right, Oct. 17, 2026.katie phang Feckless sellouts are about to pay the price for ditching democracy when it mattered the most.

More Russia-Ukraine News and Comment 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, both designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik).Steve Witkoff jared kushner sputnik afp getty

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

  • The Daily via PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: RussiaGate Was And Is Very Real, Sarah Jones, right, Oct. 17, 2026. sarah reese jonesAs Republicans face predictions of a brutal midterm loss, Trump used a national-interest waiver to issue an executive order putting on hold a new Russian sanctions package. 

More Global News

  • New York Times, Israeli Settlers Attack Palestinians and Washington Post Journalist in West Bank, Azam Ahmed, Oct. 17, 2026 (print ed.). In the latest surge of violence, settlers targeted Palestinians during the olive Israel Flagharvest, a cultural touchstone and economic lifeline in the Israeli-occupied area. Dozens of masked Israeli settlers on Friday attacked a group of Palestinians while they were picking olives in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, seriously injuring several people, including a veteran Washington Post photographer covering the harvest.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

More On U.S. Economy, Inflation, High Tech, Jobs, Markets

  • New York Times, Weak Links Start to Show in A.I., Maureen Farrell and Rob Copeland, Oct. 17, 2026. Debt trouble at CoreWeave, Oracle and SoftBank raises questions about whether there are broader problems with the data center build-out.
  • New York Times, Corporate Tax Revenue Falls Even as Profits Soar Under Trump, Andrew Duehren, Oct. 17, 2026. The annual decline was about $70 billion. Companies are writing off billions in A.I. investments, taking advantage of tax cuts that President Trump signed into law. 

More On U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Religion

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Top Headlines

 

 

President Trump warmly greeted Russian President Vladimir Putin last summer in Alaska with red carpet treatment rolled out by the U.S. military in honor of a longtime adversary of the United States highly active in disrupting elections, media and other institutions to help his allies operating in the United States (New York Times photo by Doug Mills).

Proof, Investigative Commentary:  Second Treason Scandal Hits Donald Trump and the White House, Seth seth abramson graphicAbramson, left, Oct. 16-17, 2026. A Trump-Israel Treason scandal that’s already embroiled Trump, U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee, and Huckabee deputy David Milstein has deepened—even as a new Treason scandal involving Russia blows up.

Here’s everything we know about the new Trump-Russia Treason Scandal (see here for exhaustive, reliably sourced Proof coverage of the Trump-Israel Treason Scandal):

The Treason statute reads as follows: “Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States….adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of Treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than 5 years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”

Russia is currently a belligerent against the United States on multiple fronts.

First, the Kremlin is waging cyberwar against America’s elections infrastructure (a war that faced only “some russian flag wavinginterruption”—not as much as many thought or had hoped—during recent Ukrainian strikes on Russian data centers).

Second, the Kremlin is coordinating Iran’s missile-targeting in the Iran War to ensure that as many U.S. soldiers as possible (21 and 865 so far) are killed or injured, respectively—and as many U.S. bases (20) damaged, possibly beyond repair or reoccupation—by a nation that otherwise wouldn’t have such capacities.

Third, the United States and its longtime European allies are variously selling and gifting war material to Ukraine in the Russia-Ukraine War, with Ukraine a chartered U.S. ally for nearly 20 years now (a period covering both before and during its years-long defensive war against Russian war criminals); meanwhile, Russia has been an acknowledged major U.S. adversary for nearly 80 years.

Fourth, Russia has repeatedly and often aggressively violated the airspace of the U.S. and NATO, indeed the airspace of every American ally who shares a land border with Russia, during its ongoing invasion of Europe, and these violations have increasingly involved not just airspace-violative plane and drone maneuvers but, in several instances, actual asymmetrical warfare (as well as material assistance for seditious plots in U.S.-allied countries).

Fifth, because Congress has made clear that declarations of war and the War Powers Resolution are immaterial to whether America is currently in a war—indeed, Donald Trump has now referred to multiple conflicts that he says he didn’t need congressional approval for as “wars,” notably the wars in Venezuela (a “big war,” Trump crowed) and Iran (a war he admits he runs with domestic politics in mind)—neither Trump nor his agents can hide behind claims that the above actions by Russia don’t fall somewhere between military hostilities and open war. In other words, Russia incontrovertibly qualifies as an “enemy” of the United States under federal law—and no declaration in an executive order or in his imagination permits Mr. Trump to pretend that matters stand otherwise.

Against this backdrop, a small cadre of Trump officials and agents, including Trump himself, are cutting deals with America’s legally cognizable enemies.

In fact, the state of affairs must be expressed more strongly than this: every person Trump has designated to treat with the Russians on the Russia-Ukraine War is (i) unqualified to participate in U.S. diplomacy, (ii) a security risk who has struggled to get or not been able to get a top security clearance through the usual channels or protocols, and (iii) someone with clear conflicts of interest that suggest they’re putting personal business interests over the national security of the United States.

This includes Trump himself, Donald Trump Jr., Elon Musk, Jared Kushner, and Steve Witkoff.

 

President Trump's Russian and Iranian war negotiators ared Kushner, left, and Steve Witkoff have business ties to two of the Middle Eastern investors involved in the deal (Pool photo by Jacquelyn Martin).President Trump's Russian and Iranian war negotiators Jared Kushner, left, and Steve Witkoff have business ties to two of the Middle Eastern investors involved in the deal (Pool photo by Jacquelyn Martin).

Meanwhile, as to the involvement of their potential and current Russian business partners in the Iran War, President Trump and his team have dismissed the issue by falsely claiming that Russia isn’t involved in targeting U.S. troops in the Middle East, just as Trump previously claimed that Russia was not paying bounties for U.S. soldiers’ deaths in Afghanistan (at a time the USIC was saying it was) and has openly said he trusts Russian intelligence more than U.S. intelligence.

In other words, in order to continue his own, his agents’, and friends’ clandestine business dealings with the Kremlin and its agents and associates, the president has lied to Congress, American media, and most importantly U.S. voters to try to ensure—in vain—he’s not caught cutting deals with America’s enemies amidst multiple wars in which America is engaged and Russia a clear adversary.

Until now, however, Trump’s actions weren’t broadly seen as interceding directly in any war in which the United States was participating—but that’s changed.

To be clear on this, Trump actually has regularly interceded—contrary to U.S. national security interests—in hostilities involving Russia in order to maintain his and his family’s ability to continue doing business with the Russians. And not just by denying known intelligence, as indicated above. He’s rewarded an ally, employee, and mega-donor, Elon Musk, who in 2022 turned off Starlink during a Ukrainian military offensive; during his first term he withheld urgently needed Trident missiles from Ukraine in a bid to extract personal benefits from the Ukrainians (and stay in the good graces of current or potential future business partners in Russia); and he was later impeached for withholding other military aid to Ukraine to try to simultaneously secure illegal foreign election assistance from Kremlin agents in Russia and Kremlin agents in Ukraine in the 2020 presidential election—an effort led by his lawyer Kash Patel, the now-FBI director who is currently in Moscow for unknown reasons two weeks before the 2026 midterms (even as America is under attack by Russia with respect to those very midterms). And of course the Trump-Russia Scandal began with Mr. Trump’s top national security adviser, notorious Russophile Michael Flynn, promising to relieve Russia from American sanctions over its war crimes in Ukraine at a time Flynn’s patron was engaged in real estate negotiations with Putin’s office through his lawyer/fixer, Michael Cohen.

This change—which has seen Trump personally intercede to aid the Russian war effort in Ukraine and Iran, an act of Treason—is, incredibly, not a one-off but two-fold.

First, President Trump unilaterally and “illegally” declared that he would ignore congressional sanctions on Russian energy products to alleviate the politically damaging high diesel prices that accompanied his war-of-choice in Iran (a war America is in because of Trump’s other Treason scandal, which has seen him do the bidding of Israel on matters of national security, apparently to ensure he continues to get the benefit of donations from pro-Israel mega-donors like The Adelson Family).

Second, either he or someone acting with his authority ordered the Pentagon to deliberately slow down Ukraine’s Starshield service at a time when the White House knew that doing so would cause the deaths of many Ukrainian civilians at the hands of Russian invaders (and indeed those deaths—many of them women and children—did come to pass, meaning that Trump and his agents have now (or, arguably, again) enabled deadly war crimes.

As expected, Trump has lied in every conceivable way to cover his tracks and erase his Treason(s) from public view. Trump now claims that the White House never ordered Starshield to be kneecapped, which Americans know from robust major-media reporting is a lie. And he further claims—in a self-exculpation that’s almost cartoonishly ham-fistedly self-exculpatory—that even if such a thing had been discussed, it didn’t actually happen and Starshield service was never slowed down (which claim is also known to be false).

Meanwhile, he’s falsely said he has authority to end congressional sanctions, falsely assured American voters just days before the midterms that his new deal with America’s enemies will have an appreciable impact on gas prices (which experts who have looked at the question, of whatever political stripe, have confirmed is unlikely to be the case), and refuses to accept even the most basic, incontrovertible component of the deal: that he’s now actively funding the Russian war effort against a U.S. ally.

Instead, the president is now doubling down on his de jure offense—without ever acknowledging it—by demanding that Ukraine replace its president but making no such demand to the Kremlin. Trump is also going still further, seeking to destroy the international court that’s issued arrest warrants for both of the men he’s committing Treason with, Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu, and is even threatening to leave NATO—a development the former of these two autocrats has long yearned for—if Europe doesn’t back his play to make his co-conspirators above the law. (That is, just as above the law as he himself became in 2024 following the Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. United States.) This latter ruling was made possible by Supreme Court seats that Trump and his agents stole, FBI probes into Court nominees that were secretly curtailed and then scuttled, violations of longstanding rules Senate Republicans insisted on when America had its first Black president, and Perjury offenses committed by every jurist Trump nominated to the nation’s highest court.

As always, the question now is whether anything can be done about any of this.

The Supreme Court has put Trump—and thus far, only Trump—above the law, and major-media appears to be so shy about properly covering Trump-Israel Treason that it’s said hardly anything about the now-confirmed fact that Trump and his agents covered up the deaths of Americans at the hands of the Israelis (as well as, as discussed here, the crossing of U.S. national security “red lines” under circumstances that could immediately alter decisions about war and peace now being made—or postponed—by Congress).

As for Russia, so many major media outlets now falsely accept the Trumpist claim that the Trump-Russia Scandal was a “hoax,” though no part of it was, that getting the men and women who work in mainstream corporate media to accept that Donald Trump is committing Treason with the Russians in broad daylight, and not for the first time, may be impossible.

All this is happening even as the Treason scandal that erupted in public view just last week is worsening. As Proof and a very small number of other outlets reported, Trump and his team have been covering up the murder of Americans by Israeli soldiers in an active war theater.

What we didn’t have until now is video of that offense continuing. American journalist Heidi Levine of the Washington Post was just attacked on camera by Israeli terrorists (men part of an organized crime operation falsely referring to itself as composed of “West Bank settlers”).

Worse still, these terrorists were at the time receiving active military support from the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces). Levine would have been beaten to death if Palestinian youths and journalists hadn’t intervened to save her. After this harrowing event was made public—the whole world has seen the horrifying footage now—not only did the second Trump administration in Washington and Jerusalem say nothing about it, but it let the genocidal Netanyahu regime do all the talking, instead. As expected, Netanyahu blamed others for the war crimes carried out by his soldiers and their terrorist irregulars: to wit, he falsely implied that the youths who saved an American journalist’s life at the risk of losing their own were the aggressors.

Conclusion

 

djt car siloutte

President Trump, shown using his cellphone on a limo ride, and his team have many dark secrets involving Russia and its leader Putin.

President Trump has long worked closely with top Russian officials, often in secret, as in his meeting at the White House shown above, from which U.S. media were barred, with the result that all photos as here were from Russian state media: Portrayed with Trump were Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, left, and Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak, with all concerned seeking to thwart then-current investigations into Russian influence to help Trump during the 2016 presidential elections and advance his and his allies' private business interests (Tass photo May 10, 2017).

President Trump has long worked closely with top Russian officials, often in secret, as in his meeting at the White House shown above, from which U.S. media were barred, with the result that all photos as here were from Russian state media: Portrayed with Trump were Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, left, and Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak, with all concerned reportedly seeking to thwart then-current FBI, congressional and media investigations into Russian influence to help Trump during the 2016 presidential elections and advance his and his allies' private business interests (Tass photo May 10, 2017). 

America can’t abide this much longer.

It’s now generally accepted that the Department of Justice and FBI are inoperative; that all Trump co-conspirators—indeed, nearly all Republican politicians writ large—will be pardoned before or after the fact for their crimes, even as Trump seeks to have his American-citizen political opponents in the Democratic Party killed or deported; and that the President of the United States and his ad hoc diplomatic corps (composed of family members, associates of dead pedophilic sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, mega-donors, and persons who fit two or more of these descriptions) are far more attuned to their own business interests than anything that involves American national security.

In other words, traitors to America are running America.

And with just two weeks left before a midterm election that Republican politicians won’t commit to honoring the results of, there’s every reason to fear that letting traitors run America will have exactly the outcome post-midterms that anyone would expect: the near-term destruction of the United States of America and its democracy.

Note: If you’d like to tip this author, Seth Abramson, via PayPal, beyond any Substack subscription you already have, you can do so in any amount via the button here.

Special Report: No Kings / Early Voting Day  

 djt as king 11 23 2025

President Trump frequently portrays himself on his Truth Social or via White House as an all-powerful king or emporer annointed by God and backed by security forces and the military, as in this portrayal above by former Repubicans who organized the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. The political, military and economic chaos extends to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, selective tariffs helping insiders and Trump's transformation of U.S. longstanding alliances with Canada, Europe and NATO into adversaries whom he disdains while courting profitable deals from Russia, as newly documented this week, benefiting his family and allies. Separately, The New York Times published on Sunday an in-depth investigation excerpted below showing that the fascist, White nationalist themes of Trump's MAGA movement have inspired unprecendented threats of violence from both the right and left against U.S. public officials that are transforming governance.President Trump frequently portrays himself on his Truth Social or via White House as an all-powerful king (as at top) or emporer annointed by God and backed by security forces and the military, as in this portrayal above by former Repubicans who organized the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. The political, military and economic chaos extends to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, selective tariffs helping insiders and Trump's transformation of U.S. longstanding alliances with Canada, Europe and NATO into adversaries whom he disdains while courting profitable deals from Russia, as newly documented this week, benefiting his family and allies.

 

no kings speakers 10 17 26

The graphic displays photos of some of the speakers at the Official No Kings Virtual & Accessible GOTV Rally hosted by Stand Up for Science. The speakers displayed are Theo Braddy, Michael Lewis, Stacy Abrams, and Colette Delawalla. The graphic reads: "Virtual & Accessible GOTV Rally with ASL & Spanish interpretation. Show Up. Fight Back. GET OUT THE VOTE! Register at: tr.ee/8kXAhZ"

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion: On The Urgency Of Driving The Early Vote, The Regime’s Rot And Chaos Worsens, Trump Betrays America By Helping Putin Win, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 16, 2026. Today is No Kings Early Vote day. You can catch my [Simon Rosenberg] remarks at 12:30 pm ET today at a Stand Up For Science virtual, accessible rally by heading here.

Here’s my main message today: We have done many remarkable things together these past three and a half years fellow patriots. Now, today, and in these next few weeks, we must do everything we can to drive and celebrate the early vote. I explain why early voting is so important in this post:

vote early graphic

Voting Early/Voting On Day 1: Why It Matters

But the bottom line is this: voting early makes it more likely we win and harder for them to cheat. Period.

We need far more social media and events like this:

Here’s the remarkable video from this post, sound on! Yes, we can do this people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Send photos and links of your events to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and good luck today everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We must drive the early vote with great urgency because Trump and his enablers are putting America and the world in grave danger. This week we got two inflation reports that showed inflation soaring. Brent crude hit U.S. 2026 Midterm elections$110 a barrel yesterday and starts today at $109. Soaring inflation and higher interest rates are weakening the balance sheets of our government and governments throughout the developed world, pushing us closer to a global financial crisis.

The war in the Middle East is widening and Russia-Iran-China are in a far stronger position today in the region due to Trump’s ongoing compromise and buffoonery. His regime has descended into Olympian levels of chaos and infighting, with savage leaking, the ascendance of Natalie [Harp], even deep loyalists getting thrown under the bus, and of course the ongoing firing of prominent women and the coddling of Hegsethian men.

But it is what is now happening with Russia that should create enormous urgency to our work to win these elections and make them a clear and unequivocal repudiation of Trump and his historic betrayal of the country and the American people. I am not going to spend time on the latest events this morning for time and space reasons but I am sharing this post from David Frum. The Putin advisor who has been meeting with Kushner and Witkoff posted this image of the US and Russia now together fighting the UK and Europe:

 

david frum trump russian ally

We must act with great urgency my friends. Trump is a monster, a world-altering venal, traitorous, monster who is attempting to throw the West, freedom and democracy, the America of the Four Freedoms, into the dustbin of history.

The single most important thing we can do to stop him is to ignore the noise, go to work, drive the early vote, run up the score, support our candidates and state parties, and turn this election into a humiliating rout. That’s what we need to do now, fellow patriots, and yes that means it also time to……Go Kick These Corrupt Traitors’ Asses, Win The Midterms, And Prepare For The Fuckery That Is Already Here - With More To Come

Two things you can do today in addition to supporting our intrepid candidates and state parties:

  • Become an Early Vote Champion in your networks, communities, and organizations.
  • Sign up to become a Democracy Protector too. 

Keep working hard all. For we have a country to save, and elections to win all across the country this November, together! - Simon

PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: Republicans Threaten To Block Trump’s Ballroom After He Lifts Russia Sanctions, Jason Easley, right, Oct. 17, 2026.jason easley Republicans who will be leaving office at the end of the current CongAndrew Kreig Author Legal Reformerress still have a ton of power.

The power of outgoing Republicans will grow even more if Democrats take back control of all or part of Congress.

Democratic-Republican Campaign logospoliticus usa logoTrump needs the lame duck Republican-led session to pass everything from government funding to funding for his Iran war to money and authorization that he is seeking for the illegal ballroom that he is building at the White House.

Trump’s lifting of sanctions has brought back questions about the Trump relationship with Russia and RussiaGate.

It was just a week and a half ago that outgoing Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) talked about how the Trumps relationship with Russia is hurting Republicans: “The big issue I have is with Don Jr. Look I realize even people worth $300 or $400 million can have liquidity problems- but you’d have thought that he’d have figured out another way other than get- letting a Russian oligarch who has literally been on a mission with Vladimir Putin to Beijing fund a wedding. Doesn’t make sense. Is it illegal? I don’t know, but appearances, it’s the last thing we need. This is about the Republican brand.”

Republicans are outraged by the lifting of sanctions on Russia, and some of them are threatening to retaliate by blocking Trump’s ballroom.Lame Duck Republicans Could Screw Trump Over

Republicans expressed outrage after Trump’s late-night move to help Putin.

Tills wrote on X:

Beyond irresponsible. What part of enforcing a law passed 86-11 by the Senate does the President and his advisors not understand? It’s unconscionable that this administration is capitulating to a Russian dictator who illegally invaded Ukraine and butchers innocent civilians every single day. If the President wants to actually bring down energy prices, he can do it by solving the Iran problem, not by doing a solid for Vladimir Putin.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) said that he thinks Trump’s lame duck session agenda is now dead:

Congress has a lame-duck session. The President has an agenda: supplemental, reconciliation, Ballroom, etc… I think the agenda is dead. Many of us won’t fund these things knowing he is propping up a dictator’s invasion and throwing an ally under the bus.

Trump has been pushing Republicans to pass another reconciliation bill during the session after the midterm election to deliver all sort of goodies that Trump wants to fund his agenda.

These goodies include his ballroom.

To think that Donald Trump may have sabotaged his beloved ballroom to bend the knee to Putin. After Republicans lose the midterm election, they have zero reason to be loyal to Trump.

The worst thing that they could do to the president would be to ignore his lame duck agenda and leave him at the mercy of Democrats who are ready to shut down Trump and his agenda ASAP.

Donald Trump put Putin first, and it looks like he and his precious ballroom are going to suffer.

News Roundups 

 

no kings banner

  • Meidas Touch Network, Saturday Updates: No Kings Protests TAKE OVER USA as Trump Hands Putin a Gift, Brett Meiselas, Oct. 17, 2026. Here are today’s top stories: No Kings protests are underway across the country with a focus on voting; Trump waives the Russian sanctions in the Lindsey Graham Act less than a month after signing it, and just before many were set to go into effect; Trump threatens that LA County election workers “will all go to jail”; The DOJ wants Judge Reyes off the case regarding the chopped down trees in the East Potomac Golf Course after she excoriated them in court; Starlink continues to be throttled in Ukraine, and Zelenskyy says it’s deliberate.

In D.C., protesters packed the Lincoln Memorial steps under a massive “VOTERS OVER VANITY” banner, with signs reading “TRUMP MUST GO NOW!” and a big “VOTE EARLY” sign front and center. Some marchers walking past Trump’s gold statues were carrying “We ❤ Our Constitution” signs. Today’s No Kings rallies have one core focus: get people to vote. Voting is already underway in the midterms, and these crowds are pushing people to vote early. Where’s Trump? Fundraising

In D.C., protesters packed the Lincoln Memorial steps under a massive “VOTERS OVER VANITY” banner, with signs reading “TRUMP MUST GO NOW!” and a big “VOTE EARLY” sign front and center. Some marchers walking past Trump’s gold statues were carrying “We ❤ Our Constitution” signs. Today’s No Kings rallies have one core focus: get people to vote. Voting is already underway in the midterms, and these crowds are pushing people to vote early. Where’s Trump? Fundraising.

Meidas Touch Network, Saturday Updates: No Kings Protests TAKE OVER USA as Trump Hands Putin a Gift, Brett Meiselas, Oct. 17, 2026. Here are today’s top stories:

  • No Kings protests are underway across the country with a focus on voting
  • Trump waives the Russian sanctions in the Lindsey Graham Act less than a month after signing it, and just before many were set to go into effect
  • mtn meidas touch networkTrump threatens that LA County election workers “will all go to jail”
  • The DOJ wants Judge Reyes off the case regarding the chopped down trees in the East Potomac Golf Course after she excoriated them in court
  • Starlink continues to be throttled in Ukraine, and Zelenskyy says it’s deliberate
  • Iran claims 3 more tankers have been hit around the Strait of Hormuz
  • The U.S. has fired 19 years’ worth of Patriot interceptors in just 7 months (not a typo)
  • Republican voters are breaking ranks over data centers and tariffs

No Kings Day Is Here

The map of today’s No Kings protests is staggering. It covers the entire U.S. with flagship rallies in every region. A huge shoutout to the organizers and all of you who are able to participate.

While millions protest, Trump retreated to his Palm Beach safe space. His schedule shows “executive time” this morning, then a 2pm rally in Kentucky.

At Friday’s event in Dalton, GA, Trump joked that a $5,000 lunch at Mar-a-Lago probably only gets you a hamburger and a small dessert while dangling his fraudulent $5,000 dividend to voters. Really nailing that affordability message!Trump Waives His Own Russia Sanctions

Late last night, the White House issued an executive order titled “Implementing the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026.”

The implementation was in name only. The text of the order turned out to be about waiving the sanctions. Trump signed the act September 18. Less than a month later, he suspended the 500% tariffs on Russian goods and the 100% tariffs targeting major buyers of Russian energy, certifying to Congress that this was in the “national interests of the United States.” What a slap in the face to his late buddy Lindsey, and the entire free world.

The timing is grotesque. It came a day after one of Russia’s largest attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid. Zelenskyy said over 320 drones and missiles his his country overnight, targeting more than 15 critical power facilities. The New York Times and Meduza have detailed an intercepted Russian plan to cut power and heat by about 90% in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa.

Russia is thrilled. Just take a look at these posts from Putin envoy Kirill Dmitriev:

Dmitriev told Russian Energy Week that the diesel deal is just one of many projects in the works with Trump, including uranium, fertilizer, aluminum, rare earths, Arctic, and LNG projects. Zelenskyy called the waiver out for what it is: a reward for Putin. Ukraine responded by striking the Surgut refining complex, roughly 2,400km inside Russia.

In my view, a president refusing to faithfully execute a law Congress passed should be viewed as an impeachable offense.Starlink’s “Kill Switch”

Zelenskyy says Starlink restrictions in Ukraine cut the connection above 161km/h, which grounds interceptor drones. And he says the restrictions are still in effect.

Zelenskyy did an experiment. He drove Starlink-equipped vehicles into the EU at over 180km/h, and voila, the systems worked perfectly once out of Ukraine.

The Telegraph says Elon was the one who approached Trump with the idea of slowing down Starlink in Ukraine, and Trump agreed. Reuters says the ultimate call to throttle the speeds came from inside the White House. They both are denying their roles in this. Now, European countries are rushing to build new alternatives to reduce their reliance on Starlink. If your allies can be switched off at will, why would ANYONE buy American equipment?Trump Threatens Election Workers

Trump posted “they will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!” while sharing Fox News’ Matt Finn’s report that the DOJ warned LA County ballot processors they could face prosecution for tabulating votes of alleged noncitizens. Let me be clear: there is zero evidence behind this. It’s intimidation of election workers less than 3 weeks before Election Day.

They Can Dish It Out, But They Can’t Take It…

The Trump regime toppled 430 trees at East Potomac Park in D.C., where Trump wants a championship golf course. Its own lawyer admitted it knew about the plan on October 8 or 9 but only notified the court at 4:55 pm on the Friday of a holiday weekend. Judge Reyes halted the razing at a Columbus Day hearing, tearing into the DOJ for its duplicity and saying the government has lost all credibility. The DOJ in response moved to disqualify her for “belittling” and “shouting at” its lawyer. They have this whole weaponizing victimhood thing down to a science.

The Iran War Keeps Getting Worse

Iranian state media claims the U.S. asked permission to strike the Pickaxe Mountain nuclear site without retaliation and was refused. Let me be clear that this is unconfirmed. At Mar-a-Lago, Trump insisted, again, that Iran is “begging” for a deal and the U.S. will “win it very soon,” as oil hit $112 a barrel.

The IRGC claims 2 supertankers carrying over 2 million barrels each hit mines, and Fars News claims a third vessel was disabled in the Sea of Oman.

CENTCOM yesterday released a really embarrassing video assuring everyone that the Strait of Hormuz was fully under U.S. control and oil was flowing unimpeded. The video was full of lies, so I wrote a full piece fact-checking the propaganda. You can read it here if you’d like.

Analyst Brett Erickson estimates at least 35 vessels have been hit in 2 weeks, with UKMTO now admitting that most attacks go unreported. He wrote a whole piece about this for MeidasTouch News, which I recommend.

OSINT monitors tracked a U.S. destroyer roughly 400km from Iran, keeping its distance. Stephen Semler found the U.S. has fired about 1,800 Patriot interceptors in the war’s first 7 months, roughly what the Army received over 19 YEARS…

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, meanwhile, is heading to Bahrain for GCC talks and then to Tehran on Monday. Trump says Iran will surrender while he cuts deals with one of Iran’s closest partners.

Some Economic News

Steve Rattner’s charts for Morning Joe show that factory construction is down a whopping 31% since Trump took office. That hasn’t stopped Trump from falsely claiming record factory building.

Trump claims gas is cheaper than under Biden. Also false. It’s $4.35 now, vs. a $3.46 Biden average and $3.01 when Biden left office. Inflation was 3% when Biden left. It’s now 3.7% YOY.

Other Moments Before I Go

JD Vance on The Sean Spicer Show said he refuses to disavow anything Trump says, claimed Trump has more authority than leaders in Russia and China, and revived the “fentanyl candy” myth, which drug-policy experts largely disputed in 2022.

The Intercept Brasil reports Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign paid R$600,000 to Elytron, a U.S. company that pitched an AI system to map voters, create fake accounts, and spread disinformation. His party paid it another R$131,900. The campaign denies hiring illegal services. Meta has also admitted to suppressing Lula’s accounts while boosting Bolsonaro’s across Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp.

Canadian PM Mark Carney says Canadians should trade east and west instead of north-south.

Israeli occupiers in the West Bank attacked a convoy of French, Belgian, and Polish diplomats near Ramallah. This comes just a day after they were caught on video violently assaulting a Jewish American Washington Post photojournalist.

katie zaccharia djt after firingKatie Zacharia, Trump’s very short-lived former press secretary, posted a tribute to her 5 days in the job, calling Trump “kind” and “gracious.” “It was an honor to work for him,” she added. Sitting on the desk in the photo of her and Trump appears to be a blurred-out map of East Potomac golf course, the same one at the center of the tree lawsuit. Zacharia may have just handed the federal judge evidence of exactly where the order came from.

 

north carolina att marchNorth Carolina AT Aggies LogoThe Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Students Rise Up Against GOP Voter Suppression, Trump Branded a “Traitor” Over Putin Sanctions, Trump Threatens to Jail Election Officials, Aaron Parnas, right,aaron parnas new headshot Oct. 17, 2026. Yesterday I heard from my family in Ukraine. They told me the night Starlink was disrupted was one of the scariest nights they’ve lived through in more than four years of war. They could hear missiles and drones outside their apartment but had no idea where they were headed. All they could do was pray they wouldn’t be hit. And last night, Trump waived the sweeping Russia sanctions Congress passed, just days before they were set to take effect. Putin’s envoy called it “truly historic.” I call it a betrayal of the people living through this war, including my own family.

Here at home, the attacks on our democracy are escalating. Trump’s Justice Department is now threatening to prosecute California election workers for counting ballots, and Trump says “they will all go to jail.” In North Carolina, students at the nation’s largest HBCU had to march 45 minutes through broken sidewalks to vote after Republicans took away their campus polling site. They showed up anyway.

Today, millions of Americans are expected to show up too, for No Kings, and I’ll be bringing you coverage all day long. This is exactly why independent journalism matters. I don’t answer to a billionaire, a corporation or a political party. I answer to you. If you believe in what we’re doing here, please subscribe today. Every single subscription keeps this work going and makes sure the truth gets out, no matter how hard they try to bury it:Subscribed

Here’s everything you need to know this morning.

Students at the Nation’s Largest HBCU March to the Polls After North Carolina Takes Away Their Voting Site

north carolina mapMore than 100 students from North Carolina A&T State University and UNC Greensboro marched to the polls on the first day of early voting, after election officials refused to give them on-campus voting sites. Students rallied on both campuses Thursday and then walked to Union Square, now the closest early voting site, carrying signs that read “They close polling sites, we keep showing up anyway” and chanting “This is what democracy looks like.”

N.C. A&T is the largest historically Black university in the country, with more than 15,000 students, and both schools had on-campus early voting in 2024. “You turned out when they took your voting site away,” state House Minority Leader Robert Reives told the A&T crowd, urging students to bring their friends to the polls too. Students from Bennett College joined the march, and many of the marchers were voting for the first time. “We will come and make our voices clear, no matter how far you push a polling site off of our campus,” said student organizer Xavier Jones. “We will organize. We will march.”

The walk to the polls took about 45 minutes, through broken sidewalks, poison ivy and debris, and some students waited in line for three hours once they got there. Students had to step into the street where sidewalks were missing or blocked by branches, and Democracy Docket reports the route also crosses train tracks and a dirt path. Most A&T students don’t have cars. More than 300 votes were cast at Union Square on the first day, according to the Board of Elections, but some students had to leave the line to get back to class or work. Democratic organizer Kema Leonard, who also waited three hours, said staff at one point ran out of registration forms. “It shouldn’t have been that hard,” Leonard said. “It almost proved our point that we need our own sites. They weren’t ready.”

This is the second time North Carolina’s Republican-controlled elections board has denied A&T students a voting site for the midterms, and one student says the board chair threatened students who asked why. The Guilford County Board of Elections first rejected the campus sites, and the State Board of Elections denied them again in August, voting along its 3-2 party lines. A&T student Shia Rozier got up at 4 a.m. and skipped class to attend that meeting, holding a sign showing the more than one-mile distance from campus to the nearest polling place. Carolyn Bunker, a Democrat on the Guilford County board, said she watched Chairman Francis X. De Luca threaten students with removal and arrest multiple times for asking why he voted against their site. “To acknowledge them and then to continue to dismiss them... it almost felt humiliating,” Rozier said. The board offered Union Square, a downtown health education center shared by A&T, UNCG and Guilford Technical Community College, as a compromise.

The A&T fight is part of a broader set of voting cuts across North Carolina this fall, including slashed Sunday voting and new mail ballot rules that are already getting votes thrown out. Only 17 counties will have Sunday voting this year, compared with 40 in 2022, which cuts into the “souls to the polls” tradition at Black churches. One Anson County board member argued against Sunday voting in part because Chick-fil-A isn’t open that day, which stunned even his Republican colleagues. The state board also adopted a last-minute rule, now being challenged in federal court, requiring voters to seal an inner envelope on their mail ballots. In Wake County, exactly 2.5% of absentee ballots were rejected three weeks in a row because the inner envelope wasn’t sealed, and Guilford County’s rejection rate has topped 2%. Mail ballot requests are down nearly 33% from 2022.

North Carolina has also been flooding voters with confusing letters about their eligibility since striking a deal with Trump’s Justice Department. Some voters have received three or more letters with different and sometimes conflicting instructions about whether they need to take action to vote. This week, the state began sending letters to 1,392 voters flagged as possible noncitizens by the federal SAVE database, telling them to “voluntarily request removal from the voter rolls” or prove they are citizens. SAVE is known to be unreliable: when Texas used it, at least 21% of the people it flagged turned out to be wrongly identified. “People do get worried when they get those letters, especially elderly folks in the eastern part of the state,” said Siobhan Millen, a Democrat on the state elections board. Voters have until Oct. 20 to request a mail ballot, and early in-person voting runs through Oct. 31.

Trump Waives Russia Sanctions Days Before They Take Effect, and Moscow Calls It “Historic”

Trump signed an executive order waiving sweeping new sanctions on Russia that Congress passed and that he signed into law just last month. The Lindsey Graham Act, named for the late senator, targeted Russia’s energy and defense sectors, Putin himself and the “shadow fleet” of tankers Moscow uses to get around Western sanctions. It also would have let the president impose tariffs on the biggest buyers of Russian oil and gas, which could include China and India. Trump waived the sanctions just days before they were set to take effect, arguing the move “is in the national interests of the United States.” The decision comes a week after Trump struck a deal with Putin to ease existing sanctions in exchange for Russia releasing hundreds of thousands of tons of diesel onto global markets. Diesel prices have jumped almost 70% since the Iran war began in February, and the midterms are less than three weeks away.

Zelensky and lawmakers from both parties blasted the waiver as a gift to Putin. “A US sanctions blackout, easing pressure on the aggressor, financial rewards for Putin, all of this only encourages him to keep attacking,” Zelensky wrote, adding that Putin “feels joy and happiness that there is such support.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal called it a “craven, cowardly action” that has “everything to do with sucking up to Vladimir Putin.” Republican Rep. Don Bacon, a strong Ukraine ally who isn’t running for reelection, said “the president is prolonging the war, not ending it.” Sen. Darline Graham, who co-sponsored the bill named for her late brother and has made it a centerpiece of her campaign, has not criticized Trump for waiving it. Graham owes her GOP primary win in large part to Trump’s endorsement.

russian flag wavingRussian officials celebrated Trump’s decision as Putin vowed to keep pushing deeper into Ukraine. “The Trump administration’s suspension of the Graham Act is an important and truly historic moment,” said Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s envoy. The Kremlin itself hasn’t formally responded, but Dmitriev claimed the sanctions would have hurt the U.S. economy more than Russia’s. On Friday, Putin told military leaders he sees “a positive trend” on the battlefield and said “one of the main objectives remains the liberation of the Donetsk People’s Republic,” using the Kremlin’s name for the eastern Ukrainian region. Russia’s military chief also told Putin the military has set aside what it needs to keep attacking Ukraine’s power grid. U.S.-led peace talks have produced no breakthrough.

The waiver came as Russia hit Ukraine with another wave of deadly attacks, killing at least eight people and knocking out power to more than a million. Friday’s strikes hit nine regions, including two shopping centers in Rivne and Sumy, according to Ukrainian officials. In Kharkiv, a 71-year-old woman and a 58-year-old man were killed and 12 people were injured, and two more people were killed in the frontline city of Kramatorsk. Drones also hit a food-processing plant and a customs terminal near Ukraine’s border with Poland, setting about 10 trucks on fire. The U.N. said at least 328 civilians were killed in Ukraine last month, 85% more than in September 2025. “The first two weeks of October were among the deadliest periods for civilians in years,” said Danielle Bell, head of the U.N.’s human rights mission in Ukraine.

Ukraine is hitting back, striking a railway bridge inside Russia and Russian military supply depots in occupied Donetsk. According to Ukraine’s General Staff, forces hit a railway bridge over the Unecha River in Russia’s Bryansk region, part of the route Russia uses to move ammunition, fuel and equipment to the front. Ukraine also struck supply depots near Novoandriivka, Nikolske and Mariupol, plus a Russian drone command post near Malynivka. On Thursday, a Ukrainian brigade used a domestically built interceptor drone to target a Russian Mi-28NM attack helicopter over Russia’s Belgorod region, the second such strike in less than a week. Ukrainian officials have not released damage assessments for any of the strikes. Zelensky has made clear Ukraine will keep fighting back, saying Friday that “the main rule of our operations is to respond.”

Trump Threatens to Jail California Election Workers as Suspicious Letters Target Election Offices and Lawmakers

The Trump Justice Department is threatening to criminally prosecute California election workers who count ballots from people the federal government claims are noncitizens. “If persons knowingly tabulate ballots cast by individuals identified by federal agencies as noncitizens, they risk becoming aiders and abettors to a federal crime,” acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter wrote in a letter to Los Angeles County officials. The letter was also sent to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and L.A. County Registrar Dean Logan, which effectively puts the whole state on notice. Trump shared a story about the letter on Truth Social and wrote, “They will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!” Any federal charges in Los Angeles would be handled by Bill Essayli, the region’s top federal prosecutor, who also helped file the DOJ’s lawsuit against the state. Logan said the DOJ “has chosen to litigate their unverified assertions,” adding, “it is best for this to be addressed in court.”

The threat came one day after the DOJ sued California to block it from counting mail ballots from 20,000 people the government calls “likely” noncitizens. The lawsuit was filed after California officials didn’t meet a 48-hour deadline to review a password-protected thumb drive the DOJ said contained the names. Weber said the administration has offered no evidence to back up its claim and called the effort a way to “cause chaos and fuel public distrust in our elections.” The administration’s track record on these claims is poor: it said Nevada had 1,500 noncitizens on its voter rolls, and after the list was checked, the real number turned out to be zero. Research and state investigations consistently show that noncitizen voting is extremely rare. This year, the DOJ has charged about 50 people with voting as noncitizens, out of more than 227 million registered voters nationwide.

Election law experts say the threats won’t hold up in court and warn that the administration is laying the groundwork to challenge the midterm results. “They’re putting a nail in the wall for something to hang their hat on later,” said Sean Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center. UCLA law professor Rick Hasen called it “deplorable” that the federal government is “making escalating threats and unreasonable demands beyond its power in the middle of an ongoing election.” Former DOJ official Justin Levitt said, “Courts haven’t been buying what DOJ has been selling,” and that election officials “are equipped to stand up to aggressive bullying.” Sens. Alex Padilla, Sheldon Whitehouse and Dick Durbin have written to Attorney General Todd Blanche demanding the DOJ commit to not seizing ballots or other election materials before results are certified. California has more than 23 million registered voters and several competitive House races that could decide control of Congress.

Letters containing suspicious substances have been sent to election offices and more than 20 members of Congress from both parties, just weeks before the midterms. Sens. Amy Klobuchar, Tina Smith, Chris Murphy, Alex Padilla, Kirsten Gillibrand, Mike Rounds, Pete Ricketts and Ted Cruz, along with more than 15 House members, have reported letters sent to their offices, and many were intercepted before delivery. In Rep. Jimmy Panetta’s Santa Cruz office, a staffer opened an envelope containing a “suspicious white powder,” cleared the office and called 911. Election offices in Delaware, Oklahoma and Louisiana also received letters with white powder, and Louisiana’s office was evacuated before law enforcement found nothing harmful. The FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service are investigating and trying to identify who sent them. “This seemingly deliberate and widespread attack on our democracy and elections is unacceptable,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal said.

Other news:

The right-wing influencer behind the false rumor that Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico was in a psychiatric hospital has a long history of posts praising Nazi Germany and attacking Jewish, Black and Muslim people, according to a Guardian investigation. Ryan Amacher, who goes by Rhein Amacher online and worked for the Trump campaign in 2024, called an Ohio psychiatric hospital three times trying to confirm the hoax, giving a fake name and admitting he “made up” a patient code “to bypass the facility’s security restrictions.” The rumor fell apart within hours, but not before a staffer on Republican Ken Paxton’s campaign boosted it, influencer Nick Sortor posted a clip claiming the hospital “CONFIRMS” it, and Elon Musk replied “!!” The Guardian found Amacher has called for “modern Freikorps volunteers” to “purge the German nation,” a reference to the paramilitary groups that came before the Nazi party, and has called Muslims “sub-human.” He has also posted more than 30 times calling for “remigration,” the mass deportation of migrants, and urged Americans to “hunt them down” if the government won’t deport them. Neither Amacher nor the Paxton campaign responded to the Guardian, and Amacher has reportedly said his lawyer gave him a “stand down order.”

Texas has been considering selling Boca Chica State Park to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and the sale was set to come up two days after the election, according to Texas Monthly. A draft agenda shows the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission, whose members were all appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott, planned to discuss selling “1,300 acres” in Cameron County in a closed-door session on Nov. 5. Two sources told Texas Monthly that SpaceX is the buyer and that the land is the beachfront state park next to Musk’s Starbase site near Brownsville. After Texas Monthly asked about it, a department spokesperson said the commission “is not considering the sale of the Boca Chica property at its November meeting,” but sources said it could come up at a later date. The news comes as Musk pours $158 million into Ken Paxton’s Senate campaign, while his super PAC attacks Abbott’s Democratic opponent, Gina Hinojosa, who is within striking distance in the polls. “It stinks,” said Luke Metzger of Environment Texas, warning that the park is home to endangered species like the ocelot and is among “the most sensitive” land in the entire state.

Police have released new details about the Bend, Oregon, school shooting, including the names of the teacher who was killed and the 16-year-old gunman. The teacher was 25-year-old Megan Lambert. “She loved Silver Rail. This was her dream job,” her family said, adding that she “always fought for the underdog and those with special needs.” Police identified the shooter as Griffin J. John II, a former special needs student at the school, who fired as many as 15 rounds in a special education classroom using a shotgun his mother bought around his birthday in August. Another teacher tackled the gunman, threw her phone at him and fought for his weapon, which Police Chief Mike Krantz said “almost certainly helped prevent more bloodshed.” Kaylub Giamanco, a carpenter and father of two Silver Rail students, saw the gunman fire at a pickup truck, followed him inside with a legally owned pistol and shot him. Police say the injured 7-year-old girl is in serious but stable condition and educational assistant Rebecca Drury has non-life-threatening injuries.

 

pope leo xiv vatican mediaPope Leo XIV, above, is being discharged from the hospital on Saturday after surgery to remove a cancerous nodule from his lung, and he will lead prayers on Sunday. The Vatican said the 71-year-old pope was “deemed fit for discharge” after blood tests and a chest X-ray, and he will return to the Vatican in the afternoon. He’s expected to recite the Angelus prayer from the window of the papal apartment overlooking St. Peter’s Square on Sunday. Leo was diagnosed with adenocarcinoma, the most common form of lung cancer, after a lump was found during a routine checkup, and he is not known to have ever smoked. His doctors haven’t said whether he needs more treatment or whether the cancer has spread. His two-week trip to South America is still scheduled to begin next month, though Peru’s president said his recovery could decide whether he makes it there.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney made a final appeal to Albertans to reject a path toward independence ahead of Monday’s vote, warning that Trump is trying to “break us so they can own us.” Monday’s vote isn’t a direct vote on independence. Albertans will decide whether to start the legal process toward a future separation referendum. “This is not a game. This is not poker. A vote against Canada is a dangerous bluff,” Carney told a rally in Edmonton, where he grew up. Alberta’s conservative premier, Danielle Smith, joined him in opposing separation, even though she called the referendum herself, and Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre also urged Albertans to stay. Alberta holds most of Canada’s oil reserves, the fourth largest in the world, and a recent poll found about 22% of Albertans support separation. Carney said the vote comes at the “worst possible time,” with Trump waging a trade war and threatening to make Canada the 51st state.

The man ICE said it was hunting when one of its agents ran over a man in Houston has been dead since 2017, according to his family. ICE said its agents were trying to arrest “Jose Mendoza-Cervantes” on Oct. 10 when an agent struck 48-year-old Miguel Parra Hernández with an SUV, breaking his leg. ICE then released a “wanted” photo of the man it was looking for, but his daughter said it was actually her father, José Hector Jiménez Mendoza, who died in 2017 while trying to enter the U.S., and the family has shared his death certificate. “Either someone is not telling the truth or, all of a sudden, the two ICE agents have developed a sixth sense and are able to see dead people,” said Cesar Espinosa of the immigrant rights group FIEL Houston. Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare says it’s “pretty obvious” from video that ICE hit Parra on purpose, and he is investigating a possible aggravated assault charge that could go to a grand jury next week. The agent who was driving has been placed on leave, and ICE has called claims that the hit was intentional “RECKLESS and FALSE.”

U.S. corporate lobbyists, backed by the Trump administration, spent two years working to weaken the European Union’s landmark law against deforestation, according to a new investigation by the watchdog group Mighty Earth. The group found that 24 major U.S. companies and trade groups, including Cargill, Bunge, Mondelēz and the U.S. Soybean Export Council, held more than 350 meetings with EU officials about the rule. The law bans imports of goods like cattle, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, soy and wood from deforested land, but its rollout has been delayed twice and its rules watered down so much that some supporters say it has effectively been “dismantled.” Two weeks after Trump met with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at a Scottish golf course in July 2025, the EU declared that the U.S. “poses negligible risk to global deforestation.” Mighty Earth said the pressure campaign went “all the way to President Trump, who offered to personally intervene.” The companies deny there was a coordinated effort and say they raised legitimate concerns about how the law would work.

A New Mexico judge dismissed child sexual abuse charges against “West Wing” actor Timothy Busfield, ruling that prosecutors didn’t act fairly during grand jury proceedings. Busfield, 69, was indicted in February and accused of groping a young boy on the Albuquerque set of the Fox drama “The Cleaning Lady,” where he was a director and producer. Twin brothers reported that the alleged contact happened over two years, when they were 7 and 8 years old. Judge Joseph Montano ruled that the prosecutor wrongly told grand jurors at least eight of them had to agree before they could hear from additional witnesses, which “had the practical effect of unilaterally withholding witnesses.” The judge said prosecutors can still bring new charges, and the district attorney’s office says it is weighing its options. Busfield has called the allegations “lies.”

A Mexican judge sentenced three men to more than 158 years in prison each for murdering two Australian brothers and their American friend during a 2024 surf trip. Jake and Callum Robinson and Carter Rhoad were shot and killed while camping near Ensenada, Baja California, in April 2024, in what authorities believe was a robbery. Their bodies were found days later in a clifftop well, each with gunshot wounds to the head. The three men were found guilty last week of homicide, aggravated robbery and vehicle theft, and the man accused of leading the attack is known as “El Kekas.” The brothers’ parents, who traveled from Australia for the trial, watched the sentencing by video link and have started a foundation in their sons’ names. Jake was a doctor about to start a hospital job in Australia, and Callum had moved to the U.S. to play professional lacrosse.

Sean “Diddy” Combs has been moved to a different federal prison after reports that he was living a life of luxury behind bars. The Bureau of Prisons confirmed Combs was transferred from FCI Fort Dix in New Jersey to FCI Allenwood Low in Pennsylvania. In September, NBC News reported that Combs was smuggling in Hennessy cognac, having other inmates cook, clean and give him massages, and using a contraband phone to look at social media. After that report, he was placed in a high-security housing unit and docked 41 days of good-conduct credit, which pushes his release date to March 2, 2028. TMZ reported he was injured in a fight with another inmate, but the Bureau of Prisons called that story “false” and said it “did not happen.” Combs is serving a sentence of more than four years for prostitution-related crimes, and an appeals court has not yet ruled on his effort to overturn the conviction.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

New York Times, Hegseth Singled Out in Democrats’ Campaign Attacks for War and High Prices, Robert Jimison, Oct. 17, 2026. Cabinet members are seldom major figures in campaigns, but the defense secretary’s forays into politics and his bravado in defense of an unpopular war have made him a target.

A Democrat in a hotly contested House district in Colorado ridiculed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s workout routine in a social media post promoting his congressional campaign.

Another Democratic candidate in California invoked his name as she excoriated her Republican opponent for his support for the war with Iran — which she blames for higher prices Americans are paying at the pump.

Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the New York Democrat in line to be speaker should his party win control of Congress, has said repeatedly that one of their first orders of business will be to impeach Mr. Hegseth.

In the final weeks of a midterm congressional battle in which voters’ opposition to the war with Iran has become a major issue, Democrats are increasingly making Mr. Hegseth a main character in their campaign messaging.

It is an effort to turn one of President Trump’s most recognizable cabinet officials — and one who has been an unapologetic and visible cheerleader for a war that polls show is deeply unpopular — into a liability for Republicans’ fighting to keep their seats.

In a recent video he posted online, Manny Rutinel, the Democrat and former state legislator who is challenging Representative Gabe Evans of Colorado in one of the most competitive races in the country, featured unflattering footage of Mr. Hegseth working out with troops.

“This man is letting Trump raise your gas prices,” reads the type stamped on the video of a sweaty Mr. Hegseth seeming to struggle as he lifts weights alongside military personnel. “I’m going to put a stop to it,” it reads, as the video cuts to Mr. Rutinel doing pull-ups and lifting much bigger weights at the gym.

“Pete Hegseth is helping Trump start an unplanned forever war while Americans struggle here at home,” Mr. Rutinel wrote in a post circulating the video, which does not show Mr. Evans. “I’m running for Congress to stop them.”

More recently in San Diego, Marni von Wilpert, a city councilwoman running for an open House seat against Jim Desmond, a Trump-endorsed Republican, used an appearance by Mr. Hegseth to call for an independent investigation into conditions aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, the aircraft carrier that recently returned after a deployment of nearly 11 months amid reports of deteriorating morale and suicide attempts. 

More On Trump Team Corruption, Obsessions, Accountability

 

Richard Grenell and Alina Habba Mildon had once been close friends (New York Times photo by Haiyun Jiang).

Richard Grenell and Alina Habba Mildon had once been close friends (New York Times photo by Haiyun Jiang).

New York Times, Dispute Between Trump Allies Centers on Payment From Congo, Tyler Pager and Anatoly Kurmanaev, Oct. 17, 2026. The White House inquiry is focused on diverging accounts from Richard Grenell and Alina Habba Mildon about a $17 million transfer from a government account in the African country to a Texas defense firm.

Mrs. Mildon, a former personal lawyer for President Trump, stormed into the Oval Office last week accusing Mr. Grenell of siphoning millions of dollars from a business transaction in 2025 organized by a Turkish investor who later became her husband. Part of the money, she claimed, was meant to be set aside for a donation to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts but was never delivered to the institution. Mr. Grenell ran the Kennedy Center at the time.

Mr. Grenell previously denied all accusations, calling them absurd. He declined further comment. Mr. and Mrs. Mildon didn’t respond to requests for comment. The White House also did not respond.

The dispute and resulting investigation have unfolded at a time of internal turmoil for the Trump administration, with the dramatic exit of his new press secretary and officials with ties to the president.

Mrs. Mildon and Mr. Grenell had once been close friends but have fallen out in recent months over Mr. Mildon’s business dealings. Their feud became public in recent days, after The New York Times began to inquire about Mr. Mildon’s business activities and his contributions to the Kennedy Center. The questions prompted Mrs. Mildon to relay her accusations directly to Mr. Trump last Friday.

Mrs. Mildon initially told White House officials that the money, $17.6 million, came from her now-husband, Turhan Mildon, whom she married last month. The initial set of documents that her husband’s lawyer submitted to the White House, however, redacted the name of the sender, according to the people familiar with the matter.

The White House later learned that the transfer was made from a bank account affiliated with the Congolese government, the people said. Mr. Mildon has previously acknowledged to The New York Times, through a spokesman, that he serves as an adviser to the Congolese president and holds a diplomatic passport of the country.

Mr. Mildon also has extensive business holdings in Venezuela and has discussed his role in that country with Mr. Grenell. At the time of the bank transfer, Mr. Grenell was serving as Mr. Trump’s special envoy to Venezuela.

The transfer was sent last May to TX-AT, a Texas security and defense firm. Mr. Grenell, who was ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence during Mr. Trump’s first term, previously acknowledged consulting for the firm in 2024. But he said he had no connection to it at the time the transfer was made and denied any connection to the transfer.The purpose of the underlying business deal is unclear.

Mr. Mildon built deep connections with the Congolese elites and acquired major business interests in the country since arriving there as a 20-something entrepreneur in 2021. He has previously said that he has met the Congolese president, Félix Tshisekedi, at an event in Istanbul and immediately jumped on the plane to explore investment opportunities in the resource-rich African country.

His company Milvest has since won several major government construction projects, including for the Kinshasa Financial Center. Mr. Mildon has previously said that he also owns mines in Congo.

Several senior Congolese politicians attended Mr. and Mrs. Mildon’s wedding in Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York last month, as did various senior Trump administration officials. Among them was Will Scharf, the White House counsel who is leading the administration’s inquiry into the disputed payment.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

New York Times, Justice Department Seeks to Disqualify Judge Overseeing Golf Course Lawsuit, Zach Montague, Oct. 17, 2026 (print ed.).  Escalating a standoff with Judge Ana C. Reyes, the Justice Department demanded that she recuse herself from a case in which she had ordered several Trump officials to testify.

The Justice Department on Friday filed a motion seeking to disqualify the federal judge presiding over a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s changes to the East Potomac Golf Links, demanding that she recuse herself from the case.

The motion in the escalating standoff followed a remarkable clash on Monday, when a group of preservationists and Washingtonians behind the lawsuit informed Judge Ana C. Reyes that the Trump administration had moved to abruptly clear hundreds of trees from the golf course. Judge Reyes had previously ordered the government in blunt terms not to carry out any surprise work on the municipal course, which President Trump has proposed transforming into a championship-level one.

The revelation that the government had appeared to surreptitiously clear cut large sections of the course over a holiday weekend while giving less than 24 hours of notice drew Judge Reyes’ fury.

Hope for America, Opinion: The Russian asset in the White House, Heather Delaney Reese, right, helen delaney reese djtOct. 16, 2026. At 12:56 this afternoon, the President of the United States walked out of the White House with a look of deep concern on his face and went directly to the reporters who had lined up to ask him questions about Ukraine and his troubled new press secretary. He looked at them and immediately made a 180-degree turn while he pointed away from them, and said, “So that’s one of the largest cranes anywhere in the world, brand new. And that’s lifting the beams up. And the beams are about record setting in size because it has to be a span with no column. If you look at the counterweights in the back, you’ll not find a bigger, more impressive piece of equipment than that one right there.”

He then paused so long it became uncomfortable and then said, “It’s one of the biggest, they call it a steel lifter. It lifts the biggest steel and that’s as big as it gets. That’s something, huh? Pretty good, right?” The press looked around, confused, not sure what he was saying or why.

He once again took a long pause before eventually saying, “Okay,” with a sort of sigh. The journalists didn’t skip a beat and instantly asked Donald Trump, “Why did you guys slow down Starlink or the StarShield for Ukraine?” His response came just as fast: “We didn’t do that at all. In fact, I don’t know where it is. I don’t even think it was slowed down.”

This is the story we are not letting Donald Trump sweep under the rug, no matter what else he does to distract us. Earlier this week, SpaceX’s Starshield system, the military-grade satellite network that Ukraine depends on for battlefield communications and missile defense, was throttled without warning during one of the largest Russian attacks of the war. Ukrainian lives were lost. What happened was not just a pivotal moment for the war itself. It was also one for how Donald Trump will be remembered until the end of time.

That’s why reporters asked Trump about it again. Not even a few minutes after his first nonanswer, he was ready to try out a different response: “Well, I don’t know. I know that I think it’s the same. I’m not sure that it ever came down, but I just checked it this morning. It wasn’t us.”

Then, a few minutes after that almost completely incoherent explanation, he gave a third version: “Well, I don’t know if it was anybody because it wasn’t me and I don’t think it was Elon. And from what I understand, it’s the same as it’s always been.”

He only spoke to the press for 20 minutes, and yet he was able to contradict himself three times. First, it didn’t happen. Then, he’s not sure it happened. Then, it wasn’t him or Elon, but maybe it wasn’t anybody. Donald Trump is the President of the United States and the Commander in Chief. He should know exactly what happened, and he should have a logical response to explain it. Donald Trump had neither. He didn’t know what version of the lie he was supposed to be telling because nobody had decided what the official lie was going to be, or they didn’t think they could trust him with the truth. Or worse, he isn’t actually involved in these kinds of decisions because he doesn’t want to be or because he is too impaired to know they are happening in the first place.

Nearly every day we see Donald Trump’s decisions actively advancing Russian interests while he intentionally snubs and puts in harm’s way an ally fighting for its survival. Donald Trump is not just soft on Russia; he is acting like a Russian Asset from inside the White House.

While Donald Trump was struggling to explain himself today, President Zelenskyy was answering questions of his own at a press conference in Brussels. Sky News reporter Alistair Bunkall asked Zelenskyy this: “President Trump is facing pretty difficult midterm elections, his personal popularity is very low, diesel prices in the US are very high, and the war that he started in the Middle East is not going the way he wants it. Do you think you are being treated as a scapegoat for his own problems?”

Zelenskyy paused and said nothing for what felt like minutes but was really just seconds. He stood at the podium, looked down, and then he looked up and smiled. Nearly everyone in the room started to laugh, and Zelenskyy finally spoke and said, “This is my answer,” and ended his entire press conference on that note.

I watched that moment live during a patchy night of sleep. And even though it was funny, and I did laugh, my heart sank afterward. Because if that had been any other country, or any other president, in any other situation, it would have just been a funny moment. A leader with a sense of humor, bringing a little levity to something very serious, reminding us that sometimes humor is what gets us through the worst of times. But that’s not what this was at all. This was the president of a country that has been under attack for years, whose people have been scattered across the world, and where 600,000 people had just lost their electricity with the cold winter months approaching. And there he was, standing at a podium, smiling through a question about whether the United States, the country that is supposed to be his ally, was using him as a political prop. I kept thinking about what it must feel like to stand there and be asked that question about a country you are supposed to be able to count on. And the fact that the question even needed to be asked, and that his silence seemed more honest than anything our own president had said all day, was heartbreaking.

I’ve been thinking about that moment, and what it really means all day. How devastating and shameful it is to live in a country that is actively aiding the aggressor while the country being invaded is left to answer questions about whether it’s being scapegoated by its supposed ally. And I keep returning to something that has been sitting with me for a long time, something I think a lot of Americans are also grappling with.

I remember when I first learned about the Holocaust, the rise of Hitler, the concentration camps, and the scale of the atrocities, and thinking that a madman had essentially carried out a military takeover of Germany. That the German people were victims, too. That most of them wanted nothing to do with what was happening and were as horrified as anyone. I didn’t spend much time thinking about the ordinary people who carried out the orders, or the neighbors who turned in people they knew or looked the other way as they were dragged off. I certainly didn’t think about the millions who benefited from staying silent. There were also many who resisted and paid the ultimate price for it. And of course, there was so much more to what happened than I understood at the time. But as a child, it all seemed so simple. Why didn’t they all just say no? Why didn’t they stand together and refuse? There were so many of them. How could so few people hold so many hostage?

What I never imagined was that I would spend years of my adult life living inside that question. Because now I understand something I couldn’t as a child. It’s more nuanced than that. Sometimes they are afraid, or they truly believe nothing they could do would make a difference. Or they look around and think they are the only ones who see what is happening and they are simply waiting for someone else to go first. And the longer that goes on, the harder it becomes to speak up, because what once seemed unthinkable starts to feel normal.

That’s where America is. There are people who love the cruelty and corruption, who are benefiting from it or think that they are. Then there are people who care deeply but feel powerless to do anything about it. And in between are millions of Americans who know something is terribly wrong, who are angry and frightened by what they see happening, but don’t know what to do or where to begin. They want things to change, but they’re exhausted, overwhelmed, and trying to survive their own lives. They’re waiting for someone to show them what they can do that will actually make a difference. That’s the gray zone, and that’s where so many of us are right now.

Tomorrow is the next No Kings rally, focused entirely on voting. It is being held to remind us all that we have one powerful tool that we can still use to change the direction of this country before it’s too late. This is our time to take the lessons we have learned from other dark times in history and not waste an opportunity to stop what is happening. Hopefully it will also remind us all that we are not alone. That others see what is happening and share the same concerns and fears.

If you are wondering if they are even worth showing up for, yes. 100% yes. Because our resistance is working, and we are seeing signs of it every single day. After much pressure and public embarrassment, today, Katie Zacharia became one of the shortest-serving White House press secretaries in American history, lasting only five days. She was named to the position last Friday, gave her first and only disastrous press briefing on Tuesday, and by today she was gone. Anthony Scaramucci, who served as Trump’s White House communications director during his first term and whose name became a way of describing someone who didn’t last long in a political appointment, lasted only 11 days. Zacharia beat his record by six days. Scaramucci himself posted on X today: “Records are made to be broken. But I take no pleasure in other people’s pain.”

She failed for a multitude of reasons, one of which was that what she presented about herself wasn’t exactly the truth. When her law credentials were looked up in a public database, it was found that Katie Zacharia, who had called herself a lawyer on Instagram, in press releases, and in professional bios for years, was not licensed to practice law in any state. She graduated from Pepperdine Law and claimed she practiced law in China, but legal experts told NBC News that only Chinese citizens can sit for the Chinese bar exam. A senior administration official confirmed she never passed the California bar.

That was it, and her entire credibility started to unravel. Trump tried to frame it as media cruelty, which is an odd way of saying being caught misrepresenting your qualifications, but the damage had already been done. He told reporters today, “I said, Katie, is this for you? Because you know she’s been treated very rough.” He told her, “Welcome to the world of Trump.” But the world of Trump is a world where nobody checks anything before they put someone behind the podium. It’s a world built entirely on loyalty, and where competence in the job doesn’t matter. Where credentials and the truth don’t matter either until someone outside the Trump regime bothers to verify it, and when they do, the whole thing falls apart quickly.

The Trump presidency is in a crisis. Donald Trump couldn’t keep his lies straight about Ukraine and he couldn’t even keep a press secretary for a week. That tells us how fragile all of this really is. That is our opening growing bigger. We have some very important weeks ahead of us. Tomorrow we take to the streets and remind Donald Trump and his enablers what is coming and we remind each other that we are here, we are seeing the same thing, that our country is under attack from within and that we are done with this chaos and cruelty. We send a message to those outside the states that there are more of us than the red hat cult and that we are taking back our country. And then on Nov 3, or sooner if we can vote early, we send the biggest message yet. We send the Trump sympathizers in Congress packing and we take back our power. We are going to show the world that the American people have not given up on our country and that we never will. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too. 

Special Report: Accountability for Feckless Sellout Law Firms

Katie Phang via Substack, Opinion: The Bill Is Coming Due, Katie Phang, right, katie phangOct. 17, 2026. Feckless sellouts are about to pay the price for ditching democracy when it mattered the most.

I’ve spent the better part of my career inside of the courtroom, and here’s one thing I’ve learned: the people you’re going to look at with a jaundiced eye are the ones who surrender quietly, sign something in a back room with little to no witnesses, and then hope nobody ever asks to see the actual paperwork. Well, somebody is asking now.

A quick flashback: In the spring of 2025, Convicted Felon Donald Trump started issuing executive orders targeting the world’s elite law firms. Not because they were breaking the law, but instead, Trump took umbrage with these firms for doing things like representing the wrong clients, for employing attorneys he didn’t like, and for having the audacity to work on cases about which he took great personal offense. These Executive Orders were blatantly unconstitutional. We know that because four courageous law firms — Perkins Coie, Jenner &. Block, WilmerHale, and Susman Godfrey — went to court and they WON. Every single one of them.

Some firms, however, didn’t have that type of backbone. Paul Weiss was the first to roll over and play dead. Then the dominoes began to fall: Skadden, Kirkland, Latham, Simpson Thacher, Milbank, A&O Shearman, Cadwalader, and Willkie Farr. Together, nine of the most powerful and most profitable law firms in the world pledged roughly $940 million in pro bono work for causes Trump supports. Nine hundred and forty million dollars just to make the bad man with cankles go away so they could continue to mint money.

In response to this cowardice, I posted an “Open Letter to the Big Law Firms that Bent the Knee” and invited them to talk about why they did what they did: As I wrote: “I’d like to think if these firms are so proud of the work they’re doing on behalf of the Administration, there should be no problem in sharing all of the details.” Of course, no one responded to my open letter. You’d think they’d want to be transparent about their pro bono work — they certainly advertise as much on their websites — but alas, you’d be wrong.

richard blumenthal portraitFast forward to the present. On October 16th, Congressman Jamie Raskin and Senators Richard Blumenthal, left, and Adam Schiff sent yet another letter to Kirkland & Ellis to explain its ways. I use the phrase, “another letter,” because Kirkland hasn’t produced a single responsive document or explanation. It has refused to even sit down with congressional staff. Instead, according to the lawmakers, the firm has offered up a “laundry list of legally specious claims of privilege.”

“Privilege.” Ha. That’s rich coming from a firm that goes out of its way to advertise its greatness. I’d love to see the firm’s so-called privilege log. Actually, I’d love to see anything, which is exactly the point. I guess this is to be expected from a law firm that is notorious for demanding everything from its opponent, but giving nothing in return. But this is a foolish, short-sighted maneuver by the firm. The lawmakers said they’ll use every tool they have to pursue answers, in this Congress and the next. Considering the senders of that letter, that’s not a threat, that’s a promise.

But Kirkland isn’t the only firm acting chicken shit. Back in August, Congressman Jamie Raskin and Senators Richard Blumenthal and Adam Schiff also asked Skadden Arps some pointed questions about its deal: $100 million in free legal work for the Trump Regime’s favored causes. This was the third time members of Congress had written Skadden for information. Skadden’s answer? A few sentences, sent from its outside lawyer, Richard Sauber, with the following finishing touch: “We reiterate that the firm’s decisions about client matters are, and will continue to be, made in compliance with the highest ethical standards of the bar.” Or put another way: move on folks, nothing to see here. I’ve seen longer notes left on a windshield after a fender bender. But the problem is there’s PLENTY to see. Not to mention if you’re doing a deal — any type of deal — with this administration, then sorry, Rich, your client’s ethics are in the toilet to begin with.

Sidenote: I’m often asked where I go to do research for my reporting. One of the main research tools I use is called Ground News. Ground News shows me how stories are being covered from different political perspectives, and it highlights “blindspots” where only left-wing or right-wing media is covering a story.

Ground News has been a great sponsor of my YouTube channel, and they’re now sponsoring this post as well. I worked out a deal with them: if you go to ground.news/phang, you can get 40% off Ground News’ top-tier Vantage plan, which gives you unlimited access to all the research tools I use.

Ground News is subscriber-funded, so they don’t rely on ads that could introduce bias.

By subscribing, you support both our channel and their independent team working to keep the media transparent.

Of particular import, the lawmakers flagged that Skadden was representing Intel on the deal that gave the U.S. government a 10% stake in that company. A firm that owes the administration $100 million in free legal work is sitting across the table from that same administration on behalf of a paying client. So whose interests come first: the client who’s paying your bills or the government that held an Executive Order over your head? That’s Conflicts of Interest 101. Every first-year associate learns it and every client deserves to know the answer. Anyway, Raskin, Blumenthal and Schiff said, “these vague and cursory denials of any wrongdoing are not going to cut it.” Zooming out some, the pattern is this: Kirkland hides behind privilege, while Skadden hides behind a form letter. Different tactics, same bullshit message.Dollars to donuts, the other seven law firms, if asked, would give a similar answer.

Look, I’ve represented clients who were scared. I know what fear can do to people’s resolve. But these weren’t scared individuals with no options and no financial wherewithal. These were legendary legal institutions with armies of litigators, bottomless resources, and, most importantly, the LAW ON THEIR SIDE. The four firms that fought the Trump Regime proved that in court. I mean, it’s not like the nine firms that folded didn’t have the exact same U.S. Constitution available to them to consult. Instead, they just did the math and decided the rule of law wasn’t worth the millions of dollars each equity partner makes a year. Greed and cowardice are a potent combination.

Our popular culture commonly hypes up the lawyers who don’t flinch. The image of Gregory Peck playing Atticus Finch and standing up for what’s right was seared into my mind from a young age. Probably for many of you, as well. But if the biggest firms in the country that bill thousands of dollars an hour for their time will retreat like cowards to protect their bank accounts, what message does that send to the solo practitioner representing an immigrant family facing deportation? To the public defender? To the small firm suing a powerful agency? It’s a chilling message: shut your mouth and know your place.

There’s also a bigger concern at play here. When elite institutions look the other way during threats to democracy, bad stuff happens. We’ve seen as much in the not too distant past that ended with terrifying results. At its core, authoritarianism thrives on institutions deciding, one at a time, that compliance is the cheaper, easier option than pushing back. Universities, companies and other major institutions fold and society slides into some very dark places.

I’m thrilled Democrats are pressing these law firms. I’m thrilled they’ve sent letter after letter. I’m thrilled they’re asking what Kirkland promised, who it talked to, and what role Trump’s personal lawyer, Boris Epshteyn, played in brokering these deals. These are questions the public has every right to have answered. But let’s be honest about what a letter is. A letter is a request. And Kirkland has shown us exactly what it thinks of requests. But that all changes if the House flips in November and Democrats regain the majority. Congressman Jamie Raskin is in line to chair the House Judiciary Committee. With a majority comes subpoena power, control of the committee calendar, and the ability to put managing partners under oath in front of cameras. That’s when the shit gets real. And I expect that each of these nine “leaders” will face plant on national television if given the chance.

I keep coming back to those four firms that went to court. They took a risk and they had to wonder whether the government would come after them even harder. And yet they won. They proved that the law still works when you’re willing to use it. That’s the whole lesson: Democracy isn’t defended by the people with the most power. It’s defended by the people who are willing to use the power they have, even when it costs them. Big Law had all the power and money in the world, but complicit, chicken-shit law firms with feckless leadership chose to spend it on a deal. Time to pay up.

More Russia-Ukraine News and Comment

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, both designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik).Steve Witkoff jared kushner sputnik afp getty

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

The Daily via PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: RussiaGate Was And Is Very Real, Sarah Jones, right, Oct. 17, 2026. sarah reese jonesAs Republicans face predictions of a brutal midterm loss, Trump used a national-interest waiver to issue an executive order putting on hold a new Russian sanctions package.

It’s a spy novel come to life.

Contrary to years of a certain kind of bootlicker gaslighting the public that “RussiaGate was a hoax!”, Russia Gate was very real.

And it appears to be very real still.

In a Friday night news dump, Trump used a national-interest waiver to issue an executive order putting on hold a new Russian sanctions package named after now deceased Senator Lindsay Graham.

The legality of this latest gift to Russia is in question, as is his diesel deal. However, the legislation Trump signed a month ago explicitly grants the president the authority to suspend or waive the measures if he certifies that it’s in the national interest of the US to do so, which is what he did.

At the time the sanctions bill was passed a month ago, a large majority of House Democrats voted against the bill primarily because it gave Trump broad authority to waive the new sanctions and impose extensive tariffs. It’s almost like they could see where this was going, while Republicans continue to play duped fool, feigning ignorance of Trump’s pattern of behavior.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who co-drafted the bipartisan legislation targeting Russian energy, said, “Trump confirms again that he stands on the side of a bloodthirsty thug & the enablers of Russia’s war machine & against the majority of Americans, their representatives in both houses of Congress, & our European allies.”

“These waivers have nothing to do with our national security, and everything to do with sucking up to Vladimir Putin,” Blumenthal added on X.

A few Republicans spoke up. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) wrote, “What part of enforcing a law passed 86-11 by the Senate does the President and his advisors not understand?” Tillis is retiring, so he has the freedom to speak his mind.

On the other hand, Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY), who has done so much on Epstein legislation, supported Trump’s move 100%.Trump’s Pivot to Russia

It was widely covered in global media as an open pivot toward helping Russian President Vladimir Putin. But is it a pivot? Trump was already being battered in international press as a “traitor” and “treasonous” for his diesel deal.

It comes just one week after Trump made a deal to buy diesel gas from Russia, in what Republicans tried to sell as an attempt to lower domestic and global fuel prices. However, they left out that diesel largely skyrocketed because of Trump’s unnecessary war against Iran.

Furthermore, diesel prices actually went up right after the announcement and continue to climb, which wasn’t a surprise given that experts predicted the deal wouldn’t do a lot to help.

Donald Trump was globally labeled a helper of Putin’s. He responded to that criticism by giving Putin several economic lifelines — at the same time as Trump needs an electoral lifeline.

These events once again raised questions about whether or not Trump was being led around by the nose by Putin or Putin had some kind of kompromat on Trump.

“Europe Reckons With a World Where Trump Is Now Helping Putin,” Bloomberg reported on Thursday, continuing:

In the span of a week, Trump has trashed years of energy sanctions on the Kremlin, pressured Kyiv to quit bombing Russian oil refineries and suggested Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy was an illegitimate leader — echoing Moscow’s propaganda. At one point, Ukraine also lost full access to the Elon Musk-owned Starlink system, leaving it hobbled on the battlefield.

It’s worth noting how often we hear talking points in defense of Trump’s actions that Putin could have written himself, including blaming Ukraine for the cost of gas.

In reality, the price of gas skyrocketed after Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz in response to Trump and Netanyahu’s attack on Iran, an attack that has not been justified and in fact has been widely condemned.

The current skyrocketing cost of gas is largely due to Trump’s Iran war. That’s reality. Here’s a graph to prove it:Donald Trump’s Midterm Desperation Leads Him Into Putin’s Arms

It’s remarkable that some are able to still ignore the fact that Trump’s alignment with Putin escalated to the point that he has paused sanctions against Russia at the same tine as it’s become obvious his party will lose the midterms.

Trump has done this after a pattern of behavior spanning a decade that has shown him more aligned with Putin than with western democracies and that he will take help from Russia, and then give Putin what Putin wants, and then gaslight the public to say that RussiaGate isn’t real.

It looks like quid pro quo. It’s important to note that this is circumstantial evidence. We don’t have evidence of an agreement between the two. What we have evidence of is: A US president who was globally labeled an ally to Putin followed that up by giving Putin several economic lifelines at the same time as Trump needs an electoral lifeline.

Many previously admired journalists are still running around mocking anyone who suggests RussiaGate was real, even though we can see with our own eyes that Donald Trump has given Putin everything Putin most wanted, including weakening NATO and making American ideals of democracy and freedom an international joke.

The people chanting “USA!” at rallies are the people who are still to this day unaware that their vote empowered enemies of the U.S.

Has Trump just proven that RussiaGate is real? Discuss it in the comments below.

New York Times, Trump Signs Order Exempting Russia From Sanctions Law, Alan Rappeport, Updated Oct. 17, 2026. The sanctions were part of a measure that was named after Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who died in July.

President Trump signed an executive order on Friday night exempting Russia from a new sanctions measure that Congress passed last month, offering another economic lifeline to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin as the United States turns to Russia for help in lowering gas prices.

The sanctions were intended to target Russian officials, oligarchs and financial institutions, and were part of a law that was named after Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who died in July after spending more than a year building support for the measure.

The law, which is intended to squeeze the financial lifelines sustaining Russia’s war against Ukraine, also provided Mr. Trump with additional tariff authority that he could use to punish countries that continue to trade with Russia.

The White House has broad authority to issue sanctions exemptions or waivers, and the new law requires Mr. Trump to notify Congress only if he opts against imposing the economic restrictions on Russia. Two days before the law is set to take effect, Mr. Trump exercised that power.

“I am hereby waiving the application of such sanctions, restrictions and duties provided for in the Graham Act,” Mr. Trump said in the order. “I have submitted to the Congress a certification that the issuance of such a waiver at this time is in the national interests of the United States.”

The order does not explain why waiving the sanctions is in the interests of the United States or what rationale Mr. Trump is providing to Congress for the waivers.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

The decision comes as Mr. Trump has in recent weeks embraced Russia and expressed frustration that Ukraine’s attacks on Russian refineries were helping to push up gasoline and diesel prices around the world. The biggest factor limiting supplies, though, remains the war in Iran.

“The main issue is still the Strait of Hormuz — that there is not enough diesel coming out of the Strait of Hormuz,” said Sarah Raffoul, an oil product analyst at Argus Media.

The price increases have triggered inflation weeks ahead of midterm elections that could cost Republicans control of Congress. Ukraine said it was willing to halt its refinery strikes if Russia halted its own attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Mr. Putin refused.

Mr. Trump announced last week that he had reached a deal with Mr. Putin, and that the United States would begin importing Russian diesel fuel. The Treasury Department temporarily lifted sanctions on Russian diesel exports “to allow the supply of Russian diesel to the global market,” and gave Russian energy producers a general license to sell diesel fuel until April.

That decision angered President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, and drew backlash from European officials. This week, a bipartisan group of senators urged Mr. Trump to reverse the sanctions waiver on diesel fuel.The move to waive the sanctions that were enacted in the new law drew a swift rebuke from critics in Congress, who had predicted that Mr. Trump would not impose them.

More News Roundups 

President Trump and White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia talk with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House on Tuesday, October 13, 2026. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

President Trump and White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia talk with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House on Tuesday, October 13, 2026. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Oct. 16, 2026 [White House Chaos], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 17, 2026. Trump’s new pick for White House press secretary lasted less than five days. Katie Zacharia resigned today after a series of disastrous performances and news that she had misrepresented her legal credentials. Trump said he would let her decide if she wanted to stay but added that if he were in her shoes, he would “reconsider.”

Wags noted that the time unit of a Scaramucci—named for the White House communications director who lasted only 11 days during Trump’s first term and used to identify an official whose stay in public office has been exceedingly brief—has been replaced by the Zacharia.

Yesterday morning, Trump posted on social media that the execution of Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people and injured 32 others at Fort Hood in 2009, will not be livestreamed. As Amy B. Wang and Alauna Safarpour of the Washington Post reported yesterday, 80% of Americans opposed livestreaming the execution to the public.

A poll by the Washington Post, ABC News, and Ipsos showed that the only demographic polled in which a majority wanted a livestream of the execution was MAGA Republican men, of whom 57% wanted the event livestreamed and 42% were opposed. Veterans, Democrats, non-MAGA Republicans, Independents, and MAGA Republican women all opposed the livestream by overwhelming amounts.

And so, the chaos of Trump’s MAGA administration continues.

Chaos continues as well in Trump’s approach to Ukraine, and it has a deadly pattern.

After SpaceX debilitated Ukraine’s military defenses on October 14, in the midst of one of the heaviest Russian bombardments of the war, by slowing down the speed of Ukraine’s Starlink terminals and the Starshield system that Ukraine’s military uses, Elon Musk, who owns SpaceX, and Trump, who controls Starshield, each blamed the other for the slowdown.

Yesterday, Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, led a bipartisan group of nine senators demanding answers from Platte Moring, the inspector general of the Department of Defense.

Noting that the slowdown meant that “U.S. diplomatic, military, and security personnel were unable to reach designated bunkers during Russian air raids,” they asked “[w]hether any Department of Defense or other U.S. government officials directed, authorized, approved, or had advance knowledge of changes to intelligence-sharing arrangements, warning capabilities, or Starlink and Starshield services affecting Ukraine.”

They also asked if the slowdown was a policy decision or a contractor action, whether U.S. personnel received adequate warning, and whether “any restrictions on Starlink or Starshield services were directed, authorized, or implemented by SpaceX, the Department of Defense, or other U.S. government entities.” They also wanted to hear exactly what “immediate corrective measures are being implemented” to make sure such a crisis doesn’t happen again.

Today Trump told reporters that neither he nor Musk had caused the shortage. “I didn’t do that. No, we didn’t do that at all. In fact, I don’t even think it was slowed down, from what I understood. Because I just checked this morning.” He continued: “I heard about it from the news, the media. And we didn’t slow it down at all. And I think it’s probably functioning, from what I understand.” When a reporter asked if Musk had had anything to do with the slowdown, Trump said: “I don’t know if it was anybody, because it wasn’t me, and I don’t think it was Elon, and from what I understand, it’s the same as it’s always been.”

Joe Barnes of The Telegraph reported today that according to four sources familiar with the discussions over the issue, as well as “[a] high-ranking European official and two “well-placed Ukrainian sources,” it was Musk who approached Trump with the idea of slowing down the Starlink systems in Ukraine, and Trump agreed. But, according to Barnes, the outcry over Russia’s destructive attacks that night made Musk worry that European customers might turn against him, as indeed they warned him on social media.

A source told Barnes: “He tweeted out that he was innocent and that it was the US administration that did it. The reality is that they were both in it.”

Meanwhile, Theodore Schleifer of the New York Times reported today that Musk donated $158 million in September alone to a super PAC that immediately sent $158 million to back Ken Paxton’s campaign to become the next U.S. senator from Texas instead of Democratic candidate James Talarico. Musk donated an additional $10 million to a different pro-Paxton super PAC, as well.

Musk’s huge donations have kept the unpopular Paxton financially competitive with Talarico. Paxton is currently the Texas attorney general, responsible for the few state regulations concerning SpaceX and Musk’s more than 90 other companies and other legal entities in Texas.

Trump has clearly decided his own personal interests require bringing the United States to the rescue of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin. Just a week ago, he announced he was waiving sanctions to allow Russia to sell diesel on the global market, funneling money to Putin to continue his war on Ukraine.

Tonight, in a late Friday night news dump, Trump signed an executive order waiving yet more sanctions on Russia that would have gone into effect in two days under the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026. The president wrote that waiving those sanctions is “in the national interests of the United States,” although he did not specify why.

Congress passed the Graham Act just weeks ago, making clear that it expected stronger measures against Russia. Trump signed the law but is doing the opposite of Congress’s intent. Representative Don Beyer (D-VA) posted: “Trump’s latest surrender to Putin again betrays our Ukrainian partners and defies clear congressional intent of legislation designed to punish Russia for its illegal war of aggression.”

Like Putin, Trump has been determined to sow confusion and fear over the midterm elections, likely hoping to depress voter turnout and destroy faith in the outcome. Central to that is Trump’s insistence that noncitizens are swinging elections against him, even though experts across the political spectrum agree that voting by noncitizens is both illegal and exceedingly rare.

Jacob Bogage and Andrew Goudsward of Reuters reported on October 13 that after losing 26 of its lawsuits designed to get access to state voter rolls and winning none, the Department of Justice gave California officials just two days to review a list of 20,000 people it suspects are not citizens but may have received mail-in ballots for the midterm election. The DOJ sent along a thumb drive that it said identified those voters.

California officials did not do as the DOJ demanded, saying the scheme had no legal basis. Sarah N. Lynch of CBS News reported that Dean Logan, the registrar-recorder/county clerk of Los Angeles County, said his office would not open the thumb drive “because doing so would conflict with established data privacy and information security protocols.” He added: “Federal and state laws are clear on how voter eligibility is established—and any action to remove a voter from eligibility must be based on verifiable information, not assertions of unconfirmed data matching.”

Yesterday Alanna Durkin Richer, Sophie Austin, and Safiyah Riddle of the Associated Press reported that the administration is escalating its threats, suing election officials in California and asking a judge to stop the state from counting mail-in ballots from people the administration claims aren’t citizens until their citizenship has been verified.

Today Juhi Doshi, Alexander Mallin, Luke Barr, and Lucien Bruggeman of ABC News reported that the administration is now threatening criminal prosecution for election workers who knowingly count ballots filled out by noncitizens. Trump added on social media: “They will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!”

According to the ABC News journalists, “Experts overwhelmingly agree the lawsuit is unlikely to succeed. But they fear the consequences of publicly calling election outcomes into question could damage confidence in democracy.”

That concern is behind the No Kings events taking place across the country on Saturday, October 17. While earlier No Kings events emphasized protest and solidarity, tomorrow’s will be about “nonpartisan voter participation, being in community with each other, and making sure every eligible voter has a plan, knows their options, and is ready to make their voice count.”

The organizers remind Americans: “Our democracy depends on every eligible voter having the freedom to participate without intimidation, interference, or barriers.”

More Global News

New York Times, Israeli Settlers Attack Palestinians and Washington Post Journalist in West Bank, Azam Ahmed, Oct. 17, 2026 (print ed.). In the latest surge of violence, settlers targeted Palestinians during the olive harvest, a cultural touchstone and economic lifeline in the Israeli-occupied area.

Israel FlagDozens of masked Israeli settlers on Friday attacked a group of Palestinians while they were picking olives in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, seriously injuring several people, including a veteran Washington Post photographer covering the harvest.

Shortly after 8 a.m. during the start of the harvest, the settlers, dressed in black, descended on the village of Khirbet Abu Falah, a small hamlet of fewer than 6,000 people northeast of Jerusalem, according to residents and the mayor.

A team of New York Times journalists arrived on the scene around 9:30 a.m. and witnessed the attack. Armed with slingshots and batons, the settlers launched heavy stones at the Palestinians and set trees ablaze, sending dense columns of smoke into the sky and prompting residents to flee. At least one settler carried a firearm.

Panic ensued as the settlers pressed closer and some young residents squared off with them, trying to defend their neighbors.

Videos of the attack, which were verified by The Times, show that the photographer, Heidi Levine, 63, who was wearing body armor with large press tags, was trapped behind the settlers. They began to beat her with bats and sticks, kicking her as she was prostrate on the ground, according to the videos.

We saw Israeli military forces arrive amid the ongoing attacks and begin pressing residents back from the olive fields, which stretch across several acres along the outskirts of the village. They fired dozens of rounds of tear gas. The sound of live fire rang out.

Medics from neighboring communities raced into the swarm to rescue the injured as tear gas filled the area, where dozens of other journalists and activists had gathered.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said three Palestinians were also wounded. Ms. Levine was transported to a hospital in the area of Ramallah, a city in the West Bank. “While we are relieved that Heidi has received medical care and is safe, we are outraged by this unwarranted attack on a journalist doing her job,” The Post said in a statement.

Doctors have said Ms. Levine has a broken rib and lacerations on her legs, rear end and hip, as well as a serious cut on her left hand, according to Michael Milner, her son.

The Israeli military said soldiers and border police officers were dispatched to the area of Khirbet Abu Falah after receiving a report of a confrontation. It said that a female foreign journalist was injured, adding that all circumstances surrounding the incident would be examined.

“Attacks and violence against innocent civilians are grave and unacceptable acts that require a coordinated, multi-agency response,” the military said.

The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in a statement in English: “The facts surrounding the confrontation near Abu Falah, during which Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine was allegedly assaulted, remain unclear and are under investigation.”

Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, settlers have intensified their attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank, a campaign of violence that has emptied out entire villages and instilled fear in communities. In recent weeks, their assaults have focused on the olive harvest, a cultural touchstone in the West Bank, with hundreds of villages relying on it as both a communal rite and economic lifeline.

Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group that monitors settler violence, said it has documented 82 violent incidents against harvesters, 135 instances of crop theft, and 39 of damage to or destruction of trees.

More On Trump Team Allegations, Governance

Entertainer Russell Brand, about to undergo trial in Great Brittain on multiple rape charges, is shown at left with his Trump-aligned political allies leading the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., center, and Centers for Disease Contral Director Dr. Mehmet Oz, all promoters of health care fads of dubious or controversial impacts.

Actor Russell Brand, about to undergo trial in Great Brittain on multiple rape charges, is shown at left with his Trump-aligned political allies leading the U.S. Health and Human Services Department: Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., center, and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Mehmet Oz, all promoters of health care fads of dubious or controversial impacts.

Politico, RFK Jr. and his allies are standing by Russell Brand as the comedian’s rape trial begins, Carmen Paun, Oct. 16, 2026. Actor Russell Brand appeared at a Make America Healthy Again Summit in Washington two weeks ago, standing onstage with Mehmet Oz and snapping a photo with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

politico CustomThis week he’s on trial in London on charges that he raped or sexually assaulted six women. Tony Lyons, the head of the MAHA PAC, was in the courthouse supporting him.

Brand was charged more than a year ago, based on allegations from four women, but MAHA groups and the movement’s founder, Kennedy, have stood by him. Brand spoke on Lyons’ regular conference call for movement activists on Wednesday, the third day of his trial.

“He’s been falsely accused, he’s been vilified, persecuted, deplatformed, demonetized, censored, prosecuted,” Lyons said in introducing Brand.

Brand has denied the charges, three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault and one count of indecent assault, saying any sex he had was consensual.

Brand’s attorney did not respond to POLITICO’s request for comment. Neither did Lyons or spokespersons for Oz, Kennedy and President Donald Trump.

Brand said on Lyons’ call that he believes in truth, justice and redemption “as a follower of Christ.”

He’s a longtime MAHA supporter because, like many others in the movement, he rejected mandatory Covid-19 vaccination and lockdowns during the pandemic. Like Kennedy, Brand often rallies against the pharmaceutical industry, which he’s accused of prioritizing profits over people’s health, and against bureaucrats he thinks aren’t protecting the public. He often praises Kennedy’s effort to remove artificial dyes and other chemicals from food.

At the MAHA Summit, he interviewed Oz, the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Oz aide Dan Brillman, about the high cost of American health care amid high rates of obesity and chronic disease.

Oz introduced Brand by telling the audience he’d seen Brand backstage hugging Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.

Brand responded: “She initiated that contact, I should make clear, doctor.” Oz laughed.

At the end of the panel, Brand, Brillman and Oz took a picture with Kennedy.

The comedian was a star of several comedy hits including Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Bedtime Stories and has voiced the role of the mad scientist Dr. Nefario in the animated Despicable Me films.

He now hosts a ‘Stay Free’ podcast on livestreaming platform Rumble.Watch: The ConversationInside the democratic socialists’ plan to shake up Congress

British prosecutors in April 2025 charged Brand for allegedly raping a woman in 1999; sexually assaulting another in 2001; raping and sexually assaulting a third woman in 2004 and sexually assaulting a fourth woman between 2004 and 2005.

Prosecutors in December announced two more charges of rape and sexual assault involving two additional women, with the offenses alleged to have happened in 2009.

The women’s identities have not been disclosed, as victims of sexual offenses are entitled to lifelong anonymity in the media or any other publication under U.K. law.

Some of the women said they didn’t come forward about the alleged offenses sooner because they thought they would be blamed for what happened, a prosecutor said Wednesday, according to a New York Times report from the court.

In a video he posted to the social media platform X addressing the initial charges last year, Brand said that while he was “a drug addict, sex addict, and an imbecile” in his youth, he was never a rapist. “I’ve never engaged in non-consensual activity, I pray that you can see that by looking in my eyes,” he added.

Brand also suggested he was being maliciously prosecuted. “We’re very fortunate, I suppose, that this is happening at a time where we know that the law has become a kind of weapon to be used against people, institutions, and sometimes entire nations that will not accept and tolerate levels of corruption that are unprecedented,” he said in the video.

His trial is expected to last six weeks, Reuters reported.

Brand endorsed Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 2024, just weeks before the now-health secretary dropped out and threw his support behind Trump. A few days after being sworn in, Kennedy posted to X a picture of himself with Brand and a shirtless Oz, while the health secretary was holding a lizard.

At the MAHA Summit on Sept. 29, Brand praised Oz for connecting him to a surgeon who performed heart surgery on Brand’s son when the boy was 12 weeks old. Brand has said that his son was born with DiGeorge syndrome, a genetic condition that can result in heart issues, and Tetralogy of Fallot, a rare, life-threatening congenital heart defect.

“You are a doctor, and you are a healer, and you are a beautiful man,” Brand told Oz before turning to Kennedy, whom he praised for being devoted to what he does.

During his MAHA Action call Wednesday, Lyons advertised Brand’s book, How to Become a Christian in 7 Days, which Lyons’ company, Skyhorse Publishing, released this year. In the book, “Brand describes his apostasy from ‘demonic Hollywood’ and radical conversion to Christianity against a backdrop of his son’s heart surgery and truly jaw-dropping spiritual warfare,” Skyhorse says in its promotional materials. Lyons claimed the British are censoring the book, along with U.S. booksellers, and told people on the call to buy it.

 

MIT logo

New York Times, M.I.T. Scientist Wins $6 Million in Sexual Harassment Defamation Suit, Mark Arsenault, Oct. 17, 2026 (print ed.).  David Sabatini, once a prominent scientist at M.I.T., sued a former colleague who accused him of inappropriate behavior. A jury found in his favor.

A prominent Massachusetts Institute of Technology biology professor forced out of his job over sexual harassment allegations won a defamation case against his accuser on Friday, along with a $6 million award.

The biologist, David Sabatini, was among the most prominent scientists in his field, and ran a research lab at the Whitehead Institute, in Cambridge, for 24 years. His lab studied cellular biology to better understand neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, diabetes, and aging.

He was forced out of his lab in 2021 after an internal Whitehead investigation concluded he had a past sexual relationship with a younger and less experienced colleague, Kristin Knouse, over whom he had a career-influencing role. The investigation also found that his lab had maintained a sexualized atmosphere. Dr. Knouse said that the relationship was coerced.

But Dr. Sabatini denied his lab had an improper atmosphere. He maintained that his relationship with Dr. Knouse had been consensual and that Dr. Knouse had schemed to get him fired and disgraced after he became interested in another woman.

“It’s surreal,” Dr. Sabatini, 58, said in a phone interview after the verdict. “I’ve been dreaming about this moment for all this time, but often thinking I might not make it, financially, emotionally or physically.”

Nearly five years to the day after he filed his defamation lawsuit, a Suffolk County jury agreed with him, finding that Dr. Sabatini had proved in court that Dr. Knouse had defamed him and interfered with his ability to work.

The jury rejected Dr. Knouse’s counterclaims that Dr. Sabatini had harassed and retaliated against her.

Dr. Knouse’s lawyer, Ellen Zucker, said in an interview Friday evening that Dr. Knouse would appeal the decision.

“The sad reality of our time is that society still has a difficult time believing women and appreciating the difficulty they encounter with men who too often control their fate,” Ms. Zucker said. She said Dr. Knouse “came into court and told the truth.”

Dr. Knouse is an assistant professor of biology at M.I.T. and on the faculty of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, which is affiliated with M.I.T.

Dr. Sabatini’s career was derailed by the allegations. After he was pushed out of M.I.T. and the Whitehead, he had talks with New York University about a job. But N.Y.U. staff members and students protested in the streets against his hiring in 2022, and the university did not hire him.

In 2023, he was hired by the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, in Prague, and later opened a Boston-area branch of that institute. He has been splitting time between Massachusetts and the Czech Republic.

Dr. Sabatini said he hopes the verdict is a step toward regaining his reputation. “Before, I was judged as having a great lab and for providing great mentoring,” he said. “For the most part my trainees have been there for me through this.”

“I hope that I can get back to being judged by my science and my training,” he said.

The Whitehead Institute, in a statement after the verdict, said that earlier legal claims against the institution had already been dismissed, adding, “Therefore, Whitehead was not a party to this case, and the decision and judgment only apply to Drs. Sabatini and Knouse, the parties in the case.”

More News Roundups

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Comment: White House in “State of Panic” as Officials Purged, Musk Pitched Ukraine Starlink Slowdown that Helped Putin, and More, Aaron Parnas, aaron parnas new headshotright, Oct. 16, 2026. It’s been a wild Friday. Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, is out after just five days, making her the shortest-serving press secretary in modern history. CNN reports Trump was embarrassed by her first briefing and decided she had to go after she didn’t defend him well enough on Sean Hannity’s show. Remember, he picked her because he wanted more people defending him on TV.

Then there’s Ukraine. The Telegraph is reporting that Elon Musk was the one who pitched slowing down Starlink in Ukraine, and that Trump signed off. That’s the same Musk who publicly blamed Trump for it two days ago. Earlier this week, I said Musk could face war crimes charges if he disrupted Starlink for Ukraine. MAGA said he should sue me. Now four sources say he pitched the very slowdown that left Ukraine nearly defenseless against Russian drones. Looks like I was right.

The White House hates my reporting, and that’s exactly why I’m not going anywhere. I’m getting you this news in real time, with no billionaire behind me and no one telling me what I can’t say. If you want to make sure this work keeps going, please subscribe to support it:Subscribed

Here’s everything you need to know tonight.

The chaos inside Trump’s administration is growing, with at least four officials out this week and the president’s own chief of staff possibly next. Press secretary Katie Zacharia was forced out Friday after just five days on the job, making her the shortest-serving press secretary in modern history, after a disastrous debut briefing and days of questions about why she called herself a lawyer despite failing the bar exam. On Tuesday, during Zacharia’s only briefing, Kimberly Guilfoyle was forced to resign as ambassador to Greece after texts surfaced in which she allegedly begged a Trump donor to pay off her Amex bill. Paolo Zampolli, a longtime Trump confidant who claimed to have introduced him to Melania, was pushed out at the State Department after one of his feuds spilled into the press, and Kristi Noem is leaving her “Shield of America” job, another shake-up for an official who has already changed roles multiple times this year. Meanwhile, Politico reports Trump has been calling allies to ask who should replace Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, with names like Stephen Miller, Bill Pulte and Jay Clayton being floated. The White House denies Wiles is on her way out, but one person close to Trump said the White House is “in a state of panic.”

Katie Zacharia Ousted After Five Days as Trump Says He Knew “She Needed to Go”

Katie Zacharia was forced out as White House press secretary on Friday after just five days on the job, making her the shortest-serving press secretary in modern history. Three people familiar with the matter told the New York Times she was pushed out, and two senior administration officials told Axios she was ousted. Trump told reporters he had urged her to “reconsider” the job, saying, “Katie, do you need this? I don’t think you need this.” He said she might keep working for him “in some form, but maybe a more pleasant form.” White House communications director Steven Cheung later said Zacharia will be “transitioning into a new role that will be announced at a later date.” She started on Monday and hadn’t even moved to Washington yet.

Trump was embarrassed by the coverage of Zacharia’s first briefing and decided she had to go after her Hannity interview, according to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. Collins reported that when Trump asked other aides about her, Zacharia had few allies willing to defend her or her performance. Trump rushed to pick her because he was frustrated with how long it was taking to replace Karoline Leavitt and wanted more people defending him on TV. When she didn’t do that well enough with Sean Hannity on Thursday night, Trump said he knew she needed to go. Axios also reported that Trump was “blindsided” to learn she wasn’t an attorney, as he had claimed when he announced her hire on Truth Social. A White House official told Axios that her shaky, nervous debut briefing left Trump “unimpressed.”

Zacharia’s week was dominated by questions about her legal credentials, and her answers only made things worse. In her first and only briefing on Tuesday, she largely read from a script and cut off questions after just three, according to the Times. When a reporter on the South Lawn repeatedly asked which state she had passed the bar in, she twice answered, “When I moved to China,” and later told the Times she had misheard the question, even though Trump repeated it to her from a few feet away. On Hannity, she admitted she failed the bar exam and never retook it, and she dismissed 15 social media posts calling herself an attorney as retweets. Her Friday morning appearance on “Fox & Friends” didn’t go much better. When host Lawrence Jones asked whether she wished she had told Trump she hadn’t passed the bar, she replied, “Well, Lawrence, those questions weren’t asked.”

Zacharia was a surprise pick pushed by Trump aide Natalie Harp, and her firing caps a week of chaos inside Trump world. Axios reported that Trump wanted former Fox News host Maria Bartiromo for the job first, but she signaled she wouldn’t take it, and commentator Scott Jennings was considered but never offered the role. Trump offered Zacharia the job on the spot after one meeting, with strong input from Harp, the aide who rarely leaves his side and who printed out the Politico report on Susie Wiles that reportedly set Trump off on Thursday. The same week, Kimberly Guilfoyle was fired as ambassador to Greece, Trump confidant Paolo Zampolli was pushed out at the State Department, and Wiles’ daughter came under scrutiny for her work overseas. A White House official said Zacharia and her family were having dinner Friday night with Vice President JD Vance, insisting “the warmth for Katie goes well beyond the president.” Fox News’ Peter Doocy said Trump is in “no rush” to name a replacement.

Musk and Trump Were “Both In It”: Report Says Musk Pitched Starlink Slowdown That Left Ukraine Defenseless

Elon Musk approached Trump with the idea of slowing down Starlink in Ukraine, according to an exclusive report from The Telegraph. Four sources familiar with the discussions told the paper that Musk proposed putting speed limits on the system, which ended up crippling Ukraine’s drone defenses. One source said Trump “agreed” with Musk’s suggestion, which cleared the way for the Pentagon to slow down Starshield, the military version of Starlink. That directly contradicts Musk, who claimed on Wednesday that “any limits on speed or usage” were “decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.” A senior source said Musk grew worried about a backlash from European customers after what was described as a “night of carnage” in Kyiv. “He tweeted out that he was innocent and that it was the US administration that did it. The reality is that they were both in it,” the source said, and a high-ranking European official and two Ukrainian sources confirmed that account.

Trump now says neither he nor Musk was responsible, even as multiple reports point to the White House. Speaking to reporters Friday as he left for Georgia, Trump said he didn’t believe either of them caused Ukraine to lose Starlink access, and he claimed the United States didn’t impose any limits. That conflicts with Reuters’ exclusive report from Thursday, in which two U.S. officials and a Western official said the order came from inside the White House. A U.S. official has insisted that “no request was ever made by the president,” but the White House hasn’t said whether anyone else in the administration made it. The Pentagon has offered no public explanation for the restrictions. Trump also said he has a good relationship with Zelensky, just a day after telling Newsmax he is “not a big fan” of the Ukrainian leader.

The slowdown left Ukraine nearly defenseless against Russia’s fastest drones, and Europe is now warning Musk directly. The speed cap limited Ukrainian drones using Starshield to about 100 miles per hour, roughly half the speed of Russia’s jet-powered drones and missiles, which made them almost impossible to intercept. Zelensky called it a “very dangerous and unpleasant surprise” and said Friday that speeds are returning but still aren’t back to normal. British Defense Secretary Wes Streeting said Pete Hegseth assured him that Ukraine’s access has been fully restored, though the cause of the blackout remains officially unexplained. Poland’s foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, posted a warning to Musk: “As your European customers, we are watching you.” The EU plans to have its own Starlink replacement, called Iris2, running by 2030.

Zelensky is turning to Europe for help as Trump moves closer to Russia ahead of the midterms. At the EU summit in Brussels, Zelensky told leaders the war will cost about €155 billion in 2027 and asked for at least €70 billion more “for defence, for weapons and for our resilience.” He also hinted that Ukraine will keep striking Russian oil refineries despite Trump’s demands, saying, “the main rule of our operations is to respond, other things you will see.” Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports the Trump administration is considering easing sanctions on the “shadow fleet” of tankers Russia and Iran use to get around sanctions, part of an effort to lower diesel prices before Election Day. Putin, for his part, said Russia is building a 410-mile “security zone” inside Ukraine along the border and will not negotiate over it. Fiona Hill, Trump’s former Russia adviser, said Trump is “exacerbating and prolonging” the war and blaming Ukraine for high fuel prices caused by his own war with Iran.

Other news:

The Oregon elementary school shooter used a pump-action shotgun his mother bought, according to the Associated Press, as investigators look for a motive. The 16-year-old forced his way into Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend around 1 p.m. Thursday by shooting through the locked doors, after first firing at a person in a car. Several news outlets have identified him, citing law enforcement sources, but police have not formally released his name. Police Chief Mike Krantz said an armed community member saw him enter the school, followed him inside and shot him, and officers arrived three minutes after the first 911 call. The FBI is assisting in the investigation, and the shooting is the deadliest at a U.S. school since the September 2024 attack at Apalachee High School in Georgia. “My heart is absolutely broken today,” Gov. Tina Kotek said, as hundreds of people gathered for a candlelight vigil in Bend’s Drake Park.

One of the children killed in Bend was 5-year-old Rhoam Summer, whose family says they are “broken and lost.” Rhoam’s mother, Kelik Summer, wrote on Facebook that Thursday was “the worst day of my life. My son Rhoam was killed in a school shooting.” Several parents told NBC News the shooting happened in a special education classroom, though police haven’t confirmed that. A 7-year-old in a wheelchair was shot in the face and is recovering from surgery, and injured teacher Rebecca Drury is also in critical condition, according to her husband. The man who stopped the gunman was identified by his brother as Kaylub Giamanco, a 36-year-old father of two whose children attend the school. His brother said Giamanco doesn’t feel like a hero, “can’t get the children out of his head” and feels guilty he couldn’t save more people.

The Trump administration finalized a rule that will once again let hunters lure bears with human food and shoot them at close range on Alaska’s national preserves, reversing a ban animal welfare groups spent more than a decade defending in court. According to Humane World for Animals, the National Park Service rule gives trophy hunters the legal authority to bait black and brown bears with “donuts, bacon grease and other bait,” some of which the group says is toxic to wildlife. The rule itself says the Park Service considered a 2025 letter from Safari Club International, one of the country’s biggest trophy hunting groups, and that it carries out an executive order Trump signed on his first day back in office. The public overwhelmingly opposed the change: the agency received more than 5,000 comments, many of them specifically against bear baiting, and a 2023 poll found 75% of Alaskans oppose the practice. The Park Service brushed aside safety concerns and dismissed a survey of bear biologists as “speculation,” even though a 2024 study by Park Service and outside biologists found that bears defending bait sites pose a “moderate to high” risk of injuring or killing visitors. “There is nothing sporting about luring hungry bears with pastries, bacon grease and other human food before shooting them,” said Sara Amundson of Humane World Action Fund, and the group says it is weighing a lawsuit to block the rule.

The Trump administration is moving forward with a plan to let pharmacies produce peptide injections, an unproven wellness trend championed by RFK Jr. and his allies. Kennedy’s health department sent an “interim access policy” to the White House for review, and two people familiar with the plan told the AP it would let pharmacies temporarily make some of the most popular peptides, including BPC-157. The FDA had previously put BPC-157 and more than a dozen other peptides on a list of substances too risky for pharmacies to compound, citing possible contamination, allergic reactions and tumor growth. In July, a panel of outside advisers handpicked by Kennedy’s department recommended lifting restrictions on six peptides, overruling the FDA’s own scientists, who said none had been studied enough to prove they are safe or effective. Several members of that panel work in the peptide industry, and some of the biggest MAHA figures sell peptide injections themselves. Wellness clinic operator Brigham Buhler called the move “huge” and framed it as a fight over “MEDICAL FREEDOM,” while analysts estimate the market could be worth $2 billion to $3 billion.

A former Fox News colleague of Kimberly Guilfoyle accused her of showing explicit photos to coworkers and constantly talking about sex, days after she was forced out as ambassador to Greece. In a Daily Mail column, Fox commentator Lisa “Kennedy” Montgomery wrote that Guilfoyle “talked about sex so cavalierly that she made Samantha from Sex and the City seem like Greta Thunberg.” Kennedy alleged that Guilfoyle showed her and other colleagues at least three sets of explicit photos of a man she was dating, paired with pictures of his Amex black card. She also claimed Guilfoyle “demanded” she pledge loyalty to Roger Ailes and his wife after sexual assault allegations surfaced against the late Fox chief. Guilfoyle has called the allegations against her false and said she will “vigorously defend my name, my reputation, and my integrity.” She is also being sued for defamation by former Trump donor Eric Deters, who published texts in which she allegedly begged him to pay off her Amex bill, and who said his lawsuit “might bring down the entire Trump administration.”

Sean “Diddy” Combs was moved to a different federal prison after reports that he was living a lavish life behind bars and was injured in a fight with another inmate. A person familiar with the matter told the AP that Combs was transferred from FCI Fort Dix in New Jersey to FCI Allenwood Low in Pennsylvania. According to TMZ, Combs suffered a head injury in a fight with convicted drug lord Christopher “Dudus” Coke, who was reportedly angry that Combs had gotten other inmates in trouble. An NBC News report had exposed Combs for allegedly using a contraband phone and drugs in prison, which led to two raids that confiscated phones from Coke and others. Combs has also lost 41 days of good-conduct credit, pushing his release date back to March 2, 2028. The Bureau of Prisons confirmed the transfer but has denied the reports of fights and lavish living, according to TMZ.

A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit against billionaire Leon Black after the woman accusing him of rape said she was medically unable to continue. The woman, known as “Jane Doe,” alleged that Jeffrey Epstein “handed off” her to Black, who sexually assaulted her in 2002 when she was a teenager. Representing herself after her lawyers withdrew, she wrote that her request “is not a concession concerning the truth of my allegations,” only that she “can no longer safely pursue this litigation.” Black’s lawyer, Susan Estrich, called the lawsuit a “work of fiction,” and Black has denied the allegations. Black, who paid Epstein about $170 million in fees after Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea, was voted in criminal contempt of Congress by the House in September for defying subpoenas from the Oversight Committee. The case was dismissed with prejudice, so it can’t be refiled.

Brush fires driven by Santa Ana winds forced evacuations across Southern California, and utilities cut power to more than 150,000 customers as a precaution. The Bryson Fire in Malibu grew to about 200 acres and threatened a county juvenile detention facility, but it was 17% contained as of Friday morning. More than 400 firefighters are working the blaze, and officials say only minor injuries have been reported. Crews also fought fires in Azusa, north of Los Angeles, and at Camp Pendleton near San Diego, where evacuation orders were lifted Thursday evening. The Getty Villa and state parks in the Santa Monica Mountains are closed. A red flag warning remains in effect until 8 p.m. Saturday, though forecasters say the winds won’t be as strong as the ones that fueled the deadly Palisades and Altadena fires in January 2025.

Amber Guyger, the former Dallas police officer convicted of murdering her Black neighbor Botham Jean in his own apartment, was released from prison on Friday. Guyger, 38, served seven years of a 10-year sentence after the Texas parole board approved her release over the objections of Jean’s family. In 2018, she walked into Jean’s apartment and shot him as he sat eating ice cream and watching TV. She claimed she thought it was her own apartment, one floor below, and mistook him for a burglar. Prosecutors had asked for at least 28 years, the age Jean would have been at the time of sentencing. Jean’s family asked for privacy, noting that the parole news came just two days after what would have been his birthday.

Police have arrested a 65-year-old man in the 2016 cold-case killing of a 25-year-old in rural West Virginia, and they say the dispute may have started over a bandana. Richard William Nichols was arrested in Indiana last month and extradited to West Virginia, charged in the death of Ivan “Vanya” Perlis. A hunter found Perlis’ remains near Maysville in November 2016, including a skull with three bullet wounds in the back. The two men lived on the same property, and police say Nichols once grabbed Perlis by the neck and shook him after accusing him of taking a bandana and using his camper. Investigators say Nichols’ story changed several times. In 2024, the property owner told police he saw the two men leave together and that Nichols came back in different clothes, saying he had blood on his clothing and that Perlis wouldn’t be coming back.

 

More On U.S. Economy, Inflation, High Tech, Jobs, Markets

New York Times, Weak Links Start to Show in A.I., Maureen Farrell and Rob Copeland, Oct. 17, 2026. Debt trouble at CoreWeave, Oracle and SoftBank raises questions about whether there are broader problems with the data center build-out.

Trillions of dollars in borrowed money have powered the A.I. boom. But now there is growing uncertainty around just how easily more money can be obtained — and how much of it will be paid back.

Those questions burst into the forefront this week when investors rapidly lost confidence in one debt-laden data center company, CoreWeave. Prices of its bonds — the company has accrued $72 billion in liabilities to operate 51 data centers — crashed, and investors placed a more than 60 percent likelihood CoreWeave would fail to meet its obligations.

Investors have sold off bonds for other A.I. giants as well, including Larry Ellison’s company, Oracle, though the price declines are not as steep as CoreWeave’s.

At the same time, Wall Street investors have been bidding up the price of some complicated financial instruments that insure corporate debt against default, such as those insuring SoftBank, the Japanese technology colossus that has borrowed heavily to bet its future on a partnership with OpenAI.

The recent market moves could spell losses for investors that own the companies’ existing bonds and could mean the companies will be forced to pay higher interest rates when they borrow again, raising the costs of their already wildly expensive A.I. projects.

The broader question is whether companies facing debt trouble like CoreWeave, Oracle and SoftBank are the industry’s weak links or are harbingers of deeper problems in the A.I. build-out.

The spread, or extra premium that investors demand to put their money into risky A.I. debt investments, has shot up more than 50 percent over the past six months, according to Barclays, the investment bank.

“The market is on a knife’s edge everywhere,” said Alexandra Coleman, founder of Azraq, a data center risk researcher.

A lot is riding on the continuation of the borrowing binge. Every week lately, economists, banks and private equity firms project higher and higher amounts of debt that they say will be needed to finance the artificial intelligence systems that their boosters assert will run the world in a few years.

Virtually every major mutual fund company, insurer and private equity firm has been buying up the A.I. debt, to say nothing of the scores of individual investors who have poured money into skyrocketing A.I. companies.

New York Times, Corporate Tax Revenue Falls Even as Profits Soar Under Trump, Andrew Duehren, Oct. 17, 2026. The annual decline was about $70 billion. Companies are writing off billions in A.I. investments, taking advantage of tax cuts that President Trump signed into law.

Corporate tax revenue has fallen precipitously under President Trump even as companies’ profits have surged to record highs, a divergence that began after Republicans approved tax breaks allowing firms to write off the cost of their investments more quickly.

Revenue from the corporate income tax, which applies to the profits made by the largest and most sophisticated companies in the United States, fell roughly 15 percent, to $381 billion, in the fiscal year that ended on Oct. 1, according to data released on Friday by the Treasury Department. The roughly $70 billion drop followed a similar decline the previous year. Corporate tax revenue is down more than quarter from 2024, the last full fiscal year of the Biden administration.

More On U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Religion

 

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New York Times, With Layoffs and a Firing, Netflix Hurries to Rewrite Its Narrative, John Koblin and Nicole Sperling, Oct. 17, 2026 (print ed.). Despite strong revenues and profits, the streaming service cut 1,000 jobs and jettisoned its chief content officer. Drops in the stock price and viewer engagement are to blame.

Plenty seems to be working for Netflix these days.

The company remains, by far, the most-watched paid streaming service in the world, with more than 325 million subscribers. It accounts for far more television viewing time than any of its traditional entertainment competitors, including Disney, Amazon Prime Video or Skydance. Its revenue is robust, and profits are plentiful.

Yet on Wednesday, Netflix let go of roughly 1,000 employees, about 6 percent of its ranks and its biggest round of job cuts in four years. And on Thursday, it made an abrupt leadership change, pushing out Bela Bajaria, who oversaw all of the company’s TV series, movies, live events, sports and video podcasts, and replacing her with Peter Rice, a Fox and Disney veteran.

Two intertwined factors helped drive the moves, which reverberated throughout Hollywood this week. The company isn’t growing fast enough, as Ted Sarandos, the company’s co-chief executive, said recently. And Netflix’s stock price has plummeted more than 40 percent over the last year.

“These are moves that Netflix has to make,” said Mike Proulx, vice president and research director at Forrester, a research and advisory firm. “The company has to be acting in a more bold way, especially given what’s going on with its competition right now.”

Netflix has seen the time spent by viewers stall as it struggles to find new global hits to replace blockbuster series like “Stranger Things,” which ended last year. YouTube, one of Netflix’s biggest competitors, has seen its share of television viewing time in the United States increase over the last year while Netflix’s has declined, according to Nielsen.

In September, the streaming service had its worst showing at the Emmys in a decade, even though it spends more than three times as much on content as it did in 2016.

And some of the biggest names Netflix had lured with lucrative production deals have left for competitors. The Duffer brothers, the creators of “Stranger Things,” decamped for Paramount last year. Shawn Levy, an executive producer of “Stranger Things,” announced last month that he was leaving for Disney. The director David Fincher, who brought “House of Cards” to Netflix and will release his latest movie, “The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth,” on the service at the end of December, opted to let a deal with the company lapse, and Noah Baumbach (“Marriage Story,” “Jay Kelly”) left for Warner Bros.

“The stock is down for one reason: There is a perception that their engagement challenges will create headwinds for revenue growth,” said Rich Greenfield, founder of LightShed Partners, a research firm.

“The only way Netflix is going to improve their stock,” he added, “is by proving that the slower engagement is not impacting revenue growth.”

Netflix’s share price began sliding last year when it made an audacious bid for Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio and streaming business. The potential acquisition, on which Netflix was prepared to spend more than $80 billion, seemed to undercut a central premise that Netflix was just fine on its own producing hit movies and shows, and instead needed to look outside the company for help. “We’ve been builders, not buyers,” was a phrase Mr. Sarandos repeated for years. 

Oct. 16

Top Headlines

 

President Trump’s super PAC and Elon Musk have both spent enormous amounts to support Republicans in the midterms. Here the president meets with fellow billionairres who help him run the government, including puppetmaster and federal contractor Elon Musk, looming over Trump in the Oval Office photo. Musk is a native of South Africa who is funding ultra-right poitical parties around the world to advance white leaders. Others advancing the agenda are Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant, at left, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (New York Times photo by Haiyun Jiang).

President Trump’s super PAC and Elon Musk have both spent enormous amounts to support Republicans in the midterms. Here the president meets with fellow billionairres who help him run the government, including puppetmaster and federal contractor Elon Musk, looming over Trump in the Oval Office photo. Musk is a native of South Africa who is funding ultra-right poitical parties around the world to advance white leaders. Others advancing the agenda are Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant, at left, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (New York Times photo by Haiyun Jiang). 

News Roundups

katie zacharia fox news

  • MeidasTouch Network, She Just GOT FIRED..., Brett Meiselas, Oct. 16, 2026. Major breaking news just in: new White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia is OUT as press secretary just 5 days into the role. And there’s a whole lot of other news to get you up-to-date on. 
  • The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Trump “Freakout” Rocks White House, Musk Tries to Buy Texas, Fox News Turns on Zacharia, Musk Exposed in New Documentary, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 16, 2026. Before anything else, my heart goes out to the families in Bend, Oregon. Three young children and a teacher were killed at their elementary school yesterday, and I’m thinking about that community this morning. It’s been another chaotic news day. Trump reportedly blew up yesterday after one of his aides printed out a Politico story about him looking to replace his chief of staff, and the White House is now “in a state of panic.” 

Special Report:

  • The Triad via The Bulwark, Opinion: The Tigers-Eating-Faces Party Is Real, Jonathan V. Last, Oct. 16, 2026. And it’s way creepier than you think. Three days ago the president of the United States posted a snuff film. On October 10 a mentally troubled man visiting the Yorkshire Wildlife Park climbed into a tiger’s enclosure. The tiger killed him. Onlookers recorded the mauling. Somehow this video made it to the retinas of America’s commander-in-chief, who was, presumably, taking a short break from losing his war against Iran. President Trump then shared this footage with the world.

Trump Team Lets Fly Mutual Allegations of Corruption 

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

djt heather delaney reese while djt sleeps they steal

  • Hope for America, Opinion: Trump again claims Canada will be the 51st state at his Arizona rally, Heather Delaney Reese, above, Oct. 16, 2026. Trump again claims Canada will be the 51st state at his Arizona rally.
  • Letters from an American,heather cox richardson cnn Historical Commentary: Oct. 16, 2026 [Single Party Corruption?], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Oct. 16, 2026. There is an old saying about rats and sinking ships. There’s also an old saying about how a democratic system taken over by a single party quickly becomes corrupt because the ruling party lacks oversight. 
  • Hopeheather delaney reese for America, Opinion: Donald Trump has “severe problems,” Heather Delaney Reese, right, Oct. 16, 2026.At 12:53 this afternoon, Donald Trump was already struggling to keep his eyes open as he exited the Oval Office and walked straight to the Rose Garden luncheon to honor first responders.
  • New York Times, Opinion: Undaunted, Jennifer Rubin, right, jennifer rubin new headshotOct. 16, 2026. Troops Who Uphold Honor.🚨 18 Days to the Midterms 🚨 Under a barrage of public outrage, Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he would reverse course and cancel the planned livestreamed execution by firing squad of Nidal Malik Hasan — convicted of murdering 13 people at Fort Hood — which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced last week.

Special Report

  • Lincoln Square Media, Opinion: Two Desperate Dictators: The Trump-Putin Alliance Now Faces American Voters, edwin eisendrathEdwin Eisendrath, right, former Chicago Sun-Times CEO and Chicago Alderman, Oct. 16, 2026. Efforts to buy our votes with Russian oil won’t work. Donald Trump is facing a crushing reckoning at the polls. He is desperate. Vladimir Putin does not have voters, but even Russians, as experienced as they are with pain, have limits. This week, the two dictators came to each other’s aid. Last Friday, the two spoke for an hour-and-a-half. Trump described it was a great conversation. He said Putin wants peace, and blamed Ukrainian President Zelenskyy for the continued carnage.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

More On Middle East Wars

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

katie zacharia uncredited smile first day

More On U.S. Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets`

  • Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: The Bad News on Inflation Just Keeps Coming, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 16, 2026. And it’s all about Trump. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Inflation is down. Or at least that’s what Donald Trump says.
  • MS NOW, Opinion: Republicans' midterm affordability pitch is basically 'let them eat pinto beans,' Jarvis DeBerry, Oct. 16, 2026. Of all the bad answers Republicans have given to questions about what they’d to do to make life under Trump more affordable, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi may get the prize for the worst one. As her Democratic challenger Scott Colom reminded everyone in a comical ad this week, when a reporter asked Hyde-Smith about families struggling to afford the higher price of beef, she said shoppers “have so many proteins to choose from.”

More On U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Religion

  • Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Post-Truth Press Secretary, Andrew Egger, right, andrew eggerOct. 16, 2026. The new White House press secretary doesn’t have the one skill Trump’s top flack needs. She just can’t lie good.

Top Stories

 

President Trump’s super PAC and Elon Musk have both spent enormous amounts to support Republicans in the midterms. Here the president meets with fellow billionairres who help him run the government, including puppetmaster and federal contractor Elon Musk, looming over Trump in the Oval Office photo. Musk is a native of South Africa who is funding ultra-right poitical parties around the world to advance white leaders. Others advancing the agenda are Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant, at left, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (New York Times photo by Haiyun Jiang).

President Trump’s super PAC and Elon Musk have both spent enormous amounts to support Republicans in the midterms. Here the president meets with fellow billionairres who help him run the government, including puppetmaster and federal contractor Elon Musk, looming over Trump in the Oval Office photo. Musk is a native of South Africa who is funding ultra-right poitical parties around the world to advance white leaders. Others advancing the agenda are Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant, at left, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (New York Times photo by Haiyun Jiang). 

New York Times, Avalanche of G.O.P. Cash Keeps the Party Competitive Despite Its Problems, Theodore Schleifer and Matt Zdun, Oct. 16, 2026. Republican Senate and House candidates are being out-raised by their Democratic rivals, but the party has received a huge boost from groups tied to Elon Musk and President Trump.

The political fund-raising picture in the final month of the midterm elections is something of a Rorschach test.

If you’re a Democrat, new election filings show many of the party’s Senate and House nominees raising more than their Republican rivals. This campaign cash is the most important money in politics, because candidates can control it directly and buy ads at cheaper rates.

If you’re a Republican, the same filings show that the G.O.P. has a significant advantage in money from super PACs and other outside groups tied to Elon Musk, President Trump and the party’s big donors. In many races, this edge has allowed the party to club Democrats with advertising even though Republican groups have to pay more for ads.

In fact, both of these perceptions are true. And for Republicans, the ability to hold their own — at least — in the midterm money fight is a rare bright spot as the party faces a gloomy political environment. This financial resilience has allowed Republicans to put up a robust defense of the Senate, in particular, as they try to keep control of Congress.

A bonanza of Federal Election Commission filings on Thursday offers a view of how much every federal candidate in the country raised and spent from July through September, as well as the finances of many of the outside groups supporting them. Even more filings for those groups will land next week.

Here are seven takeaways from the filings:Democratic Senate contenders have raked in cash.

In eight of the Senate races expected to be most competitive in November, Democrats have raised more money this year through their main campaign committees than their Republican challengers, the filings show.

No Democrat raised money like James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas. His campaign hauled in a staggering $114 million from January through September, about $100 million more than his Republican rival, Ken Paxton, raised.

The Democratic edge was also striking in Kansas, a surprising Senate battleground. Adam Hamilton, the Democratic nominee, raised $13.4 million in the first nine months of the year, roughly six times as much as his Republican opponent, Senator Roger Marshall. (In just the third quarter, Mr. Hamilton brought in nearly $10 million, compared with Mr. Marshall’s roughly $800,000.)

New York Times, Most of Ken Paxton’s Money Can Be Traced to One Man: Elon Musk, Theodore Schleifer, Oct. 16, 2026. The world’s richest person, who has become the biggest known midterm donor, gave $158 million to a group that quickly spent that much to help Mr. Paxton’s Senate bid in Texas.

If Ken Paxton wins in Texas, he may have Elon Musk to thank.

Mr. Musk, the world’s richest person and a Texas resident who has major business interests in the state, sent $158 million in September to a super PAC that immediately flipped that much money to a group backing Mr. Paxton’s Senate bid, according to campaign-finance filings released Thursday.

The donations from Mr. Musk, collectively some of the biggest ever recorded in American politics, have allowed Mr. Paxton to remain financially competitive even as he is vastly outraised by his Democratic opponent, James Talarico. Republicans in Texas have grown increasingly worried about the race, one of this year’s most expensive and high-profile contests, fearful of losing a statewide election in Texas for the first time in more than three decades.

Mr. Musk sent the money to Senate Republicans’ top super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, in donations of $75 million on Sept. 9 and $83 million on Sept. 23. Each time, the very next day, the super PAC cut a check of the same amount to Texas PAC, a group that the Senate Leadership Fund had set up to support Mr. Paxton.

The money sent to the Texas group was not necessarily Mr. Musk’s, and super PAC officials have said publicly that they were seeking new donations to finance a pro-Paxton operation. But without Mr. Musk’s historic donations, it’s unlikely that such a large amount would have flowed Mr. Paxton’s way.

Rarely has an individual donor been effectively tied to such a large commitment for a single candidate.

The New York Times reported on Monday about Mr. Musk’s contributions to the Senate Leadership Fund and how they could end up helping Mr. Paxton, but the campaign filings offered more detail on the choreography of Mr. Musk’s donations.

New York Times, How Claims of Widespread Noncitizen Voting Fall Apart, Amy Schoenfeld Walker, Jeremy White and Seamus Hughes, Oct. 15, 2026. While President Trump has claimed that noncitizens voted en masse and even tipped the scales in recent elections, research from partisan and nonpartisan groups alike has shown that instances of noncitizen voting are so rare that they have never been significant enough to change the outcome of an election.

Investigations into noncitizen voting have historically followed a pattern. First, state or federal election officials report that hundreds or thousands of noncitizens may be on their voter lists. After further review, the figures often shrink to dozens. Each inquiry ends with few, if any, prosecutions.

“We keep finding the same story over and over and over again, which is very, very small numbers,” said Christopher Mann, the research director at the Center for Election Innovation and Research in Washington, which tracks reports of ineligible voting.

But just how small are those numbers?

New York Times, Live Updates: Bystander Who Killed Oregon School Shooter Is Father of Two Students, Anna Griffin and Chelsia Rose Marcius, Oct. 16, 2026. The armed man who shot the 16-year-old assailant at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend intervened after the teenager, who was armed with a shotgun, killed a teacher and three children. Investigators have searched the suspect’s home.

The man who cut short a deadly rampage at an Oregon elementary school by fatally shooting the 16-year-old attacker was the father of two students at the school. Officials had not yet identified the man on Friday, but neighbors pointed out his house near the school, and family members, including his mother, confirmed his identity and asked for privacy.

The man, Kaylub Giamanco, intervened on Thursday as the teenage assailant attacked Silver Rail Elementary School with a shotgun, blasting through locked doors and killing a teacher and three children, ages 5, 8 and 11. A 7-year-old and another teacher were critically injured.

Investigators have searched the home of the 16-year-old suspect, John J. Griffin II, according to a law enforcement official granted anonymity to discuss details of the case. His mother was cooperative, the official said, and investigators took the boy’s electronic devices under a search warrant. They believe the shooter used a weapon that belonged to his mother.

The authorities have not publicly named the shooter, the victims or the bystander, but were expected to share more information at a news conference later Friday. The 5-year-old victim was identified as Rhoam Summer by Bryan Jolly of Bend, who said he is the boy’s grandfather. “He was very bright and very mischievous and very fun-loving,” Mr. Jolly said.

It was not clear if the attacker knew anyone at the school, which remained cordoned off by yellow crime scene tape on Friday. Children’s bicycles crowded a rack near the front entrance, near where mourners had set up makeshift memorials.

The fatal attack was part of a long pattern of deadly shootings at American schools over the past three decades, leaving deep and lasting scars on communities. Oregon has more restrictions on gun ownership than most states, though many are held up in court.

Here’s what we’re covering:

  • The response: Hundreds of officers responded to emergency calls on Thursday afternoon, entering the locked-down school within minutes of the first call, officials said. They quickly confirmed that the gunman was dead and began evacuating students and teachers.
  • The bystander: Gov. Tina Kotek of Oregon called the armed bystander a hero in a news conference on Thursday night. “Your actions carry a heavy emotional burden,” she said, addressing him directly. “I just want you to know my thoughts are with you as well.”
  • Shaken families: Parents of children who survived the attack said they were struggling to help their children manage feelings of trauma, fear and guilt after the shooting.
  • Years of violence: Since the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in 1999 left more than a dozen people dead, school shootings have terrorized America. 

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Katie Zacharia’s Problem Is That She’s Bad at Lying, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Oct. 16, 2026. Plus, three cheers for No Kings.

bulwark logo big shipWe’ve come a long way since Jordan Peele’s 2018 PSA warning about the future of political deepfakes. Back then, everyone assumed that AI-faked video would mostly be the work of nefarious outside actors.

Today, a remarkable chunk of the political ecosystem has openly embraced them, particularly on the right. The New York Times reports today that candidates and PACs, predominantly Republican ones, have already spent more than $137 airing AI-generated ads this year alone. About 70 percent of the ads, they found, “contained no disclaimer that AI was used.” Happy Friday.

News Roundups

katie zacharia fox newsMeidasTouch Network, She Just GOT FIRED..., Brett Meiselas, Oct. 16, 2026. Major breaking news just in: new White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia is OUT as press secretary just 5 days into the role. So let’s get into today’s headlines.

  • mtn meidas touch networkKatie Zacharia has been fired, or as a White House official told Peter Doocy, she is “transitioning out” of the role
  • Reuters confirms the order to slow Ukraine’s Starshield came from inside the White House as Trump denies it
  • Zelenskyy ends the refinery strike pause
  • Ukraine is out of Patriot interceptors as Russia launches 850+ Shaheds
  • Iran fires missiles and drones at UAE port anchorages, and Brent hits $110
  • Noem demoted again, and Guilfoyle gets an unceremonious boot from Greece
  • canadian flagCarney rallies Alberta and fires back at Ambassador Hoekstra
  • A judge tosses Trump’s lawsuit against NYC sanctuary policies
  • Trump publicly pushes Justice Alito toward retirement
  • And more…

Not Even Half a ‘Mooch

katie zarcharia news coverage collage 10 14 2026Katie Zacharia is OUT. Her exit came shortly after Trump said he told her, “Honestly, if I were you, I would reconsider” the role. He said she might say in the administration “in some form but maybe a more pleasant form,” and blamed the “fake news” for “brutalizing” her.

The Party of Personal Responsibility™ always blaming others. It's pathetic.

And are we talking about “fake news” like Sean Hannity? Because last night, Zacharia went on his show and oooof….. It was brutal! Hannity grilled Zacharia about her background and her pretending to be a lawyer. Zacharia was clearly caught off guard by the tough questioning. It was clear the order was sent by the powers that be that Hannity had the go-ahead to take her down. And he did. Just 2 days earlier, he had attacked the “media mob” for asking her about not passing the bar exam. Then, he found himself asking the same questions, and was not a fan of her answers.

This morning on Fox & Friends didn’t go any better for her.

The White House Hobbled Ukraine’s Defenses

Two U.S. officials and a western official told Reuters that Pentagon leaders received a message from inside the White House saying Ukraine’s SpaceX Starshield service needed to be slowed. A senior official denied that Trump personally ordered it. This morning, when asked by the press, prolific liar Trump said the report was false. Their refusal to take the blame shows they know how politically toxic this decision was. Meanwhile, The Telegraph reports that Elon Musk approached Trump with the idea of slowing down Starlink.

ukraine flagZelenskyy is not happy. He explained how Ukraine uses Starshield to intercept jet-powered Shaheds aimed at civilians, to strike Russian military in occupied territory, and to deliver food and water by drone to soldiers on the front. When speeds dropped, some Shaheds got through.

Zelenskyy held back his attacks on Russian refineries for days, but those days are now over. Trump has only grown more hostile toward Zelenskyy, while Putin has continued to attack Ukrainian energy sites. So, Zelenskyy declared: “The block on attacking refineries is out. We’re done.” He accused Trump of passing the throttling off as a “technical glitch” and of blaming missed missile warnings that killed multiple people on “bad weather.”

“It was not a technical problem, it was the will,” he said.

Ukraine then set a Ryazan refinery ablaze. Zelenskyy told FT that Trump openly admires leaders who hold power for decades and said it’s a “pity” the U.S. has helped Putin.Out of Patriots, and Trump Lies About Tomahawks

Ukraine has now run out of Patriot missiles. The Washington Post says Ukraine had just 10 left on October 7, with irregular deliveries since May. Russia launched more than 850 Shaheds in about a day. Zelenskyy said Moscow escalated after “receiving sanctions relief” from the U.S. The UK is sending more Storm Shadows, per Bloomberg.

On state regime media Newsmax, Trump blamed low U.S. munitions on Biden giving “massive amounts” of Tomahawks to “P.T. Barnum,” his name for Zelenskyy. Oh, the projection.

But here are the facts: the U.S. has NEVER sent Ukraine a single Tomahawk. Not one. The reason we are low on munitions is entirely due to Trump’s failed war in Iran.

Europe Is Pushing Back

Kaja Kallas, Vice-President of the European Commission: Pressure “the aggressor to stop the war, not the victim to surrender.”

Mette Frederiksen, Prime Minister of Denmark, on Starshield: “If they want to protect NATO, if they want to protect Europe, it has to stay open.”

German Chancellor Merz rejected a Witkoff and Kushner plan to move frozen Russian assets into a Washington-controlled fund. “This is our business, and we decide on it,” he said.

When Sky News asked Zelenskyy whether Trump is making him a scapegoat for low polls and high diesel prices, Zelenskyy smiled and said, “This is my answer.”

Ukraine also launched around 350 drones into Russia. Strikes hit Moscow-region warehouses and reportedly another Yandex data center. Ukraine’s Navy says Neptunes destroyed 6 Su-34s at Borisoglebsk. Russian drones hit ships off Romania and Bulgaria, with at least 2 dead and 19 missing.

Iran Escalates

Overnight, Iran fired anti-ship missiles and Shahed-136s toward port anchorages at Sharjah, Ras Al Khaimah and Jebel Ali, leaving Emirates flights circling off Dubai. Iran’s forces are on their highest alert for 72 hours. The IRGC also struck a tanker in the Gulf of Oman. About 30 tankers have been hit since October 5.

After 5 days of missile tests, U.S. and Israeli reports suggest Iran’s launcher stockpile may now exceed prewar levels. Iran says it’s identified about $2 trillion in U.S.-linked regional assets and has threatened undersea Internet cables. Brent crude surged to $110, and jet fuel scarcity is coming next.

Per CNN, the Pentagon has now drafted options to drop a MOAB (Mother of All Bombs) on Iranian sites as a “fireworks show” before a possible withdrawal. Trump told Newsmax it’s “like a tiny nuclear bomb.”

By the way, back home, wholesale inflation is at 6.3%. Mortgages are near 7.5%. And U.S. import and export prices today have surged above expectations. Import prices are up 8.1% year over year. Export prices are up 11.6% year over year.

Palestinian Villagers and a Jewish American Journalist Attacked in the West Bank

Violent, masked Israeli occupiers attacked Palestinian villagers near Abu Falah in the West Bank earlier, setting olive groves on fire and hurling rocks. Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine, a Jewish American, was brutally attacked by these so-called “settlers.”

“They just kept kicking me and kicking me, like probably 50 times,” she said.

She is now recovering in the hospital.

Levine was wearing visible markings identifying her as press. The Washington Post says they are outraged by the attack, which was caught on video. Levine was there to photograph was was supposed to be a peaceful olive harvest before it was stormed by the masked attackers.

Netanyahu’s response was horrifying. He called the facts “unclear” and described Levine as “allegedly assaulted,” despite the whole thing being caught on video. He recast the attack as a two-sided confrontation between some 200 “Arabs and far-left activists” and about 40 Israeli youths and warned against using “disputed incidents” to demonize “settlers.”

There is nothing to debate here. The footage is out there for all to see. And the Post has reported extensively on what happened.Other Loyalists Sliding Out…

Kristi Noem’s envoy status for her fake Shield of the Americas position quietly expired last month. She’s now been shuffled to a new gig: senior adviser to Deputy Secretary Christopher Landau.

Kimberly Guilfoyle is not getting a pleasant exit from Greece. Greece’s president is refusing to hold the customary farewell they normally do when an ambassador exits.

Canada Isn’t Backing Down

This cover of The Economist is sure to drive Trump nuts: Mark Carney shows middle powers how to handle a dangerous world

canadian flagCarney on U.S. Ambassador to Canada Hoekstra’s “election interference” claims: “He’s wrong.”

At an Alberta rally, the crowd erupted when he said the Pacific Link pipeline would reduce Canada’s dependence on the U.S.

Carney: "Careful. They might think that's election interference. They're a little touchy down there. We're not. We're getting on with it."

A few more notes…

  • Kid Rock had an awful and bigoted appearance on Fox earlier
  • Sen. Dan Sullivan, getting pummeled in the Alaska U.S. Senate debate, accused Mary Peltola of getting the debate questions early. Her reply: “It’s called being prepared.”
  • Judge Reyes dismissed Trump’s suit against NYC’s sanctuary laws and found 2 federal immigration statutes unconstitutional
  • Trump called Alito a “great man” when sharing Politico’s retirement story and said he wants to confirm a new justice before Democrats can block one. If Democrats take control of the Senate, they should definitely refuse any nominees. Mitch McConnell set the precedent.
  • RFK Jr. said if Americans can’t afford ribeye anymore, they can skip it and try other, cheaper cuts, before saying ribeye was his personal favorite
  • The administration finalized a rule letting hunters bait bears with donuts and bacon grease in Alaska.

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Trump “Freakout” Rocks White House, Musk Tries to Buy Texas, Fox News Turns on Zacharia, Musk Exposed in New Documentary, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 16, 2026. Before anything else, my heart goes out to the families in Bend, Oregon. Three young children and a teacher were killed at their elementary school yesterday, and I’m thinking about that community this morning.

It’s been another chaotic news day. Trump reportedly blew up yesterday after one of his aides printed out a Politico story about him looking to replace his chief of staff, and the White House is now “in a state of panic.” Sean Hannity also turned on Trump’s new press secretary on live TV, which tells you a lot about where things stand inside that building. On Ukraine, Trump said Zelensky is “more difficult to deal with than Putin,” and Reuters is reporting that the order to slow down Ukraine’s military Starlink came from inside the White House. As you all know, that one hits close to home for me.

And then there’s Elon Musk. The New York Times found that most of the money behind Ken Paxton’s Senate campaign in Texas traces back to him, $158 million and counting. I heard Musk fans are mad at me, so I’m interviewing Alex Gibney, the director of the new Musk documentary he wants you to never see. Musk can spend hundreds of millions trying to buy elections and drown out the truth, but he can’t buy this newsletter, and he can’t buy you.

I don’t have a billionaire backing me. I have you. If you want to make sure this work keeps going no matter who gets angry about it, please subscribe today. Every single subscription keeps me independent and helps me keep holding the most powerful people in the world accountable:

Here’s everything you need to know today.

Trump “Blew Up” Over Wiles Report as White House Panics and Hannity Turns on Zacharia

Trump “blew up” after aide Natalie Harp printed out Politico’s Playbook report about Susie Wiles’ future and handed it to him, according to Politico. Two people with knowledge of what happened told Politico that Harp, 35, printed the newsletter for the president to read Thursday morning. Three people described what followed as a “freakout,” as Trump reacted to more bad headlines about his chief of staff. The report described Trump privately calling allies to ask who should replace Wiles, whom he has nicknamed his “Ice Maiden.” Harp is known inside the White House as the “human printer” because she prints articles and online comments for Trump, and she reportedly has had tension with Wiles for months. After reading the story, Trump made more calls to allies about Wiles, according to a person with direct knowledge.

The White House is “in a state of panic” as Wiles, right, scrambles to save her job, according to a person close to the president. Wiles and her allies have been “burn[ing] up phones around town” to calm things down, people susie wiles linked infamiliar with the situation told Politico. “Susie is looking over her shoulder, trying to solicit people to go out and say good things about her and her team and make it seem like everything is fine. It’s not,” the person close to Trump said. New reporting from the New York Times is unlikely to help. The Times detailed more of the work Wiles’ daughter, Katie Wiles, has done for Republika Srpska, the pro-Russian Serb territory in Bosnia and Herzegovina, including visits to a gas pipeline there with a Texas energy executive. Two Wiles allies, former White House aide James Blair and former Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita, have also been tied to work for the territory, and one adviser accused “Susie’s cadre” of “monetizing [Trump’s] ecosystem pretty dramatically.”

Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton is now being floated as a possible replacement for Wiles, adding to a growing list of contenders. Politico reported that Trump is weighing several names, including Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, special envoy Steve Witkoff, housing chief Bill Pulte, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and New York Yankees president Randy Levine. The Washington Post reports that rumors of Wiles’ exit have set off a fierce fight among rivals, with Miller, Pulte and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin reportedly positioning themselves for the job. Some of the allies Trump has called have been happy to criticize Wiles, with one Republican strategist telling Politico, “She’s burned a lot of people.” Many in the West Wing saw Trump’s decision to hire Katie Zacharia as press secretary without consulting Wiles as a direct shot at his chief of staff. Wiles has said she has no plans to leave anytime soon.

The White House and Trump are flatly denying the reports, even as the stories keep coming. White House spokesperson Danielle Alvarez called Politico’s latest report “an unbelievably stupid and false claim from yet another anonymous ‘source.’” “Nobody read the story and freaked out because, frankly, nobody reads Politico in the first place,” Alvarez said, ending her statement with “FAKE NEWS POLITICO!” Trump himself denied that any of the reported calls happened, calling the report “TOTAL FAKE NEWS.” “Susie Wiles is my loyal and longest serving Chief of Staff,” Trump said, adding that she has his “COMPLETE confidence.” The turmoil comes less than three weeks before the Nov. 3 midterms, with Democrats holding a 9-point lead on the generic ballot.

Sean Hannity, one of Trump’s closest media allies, grilled Zacharia on Fox News Thursday night, and critics across the spectrum said she’s “cooked.” Hannity had first defended her 14-minute debut briefing, where she took only three questions, as “perfectly normal,” but this time he called it “widely panned” and asked whether she was blaming staff for not preparing her. He also pressed her on describing herself as a lawyer even though she failed the bar exam, and she admitted she never took it again. When Hannity cited a report of 15 social media posts in which she called herself an attorney, Zacharia dismissed them as retweets and said she had consulted legal professionals about using the term “lawyer.” Journalists like Yashar Ali and Semafor’s Max Tani noted that Hannity knows Trump watches his show, and Ali said it was hard to imagine Hannity taking that tone unless he knew Trump was fine with it or wanted it. Even MAGA commentator Ian Miles Cheong said, “Sean Hannity just ended Katie Zacharia’s entire career.”

Trump Says Zelensky Is “More Difficult to Deal With Than Putin” as Reuters Reports Starlink Order Came From Inside the White House

 

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelinsky: Does he

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelinsky: Does he "hold the cards?"

Trump called Ukraine’s renewed strikes on Russian oil refineries a “disgrace” and said Zelensky is harder to deal with than Vladimir Putin. “If you tell me that Zelenskyy is again shooting at refineries, all he’s doing is making the world oil price higher,” Trump told Newsmax on Thursday night. “I think that’s a disgrace. There’s plenty of other targets; they don’t have to hit.” Trump also said he is “not a big fan of Zelensky” and that the Ukrainian leader is “not a good guy for us to deal with.” “He says he wants to settle, but he doesn’t,” Trump said, adding, “I find Zelenskyy to be more difficult to deal with than Putin.” The Kremlin quickly sided with Trump, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying it was clear that “Zelenskyy doesn’t want to take responsibility and move toward a peaceful resolution.”

russian flag wavingTrump’s anger is tied to his diesel deal with Russia and the gas prices threatening Republicans ahead of the midterms. Zelensky had paused strikes on Russian refineries for three days at Trump’s request for an “energy ceasefire,” but resumed them Thursday because Russia never stopped hitting Ukraine’s power grid. Moscow has said it never agreed to the ceasefire in the first place. Last week, Trump struck a deal to import Russian diesel, reversing years of U.S. policy, and Ukraine’s refinery strikes threaten Russia’s ability to deliver it. Trump blames the strikes for high fuel prices, but experts say the spike is mainly the result of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, which has largely shut the Strait of Hormuz. Zelensky called the diesel deal a gift to Putin and “weak,” and Trump has since called for Zelensky’s ouster and new elections in Ukraine.

The order to slow Ukraine’s military satellite service came from inside the White House, according to an exclusive Reuters report. Two U.S. officials and a Western official told Reuters that Pentagon leaders received ukraine flaga message from the White House saying the SpaceX Starshield service for Ukraine’s military needed to be slowed. The officials did not say who in the White House made the decision. Ukrainian officials said the restrictions disrupted strike missions and slowed interceptor drones used to shoot down Russian Shahed drones, and several deadly Russian strikes hit Ukraine Tuesday night with no advance warning. A senior U.S. official said “no such request was ever made by the president,” and the White House didn’t answer whether anyone else in the administration made it. Elon Musk has said decisions on Starshield limits are up to the U.S. military or the president, and a senior Ukrainian official said Kyiv was told directly that it was a White House decision.

Zelensky was in Brussels on Friday rallying European support and thanking “real leaders” as his relationship with Trump falls apart. He arrived at an EU summit alongside European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa. “Of course we supported President Trump’s energy ceasefire but we’ve seen that Russia did not respect it, not a single minute,” von der Leyen said, adding that sanctions on Russia “have to increase.” Costa said “this is no time to withdraw support” from Ukraine and “no time to relieve Russian sanctions,” a clear contrast to Trump’s diesel deal. The summit is focused on funding Ukraine and helping it survive a fifth winter of full-scale war, as Russian attacks continue to target its energy and water infrastructure. Overnight, a Russian drone strike killed several people in Kharkiv, and about 270,000 households in the Volyn region lost power, while Zelensky said Starlink speeds still haven’t fully returned.

Musk Documentary Paints a Damning Portrait as His Money Props Up Ken Paxton in Texas

Alex Gibney’s new documentary “Musk” paints Elon Musk as a man who sees other people as characters in his own video game, according to a review in The New Republic. The film, from the director of “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” and “Going Clear,” runs nearly four hours with an intermission. Musk refused to be interviewed and instead called Gibney a “douche” on X, so Gibney built a database of Musk’s recorded interviews and created a computer-generated Musk avatar that “answers” questions using things Musk has actually said. The device plays on Musk’s long-held belief that life is probably a simulation, and the film portrays him as the main character in a digital world where everyone else is a “non-player character.” Reviewer David Klion describes the portrait that emerges as one of “an empty, hateful, emotionally stunted man” whose two superpowers are shameless self-promotion and an ability to exploit weaknesses in government regulation. The central question of the film, Klion writes, is how someone like Musk gained such immense power and “what does it say about the rest of us that we allowed it to happen?”

The documentary traces the damage Musk has done, from Tesla’s self-driving crashes to the dismantling of USAID, and includes his power over Ukraine’s battlefield through Starlink. Gibney interviews more than a dozen people, including Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard, Musk’s ex-wife Justine, Ashley St. Clair, former USAID chief Samantha Power and members of Musk’s own family. The film highlights a Florida lawyer suing Tesla over its self-driving cars, which have been involved in at least 60 deaths. It also covers Musk’s gutting of the federal government through DOGE, and Power chokes up on camera describing the suffering caused to the world’s poorest people when USAID was dismantled. Gibney shows how Musk built ties with Trump, Argentina’s Javier Milei, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan to expand businesses like Starlink, which lets him “sway the battlefields of Ukraine by denying or granting access.” St. Clair, the mother of one of his 14 known children, says on camera that she refused to sign a nondisclosure agreement she claims Musk has offered other women and details the harassment she has faced since speaking out.

Most of the money behind Ken Paxton’s Texas Senate campaign can be traced to Musk, who gave $158 million to a super PAC that immediately sent the same amount to a pro-Paxton group, according to the New York Times. Campaign finance filings show Musk gave the Senate Leadership Fund $75 million on Sept. 9 and $83 million on Sept. 23. Each time, the very next day, the super PAC sent a check for the exact same amount to Texas PAC, a group it set up to support Paxton. Musk also gave $10 million to a separate pro-Paxton super PAC that started running TV ads in late August, and his midterm donations now total at least $276 million, making him the biggest known donor this cycle. Musk, who lives in Austin, has long been allied with Paxton, who as Texas attorney general regulates Musk’s businesses in the state. The money has kept Paxton competitive even though he has been vastly outraised by Democrat James Talarico, who has criticized billionaires like Musk on the campaign trail and has been the target of several recent attacks from Musk on X.

Musk settled the last two lawsuits over his $1 million voter giveaways from the 2024 election, ending a two-year legal fight, according to CNN. In the final stretch of the 2024 race, Musk’s America PAC gave away $1 million a day to registered voters in battleground states while Musk urged people to vote for Trump. Voters later filed proposed class-action fraud lawsuits claiming Musk tricked them into thinking they had a fair shot at the money, which required handing over their personal data to his political group. Musk had said the winners would be picked “randomly,” but his lawyers later admitted in court that winners were “not chosen by chance” and were instead picked based on whether they would make good spokespeople for the pro-Trump super PAC. The terms of the settlements were not disclosed, and Musk and America PAC deny wrongdoing. The Justice Department warned Musk in 2024 that the giveaways could violate federal vote-buying laws, and Wisconsin’s bipartisan election commission concluded this year that he likely broke state law with similar giveaways in a 2025 judicial race, though prosecutors declined to bring charges.

Settlers Attack Olive Harvesters and a Washington Post Journalist in the West Bank as Iran Warns of the War’s Lasting Damage

Masked Israeli settlers armed with clubs attacked Palestinian olive harvesters in the occupied West Bank village of Abu Falah, and a Washington Post journalist was beaten, according to a reporter who was there. Journalist Jasper Nathaniel told Al Jazeera that settlers gathered on a hilltop near an outpost, put on masks and then charged down at the farmers, throwing stones and using slingshots. As the clash escalated and tear gas filled the area, a pickup truck carrying at least two settlers with machine guns sped down the hill, and the settlers opened fire. In the chaos, Washington Post reporter Heidi Levine fell, and Nathaniel said he saw people “beating her, clubbing her, robbing her, pulling her up, beating her again and kicking her.” When the Israeli army arrived, soldiers fired and used tear gas, and a canister struck a Palestinian man in the leg, and he and Levine were both taken to a hospital in Ramallah. Nathaniel, who has reported from the West Bank for three years, said settler violence is likely “at or near an all-time high right now.”

Qatar’s prime minister visited Lebanon and said Israeli violations and the escalating conflict there dominated his talks. Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani said the discussions covered “the assault on the peacekeeping forces as well as the Israeli violations within the Lebanese territories.” He called for full implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, the 2006 agreement that ended the war between Israel and Hezbollah. That resolution called for Israel to fully withdraw from Lebanon, Hezbollah to disarm and only Lebanon’s army and U.N. peacekeepers to operate in southern Lebanon. He also announced that Qatar Energy plans to build a “massive” solar plant in Lebanon, which has struggled through severe energy crises. Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam thanked Qatar for standing by Lebanon “in some of our darkest hours,” including after the 2006 war.

Iran’s president warned that the war’s environmental damage will be paid for by future generations, as tensions continue at sea. Speaking in Armenia at an environment conference, President Masoud Pezeshkian urged the international community “to pay more serious attention to the environmental impacts of military conflicts.” Iran’s navy also said a “violating tanker” caught fire in the Sea of Oman, though it gave few details. Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran is concerned about growing U.S. influence in the region, pointing to the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, a U.S.-backed trade corridor through southern Armenia. Araghchi said Tehran has been assured that “Armenia will not take any action against the security of Iran.” He added that Iran will keep consulting with Armenian officials.

Other news:

Three children, ages 5, 8 and 11, and a teacher were killed in Thursday’s shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, and police say a community member killed the 16-year-old suspect. The shooter fired through the school’s locked doors to get inside around 1 p.m. local time, after first firing at a person in a car with a long gun, according to Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz. A community member who saw the suspect enter the school followed him inside and shot him, and officers arrived about three minutes after the first call. A 7-year-old and a 54-year-old teacher were taken to St. Charles Medical Center in critical condition. Police haven’t released the suspect’s name or a motive, and they haven’t said how he got the gun, since Oregon law bars selling firearms to minors. Gov. Tina Kotek praised the community member who “heroically intervened to stop further loss of life,” and all Bend-La Pine schools are closed Friday.

Trump is blaming Sen. John Cornyn and Karl Rove for Ken Paxton’s struggles in the Texas Senate race, which polls show the Republican could lose. In a Truth Social post, Trump accused his fellow Republicans of “doing everything possible to make it hard” for Paxton and said they were working against him “sadly, and very stupidly” out of personal jealousy. “If Ken Paxton loses, it will be because of WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Political Hacks like John Cornyn and Karl Rove, who have ineffectively opposed me for my entire political career,” Trump wrote. He also said the pair were “hurting Texas and, more importantly, hurting the United States of America!” Many Republicans consider Texas a safe seat, but polls show Democratic nominee James Talarico with a slight lead over Paxton, who has been the state’s attorney general since 2015. A Paxton loss would be a major blow to Trump and the GOP, since Democrats haven’t won a Senate race in Texas since 1988.

Pope Leo XIV is showing “continued improvement” after lung cancer surgery and will make his first public appearance Sunday, the Vatican says. Doctors removed the lower lobe of the 71-year-old pope’s right lung on Oct. 13 after finding a suspected cancerous nodule, and the surgery confirmed adenocarcinoma, the most common type of lung cancer. His doctors said his recovery now lets him “carry out his normal daily activities completely on his own,” and he presided over Mass in a hospital chapel on Friday. The Vatican also published the list of journalists flying with him on his Nov. 6-17 trip to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru, a sign the trip is still planned. Still, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin raised eyebrows by suggesting the pope may need to “adjust his pontificate.” Doctors are still waiting on tests to learn whether the cancer has spread and whether more treatment is needed.

Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan broke with Trump on his Russian diesel deal during a heated debate against Democrat Mary Peltola in one of the country’s most closely watched Senate races. “I just led the effort on a Russia sanctions act that passed the Congress, so I’m opposed to that,” Sullivan said, joining other Republicans in tight races who have been distancing themselves from the administration. He also criticized the Pentagon’s now-scrapped plan to livestream Nidal Hasan’s execution, saying it would “create more terrorists.” Peltola tied the Iran war to rising prices at home and hit Sullivan for getting “richer every single one of” his 12 years in Washington. Sullivan attacked Peltola over her lobbying work and a New York Times report on turmoil in her congressional office, which she called “mass exaggerations of the truth.” NBC News rates the race a toss-up, and Peltola led Sullivan 49.5% to 41.4% in August’s all-party primary, even though Trump won Alaska by double digits in 2024.

A Norwegian teenager was sentenced to 20 years in prison for traveling to the U.K. to carry out a contract killing for a crime gang linked to Iran. Johannes Kongsnes Natland, now 19, was convicted in July of conspiracy to murder after agreeing to shoot an unknown target for 25,000 euros. He was arrested at a hotel in Huddersfield, England, with two guns and ammunition two days after arriving in the country. He was recruited while playing an online game by the Foxtrot Network, a Swedish organized crime group that London police say has ties to the Iranian government. Natland claimed he didn’t want to go through with it, but the judge said he “pursued it, despite numerous opportunities to extricate yourself.” The U.K. sanctioned the Foxtrot Network last year over violence against Jewish and Israeli targets in Europe carried out on behalf of the Iranian regime.

Istanbul has been hit by its worst floods in more than 80 years, and at least four people have died. Turkey’s largest city, home to 16 million people, got more rain in 48 hours than it usually gets in September and October combined, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency. “We are experiencing the biggest flood disaster since 1942,” Interior Minister Mustafa Ciftci said. The body of a 66-year-old man was found under a bridge Friday, and a teenager was among the earlier victims after being electrocuted during the storm. Homes and businesses flooded, cars were swept away and piled up at the bottom of hills, and officials have received nearly 10,000 damage reports. Turkey’s environment minister, who will chair the U.N.’s COP31 climate conference next month, linked the floods to climate change and said fighting it “is not a choice, but a necessity.”

A fast-moving brush fire in western Malibu has burned 200 acres and forced evacuations amid hot, windy conditions. The Bryson Fire started just before 5 p.m. Thursday in the Santa Monica Mountains near the Ventura County line and was 0% contained as of Thursday night. Evacuation orders were issued for the Encinal Canyon area, and nearby areas including Zuma Beach are under evacuation warnings. “It’s really windy, and it’s really scary to see this happening again,” said one evacuee who lost her home in the 2018 Woolsey Fire. No structures have been lost and no injuries have been reported, and more than 300 firefighters are on the fire, backed by aircraft that can fly at night. A red flag warning remains in effect for much of Los Angeles and Ventura counties until 8 p.m. Saturday, and the cause of the fire is still unknown.

Special Report:

jonathan v last jvl triad logo

The Triad via The Bulwark, Opinion: The Tigers-Eating-Faces Party Is Real, Jonathan V. Last, above, Oct. 16, 2026. And it’s way creepier than you think.

1. The Tiger King

Three days ago the president of the United States posted a snuff film.

On October 10 a mentally troubled man visiting the Yorkshire Wildlife Park climbed into a tiger’s enclosure. The tiger killed him. Onlookers recorded the mauling. Somehow this video made it to the retinas of America’s commander-in-chief, who was, presumably, taking a short break from losing his war against Iran.

President Trump then shared this footage with the world.

One minute later—literally, a single minute—the president posted another video. This one was a medley of tigers and lions mauling people. I wonder how Trump had this video so close at hand. Maybe it was in his favorites. Maybe in a special folder.

At least three of these five clips were AI-generated. Here’s another question: Did the president of the United States know that this video, which he had—miraculously! right there!—was half-fake?

Time passed. Seven hours later President Trump posted a third video. This one was entirely AI-generated. It began with Trump in the same position as the dead Englishman, sitting while a tiger pawed at him.

Only in this video Donald Trump feints a smack at the tiger, jumps up from his sitting position, chases the tiger across the grass, tackles it, forces it to submit, and finally stands up, raising the tiger on its hind legs to join him in a bro-hug.

Just two kings of the jungle, having a good time. Though one of them is clearly dominant.

I hope you enjoyed this little excursion through the psyche of the man who controls America’s nuclear arsenal.

But as we often say around here: Just wait. It gets worse. SO MUCH worse.

2. Shark Week

Trump has a fetish for powerful animals. Once upon a time, way back in 2007, when he could still get it to half-mast, Trump summoned the porn star Stormy Daniels to his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Daniels said she had previously had sex with Trump after he suggested to her that doing so could help her career. Daniels arrived at the bungalow prepared for, well, who can say. She’s a woman of the world. You work it out.

stormy daniels 60 minutes cbs

Here’s how Daniels, shown above, described the encounter in a 2018 interview with 60 Minutes:

Stormy Daniels: I remember arriving, and he was watching Shark Week. He made me sit and watch an entire documentary about shark attacks.

Anderson Cooper: It wasn’t at that point a business meeting, it was just watching Shark Week.

Stormy Daniels: Yeah.

Anderson Cooper: Did you have sex with him again?

Stormy Daniels: No.

Anderson Cooper: Did he want to?

Stormy Daniels: Yes.

Anderson Cooper: How do you know he wanted to?

Stormy Daniels: Because he came and sat next to me and, you know, touched my hair, and put his hand on my leg, and r-- referenced back to how great it was the last time.

Anderson Cooper: How did you get out of it?

Stormy Daniels: Well, I’d been there for, like, four hours. And so I then was like, “Well, before, you know, can we talk about what’s the development?” And he was like, “I’m almost there. I’ll have an answer for you next week.” And I was like, “Okay, cool. Well -- I guess call me next week.” And I just took my purse and left.

He summoned a porn star. Forced her to watch FOUR HOURS of shark attacks with him. And then tried to get it on.

I’m not even 1/16th of a psychologist. But c’mon. 🤔

This is an administration driven by the psychosexual urges of some very weird dudes.

  • The president wants to watch apex predators attacking.
  • jd vance oThe soft, beardo vice president, right, can’t stop talking about how gay other guys are.
  • The secretary of defense frequently rants about fatties, trannies, and beardos. He has instituted a regime to test the testosterone levels of the men under him. Also, he wears a great deal of makeup.
  • The secretary of health and human services is a dom daddy with an interest in felching.
  • The president’s biggest donor is trying to breed as many women as possible in the name of saving Western civilization from genetic dilution.
  • And all of that is aside from the Epstein stuff, and the sex trafficking, and the garish plastic surgery, and the monomaniacal obsession with transsexuality.

It’s enough to make you long for the relative normalcy of J. Edgar Hoover’s crossdressing.¹

As Frank Underwood once explained, everything is about sex, except for sex. Which is about power.

There are many lenses you can use to make sense of this administration. Racism explains a lot of it. Money explains a lot of it. Psychosexual compulsions do, too.

Trump Team Lets Fly Mutual Allegations of Corruption 

Emptywheel, Analysis and Opinion: Knives Out! Habba versus Grenell and Zampolli versus Landau and Guilfoyle versus Everyone and Everyone versus Wiles, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, Ph.D), right, marcy wheelerOct. 15, 2026. I’m not sure if there’s one precipitating factor causing the flood of nasty in-fighting among Trump’s top people — though Serbia and Venezuela appear to be hot-buttons. But I do know it has gotten hard to keep track of.

Kimberly Guilfoyle

Start with Kimberly Guilfoyle. The source of her downfall is a guy named Eric Deters, who had paid Guilfoyle some ton of money to get an extradition, to get little in return. WSJ had a slew of stories, of which most aired that Deters’ complaints.

  • September 25: The Mystery Man Shadowing Kimberly Guilfoyle as She Pushes Deals Across Europe
  • October 7: ‘Honey Please’: Kimberly Guilfoyle Pushed Donor to Wire $100,000 to Her Amex Account
  • October 10: At Davos, Kimberly Guilfoyle Boasted of Private Jet Trips, Luxury Stays
  • October 13: Kimberly Guilfoyle Resigns as U.S. Ambassador to Greece
  • October 13: Inside Kimberly Guilfoyle’s Final Days as Ambassador to Greece
  • Don’t miss The Bulwark’s interviews with Deters (one, two), in which Sam Stein asks Deters if he isn’t sort of extorting everyone here.

After Guilfoyle’s resignation, the Daily Mail reminded that it had busted up the Guilfoyle-Don Jr relationship in the first place and quoted some Trumpsters imagining that Guilfoyle may exact her revenge.

Allies of the president are said to be relieved that Guilfoyle is leaving her post, but insiders have warned the Trump family may not have heard the last of her.

‘Having her back in America would be a nightmare. Kimberly knows where the bodies are buried. She knows the people, the secrets, the fights, the relationships,’ one source told the Daily Mail.

‘Nobody wants an angry Kimberly back home with nothing to lose.’

Her firing now raises the prospect of her former fiancé Don Jr and the rest of the Trump family and their cronies facing that fallout.

I’d love to see it. Guilfoyle knows where a lot of bodies are buried. Remember, she played a key role in the insurrection in 2020!

But sadly, I don’t think she has the talent to negotiate the criminal legal exposure to do that.

James Blair and Chris LaCivita

Meanwhile, NYT revealed that after James Blair had left the White House in order to try to salvage the midterms for the GOP, he and Chris LaCivita were instead in Serbia helping pro-Russian

  • October 6: Amid Midterm Crunch, Trump Advisers Took Time to Help Russia-Aligned Government

Buried in that first story and a number of follow-ups was the detail that Susie Wiles’ daughter was also in Serbia making bank.

Sadly, I don’t think the prospect of top Trump aides cashing in on helping Russian puppets was a problem for Trump. As the story mentioned, though mostly in passing, Don Jr has been cozying up to the same people. I think the problem is that Republicans are facing disaster and … Blair is nowhere to be seen. Or rather, is seen someplace where he’ll be of little use to the GOP, unless they’re trading work in Serbia for Russian interference in the US.

That led a lot of the endangered Republicans to bitch and bitch.

And so Trump played dumb about the disclosure, claiming he might fire them.

We’ve seen this play before with Paul Manafort, among others. I doubt much will come of it.

Alina Habba and Ric Grenell

Then there’s Alina Habba and Ric Grenell. On Monday, NYT explained some of the mystery behind Habba’s marriage to a much younger billionaire Turkish dude, Turhan Mildon.

  • October 12: A Trump Loyalist, a Turkish Investor and a Battle for Wealth and Influence

While both deny there’s anything utilitarian about this marriage, the story describes how Mildon’s cement contract in Venezuela posed a problem.

Before the United States captured Mr. Maduro, aides to Mr. Trump and some U.S. intelligence officials expressed concern about Mr. Mildon’s work with the Maduro government, according to multiple people briefed on the matter. Mr. Mildon had spent months trying to build ties between Alex Saab, one of Mr. Maduro’s closest confidants in Venezuela, and Republicans in Mr. Trump’s orbit. The Trump administration had considered placing sanctions on Mr. Mildon, two people involved in the discussions at the time said.

Once Mr. Maduro was out of the picture, things for Mr. Mildon got even worse.

Until he married Habba, and then Delcy Rodriguez reconsidered terminating his cement contract.

But there was a bright spot: Mr. Mildon had met Ms. Habba, one of Mr. Trump’s most prominent legal defenders. They started dating this year, soon after Mr. Maduro’s downfall. By this past summer, the couple’s burgeoning romance had begun to draw attention. Specifically, it caught the eye of Ms. Rodríguez, according to two people close to her. Mr. Mildon was in a serious relationship with a woman who had high-level access to Mr. Trump — the one person keeping Ms. Rodríguez in power.

Since taking office, Ms. Rodríguez has been trying to balance the interests of the competing MAGA factions, and gauging their relative influence over Mr. Trump. After learning of Mr. Mildon’s powerful allies, she decided to pause her order terminating his cement contracts, allowing him to continue to profit from them, according to people familiar with her thinking

While the NYT does not say definitively who introduced Mildon and Habba (a report when they married said a diplomatic source introduced them, which for a slew of reasons made me wonder if Tom Barrack had) but it implies that Mildon met Habba at some Kennedy Center events back when Ric Grenell — who keeps finding himself on the losing side of Trump’s Venezuelan adventures — ran the joint.

He became a frequent guest at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where he networked with the man in charge of the institution at the time, Richard Grenell. Mr. Grenell was also working as Mr. Trump’s special envoy to Venezuela, and trying to broker Mr. Maduro’s exit from power.

Mr. Grenell introduced Mr. Mildon to some of the MAGA crowd. Mr. Mildon’s spokesman said his client and Ms. Habba had first met at an event at the Kennedy Center in late 2025, and started dating in early 2026.

Just one day later, Axios described a big blow-up between Habba and Grenell over a payment Mildon claims Grenell received but did not deposit.

October 14: Exclusive: White House probes claims of missing Kennedy Center money in “MAGA blood feud”

In the matter of days, Ric Grenell went from chasing the baseless Talarico smear to demanding that Caputo demand proof before posting Habba’s hit job on him.

Update: In a story matching WSJ, NYT reveals Mildon may actually be just 25. Habba is 42.

Paolo Zampolli versus Christopher Landau

Which brings me to Paolo Zampolli — the guy who claims to have introduced Melania and Donald — versus Christopher Landau — the far right Deputy Secretary of State whose father was a diplomat (and who therefore may be one of just a handful of people in the Trump Administration who knows or cares how agencies are supposed to run).

October 15: Nasty email fight between 2 top Trump appointees spills into the open

I have no fucking clue (yet) why we’re getting this now. The Politico story describing it traces a dispute that started last November and continued until this July, when Dan Scavino broke up the fight by putting Sarah Rogers (whose far right shenanigans make her pro-Russian by default) between the two of them. Landau kept trying to rein in Zampolli’s extracurricular activities, and Zampolli kept making it clear that Landau is not the boss of him.

Even though he’s assigned to the State Department, Zampolli, who last year posted on social media that he’s “never had a boss in my life,” has publicly indicated that typical bureaucratic org charts do not apply to him.

“My number-one boss is the president of America,” Zampolli told the Financial Times. “I get my instructions from the White House, Commerce and the Department of War … anything to advance the America First agenda.”

But many of his Instagram posts also appear to provide backup to Landau’s assertions that Zampolli has gone far beyond his remit on cultural issues, including posts of meeting the energy minister of Romania, working on nuclear energy issues in Hungary, attending World Bank/International Monetary Fund meetings, meeting with the United Arab Emirates’ director of foreign direct investment and even discussing with an Argentine official how to send that country’s astronauts to space.

I mean, Zampolli knows the secret that Melania and Donald are hiding about Epstein, so I’m certain Landau is not the boss of Zampolli.

What I find interesting is that, in June, Zampolli reportedly pinned the March NYT story describing how Zampolli got his ex-baby mama deported to Brazil on Landau, which makes zero sense — much of the story seemed sourced to Amanda Ungaro herself, but also to the people at ICE whom Zampolli asked to make it happen. Or possibly Corey Lewandowski.

In one particularly heated exchange on June 19, Zampolli asked State Department Inspector General Arne Baker to investigate Landau, complaining that Landau was restricting his authority. Zampolli asked for a meeting with Baker to discuss his concerns about Landau. (A spokesperson for the inspector general declined to comment on whether any investigation was opened.)

The same day, Zampolli accused Landau of being the source for a New York Times story “that caused irrepable [sic] harm to the First Lady and to my family.” He doesn’t cite the Times story. But several months earlier in March, the Times reported that during a custody battle, Zampolli had asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport Amanda Ungaro, the mother of Zampolli’s son, to Brazil, to help him gain custody of their teenage son. The story mentions Melania Trump in passing. Zampolli denied that he ever asked ICE to detain Ungaro.

As I said, that makes zero sense and it makes less sense that Zampolli would wait three months to try to pin it on Landau and it would take four more months — until right before the GOP gets hammered in midterms — for a story told to 16 different people on an email chain would get told.

But it’s that kind of fortnight, I guess.

Incidentally, Zampolli is also being sued by a woman who claims he raped her in October 2023.

Update: Oh. This is why this got aired in the press.

Susie Wiles

Which brings us, finally, the a Politico Playbook piece today describing that Trump is entertaining replacing Susie Wiles (who, by the way, I had thought was leaving after the election anyway).

October 15: Trump’s ice maiden is under fire

It includes some names of insane people and some names of people who’d be insane replacements for Wiles.

Trump has floated several people who could replace Wiles as chief of staff: The senior elected Republican official said the president had mentioned Stephen Miller, his deputy chief of staff, and Randy Levine, the president of the New York Yankees, as an outside-the-building option.

Trump is also considering Steve Witkoff, Bill Pulte and Kevin McCarthy, people close to the president told us. Allies of McCarthy, the former House speaker, have been arguing that he could help Trump handle a hostile Democratic Congress.

But they key part is someone appears to have leveraged Susie’s daughter, Katie’s, corruption in Serbia to put a target on Susie.

Trump has bristled at recent reports showing several longtime advisers are profiting from foreign consulting business, including top Wiles allies James Blair and Chris LaCivita(see the NYT). Katie Wiles, the chief of staff’s daughter, was reported (see the FT) to be representing Republika Srpska, the pro-Russian, semi-autonomous Bosnian Serb territory for which Blair and LaCivita also did work. Trump was not previously aware of Katie Wiles’ foreign work and rivals of Susie Wiles have made sure the headlines surrounding her daughter reached the president, one person close to the president said.

“Susie has this whole cadre of people that have been found to have been monetizing his ecosystem pretty dramatically,” a senior outside adviser told Playbook.

As I noted yesterday, some of the people most responsible for the ass-handing that Republicans are about to suffer are attempting to dodge the blame even while making juvenile efforts to stave it off.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

 

djt heather delaney reese while djt sleeps they stealHope for America, Opinion: Trump again claims Canada will be the 51st state at his Arizona rally, Heather Delaney Reese, above, Oct. 16, 2026. Listen nowTrump again claims Canada will be the 51st state at his Arizona rally.

At 1:04 yesterday afternoon, Donald Trump landed in Arizona aboard Qatari Air Force One. Within minutes, he was preparing to tell another crowd that his followers would be okay if he murdered someone, that he had “aced” another cognitive exam, and that Canada would become the 51st state. He talked about Greenland and Venezuela as though sovereign nations were additions to hispersonal collection. Then he said, “Leakers should be shot… In the old days, we used to shoot leakers,” before pointing at the reporters and calling them leakers. At one point, just one of these statements from a president would have been a major issue. What I struggle with most now is how familiar it all feels. We hear another threat, another fantasy of conquest, another search for “wiggle room” to serve a third term, and we know something equally sinister may overtake it in the headlines tomorrow.

While he stood there promising things nobody had ever seen before, Ukrainians were dealing with another devastating Russian attack. At least 39 missiles and 128 drones had been launched at their cities, at least 9 people were killed, and more than 600,000 were left without power. The Starlink communications systems their defenders depended on had been blocked. Asked whether Trump had betrayed him, Volodymyr Zelensky said, “I am sure they knew what they did, absolutely.” Elon Musk said Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government, with limits ultimately decided by POTUS. We have watched this building for years, and now we are watching a president show his loyalty to the aggressor while an ally struggles to defend itself. I keep thinking about the responsibility the presidency once carried. Roosevelt was far from perfect, but after Pearl Harbor he understood that millions of lives depended on the decisions he made. He spoke about danger and sacrifice with the seriousness they deserved. We used to assume that, regardless of party, a president understood that the office was bigger than himself.

Donald Trump did not break the presidency; he revealed how little we were protecting it. This is also on the members of Congress who enabled him, the Supreme Court that granted broad immunity for official acts, and the people who keep defending cruelty and division.

Watching him now, I worry about children growing up believing this is simply what a president is: someone who threatens journalists, talks about conquering countries, and shows loyalty to dictators. We cannot let that become the permanent baseline. People are already standing up at public events, sometimes at great personal risk, to make their opposition known. Not everyone can take those same risks, but we can vote. We can turn out for the midterms and begin putting a stop to this destruction. Future generations need to know that when our country needed us, we stood up together and did something about it.

We are living through a pivotal moment for our country, and my goal is to reach as many people as possible with clear, factual information about what is happening. The more people who understand what is unfolding, the better our chances of pushing back against chaos, cruelty, and corruption ahead of the midterms.

  

This is an image President Trump posted on portraying himself as celebrating (using the dance moves of a favorite song,This is an image President Trump posted on portraying himself as celebrating (using the dance moves of a favorite song, "YMCA," by the disco group "The Village People")the destruction of Iran's Karg Island in the Strait of Hormuz on Aug. 30, 2026 -- a claim he reinforced with a statement shown below but which was refuted by other sources.  

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Oct. 16, 2026 [Single Party Corruption?], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 16, 2026. There is an old saying about rats and sinking ships. There’s also an old saying about how a democratic system taken over by a single party quickly becomes corrupt because the ruling party lacks oversight. 

Then, as corruption becomes the party’s driving force, the only people willing to work for it are either corrupt themselves or so unqualified they support the corrupt leadership to gain power, knowing that in a merit-based system it would be entirely out of their reach.

OK, that second old saying is shared mostly among political scientists, but it’s accurate, and it’s right up there with the rats and the ships to describe what’s happening in Trump’s orbit now.

The saga of Kimberly Guilfoyle, who was recently forced to resign from her post as U.S. Ambassador to Greece, continues to expand. Guilfoyle left her post after news broke that she had tried to get a donor, Eric Deters, to pay down her credit card debt. She and her lawyers countered the story by claiming Deters was withholding money she had earned, and said the text messages he shared with news outlets were false.

Guilfoyle dated Don Jr. from 2018 to 2024 and was engaged to him the last four years of that time. Now there are rumors that during her time inside the family as a trusted loyalist, she kept a “burn book” about the family.

While that may or may not be true, the fact that there’s such a threat out there reflects the cracking loyalties of Trump insiders. More to the point might be the video released today by Deters himself, saying that he had launched a lawsuit against Guilfoyle for defamation and that he would depose her and Don Jr. and demand subpoenas to clear his name. He also vowed to play a 16-minute phone conversation tomorrow that he claims has information which “might just bring down the entire Trump administration, an administration which I have supported from Day One.”

Note that the story of Guilfoyle’s alleged shakedown is breaking now, although it happened more than a year ago.

Also in the category of old stories coming to the surface is one reported yesterday by Marc Caputo of Axios. He wrote that Trump’s former lawyer Alina Habba is saying that another one of Trump’s advisors, Ric Grenell, did not deposit her billionaire husband’s $5.6 million donation to the Kennedy Center. According to Habba, Grenell asked that the donation be routed through a $17.6 million payment for a business deal, an accusation Grenell called “absurd.”

Trump appointed Grenell to be U.S. ambassador to Germany and then acting director of national intelligence during his first term. After retaking office, he named Grenell as a special envoy to Venezuela before putting him in charge of the Kennedy Center.

A fight that has been going on for more than a year in the administration broke into the open this morning in a Politico story by Daniel Lippman. He explained that Trump named Italian Paolo Zampolli, a former modeling agent who introduced Trump to First Lady Melania Trump at a party in New York City, as a special envoy at the State Department with a portfolio of cultural diplomacy. But Zampolli apparently ignored that assignment and struck out on his own on a wide range of issues, infuriating Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau.

“My number-one boss is the president of America,” Zampolli told James Fontanella-Khan of the Financial Times in April. “I get my instructions from the White House, Commerce and the Department of War…anything to advance the America First agenda.” More than 16 administration officials have been included in the angry email chains Zampolli and Landau have exchanged, which at one point led to communications about the fight with a top-level foreign official.

At one point Zampolli accused Landau of leaking to reporters what appeared to be the story that Zampolli had tried to get custody of his son by asking Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to deport Amanda Ungaro, the boy’s mother. That story created its own scandal when Ungaro, a former model, threatened to expose information about the president and first lady. Landau responded to Zampolli’s accusation, which he sent to more than a dozen other officials, saying: “Your threats and accusations are getting more and more bizarre, defamatory, and inappropriate for broad dissemination on email.”

An administration official told Lippman that the State Department was “generally squeaky clean and professional and above it all.” In contrast, these exchanges were “cartoonish and embarrassing.”

By this afternoon, Lippman had a follow-up story: Zampolli had been fired.

It is not just the current associates of the president who are problematic. Today, news broke that two women have named former Republican representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL), along with his friend former Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg and others, in a civil lawsuit, alleging that from 2017 through January 2019, “Gaetz and Greenberg coordinated recruitment, payments, drugs, and travel to obtain commercial sexual acts….”

In 2024, the House Ethics Committee reported that Gaetz “regularly” paid women, as well as a 17-year-old girl, for sex, and bought and used illicit drugs while a member of Congress. Those accusations helped to sink Trump’s nomination of Gaetz for U.S. attorney general in 2025.

Gaetz’s response was hardly a denial: “I look forward to taking the plaintiffs’ depositions because much of the conduct alleged against me is false,” he wrote. “The lawsuit relies almost exclusively on a Congressional Committee Report that didn’t allow me to confront my accusers. Now I will finally have that chance.”

One has to wonder why anyone would want to be part of such a mess, but Trump’s new White House press secretary provides an answer: in a normal administration she would never make it through the door. Trump has described Katie Zacharia as an “attorney,” and she has identified herself as a “general counsel” and seemed to claim she worked as an attorney in China.

But after Judd Legum of Popular Information noted there was no sign she had ever passed the bar exam or been admitted to a state bar, Philip Wegmann and Alexandra Bruell of the Wall Street Journal reported today that, in fact, she failed the California bar exam when she took it. That, itself, is not unusual—the California bar exam is notoriously difficult—but it does mean she is not qualified to call herself an attorney.

Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonpartisan team defending democracy led by attorney Norm Eisen, has asked the State Bar of California and California Attorney General Rob Bonta to investigate whether Zacharia practiced law without a license in California, where doing so is a crime.

Tonight, on his show, Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity seemed to undercut Zacharia, asking her why she had chosen to describe herself as an attorney when she could just have said she “went to Pepperdine Law School and then took a different career path.” Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo noted that Hannity’s stance likely reflected that Trump is turning on her.

Rhein Amacher, the man who started a right-wing media frenzy when he claimed to have proof that Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico had sought mental health treatment in Ohio, backed away from that claim today…sort of. Amid suggestions that he might well have run afoul of HIPAA penalties for trying to obtain health information duplicitously, he posted that “this entire situation has been blown completely out of proportion,” and wrote, “As far as I’m concerned, this matter is closed.” Later, in response to a post saying he had lied, he added: “Never lied, I just doubled down on wrong information.”

A blockbuster story by Jonathan O’Connell, Sarah Blaskey, and Aaron Schaffer of the Washington Post today explained that the administration has been able to keep donations for Trump’s ballroom largely secret by using a nonprofit to collect the donations and then channeling that money “into a White House account the president directly controls.”

The reporters gained access to a list of the 57 donors who have committed to giving $100,000 or more to the project. They found that “the vast majority of the funds raised came from companies and wealthy individuals with interests before the federal government.” Large technology companies Nvidia and Apple committed $25 million each. Microsoft, Palantir, and Lockheed Martin pledged $10 million each.

Individuals on the list who are associated with Trump include Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s son Brandon, chair of investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, who contributed stock worth more than $2.5 million, and the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, Republican donor Joseph Popolo Jr., and his wife, who gave $1 million. Missing from the list is Trump himself, who claimed he would be helping to pay for the project.

Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark was right when she called the ballroom being constructed where the East Wing of the White House used to be “a monument to corruption” built by “a corrupt American president.”

On Tuesday, Charles Gorrivan, Lydia Beyoud, and Nicola M. White of Bloomberg reported that on March 23, a few traders placed billions of dollars of contracts predicting that the price of oil would fall just 15 minutes before Trump posted on his social media platform that he had changed his mind about striking Iranian power plants. The deals were worth billions, and analysts from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) flagged the traders and the deals and sent a referral to the Division of Enforcement to decide whether to open an investigation into insider trading. But in a virtually unheard-of move, the administration asked the CFTC to withdraw the referral.

The journalists note both that there have been many trades apparently tied to Trump’s announcements and that between a 20% cut to CFTC staff during Trump’s second term and the agency chair’s vow to curb “over-zealous regulation,” enforcement actions have dropped dramatically from the numbers during the Biden administration.

Steven Portnoy and Katherine Faulders of ABC News reported today that the White House is claiming that all Trump’s conversations about plans to renovate the Kennedy Center are covered by executive privilege and therefore can be kept secret. This is a dramatic expansion of the concept of executive privilege, which enables the president to shield conversations with key advisors from public scrutiny, extending it to consider virtually all conversations private.

Apparently in anticipation of Democratic investigations, Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a memo as soon as he took office, claiming presidents can shield “presidential communications with private advisers so long as the communications relate to official presidential decisionmaking.”

A new Fox News poll released today showed that voters’ top concern is “corruption in government,” with 88% worried about it compared to 12% who are not. Corruption tops even “inflation and high prices,” which comes in at 85%, and “gas prices,” which concern 83% of voters.

In a conversation with Rob Finnerty of Newsmax, aired tonight, Trump suggested he would pardon everyone in the administration, including himself, to make sure none of the people around him have to “go through years of nonsense, hire lawyers and everything else, all for nothing.”

It is no wonder that Republicans eager to stop Trump are backing Democratic candidates for the midterms. Today 58 Republicans and Independents in New Hampshire declared their support for the Democratic Senate candidate, Representative Chris Pappas, over Republican candidate John Sununu. Those supporters include Don Bolduc, who was Trump’s pick for the Senate in 2022 but who lost to Democrat Maggie Hassan by 9 points after he embraced Trump’s claim to have won the 2020 election.

One of the Republicans supporting Pappas told Kevin Landrigan of the New Hampshire Union Leader: “Donald Trump has turned the Republican Party into something I no longer recognize. 

 

alina habba djt ap

New York Times, Behind a White House Feud That Is Bitter Even by Trump-Era Standards, Tyler Pager and Anatoly Kurmanaev, Oct. 16, 2026 (print ed.). Two Trump allies — Alina Habba Mildon (shown above in an AP file photo in the White House) and Richard Grenell — are locked in a raging dispute that has its roots in the battle for a share of the spoils in Venezuela.

The accusations were shocking.

Alina Habba Mildon, who had been one of President Trump’s personal lawyers, stormed into the Oval Office last week intent on taking down another prominent ally of the president. Her target was Richard Grenell, who had earlier served as Mr. Trump’s special envoy to Venezuela and as head of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Mrs. Mildon had just married a Turkish investor, Turhan Mildon, who has extensive business holdings in Venezuela. He had been in regular contact with Mr. Grenell the previous year both about Venezuela and about supporting the Kennedy Center.

But now Mrs. Mildon was telling Mr. Trump that Mr. Grenell had misallocated millions of dollars that her husband had sent Mr. Grenell in 2025 intended for the Kennedy Center. A lawyer for Mr. Mildon followed up this week by sending the White House documentation intended to back up the accusation, including a text message in which Mr. Grenell was purported to have said he wanted to make Mr. Mildon the “American face down in V,” referring to Venezuela.

Mr. Grenell denied the accusations, calling them absurd.

What actually happened is now at the center of a White House storm that has left Will Scharf, the White House counsel, with the job of discerning who is telling the truth.

The accusations are part of a long-running battle among Mr. Trump’s allies and supporters for a share of the spoils in Venezuela, whose resource riches are now effectively under American control.

This article is based on interviews with more than a dozen people with knowledge of the events, most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the accusations and the private Oval Office meeting.ImagePresident Trump had appointed himself chairman of the Kennedy Center.Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times

Mrs. Mildon went to the White House on Friday after The New York Times sent Mr. Mildon a series of questions about his business interests in Venezuela and his relationships with Trump allies. In the Oval Office, Mrs. Mildon told Mr. Trump that in May 2025, Mr. Mildon transferred $17.6 million to an account at Mr. Grenell’s direction, the people said. Her initial story varied, they said, but she eventually claimed that most of the money was for a business transaction, the details of which remain unclear. Mr. Mildon, she told the president, believed that $5.6 million from the total sum was going to be set aside for the Kennedy Center.

But the money never got to the center, she said.

Mr. Trump, who named himself chairman of the Kennedy Center, called Mr. Scharf into the Oval Office to hear Mrs. Mildon’s accusations.

On Wednesday night, Mr. Mildon’s lawyer sent text messages and a wire transfer receipt to Mr. Scharf to back up Mrs. Mildon’s claims, according to two of the people familiar with the sequence of events. The New York Times has not verified the veracity of Mrs. Mildon’s accusations, which were first reported on Wednesday by Axios.

Mr. Grenell said no financial transaction took place between him and Mr. Mildon or entities related to him.

“I’ve never asked for one cent to be sent somewhere else pretending it was for the Kennedy Center, and I’ve never received any payment from him,” Mr. Grenell said.

The dispute centers on a multimillion-dollar wire transfer that Mr. Mildon made to a Texas defense and security equipment company called TX-AT. Mrs. Mildon told the White House that the transfer was made at Mr. Grenell’s direction.

Mr. Grenell said he consulted for TX-AT in 2024 but had no connection to the company at the time that Mr. Mildon says he made the transfer. Mr. Grenell said he had never solicited payments on the firm’s behalf. Representatives at TX-AT did not respond to multiple requests for comment

A spokesman for the Kennedy Center said the organization is conducting an internal review of relevant pledges and funds and will share its findings with its board.

Last year, as Mr. Mildon worked to build ties to the Trump administration, he became a frequent guest at the Kennedy Center, where he networked with prominent Republicans, and eventually met his future wife, Mrs. Mildon. After one gala concert, he pledged to donate $270,000. He only paid this week, after The Times questioned him on why he had never fulfilled that pledge.

Hope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump has “severe problems,” Heather Delaney Reese, right, Oct. 16, 2026. heather delaney reeseAt 12:53 this afternoon, Donald Trump was already struggling to keep his eyes open as he exited the Oval Office and walked straight to the Rose Garden luncheon to honor first responders.

As “God Bless the USA” played over the speakers, the president stood with the right side of his mouth drooping downward, taking in the moment until every last note of the song had been played. He then walked up to the podium and spoke for 36 minutes, telling the audience of heroes that he should be sleeping right now, that he is not a controversial person, and that he has some “severe problems,” but that they are not related to drugs or alcohol. By the time he finished his incoherent, rambling speech, it was clear that Donald Trump’s long goodbye was already well underway.

Nowhere was that more apparent than in the way he treated the very people he was there to honor. The event was supposed to recognize first responders, including firefighters, police officers, paramedics, EMTs, and Secret Service agents, all of the people who rush toward danger to help others. These are people who deserved a president who would honor their sacrifice and service, not turn an event about them into an event about himself. Yet of the 36 minutes he spoke, very little was actually spent recognizing their service.

Trump began by telling the people gathered in front of him that he had just landed back in Washington, D.C., at 4:45 that morning. He said he was “supposed to be sleeping now,” and joked about sending a robot version of himself out on the campaign trail so he could stay home and watch on TV. He talked about the scandal-plagued Ken Paxton, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Texas, and then said, with all seriousness, that while Paxton might be considered controversial, he had this to say about himself: “I don’t happen to be a controversial person.”

He also spent a good amount of time talking about addiction, avoiding drugs and alcohol, and how fortunate he is that he does not drink or smoke. He said his friends who drink have “a real hard time” staying away from it, and then he went into a hard-to-follow story about the vicious cycle of Narcan use and how addicts are revived only to go right back to using. Then he said something he very much regretted saying: “I have other problems. I have some very severe problems. But those are not one of them. I don’t want to add them to the list. Do you understand that? I don’t want to add them to the list. Because if I did, I guarantee I wouldn’t be here right now.”

He kept talking for a little while before the lightbulb turned back on inside his brain and he realized what he had just admitted. Desperately trying to undo the damage, he said into the microphone, “The press is going to say, what problem does he have? Let’s figure it out. I probably set myself up for that one.” He then turned to Attorney General Todd Blanche and asked him for help: “Todd’s going to have to try and defend me.”

Donald Trump admitted something that many have believed for a very long time, that he has “very severe problems,” but he did so without explaining what they are. No president of the United States should stand at a podium and tell the world something like that without providing any context, and for good reason. We, the American people, and anyone tasked with negotiating with him deserve to know whether there is anything affecting his ability to carry out the responsibilities of the presidency. But at the same time, making a declaration like that with no explanation leaves us as a country vulnerable to speculation and uncertainty. This was yet another moment that should have prompted congressional questions at the very least, but his words were caught on camera, so when Congress is no longer a MAGA stronghold, they can be examined and investigated then.

He also talked about “reskinning” the exterior of the White House, which is an odd way of saying he is still obsessed with wasting taxpayer dollars on his gold lamé glorification projects. He talked about replacing laminate signs with “solid brass, half-inch thick” ones and about fixing the ornamental stonework around the windows. The way that he described the work he was doing was as if he were putting the finishing touches on his own mausoleum.

One of the more absurd and pathetic moments came when Donald Trump brought up the $22 trillion in investment he claims credit for. He then stopped to explain that someday a future president would stand at that same podium and announce the greatest economic growth in American history, but he wanted everyone to remember who deserved the credit. “Remember, I did it,” he said. “They didn’t do it.” Then he turned to a Border Patrol official named Paul and said, “Please protect me. Paul, would you please protect me? Get up to the microphone, Paul, and say, ‘It was Trump that did it, sir.’”

Later in the day, Trump gave us even more concerning comments when he sat down for an interview with Newsmax, where we saw a completely unfiltered version of the president. When he was asked about the possibility of yet another impeachment if Democrats win the midterms, Donald Trump responded by saying that he has “become good at anti-impeachment; I go with the anti-impeachment movement. But for them to do that, it cheapens our country so much. It’s really very terrible.”

You could tell he was a bit thrown by the question, so he deflected and turned the attention to others. “Honestly, I could have done numbers on Hillary Clinton. I could have done numbers on Bill Clinton. I do like Bill Clinton. I could have done numbers on Barack Hussein Obama. Still could, I still could. I could do big numbers if I wanted to.” He continued with, “I’ve turned down going after Hillary Clinton. Big numbers. I’m talking about going after them criminally. I could have done something having to do with their reputations, destroyed their reputations. We have a lot of information about Hillary, we have a lot of information about Barack Hussein Obama, we have a lot of information on Sleepy Joe.”

New York Times, Opinion: Undaunted, Jennifer Rubin, Oct. 16, 2026. Troops Who Uphold Honor.🚨 18 Days to the Midterms 🚨 Under a barrage of public outrage, Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he would reverse course and cancel the planned livestreamed execution by firing squad of Nidal Malik Hasan — convicted of murdering 13 people at Fort Hood — which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced last week.

The reversal does not erase Hegseth’s reprehensible judgment in making the initial decision, nor does it render insignificant the commendable opposition stated by members of the armed services.

Hegseth has proven himself utterly unfit to uphold his oath of office or to defend the rule of law, the honor of the U.S. military, and the storied tradition of decency, nonpartisanship, and excellence that made it the envy of the world. But in this case, Hegseth went too far even for many Republicans — including Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). Public revulsion was immediate, bipartisan, and widespread. “Only 18% of Americans strongly or somewhat favor having executions broadcast live to the public, while 69% oppose this,” The Economist/YouGov poll reports. In fact, the majority of Republicans (52% oppose / 31% favor), MAGA Republicans (48% / 36%), and death penalty supporters (55% / 32%) opposed such a spectacle.

Most noteworthy were the objections from the military itself, as WTOP reported:

More than 60 soldiers have stated they don’t want to be involved in the livestreamed firing squad execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, according to a religious freedom organization that assists members of the U.S. military.

Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, told WTOP he expects up to 180 soldiers stationed at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas, will ultimately seek guidance to avoid being a member of the team that will execute Hasan at 1 p.m. on Dec. 3, on the basis of their religious beliefs….

Weinstein said a wide variety of soldiers have expressed their religious objections to being part of a live-streamed spectacle.

As a preliminary matter, no one should minimize the courage it took to register objections of any type to this abusive, cruel, and vindictive regime — which has retaliated against senior officers by denying promotions, firing Stars & Stripes journalists for writing negative accounts, and attempting to prosecute members of Congress for telling military personnel to reject illegal orders. To stand up to Hegseth and Trump on religious grounds, revealing the degeneracy of a White Christian nationalist secretary who revels in death and oozes Islamophobia, showed extraordinary character.

The military personnel’s aversion to carrying out a stunt so at odds with the traditions of the military and of the moral sensibilities of our democracy (at least those that existed before the descent into MAGA debasement) spoke well of their moral fiber. “It’s one thing to carry out an order of execution. It’s quite another to have it streamed, where every second grader, at this stage in 2026, with the ability to get to the internet, can watch it happen,” Weinstein told WTOP. “It’s grotesque and barbaric.” He added, “Most of them that have come to us are Christians, but we have Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, we have agnostics and atheists — they feel this is an example of the sinful pride of execution.”Subscribed

The troops’ objections came on the heels of a public statement released on October 12 by Archbishop Timothy Broglio, responsible for the spiritual guidance of Catholics in the military. He declared that “it is my duty to express my disapproval of what is proposed regarding the execution of the terrorist Hasan in the Archdiocese entrusted to my spiritual care to be done by those for whose salvation I have been constituted as the Archbishop for the Military Services, USA.”

“The dignity of the human person is again at stake.”

After reiterating the Catholic Church’s opposition to capital punishment — he issued a heartfelt plea:

[D]o we really want to imitate the terrorists of this world and make a public spectacle of barbarically killing our adversaries? The crime committed by Nidal Malik Hasan was heinous, but does exposing the public to his execution serve any purpose? Has the potential moral injury, which the members of the firing squad might experience, been considered? Will the exposure of a live-stream to the young and impressionable during the 250th anniversary year of our independence be able to be repaired? The US military generally enjoys a good reputation in the world. Is there really a value to throwing them in the same boat with terrorists by broadcasting the image of the execution of a man in a wheelchair to the whole world? Does this decision reflect the dignity of the human person?

Broglio asked for the decision to be “reconsidered” and, in any event, to do whatever “is possible to keep the exposure to the live-streaming of the proposed execution from the vision of the young and impressionable.” That, as the archbishop undoubtedly knew, would have been virtually impossible in an era of ubiquitous screens, which only underscores the moral insanity of putting out such images. In a noteworthy analogy that should have touched a nerve with those in the Trump regime who identify as pro-life, Broglio concluded by asking that “[a]s I would in the case of a procured abortion, I oblige any Catholics assigned to the firing squad to request to be excused from this action contrary to the teaching of the Church.”

On one level, as heinous as this may be, Hegseth has been guilty of much greater sins and crimes against humanity (e.g., ordering reckless strikes that killed nearly 240 people on the high seas, and 156 innocent people at an Iranian school). However, the gratuitous barbarity and determination to drag junior personnel into a travesty of this sort marked, in some respect, a new debasement of the military.

By stark contrast, we should herald the decency and ethical resoluteness of military personnel who — at risk to themselves and their livelihoods — refused to participate in this depraved act. We salute those, including the archbishop, who provided spiritual and religious guidance. And those who resisted may have been instrumental in forcing Trump’s about-face.

At a time when the president and a flock of his minions, indeed an entire political party, so abjectly fail to serve as decent role models, we are particularly appreciative of the undaunted moral bravery of those who serve in the armed forces, risking their lives to maintain our freedom as they maintain the highest, truest tradition of military honor and human decency.

Special Report

U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsLincoln Square Media, Opinion: Two Desperate Dictators: The Trump-Putin Alliance Now Faces American Voters, edwin eisendrathEdwin Eisendrath, right, former Chicago Sun-Times CEO and Chicago Alderman, Oct. 16, 2026. Efforts to buy our votes with Russian oil won’t work.

Donald Trump is facing a crushing reckoning at the polls. He is desperate. Vladimir Putin does not have voters, but even Russians, as experienced as they are with pain, have limits. This week, the two dictators came to each other’s aid.

lincoln square media logoLast Friday, the two spoke for an hour-and-a-half. Trump described it was a great conversation. He said Putin wants peace, and blamed Ukrainian President Zelenskyy for the continued carnage.

For years, Trump quietly abetted Putin’s war on the West. He didn’t object when Putin launched an unprovoked and illegal war in Ukraine, the biggest land war in Europe since World War II. He turned a blind eye as Putin launched a hybrid war across the continent- blowing up shopping malls, cutting communications cables, flooding border crossings with migrants, jamming GPS systems, and interfering with elections.Subscribed

Trump famously asked Putin to help him win his first presidential race. According to a report of the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by then-Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, Russia did. Now Putin is allied with Iran and has provided the Revolutionary Guard with intelligence that helped kill Americans and destroy American bases in the region. Trump says that’s not important.

He hosted a summit with Putin in Alaska that succeeded only in giving the Russian dictator a propaganda boost at home. He ended U.S. government programs that tracked money laundering and sanctions evasion, helping Putin continue to fund his war. He launched his own assault on NATO with rhetorical attacks and real threats to invade a Greenland, part of NATO member Denmark.

Republican former Congressman Joe Walsh and I wrote about these and other ways Trump has assisted Putin.

Joe and I don’t see eye to eye on everything, but we are both clear about the threat Russia poses to world peace and human freedom, and about which side Donald Trump is on— the wrong one.

As we wrote, news was breaking about Donald Trump jr.’s wedding on a private island in the Bahamas. Within days, however, we learned that a Russian oligarch with close ties to Putin had paid for the party and for the rental of the island whole island for the party.

When the story broke, the Trump family explained that it’s no big deal he’s just a close friend and that they’d never heard of the guy. Later they said they would pay him back.

Sure.

War is not a predictable business. Putin thought he would conquer Ukraine in a matter of weeks. That was in 2022. Instead, according to a March piece in the Military Times, the war had already claimed about 325,000 Russian lives with another 875,000 wounded or missing.

A July report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies puts the carnage is even higher. They calculate Russian deaths at 450,000 and they put monthly casualties at 30,000, likely exceeding recruitment.

Another 650,000 Russians have fled abroad. The Military Times estimates the total cost of the war to be about $2.5 trillion. That cumulative cost is bigger than Russia’s annual GDP.

This would be a time to think seriously about regime change in Russia. Instead, Trump actively assisting Putin.

In August, CIA Director John Ratcliffe flew to Moscow. We know this not because the administration announced the trip, but because flight trackers discovered that a US Air Force Boeing C-17A Globemaster had left Riga and landed in Moscow. They posted video on social media. CBS News then confirmed the mission with sources. His plane was carrying a mobile SCIF, allowing him to stay in touch with Washington and to discuss classified information while in Russian airspace. Later, multiple media reports indicated that Ratcliffe went to Russia to warn Putin against attacking NATO.

Maybe. Or maybe he was warning Putin about domestic threats.

Earlier this month, news broke that Putin and Trump had reached an oil deal. Sanctions have made foreign assets of Russian oil companies essentially worthless to Russia. But … here’s the catch: they might be worth a lot to non-sanctioned companies. Putin knows this, and so he turned economic pressure designed to change his behavior into economic promise designed to change Trump’s. The deal transfers ownership of foreign assets of Russian oil giant Lukoil to entities that partner with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. The deal is paid for in part by U.S. taxpayers. It provides needed cash to a badly damaged Russian economy.

Now, just weeks after the announcement of that corrupt deal, any pretense of Trump’s being on our side rather than Putin’s is gone. This week, Trump lifted sanction on Russia diesel exports and said America would buy the fuel— direct payments from American taxpayers to Putin.

Yesterday, a day after the deal, Russia flew five glide bombs into residential buildings in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, killing a dozen people including three children.

Donald Trump drove up diesel prices globally when he allowed Iran, for the first time ever, to close the Strait of Hormuz. He and his stooge Pete Hegseth, failed to protect American military bases from Iranian attacks that relied on Russian intelligence. U.S. bases took damage in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Iraq, Oman, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.

American soldiers were killed on an American base in Jordan that lacked adequate protection from Iranian drones. The attacks in Bahrain damaged America’s main logistics hub in the region. That meant shifting logistics to the island of Diego Garcia 7,000 miles, away and contributed to the appalling conditions aboard Navy ships remaining in the region.

Americans are getting ready to vote, and we are angry. Donald Trump thinks that he can buy our votes. He told us if Republicans win, he will cut us $5,000 checks. His poll numbers went down. Now he’s trying to buy our votes with Russian oil. But the price of that oil is Europe’s freedom- the very thing one generation of Americans fought to preserve in World War II and another generation fought to safeguard during the long cold war.

Americans today are not going to allow Donald Trump to repudiate their sacrifice.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion,Trump Has Had A Very Bad Week, NC Dems Blow Out First Day Of Early In-Person Voting, Encouraging New Polls In OH/VA And More, Simon Rosenberg, simon rosenberg facebookright, Oct. 16, 2026. This has been a very bad week for Trump:  betraying Ukraine/Europe/NATO, two horrific inflation reports, the Saudis getting badly bloodied by the Houthis, a comically terrible new press secretary, escalating levels of staff chaos and regime in-fighting, and an election just going to sh-t for him and the Rs.

Several more wheels came off the Trumpian bus this week. It is the very opposite of closing strong. And holy shit is it great to see.

Stories about the House being gone, races being moved to the Dems have been all over the national media this week:

Cook has now moved 29 House races towards the Dems in recent days, and this week we got polls showing races Cook sees as “Likely Republican” dead even. The House battlefield - despite all the R spend, their extraordinary propaganda regime, their increasing control over legacy media and aggressive government censorship - keeps eroding as we get closer to Election Day. There are the new Cook rankings:Image

A new AARP poll of the House battleground confirms this GOP erosion as the generic ballot is +3 Dem, 9 points better than 2024. The Republican pollster in this poll is Tony Fabrizio, Trump’s own pollster:

Two polls released on Wednesday that will be seen widely in Republican audiences had Dems up in the national generic ballot 9 and 11 points - really ugly stuff (Via FiftyPlusOne):

A new poll in bellwether VA-02 has our candidate there Elaine Luria up 3, 46%-43%, in a district she lost by 4 points in 2022:

Luria received 46% support among likely voters in the district, compared with 43% for Kiggans, according to the university’s Wason Center poll. Another 10% were still undecided, and 2% favored another candidate.

Kiggans defeated Luria, a former Democratic congresswoman, in 2022. Their rematch is among the races Democrats are targeting as they try to regain control of the U.S. House.

A new Bowling Green State University Bowl in Ohio finds Sherrod Brown and Dr. Amy Acton up 6, Dems with far more intensity to vote, and the generic ballot +4 Dem!!!!!! Trump won Ohio by 13 points in 2024. From the poll summary:

Since the September poll, we find Democrats have increased their leads in both the governor’s race and the U.S. Senate race, but both continue to be competitive. Democrat Amy Acton holds a 6-point edge over Republican Vivek Ramaswamy for governor (50% to 44%) and Democrat Sherrod Brown holds a 6-point lead over Republican Jon Husted in the Senate race (48% to 42%)….

Democrats continue to be more motivated to vote in this election compared to Republicans although the gap has narrowed (59% to 41%). Democrats have also increased their edge when it comes to the generic congressional ballot. Currently, we find respondents would choose Democrats over Republicans by 4 points (49% to 45%) compared to a 1-point margin in the September poll (48% to 47%).

Ohio continues to be one of the great early vote Dem success stories. Look at this remarkable data from TargetEarly. There is a reason Republicans are throwing so much money at Ohio right now:

Be sure to watch my new interview with Sherrod Brown where he talks about the remarkable early vote success Dems are having in Ohio this week.Subscribed

Republicans are also throwing an incredible amount of money at Iowa. This new clip of a MS Now focus group with Trump 2024 voters in Iowa shows why. These ten Trump 2024 voters are asked whether they are leaning towards Ashley Hinson, the GOP Senate candidate against Josh Turek. Not one of the ten raises their hand. It’s a stunning moment - do watch:

Look at how the Dem grassroots is rallying for our Senate candidates, and providing a powerful counter to the huge spend of Elon, Trump, and the oligarchs (Via Axios). One party is powered by people, the other by oligarchs:Image

Our friends in North Carolina had a massive first day of early in-person voting yesterday. Here’s Professor Mike McDonald, who tracks the early vote, from a new Substack post, North Carolina First Day of In-Person Early Voting is a Blue Tsunami:

North Carolina held its first day of in-person early voting yesterday.

I’ve been reluctant to make same-day comparisons for other states because the early voting laws have changed or election circumstances have changed.

North Carolina is a party registration state that hasn’t greatly changed its voting laws since 2018, so it is the first state to make confident same-day comparisons as of the first day of in-person early voting.

This is what a massive blue wave looks like.

Here’s the data. It’s just stunning stuff:

Be sure to watch my Monday interview with NC Dem Chair Anderson Clayton who explains all their prep to drive the early vote and to make this remarkable first day happen. Huge kudos to Anderson and the whole NC Democratic Party team today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As I said in my weekly talk - Trump Is A Traitorous, Venal, F-ck Up. Through Hard Work And Inspiring Candidates We’re On The Cusp Of Having The Election We All Wanted To Have - Now We Need To Finish The Job - now we need to close strong and finish the job people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Good luck to everyone working No Kings Early Vote events tomorrow!

And yes, now it’s time to….Go Kick These Corrupt Traitors’ Asses, Win The Midterms, And Prepare For The Fuckery That Is Already Here - With More To Come

Two things you can do today in addition to supporting our intrepid candidates and state parties:

Become an Early Vote Champion in your networks, communities, and organizations.

Sign up to become a Democracy Protector too. Our next training is this Saturday, Oct 17th at 2pm ET.

To make sure campaigns and state parties can put your contribution to strategic use in these closing days please make all your donations by Sunday, October 25th. Contributions that come after that date are welcome but are harder to use strategically. 

 

bulwark morning shots logoMorning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: A Tip of the Cap to No Kings, William Kristol, right, william bill kristol imdbOct. 16, 2026. Earlier this week, I asked if a reinvigorated liberalism is possible. I think it is, and urged us to “look abroad,” at the examples of Volodymyr Zelensky, and Péter Magyar, Mark Carney, and Pope Leo XIV, all admirably “strong and confident defenders of liberty.”

bulwark logo big shipAnd I added,

But you know what else gives me hope for a revitalized liberalism? The American people, or at least an increasing percentage of them. Seeing support for President Trump collapse among the public—with very little help from our pitifully complacent and fearful elites—is heartening. Even inspiring.

And tomorrow, it will be inspiring to once again see millions of Americans show up at No Kings rallies. Because before the polls changed, before the gradual move of the public away from Trump, there were the efforts of the No Kings organizers. There were the peaceful and patriotic demonstrations of the participants. Before it was fashionable, No Kings was there.

The first of the No Kings demonstrations, on June 14, 2025, was organized in response to Trump’s military march in Washington that he’d timed—monarchically—to coincide with his birthday. At the time, according to the New York Times average of the polls, Trump had 44 percent approval and 52 percent disapproval. Anti-Trump elites were engaged in hand-wringing over his apparently unshakable hold on the public. Other elites were busy accommodating Trump. But five million Americans turned out to protest.

The second No Kings gatherings took place four months later, on October 18, 2025. Trump’s approval had barely budged: 43 percent approval to 53 percent disapproval. But turnout at the demonstrations across the nation surged to about seven million Americans. And in Virginia, where I live, there were indications of a big Democratic victory coming at the polls two weeks hence, and a sense that the tide might be turning.

The third day of No Kings rallies occurred this spring, on March 28, 2026, a month after Trump launched the Iran war. They were the largest yet, attracting around 8 million people. The mood was determined but somewhat upbeat, despite all of the depredations of the Trump administration at home and abroad. And it was clear that Trump’s popularity was finally dropping. He was by then at 40 percent approval and 56 percent disapproval, en route to his current 37 percent approval and 60 percent disapproval.

Tomorrow, we’ll get together once again under the rubric of No Kings. The focus this time is less on protesting the Trump administration and more on the practical task of encouraging and aiding voter turnout for the midterms.

As the No Kings coalition website explains,

No Kings: Vote Early is the next step of reclaiming our power after a year of mass mobilizations. It’s a day of nonpartisan voter participation, being in community with each other, and making sure every eligible voter has a plan, knows their options, and is ready to make their voice count.

The events around the country tomorrow will be less dramatic, and probably won’t get quite the numbers the earlier ones did. But they will be the culmination of a genuinely impressive and important effort on behalf of our democracy and our freedom.

I’ll be there tomorrow. And I’ll take a moment to tip my Bulwark baseball cap to No Kings.

AROUND THE BULWARK

  • GOP’s Top GOTV Operative Employed an Organizer Convicted of Strangulation… And that’s not the only person with a criminal history who we found on his PAC’s payroll, reports BRENDAN HARTNETT.
  • bulwark logo big shipSo Many Bad Things… And they’re happening to bad people! Is the worst yet to come? Join JVL and SARAH on The Secret Podcast.
  • Book a Room at the ‘Haunted Hotel’... Showrunner MATT ROLLER joins SONNY BUNCH on THE BULWARK GOES TO HOLLYWOOD to discuss the second season of Netflix’s hit animated series.
  • MAGA Influencers Are Running for Cover After Talarico Smear Collapses… THE TRIO gives an update on the MAGA influencers caught pushing a false story about Texas Democrat James Talarico, and why those behind the smear may face few consequences.
  • DHS Raids Ilhan Omar’s Home. Weissmann Smells a Rat… On The Illegal News, SARAH LONGWELL and ANDREW WEISSMANN discuss the FBI raid on Ilhan Omar, Trump’s latest overtures to Putin, and the courts’ efforts to stop his taxpayer-funded campaign ads.

Quick Hits

FUN WITH ROLLS: Donald Trump’s war on mail-in ballots continues. Yesterday, the Trump administration sued the state of California, asking a judge to block the counting of mail-in ballots from around 20,000 California residents it considers “likely” to be non-citizens. Earlier this week, California election officials received the list of supposedly suspect voters on a thumb drive, along with a demand from the Justice Department to remove them from the state’s voter rolls within 48 hours. But Secretary of State Shirley Weber said that Justice had provided no evidence that the persons named in the list were non-citizens—and noted that, when the Department of Homeland Security sent a similar list with similar demands to Nevada last month, state officials ultimately determined that every person listed was in fact a citizen. The AP has more:

The letter sent by acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter gave the state 48 hours to research the list of the 20,000 people it claims might not be citizens. For those whose citizenship cannot be independently verified, the state is to instruct local election officials to segregate their mail-in ballots until their status can be determined, and to not provide a ballot to anyone who has not yet received one.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said at an unrelated press conference Thursday morning that state officials would not carry out the federal government’s requests to withhold ballots for the alleged noncitizen voters. He noted that the administration’s alleged number of noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls had dropped from the 190,000 flagged over the summer by the Department of Homeland Security to the 20,000 noted by the Justice Department.

One thing after another with these guys. Read the whole thing.

RED HOPIUM: The polls look terrible for Republicans. But Republicans have one reason to console themselves: How many times lately have the polls been flat wrong? Here’s Politico:

Polling over the last decade has struggled to capture Republican voters. The data underestimated Trump’s support in 2016, 2020 and 2024, and Republicans argue similar errors could be happening again this cycle, particularly in competitive Senate races.

“Polling is getting much more difficult to do,” said veteran GOP strategist Karl Rove, adding that if the polls reflect Democratic overperformance “then every one of these races that we’re talking about today—Texas, Michigan, Maine, Alaska, Iowa—they’re all within the margin of error.”

As Nate Silver has pointed out, “The polls have overestimated Democrats for three presidential elections in a row” (emphasis added). But “Polls in the 2018 and 2022 midterms did much better.”

One GOP strategist told Politico that the polls are so Democrat-favored right now that they suggest a change in the electorate “as profound as those seen after Watergate and 9/11”—and surely that hasn’t happened, right? “You’d have to presuppose we’re staring down the barrel of a generational national trauma that no one is aware of,” the strategist said.

Now, look: We’ll be the first to admit that you’d have to be crazy to have tremendous confidence in polling at this moment in time. But is it really so ridiculous to think that the catastrophic crackup of Donald Trump’s political movement—the most potent force in politics over the last decade—is driving some pretty remarkable political realignments?

New York Times, ‘Oh, Shut Up’: 5 Takeaways From the Senate Debate in Maine, Emily Davies, Updated Oct. 16, 2026. The race’s fourth and final debate centered on whether Senator Susan Collins, the Republican incumbent, was as independent as she claimed to be from President Trump.

Senator Susan Collins, the Republican incumbent in Maine, and Troy Jackson, the Democratic challenger, faced off on Thursday evening for the fourth and final debate in one of the most closely watched Senate races of the cycle.

In her closing pitch to voters, Ms. Collins focused on portraying herself as independent from the Trump administration, looking to address her biggest vulnerability in a state where many voters are incensed with the president. Mr. Jackson tried to fortify his opponent’s connection to President Trump and vowed to be a voice against him — and for Mainers — if he is elected to the Senate.

Polls show the candidates running neck and neck with 19 days until Election Day. Here are five takeaways from the debate.Collins defended her record as an independent Republican.

Ms. Collins has survived in the Senate for nearly 30 years with her reputation as an independent-minded Republican who delivers for Maine, a brand well suited for a state where about a third of voters are not affiliated with either party.

The election will answer the question of whether she still has that standing, or whether her votes to support Mr. Trump in key moments have convinced Mainers otherwise.

On Thursday, she arrived on the debate stage armed with examples of what she described as bipartisanship and independence, such as her votes in favor of the three liberal justices, all appointed by Democratic presidents, on the Supreme Court.

Her approach appeared to backfire at one point during the debate, when a moderator asked about a time when she voted against the Republican Party and, as a result, changed an outcome. She described trying to organize a group of senators to vote against the confirmation of Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense. That effort ultimately failed.Jackson pitched himself as a fighter for the working class.

Ms. Collins looked to turn Mr. Jackson’s attacks on their head by arguing that he would be an “automatic vote for the Democratic Party.”

Mr. Jackson, a former Republican, responded by pitching himself as a fighter on behalf of working people — at times against his own party, but largely against the Trump administration.He said a Democratic governor had vetoed 40 of his bills, and he criticized the Democratic Party for being “too close to corporate PAC money.” But he spent much of the debate selling himself as part of a Democratic majority that could sweep into power and serve as a check on the Trump administration.

“Our democracy is going to look not at all like it is, or what it should be, if we don’t flip the House and Senate and get a Democratic majority that holds Donald Trump accountable,” he said. “The Republicans have totally given up their willingness to do that.”Collins said she did not regret voting for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Ms. Collins was pressed on her votes to confirm specific members of the Trump administration, such as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

She articulated her disapproval on his outlook on vaccines, but applauded his focus on chronic diseases and ultraprocessed foods. When pressed, she said she did not regret her vote for him. She was also clearly prepared to defend the secretary’s advocacy for heating assistance for low-income families, a key benefit for residents of Maine’s northern climate.

“I agree with him on some issues, disagree with him on others,” Ms. Collins said.Each candidate chose a figure for a Maine Mount Rushmore.

“If Maine had a Mount Rushmore, who should be carved on it?”

That was the last question of the night from Phil Hirschkorn, a political reporter with News Center Maine.

For Ms. Collins, the answer was one of the heroes of Maine history: Joshua Chamberlain.

Mr. Chamberlain rose to the rank of brigadier general in the Union Army, and was a recipient of the Medal of Honor for leading a bayonet charge at the Battle of Gettysburg. Perhaps more famously for some Mainers, he served four one-year terms as governor of Maine and was also a graduate, professor and president of Bowdoin College, in Brunswick.

Mr. Jackson chose Frances Perkins, the advocate for workers rights who served as labor secretary under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Each candidate’s answer tapped into a theme of their respective campaigns. Ms. Collins chose a steady and long-serving force in the state’s history. Mr. Jackson chose a populist and progressive leader who, like him, argued that government must do more to improve the lives of everyday Americans.Jackson told Collins, ‘Oh, shut up.’

This is not the first debate between the Senate candidates in Maine to grow testy. But it was the first time one contender told another one to shut up on live television.

It was also the first debate to be staged in front of a live audience — and the decision came with some consequences. A protester in the audience, at Husson University in Bangor, interrupted the proceedings, yelling: “A.I. data centers are destroying our climate. They’re poisoning our water.”

Ms. Collins quickly quipped that the demonstrator was “obviously one of Troy’s supporters.” Mr. Jackson, visibly irked, replied in his vintage Maine accent: “Oh, shut up. I don’t even know that kid.”

“Oh, right,” Ms. Collins replied sarcastically.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

katie zacharia uncredited smile first day

New York Times, Katie Zacharia Admits Failing Bar, but Defends Calling Herself a Lawyer, Shawn McCreesh, Oct. 16, 2026 (print ed.). In an interview with a right-wing influencer, the new White House press secretary also described the harried process that led to her hiring.

Katie Zacharia, the new White House press secretary, confirmed on Thursday that she had never passed a bar exam or been an “attorney,” even while maintaining in her first extended interview since taking the job that she had not misrepresented her legal career.

Four days into her new role, Ms. Zacharia appeared on Real America’s Voice before a friendly interviewer, addressing some of the controversies already swirling around her. She explained why her debut briefing was so short and why she seemed unprepared. She also revealed who she hoped might play her on “Saturday Night Live.”

The interview was conducted by one of the Trump administration’s favorite right-wing influencers, Jack Posobiec, who rose to prominence online by stoking conspiracies about pedophilia and Democratic elites — theories that Ms. Zacharia once helped spread.

In the interview, Ms. Zacharia said she had sat for a bar exam but failed. Despite that, Mr. Trump has described her as “an attorney.” The president has over the years repeatedly ridiculed Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris for failing a bar exam (both women eventually passed).

Ms. Zacharia has identified herself in the news media as a “lawyer,” and much of her defense of how she has represented herself seemed to rest on what she maintained was the difference between a “lawyer” and an “attorney.”

Many legal experts have said this week that because she does not have a license to practice law, she is neither.

Under California law, “one has to be licensed by the State Bar to practice law or hold oneself out as entitled to do so,” said Jeremy Fogel, a retired federal judge who leads the Berkeley Judicial Institute. “A person who has graduated from law school obviously has legal training, but the law doesn’t authorize them to represent that they are an attorney or a lawyer.”

Ms. Zacharia told The New York Times on Wednesday evening that she was once advised by a president of Pepperdine University that it was OK for her to identify as a lawyer on television. She told Mr. Posobiec on Thursday that she “consulted for a very long time many people in the field” and was told it was “absolutely” acceptable to call herself a lawyer.Ms. Zacharia with President Trump and Natalie Harp, a special assistant to the president, in Alaska on Tuesday. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

“I never came across as someone who was an attorney at law,” she said.

In her brief conversation with The Times, Ms. Zacharia declined to say which president of Pepperdine had advised her. She graduated from law school there in 2011. Andrew K. Benton was the university’s president at that time. In 2019, Jim Gash became the president.

Mr. Benton said in a phone call on Thursday that he was not the one who advised her, though he did call her “a young woman of high integrity.”

A representative for Mr. Gash said “he does not comment on private conversations,” but released a statement from him: “Pepperdine is proud to count Katie among our alumni, former colleagues and friends. As she takes on this significant responsibility, we pray that God will grant her wisdom and courage. We look forward to seeing her use her incredible gifts and extensive experience in service to our nation.”

In the interview with Mr. Posobiec, Ms. Zacharia also described the harried process of her hiring, hinting that she wasn’t really ready for what was about to happen when she stepped up to the White House lectern for the first time.

She said she was taking her young son to a pumpkin patch last Wednesday when she got a phone call from the president.

“I was very excited by this phone call from the president, and basically, in short order, flew out on Thursday to meet with him on Friday, and accepted the job on Friday,” she said.

The next day, she said she flew back to California to “pack up all my suitcases, because I was only in D.C. with a carry-on bag at a hotel, and packed up two suitcases.”

Monday was a federal holiday, “but he asked me to be in office on Monday, and Monday I showed up,” she said. The next morning, she was standing before a room of journalists.

New York Times, Live Updates: Police Investigate Deadly Shooting at Oregon Elementary School, Anna Griffin and Francesca Regalado, Oct. 16, 2026. A teenager shot his way into the Silver Rail Elementary School, killing three children, ages 5, 8 and 11, and a teacher. An armed bystander shot him dead, the police said.

Here’s the latest.

The authorities were investigating a school shooting in Bend, Ore., that killed three children and a teacher, and left many questions unanswered by Friday morning.

A 16-year-old boy shot his way through locked doors at Silver Rail Elementary School with a long gun on Thursday afternoon before a bystander shot him dead, according to officials.

Police officers responding to the shooting found three children, ages 5, 8 and 11, and a teacher dead at the scene. A 7-year-old and another teacher were critically injured. The authorities did not name the victims, the shooter or the bystander who killed him. They said it was not clear whether the shooter knew anyone at the school.

On Thursday night, hundreds of people gathered for a candlelight vigil in Drake Park, praying and singing hymns. People wrote messages of remembrance in chalk on the park stage, along with calls for tighter gun control laws.

Oregon has more restrictions on gun ownership than most states. The fatal shooting on Thursday was part of a long pattern of school shootings that have stricken the nation over the past three decades, leaving deep and lasting scars on communities.

More On U.S. Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets`

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: The Bad News on Inflation Just Keeps Coming, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 16, 2026.  And it’s all about Trump.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Inflation is down. Or at least that’s what Donald Trump says.

I wrote yesterday, following the release of the latest Consumer Price Index, that Trump had snatched inflation defeat from the jaws of victory. Now the Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its other inflation measure, the Producer Price Index, which measures wholesale prices, and it was even worse, running substantially hotter than forecasters expected:

My basic point — that Trump inherited a relatively benign inflation picture and threw that inheritance away with his tariffs and war — is even clearer from the PPI than the CPI. And the PPI is often a leading indicator of future consumer prices, so there’s no relief visible in the near future.

There’s no mystery about what’s going on: it’s mostly about the prices of petroleum products, especially diesel. Diesel prices have risen more than twice as much as gasoline prices over the past year — and the rising price of diesel cascades through the economy, raising business costs and driving inflation across a wide range of products.

But didn’t Trump just make a deal to buy Russian diesel? Yes, and it was shameful. It was also ineffective: Even if Putin can deliver the fuel, which is doubtful — the Ukrainians have resumed their strikes on Russian refineries — the quantity was much too small to make much difference. Indeed, wholesale diesel prices remain significantly higher than they were at the height of the shooting war with Iran, let alone before Trump started that war:

In any case, Trump’s response to the dismal inflation news — even worse for him politically because of the extravagant promises he made in the past — is denial: He keeps insisting that inflation is way down. Is he deliberately lying, or does he truly not know what’s going on? We shouldn’t rule out the latter possibility. Bear in mind that Trump doesn’t read, and he certainly doesn’t read BLS data releases. And while he presumably has aides who do know what the numbers say, are they willing to tell him things he doesn’t want to hear? Probably not.

Then again, I may be making a category error. As far as I can tell, Trump doesn’t believe that there is such a thing as objective truth, there’s only what he wants to be true. Hence my Orwell reference at the top of this piece. Trump doesn’t have the full powers of a totalitarian ruler, but often behaves as if he did (and is enabled in that behavior by almost the entire GOP.) And Orwell wrote about the mutability of history under totalitarian regimes:

If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ – well, it never happened.

In this case what never happened was surging inflation.

But while Trump is surrounded by lackeys willing to deny reality, according to the latest Fox News poll, 55 percent of voters say that inflation is “not at all” under control — and that includes 30 percent of Republicans.

Inflation won’t be the only issue in the midterms. That same Fox News poll shows voters even more concerned about “corruption in government.” But that is also not exactly a source of Republican strength.

If these numbers don’t generate a blue wave, nothing will.

I have another day of playing academic statesman at Oxford, so that’s it for today. 

MS NOW, Opinion: Republicans' midterm affordability pitch is basically 'let them eat pinto beans,' Jarvis DeBerry, Oct. 16, 2026. Of all the bad answers Republicans have given to questions about what they’d to do to make life under Trump more affordable, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi may get the prize for the worst one. As her Democratic challenger Scott Colom reminded everyone in a comical ad this week, when a reporter asked Hyde-Smith about families struggling to afford the higher price of beef, she said shoppers “have so many proteins to choose from.”

Let them eat pinto beans, it’s safe to say, is not the message voters want to hear from the ruling party. Republicans, as a general rule, have trumpeted conspicuous, even wasteful and unhealthy, consumption.

Let them eat pinto beans, it’s safe to say, is not the message voters want to hear from the ruling party. Republicans, as a general rule, have trumpeted conspicuous, even wasteful and unhealthy, consumption: Buy that gas-guzzling truck, fry your fries in beef fat, don’t give a flip about taking up less space or using less energy or heeding guidelines related to food safety or cholesterol. This year, the cost of a pound of ground beef passed the amount of money you get for an hour’s work at the federal minimum wage.

Republicans, as a general rule, have trumpeted conspicuous, even wasteful and unhealthy, consumption: Buy that gas-guzzling truck, fry your fries in beef fat, don’t give a flip about taking up less space or using less energy or heeding guidelines related to food safety or cholesterol.

Hyde-Smith, a cattle rancher with an estimated net worth of more than $900,000, advising her constituents to accept that they’re just not in the meatloaf income bracket would be bad in any context. But it’s especially jarring coming from a member of the party that looks the other way as the president and his family grow wealthier by the day.

“Them belly full but we hungry,” Bob Marley and The Wailers famously sang. We’ll learn soon if the next line — “A hungry mob is an angry mob” — predicts what Republicans can expect at the ballot box next month. But the party doesn’t appear to appreciate the intensity of the public’s anger. When they’re not downplaying the higher prices, characterizing those higher prices as an acceptable sacrifice for Trump’s heedless invasion of Iran or making the preposterous claim that somehow, even now, everything is Joe Biden’s fault, they’re arguing that ground beef is the rich man’s food.

Hyde-Smith made her protein comment weeks after Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins suggested that, for as little as $3, Americans could make a dinner out of a piece of chicken, a “piece” of broccoli, a corn tortilla and “one other thing.” Rollins, whose net worth has been estimated at $15 million, was rightly roasted for that, which made Hyde-Smith’s repetition of that sentiment even more politically inept.PlayWholesale inflation jumps 6% compared to last yearMay 13, 2026 / 07:30

According to the results of a Pew Research Center survey conducted this fall and published Wednesday, 73% of U.S. adults say they are “very concerned” about the cost of food and consumer goods and 74% are similarly concerned about the price of gasoline and energy. That’s not new. In fact, those concerns helped end the Democrats’ chances of winning the White House in 2024. But earlier this year, the Pew Research Center reported that 44% of Americans say they’ve had trouble paying for either medical care, daily transportation, rent or mortgage or food over the past year. Twenty percent say they got food from a food bank or pantry.More articlesOn Trump’s new policy on beef tariffs, the political backlash isn’t his only problemSteve BenenCows are seen at a farm.Trump’s ‘mystery meat’ policy faces one unavoidable question he still doesn’t want to answerSteve BenenGround beef is portioned onto trays in the meat department of a supermarket.

It seems, then, that many Americans are already choosing “other proteins,” if they’re not skipping meals altogether. People don’t want to hear that they should cut back. They want to hear that their elected officials have a plan so they won’t have to.

Most surveys about the state of the economy reflect stark partisan difference. The people who support the party in power tend to be more sanguine about things than people who don’t. That remains the case, according to the Pew Research Center’s recent survey: 36% of Republicans say the economy is excellent or good, compared to 21% of independents and 9% of Democrats. But, the Pew Research Center reports, in July, 41% of Republicans thought the economy was excellent or good, and “about a quarter of Republicans (23%) now say conditions are poor, up from 19% in July.”

More On U.S. Media, Education

 katie zacharia uncredited smile first day

bulwark morning shots logoMorning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Post-Truth Press Secretary, Andrew Egger, right, andrew eggerOct. 16, 2026. The new White House press secretary doesn’t have the one skill Trump’s top flack needs. She just can’t lie good.

bulwark logo big shipKatie Zacharia’s first few days on the job have become dominated by her halting, changing responses to accusations that she spent years falsely claiming to be a lawyer, even though she has never been admitted to the bar in any state and never practiced law. Asked Tuesday when she had passed the bar, she replied “when I went to China.” On Wednesday, she insisted she had misheard the question and had thought she was simply asking what she had done after law school.

Then, yesterday, she did a damage-control tour of conservative media, sitting for interviews with Fox News’s Sean Hannity and MAGA conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec. She insisted in these interviews that legal experts had assured her she could call herself a “lawyer” so long as she never used the (she said) more specific term “attorney.”

This is a silly dodge: In America, “lawyer” and “attorney” are synonyms. And it’s not a good excuse either: CNN promptly found at least fifteen times since last year that Zacharia had shared posts describing her as an “attorney.”

Even Hannity, far from giving her the softball primetime interview she plainly had hoped for, struck a prickly, skeptical tone last night: “Why get into this long, drawn-out thing about the difference between a lawyer and an attorney?” he asked. He then asked her point-blank about the CNN “attorney” report. “I think they were retweets,” Zacharia blustered, “and I corrected the record and said that I was not endorsing the title, they were retweets of a title that had been given.” As Judd Legum, who broke the story of Zacharia’s resume embellishment, pointed out, she shared one of these tweets just last week.

None of this, of course, reflects particularly well on Zacharia’s honesty and character. Just as importantly, it is terrible comms work. Being able to navigate through stories like this in a disciplined, low-drama way is the single most important requirement for her new job.1 But instead of competently smothering the story, she has prolonged it, her multiple ridiculous “explanations,” each debunked faster than the last, just dragging out the embarrassment.

Put another way: Zacharia’s dishonesty isn’t the reason her job is in trouble. Being dishonest without seeming to is a big part of the job! The problem isn’t that she’s a liar, it’s that she’s a bad liar. Neither Hannity or Trump or anybody in MAGA cares that she lied on her résumé. What they care about is her clumsiness in explaining that now. Because a person who can’t even wriggle out of a little lie like that is going to get completely tangled when it comes time to defend way bigger whoppers in the White House briefing room.

Recall here that Trump picked Zacharia for the job on gut instinct, after seeing her appearances on TV. He made the choice over the objections of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, who thought that CNN commentator Scott Jennings—a truly seasoned, deft liar—would be the superior choice.

“I would not be surprised if he happened to be meeting with her and just decided right then and there to give her the job, without much input or vetting,” Stephanie Grisham, one of Trump’s first-term press secretaries, told me.

Some in the White House who have chafed at Wiles’s leadership were enthused about the move: “Susie wanted someone who would be loyal to her and instead Trump chose someone loyal to him, as it should be,” an administration source told the Daily Mail this week. “He is taking back control, and it is starting to feel more like the first term.” (No argument there.)

What Trump wants and what Trump needs from the people around him aren’t always the same thing. Trump picked Zacharia because she’s a sycophant in his preferred mold. And he thinks she fights hard. But there’s a difference between fighting hard and fighting well. A press secretary who can’t lie convincingly won’t cut it. 

Oct. 15

Top Headlines

djt qatar plane arizona 10 14 2026

  • Hope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump is an abomination to the presidency, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Oct. 14, 2026. At 1:04 this afternoon, Donald Trump landed in Arizona aboard Qatari Air Force One. By 1:22, helen delaney reese djthe was surrounded by bulletproof glass, preparing to tell the crowd that his followers would be okay if he murdered someone, that he “aced” his latest cognitive exam, that Canada will “end up being the 51st state because it’s the only way it works,” and that he thought leakers and, by extension, reporters should be shot.

That was just the beginning of the President’s very disturbing day and another painful reminder that everything the Presidency of the United States of America used to stand for is completely gone.

Special Report: 'Why billionaire wealth should be taxed, why we have to get big money out of politics.'

 

Elon Musk, Exhibit AExhibit A

  • Robert Reich via Substack, Opinion: Defund Musk! Robert Reich, right, robert reich color headshotauthor, retired professor, former U.S. Labor Secretary, Oct. 15, 2026. "He’s Exhibit A on why billionaire wealth should be taxed, why we have to get big money out of politics, why billionaires shouldn’t be allowed to buy up major media, and why our government shouldn’t give them huge military contracts."  I’m talking about Elon Musk, of course.

More On Ukraine's Defense Against Russian Bombs, Invasion

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelinsky: Does he

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelinsky: Does he "hold the cards?"

Special Report: More On Trump Justice Department Vengeance, Corruption

Cassidy Hutchinson testifies before the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States on June 28, 2022 ((Tom Williams photo for CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images).t Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States on June 28, 2022.Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images

Cassidy Hutchinson testifies before the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States on June 28, 2022 (Tom Williams photo for CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images).

News Roundups

In Washington, Trump is reportedly asking friends whether he should push out his chief of staff, Susie Wiles. Meanwhile, Democrats are getting ready to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s finances if they win Congress in three weeks. Trump’s new press secretary is in even deeper trouble. She shared posts calling herself an “attorney” at least 15 times after failing the bar, a partner at the Chinese firm on her résumé compared her job there to a paid internship, and she once sold shakes for a company she herself calls “sort of a pyramid scheme.” And in Ukraine, they’ve run out of Patriot missiles, the one thing that can stop Russia’s ballistic missiles, just as Russia tries to freeze the country into submission this winter.

More On Middle East Wars

Trump Administration New Scandals

 

  • will sommer false flagFalse Flag via The Bulwark, Investigative Commentary: First Noem Fired Her. Then She Fed Her to MAGA, Will Sommer, Oct 15, 2025.The ex-DHS secretary and Corey Lewandowski have been caught using right-wing influencers to scapegoat a civil servant.
  • New York Times, More Trump Allies Aided Pro-Russian Balkan Government, Kenneth P. Vogel, Oct. 15, 2026. The daughter of the president’s chief of staff joined an American businessman in Republika Srpska as he explored a gas pipeline. And six current and former campaign advisers recently traveled there for an election
  • The Daily with Sarah Jones via PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion:Growing Signs That Pete Hegseth Is On Thin Ice After Trump Cancels Public Execution,.Sarah Jones, right,and Jason Easley, Oct. 15, 2026. The public livestreamed execution of the Fort Hood shooter was Pete Hegseth’s idea, but after public backlash, Trump canceled it, suggesting that Hegseth’s job is in danger.
  • New York Times, ICE Agents Who Rammed Worker Were Chasing Man Dead 9 Years, Family Says, Jazmine Ulloa, Oct. 15, 2026. An ICE operation in Houston left a Mexican man struck and injured by an S.U.V., but a bulletin of the target shows a man who died in 2017, his daughter said.

More On #MeToo, Trafficking Claims

More On U.S. Education, Data Centers, Media 

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

More Global News

More On U.S. Media 

U.S. Rep. Andy Harris refuses to take questions from Cat Murphy, a CNS reporter from the University of Maryland, during a press gaggle following a League of Women Voters forum at the Chesapeake Grove Intergenerational Center in Cambridge, Md. on Tuesday, October 13, 2026. (Ulysses Muñoz/The Banner)U.S. Rep. Andy Harris refuses to take questions from Cat Murphy, a CNS reporter from the University of Maryland, during a press gaggle following a League of Women Voters forum at the Chesapeake Grove Intergenerational Center in Cambridge, Md. on Tuesday, October 13, 2026. (Ulysses Muñoz/The Banner)

More On U.S. Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets

Top Stories

djt qatar plane arizona 10 14 2026

Hope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump is an abomination to the presidency, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Oct. 14, 2026. At 1:04 this afternoon, Donald Trump landed in Arizona aboard Qatari Air Force One. By 1:22, helen delaney reese djthe was surrounded by bulletproof glass, preparing to tell the crowd that his followers would be okay if he murdered someone, that he “aced” his latest cognitive exam, that Canada will “end up being the 51st state because it’s the only way it works,” and that he thought leakers and, by extension, reporters should be shot.

That was just the beginning of the President’s very disturbing day and another painful reminder that everything the Presidency of the United States of America used to stand for is completely gone.

There was a time when hearing a President of the United States say even one of those things would have stopped us all in our tracks. But we have now become so accustomed to hearing things like this from Donald Trump that we have almost forgotten how shocking they really are, and how there was once a time in our history when no president would have dared to say the outlandish things he says so often.

Because there was still dignity in the office. It was held by men who were imperfect but still understood that the presidency was bigger than themselves and that holding it came with responsibilities far greater than their own interests.Maybe the most disturbing part of what is happening, and what I struggle with the most whenever he is speaking, is how familiar it all feels. Like how the President of the United States stood there in Arizona today talking about sovereign nations as though they were his for the taking.

djt arizona speaking 10 14 2026

Threatening Canada is just something he does now. Today was no different when he told the crowd that there was no other option than Canada joining the United States. Then he turned to Greenland, which he said was canadian flag“owned” by Denmark, but suggested it belonged on America’s growing list of acquisitions with this odd thought: “But it just adds to our beautiful plate. Our plate is getting larger all the time.” And then he added, “How about Venezuela?”

That wasn’t even the worst of what he would go on to say. He also brought up a military operation against Iran, describing how B-2 bombers were sent in the middle of the night and how someone had leaked their departure time to the press. He made his thoughts very clear on the people he thought shared this information, saying, “Leakers should be shot… In the old days, we used to shoot leakers.”He called them “the scum of the earth.”

Moments later, he turned his attention to the reporters at the event, pointed right at them, and said they are “almost as bad as a leaker because they leak false information. That makes them a leaker, right?” The crowd looked around awkwardly, understanding exactly what he was saying. The President of the United States had just said that leakers should be shot, and then he said the press were leakers.

Not too long ago, if a President of the United States even suggested that journalists should be harmed, they would have faced immediate consequences because freedom of the press is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution.

In the past, something like this would have prompted immediate hearings and investigations. Congress would be demanding answers and the country would be outraged if the President of the United States started suggesting that reporters deserve to be shot simply for doing their jobs. But because this has become a near-daily occurrence, it will likely be forgotten or pushed aside by something just as sinister that he will say tomorrow.

He also brought up the idea of serving a third term once again, encouraging the crowd to chant “four more years.” He told them, “I’d love to,” and he then turned to the senators in the audience and started talking about the Twenty-Second Amendment, which limits presidents to two elected terms. “We have a clause,” he said. “It says you will, under no circumstances, be allowed, this is for anybody that’s served two terms, be allowed to run under any condition for president of the United States after two terms. Now, usually there’s a little wiggle room. Steve, we’ve looked. Tim, what do you think? You see any wiggle?” He sounded defeated but promised that before he left they would all “be happy,” teasing that he and his enablers would be “doing things that nobody’s ever seen before.”

While he hinted at big plans to come, he didn’t mention the devastating attack Russia launched just last night, or the role his administration is reported to have played in restricting the communications systems Ukraine depended on to defend itself. Russia launched at least 39 missiles and 128 drones at Ukrainian cities. It was one of the heaviest attacks in months, with at least 9 people killed, and more than 600,000 people now left without power right before the cold months start. In the middle of Ukrainians trying to defend themselves, the Starlink systems that they use for communications and that their interceptor drones depend on were blocked.

This happened around 1 a.m., forcing Ukraine to disrupt missions of their interceptor drones because the satellite network they depend on needed Starlink. When Volodymyr Zelensky was asked during an interview today whether he had been betrayed by Donald Trump, he said, “I am sure they knew what they did, absolutely.”

Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX operates Starlink and its military version, Starshield, posted on X to explain who controls the military system. “Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS,” he wrote.

He didn’t mince words. According to Musk, decisions about restricting Starshield are ultimately in the hands of the United States government and President Donald Trump, not him. That means, as Ukrainian forces were struggling to defend their country last night against another wave of Russian attacks, their access to a system they desperately needed had been restricted by the president, who once again showed his loyalty to the aggressor, Donald Trump’s dictator friend, the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin.

For those of us who care about our country and the world, we can see what just happened, and we have watched this building for years now. The White House has fallen. We are now either under the control of Russia or, at the very least, aligning ourselves with them as something resembling partners. And Donald Trump isn’t even trying to hide it. He is doing it right out in the open. But the danger goes far beyond what happened last night, because so many Americans who are not as invested in politics have no idea what is happening, and the outrage that something like this should cause isn’t at the level that it deserves. It is being covered by news organizations outside our country, but here in the United States it should be on the cover story of all programs, but it’s not. So those of us who know what is happening are left watching another deeply troubling development get chalked up to just one more bad thing this president has done, while millions of others have no idea just how far he has gone to carry out Vladimir Putin’s dirty work.

Our past presidents would not recognize this country. They would be shocked and horrified at how far we have fallen and that we are now being led by a convicted felon as our president. There was a time when the President of the United States was the person everyone looked to when the worst was happening, and they were expected to rise to the occasion and lead. Franklin Roosevelt did not hold rallies while the world burned, and he certainly wasn’t the one setting the fires in the first place.

There are stories of him on December 7, 1941, when he learned that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, and how he responded with calm determination in that moment. How just two days after the attack, he was able to speak directly to the American people with such composure and reassurance, telling them that the war would be long and difficult, and that there would be sacrifices. He did not pretend that the danger wasn’t real or that he could simply make it disappear. He understood that the lives of millions of people, both here and around the world, depended on the decisions he was making. Roosevelt was far from perfect, but when the country was facing one of the darkest moments in its history, he understood that being President of the United States meant carrying responsibilities that were much bigger than himself. And here we are today, watching Donald Trump side with evil and bring the world instability and nonstop chaos. His presidency is a disgrace to all past presidents who ever took the oath of office with dignity and a sense of duty.

Over 80 years after the end of the last world war, we have forgotten just how enormous the responsibility of being President of the United States really is. We used to take that responsibility for granted. We used to assume that whoever sat in the Oval Office, regardless of party, would at bare minimum understand and carry out the responsibilities expected of them. We used to assume that when bombs were falling on a country that depended on technology we control for its survival, the president would be doing everything in his power to help defend it. We did not assume he would be the one who sided with a dictator and helped an aggressor destroy our ally.

This isn’t even on Donald Trump. He has never hidden who or what he is. A failed human being and a terrible leader. Donald Trump did not break the presidency; he just revealed how little we were protecting it. He showed us that the office of the presidency had become, in the minds of too many Americans, something closer to a cult of personality than the sacred trust it is.

This is on every member of Congress who has enabled and defended him, abdicating their responsibility to their constituents and the Constitution. This is on the Supreme Court for its decision granting presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts. And this is on members of our communities who have allowed themselves to be brainwashed by this corrupt man and dragged onto the wrong side of history. At some point, we have to stop pretending that everyone still siding with him doesn’t know what he is doing to our country, or that none of them have decided they like the cruelty and division. And that moment is now. There is too much on the line to keep making excuses. But that also doesn’t mean they aren’t welcome if they ever decide to leave.

Today, watching him go on for hours, I just kept thinking about what happens if we keep going like this. I worry about what happens if this becomes the permanent baseline of what a president is. That this is just how presidents talk and act. What happens to a civilization when a generation of children who have been subjected to Donald Trump for over a decade grow up believing that this is what a president is? That a president is someone who talks about shooting journalists and shows loyalty to anti-democratic governments. Someone who openly talks about his imperialistic dreams of conquering sovereign nations as though they are his for the taking. What happens if we don’t get enough people to show up during the midterm elections to begin putting a stop to this destruction of everything the presidency was supposed to stand for?

Maybe the greatest danger we face is not what Donald Trump does next. Maybe it is that the next generations will not know there was ever anything different. That they will think that this is just who we are now. Thankfully, we are not going to let this happen. At almost every public event the president has been at these past couple of weeks, people have stood up, in a sea of what must have felt like enemy territory, and made their opposition known. At great risk to their physical safety and personal well-being, they looked at this moment and said, not on my watch. They did what they could to resist.

Not all of us are able to take that kind of action or in a position to take those same risks, but we all have one thing we can do to have our voices heard as well. We can vote. That is how we take back our country from a group of people in power who have caused so much pain and division. We are going to turn out at the polls in numbers this country has never seen before. We are the ones who are going to make it too big to rig. We are going to make sure that future generations know that when our country needed us most, we didn’t look away. We stood up together and did something about it. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

Picture of the day: The ICE raids are as bad as you can imagine they are here in Southern California. I just saw a post showing people being kidnapped just a few minutes from my house, a block away from our old house, and everywhere in between. I was talking to someone earlier today about how fearful we all are for people in our community because those with dark skin are being stopped and forced to comply with the demands of people who are not identifying themselves and are wearing masks to conceal their faces. U.S. citizens are so far being released, but I fear this is all a test of what is to come.

We also talked about the last time we felt truly safe, and I realized it was almost two years ago, before the 2024 election. Then I remembered the moment I took this picture, during the summer of 2025, on Canada Day in Victoria, B.C., and being so thankful to be able to get away from the States for a bit, and how I felt a bit of safety then too. I remember that moment and thinking back then about the summer before, when I was standing in this same spot looking forward to the 2024 election and finally being rid of Donald Trump. Heather in 2024 had no idea what was to come and was so hopeful for the future. Heather in 2025, if you look closely, had pain in her eyes for what had already happened and for what she knew was coming. I was so happy to be with my oldest in that moment and also so sad for the world she was having to live in back at home.

This past summer was the first time we haven’t gone up to Canada since COVID, but there was just too much work to do back at home ahead of the midterms, so we decided not to go. To my Canadian friends and to everyone outside the U.S. reading this, please keep the faith. We are pushing through this authoritarian takeover. We will keep working to reclaim Congress through our votes, and we will work for however long it takes to get to the other side of this and somehow mend the damage we have caused. We won’t stop until we do. And no, you will never be the 51st state. 

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Short-Term:😀. Medium-Term:😟. Long-Term: s😟, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Oct. 15, 2026.bulwark morning shots logoAfter the midterms, the Democrats’ challenges are daunting.

bulwark logo big shipDon’t look now, but more crazy House-GOP leadership drama may be just around the corner. CNN reports that if Republicans lose the house and Speaker Mike Johnson loses his gavel, Rep. Jim Jordan may challenge him for leadership of the conference. Happy Thursday.

Special Report

 

Elon Musk, Exhibit AExhibit A

Robert Reich via Substack, Opinion: Defund Musk! Robert Reich, right, robert reich color headshotauthor, retired professor, former U.S. Labor Secretary, Oct. 15, 2026. "He’s Exhibit A on why billionaire wealth should be taxed, why we have to get big money out of politics, why billionaires shouldn’t be allowed to buy up major media, and why our government shouldn’t give them huge military contracts."

I’m talking about Elon Musk, of course.

Yesterday, former Ukrainian defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov thanked Musk for restoring his Starlink satellite’s vital high-speed connectivity: “Thank you, @elonmusk. We hope for your continued support.” (Connectivity had slowed after Musk posted Saturday that “Zelensky has gone too far.”)

But who gave Musk authority to slow his satellite service in the first place — or, for that matter, to publicly comment on Ukraine President Zelensky? (Musk says Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government, and that “any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.” But if that’s the case, why did Fedorov thank Musk?)

Every time I list another of Musk’s outrages, someone says, “Yes, but he’s an innovator!”

He’s not. As is made clear in Alex Gibney’s smart new documentary, “Musk,” Elon didn’t invent Tesla. He didn’t invent X. He didn’t invent SpaceX. He didn’t invent Starlink satellites. He didn’t invent squat.

Musk is to innovation what Trump is to governing. Both are conmen. Both are megalomaniacs. Both love authoritarians and detest democracy. Both are racist and misogynistic. Neither believes in (or harbors an ounce of) empathy toward anyone. Both think nothing of corrupting governments for personal gain. Both say they’re self-made men — and both worship their creators.

Both spout bigoted filth all hours of the day and night to hundreds of millions of people.

Okay, let me just say it out loud: Both Musk and Trump are loathsome human beings.

Someday historians will come up with an explanation of how two such awful people could have become the two most powerful people in America if not the world (what was there about America in the early 21st century?).

But for now the goal of sane people must be to defund both of them and get them as far away from politics as possible.

That will be difficult, to be sure. Musk has so far sunk roughly $366 million into the 2026 midterm election cycle, $276 million of it since July — all ​to help Republicans retain control of Congress. That makes him the largest single known donor in the entire midterm elections. And he’s aiming to collect a lot of quid pro quos.

Hell, he spent a quarter of a billion dollars in 2024 to help Trump win reelection and was rewarded by Trump with access to every bit of data the U.S. government keeps on every one of us, along with billions of dollars’ worth of no-bid contracts with the Pentagon. (His Starlink satellite system is now key to the military strategy of the United States as well as that of Ukraine.) He was also rewarded with a chain saw inaptly named “Department of Government Efficiency,” which he used to destroy U.S.A.I.D. and slash other government agencies he doesn’t like.

In the last few months Musk has given at least $10 million to a Texas super PAC seeking to elect Republican Ken Paxton to the Senate, despite (or is it because of?) Paxton’s long record of ethical lapses, legal controversies, and official misconduct. Musk’s businesses are headquartered in Texas, so he needs to buy friends there.

On Sunday, Musk pushed the false story to his 242 million followers on X that James Talarico, Paxton’s Democratic opponent, was absent from the campaign trail because he had suffered a mental breakdown and was receiving counseling at the Lindner Center of Hope, a mental health center in Ohio.

Musk’s story has been thoroughly debunked. Security camera footage shows Talarico at home, not at an Ohio mental health facility. (Meanwhile, according to The Wall Street Journal, on New Year’s Eve 2024, Paxton partied in Dubai with his extramarital girlfriend and two fugitives from charges of over $300 million in healthcare fraud in the U.S. One of the men donated $190,000 to Paxton, $25,000 of it after he was indicted.)

The project of defunding Musk will probably have to wait until after January 20, 2029, when, let’s pray, we have a sane administration in Washington that will end all government contracts with him (his support for right-wing extremists around the world makes him a security risk), bust up his monopolies (a reinvigorated Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission will see to it), and impose a significant wealth tax on him.

But you don’t have to wait until then. Stop buying Teslas. Don’t use X. Don’t sign up for Starlink. And support politicians who promise to defund him.

Oh, and what about deporting him? Hmmm. Didn’t he lack proper work authorization during his student-to-entrepreneur transition time in the mid-1990s?

More On Ukraine's Defense Against Russian Bombs, Invasion

 

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelinsky: Does he

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelinsky: Does he "hold the cards?"

New York Times, Zelensky Says Ukraine Will Resume Russian Refinery Strikes, Defying Trump, Francesca Regalado, Oct. 15, 2026. President Volodymyr Zelensky made the announcement in an interview with The Financial Times. He had paused the strikes to comply with a demand from the United States.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has said he will no longer abide by President Trump’s demand to stop striking Russian oil refineries, as Kyiv’s anger at what it sees as a betrayal by Washington appeared to boil over.

Mr. Zelensky’s remarks — in an interview with The Financial Times published on Thursday — brought to a head days of mounting tensions with the Trump administration.

Ukraine stopped striking Russian refineries to comply with an energy cease-fire that Mr. Trump unilaterally declared on Sunday, and it shrugged off the U.S. leader’s calls for Mr. Zelensky to be replaced.

While Kyiv said it was unfair that Russia continued to attack Ukraine’s power plants and substations, it abided by the halt for three days, partly over concerns that Washington could stop sharing the intelligence Ukraine needs to warn its population of incoming Russian strikes. Then, on Wednesday, Ukraine said that its military, with no warning, had lost some critical access to a military version of Starlink, a pillar of its battlefield communications.

Asked in the Financial Times interview how much longer Ukraine would maintain the pause, Mr. Zelensky said, “That’s it. The block is out.” He did not provide details or say when refinery strikes — previously part of a Ukrainian campaign to bring the war closer to Russians — would resume.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia, Ukraine and the United Kingdom? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

On Thursday, Pavel Malkov, the governor of Ryazan, a Russian region southeast of Moscow, said on social media that a fire had broken out at an oil refinery after a drone strike overnight. Those details could not be independently confirmed.

In Mr. Zelensky’s Financial Times interview, which took place during his visit to London on Wednesday to meet with Prime Minister Andy Burnham and King Charles III of Britain, he also said that U.S. military officials had threatened to withhold intelligence if Ukraine did not stop attacking Russian energy infrastructure.

“They said, ‘If you will not stop, we will block intelligence,’” Mr. Zelensky said, referring to what he described as communication between American military officials and their Ukrainian counterparts. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

He also said that Ukraine had not received advance warning about Russian ballistic missile launches this week. Those warnings typically come from U.S. intelligence.“Block or technical problem or will, I don’t know,” he said.

U.S. officials have said that the United States has not cut back on intelligence sharing with Ukraine, and denied any threat to withhold such support.

Overnight on Wednesday, Russia launched dozens of ballistic missiles, hitting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and leaving 600,000 people in Kyiv without power. Ukraine said that the use of Starshield — a military version of Starlink that the Pentagon pays for — had been restricted for devices traveling faster than 100 miles per hour.  

New York Times, Defying Trump, Zelensky Says Ukraine Will Resume Russian Refinery Strikes, Cassandra Vinograd and Francesca Regalado, Oct. 15, 2026. President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed overt frustration with the United States in an interview with The Financial Times. He had paused the strikes to comply with a demand from the United States.

President Zelensky’s anger with the Trump administration burst into view on Thursday when he said he would no longer abide by President Trump’s demand to stop striking Russian oil refineries. It was a remarkably vocal expression by the Ukrainian leader of frustration with the United States, as Kyiv grapples with what it sees as a betrayal by Washington.

Mr. Zelensky’s remarks, in an interview with The Financial Times published on Thursday, brought to a head days of mounting tensions with the Trump administration. It drew expressions of support from European allies in Brussels, but could be a risky move for a country that has depended heavily on U.S. support.

In the interview, Mr. Zelensky appeared baffled by Mr. Trump’s decisions, criticizing Mr. Trump for making deals with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and for openly admiring dictators who have clung to power. Mr. Putin, the Ukrainian leader said, is “real evil.”

“How can Trump be friends with him?” Mr. Zelensky added. “I think it’s a mistake.”

The Trump administration has long blown hot and cold when it comes to Ukraine. But a new round of frictions emerged last week, when Mr. Trump said he had reached an agreement to immediately import Russian diesel fuel to the U.S. market. Ukraine panned the move, saying it would help fund Moscow’s war effort.

Mr. Trump upped the ante on Sunday, unilaterally declaring an energy cease-fire between the two warring sides and calling for Mr. Zelensky to be replaced. While Ukraine shrugged that idea off, it stopped striking Russian refineries. But Mr. Zelensky’s public expressions of frustration became more pointed amid concerns that Washington might cut off intelligence sharing that helps Ukraine detect Russian attacks.

Then Ukraine said on Wednesday that its forces had lost some critical access to a military-grade version of Starlink, a pillar of its battlefield communications that the Pentagon pays for.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia, Ukraine and the United Kingdom? 

Mr. Zelensky now appears to have had enough.

“That’s it. The block is out,” Mr. Zelensky said when asked by The Financial Times how much longer Ukraine would maintain the pause on targeting refineries. He did not say what had tipped his decision or when the strikes would resume.

Questions about U.S. support for Ukraine in the war against Russia grew after a meeting this month between Ukrainian officials and top U.S. negotiators in which some present thought the Americans made a veiled threat about curbing intelligence sharing.

U.S. officials said this week that Washington had not cut back on intelligence sharing with Ukraine, and denied any threat to withhold such support.

But Mr. Zelensky said in his interview that U.S. military officials had threatened to withhold intelligence if Ukraine did not stop attacking Russian energy infrastructure. He also reiterated that Ukraine had not received advance warning about Russian ballistic missile launches this week, including overnight on Wednesday.ImageSeveral people wearing work jackets are standing amid debris and a damaged building. One person is crouched low, operating a tool.Workers clearing an apartment that was damaged in an attack, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday.Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

Russia launched dozens of ballistic missiles in that assault, hitting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and leaving 600,000 people in Kyiv without power. Reports that the use of the military version of Starlink had been restricted for devices traveling faster than 100 miles per hour came later that day.

The restrictions were seen in Ukraine as a way to limit the fighting ability of Kyiv’s forces — part of the Trump administration’s broader pressure campaign. Mr. Trump has pushed Kyiv to stop attacking Russia’s oil refineries so that Moscow can send more diesel to global markets, as high prices threaten the Republican Party’s prospects in the midterm elections.

Mr. Zelensky has acknowledged that he felt betrayed by those moves. He told Piers Morgan, the British TV host, in an interview on Wednesday that it was “a pity that we are losing a strong partner” and that “this is not the right side of history.”

His remarks to The Financial Times — in which he also questioned how Washington could seek business deals at a time when people are “surviving, fighting, dying” — went further. They were published hours before Mr. Zelensky arrived in Brussels, where European leaders mostly expressed support for his decision to resume attacks on Russian refineries.

“The faster all the Russian refineries and ability to sell energy will be blown to smithereens the better, because Russia is funding the war with that,” Prime Minister Kristen Michal of Estonia told reporters.

That backing, however, wasn’t unanimous. “I don’t support strikes on any refineries,” Prime Minister Rumen Radev of Bulgaria told reporters.

With the exception of Mr. Radev, many also criticized the Trump administration’s decision to lift sanctions on Russian diesel.

“This ridiculous diesel deal won’t do anything at all for prices on the world market,” said Rob Jetten, the prime minister of the Netherlands. “It does, however, fill Putin’s war chest, so it’s really a very bad choice on Trump’s part, and he’d be better off abandoning it.”

There was no immediate response from the White House to the remarks by Mr. Zelensky. In the meantime, officials from Ukraine’s defense ministry said they were working to verify whether Starshield’s connectivity for devices in motion had been restored. Ukraine’s embassy in Washington, though, said services had resumed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, is shown in a pool photo last month with Trump Administration special emissaries Jared Kushner, left, President Trump's son-in-law and Steve Witkoff, Trump's longtime real estate crony and golfing partner, both of whom have been pursuing huge business deals with Russia and Middle Eastern monarchies for their private companies and allies while ostensibly seeking to negotiate peace on behalf of the United States in the Russia-Ukraine and U.S.-Iran wars.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, is shown in a pool photo last month with Trump Administration special emissaries Jared Kushner, left, President Trump's son-in-law and Steve Witkoff, Trump's longtime real estate crony and golfing partner, both of whom have been pursuing huge business deals with Russia and Middle Eastern monarchies for their private companies and allies while ostensibly seeking to negotiate peace and economic deals on behalf of the United States in the Russia-Ukraine and U.S.-Iran wars.

New York Times, The Race to Defend Kyiv Against Terrifying New Jet-Powered Drones, Maria Varenikova and Paul Mozur, Oct. 15, 2026. Ukrainian engineers are rushing to perfect A.I.-guided, jet-driven interceptors. Their goal: to stop a fast Russian threat in the latest round of a deadly tech duel.

The jet-powered attack drones scream through Kyiv’s skies at hundreds of miles per hour, outracing air defenses as they slam into gas stations, bridges, power plants or civilian buildings. They arrive so quickly that those nearby barely have a chance to run.

Russia began firing these drones, which travel much faster than older propeller-driven models, at Ukraine’s capital in large numbers this summer, aiming to snuff out the city’s ability to support ordinary life. Since then, Ukrainian companies have been under intense pressure to develop an effective defense.

They are all pursuing the same goal: an interceptor fast enough to counter the threat.

The quest has taken them to farm fields across Ukraine. On one recent day, in a freshly harvested expanse of corn, operators placed a tiny jet-powered interceptor, shaped like a miniature stealth bomber, on a catapult. It launched skyward, then plunged into the soil a few yards away, throwing up dust.

Ukrainian Air Force officers who had come to watch the test groaned. They gathered with the engineers to discuss what needed fixing.

For Kyiv’s three million residents, solutions cannot come soon enough. The Russian drones are inflicting more damage and inducing more fear than the capital has experienced since the war’s earliest weeks.

The interceptor race is the latest in a series of technological duels that have pitted Ukrainian engineering against Russia’s military-industrial complex.

Engineers and military officials say Ukraine’s best hope lies in building a new class of jet-powered drones and outfitting them with artificial intelligence that can steer them into a target moving at 350 miles an hour or faster.

A year ago, Ukraine had largely solved the problem of the fixed-wing Russian drones known as Shaheds. These drones, designed in Iran, were propeller-driven and slow enough for fleets of interceptors to hunt.

Russia has since transformed the Shahed by developing jet-powered versions, making them too fast for most interceptors to catch. 

Special Report: More On Trump Justice Department Vengeance, Corruption

Cassidy Hutchinson testifies before the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States on June 28, 2022 ((Tom Williams photo for CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images).t Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States on June 28, 2022.Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images

Cassidy Hutchinson testifies before the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States on June 28, 2022 (Tom Williams photo for CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images).

The New Republic, SHAMEFUL: As Trump Witch Hunts Go, the Cassidy Hutchinson One Is the Worst Yet, Opinion by Harry Litman, right, harry litman 2023Oct. 14, 2026. Trump’s other targets were at least battle-seasoned veterans. Hutchinson was a young woman who showed enormous bravery. Besides which — the case will fail.

There’s an unsurpassed ugliness in watching the full might of the federal government bear down on a young woman whose offense was bravely telling the nation the truth about the president. Even by the standards of this administration’s long campaign of reprisal, the pursuit of Cassidy Hutchinson may be its nastiest and most repulsive move yet.

new republic dailyIn June 2022, some 13 million Americans watched the 25-year-old aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows tell the House January 6 committee what she had seen inside the Trump White House. She had broken with a Trump-connected lawyer who, by her account, steered her toward saying less than she knew. She had every reason to stay quiet: She had a career in Republican politics ahead of her and, by her account, a Trumpworld lawyer dangling jobs in exchange for loyalty. She spoke up anyway, at enormous personal cost. Her testimony was riveting and, to me and I think to the clear majority of the country, completely credible.

Now the villains she stood up to have seized power, and the president wants to see her in the dock. The Washington Post reports that prosecutors presented evidence against her to a D.C. grand jury last week. The department is reportedly weighing perjury and obstruction charges, with an indictment request expected after the midterms.

The investigation has shown the earmarks of a political hack job from the outset. It will never produce a conviction, as Hutchinson’s tormentors almost surely recognize. And if it ever sees the light of day, it could boomerang, with considerable damage to Trump and his administration.

The clearest indication of the political impetus is that the Civil Rights Division is running the case. For this DOJ alum, that detail leaps off the page.

Why? Because that division, traditionally one of the crown jewels of the department, is now a hollowed-out hackery run by Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump loyalist through and through. And it has no business near this case: The division oversees, or used to, a discrete set of offenses, and lying to Congress isn’t among them. The assignment smacks of a delivery to a handpicked loyalist who makes up in devotion what she lacks in prudence and experience.

A perjury or false-statements case would normally run out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C., headed by Jeanine Pirro. But Pirro has suffered an astonishing run of grand jury defeats, from the “sandwich guy”—a man who threw a Subway sandwich at a Customs and Border Patrol agent and on whom Pirro tried to pin federal felony charges; a grand jury said no—to six Democratic lawmakers whose only offense was reminding troops not to follow illegal orders, to David Hearn, the famous Reflecting Pool non-vandal. So the case went to Dhillon, and it seems likely that the order came from Todd Blanche or someone above him.

We know what that someone wants. The Atlantic’s Sarah Fitzpatrick reported last week that Blanche’s and FBI Director Kash Patel’s jobs may ride on delivering indictments of Trump’s enemies, Hutchinson among them. One former official put it plainly: “The president wants indictments. He wants people in handcuffs. He wants the headlines.”

But the case is a stone-cold loser, and any experienced prosecutor knows it.

The geniuses in MAGA-land have fixed on Hutchinson’s testimony that deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato told her a story—in the presence of Bobby Engel, the head of Trump’s detail—that captured Trump’s crazed determination to join the marauders at the Capitol. According to that account, Trump said “something to the effect of, ‘I’m the f---ing president, take me up to the Capitol now.’” He then reached for the steering wheel and, when Engel stopped him, lunged at Engel.

The supposed contradiction is that the Secret Service driver, in an interview months later, said he never saw Trump grab the wheel. That says nothing about whether Ornato told Hutchinson the story—in front of Engel, who said nothing to contradict it. And when the committee later questioned Ornato, he reportedly said not that the conversation never happened but that he didn’t recall it. That’s the well-known dodge of a witness caught between a rock and a hard place.

What about building a case on the differences between what Hutchinson told the committee early on, under the guidance of the Trump-supplied lawyer, and her later testimony? It won’t work. Federal law permits that theory—that one of two contradictory sworn statements must be false—for court and grand jury testimony, but not for congressional testimony. The department would have to pick a specific lie and prove it. And for political reasons, the statement it picks has to be her truthful public testimony to the committee, because Blanche obviously wouldn’t prosecute her for shielding Trump as she did in her earlier testimony.

The country has already seen what the reprisal squad wants to put before a federal jury: a young woman under enormous pressure, inviting total ostracism in Trumpland, stepping forward to tell the truth. It’s doubtful a single juror, much less all 12, would vote to convict. Given Hutchinson’s evident innocence and D.C. grand juries’ recent record, prosecutors may well fail to secure an indictment.

Third, a prosecution would rehearse the most forceful evidence against Trump’s Orwellian project of erasing January 6. A trial would drag that day back into the light, under oath.

That begins with Hutchinson’s boss. Meadows was by Trump’s side most of January 6, acting as the switchboard for the panicked calls from the Hill. Nobody knows more about Trump’s conduct that day. Meadows defied the committee’s subpoena, and the Garland Justice Department declined to prosecute him for contempt. The administration has dodged that cannonball ever since. A Hutchinson trial would put Meadows at the center of the courtroom.

It would also resurrect the rest of her testimony: Trump hurling his lunch at the wall after Bill Barr told the AP there was no widespread fraud, ketchup dripping down the wallpaper; Trump urging the crowd toward the Capitol knowing many were armed (“They’re not here to hurt me,” Trump said, according to Hutchinson).

Hutchinson herself would likely testify, a rarity for federal defendants but a natural move for her. And if the government called Ornato and Engel to contradict her, the cross-examination would not be pretty.

Finally, the hounding of Hutchinson has an outsize moral dimension that lays bare the rot at the heart of the administration. Jim Comey, John Brennan, and Letitia James were all formidable figures, seasoned combatants with platforms, résumés, and the means to fight back. Hutchinson was a 25-year-old junior aide who literally spoke truth to power.

She is young, brave, and decent; they are old, craven, and corrupt. The moral chasm between the hunters and the hunted is oceanic.

They’d have to be blind with bloodlust, or terrified of Trump, to pursue this case. But as we know, that describes them precisely.Harry Litman

Harry Litman is a senior legal columnist at The New Republic, a senior fellow at the USC Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, and the creator of Talking Feds, a Substack and podcast on legal and political issues. A lawyer, professor, and legal commentator, he is the former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania and has served as a deputy assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice. He clerked for Supreme Court Justices Thurgood Marshall and Anthony Kennedy, and has taught at UCLA School of Law and UC San Diego. He is also a former legal affairs columnist at the Los Angeles Times.

News Roundups

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Trump Eyes White House Purge as Epstein Probes Loom, Press Secretary Exposed, Oregon Elementary School Shooting, and More, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 15, 2026. We’ll start with some heartbreaking news. There was a shooting at an elementary school in Bend, Oregon, this afternoon. Police say children are among the victims, at least two people were hospitalized, and the shooter is dead. We’re still waiting on details, and I’ll update you as soon as we know more.

In Washington, Trump is reportedly asking friends whether he should push out his chief of staff, Susie Wiles. Meanwhile, Democrats are getting ready to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s finances if they win Congress in three weeks. Trump’s new press secretary is in even deeper trouble. She shared posts calling herself an “attorney” at least 15 times after failing the bar, a partner at the Chinese firm on her résumé compared her job there to a paid internship, and she once sold shakes for a company she herself calls “sort of a pyramid scheme.” And in Ukraine, they’ve run out of Patriot missiles, the one thing that can stop Russia’s ballistic missiles, just as Russia tries to freeze the country into submission this winter.

This afternoon Twitter erupted saying Elon Musk should sue me for saying he could face war crimes charges if he disrupted Starlink for Ukraine. So I did what any reasonable person would do and went to treat myself to a coffee. My message to everyone attacking me is simple: I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to keep asking the hard questions about the most powerful people in the world, whether it’s Musk, Trump or anyone else, because that’s my job. I don’t have a corporate owner, a network or a billionaire behind me, and I answer only to you. 

Here’s the news:

Several people were killed in a shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, sources told CBS News, and police say children are among the victims. Police got a call about a shot fired into a car just before 1 p.m. local time, arrived within three minutes and quickly learned that the shooter was dead. A police spokesperson said it isn’t clear who shot the suspect and that it “may have been a bystander.” At least two people were taken to St. Charles Medical Center, though it’s not yet known whether they’re among those killed. “The victims include children,” the spokesperson said, adding that the total number of victims is still unclear. Police haven’t released any information about the suspect, and the school, which serves about 460 students from kindergarten through fifth grade, was placed on lockdown as officers evacuated it room by room.

Susie Wiles Is Being Pushed Out as Trump Faces the Prospect of Epstein Investigations If Democrats Win

Trump is reportedly looking to push out his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and he erupted when the story broke. Politico Playbook reported Thursday that Trump has been asking friends whether he should replace Wiles, citing four people with direct knowledge of the conversations. Wiles has reportedly been left out of the loop on several major decisions in recent weeks, and a GOP operative close to the White House said, “She’s burned a lot of people.” Trump has floated replacements including Stephen Miller, Steve Witkoff, Bill Pulte and Yankees executive Randy Levine. He pushed back angrily on the report Thursday, but he didn’t put an end to the speculation. Wiles, who Trump once praised as the “ice maiden” who got him back into the White House, now appears to be on her way out.

The shake-up talk comes as Trump stares down the prospect of a Democratic Congress investigating Jeffrey Epstein. One of the names Trump has reportedly floated is former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, whose allies say he could manage relations with a Democratic majority, a sign the White House is bracing for a loss in November. Democratic committees in the House and Senate are preparing to interview bankers who worked with Epstein and potentially hold hearings into his finances if Democrats win either chamber, according to Democratic staff who spoke with The New York Times. The two lawmakers leading the push, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Robert Garcia, are the top Democrats on the Senate Banking and House Oversight committees and would likely become chairs. That would give them subpoena power and the ability to put Epstein’s finances under oath in public hearings. For a president who has spent more than a year calling the Epstein story a “hoax,” that is a serious threat.

Democrats just introduced a bill to go after the Wall Street executives who helped finance Epstein’s crimes, and it has Republican support. The Epstein Wall Street Records Act would force regulators, including the Federal Reserve and the SEC, to investigate “Epstein-connected” firms and executives, fine or ban wrongdoers from the financial industry, and refer potential crimes to the Justice Department. It would also require regulators to publicly release any records tied to Epstein and his associates. “Since the big banks won’t hold themselves accountable, and the Trump administration won’t either, Congress must act,” Warren said. GOP Rep. Thomas Massie, the House’s most prominent Republican critic of Trump, is backing the bill. JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and Bank of America have paid more than $437 million to settle lawsuits from Epstein’s victims, but only Deutsche Bank has ever been penalized by a U.S. regulator.

Trump has long tried to make the Epstein story go away, and Democrats say he’s running scared. Epstein was once Trump’s friend, and he was arrested, detained and died in federal custody during Trump’s first term. After his administration promised to release the Epstein files and then reversed course last year, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said, “Donald Trump is running scared and the Trump administration is running scared. What are they hiding from the American people?” Trump has repeatedly dismissed the story as a “SCAM” pushed by Democrats. Now, with his approval rating at a record low of 32% and Republicans privately conceding the House, a Democratic majority with subpoena power is a real possibility. Three weeks before the midterms, Trump is reportedly weighing a shake-up at the top of his White House while the threat of Epstein investigations grows.

Trump’s Press Secretary Is in Big Trouble as Her Résumé Falls Apart

Katie Zacharia’s credibility is collapsing just days into the job, and a CNN review shows she promoted herself as an “attorney” at least 15 times after failing the bar. Between April 2025 and September 2026, she shared Fox News and One America News posts on X and Truth Social that labeled her an attorney, including one headline she reposted six times in a single day. At least one of those posts has since been deleted. In early October, she said on Newsmax’s “The Greg Kelly Show,” “I’m a lawyer.” Now she claims Pepperdine’s president told her she could call herself a “lawyer” but not an “attorney” or “esquire,” which suggests she knew the distinction mattered while she kept amplifying the title anyway. “I was very careful how I executed this, and I never came across as someone who was an attorney at law,” she insisted on Real America’s Voice.

Her claimed legal career in China is also unraveling, and a partner at the firm says her role was likely “similar to a paid internship.” Zacharia lists nearly two years at Zhong Lun, one of China’s largest law firms, as an “associate” in international transaction law. But Shanghai-based partner Gary Gao told The New York Times that the firm often hires foreigners for language help and to explain foreign business culture, adding, “They are not practicing Chinese law at any time.” A University of Hong Kong law professor said calling herself a former Zhong Lun associate “may therefore be somewhat controversial.” Zacharia herself told Real America’s Voice that she considered her failed bar result “inconsequential” when she moved to Beijing. That’s a problem for someone who, when asked where she passed the bar, answered “when I moved to China,” and then blamed the noise from Marine One.

She could face real legal consequences, and her “general counsel” title is now under fire too. A watchdog group has filed a complaint with the State Bar of California, where holding yourself out as a lawyer without a license is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine. Zacharia’s LinkedIn calls her “general counsel” for Fix California, a group run by Trump loyalist Ric Grenell. But tax filings reviewed by WIRED show she was actually a fundraiser for the nonprofit. “You can’t be a general counsel to a company in the United States unless you’re admitted to the bar to practice law,” said UC Berkeley law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “You can’t practice law without a license.”

New revelations keep coming: Zacharia spent part of a decade-long gap in her résumé selling shakes for a company she herself calls “sort of a pyramid scheme.” WIRED found that after returning from China in 2013, she worked as an affiliate marketer for the fitness company Beachbody, promoting its Shakeology product. Zacharia confirmed the role and described the company’s multilevel marketing operation as “sort of a pyramid scheme.” Beachbody settled a $3.6 million consumer protection lawsuit in 2017 over health claims that prosecutors called “false, misleading, and not backed by scientific evidence.” All of this follows a first briefing that lasted less than 15 minutes and took just three questions, along with the discovery of deleted conspiracy theory posts. The White House is still calling her “uniquely qualified,” but every day brings a new question about who Trump put behind the podium.

Ukraine Runs Out of Patriot Missiles as Russia Tries to Bomb It Into Submission This Winter

Ukraine has run out of Patriot interceptor missiles, leaving it nearly defenseless against Russian ballistic missiles, CNN reports. A source told CNN that “almost all the ballistic missiles from the last strike were not intercepted due to lack of the (interceptor) missiles.” In Wednesday’s attack, Ukraine shot down only four of the 39 ballistic missiles Russia fired, and those four likely used up the last Patriots it had. Russia hit all three of Kyiv’s power plants in that attack, killing four people and injuring 25. Zelensky has warned for months that Ukraine was running out, and a promised U.S. license to manufacture Patriots never materialized. He has now said that the “minimum” price for halting strikes on Russian refineries is more Patriots, adding that “when he asked for more air defenses the American response was to weaken Starlink’s service.”

Trump’s administration is threatening to cut off the very weapons pipeline Ukraine needs to restock. European officials told CNN that the State Department and the Pentagon warned Ukraine and its European allies that the U.S. could suspend European purchases of American weapons for Ukraine, along with intelligence sharing, if Kyiv kept striking Russian energy sites. Those purchases run through a program called PURL, and suspending it would threaten any future Patriot shipments. Trump insists that intelligence sharing hasn’t stopped, but he has blamed the war in Ukraine for rising diesel prices, even though the Iran war has played a bigger role. Ukraine’s military Starshield service has only been partially restored, and Kyiv says it still hasn’t heard from SpaceX or the Pentagon about why it was throttled. “We hope all will be resumed to the previous level,” Ukraine’s top diplomat in Washington said.

Russia sees an opening to break Ukraine this winter by cutting off power, heat and water to its biggest cities. An intercepted Russian attack plan obtained by The New York Times estimates that Moscow needs about 70 ballistic missiles, 720 drones and 150 guided bombs to cut Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa off from power, water and heat. That’s roughly the number of missiles and drones that get through Ukraine’s defenses in a single month, meaning Russia believes one month of strikes could do what four winters haven’t. If it works, those cities would lose 90% of their electricity and heat. Kyiv’s power plants have already been knocked down from 1.3 gigawatts of capacity before the war to about 500 megawatts, and scheduled blackouts began weeks earlier than last year. “The Russians are inflicting a lot of damage in an effort to terrify Ukrainians ahead of winter into giving up,” one analyst said.

Trump’s “energy ceasefire” has collapsed, and both sides are escalating as Musk calls for Zelensky to go. Russia launched more than 850 drones at Ukraine, including more than 360 at the Kirovohrad region, which killed three people. Ukraine resumed strikes on Russian refineries, hitting one in Ryazan with 69 drones and four cruise missiles, and destroyed or damaged six Russian fighter jets at an airfield. Russian drones also violated Romanian airspace and set two chemical tankers ablaze, leaving at least seven sailors missing near NATO’s shores. “It is obvious that Russia deliberately chose to escalate its attacks after receiving sanctions relief and seeing attempts to pressure Ukraine,” Zelensky said. Musk denied throttling Starlink and blamed the U.S. government, but he also posted, “And so the slaughter continues … Time for Zelensky to go.”

Houthis Strike Yemen’s Presidential Palace as the Iran War Spreads Across the Region

A Houthi missile attack on Yemen’s presidential palace in Aden killed at least five people and wounded 16, according to Yemen’s health minister. The government says the prime minister and the cabinet survived the strike on the al-Maashiq palace, which also hit a command center for the Saudi-led coalition. Hours later, the Houthis fired 16 ballistic missiles and other projectiles at residential neighborhoods in the city of Marib, in what local officials called a “flagrant violation” of laws against targeting civilians. The head of Yemen’s ruling council called the Aden attack “an extension” of Houthi strikes on airports and oil facilities, and ordered government forces to “respond appropriately.” He said the government’s offensive will continue until it retakes the capital, Sanaa. The Houthis have vowed that attacks “will continue in the coming days, targeting Saudi enemy airports and oil facilities.”

Houthi strikes on Saudi Arabia have turned deadly, and the toll is climbing. The Saudi-led coalition says attacks on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport killed 17 people and injured 333 between October 7 and October 11. The Houthis also hit a building belonging to oil giant Aramco at its headquarters in Dhahran, which caused a fire, and targeted a refinery in Riyadh. A senior Saudi diplomat accused Iran of “encouraging” the escalation by arming, training and supporting the Houthis. He also said elements in Russia and China are providing some of the Houthis’ capabilities or intelligence. He added that the Houthis turned down a Saudi request to meet in Oman two weeks ago to end the fighting.

The U.S. and Iran are now openly contradicting each other over who controls the Strait of Hormuz. An Iranian army commander claimed the strait is under “full surveillance” and that “not a single enemy vessel” has been able to enter it. U.S. Central Command fired back that the U.S. and its partners “continue to control the Strait of Hormuz.” CENTCOM also disputed Iran’s claim that a container ship sank after hitting a naval mine, saying it was hit by an Iranian projectile and sank “while being towed to shore.” It also rejected Iran’s claim that it had “killed hundreds of US service members in Jordan,” saying three Americans were killed in action there in July. Separately, the U.S. said it destroyed a vessel suspected of serving as an Iranian command-and-control post.

The war is pulling in more countries, as France sends forces to Saudi Arabia and Lebanon presses Washington on Israel. France has begun deploying military assets to Saudi Arabia to help protect its oil facilities, following President Emmanuel Macron’s promise to send troops and defense systems to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, a key energy hub. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to pressure Israel to stop its attacks in southern Lebanon, including bulldozing operations that keep farmers from their fields. Israel still occupies parts of southern Lebanon despite a June agreement that set out a phased withdrawal. This all comes as CNN reports the U.S. military has drawn up plans to drop the “mother of all bombs” on Iran if Trump orders new strikes.

Other news:

Former Rep. Matt Gaetz has been accused of sex trafficking two young women in a new federal lawsuit in Florida. The suit, filed Thursday by two women identified as Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2, alleges that Gaetz and two others “coordinated the recruitment, payments, drugs, and travel to obtain commercial sexual acts” from them between 2017 and January 2019, when the women were recent high school graduates. It claims Gaetz and his associate Joel Greenberg, a former Florida tax collector now serving 11 years in prison for crimes including sex trafficking of a child, paid one of the women on at least 19 occasions and took them on trips to the Bahamas, Las Vegas and New York. The lawsuit also alleges that one of the women saw Gaetz with a 17-year-old at a 2017 party. Gaetz denied the allegations, saying “much of the conduct alleged against me is false,” and posted a beach photo of women he suggested might be the plaintiffs. A 2024 House Ethics Committee report found that Gaetz paid women for sex and drugs on at least 20 occasions and had sex with a 17-year-old in 2017, findings he has also denied.

The MAGA donor Kimberly Guilfoyle allegedly begged to pay her $100,000 credit card bill has sued her for defamation, and he says the case “might bring down the entire Trump administration.” Kentucky attorney Eric Deters filed the suit in Kentucky state court on Thursday against Guilfoyle and her legal team, after they called the text messages he shared fake and labeled him a “known blackmailer.” The Wall Street Journal reported that Guilfoyle asked Deters to pay her American Express bill in exchange for influence in the administration, texting him, “Honey please I need you to get this done for me today,” and assuring him the wire “won’t show up anywhere.” Deters says he never paid, didn’t owe her money, and that she asked him to write a letter falsely claiming he owed her so the payment could be “papered.” He also warned that the lawsuit “may end the JD Vance/Marco Rubio ticket,” without explaining why. Guilfoyle resigned as ambassador to Greece on Tuesday at the White House’s urging and has vowed to “vigorously” fight what she calls “false” allegations.

Leaked records show Trump isn’t paying a dime for his White House ballroom, which corporations and donors with business before his government are funding instead. An internal spreadsheet obtained by The Washington Post details $333 million in private pledges, including $25 million each from Nvidia, Apple, the Adelson family and Dish Network chairman Charles Ergen, with no contribution listed from Trump. That contradicts Trump’s claim last year that the project was being “paid for a hundred percent by me and some friends of mine.” At least $77 million came from donors who asked to stay anonymous, all routed through a nonprofit that avoids public disclosure. Several donations lined up with favorable government decisions: Trump pardoned a banker months after his daughter pledged $2.5 million, and the FCC dropped an investigation into Ergen’s company after his $25 million pledge. The White House called the leak “cowardly” and vowed to “relentlessly pursue those responsible.”

Russell Brand’s rape trial began hearing from his first accuser, who testified that he transformed into a “monster” in a hotel room in 1999. The woman told the court she met Brand at a cabaret event during the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth, and that he raped her after making her take half-naked photographs of him. “I know he raped me, I know I said ‘no, no, I don’t want this,’” she said, breaking down in tears in the witness box. Under cross-examination, she rejected the defense’s claim that she fell under Brand’s charismatic spell, saying, “He was frightening, he seemed menacing.” Brand, 51, faces three charges of rape, three of sexual assault and one of indecent assault involving six women between 1999 and 2009. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges, and the trial continues.

Trump’s Justice Department sued California to block it from counting certain mail-in ballots in the midterms, two days after demanding that Los Angeles County act on a thumb drive of names within 48 hours. On Tuesday, the DOJ sent county officials a USB drive with a handwritten password, claiming it contained the names of noncitizens registered to vote, without explaining how it built the list. When the county refused to review it, calling the drive unsecure, the DOJ sued to have ballots from more than 20,000 flagged voters set aside. California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said the effort serves “only to cause chaos and fuel public distrust in our elections.” The administration’s track record on this is poor: when Homeland Security gave Nevada 185 names of supposed noncitizens, officials found every one of them was a citizen. UCLA election law expert Richard Hasen called the lawsuit “a nice publicity stunt” and noted that federal law bars systematic voter purges within 90 days of an election.

A year-long email war between two senior Trump State Department officials has leaked, exposing accusations of insubordination, possibly unlawful activity and “unhinged” threats. The messages, obtained by Politico, show Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau clashing with Paolo Zampolli, a longtime Trump friend and the former modeling agent who introduced Melania to her husband, now serving as a special envoy. In November 2025, Landau ordered Zampolli to “immediately stop all work on ANY issues not directly tied to cultural diplomacy.” He then accused him, with 15 other officials copied, of “unauthorized and possibly unlawful ventures in commercial and economic matters.” After Zampolli met with Serbian officials, Landau personally apologized to Serbia’s foreign minister for “any confusion,” saying Zampolli had “absolutely no authority to speak for our Administration.” Zampolli fired back by asking the inspector general to investigate Landau and accusing him of leaking to The New York Times, and Landau called those claims “bizarre” and “defamatory” and told him to stop sending “unhinged emails.” One administration official called the whole spectacle “cartoonish and embarrassing.”

Pete Hegseth’s church allies backed his plan to livestream the execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan before Trump called it off. Douglas Wilson, who co-founded the church network Hegseth belongs to, said he “prefer[s] public executions to private” and favors “the older forms, like a firing squad.” Pastors in that network have for years advocated the death penalty for adultery, abortion and homosexuality, and a podcaster from Hegseth’s former church has called for public executions and the banning of Islam. Even after Trump canceled the livestream, a Pentagon spokesperson told the Guardian, “The secretary is correct. It will be livestreamed.” Pope Leo, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Association of Evangelicals all condemned the plan, with the Catholic bishops’ leader calling it “a barbaric promotion of a culture of death.” The Vatican’s secretary of state said it is “certainly unacceptable to turn death into a spectacle.”

A near-record “super El Niño” is set to slam the West Coast and southern U.S. with powerful storms this winter, according to NOAA’s official forecast. El Niño is expected to peak in December and steer storms across the southern half of the country, bringing heavy rain and mountain snow, as well as possible ice and snow to the Southeast and southern Plains. “These storms could be very strong,” a NOAA meteorologist warned, adding that some could swing up the East Coast and bring heavy snow to big cities. California is especially at risk, and Gov. Gavin Newsom has already declared a state of emergency ahead of possible flooding and mudslides. The last super El Niño, in 1997 and 1998, set rainfall records across California. That comes as a state audit warns that 57 California dams are in poor condition.

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and CommentaryTrump’s Press Secretary Exposed, Zelensky Tells Trump “We’re Done,” the Push to Strip Ilhan Omar’s Citizenship, and More, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 15, 2026. Trump’s new press secretary has spent years calling herself a lawyer. The Wall Street Journal now reports that she took the bar exam and failed it. Her explanation for telling reporters she passed it “when I moved to China” is that she misheard the question over the noise of Marine One. A watchdog group is asking California to investigate, and in that state, calling yourself a lawyer without a license is a crime. The White House is still standing behind her.

In Ukraine, Zelensky has had enough. He told the Financial Times “we’re done” and resumed strikes on Russian oil refineries, since Russia kept bombing Ukraine’s power grid the whole time Ukraine held its fire. He also says the Starlink slowdown “was not a technical problem, it was the will.” And the Trump administration is reportedly trying to strip Rep. Ilhan Omar of her citizenship and deport her, three weeks before she’s on the ballot.

As someone who actually practiced law before leaving to do this full time, I’ll tell you that the press secretary story bothers me more than it might seem to. Being a lawyer means something, and so does telling people the truth. That’s the whole reason I walked away from a legal career to build this: to give you straight, accurate news with no spin, whether it’s about the White House podium or my family’s home in Ukraine. I don’t have a network, a corporate owner or a billionaire behind me. It’s just me, and I answer only to you. With three weeks until the midterms, if you want to help me keep going, please consider subscribing here:Subscribed

Here’s the news:

Trump’s Press Secretary Failed the Bar Exam, and Now She Says She Misheard the Question

The Wall Street Journal reports that White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia took the California bar exam and failed it, even though she has repeatedly called herself a lawyer. Zacharia sat for the exam in 2011 after graduating from Pepperdine law school but didn’t pass, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. She then moved to Beijing to work at the Chinese law firm Zhong Lun, where international staff worked as “legal consultants” and didn’t need licenses. When Trump announced her appointment, he called her an attorney, and she has called herself a lawyer on air, including telling Fox News in August, “As a lawyer, the procedural steps are absolutely critical.” Reporters found no record of her being licensed in California, Texas or Washington, D.C., under either her married or maiden name. Even her former law school mentor, Roger Alford, said “it would be unusual to say that you’re a lawyer if you’ve not passed the bar somewhere.”

Zacharia now says she simply misheard when she answered that she passed the bar “when I moved to China.” Trump had turned to her on the South Lawn and asked “which state?” after a reporter raised the question, and her answer sparked days of scrutiny. Zacharia told The New York Times, “I assumed the question was, ‘Where were you after law school?’” and blamed the noise from Marine One. She said “wanting to respect protocol, the distance behind the president, kept me from moving closer to hear the question.” In an earlier statement, she said she “practiced international transaction law, with all the appropriate credentials.” Neither she nor the White House has provided evidence that she ever passed a bar exam anywhere.

A watchdog group wants California to investigate whether she broke the law, and in that state, calling yourself a lawyer without a license is a crime. Campaign for Accountability filed a complaint with the State Bar of California asking it to look into whether Zacharia violated state law by presenting herself as a lawyer. California law makes it a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine to hold yourself out as entitled to practice law without being an active bar member. Her LinkedIn lists her as general counsel for Fix California, a group founded by Trump ally Ric Grenell, from 2024 to 2025. A person familiar with that job said she directed the group’s outside lawyers. The State Bar of California says it has no record of her ever being licensed.

The White House is standing firmly behind Zacharia, just days into the job. Communications Director Steven Cheung called her “a fabulous and wonderful addition to the team” who is “uniquely qualified and whip smart.” A White House official stressed that Trump didn’t hire her to handle legal matters. The scandal comes on top of a widely panned first briefing and the discovery of deleted posts in which she promoted conspiracy theories and called for suspending habeas corpus. Zacharia replaced Karoline Leavitt and was announced as press secretary only last Friday. With the midterms three weeks away, the White House is now dealing with questions about its chief spokesperson’s own credibility.

“We’re Done”: Zelensky Defies Trump, Resumes Strikes on Russian Oil Refineries

Ukraine is striking Russian oil refineries again, defying Trump’s “energy ceasefire” after Russia kept bombing Ukraine’s power grid. “The block [on attacking refineries] is out. We’re done,” Zelensky told the Financial Times in an interview published Thursday. Hours later, Russia said Ukraine had launched a “massive attack” on an oil refinery in Ryazan, south of Moscow, which started a fire. Zelensky said Ukraine held off for three days to meet Trump’s demands, while Russian attacks on the energy grid killed more than 100 civilians in a week. Russia launched more than 850 drones at Ukraine starting early Thursday, and Zelensky said this happened “precisely at a time when the speed of our defensive capabilities is being artificially restricted.” He said he would halt the refinery strikes again only if the U.S. sends more Patriot interceptors, calling that the “minimum.”

Zelensky says the Starlink slowdown was deliberate, and Musk is now openly pointing the finger at Trump. “It was not a technical problem, it was the will,” Zelensky said of the restrictions on Starshield, the military version of Starlink. He said U.S. officials told Ukrainian commanders, “If you will not stop [the energy strikes], we will block intelligence,” and that the cutoff was later presented to Kyiv as a technical glitch. Musk responded on X that “Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and POTUS.” He then also posted that it was “time for Zelenskyy to go.” A Ukrainian defense source says Starshield service has now been restored, but Kyiv is still demanding an explanation, and GOP Sen. Thom Tillis has asked the Pentagon’s inspector general to investigate.

Zelensky launched a direct personal attack on Trump, saying the president admires Putin and is cutting deals with Russia at Ukraine’s expense. Trump “speaks about it openly and loudly that he loves such people and he respects such people,” Zelensky said, referring to strongmen who stay in power for “20 years, 30 years, 40 years.” He dismissed Trump’s call for him to resign as “rhetoric” that only emboldens Putin. Zelensky warned that the diesel deal is just the beginning: “The question will be when will the next deal be? Maybe it will be gas. Definitely it will be gas.” Trump is now also considering easing sanctions on “shadow fleet” tankers carrying Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan oil, which Zelensky and U.S. senators warn would be a gift to Putin. “We didn’t destroy any relationship,” Zelensky said, making clear it’s up to Washington to repair the damage.

European and Ukrainian officials believe Trump is deliberately squeezing Ukraine to force concessions in stalled peace talks. Officials told NBC News they think the diesel deal, the Starlink restrictions and the gaps in intelligence sharing are all aimed at pressuring Kyiv at the negotiating table. Military experts warn that losing U.S. intelligence or satellite access could seriously damage Ukraine’s position just as winter sets in. After a Russian drone hit a shop in the Odesa region, Zelensky called it “Russia’s pointed response to the signals it is receiving from America.” He added, “The war has not stopped. The sanctions must not be lifted,” noting that Russia’s war has now gone on for 1,695 days. Zelensky still said an “honest” and “strategic” partnership with the U.S. is essential, warning that “Russia can only fight all of us when we are not together.”

Trump Administration Is Trying to Strip Ilhan Omar of Her Citizenship and Deport Her

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump administration’s investigation into Rep. Ilhan Omar is aimed at revoking her U.S. citizenship and eventually deporting her. According to U.S. officials and people familiar with the probe, investigators have issued more than a dozen subpoenas, including to Omar’s relatives, seeking testimony before a grand jury in Minnesota. The report comes days after Homeland Security Investigations agents raided Omar’s Washington home and seized her passport, phone, personal computers and notebooks. The raid took place just weeks before the November 3 midterms, as Omar runs for a fifth term. The investigation does not revoke her citizenship by itself, which would require separate court proceedings, and no such case has been filed. Omar’s office called the investigation baseless.

The case hinges on whether Omar’s age was changed on immigration paperwork more than two decades ago. Omar came to the U.S. as a refugee from Somalia in 1995, after years in a Kenyan refugee camp, and became a citizen in 2000. Investigators are examining whether she or her late father listed her as 17 rather than 18 when he applied for citizenship, which would have let her become a citizen through him without applying on her own. Her father died in 2020, which complicates any effort to prove who, if anyone, changed her age. The Journal reported that Homeland Security investigators looked into a similar allegation under the Biden administration but dropped it for lack of evidence of fraud. A nonpartisan congressional watchdog previously cleared Omar of wrongdoing in a separate matter involving her financial disclosures.

Omar and her family say she did nothing wrong and that the investigation is political retaliation. “For a decade, Donald Trump has relentlessly targeted Congresswoman Ilhan Omar with inflammatory rhetoric, repeatedly putting a target on her back,” her office said. “Now, those attacks have escalated to a pointless federal raid. The Congresswoman has done nothing wrong.” Her husband, Tim Mynett, said, “My wife came here when she was 12 years old as a child war refugee. No concerns.” Trump claimed he had “nothing to do” with the raid and said it was “really up to the DOJ,” while calling Omar “a terrible person” and “a disaster” at his rallies. The Justice Department has traditionally avoided overt actions this close to an election, and an attempt to denaturalize a sitting member of Congress would be unprecedented.

U.S. Draws Up Plans to Drop “Mother of All Bombs” on Iran as Trump Hits Record Low in the Polls

The U.S. military has reportedly drawn up plans to drop its most powerful non-nuclear bomb on Iran, even as Trump claims the war “will end very soon.” CNN reports that the strike plans could use the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast, known as the “mother of all bombs,” against Iranian energy infrastructure and nuclear sites if Trump orders renewed combat. Using it would mark a major escalation, and officials familiar with the discussions reportedly question whether it would even achieve U.S. goals. No final decision has been announced, and Reuters could not independently verify the report. The same day, Trump told reporters, “As soon as I want it to end, it’ll end,” and promised that oil prices would “drop like a rock.” Meanwhile, the Iran-backed Houthis hit the headquarters of Saudi oil giant Aramco overnight, damaging the top three floors where senior executives work.

Trump’s approval rating has fallen to a record low of 32%, and new polls show voters want major change in Washington three weeks before the midterms. A new AP-NORC poll finds that a strong majority of voters think Trump is falling short at home and abroad. More voters want Democrats to win control of Congress, and Democrats are more enthusiastic about voting than Republicans. About 8 in 10 voters say the economy or the cost of living is a top issue, and about two-thirds say the same about healthcare and the Iran war. Issues where Trump polls better, like immigration and crime, rank much lower. Trump’s “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine has also collapsed, with Russia sending more than 360 drones at central Ukraine and Ukraine striking a Russian refinery with drones and cruise missiles.

Even Republicans are losing faith in Trump’s economy, according to a new Harris poll for the Guardian. Three in four Americans are worried about a recession, and 61% believe the U.S. is already in one, though by the usual definition it isn’t. Only 28% of Republicans now say the economy is getting better, down from 49% in February, just before the U.S. attacked Iran. Among independents, who are expected to decide key swing races, 65% say the economy is getting worse, up from 48% in 2024. A full 96% of Republicans agree there is an affordability crisis. Half of independents say neither party has a solution, but Democrats lead Republicans 14% to 10% among those who pick a side.

While voters struggle with prices, Trump is bragging about his White House renovations and his administration is weighing an ad campaign to recruit white South Africans. Trump posted photos of the restored South entrance and new heliport, calling his ballroom project “on time, and on budget,” even though estimates of its cost have ballooned from around $400 million to as much as $600 million. The administration also redirected $352 million in funds meant for the Secret Service toward the project, even though the law says that money can only be spent on Secret Service personnel, training and technology, not construction. Separately, a State Department proposal obtained by the Guardian outlines a roughly $335,000 research and advertising campaign to find out why more white Afrikaners aren’t applying to come to the U.S. as refugees. Applications have “trended lower than expected” since the administration made Afrikaners its resettlement priority, citing claims of “white genocide” that South Africa and experts have widely rejected. That’s happening at the same time the administration has gutted refugee admissions for nearly everyone else.

Other news:

Trump is reportedly asking allies whether he should fire his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, as his White House faces turmoil three weeks before the midterms. According to Politico, which cited four sources with direct knowledge of the conversations, Trump has been calling friends to ask whether it’s time to replace Wiles, the first woman to serve as White House chief of staff. Wiles has reportedly been left out of the loop on several major decisions in recent weeks. One GOP operative said Wiles has “burned a lot of people,” and Trump has reportedly found no shortage of people encouraging him to push her out. Names Trump has floated as possible replacements include Stephen Miller, Steve Witkoff, housing official Bill Pulte and Yankees executive Randy Levine. He has also raised former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, whose allies argue he could manage relations with a Democratic-controlled Congress. That’s a sign the White House may already be preparing for a loss in November.

Suspicious white powder was mailed to election offices in at least three states, just weeks before the midterms. Oklahoma and Louisiana said they received envelopes containing powder this week, and Postal Service investigators intercepted a package headed for Ohio’s secretary of state. In Louisiana, an election division employee who opened one of the packages was taken to the emergency room as a precaution, and the building was evacuated, though police found no evidence of harmful substances. The FBI says it and the Postal Service are investigating “a series of suspicious mailings sent to various addresses nationwide,” including secretaries of state and election offices. The national associations of secretaries of state and election directors said, “Those who administer our elections should never fear for their safety while carrying out their essential duties.” In 2024, at least 20 states received similar letters, including one in Utah signed by a so-called “United States Traitor Elimination Army.”

Trump told a Montana rally “we don’t have inflation” on the same day a report showed it rising to 3.7%, while his own supporters said they’re struggling to afford basics. “We have very little inflation,” Trump told the crowd in Kalispell, claiming poverty is down, incomes are up and “we’re all having a good time.” But supporters waiting to see him told NBC News a different story. “We can’t afford stuff because the prices are so bad,” said Megan Gurhlke, a dairy farm worker whose family has three full-time workers. Another supporter said filling her truck with diesel costs $200, and an 84-year-old said she combines errands to save on gas. Even so, many said they don’t blame Trump, and polling suggests economic frustration could still cost Republicans Congress.

Cornell’s president faced furious faculty over his handling of the fraternity gang rape case and admitted he never read the police report. At a closed-door Faculty Senate meeting obtained by the Associated Press, Michael Kotlikoff asked for more time and argued that replacing him would hurt Cornell’s reputation. He also left open the possibility of banning fraternities entirely if they “cannot exist in a safe environment.” Kotlikoff acknowledged he hadn’t read the campus police report and didn’t know the woman had dropped out, but said, “I really reject the idea that I had no interest in it.” One government professor said faculty “were extremely angry. They gave him a hard time, I think appropriately so,” and a music professor called his failure to follow up “appalling.” Debate on a no-confidence resolution continues October 28, followed by a vote.

Thousands of student protesters clashed with riot police in Albania, partly over a luxury resort deal backed by Jared Kushner. Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama rejected calls to resign as protesters smashed windows and police fired tear gas and water cannons in Tirana for a third straight day. Protesters are angry about corruption, the cost and quality of education and a deal to sell off parts of Albania’s southern coastline for a Kushner-backed resort development. “Our prime minister is the meaning of the word corruption,” one student said. The resort has faced legal challenges, and Reuters reported that a man who sold land for the project was wanted on drug trafficking charges, though it found no evidence of wrongdoing by Kushner. Parliament canceled its session as the violence spread.

A school roof collapsed in Pakistan, killing at least 27 children and a teacher, and officials fear the death toll will rise. The collapse happened during classes at a private school in Peshawar, and most of the students killed were younger than 13. Just 47 of the 110 students in the three affected classrooms had been rescued as of Thursday, according to the city’s police chief. A rescue official said the roof of a higher floor gave way and crushed both stories beneath it. “It was a weak building structure,” the police chief said. “Its roof was overweight with construction on a weak structure that caused the collapse.” Authorities have ordered an investigation.

Pope Leo is back at work from his hospital room, and doctors say his lung is recovering well after cancer surgery. His doctors said his chest X-ray “revealed good recovery of the operated lung” and that his post-operative tests remain normal. The Vatican says he is reviewing documents and celebrating Mass in a chapel set up near his room. Doctors are still waiting on tests to show whether the cancer has spread and whether he will need more treatment. The Vatican hasn’t changed plans for his November trip to Peru, Uruguay and Argentina, and he is expected to stay in the hospital until at least October 20. His brother, who is being treated for blood cancer himself, said, “They caught it early enough.”

China and North Korea opened a long-delayed bridge between the two countries, signaling warming ties despite UN sanctions. The New Yalu River Bridge, completed in 2014 but never used, officially opened Thursday as trucks with Chinese flags lined up to cross. It is the two countries’ most significant land border crossing, and its opening follows two summits between their leaders in the past year. China is by far North Korea’s largest trading partner, and its exports to the North hit a six-year high of $2.3 billion last year. China and Russia have questioned whether UN sanctions on North Korea should still apply, and Russia is accused of giving Pyongyang military help in exchange for its support in Ukraine. Analysts say the bridge will help move heavy equipment and energy products into North Korea, though they don’t expect a full return to pre-sanctions trade right away.

China has opened its first military airfield abroad focused on air power, in Laos, and experts are watching what it could become. The Ban Keun airport, about 30 miles north of the Laotian capital and the Thai border, already has a runway long enough for fighter jets, and satellite images show room to extend it for bombers. China says the joint facility is for training Laos’ air force pilots and is “not directed against any third party.” Analysts say it could give China’s military alternate routes to the South China Sea and around Vietnam. One defense analyst said it could also complicate U.S. planning for a conflict over Taiwan: “Does this mean the U.S. would have to attack a joint facility in Southeast Asia?” It joins China’s base in Djibouti and the Ream naval base in Cambodia as part of Beijing’s push to project force abroad.

North Korea says it test-fired cruise missiles designed to be launched from submarines, the latest in a string of weapons tests. State media described the missiles as “strategic,” suggesting they are meant to carry nuclear warheads, though it didn’t say whether they were fired from an actual submarine or a test platform. The launches follow hypersonic missile tests on September 20 and October 3. Kim Jong Un is pushing to build a nuclear-powered submarine, which would let North Korea launch missiles that are much harder to detect in advance. Experts question whether the impoverished, heavily sanctioned country has the technology to pull it off. Kim has rejected Trump’s calls to restart diplomacy, which broke down in 2019, and demands that the U.S. drop denuclearization as a condition for talks.

More On Middle East Wars

 

New York Times, Attacks on Tankers in Mideast Surge, but Oil Exports Remain Steady, Peter Eavis, Oct. 15, 2026. Shipping operators are braving the Strait of Hormuz, but the risks are high and transportation costs have skyrocketed.

Iran is hitting a lot more tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, but ship operators are still going through the waterway, transporting oil in significant volumes.

So far this month, 26 vessels have been struck, according to data from organizations that track maritime incidents, making it the most dangerous period for shipping during the war with Iran. On Wednesday, a 730-foot container ship sank after a projectile hit it.

Under U.S. military protection, tankers had been returning to the strait in greater numbers. That helped oil exports from the Middle East to get close to their prewar levels last month.

But while Iran’s escalated attacks on tankers appear aimed at reversing the surge, data from firms that track oil shipments suggest that the recent recovery in exports through the strait has held up.

TankerTrackers.com said over 12 million barrels of crude a day had gone through the waterway on average this month, slightly higher than September’s average. “Exports continue to strengthen,” said Samir Madani, a co-founder of TankerTrackers.

Kpler, another maritime analysis firm, said nearly 10 million barrels of oil a day had gone through the strait this month, down from around 11 million in September.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

Tankers typically turn off their transponders to go through the strait, so the ship trackers piece together vessel movements by waiting for transponders to go back on, and by using satellite images and other information. Their totals can differ, and they often revise their most recent counts higher as they obtain more information.

Both trackers’ totals for the strait are still well below the 17 million barrels a day that went through it just before the war, which began at the end of February.

Some analysts said there were signs that Iran’s upsurge in attacks had begun to cause some shipping operators to think twice about going through the strait.

Dimitris Maniatis, the founder of Marisks, a maritime risk management firm, said some ship operators headed for the waterway had apparently decided not to go through in the wake of the latest attacks. “They don’t want to take the risk of being hit,” he said.

The strait is not the only way to export oil out of the Middle East. Persian Gulf countries have significantly increased the amount of oil they export through pipelines that bypass the waterway. So far in October, they have exported around five million barrels a day through those routes, according to TankerTrackers.

If the flows through the pipelines and strait are combined, around 17 million barrels of crude a day have left the Middle East this month. Before the war, the region was exporting over 19 million barrels a day through all routes.

But the pipelines are also vulnerable to attack. Last month, Saudi Arabia had to shut down its East-West pipeline for a while after an Iranian-backed militia struck it.

New York Times, Why Does Saudi Arabia Struggle to Stop Houthi Attacks? Neil MacFarquhar, Oct. 15, 2026. The Saudi military has expensive equipment, but the missiles and drones used by the Yemeni militia are difficult to detect and stop.

Over decades, Saudi Arabia has invested hundreds of billions of dollars in building an advanced military, putting the kingdom among the top 10 nations in terms of arms spending.

Still, the country has stumbled in response to deadly attacks by the Iran-backed Houthi militia, with the fighting in recent months reigniting a war that the kingdom began in 2015.

The problem in part is that Saudi Arabia invested heavily in weapons having what some military analysts call a “glitter factor” — things like high-tech fighter jets and the latest missile interceptors. But the Houthi guerrillas often deploy cheap drones or low-flying cruise missiles that Saudi forces struggle to detect.

In addition, Saudi defenses were built assuming that the biggest threat would come from the east or northeast, from Iran or Iraq, not from Yemen to the southwest. So the country was left somewhat exposed, analysts said.

Finally, the kingdom only recently started to address longstanding systemic problems. To inoculate the Saud dynasty against the military coups that plagued most Arab states, the military was built as two competing branches. Each suffers from highly centralized decision-making which limits flexibility. analysts said.

“It’s a hugely rattling moment for Riyadh, humiliating on a number of fronts,” said Burcu Ozcelik, an expert on Middle East security issues at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense research organization in London.

More On U.S. Education, Data Centers, Media 

New York Times, For Texas Schoolchildren, Minor Misbehavior Can Mean Criminal Charges, Kristian Hernández, Asher Lehrer-Small, Clare Amari and Rosie Cima, Oct. 15, 2026. More students ages 10 to 13 are ending up in the justice system after vaping, making threats and lashing out at school.

Over the past decade, school districts across Texas have sought to make classrooms safer by swelling the number of police officers on campuses and taking a tougher stance on misbehavior. But the crackdown has had an unexpected consequence: sweeping tens of thousands of elementary students and middle schoolers into the justice system.

Children ages 10 to 13 were referred for prosecution after incidents in schools more than 47,000 times since 2014, an analysis by The New York Times and The San Antonio Express-News found. About 4,800 students in that age group were referred during the 2024-25 academic year alone, the most recent school year for which data is available. That is a third more than the number a decade before.

Most of the students were accused of minor offenses, like making threats, using cannabis vapes or lashing out at classmates or teachers, the analysis found. Few caused serious physical harm.

Outside Austin, an 11-year-old bumped into a school counselor. In Victoria, a 10-year-old said he saw someone on campus with a weapon, but later admitted he had made up the story. In El Paso, a 10-year-old kicked an assistant principal after his cellphone was taken away.

All three found themselves in the justice system.

While the case against the boy in El Paso was dropped two months after the incident, court records show, the consequences for his family were immense. His mother, Grace Lee-Vazquez, said she shouldered thousands of dollars in legal bills. The boy, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and still struggles to double-knot his shoelaces, became anxious about school. His grades tumbled.

School district officials would not answer questions about the incident, but wrote in a statement that they were “committed to maintaining safe and inclusive learning environments for all students.”

The ordeal, Ms. Lee-Vazquez said, “broke us.” She moved the family out of state in June for a fresh start.  

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: Trump praises data centers — while his super PAC trashes them, , Rebecca Crosby and Noel Sims, Oct. 15, 2026. While Trump relentless promotes data centers, his super PAC is attacking Democrats for allegedly supporting data centers.

For months, President Trump has publicly celebrated data centers. “The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor. If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in August. “If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame.”

Trump has called data centers “fabulous” and “absolutely beautiful.” Trump has also claimed that data centers make “a fortune” for the surrounding communities, calling them “tremendous WINS for the States and Communities that are lucky enough to get them.” In August, Trump argued that “data centers could be bigger than oil.”

In September, Trump claimed that “communities that were dying” before having data centers are now “wealthy.” In a July post on Truth Social, Trump wrote, “One of the biggest Driving Forces in the Future for Jobs, are Data Centers,” arguing that “[t]hey are big, strong, bold, and Money Machines for the State in which they are built.”

Trump has also claimed that data centers make communities safer. “Look, the data centers make a lot of money,” Trump said in a September interview with TIME. “If you want to be poor, you want to have no money, if you don’t want to have a job, and if you want to live in a crime-infested area, squalor, all the things that go along with it, you should not have a data center.” In the same interview, Trump said, “It doesn’t mean I want them right next to my house, but certainly I like them in my county.”

But while Trump is publicly championing data centers, his super PAC, which he has made clear that he controls, is paying for advertisements attacking Democratic candidates for allegedly supporting data centers.

Popular Information obtained a mailer from No Going Back PAC, an alter ego of Trump’s super PAC MAGA Inc., attacking Jamie Ager, the Democratic candidate for North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District. The mailer attacks Ager for being “open to large AI data centers” and “putting… AI data centers ahead of North Carolinians.”

The mailer was submitted by a North Carolina resident through Popular Information’s new web app, Paid For By.

So, why is Trump’s super PAC attacking Democrats for something he has publicly supported?

The reality is, despite Trump’s support, data centers are deeply unpopular. A Gallup poll conducted in March found that over 70% of Americans “oppose constructing data centers for artificial intelligence in their local area.”Trump’s contradictory attack mailer is also inaccurate

Aside from being hypocritical, the mailer’s claims about Ager are unsupported.

As evidence for the claim Ager “is open to large AI data centers,” the mailer cites an April article by a news outlet called Mountain Xpress. But that article, in which Ager was asked about his stances on various environmental issues, does not show that he is “open” to data centers.

In the article, Mountain Xpress asked Ager his stance on data center development in relation to a moratorium enacted by the town of Canton, which is in the district he is running to represent. “Data centers need to work for us, not the other way around. If we’re going to let a data center be built in Western North Carolina, it needs to bring good local jobs; it cannot poison our water or our air, and it cannot drive up electric bills for families and small businesses,” Ager responded. “Canton asked the right questions. Every community deserves that ability to set the terms if they want a data center at all.”

Elsewhere, Ager has supported a moratorium on new data centers. In August, Ager said, “I’m really skeptical that centers are a good fit for Western North Carolina… We need to be very careful, and I support a short term moratorium to make sure we study the issue before we make any long term commitments.”

Most recently, Ager wrote in an October 8 Facebook post, “Western North Carolina’s natural beauty is irreplaceable. Data centers strain water resources, raise utility bills, and cause noise pollution. I support a 1-year moratorium on new data centers because these facilities are not good neighbors.”

The mailer also makes unsupported claims about Ager’s healthcare stances, stating that he “would expand giant health insurer profits” and “opposed $50 billion for rural healthcare.” These claims take Ager’s statements out of context. In reality, he has said that Affordable Care Act subsidies should be extended as a stopgap, in order to lower costs for enrollees. He also expressed opposition to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which did include $50 billion for rural healthcare, but also cut Medicaid for rural communities by an estimated $137 billion over ten years.Trump super PAC’s TV attack on data centers

The Ager mailer is not the only instance in which No Going Back has pushed misleading claims about a Democratic candidate’s stance on data centers.

In a TV ad, No Going Back accused Democrat Jessica Killin, who is running to represent Colorado’s 5th Congressional District, of “profiting off companies pushing for data centers.” The ad specifically claims that a lobbying firm co-founded by Killin’s husband has been paid “$580,000 by tech companies pushing for data centers.”

As evidence, No Going Back cites a New York Times article about data centers that does not mention Killin at all, but does mention Meta and Alphabet — two companies in which Killin’s husband owns stock. According to the Colorado Sun, the claim about Killin’s husband’s lobbying firm is also misleading. The firm FS Vector does lobby on behalf of technology companies that seem to use data centers, but the Colorado Sun could not identify any clients who directly own or operate data centers.

Killin’s campaign told the Colorado Sun that she supports a moratorium on a new data center in El Paso County, Colorado.

UPDATE: On Monday morning, Popular Information broke the news that there was no evidence that newly-appointed White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia, who claimed for years that she was a lawyer, was actually a lawyer. A few hours later, President Trump and Zacharia were confronted with Popular Information’s reporting on the South Lawn. Zacharia’s bumbling response turned the issue into a national story.

On Tuesday, a non-partisan watchdog organization filed a complaint against Zacharia with the State Bar of California for “the Unauthorized Practice of Law and for Holding Herself Out as Entitled to Practice Law.” The complaint, which cites Popular Information’s reporting 14 times, calls for the state bar to conduct a “thorough investigation” and “take all appropriate action, including referral to the Ventura County District Attorney.”

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsNew York Times, Glitch Delays 600,000 Voter Registrations in Texas as Early Voting Looms, John YoonOct. 15, 2026. Voting rights groups sued the Texas Department of Public Safety and the secretary of state over delayed voter registrations that overwhelmed local election workers.

A computer error caused a backlog of hundreds of thousands of voter registrations in Texas, sending election workers scrambling to process them before early voting starts on Monday, county election officials said.

The backlog of nearly 600,000 applications stemmed from a glitch in software run by the Texas Department of Public Safety, according to a lawsuit filed last week by voting rights groups. They accused the agency, as well as the secretary of state, who serves as Texas’ chief election officer, of failing to to maintain a reliable online voter registration system.

The backlog in a state that is home to one of the year’s most competitive U.S. Senate races raised concerns nationally. Senator Alex Padilla, a Democrat from California and the ranking member of the Senate Rules Committee, which oversees federal elections, issued a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Secretary of State Robert Howden last month demanding an explanation of the scope and cause of the failure.

“Every eligible voter should be able to cast their ballots and have their ballots counted, period,” Mr. Padilla said in an interview.

The backlog appeared to have been mostly cleared by Wednesday, according to county election officials, several of whom said there was little risk that Texans who tried to register would be unable to vote. But some voting advocates said they worried that the episode might discourage voters from turning out at all.

The lawsuit, filed last week in Bexar County, demanded that the error be fixed. It cited previous legal action that resulted in a settlement in 2021 in which Texas agreed with voting rights groups to offer residents the option of online voter registration.

The lawsuit, which named Mr. Howden and Freeman F. Martin, director of the Department of Public Safety, among its defendants, said the backlog had resulted from a programming error on a website for driver’s license applications that was also supposed to allow applicants to register to vote.

Because of the error, voters who checked “yes” to register to vote between December 2025 and February 2026 received a receipt confirming their choice, but their data was never recorded, the lawsuit said.

“We need to get to the bottom of what exactly happened,” Rochelle Garza, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, the nonpartisan group litigating the case, said in an interview on Wednesday. “The only way to do that is through litigation.”

Ms. Garza said she hoped the suit, brought by the League of Women Voters Texas and Move Texas Civic Fund and reported earlier by the nonprofit news organization Votebeat, would help determine whether the error was introduced intentionally or by mistake.

Texas counties have worked diligently to clear the backlog, said Alicia Pierce, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state. Voters who thought they had registered but who do not appear on the rolls could cast provisional ballots, she added.

The Texas Department of Public Safety declined to discuss pending litigation.

Voter registration applications were sent to counties in bulk last month, overwhelming election officials with a crush of processing work ahead of the start of early voting on Monday. Some of the applications dated to last year, voting rights groups said.

“The timing of that backlog hit really hard, because that was when we should’ve been in a position to start preparing for early voting,” Kristin Miles, president of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, said in an interview.

Ms. Miles, who is also the election administrator for Bastrop County, about 30 miles southeast of Austin, said she had worked nights and weekends along with her staff of four full-time employees to clear thousands of applications. Larger counties hired workers to ease the workload.

Adding to the burden, some voters who heard about the glitch registered anew to be sure they would be able to vote in the midterms, she said.

The secretary of state offered to reimburse any additional costs that counties incurred, including overtime and hiring of temporary workers.

The backlog put a spotlight on the companies that supply the software behind the election management systems in Texas: Civix, a Louisiana-based vendor for the Office of the Secretary of State, and Deloitte.

Paul Bettencourt, a state senator in Texas who previously worked for a decade as a voter registrar in Harris County, which is home to Houston, said the backlog had resulted from a system upgrade carried out by Deloitte. He said state government officials had failed to catch the problem right away.

New York Times, Democratic Donor Emerges to Blitz Red-State Senate Races With Late Ads, Shane Goldmacher and Theodore Schleifer, Oct. 15, 2026 (print ed.). Steve Pajcic, a lawyer and philanthropist in Florida, started a group that is airing ads in Kansas and South Carolina. Florida and Mississippi are next.

A surprise Democratic donor has emerged as a financier of a late effort to help the party deliver upsets in four red-state Senate seats.

Steve Pajcic, a lawyer and philanthropist in Florida, and his children are spending at least $7 million for a blitz of ads in Florida, Kansas, Mississippi and South Carolina, a quartet of Senate seats in traditionally Republican territory. Mr. Pajcic, a co-founder of the personal-injury law firm Pajcic & Pajcic, is behind a new group called New Deal for All that was formed in the beginning of October and started to air ads Tuesday in Kansas and South Carolina.

The group will soon expand to Florida, where it plans to spend most of its money, and Mississippi. The injection of even a modest amount of cash shows the optimism among Democrats about winning Senate seats that were thought beyond their reach as recently as last year.

“Democrats have been way too timid and modest in their expectations in the past,” Mr. Pajcic, 80, told The New York Times. “There’s a real chance for something big happening with this election, and I’m kind of old. So why not see if you can if there’s anything you can do to help?”

Mr. Pajcic has never donated at this scale before. He contributed $147,000 to a Democratic Senate super PAC in 2024, but he said he did not want to simply hand over $7 million — the most he has ever donated, he said — to outside groups.

He said that he named his super PAC New Deal for All because he wanted to see Democrats win as many as 56 Senate seats and usher in a historic movement “comparable to the changes we had with the New Deal.”

One new spot in South Carolina targets the Republican candidate, Senator Darline Graham, who was appointed to the seat after her brother, Senator Lindsey Graham, died this summer. The ad labels her as “Data Center Darline” and features a quote from her primary runoff debate in which she declared, “I’m not that informed on national security.”

 

More On #MeToo, Trafficking Claims

Mediaite, Ex-GOP Congressman Matt Gaetz Accused of Sex Trafficking in New Suit, Zachary Leeman, Oct. 15, 2026. Former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz is being accused of sex trafficking in a new federal lawsuit that names two other defendants.

“I look forward to taking the plaintiffs’ depositions because much of the conduct alleged against me is false,” Gaetz told the Miami Herald in a statement about the litigation.

“The lawsuit relies almost exclusively on a Congressional Committee report that didn’t allow me to confront my accusers. Now I will finally have that chance.”

Gaetz is named as a defendant in the suit, which was filed in the Middle District of Florida on Monday, along with ex-Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg and former Florida GOP House member Christopher Dorworth.

Greenberg previously pled guilt to multiple federal offenses, including sex trafficking of a child.

The alleged incidents in the lawsuit occurred from 2017 to 2019 and the accusations come from women identified as Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2.

They were allegedly 20 and 22 when introduced to Gaetz. Jane Doe 1 alleged she witnessed Gaetz having sex with a 17-year-old girl, and both said they were paid thousands by Gaetz, though Gaetz would describe the payments as “Being my friend,” “car deductible,” and more.

The women claim they were supplied with drugs to “facilitate sexual encounters” with Goldberg’s associates.

The women alleged they were found by Greenberg on the website SeekingArangement.com where they were recruited and then introduced to men, including Gaetz.

The suit alleges Gaetz used the other defendants to cover up direct involvement in funding travel for girls recruited.

Attorney Spencer Kuvin, who is representing the plaintiffs, said they have obtained texts they believe will prove their case, accusing Gaetz and the other men of having “coordinated recruitment, payments, drugs, and travel to obtain commercial sexual acts.”

“The text messages we have we believe are incredibly damaging to Mr. Gaetz and Mr. Greenberg,” the attorney told WPTV.

The lawsuit is tied to accusations already made public from Gaetz’s Ethics Committee probe, which found “substantial evidence” that Gaetz used illegal drugs and paid for sex with a minor, which Gaetz has long denied. The Department of Justice previously declined to bring charges against Gaetz.

Gaetz resigned from Congress in November 2024 amid the ethics probe. Gaetz at the time had been nominated by President Donald Trump to be attorney general.

Gaetz currently hosts a show on OAN.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

New York Times, Trump’s Attacks on Voting Raise Fears He Will Try to Challenge Midterm Results, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Oct. 15, 2026. Election officials say they worry the administration could use its own unsubstantiated claims to contest the vote in November.

President Trump has warned that the country’s election systems are vulnerable to foreign meddling. Federal agents are scouring state rolls and federal databases to try to find noncitizen voters. And the homeland security chief has asked the Justice Department to examine whether a commonly used voting machine can be trusted.

Just weeks away from the midterm elections, Mr. Trump’s longstanding attacks on the integrity of voting systems are crystallizing into what many election officials and Democrats fear is an attempt to lay the groundwork to challenge the results in November.

So far, the president has been stymied in his efforts to directly assert federal control over elections, which under the Constitution are administered by the states. Last month, the Supreme Court blocked Mr. Trump’s effort to have the U.S. Postal Service screen mail ballots.

Instead, Mr. Trump and his allies across the government have intensified another tactic: systematically laying out unsubstantiated and false claims in an effort to sow doubts about the safety of the country’s decentralized election system.

The result, election officials fear, could be an effort by administration officials to try to contest results that do not favor Republicans by citing their own findings that the vote is tainted.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he had grown increasingly worried that Mr. Trump may claim foreign interference in the election as a reason to seize voting machines, noting that the president made dubious claims about the country’s election defenses in a speech in July.ImageSenator Mark Warner speak outside the U.S. Capitol building. He’s wearing a dark suit with a blue tie.“Good people of both parties and independents are going to have to say, ‘No, we’re not going to allow this to take place,’” Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, said of the possibility that President Trump might challenge the midterm results.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times

“President Trump will use any tool, legal or not, to try and make sure he gets the results he wants this year,” Mr. Warner said in an interview, adding that he had reached out to business leaders, former military leaders and veteran federal law enforcement officials to ask them to stand up to Mr. Trump if he contests the results.

“Good people of both parties and independents are going to have to say, ‘No, we’re not going to allow this to take place,’” he added.

White House officials maintain that the administration’s efforts are designed to ensure a fair election. When asked if the president will accept the outcome of the midterms, Lauren Bis, a White House spokeswoman, referred to his recent response to that question.

“Of course I will,” Mr. Trump said earlier this month. “But we don’t want cheating.”

Nearly every day, the president questions the reliability of the vote. At a rally Wednesday in Arizona, a state that was a major focus of his effort to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election, Mr. Trump once again made false assertions about voting machines that year.

“The damn machines were broken in Republican areas,” Mr. Trump said, repeating his lie that the election was stolen from him.

On Thursday, the Justice Department sued the State of California, seeking to temporarily block the state from counting the mail ballots of 20,000 people it claims are “likely noncitizens.”

The administration’s intense focus on potential election issues comes as Mr. Trump has been conferring with outside supporters urging him to consider drastic actions. Last week, Mr. Trump met in the White House with Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk who was convicted of tampering with voting machines after the 2020 election, according to two people familiar with their meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private conversation.

Ms. Peters has long pushed the unsubstantiated claim that voting machines are vulnerable to foreign interference and has called for the Trump administration to inspect or take them into custody — a move legal experts say would be an overreach of federal authority.

Ed Martin, a former senior Justice Department official, told Real America’s Voice that Ms. Peters and the president had discussed “election integrity,” saying both are concerned that foreign actors could exploit election vulnerabilities to change votes. That unsubstantiated claim was echoed this summer by Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary.

Ms. Bis declined to comment on the meeting, as did Peter Ticktin, a lawyer who has represented both the president and Ms. Peters.

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: On the One Hand, On the Other Hand, William Kristol, right, william bill kristol imdbOct. 15, 2026. I’m not usually an on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand kind of guy. But sometimes life presents you with an on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand kind of reality.

So, on the one hand: The upcoming midterm elections look awfully promising for the defenders of liberal democracy. But, on the other hand: The political and governing challenges facing the defenders of liberal democracy in the coming years are awfully daunting.

bulwark logo big shipLast night, Fox News reported that its new poll shows President Trump’s overall job approval at 36 percent, his lowest ever in a Fox News survey. Until now, Fox had shown Trump’s approval holding steady at 39 percent since first dipping below 40 percent in May. And today, of the 36 percent of registered voters approving of Trump’s job performance, 19 percent strongly approve and 17 percent somewhat approve. Of the 64 percent disapproving, 50 percent strongly disapprove, with 14 percent somewhat disapproving. A strong approval to strong disapproval ratio of 19 percent to 50 percent is . . . not good.

So Trump is in bad shape, and 54 percent of voters now tell Fox they’ll back the Democratic candidate in their House district, with 45 percent supporting the Republican. That 9-point gap is wider than the Democrats’ 7-point lead in the two most recent Fox polls in July and September.

Meanwhile, Republicans are pouring money into states and congressional districts that Trump won in 2024 by 10 points or more. That money may have slowed Democratic momentum, but it hasn’t reversed it, and I think it’s more likely than not that momentum reasserts itself in the final couple of weeks.

So what to expect on Election Day? Despite all the extraordinary features of our present situation, we have seen this movie before. Twice, in fact, in the two most recent midterms with a Republican in the Oval Office.

In both 2006 and 2018, Democrats won the national vote for the House by about 8 percent. They picked up a net gain of 31 and 41 districts, ending up with 233 and 235 seats, respectively. In those two elections, Democrats also had a net gain, respectively, of six and seven governorships. The one marked difference from this year is that in 2018, Republicans had a net gain of two Senate seats, defeating four Democratic incumbents in states that had voted for Trump in 2016. But the dynamic is now decisively in the other direction, with a half a dozen states Trump won by more than 10 points in play. The results should look more like those of 2006, when Democrats won a net gain of six seats to take a narrow majority in that chamber.

And if you want to really go to town on all this good hopium, I’ll add that those 2006 and 2018 midterm victories were followed by decisive Democratic presidential victories in 2008 and 2020. And in both cases the new Democratic president had a Democratic Congress to work with.

So things not just in 2027 but also in 2029 could look pretty good!

But, as we know, in the earlier instances, everyone didn’t live happily ever after.

Politically, Democrats lost the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014. Democrats lost the House in 2022—and then everything in 2024.

And in terms of actual governing, while there were achievements in the Obama and Biden years, I think it’s fair to say neither had as much lasting success in reshaping America or the world order in a positive direction as they or their supporters hoped. I don’t say this judgmentally, but simply analytically—even sympathetically. Both faced very difficult challenges, not least in taking office in the middle of a financial crisis in 2009 and a pandemic in 2021. But I think it’s the case that at the end of their presidencies, our governing institutions weren’t stronger, our liberal democracy wasn’t healthier, and the world order of which we were the anchor wasn’t more robust.

The next Democratic Congress and the next Democratic president will face challenges comparable to—even greater than—those faced by Obama and Biden. The next Democratic Congress will have its hands full minimizing the damage over the next two years from an unprecedentedly extreme and lawless administration led by an increasingly willful and manic president, while it tries at the same time to lay the groundwork for winning the presidency in 2028, and to prepare for governing successfully in 2029.

And that next president? Remaking a polity and a civic culture that have been deeply damaged, an economy whose distortions of wealth and power threaten the future of democratic capitalism, and a world order that’s collapsed will be an even more formidable task. And that’s to say nothing of the unprecedented test of dealing with the fundamental and even existential threat of the new frontiers of artificial intelligence.

It’s daunting. But as Thomas Paine told his compatriots 250 years ago, “we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain, too cheap, we esteem too lightly.”

There’s nothing on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand about that truth, and that challenge.

AROUND THE BULWARK

  • Ukraine Is Hitting Putin Where His Data Lives… Strikes on server hubs are exposing Russian vulnerabilities—but U.S. support is suddenly looking less reliable, writes CATHY YOUNG.
  • bulwark logo big shipRamaswamy Campaign Ad Accidentally Featured a Sex Offender… The campaign says it’s recutting the spot, which was meant to be about the plague of high property taxes, reports JIM SWIFT.
  • Vladimir Putin Doesn’t Belong in Florida… And if he shows up at the G20 meeting, other leaders should boycott, argue ERIC EDELMAN and FRANKLIN MILLER.
  • Dems Are Already Fighting Over Who Gets Credit for November… The midterms haven’t happened yet, but progressives and moderates are debating what the results will mean for 2028, reports LAUREN EGAN.
  • Roy Cooper and Noam Scheiber: We Gotta Rein Trump In… Elon is now pitching in to help POTUS sabotage Ukraine while Trump makes a payout to Putin and works on his next self-enrichment scheme.

Quick Hits

TEAM RUSSIA AGAIN: The low point in U.S.–Ukraine relations under Donald Trump came last year, during Trump and JD Vance’s infamous Oval Office sandbagging of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Things are nearly that bad again now.

Any time Donald Trump speaks personally to Vladimir Putin, he seems to fall hopelessly under the Russian president’s spell: For days afterward, he seems to have adopted wholesale the Russian view of the war, according to which Ukraine—or even the American-led West more broadly—is the primary offender and aggressor.

So it has been since the pair’s call last Friday. Trump has demanded Ukraine halt attacks on Russian energy infrastructure even as Russia pummels Ukraine’s, insisted insanely that Putin wants peace more than Zelensky, floated the possibility of unfreezing Russian assets, and even seemingly cut off some forms of the limited support the United States is still supplying to Ukraine. Russian missiles fell in Kyiv Tuesday without the usual advance warning provided by U.S. intelligence, and the Starshield satellite-internet systems deployed in Ukraine by the U.S. military, which Ukraine uses to pilot drones, mysteriously experienced major throttling on Wednesday.

For days, Zelensky endured these impossible conditions, biting his tongue and agreeing in principle to abide by Trump’s demand for an energy ceasefire even as Russia was plainly ignoring it. Now he is out of patience. “The block [on attacking refineries] is out,” Zelensky told the Financial Times in an interview published this morning. “We’re done.” How Trump will take that remains to be seen.

TROUBLE IN PARADISE: This week, several stories of remarkable squabbling among Trump’s aides have made it into the press. Yesterday, our old colleague Marc Caputo reported in Axios that former Trump attorney Alina Habba had accused former Kennedy Center leader Ric Grenell, in a remarkable Oval Office confrontation last week, of pocketing a multimillion-dollar donation her billionaire husband made to the institution last year. “POTUS doesn’t want to deal with this,” a senior administration official told Caputo. “Of course, he’s concerned. But if there is missing money, this is a big, big problem.” Grenell called the accusations “absurd” and a “lie.”

And today, Politico reported on a remarkable year-long email squabble between two mid-tier Trump officials: Paolo Zampolli, “a personal friend of Trump’s and a special envoy at the State Department,” and Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau. Here’s Politico:

The emails stretch over almost a year and show Zampolli and Landau disagreeing over chains of command as Landau admonishes Zampolli to stick to his remit on cultural issues—but devolve into bitter arguments and unproven allegations.

The messages stand out not just for the personal vitriol but because upward of 16 administration officials were included at times on the email chains, with the dispute at least once spilling over into communications with a top foreign official, opening a window into delicate State Department back-channeling to allies about apparent violations of diplomatic protocol.

Donald Trump runs a tighter ship than he used to. His first administration was racked by constant infighting, and therefore leaked like a sieve; such fights have been far rarer, and the leaks far less frequent, since his return to the Oval Office. Until recently, it seems. Read the whole thing.

KATIE ZACHARIA, ESQ.?: In media appearances and on LinkedIn, new White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia has presented herself as a lawyer for years. But as Popular Information first reported this week, this appears to be untrue: Zacharia did graduate from law school, but never passed the bar to be authorized to practice law in any state. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal shed some more light on the subject: Zacharia sat for the bar only once, in California, shortly after graduating law school in 2011. She didn’t pass.

There’s no shame in that; California’s bar exam is notoriously difficult, and the fail rate is high. (Another notable person who famously failed her own first run at the California bar was Kamala Harris.) What is remarkable about Zacharia is how she has been calling herself a “lawyer” anyway ever since—in her work for the Zhong Lun Law Firm in China and, back stateside, as “general counsel” for a Trumpworld nonprofit, Fix California.

“As a lawyer, the procedural steps are absolutely critical to ensure they get this right,” she said on Fox News in August. The WSJ elaborates: “A line appeared on the chyron at the bottom of the screen referring to her as a legal and political strategist, and as an attorney.”

Cheap Shots

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, Trump Is A Traitorous, Venal, F-ck Up. Through Hard Work And Inspiring Candidates We’re On The Cusp Of Having The Election We All Wanted To Have -- Now We Need To Finish The Job, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 15, 2026. We got another inflation report this morning, and it was really, really bad. The Producer Price Index, what businesses pay for things, rose a staggering 1.3% in September, more than double what forecasters had expected. This measure of inflation has now risen 6.3% over the past year, more than three times the Fed target for inflation.

Let’s now review some updated graphs of both PPI and CPI (the main gauge of inflation) under Trump. They are remarkable visualizations of what a profound failure Trump has been, and why we must collectively and forcefully take the keys away from him in the coming months. For when Trump came to office inflation was nearing the 2% Fed target in all three major gauges of inflation. In essence inflation had been conquered, and Trump reignited it through tariffs, mass deportation, reckless fiscal policies, and the war, causing misery for workers, farmers, and small businesses across the country:CPI this year

So he and the Rs have failed, bigly. What about us? That is perhaps the most important thing we discussed last night in my weekly presentation, which you can find above. For I don’t think the chattering classes have caught up to what has happened to the relative strength of the two parties in recent months. For two things are happening right now - the American people have lost faith in Republicans, and they have once again put their trust back in us to make things better and put things right.Subscribed

I am now going to share a series of new data and graphs from Gallup, one of the country’s most respected independent pollsters. What this data shows is both Republican brand erosion and Democratic brand gains, putting us in one of the strongest position we’ve been with voters over the past forty years:

Throughout these graphs what you see is a steep upward line for us as the American people, seeing the Democratic Party through the lens of our inspiring Democratic candidates they’re meeting through our campaigns, have made a decision to once put their faith back in us. The country has turned to us in this time of profound crisis, in a time of profound abandonment and betrayal, and are giving us a mandate to govern, to make things better, and put things right while clearly taking away whatever narrow mandate and even legitimacy Trump and his allies once had.

Now we need to honor that fragile trust and deliver for them by winning these elections and taking power away from MAGA all across the country. The American people are calling us on to lead, and now my friends we simply must honor that desperate call by driving the early vote, running up the score, and winning these elections by as a big a margin as possible. For remember as Anderson Clayton told us last week:

Elections May Be Decided In November, But They Are Won In October

  

U.S. Rep. Andy Harris refuses to take questions from Cat Murphy, a CNS reporter from the University of Maryland, during a press gaggle following a League of Women Voters forum at the Chesapeake Grove Intergenerational Center in Cambridge, Md. on Tuesday, October 13, 2026. (Ulysses Muñoz/The Banner)U.S. Rep. Andy Harris refuses to take questions from Cat Murphy, a CNS reporter from the University of Maryland, during a press gaggle following a League of Women Voters forum at the Chesapeake Grove Intergenerational Center in Cambridge, Md. on Tuesday, October 13, 2026. (Ulysses Muñoz/The Banner)

Cat Murphy, a graduate student at the University of Maryland and a journalist with the school's Capital News Service, during an appearance on CNN with Jake Tapper to discuss a heated exchange between her and U.S. Rep. Andy Harris following a debate against Democratic challenger Dan Schwartz.Cat Murphy, a graduate student at the University of Maryland and a journalist with the school's Capital News Service, during an appearance on CNN with Jake Tapper to discuss a heated exchange between her and U.S. Rep. Andy Harris following a debate against Democratic challenger Dan Schwartz.

The Baltimore Banner, The UMD student reporter who dared to record Rep. Andy Harris — and kept recording, Brenda Wintrode, Updated Oct. 15, 2026. A University of Maryland student journalist targeted by U.S. Rep. Andy Harris during an informal press briefing Tuesday said she’ll continue to cover the Republican politician who threatened to have police remove her from the room.

Cat Murphy, a graduate student at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism and a reporter for the student newswire Capital News Service, appeared on CNN Wednesday to recount a post-debate clash that has gone viral on social media and been broadcast on national news.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper asked Murphy, 22, how she had processed the exchange one day later.

“It has been a lot,” she said. “But I was focused on doing my job and asking my questions that I wanted answers to. And I think I did that.”Advertise with us

Harris’ attempt to eject Murphy from the media availability to which she was invited, along with other members of the press, mirrors President Donald Trump’s embattled relationship with reporters.

Tensions ran high during a League of Women Voters forum in Cambridge on Tuesday night between Harris and Democrat Dan Schwartz, and they spilled over into Harris’ post-debate news conference. That’s when words between Harris and multiple reporters came to a head.

Harris shooed away questions from reporters that he said were “silly” and “stupid.”

Harris lashed out at Murphy after she asked him to respect the press. He demanded she stop recording the briefing and wrongly said that Maryland’s wiretap law gave him the right to singularly deny her the ability to record him.

The law does not apply to public conversations, such as a post-debate press conference.

Murphy refused and kept recording, and Harris’ behavior devolved. He threatened to refer her to a prosecutor, asked his security to take her phone away and told them to get police to escort her out.

Murphy pressed Harris for answers on his stance on the Iran War.

Before storming out of the room, the congressman told reporters to blame Murphy for his abrupt departure.

The incident sparked condemnation of Harris’ behavior from the region’s press advocacy organizations.

A statement from the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association said Harris’ interpretation of Maryland’s two-party consent rule is wrong. Executive Director Rebecca Snyder offered to work with Harris’ office to ensure that he understood the law.

“Harris has been in that position many times before, with journalists recording him as they report his comments. He should know better, and if he doesn’t, he should learn,” Snyder said in the statement.

“When you’re speaking to the press publicly, you don’t get to pick and choose who is recording you,” said U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and constitutional law professor. “But he’s obviously following Donald Trump in his efforts to censor and stifle the press.”

Harris, chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, favors interviews with right-leaning media and often declines requests with other outlets. He rarely holds in-person town halls. 

The Daily with Sarah Jones via PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: Katie Zacharia May Soon Be Under Criminal Investigation For Lying About Being A Lawyer, Jason Easley and Sarah Jones, right, sarah reese jonesOct. 15, 2026. When new White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia was asked where she passed the bar, with even Trump asking what state she passed the bar in, Zacharia oddly responded: “in China.”

This raised alarm bells because the rules to be an attorney in China are strict, and Zacharia can’t call herself a lawyer if she never passed the bar exam.

The Daily is independent democracy first journalism for the people. Please support our work by becoming a subscriber.Subscribed

It turns out Trump’s new press secretary never passed the bar.

The Wall Street Journal reported: Zacharia sat for the California bar exam after graduating from law school at Pepperdine University in 2011, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter, but she didn’t pass. She took the exam around the time she was planning a wedding and preparing to move to China with her future husband, the person said.

She moved to Beijing that summer to work as an associate on the international practice team at Zhong Lun Law Firm, a prominent law firm in China. Zacharia was later advised by lawyers that she could provide legal analysis based on her law degree and international transaction experience, the person said.

Zacharia worked as an international legal consultant, but she did not practice law in China, so she was not required to be licensed.

In the United States, a person can’t call themselves a lawyer without being licensed in the state where they are practicing.

The White House has a big problem, and investigations are being requested in California.Katie Zacharia’s Lies Are Coming Back To Haunt Her

The group Democracy Defenders Fund has requested that the California Attorney General criminally investigate Zacharia for impersonating a lawyer:

We write to request an investigation into whether White House Press Secretary Kate (“Katie”) Zacharia engaged in the unauthorized practice of law (UPL) in violation of California Business & Professions Code §§ 6125-6126. Press Secretary Zacharia apparently held herself out as a lawyer and practiced law by, among other things, allegedly serving as the General Counsel for the nonprofit social welfare organization, Fix California, without being actively licensed by the State Bar of California. Falsely holding oneself out as a lawyer is a criminal offense, punishable by fine or incarceration of up to a year in jail.

In addition to investigating whether Press Secretary Zacharia engaged in the unauthorized practice of law, it is also important to determine whether others relied on her assertions that she was licensed to practice to their detriment. To that end, if there is a determination that she is not authorized to practice law in California, we kindly request that the Attorney General’s office further consider whether any person may have been harmed by Press Secretary Zacharia’s assertions that she is an attorney.

We also request that, if there is a determination that Press Secretary Zacharia violated these laws, the State Bar of California and the Attorney General take steps to prevent Press Secretary Zacharia from misrepresenting herself as an attorney until such time as she is actively licensed in the state of California.

Zacharia would have bought herself a little more time if she had been competent during her first White House press briefing, but she was terrible.

Trump never wants to admit a mistake or look like he is being forced to do anything, so expect him to keep Zacharia around for a while.

If she gets criminally charged, he may dump her sooner, but we could be in for many months of The Katie Zacharia Show featuring zero press briefings until she gets shoved out the door.

Another one of Trump’s half-baked Fox News hires has blown up in his face, except this one could end up behind bars.

More Global News

New York Times, Families of Sailors Killed in Gulf Struggle for Compensation and Closure, Jenny Gross, Oct. 15, 2026. Attacks near the Strait of Hormuz have claimed the lives of at least 25 seafarers. Their survivors are reeling.

Sumit Kumar Singh, a sailor from eastern India, did not hesitate when a job opened up on a ship ferrying oil in the Persian Gulf. He knew it was dangerous work, but he needed the money.

On Sept. 12, he told his wife, Komal Priya, that his ship would soon enter the Strait of Hormuz. He said he would call her once he arrived at its destination. Instead, early the next morning, Ms. Priya received a call from a crew member saying that her husband and another sailor were missing after the ship, the El Gaia, was struck by an Iranian missile and a drone.

Oil exports from the Persian Gulf have rebounded, with more tankers moving through the Strait of Hormuz. But the journey remains incredibly risky. Since the war began, there have been more than 100 attacks. At least 26 ships have been struck this month alone, making it the most dangerous period during the war in Iran. Even as the regional conflict has escalated in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, the strait remains a deadly focus of fighting.

For going on eight months, thousands of sailors have been working on the front line of the war, supporting families far away. At least 25 of them have been killed, almost all by Iran, and four are missing. The first fatality was hours after the war began, and the most recent report of sailors who are missing or dead was on Monday.

On the El Gaia, projectiles struck the engine room, and Mr. Singh died in the ensuing fire. Grief has left Ms. Priya barely able to eat, said her brother, Aditya Raj, who recounted the family’s experience. Around the house, the children, ages 4 and 7, ask where their father is.

The New York Times interviewed members of seven families, including Mr. Raj, who lost husbands, fathers and brothers to attacks in or around the Strait of Hormuz. It reviewed incident reports, communications between shipping companies and families, and life insurance records, and spoke to industry analysts and officials who were monitoring conditions in the region.

The family members described to The Times their trauma and horror when learning of the deaths, and they spoke of their subsequent frustrations trying to secure compensation as survivors while trying to make sense of what happened. In most cases, the sailor’s’ salary supported his family. Only one family said it had received compensation, about $150,000.

“We don’t have anything to do with Iran and America, and we are losing our family members and our loved ones,” Mr. Raj said. “Don’t they know on those vessels there are innocent people?”

Most of the world’s sailors are from Asia — India, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia, among others — as well as Russia and Ukraine. The pay at sea is generally much higher than in jobs at home.

More On U.S. Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: On Inflation, Trump Snatched Defeat from the Jaws of Victory, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 15, 2026. There’s no way to shift the blame this time.

One of the great ironies of American politics is that Donald Trump won the 2024 election basically because a significant number of credulous voters believed his promises to bring prices down beginning on “day one.”

What actually happened was that America, along with the rest of the world, experienced a temporary surge in inflation in 2021-22, mainly because of the lingering effects of Covid disruptions. And voters still blamed Joe Biden for that surge.

But by 2024 the war against inflation had been largely won, at startlingly low cost — the recession many analysts claimed would be necessary to get inflation down never happened, but inflation came way down anyway.

And then Trump snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

There is still some controversy among economists about how much responsibility Biden administration policies bear for the 2021-22 inflation surge. My view is, very little. But there is no question who is responsible for the resurgence in inflation: this is all on Trump, first the tariffs and then then the Iran war.

And there’s a big risk that the succession of inflation shocks will do what the post-Covid shock didn’t: get entrenched in expectations, so that we will need a recession to get inflation back down.

 

Oct. 14

Top Headlines

 

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Special Report: More On Trump Justice Department Vengeance, Corruption

Cassidy Hutchinson testifies before the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States on June 28, 2022 ((Tom Williams photo for CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images).t Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States on June 28, 2022.Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images

Cassidy Hutchinson testifies before the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States on June 28, 2022 (Tom Williams photo for CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images).

News Roundups 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, both designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik).Steve Witkoff jared kushner sputnik afp getty

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

Special Reports: Trump's Attempted Fear Factor -- and What's Next

 Image by Berthold Bronisz from Pixabay for The Hartmann Report.

Image by Berthold Bronisz from Pixabay

 

Fascist leaders Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of German, and U.S. President Donald Trump

Fascist leaders Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of German, and U.S. President Donald Trump.

  • Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Nerobefehl Nation, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 14, 2026. My fears for the next two years. Hitler didn’t believe that he had failed. He believed that he had been failed by the German people. So on March 19 he issued the “Decree concerning demolitions in the Reich territory,” which has come to be known as the "Nerobefehl" or Nero decree. It ordered the destruction of Germany’s own infrastructure — supposedly to deny that infrastructure to the Allies, but the obvious purpose was to punish his own country. 

Think of the Kennedy Center, a national icon that Trump is destroying because he can’t put his own name on it, as the model for what is all too likely to happen to America over the next two years. Can Democrats stop the coming reign of destruction? Unfortunately, a corrupt, partisan majority on the Supreme Court, invoking the “unitary executive” theory, has given Trump a huge amount of untrammeled power, especially because he is surrounded by minions — many approved by supine Republicans in Congress — who are willing, even eager to break the law. 

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

Special Report: New Trump Press Secretary Falsely Claims Status As 'Lawyer'

 

President Trump and White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia talk with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House on Tuesday, October 13, 2026. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

President Trump and White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia talk with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House on Tuesday, October 13, 2026. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

More On Elon Musk, Other Trump-Enabling Billionairres

Billionairre Billionairre "Tech Bros," from left, attending Trump event, include Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, center, and Elon Musk, right.

  • New York Times, California May Tax Its Billionaires. The Billionaires Are Fighting Back, Michael Steinberger, Oct. 14, 2026. Inside the state’s multifront battle over the world’s first tax for the ultrarich. Control of Congress is the biggest issue at stake in November’s elections. A close second might be the fight over a ballot initiative in California, Proposition 40, that seeks to impose a wealth tax on the state’s roughly 250 billionaires. If approved, it will be the world’s first billionaire tax.
  • Emptywheel, Analysis and Opinion:GOP Accepts $296M Bribe to Protect African Immigrant CSAM Purveyor, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), marcy wheelerOct. 13, 2026. There are several ways to understand the $276M Elon Musk is spending to keep right wingers in power, to say nothing of the election disinformation he is spreading. On the one hand, it implicates every right winger accepting this money in the AI CSAM [Child Sexual Abuse Material] Elon Musk’s robot, Grok] was disseminating earlier this year. Elon Musk is using nonconsensual porn to compete. And children are being abused in the process. And the entire Republican Party is accepting his filthy money.

Special Reports: More On Russia, Ukraine, Assaults On West

 

Presidents Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin have a long history of deal-making and mutual support on key issues, while occassionally creating temporary disputes to obscure their larger goals.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

 

Special Report: Future President JD Vance: 'Not' Attracted To Men 


Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha Vance (Facebook photo).Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha Vance (Facebook photo).

  • Hope for America, Opinion: J.D.Vance is auditioning for his next role, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Oct. 14, 2026. heather delaney reeseAt 11:51 this morning, Vice President JD Vance landed at a small regional airport in Texas, exited Air Force Two, and had a six-vehicle motorcade drive him 295 feet, a trip that took just seconds, to the nearby rally podium outside an airplane hangar. With his plane visible right behind him, he opened his remarks by making sure the crowd knew two things: first, that he was the vice president of the United States, and second, that he was not attracted to men.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

As right-wing-watcher Will Sommer explained at the Daily Beast, an anonymous user on a Somali diaspora forum claimed in 2016 that Omar married her brother to get him a green card. The story became conservative dogma, despite a total lack of evidence that it’s true.Trump wants a race war.  “We know that she married her brother to try to bring him to the United States,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin blustered last month at the Republican midterm “convention,” vowing that “something will happen.” It’s not clear which of these crackpot theories HSI went with, but something did indeed happen on Monday.

More On U.S. Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets

More On Epstein Files, Trump Coverup, #MeToo Allegations

 

djt epstein birthday card

The collage above portrays Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein and a notorious birthday card that Trump sent Epstein some two decades ago addressed "to a Terrific Guy," illustrated with a seemingly naked portrayal of a young female.

  • Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Epstein in Iowa, Jason Ferdman, Oct. 14, 2026. “This week I had to explain to my boys, ‘No, mom does not protect pedophiles,’” opines Ashley Hinson, the Republican senate candidate in Iowa, in a video she released to social media yesterday.
  • New York Times, 3 Men Accused by Nancy Mace in House Speech Are Charged With Sex Crimes, Mark Walker and Ishani Desai, Oct. 14, 2026. The former fiancé of the South Carolina representative and two of his business associates were charged on Wednesday with sex crimes and voyeurism in connection with a 2018 incident.

More On Middle East Wars

More Global News

pope leo xiv vatican media

More On U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Religion

 katie zacharia uncredited smile first day

  • Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: A Blast from the Past, Andrew Egger, right, andrew eggerOct. 14, 2026. Is Katie Zacharia, above, already blowing it? Karoline Leavitt’s replacement at the White House podium had a first day to forget yesterday, somehow managing to bungle her inaugural briefing despite it lasting only fifteen minutes and featuring zero adversarial questions. 
  •  The Triad Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Katie Zacharia and Pyongyang on the Potomac, Jonathan V. Last, above, Oct. 14, 2026. Everyone is dunking on Katie Zacharia’s debut as White House press secretary. And fair enough. It was extra, super-duper, not-great. But I want us to look a little deeper. Because as ridiculous as she may be, Katie Zacharia is another consequence of Trumpism: the transformation of the White House press room into a simulacrum of the Korean Central News Agency. Walk with me through the press conference, beat by beat.
  • Deadline, Judge Rules Trump Administration Can’t Resume Ban On CNN, MS NOW & Politico From White House Grounds, Ted Johnson, Oct. 13, 2026. Donald Trump To Appeal Judge’s Ruling. timothy kellyU.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, right, a Trump appointee, wrote in his opinion that the news outlets “are likely to succeed not only on their due process claim, but also on their two First Amendment claims.”
  • The Bulwark, Opinion: Ramaswamy Campaign Ad Accidentally Featured a Sex Offender, Jim Swift, Oct. 14, 2026. The campaign says it’s recutting the spot, which was meant to be about the plague of high property taxes.
  • New York Times, Elon Musk, Delta Airlines and a Feud Over In-Flight Wi-Fi, Niraj Chokshi, Updated Oct. 12, 2026. Mr. Musk, whose company SpaceX owns Starlink, has attacked the top executive of Delta Air Lines for not selecting the internet provider.
  • Columbia Journalism Review, Interview: ‘I’m Not Going to Have Blood on My Hands’ -- Why Nicole Noren, a decorated ESPN producer, quit in protest, Danny Funt, Oct. 14, 2026. For years, ESPN wanted nothing to do with sports gambling. That stance had softened a bit as of 2018, when the Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on bookmaking, but the following year, Bob Iger, who was then the CEO of ESPN’s parent, Disney, told investors: “I don’t see the Walt Disney Company, certainly in the near term, getting involved in the business of gambling, in effect, by facilitating gambling in any way.”

Top Stories

 

elon musk peter thiel russia chart wmr

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Reporting and Opinion: Musk and Thiel are allied with Russia and China, Wayne Madsen, right, wayne madsen new observerauthor of 28 books and formery Navy intelligence officer and NSA analyst, Oct. 14, 2026. Trump supporting billionaire high-tech ultra-right data and election manipulators Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are every American’s enemies.

New York Times, Sudden Starlink Restrictions Hamper Ukraine Just as Russia Escalates, Constant Méheut, Oct. 14, 2026. Kyiv has found itself increasingly vulnerable. A huge attack cut power to 600,000 people there, and a Pentagon-funded satellite program appeared to be curbed without warning.

Nearly five years into its fight for national survival, Ukraine has entered a moment of intense vulnerability, under growing pressure not only from Russia but also now from the United States.

A double blow came overnight on Wednesday.

russian flag wavingUkraine said that its military, with no warning, had lost partial access to Starlink, a pillar of its battlefield communications. Kyiv relies on a militarized version of the wireless internet network paid for by the Pentagon. That led Ukrainian officials and analysts to surmise that the restrictions had come from Washington, as President Trump is locked in his latest feud with Ukraine’s leadership.

At the same time, Russia unleashed dozens of ballistic missiles in a broad attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure early Wednesday, cutting power to 600,000 people in the capital, Kyiv. It was a dark omen for a rapidly approaching winter in which Russia is gearing up to attempt a knockout punch against Ukraine as Kyiv runs low on lifesaving air defenses.

The Starlink development was interpreted in Ukraine as part of a Trump administration pressure campaign to limit Ukraine’s ability to fight. Mr. Trump is pushing Kyiv to stop attacking oil refineries so that Russia can pump more diesel onto global markets as high prices threaten the prospects of Mr. Trump’s Republican Party in the midterm elections.

“Clearly, this action cannot be a coincidence and is linked to the current political situation,” Serhiy Beskrestnov, a Ukrainian military expert who advises President Volodymyr Zelensky on weapons technologies, wrote on social media about the Starlink restrictions.

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Trump’s Strategic Flunky Reserve Is Running Low, bulwark morning shots logoAndrew Egger, Jodan Ferdman and Jim Swift, Oct. 14, 2026. The rise and imminent fall of Katie Zacharia.

bulwark logo big shipGood money to be made in the oil trade these days, if you’ve got a little inside information!

Bloomberg reported yesterday on how a sudden Truth Social swerve in Iran policy this month was immediately preceded by billions of dollars in suspicious trades in oil futures—and how, when the Commodity Futures Trading Commission began to look into the suspicious trades, their senior political leadership shut the investigation down. Probably nothing. Happy Wednesday.

Special Report: More On Trump Justice Department Vengeance, Corruption

Cassidy Hutchinson testifies before the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States on June 28, 2022 ((Tom Williams photo for CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images).t Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States on June 28, 2022.Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images

Cassidy Hutchinson testifies before the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States on June 28, 2022 (Tom Williams photo for CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images).

The New Republic, SHAMEFUL: As Trump Witch Hunts Go, the Cassidy Hutchinson One Is the Worst Yet, Opinion by Harry Litman, right, harry litman 2023Oct. 14, 2026. Trump’s other targets were at least battle-seasoned veterans. Hutchinson was a young woman who showed enormous bravery. Besides which — the case will fail.

There’s an unsurpassed ugliness in watching the full might of the federal government bear down on a young woman whose offense was bravely telling the nation the truth about the president. Even by the standards of this administration’s long campaign of reprisal, the pursuit of Cassidy Hutchinson may be its nastiest and most repulsive move yet.

new republic dailyIn June 2022, some 13 million Americans watched the 25-year-old aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows tell the House January 6 committee what she had seen inside the Trump White House. She had broken with a Trump-connected lawyer who, by her account, steered her toward saying less than she knew. She had every reason to stay quiet: She had a career in Republican politics ahead of her and, by her account, a Trumpworld lawyer dangling jobs in exchange for loyalty. She spoke up anyway, at enormous personal cost. Her testimony was riveting and, to me and I think to the clear majority of the country, completely credible.

Now the villains she stood up to have seized power, and the president wants to see her in the dock. The Washington Post reports that prosecutors presented evidence against her to a D.C. grand jury last week. The department is reportedly weighing perjury and obstruction charges, with an indictment request expected after the midterms.

The investigation has shown the earmarks of a political hack job from the outset. It will never produce a conviction, as Hutchinson’s tormentors almost surely recognize. And if it ever sees the light of day, it could boomerang, with considerable damage to Trump and his administration.

The clearest indication of the political impetus is that the Civil Rights Division is running the case. For this DOJ alum, that detail leaps off the page.

Why? Because that division, traditionally one of the crown jewels of the department, is now a hollowed-out hackery run by Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump loyalist through and through. And it has no business near this case: The division oversees, or used to, a discrete set of offenses, and lying to Congress isn’t among them. The assignment smacks of a delivery to a handpicked loyalist who makes up in devotion what she lacks in prudence and experience.

A perjury or false-statements case would normally run out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C., headed by Jeanine Pirro. But Pirro has suffered an astonishing run of grand jury defeats, from the “sandwich guy”—a man who threw a Subway sandwich at a Customs and Border Patrol agent and on whom Pirro tried to pin federal felony charges; a grand jury said no—to six Democratic lawmakers whose only offense was reminding troops not to follow illegal orders, to David Hearn, the famous Reflecting Pool non-vandal. So the case went to Dhillon, and it seems likely that the order came from Todd Blanche or someone above him.

We know what that someone wants. The Atlantic’s Sarah Fitzpatrick reported last week that Blanche’s and FBI Director Kash Patel’s jobs may ride on delivering indictments of Trump’s enemies, Hutchinson among them. One former official put it plainly: “The president wants indictments. He wants people in handcuffs. He wants the headlines.”

But the case is a stone-cold loser, and any experienced prosecutor knows it.

The geniuses in MAGA-land have fixed on Hutchinson’s testimony that deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato told her a story—in the presence of Bobby Engel, the head of Trump’s detail—that captured Trump’s crazed determination to join the marauders at the Capitol. According to that account, Trump said “something to the effect of, ‘I’m the f---ing president, take me up to the Capitol now.’” He then reached for the steering wheel and, when Engel stopped him, lunged at Engel.

The supposed contradiction is that the Secret Service driver, in an interview months later, said he never saw Trump grab the wheel. That says nothing about whether Ornato told Hutchinson the story—in front of Engel, who said nothing to contradict it. And when the committee later questioned Ornato, he reportedly said not that the conversation never happened but that he didn’t recall it. That’s the well-known dodge of a witness caught between a rock and a hard place.

What about building a case on the differences between what Hutchinson told the committee early on, under the guidance of the Trump-supplied lawyer, and her later testimony? It won’t work. Federal law permits that theory—that one of two contradictory sworn statements must be false—for court and grand jury testimony, but not for congressional testimony. The department would have to pick a specific lie and prove it. And for political reasons, the statement it picks has to be her truthful public testimony to the committee, because Blanche obviously wouldn’t prosecute her for shielding Trump as she did in her earlier testimony.

The country has already seen what the reprisal squad wants to put before a federal jury: a young woman under enormous pressure, inviting total ostracism in Trumpland, stepping forward to tell the truth. It’s doubtful a single juror, much less all 12, would vote to convict. Given Hutchinson’s evident innocence and D.C. grand juries’ recent record, prosecutors may well fail to secure an indictment.

Third, a prosecution would rehearse the most forceful evidence against Trump’s Orwellian project of erasing January 6. A trial would drag that day back into the light, under oath.

That begins with Hutchinson’s boss. Meadows was by Trump’s side most of January 6, acting as the switchboard for the panicked calls from the Hill. Nobody knows more about Trump’s conduct that day. Meadows defied the committee’s subpoena, and the Garland Justice Department declined to prosecute him for contempt. The administration has dodged that cannonball ever since. A Hutchinson trial would put Meadows at the center of the courtroom.

It would also resurrect the rest of her testimony: Trump hurling his lunch at the wall after Bill Barr told the AP there was no widespread fraud, ketchup dripping down the wallpaper; Trump urging the crowd toward the Capitol knowing many were armed (“They’re not here to hurt me,” Trump said, according to Hutchinson).

Hutchinson herself would likely testify, a rarity for federal defendants but a natural move for her. And if the government called Ornato and Engel to contradict her, the cross-examination would not be pretty.

Finally, the hounding of Hutchinson has an outsize moral dimension that lays bare the rot at the heart of the administration. Jim Comey, John Brennan, and Letitia James were all formidable figures, seasoned combatants with platforms, résumés, and the means to fight back. Hutchinson was a 25-year-old junior aide who literally spoke truth to power.

She is young, brave, and decent; they are old, craven, and corrupt. The moral chasm between the hunters and the hunted is oceanic.

They’d have to be blind with bloodlust, or terrified of Trump, to pursue this case. But as we know, that describes them precisely.Harry Litman

Harry Litman is a senior legal columnist at The New Republic, a senior fellow at the USC Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, and the creator of Talking Feds, a Substack and podcast on legal and political issues. A lawyer, professor, and legal commentator, he is the former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania and has served as a deputy assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice. He clerked for Supreme Court Justices Thurgood Marshall and Anthony Kennedy, and has taught at UCLA School of Law and UC San Diego. He is also a former legal affairs columnist at the Los Angeles Times.

News Roundups

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, both designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik).Steve Witkoff jared kushner sputnik afp getty

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary  Republicans Face Protests Nationwide, Musk Throws Trump Under the Bus, Press Secretary Hit With Bar Complaint, and Musk Tries to Bury Documentary, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 14, 2026. Republicans are getting protested everywhere they go, and their answer is to try to shut people up. At a Trump rally in Ohio, a woman in a “release the Epstein files” shirt was attacked by several men while Trump mocked her weight from the stage and called protesters “scum.” In Maryland, Rep. Andy Harris got laughed at by his own voters during a debate and then tried to get a reporter arrested. In D.C., anti-war protesters kept interrupting Pete Hegseth until security hauled them out. Three weeks out from Election Day, it’s not working.

In Ukraine, Zelensky says he feels “betrayed” by Trump, and he warned Elon Musk that “people will die” after SpaceX throttled Ukraine’s military Starlink overnight. In return, Musk threw Trump under the bus. Meanwhile, Musk is doing everything he can to bury a new documentary about him. Its director warns that Musk could use the data DOGE collected to try to undermine the midterms. And, Trump’s new press secretary has been hit with a bar complaint that could give her major legal issues.

In this clip I also speak with Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz about the midterms and what a Democratic Senate majority may look like.

I’ll be honest with you: covering Ukraine right now is hard. My family is there, and this isn’t abstract for me. But that connection is also what lets me get you accurate news straight from the ground, and I’m never going to stop. I’m fully independent, with no corporate owner or network behind me, so I answer only to you. If you want to help me keep doing this, please consider subscribing here:Subscribed

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Trump said at a campaign rally that leakers “should be shot,” then said journalists are leakers too. “Leakers should be, in my opinion, leakers should be shot,” Trump told supporters Wednesday in Bullhead City, Arizona, where he was campaigning for gubernatorial candidate Andy Biggs. He called leakers “the scum of the earth” and said one “ought to go to jail and be shot for the rest of their life,” while naming The New York Times and CNN over an alleged leak about B-2 bomber timing before a strike on Iran. Minutes later, he turned to the press: “They’re almost as bad as a leaker as they leak, they leak false information. That makes them a leaker.” He also claimed reporters “make up a lot of the sources” and called journalists “stupid people.” At the same rally, Trump revived false claims about Arizona’s elections and, without evidence, accused Gov. Katie Hobbs of ties to drug cartels.

Republicans Face Protests Across the Country, and Their Answer Is to Try to Shut Them Down

Republicans are running into protests nationwide as the midterms close in, and they’re responding with mockery, ejections and threats of arrest. Over the past week, protesters have confronted Trump at his rallies, voters laughed down a top House Republican at a debate, and anti-war demonstrators repeatedly interrupted War Secretary Pete Hegseth at a major Army conference. Each time, the Republican response was to go after the people speaking out. Trump called a protester “scum” and mocked her weight while she was being attacked. Rep. Andy Harris told a voter she was “rude” for interrupting him and then demanded that police be called on a reporter. With three weeks until Election Day, the message from Republicans to people who disagree with them is clear: stop.

At a Trump rally in Ohio, a woman wearing a “release the Epstein files” shirt was attacked by several men while the president mocked her from the stage. At least three men restrained the protester in Youngstown on Monday night, and one appeared to punch her in the head and pull her hair, according to Reality Tea. Instead of condemning the violence, Trump called her “a paid protester,” repeatedly referred to her as “he,” and told the crowd, “Oh, he’s gotta go on a diet! He’s a fat guy.” He added that protesters “get paid by the lefties in order to destroy our country. They’re scum.” Police then led the woman out with her arms held behind her back as the crowd chanted “USA, USA!” Officers reportedly ignored the man who attacked her. Trump was in Ohio campaigning for Rep. Max Miller, who faces accusations of abusing his ex-wife and their child.

The Epstein files protester says she ended up in the hospital, and this wasn’t the first time a Trump protester was attacked. A Reddit user who identified herself as the woman wrote, “Currently at the hospital, they ripped out a decent chunk of my hair.” She said she made the shirt herself, hopes to press charges and was not arrested, though she described police and security as “aggressive.” Last week in San Antonio, C-SPAN cameras recorded an older man in a red MAGA hat grabbing a protester by the shirt, yanking his hair and pulling him toward the ground. Trump mocked that protester too, saying, “He’s going back home to Mom right now.” The pattern is the same each time: protesters are physically attacked, and the president jokes about it.

House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris was laughed at by voters during a debate after he blamed Democrats for diesel prices. At Tuesday’s debate in Cambridge, Maryland, his Democratic challenger Dan Schwartz called Trump’s deal lifting sanctions on Russian diesel “disgusting.” Harris responded that diesel prices are up “because the Democrats have environmental regulations,” and the crowd groaned, laughed and shouted. Diesel was under $3 a gallon before Trump’s Iran war and is now above $6, according to The New Republic. Harris snapped at the audience: “You all say you believe there’s a First Amendment, but only if you agree with you. You should let me finish the sentence, ma’am. You are rude!” Harris, who is seeking his ninth term, has avoided in-person town halls since 2023.

After the debate, Harris tried to get a reporter arrested for recording him, even though he had invited the press to interview him. When a Baltimore Banner reporter pressed him on the Iran war, Harris said, “I refuse to give you permission to record,” and then demanded, “She is violating the law. In fact, get an officer in here. We need an officer.” He cited Maryland’s two-party consent law, but that law only covers private conversations, not on-the-record interviews with the press. Banner reporter Pamela Wood wrote that Harris “invited” reporters to talk with him and that “they all had their cameras and phones rolling and visible to the congressman.” Schwartz said afterward that Harris is “out of touch, out of practice talking to voters, and much more interested in picking fights.” Harris’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Anti-war protesters repeatedly interrupted Pete Hegseth at an Army conference, calling him a war criminal and a coward until security removed them. At least five or six demonstrators disrupted Hegseth’s panel on autonomous weapons at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual meeting on Wednesday, protesting the Iran war and Trump’s proposed $1.5 trillion military budget. Hegseth first met the protests with chuckles and sarcasm, then complained, “Appears we have a bit of a tactic,” calling the disruptions semi-coordinated. At least one woman was carried out by multiple officers while she was still shouting. The Army association said it supports the right to protest but called the outbursts “inappropriate.” Hegseth used the panel to push for a new Autonomous Warfare Command, saying, “We need this kind of authority yesterday.”

Zelensky Says He Feels “Betrayed” by Trump, Warns Musk That “People Will Die” After Starlink Cutoff

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he feels betrayed by Trump, and he blames SpaceX and the United States for cutting off Starlink. Asked by Piers Morgan whether he felt “betrayed,” Zelensky answered, “Really, yes, between us,” and said, “It is a pity that we are losing a strong partner.” He accused Elon Musk of knowingly restricting Starlink, saying, “I am sure they knew what they did, absolutely. Because it was 1am at night, Starlink was blocked by SpaceX and the United States.” Speaking directly to Musk, he warned, “This decision will bring a lot of human losses. Of course, people will die.” Zelensky later publicly called on Musk to “switch on” the system. He also said he would not resign under U.S. pressure, after Trump said on Saturday that Ukraine needs “a new president.”

Ukraine says SpaceX throttled its military Starlink terminals without warning overnight, and missions on the front line are already failing. Presidential adviser Serhii Beskrestnov confirmed that SpaceX capped terminals in motion at 100 mph on the StarShield “military service package,” which The New York Times reports is paid for by the Pentagon. The cap cripples Ukraine’s interceptor drones and mid-range strike drones, which have been strangling Russian supply lines this year. Ukraine’s 7th Air Assault Corps said drone units had to cancel missions, and commanders from elite drone units on the eastern and southern fronts reported similar problems. “Obviously, this action cannot be a coincidence and is associated with the current political situation,” Beskrestnov said. Neither SpaceX nor the White House has explained the cutoff, and Poland’s foreign minister, whose country pays for some of Ukraine’s Starlink access, wrote to Musk: “Are you playing politics with your products again? As your European customers, we are watching you.” Elon Musk threw Trump under the bus today claiming that Trump was at fault:

The Starlink cutoff came as Kyiv was hit by ballistic missiles for two straight nights with little or no warning from its allies. Zelensky said Ukraine “received no early warning from our partners,” which raised fears that Trump followed through on his threat to cut off intelligence after Ukraine kept striking Russian oil refineries. Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said Ukraine got no warning for the first wave of Tuesday’s attack, though it was alerted to three later waves. At least three women were killed and 24 people were injured, including a 7-year-old girl, when a residential building was hit in Kyiv’s Desnianskyi District. Russia damaged 26 power grid facilities and four oil and gas facilities overnight, leaving at least 600,000 people without power. Trump insists, “We are helping them, and we are sharing intel,” and NATO, EU and Ukrainian officials told reporters they have seen no sign that U.S. intelligence sharing has formally stopped.

Ukraine stopped striking Russian refineries under Trump’s “energy ceasefire,” but Russia kept bombing anyway, and Trump hasn’t called it out. The crisis started when Trump struck a deal to waive sanctions on Russian diesel, which his aides followed by pressuring Ukraine to stop hitting Russian oil refineries. Ukrainian officials took those demands as a threat to cut off intelligence aid. Trump then announced a unilateral “energy ceasefire” that blindsided both Moscow and Kyiv. Russia has continued hitting Ukraine’s energy grid while Ukraine has held its fire, and Trump has refused to accuse Russia of breaking the truce. “Ukraine did not attack Russian oil refineries, yet Trump has already begun imposing sanctions on my country. Meanwhile, sanctions against Russia have been eased,” said activist Serhii Sternenko. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said the diesel deal “legitimizes Moscow” while it bombs Ukraine.

Europe is stepping in to fill the gap, with Britain promising to speed up air defense deliveries as Zelensky tours allied capitals. Zelensky met with King Charles III and British Prime Minister Andy Burnham in London, where Burnham promised accelerated military and economic support, including a new batch of air-defense missiles that have been effective against Russian drones. Burnham told Parliament he would try to “repair bridges” between Kyiv and Washington “so that the support comes back.” Zelensky also pushed Britain to seize frozen Russian assets and release the £2.5 billion from Roman Abramovich’s sale of Chelsea to help Ukraine. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said, “Putin is trying to weaken our resolve and stop our support for Ukraine. But Russia is failing,” and he urged allies to do more on air defense. Zelensky heads next to an EU summit in Brussels.

Elon Musk Is Fighting to Bury a New Documentary About Him, and Its Director Warns About What Musk Could Do Before the Midterms

Elon Musk is waging a campaign against “Musk,” Alex Gibney’s new documentary about him, before he has even seen it. Over the past few weeks, Musk has called the Oscar-winning director an “idiot,” a “horrible human,” a “shill for the far left” and a “tinfoil hat crackpot” on X. After the film premiered at the Venice Film Festival, Musk wrote that dog feces are “worth more respect than Gibney.” He has also called the film a “hit piece that misses” and threatened legal action. When Gibney’s team asked Musk for an interview, his only reply was to post “Gibney is a douche.” The nearly four-hour film is playing in New York and Los Angeles now and expands nationwide on Friday. I have the trailer here:

The documentary has run into one roadblock after another, and Gibney says Musk’s power reaches into the companies deciding whether people get to see it. YouTube, Meta, TikTok and X all initially rejected paid ads for the film, and only YouTube and Meta later reversed course, after it was flagged for “political content.” Gibney confirmed that Universal “wavered” over releasing the film internationally, and Variety reported the studio was concerned about “legal threats from Musk.” There are also questions about whether the film will reach HBO as planned after the Skydance merger, since CEO David Ellison’s father, Larry Ellison, is friendly with Musk. “Would Musk be able to call Larry or David and say, you know, don’t put this doc on? Yeah,” Gibney said. “It’s literally pay to play.” Gibney summed it up on X: the film is “about a ‘free-speech absolutist’ who has threatened a lawsuit to try to stop the film from being seen.”

The film features people from Musk’s inner circle, but nearly everyone was afraid to speak out. Musk’s first wife, Justine Musk, his ex-partner Ashley St. Clair, Reid Hoffman, Kara Swisher and former UN Ambassador Samantha Power all appear. Gibney said almost everyone needed time to agree because “the risk profile for talking about Musk in a way that was honest was high.” The only person who agreed right away was Musk’s estranged father, Errol. Justine Musk says in the film that she learned about gaslighting from Elon, and she disputes his public claim that their infant son died in his arms, saying the child died in hers. St. Clair provided texts in which Musk told her he had “10,000 lasers in space right now” ahead of the 2024 election, and she says she turned down about $40 million to keep her right to speak freely.

Gibney says DOGE was never really about waste. He describes it as “performative cruelty” that gutted the regulatory state and handed Musk’s team unprecedented access to Americans’ data. In the film, Samantha Power describes the thousands of lives lost after DOGE shut down USAID, including food that was already paid for and then burned instead of reaching starving children. A DOGE staffer admits in a deposition that the team didn’t reduce the deficit, which was its stated goal. Gibney said DOGE staff were given “super admin status” at federal agencies, giving them “access to vast amounts of data that no one has ever had access to in history.” He wants Congress to investigate where that data went, asking whether it is “sitting in a hard drive in SpaceX or Tesla?” Because Musk refused an interview, the film uses an AI-generated Musk who speaks only Musk’s real words, taken from his own recordings.

Gibney warns that Musk could use that data to try to undermine the midterms, which are now less than three weeks away. In the film, AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton says, “It’s fairly clear to me Trump is hell-bent on corrupting the midterm elections,” and that “what DOGE did looked to me like just what you would do if you wanted to get data on US citizens.” Gibney said he doesn’t know what Musk may be planning, but if a blue wave comes, his “bigger concern is over a disinformation campaign, aided and abetted by Elon Musk, with massive amounts of data that would try to undermine people’s confidence that the election was free and fair.” That warning comes as Musk has given at least $276 million to Republican efforts this cycle. It also lands the same week Ukraine accused SpaceX of cutting its Starlink access during a Russian assault. “That’s what I fear most at this moment,” Gibney said.

Iran War Spreads to Saudi Arabia as Trump Weighs Joining Fight Against Houthis

The Iran war is spreading to a new front, and Trump is considering pulling the U.S. into it. Explosions rang out over Riyadh on Wednesday as Saudi forces intercepted another ballistic missile from the Iran-backed Houthis, whose attacks on Saudi Arabia have escalated sharply since a four-year ceasefire collapsed this summer. Last week, a Houthi strike killed 13 people at Riyadh’s international airport, which has been shut down ever since. The Houthis have also hit Saudi oil giant Aramco, including setting fire to an administrative building. The Saudi-led coalition answered with strikes on oil sites across Yemen, and the Houthis vowed to keep hitting Saudi airports and oil facilities, telling civilians and workers to “evacuate them immediately.” Trump says he’s weighing whether to join the attacks on the Houthis, who have threatened to target U.S. personnel across the Middle East if he does.

Attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz have hit their highest level of the war, and Iran says a cargo ship sank after hitting a mine, weeks after Trump claimed the strait was clear. At least 10 vessels have been attacked in or near the strait since Sunday, including six on Sunday alone, the most in a single day since the war began. Twenty-three attacks have been recorded so far in October, nearly double the monthly average, and two sailors are missing. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said a ship carrying 2,500 containers caught fire and sank after hitting a naval mine, which would be the first such sinking of the war, though that hasn’t been independently verified. At the end of August, Trump declared that U.S. forces had “totally cleared the strait of mines.” Analysts say Iran is ramping up attacks to show it can still disrupt shipping as oil traffic recovers to about 80% of prewar levels.

The White House is blaming the Houthis for this week’s bad inflation report, as the war’s costs pile up at home and abroad. Trump’s top economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, told Fox Business that Houthi attacks on Saudi oil caused “a negative shock to energy again in September,” which pushed inflation up to 3.7%. Gas has jumped from $2.98 a gallon before the war to $4.33, diesel is at $6.29, and Brent crude is around $105 a barrel. The fighting in Yemen has also cut off food aid to about 800,000 people, according to the UN World Food Programme, in a country where 500,000 young children already suffer from severe acute malnutrition. The Houthis are holding 37 WFP employees. Saudi Arabia has postponed a Netflix tennis tournament featuring Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic, and it is scrambling to offer virtual attendance and overland travel routes for its “Davos in the desert” investment conference later this month.

Other news:

Police say a group of men cheered as a woman was sexually assaulted in a bathroom at a University of Chicago fraternity house, and tried to stop her friends from getting in. The 21-year-old told police she began “feeling unwell” at a party at the Alpha Epsilon Pi house early Sunday morning, according to a police report obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times. According to the report, her two friends saw up to five men “cheering and appearing to encourage the activity inside,” and the men falsely told them she wasn’t in the bathroom. When the friends pushed forward, one man grabbed one of them by the hair while the other picked the lock, and they found the woman “not fully conscious,” with the man on top of her saying everything was “cool.” The university says it has identified a person of interest who isn’t affiliated with the school, using witness statements, campus cameras and license plate readers, but no arrests have been made. The case comes amid a national reckoning over sexual assault at fraternities, led by the gang rape allegations at Cornell.

Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff admitted he knew about the alleged fraternity gang rape in 2024 but never followed up with the woman. In his first interview since “Jane Doe” filed her lawsuit, Kotlikoff told The New York Times he learned of her report in November 2024 and didn’t know she had dropped out of Cornell until she sued last month. “The fact that Jane Doe experienced what she experienced at Cornell is something that I am personally sorry for,” he said, adding, “People are angry. I understand that anger.” The faculty senate is expected to hold a rare no-confidence vote on him later this month as calls for his resignation grow. Gov. Kathy Hochul has appointed Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor, and the local district attorney is reopening the case after initially declining to file charges. Cornell has now suspended fraternity parties for the rest of the year and hired former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates to lead an independent review.

Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, is facing a formal complaint after reporting found no record that she has ever been licensed as a lawyer. Zacharia has repeatedly called herself a lawyer, but when Trump asked her in front of reporters which state she passed the bar in, she answered, “when I moved to China.”

Only Chinese citizens can be licensed as lawyers in China, and the Guardian, the Washington Post, CNN and Popular Information found no record of her admission to the bar in any state checked, including California, where she lived. Watchdog group Campaign for Accountability filed a complaint with the California bar, saying, “In California, calling yourself a lawyer without a license isn’t puffery; it’s a crime.” Former Bush White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter said that falsely calling yourself an attorney is “a misdemeanor at least.” Deleted posts also show Zacharia fawning over Elon Musk, calling for the suspension of habeas corpus and promoting Pizzagate-style conspiracy theories. Here is a video of her claiming she was a lawyer:

The wife of Michigan Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers handed out $10 gas cards at a Detroit gas station, and critics mocked it as a paltry stunt from a party whose Iran war sent gas prices soaring. Kristi Rogers gave out the cards on Wednesday to promote her husband’s call to suspend the state gas tax, with $10 being the campaign’s estimate of what drivers would save. Democratic strategist Connor Farrell responded with the famous “Arrested Development” line, “It’s a gallon of gas, Michael. What could it cost, ten dollars?” Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum pointed out that “$10 will get approximately two gallons of gas,” and progressive organizer Isaiah Martin wrote that Republicans “would rather hand out gas cards instead of telling their dumb president to end the war.” Rogers has his own record to answer for, too: as a state senator in 1997 he voted to raise Michigan’s gas tax, he previously warned that suspending it might not lower prices, and he backed the Iran war before calling for it to end quickly. The Michigan Democratic Party asked whether Kristi Rogers would also highlight her husband’s support for “giving the president authority to continue” the war indefinitely.

Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign for Ohio governor pulled an ad after The Bulwark found that it featured a registered sex offender. The ad focused on Patty Edwards, an Amherst woman worried about losing her family farm to rising property taxes, but her husband, Vernon Edwards, appeared several times in the background footage. Court records show Vernon Edwards pleaded guilty in 2006 to two counts of gross sexual imposition involving a niece under 13 and was sentenced to eight years in prison. A spokesperson said the campaign “had no knowledge” of his history and was recutting the spot, and the campaign also quietly deleted a related social video, as did at least one Republican state representative who had shared it. The Bulwark noted that basic vetting would have turned up his listing on the county sex offender registry, where his photo appears to show him wearing the same patriotic shirt Ramaswamy complimented at a county fair. Patty Edwards called the allegations against her husband “false” and said the ad was about her own story, not his.

A federal judge quoted “The Lorax” while blocking the Trump administration from finishing a weekend demolition of more than 400 trees at a public D.C. golf course that Trump wants to redo. Judge Ana C. Reyes ordered work to stop at East Potomac Golf Course until at least October 26, after the administration announced shortly before 5 p.m. on a Friday that it would clear trees and sent bulldozers in the next morning, without giving the court or the preservation groups suing over the project any meaningful notice. “Breakneck speed to clear trees that posed no harm. The reason? Disputed. The budget? Unclear. The environmental impact? Unstudied. The urgency? None,” Reyes wrote, adding, “Just ask the Lorax.” She found that workers “raced” to tear down hundreds of healthy trees because Trump “demands haste on his redesign,” and she dismissed the government’s claim that the timing, weeks after Trump asked for the trees to be cut, was a coincidence, saying, “That asks rather a lot of coincidence.” When the judge asked the National Mall’s superintendent whether there was any urgency to keep cutting, he answered, “Not that I’m aware of.” Plaintiff Alex Dickson said filing late on a Friday and “cutting trees at dawn the next morning sure seems to skirt everything this court asked of the administration.”

Federal agents seized Rep. Ilhan Omar’s phone and sent about a dozen subpoenas, including to her family members, three weeks before the midterms. The investigation is examining Omar’s immigration paperwork, including her birthdate, with possible charges of conspiracy and making false statements, according to people familiar with the case. Omar was naturalized at 17, which means she could have received citizenship through a parent, and a five-year statute of limitations could complicate any prosecution. The Justice Department has traditionally avoided overt actions this close to an election, and seizing a sitting member of Congress’s phone typically triggers special constitutional protections. Trump called Omar “a terrible person” and “a disaster” at his Ohio rally, and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin had teased last month that “something’s going to happen” with her. “Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement,” Omar said.

Israel is blocking construction of a key base for Trump’s Gaza “Board of Peace,” which stalls the entire reconstruction plan Trump points to as proof he ended the war. In August, the board, which Trump chairs for life, awarded its first contract to build an outpost for 150 international troops, but two months later, “Israel won’t open the border,” according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. Without that base, the international stabilization force can’t deploy, and without it, “you can’t rebuild,” the source said. Board officials believe Israel may allow the project after its elections on October 27. Jared Kushner, who sits on the board’s executive committee, has unveiled renderings of Gaza as a luxury waterfront resort, and the board has pitched a $71 billion, 10-year rebuilding plan. Gaza health authorities say Israeli strikes have killed about 1,400 people since the October 2025 ceasefire.

Pope Leo is recovering from lung cancer surgery, but Peru’s president warned his recovery could take “longer than expected” and threaten his trip there next month. The Vatican says the 71-year-old’s tests show “a normal post-operative course,” and he has started walking around his room and eating meals. But Peruvian President Keiko Fujimori said his recovery “will take several weeks longer than expected” and that his November 11 visit to Peru, where he spent more than two decades, could change. The Vatican has not said whether the cancer has spread or whether he will need more treatment. Leo was diagnosed with adenocarcinoma, a form of non-small cell lung cancer, even though he is not known to have ever smoked. In his first message since surgery, the pope thanked people “warmly for your prayers.”

California has 57 dams in poor or unsatisfactory condition, and a state audit warns that failures could endanger up to 1.5 million people as an El Niño winter approaches. The 40 riskiest dams cluster near densely populated areas, including the Bay Area, Los Angeles and San Diego, and the auditor said their failure could cause more than $265 billion in damage. Lawmakers gave the state power to penalize negligent dam owners after the 2017 Oroville spillway disaster forced nearly 200,000 people to evacuate, but the state has never once used it. One unnamed dam has had a 47-foot-wide hole in its spillway for more than 30 years. Repairs could cost about $28 billion, which dwarfs available funding, and Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers cut the dam repair grant program in 2024. Emergency plans for 245 dams still haven’t been approved because state law sets no deadlines.

German police seized a robot that allegedly groped a 16-year-old girl, and they’re investigating whether two young men were controlling it while they filmed and livestreamed the incident. Police in Cologne say the robot touched the girl’s buttocks and made thrusting movements toward her on a busy street late Saturday night. Its suspected 16-year-old owner and a 19-year-old companion are suspects but haven’t been charged, and investigators are examining whether the robot’s movements were preprogrammed or controlled in real time. Officers found the roughly four-foot robot in a car trunk, dressed in a tank top, sweatpants, a gold chain, sunglasses and a fake mustache, and they confiscated it along with the men’s phones. “We have not been aware of this phenomenon so far,” a police spokesman said, calling it “new territory for us.” Police also warned the public that joking about or sharing the videos can deepen the harm to the victim.

Netflix is cutting about 6% of its workforce, or roughly 1,000 jobs, as the streaming giant struggles to grow how much people watch. Co-CEOs Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos announced the layoffs in an internal email on Wednesday, saying the company needs to be “disciplined about where we prioritize our people and resources.” Most of the cuts will hit the product, technology, legal and human resources teams. Viewing on Netflix rose just 2% year over year in the first half of 2026, and Sarandos admitted last month, “We’re not growing as fast as I want us to.” The company has been adding live sports and video podcasts to boost engagement, and it reports third-quarter earnings on Tuesday. The cuts are part of a wave of Hollywood layoffs: Disney has cut hundreds of jobs this year, and David Ellison’s Skydance is expected to shrink its workforce across Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: War Crime’—Musk Cuts Ukraine’s Internet as Russia Strikes, Republicans Concede the House, and Inflation Spikes Fast, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 14, 2026. I’m hearing from people on the ground today that the situation in Ukraine is getting worse fast. Elon Musk is deliberately messing with Ukraine’s access to Starlink, and Trump is cutting Ukraine off in many respects. This is a very serious situation, and it will get a lot of Ukrainians killed.

Here’s what we know so far. Last night, Starlink went dark on Ukrainian drones without warning, and several combat missions failed. Hours later, Russia launched 39 ballistic missiles and more than 120 drones at Kyiv and Kharkiv. They hit all three of Kyiv’s combined heat and power plants and left at least 600,000 people without power as winter approaches. For the second night in a row, Ukraine received no U.S. warning before the first wave of missiles. Critics are now calling for Musk to be investigated for war crimes.

Today’s edition also covers top Republicans privately conceding they’re about to lose the House and blaming Trump for it. The final inflation report before the midterms shows gas up 34% and real wages back where they were on day one of Trump’s term. And while all of this was happening, the president was posting a video of a man being killed by a tiger before going on a 25-post overnight spree.

I started this work because of my family in Ukraine. I will never stop this work. Reporting like this is only possible because of you. I’m fully independent. I have no corporate owner and no network, and I answer only to you. With three weeks until the midterms, I’m on the ground, talking to sources and bringing you the stories others won’t. If you value this work, please consider supporting it by subscribing here:

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Top congressional Republicans are privately admitting they will almost certainly lose the House, and some are pinning the blame squarely on Trump. Five senior Republican lawmakers told Politico the chamber has all but slipped away, with one saying the goal now is simply to “save as many Republican seats as we can” because “President Trump has made this election all about himself.” Another predicted Democrats will gain about 10 seats, more than enough to flip the House, and said even candidates in newly gerrymandered red states like Florida and Texas are “hanging on with their fingernails.” The GOP has already pulled back from races held by Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Tom Kean Jr., districts Trump carried just two years ago, and abandoned retiring Rep. Don Bacon’s Omaha seat. Bacon put it bluntly: “The biggest problem is the president’s polling numbers and unfavorables.” Meanwhile, the party is shifting money to defend Senate seats in once-safe MAGA states like Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas, even as Speaker Mike Johnson insists “the polling is wrong.”

Calls Grow for Elon Musk to Face War Crimes Investigation After SpaceX Cuts Ukraine’s Starlink Access During Russian Assault

elon musk hitler saluteCritics are calling for Elon Musk, shown above providing a Hitler-style salute at a conservative political action committee convention,   to be investigated for war crimes after SpaceX cut Ukraine’s Starlink access on the same night Russia launched a massive assault on Kyiv. Starlink terminals mounted on Ukrainian drones, those moving faster than about 100 mph, lost connectivity without warning Tuesday night, causing several combat space x logomissions to fail, according to Ukrainian officials. Hours later, Russia fired 39 ballistic missiles and more than 120 drones at Kyiv and Kharkiv, striking all three of Kyiv’s combined heat and power plants and leaving at least 600,000 people without power. Five people were killed and 36 injured in Kyiv, according to police. The International Criminal Court has previously issued arrest warrants for senior Russian officials, including former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, over strikes on Ukraine’s power grid. Critics argue that by cutting Starlink access during the assault, Musk allowed Russia to strike Ukraine with impunity.

Ukrainian officials say the Starlink cutoff was deliberate and tied to politics in Washington. “Our armed forces did not receive a warning about these restrictions and this led to the failure of a number of missions,” said Serhii Beskrestnov, a technology adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky. “It’s clear that this action cannot be a coincidence and is connected to the current political situation.” Serhii Sternenko, a political activist with close ties to the military, said SpaceX likely cut access “at the request of the Trump administration.” Ukraine depends on Starlink for long-range drone strikes, interceptor air defense systems, and front-line logistics. SpaceX has not commented, and its stock fell more than 4% on Tuesday.

The Starlink cutoff came as Ukraine went without U.S. warnings of incoming Russian missiles for a second straight night. Ukraine’s air force said it received no warning before Russia’s first ballistic missile barrage russian flag wavingTuesday, though it was alerted to three later waves. Zelensky told NPR the Trump administration has threatened to cut off intelligence sharing if Ukraine continues striking Russian oil refineries, and CNN reported the U.S. also threatened to restrict weapons. Trump has denied cutting off intelligence, saying, “We are helping them and we are sharing intel.” Ukraine has halted its refinery strikes since Friday under Trump’s announced “energy ceasefire,” while Russia has continued hitting Ukraine’s energy grid for three straight nights. “Russia has never before shown such ostentatious disrespect toward the United States,” Zelensky said.

It is not the first time Musk has cut Ukraine’s Starlink access during the war. In 2022, as Ukraine retook territory from Russia, Musk reportedly ordered SpaceX engineers to cut Starlink coverage in contested areas. In 2023, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell acknowledged the company had limited Ukraine’s use of the system, saying, “There are things that we can do, and have done.” That same year, a senior adviser to Zelensky accused Musk of decisions that led to civilian deaths. Musk is a close ally of President Trump and has given at least $276 million to Republican efforts in the midterms. Trump has escalated his attacks on Zelensky in recent days, saying Ukraine needs “a new president.” This is the moment Ukraine went dark last night:

The Trump administration has stayed silent as Russia strikes American businesses in Ukraine, while pressuring Kyiv to stand down. Russian drones and missiles have damaged facilities tied to Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, McDonald’s, and Oreo, according to the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine. “It’s sending a message that they’re targeting American business. We’re not seeing any response from the White House,” said the chamber’s president, Andy Hunder. The administration has instead lifted sanctions on Russian diesel and pressed Ukraine to stop striking Russian refineries. European allies are moving in the opposite direction, with British Prime Minister Andy Burnham telling Ukraine, “We are with you for as long as it takes.” Zelensky called on the world to respond “forcefully,” saying, “Russia has squandered the opportunity for de-escalation.”

Inflation Accelerates in Final Report Before Midterms as Gas Prices Soar 34% and Real Wages Fall Back to Day One of Trump’s Term

Inflation sped up in September, driven by soaring energy prices from the Iran war, in the last inflation report before the midterms. Consumer prices rose 0.6% in September, the biggest monthly jump in five months, and were up 3.7% from a year earlier. Gas prices rose 9.1% in September alone and 34.2% over the past year, with the national average now $4.33 a gallon, about 40% higher than a year ago. Energy prices overall are up 20.4% for the year, home heating oil is up a staggering 74.2%, and airfares have jumped 22.4%. The report came just one night after Trump told a rally in Alaska that prices were improving under his watch. Democrats pounced, with Rep. Brendan Boyle saying Trump “promised to end inflation and lower costs ‘on day one’” but has “done the exact opposite” with “his disastrous war in Iran and reckless tariff taxes.”

Americans have now seen zero real wage growth since Trump returned to the White House. With inflation rising and wage growth slowing, inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings fell 0.5% in August and were down 0.7% from a year earlier, the sixth straight month of year-over-year declines. That puts real earnings exactly where they were when Trump was sworn in for his second term. Tariffs are still pushing up some prices, with toys up 4.2% in September, though other tariff-exposed categories like clothing saw smaller effects. Rising costs for fuel, fertilizer, and shipping are also cascading through supply chains, with banana companies warning they can’t absorb higher costs much longer. The one bright spot was car insurance, which is now down 5% from a year ago after years of skyrocketing premiums.

The hot report puts pressure on the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates again just before the election. Core inflation, which excludes food and energy, rose more than expected at 0.3% in September, while a key measure of underlying services inflation has been running at a nearly 4.6% annual rate over the past three months. The Fed raised rates in September and had signaled it might skip its October meeting, which falls just days before the midterms. Now Fed Chair Kevin Warsh will face pressure to explain why the Fed is moving slowly as price pressures build. Bond markets reacted sharply, with the 2-year Treasury yield jumping to 4.88% and bond yields sitting at levels not seen in about two decades. Stock futures slipped after the report, and the trade deficit hit a 17-month high in August despite Trump’s tariffs.

Trump Posts Video of Man Being Mauled by a Tiger, Then Goes on a 25-Post Overnight Truth Social Spree

Trump reposted graphic footage of a real man being mauled by a tiger in England, sparking outrage across the political spectrum. The 41-second clip showed the fatal attack on William Chapman at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park last Saturday, with the tiger biting the back of his neck and pinning him down as he struggled. “Don’t ever mess with nature! President DJT,” Trump wrote alongside it to his 13 million followers. A minute later, he posted a compilation of lion attacks on people set to jaunty music, and it’s unclear whether all of them were real or AI-generated. He then shared an AI-generated video of himself chasing down and wrestling the same tiger before the two start smiling. Chapman, who visited the park alone and died at the scene, was a former child actor who appeared on BBC and ITV shows, and his old stage school said he “will be truly missed.”

The backlash was immediate, with even Republicans telling Trump to put his phone down. The internet responded to the AI tiger video with “WTF,” adding, “Someone take Grandpa’s phone away.” One user said they “had to triple check this wasn’t a parody account,” while journalist Andrew Egger wrote, “Your guess is as good as mine” on why the president posted it. Commentator Brian Krassenstein argued Trump is trying “to distract from reality” by posting tiger attacks “rather than election poll numbers.” The Washington Post noted it wasn’t clear why the president shared the footage at all. A health and safety investigation into the attack is underway, and the wildlife park remains closed.

Hours later, Trump went on a late-night posting binge of roughly 25 posts in just over two hours. The spree started at 12:10 a.m. while Trump was aboard Air Force One after his Alaska rally, kicking off with a video comparing him to a lion, an apparent callback to the tiger posts. It ran until about 2:19 a.m. and included videos of Fox News hosts and administration officials praising him, along with posts hyping migrant deportations and attacks on his political enemies.

 

djt god made trump ad

One video declared that “God made Trump,” casting him as a divinely chosen “caretaker” sent to protect the country. The barrage came as Trump faces some of the worst polling of his second term. It was all happening just three weeks before the midterms.

Days earlier, Trump also shared a fake Denzel Washington endorsement that had already been debunked. The post quoted Washington calling Trump the bravest and smartest person he’d ever met and saying he was “proud to be a steadfast supporter.” Snopes had debunked the quote two days earlier, finding no evidence Washington ever said it, and the same fake quote has been attributed to Matthew McConaughey and Mick Jagger. Washington has donated to Democrats, including $28,500 to Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and $27,000 to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign against Trump. His publicist has repeatedly called similar viral claims a “complete fabrication.” Trump has a history of sharing fake endorsements, including AI images in 2024 suggesting Taylor Swift fans backed him, which Swift cited when she endorsed Kamala Harris.

Other news:

Iran has sentenced a 23-year-old accounting student to death for a social media post, as rights groups warn the regime is using executions to crush dissent. Najmeh Amini, who is being held in Vakilabad prison in Mashhad, was convicted of “insulting the prophet” after Iran’s Cyber Police flagged her posts. She separately received more than 12 years for “acting against national security” and “spreading propaganda.” She was arrested during January’s nationwide protests, when thousands were reportedly killed and more than 50,000 people were detained. In an audio recording released last month, Amini pleaded for help: “I do not want to make a hero out of myself today. I only want one thing: be my voice.” Her defense argued the post was made while she was hallucinating, but the judge rejected that and reportedly asked why she hadn’t insulted “America and Israel” instead. Iran has carried out more than 600 executions this year, and her sentence can still be appealed to the supreme court.

Nearly half of Cornell students found responsible for sexual assault got reflection papers and reprimands instead of suspension or expulsion, according to a CNN review of university records. Between mid-2020 and mid-2024, Cornell reviewed 51 formal sexual assault complaints and found students responsible in 16 cases, yet expelled only two and suspended six. Seven others received written reprimands, probation, no-contact orders, or “directed study,” which can include reading the victim’s impact letter. Former student Kacey Lee said her attacker essentially “just got an extra homework assignment,” asking, “Why is my pain only worth an essay?” The findings come amid national outrage over a lawsuit from “Jane Doe,” who alleges she was gang raped at the Chi Phi fraternity in 2024, a case in which Cornell expelled just two of the seven men she accused. A university task force found that in 2025, more than one in three undergraduate women reported being sexually assaulted during their time at Cornell.

A federal judge blocked Trump’s White House ban on CNN, MS Now and Politico for the length of their lawsuit, ruling the outlets are likely to win on First Amendment and due process grounds. Judge Timothy Kelly granted a preliminary injunction on Tuesday, extending a temporary order he issued in September after Trump banned the outlets for their “constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS.” Kelly found the White House gave no advance notice before revoking the reporters’ hard passes, violating binding court precedent. Trump’s own words sank his case, with Kelly writing that the president’s comments, including in a Time interview, show he “intended the revocation of Plaintiffs’ hard passes to alter their reporting on him.” Media lawyer Ted Boutrous said “the case has gotten stronger for the plaintiffs thanks to President Trump.” The administration has still kept CNN and Politico reporters off pool duty on Air Force One and in the Oval Office, arguing the earlier order only covered access to the White House complex.

Bank of America was fined $1.21 billion, the third-largest penalty in Treasury Department history, for failing to report more than $5 billion in suspicious activity. That included roughly $1 billion tied to national security and other high-priority illicit finance risks, according to Treasury. Regulators said the bank “prioritized its revenues” over compliance and relied on tips from law enforcement and other banks instead of its own controls. The penalty includes a record $750 million from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which called the bank’s anti-money laundering program “deficient and ineffective,” plus $11.6 million for more than 400 sanctions violations involving countries including Russia and Iran. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the failures exposed “the entire US financial system to significant illicit finance risks.” The charge will cut about 17 cents a share from the bank’s third-quarter earnings, and the fine comes days after American Express paid $350 million for similar failures.

The Vatican announced that Pope Leo has lung cancer after surgeons removed the lower lobe of his right lung at Rome’s Gemelli hospital. Tests confirmed lung adenocarcinoma, which the Vatican said had been suspected before the operation and was confirmed during surgery. The 71-year-old, the first American-born pope, had told crowds in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday that doctors found a small nodule that was “well-contained” and detected early. The surgery itself lasted about 90 minutes and was described as “successful, on schedule and as planned.” All of his appointments are canceled until October 20, and he is still scheduled to travel to South America in November for a 12-day, 10-city trip. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he and his wife were “united in prayers” for the pope.

The Trump administration slashed the time refugees have to challenge the termination of their status from 30 days to just 10, with less than 24 hours’ notice. The rule took effect Wednesday, a day after it was issued, skipping the public comment period federal law typically requires for sweeping policy changes. A Homeland Security notice claims there was “insufficient” evidence for admitting a “majority” of refugees resettled in Minnesota under Biden, even though refugee vetting often takes years. Advocates say 10 days is nowhere near enough to find a lawyer and gather records from the country they fled, with the International Refugee Assistance Project calling the process “mere window-dressing” for deporting people “to persecution or worse.” The move came one day after Homeland Security Investigations agents raided the Washington home of Rep. Ilhan Omar, a former Somali refugee, who called it “an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.” The administration has also capped refugee admissions at 17,500, with nearly all slots going to white South Africans.

Seven children between the ages of 1 and 17 were removed from a Richmond, Kentucky home that police described as “very filthy and deplorable,” and eight adults now face charges. Investigators found feces smeared across floors and stairs and a strong smell of feces and urine throughout the house, which also held 10 dogs and cats. The investigation uncovered allegations of human trafficking, rape and incest. Charges range from first-degree criminal abuse of a child to first-degree rape, sodomy and human trafficking, with 63-year-old Green Schindler facing the most serious counts. The children have been placed with social services. All eight suspects are being held at the Madison County Detention Center, and police say the investigation is ongoing.

A 42-year-old man was ejected from the Goliath roller coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia and killed, renewing scrutiny of the fact that theme park rides face no federal oversight. Hassan Jihad Ibn Kariem was thrown from his seat on the 200-foot, 70 mph coaster on Monday, striking other guests before landing below the ride. Six Flags temporarily shut down nine similar coasters across North America, and the manufacturer says it is investigating. Stationary park rides are exempt from Consumer Product Safety Commission regulation, a “loophole” Sen. Ed Markey has repeatedly tried to close. That leaves a patchwork of state rules, with Florida exempting Disney World and Universal from state inspections and Arizona having no state agency that inspects rides at all. Experts say the coaster’s restraint system is designed so the train cannot move unless every seat is locked, which makes the cause of the death all the more troublin 

Special Reports: Trump's Attempted Fear Factor -- and What's Next

 Image by Berthold Bronisz from Pixabay for The Hartmann Report.

Image by Berthold Bronisz from Pixabay

The Hartmann Report, Opinion: Trump Is Teaching America the Most Terrifying Lesson Every Dictator Knows, Thom Hartmann, right, thom hartmann newOct. 14, 2026. You don't have to imprison a nation to control it. Destroy a handful of critics, make sure everyone sees it, and watch the rest fall silent…

When we think of strongman dictatorships we often imagine tanks in the streets, but those usually come in the later stages of repression (think Tienanmen Square) and often are never even needed (think today’s Russia). Instead, as every dictator on Earth can tell you, you don’t have to silence the entire country; all you have to do is shut up a few strategically-selected people visibly and publicly enough and the rest of the country will get the message and back away.

hartmann report newThat’s the message of this week’s raid on Ilhan Omar’s home, and so many other atrocities committed by Trump’s eager fascist lickspittles over the past 21 months. He and his advisors are simply repeating a long and well-trod history.

On the morning of March 14, 1757, King George II ordered Admiral John Byng executed by firing squad on the quarterdeck of the HMS Monarch in Portsmouth harbor. His crime? He’d just lost a battle off the coast of Minorca. Two years later, Voltaire wrote the event into his novella Candide, having the hero of his story watch the execution from the deck of a nearby ship. When a sailor standing with him asks why Byng was killed, his hero replied:

“In this country, it is good to kill an admiral from time to time, to encourage the others. Pour encourager les autres.”

The phrase has been foundational to the rise of every tyrant in history since. Pick a few people, make an example of them, and the fear will spread across the population in a way that’s just as effective as an army of secret police.

The genius, as Voltaire pointed out, is that it costs almost nothing yet, when done right, can have enormous impact on public behavior.

Trump has been running this play since the day he took office, and this week he ran it again, this time on a member of Congress just three weeks before an election.

Reports suggest that Homeland Security Investigations — a division of ICE — raided Ilhan Omar’s house in Washington looking for paperwork her late father filled out when she was a child refugee. She has not been charged with a crime and, as is so common, ICE isn’t explaining what they’re up to here.

That same afternoon Trump called her “totally crooked” and went off on her that night in Youngstown, Ohio calling the country she came from “one of the worst countries anywhere on the planet” while the crowd chanted “deport.”

Ever since March, this administration has apparently been looking for ways to take down this high-profile and unapologetic critic of Trump and his many criminal and authoritarian acts. Back in March, JD Vance told a rightwing podcaster that Omar had “definitely committed immigration fraud” and that Stephen Miller was working out “how do you go after her, how do you investigate her, how do you build a case.”

As former Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor told me on my radio/TV program when Trump went after him, Comey, and others, the raid itself is the punishment.

To destroy a person financially, to traumatize them emotionally, and to scare the hell out of their colleagues in a way that will make them shut up you don’t need a conviction. Hell, you don’t even need a trial. Just a subpoena, a lawyer letter filled with threats, or a raid can lead to hundreds of thousands in lawyer bills and months of sleepless nights.

This has now — like in Russia — become standard operating practice. And it reaches all the way down to a single mother of two in New Jersey; Joanne Carducci, who posts as JoJoFromJerz on Substack, revealed last month that lawyers for the president and first lady spent the first half of this year sending her letters demanding a retraction, an apology, and money over her online criticism of Melania Trump. She bravely describes in detail how threats left her worrying about her children, her home, and her livelihood.

And that’s one of the most low-profile of the cases; we never would have known if she hadn’t spoken up. How many other authors and commentators have been similarly threatened? Odds are 99% will never write about it, particularly if the threats also contain demands for confidentiality like hers apparently did.

— There’s James Comey, indicted twice now, most recently for putting a photo of seashells on social media. It’s been six months since he was charged, and he won’t even be arraigned until January of next year. And the Justice Department fired his daughter from her job as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan.

— Letitia James, who got a fraud conviction against Trump, was indicted for mortgage fraud last October and after the case was dismissed in November Todd Blanche brought the same case before two more grand juries over two weeks; both still refused to indict her. Now Bill Pulte is going after her.

— Lisa Cook was merely the first Black woman to be a governor of the Federal Reserve, an intolerable situation for this racist, revanchist regime. After the Supreme Court blocked Trump’s efforts to fire her, last week Trump signed an order for her to appear at a closed-door kangaroo court “hearing” on November 5th, two days after the election.

— They went after Senator Adam Schiff, who had to set up a legal defense fund to deal with the consequences.

— Cassidy Hutchison, who at 25 sat in front of the January 6th committee and told her story, has — bizarrely — the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ coming after her.

— When Trump turned his machine against former CIA Director John Brennan, who’s been publicly criticizing Trump, two prosecutors in a row quit so they’ve staffed the case with military lawyers and a former clerk to Judge Aileen Cannon.

— And then there’s Davey Hearn, the three-time Olympian who touched the Reflecting Pool that Trump had hired a donor and friend to re-paint. He was arrested, Jeanine Pirro indicted him for a 10-year felony, and last week his lawyers asked the inspectors general to investigate what they called a “nightmare.” I’m not holding my breath; the arrest for publicly embarrassing Trump was the entire point.

The press is getting the same treatment.

— Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, two Black journalists, were arrested in January at Pam Bondi’s personal direction for covering a protest at a St. Paul church, even though a federal magistrate had already refused to sign the warrant for lack of probable cause. Prosecutors later had to admit the sworn claim that the two were “chanting with agitators” was simply false, but their motions to dismiss the arrest are still pending and racking up legal bills.

— Trump went after George Stephanopoulos and ABC and they stupidly gave him $16 million dollars to make it go away. Instead, though, Trump turned his guns (and his lickspittle, Brendan Carr) on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel.

— And as of Friday, the Justice Department has antitrust demands out to all five networks for briefly suspending pool coverage after the White House banned CNN.

These are just the tip of the iceberg of Trump’s efforts to intimidate and shut down his critics. Reuters reported that the Trump regime has put up a cross-agency task force, meeting since May of last year, to coordinate punishment of perceived enemies.

Their Pulitzer-winning reporting on this issue has counted at least 470 targets of retribution by last November, including 128 federal workers fired and 112 security clearances pulled. The group Protect Democracy has an even more extensive tracker of these efforts to silence dissent and truth.

None of this is new, strategy-wise. In the weeks after the Reichstag fire in 1933, Hitler opened a detention facility at Dachau and threw a few thousand leftwing commentators, politicians, and journalist (among them Carl von Ossietzky) in as a message to the rest of the country.

Stalin exploited the 1934 murder of Sergei Kirov as an excuse for show trials that were really designed to cow every party official and newspaper editor who may think of opposing him.

In 2003, the early days of what has since become his dictatorship, Putin jailed just one billionaire oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and all the rest immediately fell into line. When a few press outlets dared challenge him, reporter Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead in her apartment building’s elevator and the Russian press hasn’t spoken up since.

And it’s been tried here before, too, by the guy who taught this to Trump himself.

Joe McCarthy never succeeded in sending anybody to prison for being a communist, but he didn’t have to. As I point out in The Last American President, he and his chief counsel Roy Cohn very publicly destroyed the careers of a few people and, as a result, thousands of teachers, screenwriters, diplomats, and union organizers quietly shut up. What we’re watching today is the Cohn method with the full weight of the United States Department of Justice behind it.

I’ve even encountered a small taste of this in my career. In the late 1960s and early 1970s I was a reporter and the morning news anchor at WITL-AM/FM in Lansing, then the number one station in Michigan’s capital.

One morning a state police officer and a federal agent walked into our newsroom and told us that they were about to make a mass arrest a few miles away at a house full of young people who’d stopped paying their federal taxes to protest the Vietnam War. They asked us, politely, to not report it because, they said, they didn’t want to encourage the movement.

After they left, my news director and I argued about it for several hours. It was ultimately his call, though, and we didn’t run the story. Nobody threatened us, but nobody had to. Two men with badges and the power to make your life miserable had asked a favor, and we gave it to them, and I’ve carried that around for more than fifty years.

If a polite request could do that to a newsroom in 1970, think about what a pre-dawn raid on a congresswoman does to every reporter, prosecutor, professor, and civil servant watching the news this week.

The judges who’ve been about the only force in America capable of stopping Trump have been feeling it the most. U.S. Marshals logged 564 threats against federal judges in fiscal 2025, and Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island — who Trump and his allies called a “monster” and a “lunatic” for blocking a funding freeze — had marshals tell him they’d identified at least six credible death threats.

Judge Esther Salas, who now spends her time warning her colleagues about what his rhetoric produces, knows the power of Trump’s intimidation efforts. In 2020 her only son, Daniel, opened the door of their New Jersey home to a Trump supporter in a delivery uniform who’d written that she was a “lazy and incompetent Latina judge appointed by Obama” and shot Daniel dead. He was twenty.

Trump’s goal is a quiet country. A country where the prosecutor doesn’t bring the case against the powerful donor, the reporter doesn’t file the story, the professor doesn’t sign the letter, the grand juror doesn’t want the hassle, and the judge wonders about her family before she rules.

That’s what the admiral on the quarterdeck was for. You don’t need to arrest a nation to get there. You just need to arrest a few hundred people loudly enough and often enough, and eventually everyone else essentially arrests themselves.

What gives me hope, however, is how the courts have been holding the line.

Three Virginia grand juries looked at Letitia James and said no. A Minnesota magistrate refused to sign the Don Lemon warrant. Judges in Alexandria rebuked prosecutors from the bench. Career lawyers in Florida walked out of the grand conspiracy case rather than put their names on it. The Supreme Court, of all institutions, told Trump he can’t fire Lisa Cook on a whim.

But the lesson history teaches us when we look at how dozens of democracies have been felled by fascist strongmen is that after the legislature and much of the press are cowed eventually the courts will crack, too. The only thing that will prevent that is if Democrats can take power in Congress and use the power of the subpoena to expose this fascist scheme.

Show up for the reporters and the whistleblowers and the Olympic canoeists when they’re in the dock, and don’t let a single one of these cases pass without comment. Show up to vote and bring five friends. 

 

Fascist leaders Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of German, and U.S. President Donald Trump

Fascist leaders Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of German, and U.S. President Donald Trump.

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Nerobefehl Nation, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 14, 2026. My fears for the next two years.

By the middle of March 1945 even Adolf Hitler knew that the war was lost. Soviet forces were within 45 miles of Berlin. American forces had crossed the Rhine and were well on their way to encircling the remaining German defenders. But Hitler didn’t believe that he had failed. He believed that he had been failed by the German people.

So on March 19 he issued the “Decree concerning demolitions in the Reich territory,” which has come to be known as the "Nerobefehl" or Nero decree. It ordered the destruction of Germany’s own infrastructure — supposedly to deny that infrastructure to the Allies, but the obvious purpose was to punish his own country.

Fortunately, Albert Speer and other Nazi officials didn’t carry out the order, although they apparently didn’t tell Hitler what was (not) happening.

Why am I recounting this history? Obviously because I’m thinking about what will happen after the midterms.

All indications are that Republicans are headed for massive defeat in elections that Trump has deliberately made a referendum on himself: “MAGA, pretend that I am on the ballot.” So what will he do when Americans show what they really think of him?

He will, of course, claim that the election was rigged and try to overturn the results. Assuming that he fails, however, then what?

Loss of Congress will limit Trump’s power, but by no means eliminate it. Above all, he will retain immense capacity to inflict destruction on America, not to mention America’s allies.

Over the past few days, according to President Zelenskyy, Ukraine has received no warning from the West about impending Russian missile strikes. This could reflect technical problems. But anyone dismissing the possibility that Trump is trying to punish Ukraine for daring to deny victory to his friend Vladimir Putin must have slept through the past two years.

At home, Trump officials suddenly cut down hundreds of trees at a public golf course in Washington. Trump has long wanted to remake that golf course to his own taste, but that’s unlikely to happen given the political winds, and in any case there was no need to rush the destruction. This was almost surely an act of spite, of deliberate act vandalism, undertaken precisely because Trump knows he won’t get his way.

And while a few hundred trees are not in themselves that big a deal, they represent the shape of things to come.

Think of the Kennedy Center, a national icon that Trump is destroying because he can’t put his own name on it, as the model for what is all too likely to happen to America over the next two years.

Can Democrats stop the coming reign of destruction? Unfortunately, a corrupt, partisan majority on the Supreme Court, invoking the “unitary executive” theory, has given Trump a huge amount of untrammeled power, especially because he is surrounded by minions — many approved by supine Republicans in Congress — who are willing, even eager to break the law. And he is also backed by oligarchs with vast resources who will continue to enable his attack on democracy even if their billions in political spending aren’t enough to buy this election.

But one thing Democrats can do is make it clear that everyone who aids and abets Trump in his Neroism can and will be held accountable to the full extent of the law. At this point anyone who says something like “We should look forward, not back” is making it significantly less likely that we will have anything to look forward to

 

garrett graff doomsbury1

Doomsday Scenario, Commentary: Trump's Tyranny, Part I: ICE's Reign of Terror, Garrett M. Graff, above,  Oct. 14, 2026. Welcome back to Doomsday Scenario, my regular column on national security, geopolitics, history, and—unfortunately—the fight for democracy in the Trump era.

I often think about Brian Beutler’s very smart essay, almost exactly a year ago, about the “median experience of tyranny,” how for most people—the regime’s ordinary non-targeted citizen—the daily experience of fascism is pretty … ordinary. He wrote, “We need to remind ourselves, constantly, that in the median experience of tyranny, life is largely unchanged. Even the median experience of those being tyrannized can be free of intolerable forms of oppression. If we wait until the abuses become severe and widespread enough to register in our standard analytic tools, it will be too late.”

As we head into the final weeks before the midterm elections — when a lot of decisions about our country’s arc and fate as a democracy will be made individually and collectively across thousands of election races in every corner of the country — it’s important for us to take stock of the reign of Donald Trump and damage to our country.

We’ve already gotten used to a level of fascism, authoritarianism, and corruption that would be unthinkable and shocking to us just a decade ago.

How’s this for a summary of the state of America, circa October 2026:

Secret masked police are disappearing people off America’s streets, shooting people regularly, and killing them in concentration camps. Military troops are daily patrolling the streets of the nation’s capital. Our head of state is turning the capital into a cult of personality, bulldozing our collective memory and history and erecting grand celebrations of himself. The president’s political enemies are being persecuted by government agents, while his friends and families are enriching themselves at the public trough and demanding payment and tribute from favor-seeking private businesses. White Christian nationalists are consolidating control over our military and using it to execute innocent people in international waters and conduct illegal wars overseas, and then lying to the American people and covering up the true casualties and cost of those wars.

And yet, for the most part, for most Americans, life is pretty similar. I went down to my usual coffee shop this morning and got my usual cup of coffee. I spent the weekend at a family wedding, which was just like basically any other family wedding I’ve been to. Vermont is overrun this year by the usual crop of tourists up to gaze at our amazing fall foliage, pick apples, and eat cider donuts. Life’s mostly the same — except it isn’t really.

This, as Brian wrote last October and I wrote last August, is what fascism and authoritarianism looks like in its early and middle stages. As I wrote, “I think many Americans wrongly believe there would be one clear unambiguous moment where we go from ‘democracy’ to ‘authoritarianism.’ Instead, this is exactly how it happens — a blurring here, a norm destroyed there, a presidential diktat unchallenged. Then you wake up one morning and our country is different.”

We should take stock of where we are.

Over the next few essays ahead of the midterms, I want to specifically highlight five areas where I fear we’ve lost sight of the sheer scale and horrific departure-from-normality that we’re all living through: (1) The abuses of the regime’s secret police force, a.k.a. ICE and CBP; (2) the day-to-day petty crime and grand corruption infecting the operations of the US government; (3) the political weaponization of the Justice Department; (4) the president’s abuse of our “normal” process of government; (5) the squandering of our nation’s standing around the world.

In all five of these areas, I think the media — which is under immense un-ordinary pressures of its own — continues to fail to convey just how un-ordinary these developments and shifts in our daily life. Too often, these stories are covered individually, but not as a pattern. I’ve written about all of this over the last 20 months or so, but I think it’s worth trying to paint a larger picture too.

I am, for accuracy purposes, not a fan of the “boiling frog” analogy — frogs do, in fact, hop out of water as it gets hot — but given how pervasive and widely shorthand-able the analogy has become in our society, consider this essay and the following series a picture of how boiled we are as frogs.

First up, today, ICE.Upgrade

The average American has lost track of the ongoing — and still mounting — terror campaign and tactics of the regime’s favored secret police. We shorthand the secret police as “ICE,” but it’s of course a wider umbrella that includes not just ICE but Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents and officers as well as the broader misuse of the Department of Homeland Security. Last month, I did a special “Long Shadow” podcast episode about how, as the nation marked the 25th anniversary of 9/11, in many communities across the country people would today tell you that they’re more afraid of our government and DHS, the mechanism we created to combat terrorism, than they are afraid of the threat of foreign terrorism itself.

The appointment this spring of Markwayne Mullin as secretary of homeland security has had the clearly successful effect of lowering the day-to-day temperature of the Kristi Noem/Greg Bovino military-occupation-style attacks on major American cities, like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis, that dominated headlines from the summer of 2025 through the early winter of 2026. But the reign of terror of ICE nationwide has, if anything, only increased — July was the highest month for deportations in DHS history and it’s increasingly relying on local police departments to avoid drawing headlines itself — and it’s taken the lives of dozens of people this year.

Mullin has in many ways perfected the boiling frog — overseeing ever-more aggressive, brutal, and political ICE operations on behalf of Trump and Stephen Miller, all without the flashiness and out-and-out corruption that sank his predecessor Kristi Noem.

The latest headline we saw was the shooting last week of an immigrant in New York City. The incident underscored many of the problems we continue to see, including:

Reckless tactics, unbecoming a professional law enforcement organization of any kind — in this case, a couple of officers, in masks and plainclothes—one disguised as a construction worker—bum-rushing a man and his son with guns drawn with no visible law enforcement markings, flashing lights, or any sign that they’re anything more than car-jackers.

Officers involved in ongoing patterns of misconduct, seemingly with impunity — in this case, the “construction worker” was “Brenden Cuni, an ICE supervisor, has been accused of excessive force and tackling a pregnant woman to the ground. Several of his arrests were later found to be unlawful in federal court.”

This same pattern of brutality and lawlessness has played out across the country, in community after community.

We see the same thing happen over and over again. ICE agents recklessly target and ram vehicles, open fire, and then lie about what happened — even when there’s video evidence to the contrary. They lie and cover up wrongdoing and stonewall investigations in their brutality. DHS routinely labels US citizens “terrorists.” It lies blatantly and repeatedly; its brutality is met with a near-total lack of accountability. Often the “target” in shootings and beatings isn’t who ICE thought it was anyway — and too often ICE doesn’t even bother determining whether someone it’s detained is a US citizen.

More than 506 US citizens have been detained incorrectly. Some have been beaten, including even while trying to enlist in the US military. Agents and officers are using brutal force on nonviolent offenders. Its officers assault bystanders who are doing nothing but exercising their constitutional rights, and they repeatedly have attempted to intimidate anyone who tries to document their abusive tactics. One US citizen was shot from behind while he tried to warn ICE agents about nearby children. It disappears people from the streets, sometimes releasing them later without charges. And tries to disappear witnesses to its wrongful shootings.

Agents and officers act and kill with impunity because history has taught them they’ll never face consequences.

Law enforcement in a democracy can’t look like this. (Photo by Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)

ICE has had plenty of time — and plenty of money — to adjust its “bush league” tactics at this point. It has had plenty of time and plenty of money to buy its officers real uniforms and train them in how to do thoughtful takedown operations that minimize the risk to its officers, its targets, and the general public. The fact that it hasn’t done so is a real choice and an indication that its goal is neither effectiveness nor public safety — it’s terror.

Time and again, we see every public safety justification from the administration for the immigration crackdown is a lie. This is a terror campaign, targeting anyone in the country who isn’t white. It’s tactics are so terroristic that it’s unclear across much of the country who is ICE and who is just a criminal pretending to be ICE.

ICE has repeatedly promised it will deploy body cameras to its officers, but somehow — totally coincidentally — body cameras never seem to be on when ICE shoots someone. (When the body cameras are on, they repeatedly document stunning racism and slurs from officers.) But while it can’t seem to get body cameras on, it is surging ahead with buying electric-shock gloves for its officers.

ICE has been turbocharged with tens of billions of dollars and is breaking down at every stage of its process. Its hiring surge is — entirely predictably — a disaster. To speed the hiring of thousands of new officers, it — entirely predictably — cut training standards and vetting. As an AP investigation rounded up, “Two bankruptcies and six law enforcement jobs in three years. An allegation of lying in a police report to justify a felony charge against an innocent woman — an incident that led to a $75,000 settlement and criticism of his integrity. A third job candidate once failed to graduate from a police academy, then lasted only three weeks in his only job as a police officer. Their common bond: All were hired recently by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

As the Dropkick Murphys proclaimed in a song this year, ICE is becoming identified as an agency filled with wannabe gangsters who are “Too scared to join the military / Too dumb to be a cop.” Or, as I’ve reported before, other federal agents and law enforcement joke that the quality of the average ICE officer is so low that they are hired “by the pound, from the pound.”

Amid the most recent surge, a Washington Post investigation last month found — entirely predictably — that “basic processes weren’t even followed” and “In recent months, the agency has begun quietly firing some of the recruits, according to three former DHS officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters shared with them privately. They said ICE has cited red flags that should have been identified earlier, or poor performance. Concerns about vetting exploded into public view this summer, after relatives and court records described the volatile history of a different recruit alleged to have been involved in the fatal shooting of an immigrant in Maine.”

Just as CBP’s previous hiring surge led to a giant tidal wave of crime and corruption, ICE officers are proving themselves a one-agency crime wave, incapable of policing its own ranks. Recent weeks have seen an officer arrested for entering an ex-girlfriend’s apartment; another allegedly drunk ICE officer fell asleep on a lawn in Fresno over the weekend and then was arrested after assaulting the 72-year-old man who woke him up.

CBP is still swamped by crime and corruption too — like the CBP officer convicted last month of raping and robbing Chinese sex workers, a Border Patrol who went viral for arresting a US citizen who then was arrested for drunkenly assaulting police officers and then died later of a drug overdose, or what WIRED found to be “hundreds of allegations of Customs and Border Protection workers misusing internal tools to look up romantic interests and track colleagues’ cell phones.”

In fact, the Ohio Immigration Alliance report in August found more than 152 ICE officers and CBP agents accused of sexual and physical abuse. It found “86% [of that group were] charged with or convicted of sex offenses, more than half targeted children, and many remained employed for decades despite red flags.”

And then we come to the horror show of ICE’s own facilities.

Throughout the year, we’ve seen a steady drumbeat of warnings and investigations into the inhumane conditions of ICE detention facilities. Mother Jones in August wrote a heartbreaking piece about how many people are dying in ICE custody — numbers that are up dramatically from the past as the administration transforms a process meant for purely civil detention into something that better resembles concentration camps. Reporter Isabela Dias wrote, “A staggering 55 people have died in ICE custody since Trump's return to office.” The numbers are unfortunately even higher today. Human Rights Watch wrote in June, “The mortality rate of deaths in ICE custody is at its highest level in over a decade and has more than doubled since Trump’s second term began. The rate is nearly four times that of the Biden administration, and more than two and a half times as high as that of the first Trump administration.” People are dying after being denied critical medical care. Conditions in these facilities are terrible.

We all remember last year, when Trump and DHS renditioned people — including US citizens — to a foreign torture gulag in Central America. This year, we’ve paid less attention to the fact that the Trump administration is rounding up Somalis and holding them at Guantanamo Bay, mostly, apparently, out of spite — at a cost of $118,000 per detainee. ICE is shuffling detainees between facilities to make them untraceable and last month began “disappearing” people from official records to make them impossible to locate.

DHS has built a mindbending air fleet of overpriced, high-end jets for detention, deportation, and executive travel. It’s not clear why DHS need such spacious accommodations for their executive travel.

DHS secretary Markwayne Mullin (tiny, center) journeyed to Louisiana earlier this month to observe “repatriation” flight operations. (DHS photo by Tia Dufour)

At the same time, it’s been steadily expanding its monitoring of critics, weaponizing social media, investigating protest groups, and creating databases of political dissidents. DHS is monitoring and targeting people for travel even inside the United States. Even its own internal watchdog, the very unit that’s supposed to be policing ICE, is instead policing its critics. DHS’s own general counsel has been publicly posting an “enemies list” of federal judges the department doesn’t like. As Lisa Needham wrote in Public Notice in August, “The administration had engaged in utterly unprecedented surveillance in service of its theory that somehow everyone in Minnesota was engaged in a vast criminal conspiracy to make ICE thugs feel sad.” Protesters today are being prosecuted as “terrorists.” And, to top it all off, DHS has changed its own record retention policies to make it nearly impossible to ever recover text messages among agents and leadership.

And none of this is making us safer. Most head-smacking-ly of all, the Trump administration’s blinded focus on immigration has led to an actual decrease in its investigation and prosecution of crimes that are actually harming Americans. Federal gun and drug enforcement in Minnesota hit all-time lows amid the immigration crackdown there.

ICE and DHS also are clearly being used as the president’s praetorian guard, pursuing his conspiracy theories and made-up allegations of voter fraud in a way that Trump clearly hopes will sway the midterm elections. Election officials across the country are gameplanning for how to response if and when ICE officers show up at polling places.

This is all very un-ordinary.

Put all of that together and it’s easy to conclude: We are living through a reign of terror on America’s streets by a masked secret police force, loyal specifically to the president, who have been promised impunity as long as they target the regime’s enemies.

The fact that it is and was all so predictable — everyone who paid attention knew exactly how bad ICE’s hiring surge would go; everyone has seen the same playbook of bad tactics result in the deaths again and again of innocent, nonviolent Americans; everyone foresaw these concentration camp conditions would result in the deaths of nonviolent detainees — makes clear that the administration literally doesn’t care if ICE kills people. It’s not trying to build a well-run modern law enforcement agency. It’s not trying to hire people worthy of the public trust in a democracy. It’s not trying to build a culture of accountability and transparency, one respectful of the Constitution and beholden and responsive to thoughtful judicial and congressional oversight. It’s not even pretending to care about any of those things.

The Trump administration is building and running an unaccountable masked secret police.

It is a level of daily fascism and authoritarianism and terror that would have been unthinkable to us a decade ago.

And yet as terrible as this parade of horribles is, it might just represent the start. Mullin is under immense pressure to boost deportations even more and orders are floating around to ramp things up.

We need to be clear about how very un-ordinary all of this is. Daily life in America is not the same as it was two years ago.  

The Daily with Sarah Jones via PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: Senate Democrats To Send Hundreds Of Election Observes To 9 States To Protect The Midterms, Jason Easley and Sarah Jones, right, sarah reese jonesOct. 14, 2026. In a first of its kind move, Senate Democrats will be sending hundreds of trained staffers to 9 states act as election observers to deter Trump election interference.

politicus usa logoStudies show that one of the best ways to deter election interference and meddling is to have observers watching and documenting voting as it happens. With worries that Trump is going to attempt to deter voters by using federal resources like ICE at polling places in states with key Senate races, Senate Democrats have responded with a program to train Senate staff to act as election observers for the midterm election.

The release didn’t mention which states the observers will be sent to, but we can pretty well guess that the observers will be in urban polling places in states like Michigan, Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, and Maine.

In a press release from Sens. Padilla and Schumer, the program was explained as:

The Senate Election Observer Program will not interfere with election officials in the performance of their duties or seek to influence election results in any way. It will:

Put trained congressional observers on the ground: Train and designate Democratic Senators’ official staff to observe polling locations and sites where ballots are counted and elections are canvassed and certified

Document any election interference: Deter election interference, promote confidence in American elections, and help ensure free and fair elections in 2026. Observe and record any election issues, including potential instances of voter interference, threats targeting election workers, impacts of election misinformation or disinformation, and any issues regarding the canvass or certification of elections

Strengthen congressional oversight: Gather on-the-ground information about U.S. Senate elections to assist the Senate Rules Committee in addressing any potentially contested Senate elections. Inform the Committee’s legislative and oversight work related to election administration

Operate under established authority: The same authority as the long-running House of Representatives’ Election Observer Program.

Democrats aren’t going to sit and expect a convicted felon president to play by the rules.

Sen. Padilla said: 

Donald Trump has made clear that he wants to ‘take over the voting’ in state-run elections. Election interference is unconstitutional and illegal and Congress will be watching.

We’ve recruited more than 100 Senate staffers to serve as official election observers across nine states to document potential voter interference, threats against election workers, and attempts to undermine the democratic process. Every eligible American deserves to cast a ballot free from intimidation, and every vote deserves to be counted fairly. We’re taking this step to ensure that any attempt to interfere with the right to vote is documented, exposed and met with accountability.

House and Senate Democrats aren’t the only people sending election observers. Voting rights groups will also be observing the election.

Senate Minority Leader Schumer said that Trump is trying to steal the election:

Donald Trump is trying to steal the election – but Democrats and the American people won’t let him.

Our elections are free and secure, but we cannot take that for granted. I am grateful for the Senate staff members who are raising their hand to help build trust in our upcoming election and protect the sanctity of our democracy. Trump has fought harder to rig the elections than he has to bring down costs. His record-breaking unpopularity comes from his agenda failing families, and no amount of his election meddling can change that. The voters will decide the next election—not Trump.

The job of Democrats is not just to campaign, but also to protect democracy. Trump has tried to rig the election through a failed effort to pass legislation, gerrymandering House seats in red states, and a failed executive order to limit mail-in voting. 

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Oct. 13, 2026 [Presidentials distractions, deflections -- or derangement?], Heather Cox Richardson, right,heather cox richardson cnn Oct. 14, 2026. This afternoon, the President of the United States posted two videos of lions and tigers attacking humans.

Either he has entirely lost it, or he is desperate for a distraction, or both.

It turns out the attacks on Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico were probably an attempt to get ahead of yet another damaging story about Trump’s hand-picked Republican Texas Senate candidate, Ken Paxton. Yesterday Elizabeth Findell, Mark Maremont, and Josh Dawsey of the Wall Street Journal reported that Paxton spent New Year’s Eve in 2024 in Dubai, partying with a woman who was not his wife, along with two fugitives from U.S. justice.

Although Vice President J.D. Vance and other members of the administration have vowed to remove more than 760,000 enrollees from the Affordable Care Act, citing widespread fraud, the fugitives with whom Paxton was hanging out were wanted on federal healthcare fraud charges. They allegedly embezzled $15 million from a Chicago hospital, and one of them was charged with receiving at least $195 million from the U.S. government for fraudulent Covid-19 tests.

One of the men donated $190,000 to Paxton, $25,000 of it after he was indicted.

Ron Filipkowski of MeidasNews posted: “JD Vance running around the country saying he’s fighting health care fraud while his nominee for the senate in TX who he completely supports is partying in Dubai with a guy [who] stole over $300 million in health care fraud and gave Paxton $190,000. This is the Republican Party.”

Meanwhile, although the administration has boasted that it is cracking down on fraud in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program by cutting benefits, ProPublica reported today that the real fraud comes from criminal syndicates, often from Romania, who last year walked away with $470 million stolen electronically from more than 990,000 households. The theft could be stopped with digital microchips, but Congress has refused to add them to the benefit cards. Now the Trump administration has stripped funds allocated to address the theft.

Diesel prices jumped today as traders appeared to doubt Trump’s abandonment of Russian sanctions will do much for prices in the U.S. Steve Kopack of NBC News noted that U.S. diesel futures were up about 5% by midday. Generally, a jump in futures prices means higher consumer prices are forthcoming. The price of diesel is up 70% since the war on Iran began on February 28.

Gulf Oil adviser Tom Kloza posted: “Absolutely stunning price spikes in wholesale diesel today…. Market clearly not believing that Russian oil is on the way.” He added: “US retail diesel price record of $6.53/gal could be topped by the midterms.”

As Barbara Sprunt reported at NPR, a bipartisan group of senators is pushing back on Trump’s lifting of sanctions, calling it a “betrayal of the people of Ukraine.” Democratic senators Richard Blumenthal (CT), Chris Coons (DE), Dick Durbin (IL), Jack Reed (RI), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), and Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) joined Republicans Alan Armstrong (OK), Susan Collins (ME), John Cornyn (TX), Mitch McConnell (KY), Lisa Murkowski (AK), and Thom Tillis (NC) in asking Trump to rescind the deal.

“The deal you struck with President Vladimir Putin on October 9th will not achieve just ends, nor will it benefit Americans,” they wrote. It “only provides Putin with more fuel to finance his war machine and enables Russia to continue its brutal attacks on Ukrainian civilians. Granting Moscow the ability to sell Russian diesel freely in global markets damages American security interests and is a betrayal of the people of Ukraine, who continue to defend themselves from Putin’s murderous, illegal war. This deal is a gift to our adversary and a betrayal of our Allies; it should be rescinded.”

The senators emphasized that with last month’s Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, Congress had tasked Trump with applying economic pressure on Russia, not with easing that pressure.

When asked about the letter, Trump told reporters: “Nobody’s telling me anything. That’s a diesel deal. Not for us. That’s being released into the world. That’s not being released to us. That’s a diesel deal that’s going to be released into the world for the world market, because the world market suffered with high prices.”

Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine got no warning from its Western partners about Russia’s overnight strikes on the capital, raising concerns that Trump is making good on his threat to stop sharing intelligence with Ukraine unless it stops striking Russian oil refineries. Trump today told reporters that the U.S. is still sharing intelligence.

A new poll conducted by the Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that almost six in ten Americans say they believe Trump is either illegally profiting from the presidency or doing something unethical but not illegal.

Jordain Carney and Mia McCarthy of Politico reported today that Republicans are worried not only about how much work Congress needs to get through after the midterms, but also about whether Republicans will even bother to come back to vote after the election. “Attendance is an issue right now,” Representative Austin Scott (R-GA) told Carney and McCarthy.

William Chapman, who was mauled to death when he entered the tiger enclosure at Yorkshire Wildlife Park, had suffered from mental illness, his family said. Photograph: PASouth Yorkshire

The Guardian, Family of man killed by tiger criticise online content after Trump reposts video, Mark Brown, Relatives of William Chapman say footage of attack shared online ‘deeply offensive’ and causing them ‘severe distress.'

The family of a man killed by a tiger at a wildlife park in the UK have spoken about their “severe distress” at the circulation of online media after Donald Trump reposted a video of the incident.

William Chapman, 23, was mauled to death after entering an enclosure at Yorkshire Wildlife Park, near Doncaster, on Saturday.

His family described him as “bright, warm and engaging” and suffering from severe mental illness. They said online footage being shared was “deeply offensive” and causing them “severe distress”.

One of those to circulate footage was the US president who posted a video clip of the tiger attack to 13 million followers on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday.

The clip showed the tiger biting and clawing Chapman as he was sitting in the enclosure. At one point he wags his finger at the animal.

Trump signed the footage with: “Don’t ever mess with nature! President DJT.” It did not show Chapman being killed.

Later the president posted an AI-generated video of himself grinning and having fun by chasing and play fighting with the tiger. It is accompanied by the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight by The Tokens. It features Trump copying the pointing gesture made by Chapman and ends with him and the tiger hugging.

Will Travers, the executive president of the Born Free Foundation, said the AI post was “not only incredibly insensitive”, but also reckless.

“It increases the risk to the lives of humans and captive wild animals,” he said. “Such images and videos can encourage individuals to seek out direct, unrealistic and high-risk contact with captive wild animals.”

Relatives of Chapman, in a statement released on Tuesday evening, said: “The family are utterly devastated by their loss and are struggling to come to terms with what has happened. The publication and circulation of deeply offensive media content is causing them severe distress at an exceptionally vulnerable time. We ask people to stop doing this.

“The family are hopeful that the relevant authorities will do their upmost to get to the bottom of why our amazing son did what he did.”

The statement continued: “William was a bright, warm and engaging young man whom his family dearly loved – and William loved them back. Sadly, William suffered from significant mental illness over a number of years and was consequently prescribed strong medication.

“It will be for the coroner to decide what part this played in his death.

“We would ask everybody to respect that process.”

As a child, Chapman appeared in ITV’s 2009 comedy drama May Contain Nuts and in BBC Learning’s True Stories series, according to IMDb.

He previously attended Jackie Palmer stage school in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, which paid tribute on Facebook and posted a picture of Chapman as a child student.

The school said it was “deeply saddened” by Chapman’s death, adding: “We loved watching William grow, both as a person and as a performer. It was a privilege to be part of his journey and he will be remembered with great fondness by everyone who had the pleasure of knowing him.

“William will be truly missed, and he will always hold a special place in our hearts. Rest in peace, William.”

The wildlife park has said the Amur (Siberian) tiger called Altai, who was in the enclosure, will not be euthanised. The park has remained closed since the weekend and Doncaster city council, which is responsible for licensing the park, said it had started a health and safety investigation.

Special Report: New Trump Press Secretary Falsely Claims Status As 'Lawyer'

 

President Trump and White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia talk with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House on Tuesday, October 13, 2026. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

President Trump and White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia talk with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House on Tuesday, October 13, 2026. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: Katie Zacharia’s disastrous response to Popular Information’s report, Judd Legum, right, judd legumOct. 14, 2026. Zacharia, who claimed for years to be a lawyer, is not a lawyer.

This newsletter contains important updates related to our ongoing investigation into the professional background of newly appointed White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia. Hours after Popular Information’s initial report was published Tuesday morning, Trump and Zacharia were confronted with the news on the South Lawn of the White House.

Zacharia’s response did not go well.

Popular Information’s story — and Zacharia’s fumbling reply — was picked up by media outlets around the globe, including The Washington Post, CNN, NBC News, The New York Times, CBS News, The Atlantic, The Hill, Forbes, New York Magazine, The Daily Beast, The Daily Mail, and others.

 

katie zarcharia news coverage collage 10 14 2026

For years, President Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, has publicly claimed she is a lawyer. Zacharia has repeatedly said she was “outside counsel” to the World Bank and “general counsel” to a California non-profit. Trump himself touted Zacharia as an “attorney” in his post announcing her appointment on Truth Social.

On Tuesday morning, Popular Information reported that there was no evidence that Zacharia was ever licensed to practice law in any state.

A few hours later, Trump was confronted with Popular Information’s report on the South Lawn of the White House by the New York Times’ Shawn McCreesh. Trump motioned to Zacharia, who was standing behind him, to answer the question:

Q: You said she’s an attorney. Where did she pass the bar exam? Which state?

TRUMP (to Zacharia): Which state?

ZACHARIA: When I moved to China.

Q: Where did you pass the bar exam?

When Zacharia was pressed again, she appeared to wave the question away.

Zacharia’s answer makes no sense. China’s bar exam is not available to U.S. citizens and U.S. states do not offer bar exams in China.

On Tuesday afternoon, Zacharia provided a somewhat different response to Politico’s Dasha Burns. “I practiced international transactional law, with all the appropriate credentials,” Zacharia said.

Zacharia did work for Zhong Lun, a Chinese law firm, from 2011 to 2013. Currently, a foreigner can only practice law at a Chinese firm if they have practiced for two years in their home jurisdiction, among other conditions. The position is called a “foreign legal consultant.”

Mark Jia, a Georgetown Law professor who specializes in China, explained that the formal rules for foreigners at Chinese law firms were put into place in 2017. But even before 2017, Jia said, he was not aware of anyone like Zacharia being hired as a foreign legal consultant. “Why would a Chinese law firm hire someone to advise on foreign law if they were not licensed to practice that law in their home countries?” Jia asked. He suggested it was more likely Zacharia was employed as a paralegal or another similar position.

Further, Jia argued that, even in the highly unlikely event that Zacharia was hired as a foreign legal consultant in China, it would not make her a lawyer:

It is not accurate for her to call herself a lawyer. There is a difference between being licensed to practice law and doing legal work… The Chinese government does not make someone an attorney simply by allowing them to perform some legal work for a law firm. You have to be admitted as a lawyer somewhere, and I have seen no evidence that she was admitted as such anywhere.

The questions about Zacharia’s legal credentials and her fumbling answers resulted in a flood of national and international news coverage.

It is quite clear now that Zacharia has never been licensed to practice law and is not a lawyer. But other questions remain unanswered. How did Zacharia act as general counsel for a California non-profit if she was not admitted to practice? Was the White House aware that she was not a lawyer before she was hired for the job?

Zacharia’s job as press secretary is to talk to the media. So it will be difficult for her to avoid answering these questions. 

More On Elon Musk, Other Trump-Enabling Billionairres

 

Billionairre Billionairre "Tech Bros," from left, attending Trump event, include Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, center, and Elon Musk, right.

New York Times, California May Tax Its Billionaires. The Billionaires Are Fighting Back, Michael Steinberger, Oct. 14, 2026. Inside the state’s multifront battle over the world’s first tax for the ultrarich. 

Control of Congress is the biggest issue at stake in November’s elections. A close second might be the fight over a ballot initiative in California, Proposition 40, that seeks to impose a wealth tax on the state’s roughly 250 billionaires. If approved, it will be the world’s first billionaire tax.

At a town hall in August, one of its chief proponents, Representative Ro Khanna, whose district encompasses much of Silicon Valley, asked how many in the audience were in favor of the measure. Dozens of hands quickly shot up — an overwhelming majority of those in the room. That Proposition 40 enjoyed such strong support was telling. Even here, in one of the most affluent parts of the country, anger over economic inequality was at a boil.

Khanna played to the populist fury that evening, making light of the fact that none of the billionaires who vociferously oppose the tax were present. “They expect a one-on-one meeting. They expect you to go drive to them,” he said mockingly. “How dare they actually be a commoner and sit in a seat in a town hall and wait to be called on!”

Khanna, a 50-year-old Democrat running for a sixth term, had easily fended off a primary challenge in June from a tech entrepreneur who was against Proposition 40. But when I spoke with him before the town hall, Khanna said his endorsement of the tax had been politically costly in other ways. “I’ve lost at least 20 percent of my donor base,” he said. That included several tech billionaires who had previously contributed to his campaigns. It puzzled Khanna that they couldn’t recognize what seemed self-evident to him: that the tax was actually in their best interest.

Khanna recalled that when he was growing up, people like Steve Jobs and Lee Iacocca were seen as heroes. But now, tech barons and other business leaders are widely loathed. “Eric Schmidt’s getting booed at commencements,” he said of the former chief executive of Google.

In his view, the wealth tax — a one-time 5 percent fee on total worldwide assets — is modest and a small price to pay if it helps blunt some of the rage directed at billionaires. Khanna’s message to them was simple: Read the room. “Mamdani or the next generation want your heads,” he said. “They are coming with pitchforks.”

Emptywheel, Analysis and Opinion:GOP Accepts $296M Bribe to Protect African Immigrant CSAM Purveyor, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), marcy wheelerOct. 13, 2026. There are several ways to understand the $276M Elon Musk is spending to keep right wingers in power, to say nothing of the election disinformation he is spreading.

In an effort to save Republicans’ Senate majority, he gave a total of $158 million this summer to the Senate Leadership Fund, the main super PAC backing the party’s candidates for the chamber, according to his team. In sum, that is one of the largest political donations in American history, and more than the group’s Democratic rival raised from all of its donors that quarter.

Mr. Musk has also built a major Republican turnout operation through a super PAC he founded in 2024, America PAC. He donated over $76 million this summer to the group, which in turn spent that much on building a sprawling canvassing program to try to turn out hard-to-reach Republican voters. The group is active in seven Senate battlegrounds and nearly three dozen House races.

[snip]

Beyond Mr. Musk’s donations to his super PAC and the Senate Leadership Fund, his representatives said that from July through September, he had given smaller but still substantial amounts to other conservative groups:

$20 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the main super PAC for House Republicans$10 million to Lone Star Liberty PAC, a group supporting Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee for Senate in Texas$10 million to the Republican Governors Association$2 million to the Republican Attorneys General Association

On the one hand, it implicates every right winger accepting this money in the AI CSAM [Child Sexual Abuse Material] Elon Musk’s robot, Grok] Elon Musk’s robot was disseminating earlier this year.

Here’s how three Tennessee teenagers (one has turned 18 since this happened) described having their photos turned into non-consensual CSAM material by Grok in a lawsuit filed in March.

79. Eventually, the anonymous user sent Jane Doe 1 a series of AI-generated images and videos which depicted her as well as other minor females. Jane Doe 1 was immediately disturbed by the sexually explicit content. At least five of these files, one video and four images, depicted her actual face and body in settings with which she was familiar, but morphed into sexually explicit poses. The images showed her entire body, including her genitals, without any clothes. The video depicted her undressing until she was entirely nude.

[snip]

90. On or about February 12, 2026, Jane Doe 2 learned through the ongoing criminal investigation that at least two of her images had also been used by the perpetrator to produce AI-generated CSAM using xAI. Local law enforcement informed Jane Doe 2, a minor, and her mother that these images included one photograph taken of Jane Doe 2 on the beach in a blue bikini which had been morphed to depict her without any clothes. Jane Doe 2 reviewed her Instagram photographs and found a series of images taken on October 12, 2025, depicting her in a blue bikini top in a beach setting.

[snip]

100. Local law enforcement informed Jane Doe 3, a minor, and her mother that the AI-generated images found on the perpetrator’s phone included one image of Jane Doe 3 which had been morphed to depict her fully nude.

Here’s how another victim described how hashed CSAM images of her created decades ago, when she was preschool-aged, got used and disseminated in Grok’s training set.

85. Plaintiff was preschool-aged when she was first repeatedly raped and sexually exploited by an adult male to produce CSAM to meet the demands of pedophiles on the internet. This abuse continued for years. The child sex abuse images and videos depicting her child sexual abuse will forever memorialize Plaintiff being forced to endure horrific crimes as a young child.

86. Plaintiff was repeatedly raped and sexually abused as a minor specifically to produce CSAM to share on the internet, which continues to circulate online to the present day. CSAM depicting Plaintiff has been previously hashed and included in the NCMEC Child Sexual Abuse Material Hash List and Plaintiff was identified by NCMEC in this material.

87. CSAM depicting Plaintiff has been found on xAI as part of investigative reporting, takedown request efforts, and criminal investigations, arrests, and convictions for violations of state and federal laws. Indeed, online forums of offenders include messages between offenders chatting about creating AI generated CSAM of Plaintiff and other similarly situated known, legacy, victims of CSAM.

88. CSAM depicting Plaintiff with its longstanding well-known hash values has been used as a part of the dataset used by xAI.

Another complaint (these will likely all be joined) describes how a photographer who did school photos in Arkansas used some of those photos to develop CSAM, including both girls and boys, using Elon’s robot.

107. On June 8, 2026, the Bentonville Police Department received a CyberTip from NCMEC reporting that X.AI LLC had flagged content associated with an account linked to Bloodworth.

108. On June 10, 2026, Bentonville police executed a search warrant at Bloodworth’s residence seeking, among other things, devices capable of accessing Grok. Upon accessing Bloodworth’s phone, officers discovered a hidden photo folder containing approximately 1,700 images and videos of prepubescent and pubescent children in various states of undress and in sexually explicit poses. Some of these images and videos were, on information and belief, produced using Grok, and others appeared to be genuine photographs.

112. During the relevant period, Jane Doe I was a young child enrolled at a school in Arkansas that had retained Bloodworth to provide school photograph services, including formal portraits and candid classroom photography.

113. Bloodworth photographed Jane Doe I on at least one occasion using a professional camera during a formal school photography session.

114. Law enforcement identified Jane Doe I among the images recovered from Bloodworth’s device and, in early July 2026, notified Jane Doe I’s guardians that images of Jane Doe I had been identified among the material recovered from Bloodworth’s phone.

A report in June described how Grok has increasingly relied on porn traffic to keep up with competitors.

The report claims xAI is actively doubling down on its explicit video and image-generation tools and that adult-content dominance extends into Grok’s coding model, which The Information reports frequently receives requests for pornographic material.Well over half of Grok’s overall traffic is driven by pornographic images and videos, adult role-play chats or other such activity, according to the report, which Vital Knowledge analyst Adam Crisafulli called “a desperate attempt for relevancy.”The move comes as xAI has “fallen further behind” competitor chatbots from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Meta, per Crisafulli, and Grok recorded the largest drop in web traffic of any single AI model this year, Similarweb data shows.

Elon Musk is using nonconsensual porn to compete. And children are being abused in the process.

And the entire Republican Party is accepting his filthy money.

But that’s not all. Elon Musk committed visa fraud when he first started working in the US — the kind of alleged visa fraud Trump is using to target Ilhan Omar (with the critical difference that Omar was a child when she came to the US).

South African-born Elon Musk worked illegally in the United States as he launched his entrepreneurial career after ditching a graduate studies program in California, according to former business associates, court records and company documents obtained by The Washington Post.

[snip]

What Musk has not publicly disclosed is that he did not have the legal right to work while building the company that became Zip2, which sold for about $300 million in 1999. It was Musk’s steppingstone to Tesla and the other ventures that have made him the world’s wealthiest person — and arguably America’s most successful immigrant.

This is the kind of violation that Stephen Miller is using to deport other African immigrants, even while Stephen’s spouse remains one of Elon’s loudest propagandists.

Worse still for the right wing’s favorite African immigrant, DOJ has started filing denaturalization cases against immigrants. While most target people — like Ghislaine Maxwell, though she has not been targeted — who hid their crimes when they naturalized, the effort also focuses on people engaged in CSAM dissemination.

Elon Musk is at least accused of doing everything the far right claims to hate: An allegedly illegal African immigrant who came to the US and started preying on children.

Yet they are taking every cent he pays them in hopes to cling to power.

Elon Musk clings to AI porn to remain competitive, and self-imagined immigration hard-liners cling to him.Dockets

As noted above, these cases are in the process of being consolidated. So far, these dockets are included in the motion to consolidate, with a request to certify a class.

Doe 1 v. X.AI Corp. (5:26-cv-02246): A man in Tennessee groomed three teenagers and used their photos, including a Homecoming photo and a yearbook photo, to generate CSAM (they are teenagers, though one has turned 18) on Grok; he then disseminated the images on Discord.

Doe I v. X.AI Corp. (3:26-cv-08567): A school photographer in Bentonville, Arkansas, Russell Bloodworth, used pictures he took at schools, of both girls and boys, to generate CSAM using Grok; xAI referred the photos to NCMEC.

DOE v. X.AI Corp. (5:26-cv-00772): The photo an adult woman in Denmark, South Carolina posted on January 2 was turned into nonconsensual porn on January 3; it took three days to get Xitter to take down the nonconsensual porn. Grok agreed that the photo was “shitty” and “invasive.”

Doe 1 v. X.AI Corp. (5:26-cv-09016): CSAM, including rape, created when a woman was preschool-aged, has been used to create new CSAM using Grok, with criminals discussing doing so in CSAM fora.

Jane Doe 1 v. X.AI Corp. (5:26-cv-09617): A Pennsylvania man accessed photos of three women from when they were teenagers from a victim’s Apple iCloud account and used Grok to make them into CSAM. [Content warning: Four particularly explicit descriptions of CSAM.] When arrested he said, “he was just using a computer program.”

Special Reports: More On Russia, Ukraine, Assaults On West

 

Presidents Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin have a long history of deal-making and mutual support on key issues, while occassionally creating temporary disputes to obscure their larger goals.

New York Times, U.K. and Europe Recoil From Trump’s Diesel Deal With Putin, Michael D. Shear and Jeanna Smialek, Oct. 14, 2026 (print ed.). Shocked by the U.S. agreement with Russia, which Ukraine has called “a gift” to President Putin, officials in Europe have coalesced around a cautious diplomatic message.

European and British officials were stunned by President Trump’s unexpected announcement that he had made a deal with President Vladimir V. Putin to purchase Russian diesel fuel. But they were in a bind on how to respond.

The arrangement, which President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine called “a gift” to President Putin, directly undercuts years of effort by dozens of countries — including the United States — to cut Russia off from the money that fuels Mr. Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine.

Energy experts have said that the diesel agreement, if it goes ahead, could send some $4 billion of American money into the Russian economy.

Mr. Trump’s announcement on Friday afternoon of his “highly successful discussion” with Mr. Putin was all the more shocking in Europe as it came after Russia conducted several brutal strikes in Ukraine, killing 22 people including three babies in an apartment block on Wednesday and at least 30 people in a bus on Thursday.

For European leaders, the dilemma over the past three days has been familiar: How to support Ukraine in a moment of acute diplomatic peril, without triggering Mr. Trump’s ire?

As they scrambled for a response, they have stopped short of directly criticizing the American president and coalesced around a single diplomatic message: We are not changing our own approach to Russia, and we stand by Ukraine.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Eastern Europe, Northern Europe and Western Europe? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

On Saturday, Britain announced that Prime Minister Andy Burnham had spoken to Mr. Zelensky, noting that he had begun the call “by recognizing the last 24 hours had been difficult for Ukraine” — an oblique reference to Mr. Trump’s intervention — and had “reiterated his complete solidarity.” The statement added that Mr. Burnham would meet with Mr. Zelensky in the coming days.

A spokesman for the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, told reporters that the government was “standing by the sanctions decisions against Russia and is working together with its European partners on further sanctions.”

Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat, began her comments to reporters on Monday with a conciliatory nod to the United States, before saying that the bloc was “continuing our path” of trying to keep Russia from enriching itself by blocking the sale of oil and gas on the global market.

“The U.S. is our biggest ally, but our message is clear,” she said while entering a meeting of foreign affairs ministers in Luxembourg. “If we want to end this war, the only way we can do this is by putting more pressure on Russia.”

The Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Reporting and Commentary: Ukraine’s destruction of Russian bot farms directly benefits the West’s war against Russian influence operations, Wayne Madsen, right, wayne madsen new observerOct. 12, 2026. Ukraine’s battle is democracy’s battle and the West must answer the call.

Ukraine's attacks on Russian internet infrastructure has already had important consequences for the West's efforts to counter Russian disinformation, cyberespionage, troll farms, and covert political influence operations. And Ukraine’s attack could not have occurred at a better time as the United States prepares for important midterm elections, Brazilian voters head to the polls for a run-off presidential election, Alberta holds a referendum on the future of the province within Canada, and Bulgarians vote for president. Russian bot and troll farms have been active in spreading misinformation to affect the outcomes of these and other election to boost pro-Moscow and Moscow-friendly political parties and causes.

The Ukrainian attack was buttressed by UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham being the first serving prime minister to state publicly that Russia interfered in the 2016 Brexit referendum. In an interview released October 12, 2026, Burnham said he asked officials after entering Downing Street in July and received a “clear answer” that interference occurred. Russia’s Yandex and other platforms, aided and abetted by Twitter and Facebook, directly contributed to the Brexit referendum outcome.

By knocking Yandex’s major data centers offline, Ukraine forced a collapse in automated bot traffic—down to roughly 0.4% of normal levels—dramatically reducing Russia’s ability to seed and amplify disinformation across Europe and the U.S. Multiple monitoring systems (Cloudflare Radar, NetBlocks, IODA) observed a precipitous drop in automated traffic from Yandex’s network after the strikes.

After the first strike on Sasovo on Oct. 8, bot traffic fell to 57% of normal. After subsequent strikes on Kaluga and Vladimir, traffic collapsed to 0.4% of peak levels. IODA found 78% of Yandex Cloud unreachable from outside Russia. Ukraine’s hobbling of Yandex disabled a central launchpad for Russian botnets, troll farms, and automated political influence operations.

The outages directly affected pro‑Kremlin bot networks pushing hate, division, and political agitation on X and Facebook. Bot campaigns supporting Germany’s AfD, Reform UK, and U.S. MAGA‑aligned narratives saw sudden drops in activity. Engagement on planted posts, including on U.S. immigration topics, collapsed. Far-right “news” websites, many of which are credentialed as White House press, saw their “sources” temporarily dry up.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky noted that social media became “easier to breathe,” with less hate and fewer provocations, demonstrated by the observed bot decline. Zelensky also stated there was “less hatred, less discord, and fewer provocations because there were fewer bots.” A member of the European Parliament observed that online activity around Germany’s AfD appeared to plummet after the strikes. Historian Timothy Snyder noted similar patterns around pro‑Trump and pro‑AfD bot work.

Donald Trump’s decision to buy diesel fuel from Russia and call for Zelensky to be replaced as Ukraine’s president may have had just as much to do with Ukraine’s crippling of Yandex, a source for much of Trump’s and the far right’s on-line digital slop, as Ukraine’s attacks on Russian refineries.

Yandex is not just a search engine, it is Russia’s largest cloud provider. It is host to AI systems (Chervonenkis, Lyapunov, Galushkin) used for machine‑learning and automated content generation; the Backbone for ride‑sharing, payments, logistics, and authentication systems; and a key infrastructure node in Russia’s closed domestic internet, meaning no foreign failover is possible.

Drone strikes on Yandex facilities in Sasovo (Oct. 8), Kaluga (Oct. 9), and Vladimir (Oct. 11) produced fires, shutdowns, and full suspension of operations. The Vladimir strike alone forced Yandex to suspend operations at the entire facility. This physical destruction translated into service outages across Russia, including banking, retail, railways, Google access, and RuTube. Cloud infrastructure degradation to 30% of normal traffic levels was also experienced. More importantly for Ukraine and the West, AI and bot infrastructure went dark. Ukraine’s attack was a masterful stroke and one that, hopefully, will be repeated.

Russia’s information warfare abilities also suffered. Ukraine severely reduced Russia’s ability to coordinate troll farms, limited automated amplification of narratives in Europe and North America, interrupted Russia’s ability to rapidly deploy new botnets, exposed the fragility of Russia’s closed internet architecture, and forced Yandex to add wartime force‑majeure clauses to service contracts, acknowledging systemic vulnerability.

Ir is noteworthy that the disabling of Yandex impacted Russia’s operations to influence several elections in which Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump have a stake. In addition to the November 3 midterm election, for which early and absentee voting is already taking place, there are other important elections in which Putin and Trump share favorite parties, candidates, and causes. These include the Oct. 19 Alberta referendum in which voters will decide if the province should pursue separation from Canada; the Oct. 25 second=round presidential election in Brazil (anti-Trump Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva vs. Trump-aligned fascist Flavio Bolsonaro); the Oct. 25 first-round Bulgarian presidential election in which the pro-Putin and pro-Trump Kostadin Kostadinov is one of three major candidates; the Oct. 25 Serbian parliamentary election in which the pro-Putin former Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, is vying to become prime minister; the Oct. 27 Israeli Knesset election in which Binyamin Netanyahu is seeking re-election for his far-right coalition; the Nov. 7 New Zealand general election in which Labor leader Chris Hipkins is running to replace the conservative National government (Hipkins, a supporter of Ukraine and a former minister in charge of Covid-19 response, is being targeted by an anti-vaxxer campaign originating in Russia); the Nov. 15 Cabo Verde presidential election; and the Nov. 29 Spanish general election that pits conservative and pro-Israel People’s Party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo against incumbent Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

An expanded Ukrainian attack strategy on Russia’s internet infrastructure could deal a devastating blow on such Russian disinfo ops as the Social Design Agency’s (SDA) and Struktura’s Doppelganger cloned‑media operations. Doppelganger fake news websites include those mimicking: Der Spiegel, Le Monde, Le Figaro, Le Parisien, France’s 20 Minutes, Fox News, The Guardian, Washington Post, Germany’s ARD, Bild, BBC, Italian news agency ANSA, and NATO and French Foreign Ministry sites. CZ24.news, a Czech/Slovak site, systematically republishes RT content verbatim, acting as a “relay station” for Russian propaganda.

Reliable Recent News, Doppelganger’s sister operation, acts as a central narrative hub — a clearinghouse for messaging that feeds the cloned sites. Other Russian disinfo sites that could be disrupted by a massive attack on Russian internet nodes include WarOnFakes — a Russian “fake fact‑checker” operation operating several Telegram channels and which pushes Kremlin narratives by “debunking” Western reporting and is often used to launder propaganda into more legitimate‑looking formats and Ukraine Inc., which frames Ukraine as corrupt, incompetent, or controlled by oligarchs. It uses business‑style branding to appear neutral or analytical.

Other Russian influence programs disrupted by the attacks on Yandex included Operation Overload, Portal Kombat/Pravda Network, Matryoshka, and Storm‑1516. On Oct. 12, Zelensky indicated that Ukraine’s successful attacks on the Yandex would continue. Ukraine attacked three of five Yandex sites. 

New York Times, Zelensky to Visit U.K. as Ukraine Presses Allies on Intelligence Sharing, Michael D. Shear and Lara Jakes, Oct. 14, 2026. President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine received “no early warning from our partners” about a Russian attack. President Trump has said Washington is still “sharing intel.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is set to meet with Prime Minister Andy Burnham of Britain in London on Wednesday, a day after Mr. Zelensky said his country had received “no early warning from our partners” about a Russian missile attack against Kyiv.

The comment has raised urgent questions about whether the United States has carried out President Trump’s threat to stop or cut back on sharing critical intelligence with Ukraine and how European countries might — or might not — be able to fill any gap.

Russia struck Ukraine’s energy infrastructure heavily overnight, causing significant damage to 26 power-grid facilities and four oil and gas facilities. At least 600,000 people were left without power, according to officials in Ukraine.

It is not clear if there has been any change to the United States’ approach. A spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, Yuriy Ignat, said on Wednesday that Ukraine had received no warning for one strike but did get warning for the “next three waves of attacks.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump denied that intelligence sharing had stopped. “We are helping them, and we are sharing intel,” he said.

Verbal clashes between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky in recent days have frayed nerves, raising concern about how Ukraine could continue to defend itself against Russia if it were to lose intelligence from the United States.

Britain has a sophisticated intelligence operation and works with the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand as part of the Five Eyes alliance. However, America’s capabilities dwarf the others and would be particularly hard for Ukraine to lose, according to security officials.

“The precision, detail and timeliness of intelligence from the United States is noteworthy,” Robert B. Murrett, the former director of the U.S. National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, said in an interview on Wednesday.

The United States would typically share information about targets inside Russia, said Murrett, a retired Navy vice admiral who now teaches at Syracuse University. Other European countries, including Poland and the Baltic States, also share “a fair amount of intelligence” with Ukraine, he added.

Mr. Murrett doubted that the U.S. intelligence community would pull its support from Ukraine. “The current leadership of the United States intelligence community and our allies is very anti-Russian,” he said.

“That’s not to say the White House couldn’t overrule them,” he continued. “But the principal leadership of the U.S. intelligence community does not have a warm place in their hearts for Putin and his leadership in the Kremlin.”

In London, Mr. Burnham is expected to tell Mr. Zelensky that Britain will draw up plans for imposing harsher sanctions on Russia and will accelerate military and economic support, including a new batch of air-defense missiles that have been effective against Russian drones.

“Our rock-solid support to Ukraine is vital for keeping us safe here in the U.K. and ensuring those on the front lines have the equipment they need to push back Russia,” Mr. Burnham said, according to a statement released by 10 Downing Street. 

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

 

U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsHopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion: Inflation Soars, The House Slips Away From The Rs, Dems Must Now Work Very Hard To Take Trump’s Foreign Policy Keys Away, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 14, 2026. Sherrod  Brown joins us today at 1pm ET live from Ohio/Hopium paid subscribers gather tonight at 7pm.

. With three weeks to go it’s becoming clear now that the Rs are making their Senate stand in Alaska, Iowa, and Ohio. It doesn’t mean that they aren’t playing elsewhere but this is where they believe they can keep their majority. It’s why you will see a new emphasis on raising money for those states in our daily recommendations as the amount of money Rs are now spending in these places - and across the Senate battleground - is both staggering and unprecedented. We simply must keep pumping money into these states and races to have the election we all want to have.

We got new polls in Maine and Texas today that remind us that while we may now lead in most Senate polls these races are close, and we cannot let the Rs take them away from us in these closing days:

Talarico 47% - Paxton 45% - Marist

Talarico 50% - Paxton 47% - UT Austin/Texas Politics Project

Jackson 49% - Collins 47% - Suffolk

Republicans have begun doubling, tripling down on the Senate for, as Politico reports this morning, everyone in town thinks the House will now flip to the Dems:

While Trump campaigns across the country trying to save the Senate he is also now overtly -- and dangerously -- aiding Russian-Iranian-Chinese ambitions in the Middle East and Europe. Last week he intervened against the will of Congress and our law to allow Russia sell their oil and gas on the global markets, fueling their war machines. He then called for a new Ukrainian leader, and imperiously demanded a ceasefire which Ukraine accepted and Russia has continually violated. While there have been reports of the US cutting back on intelligence sharing with the Ukrainians in recent days (this also helps Russia) we know that last night Elon Musk -- the largest spender for Trump and Republicans in the election -- restricted Starlink services to the Ukrainian military without giving the Ukrainians a heads up or explanation.

This week we’ve also seen escalating attacks by the Iranian and Chinese backed Houthis against Saudi Arabia’s energy and civilian infrastructure (mirroring Russian tactics in Ukraine). Major Saudi airports have been attacked and closed, and yesterday, the headquarters of the Saudi state-owned oil company, the largest in the world, was attacked:While Trump is thrusting his knife deeper into Ukraine he is also letting his close ally Saudi Arabia burn. In both cases the beneficiary is the illiberal Russian-Iranian-Chinese-North Korean alliance.

While Democrats will rightly be focusing on affordability and the economy after the election we are also going to have work furiously and urgently to stop Trump’s traitorous selling out of Ukraine/Europe/NATO and to find a better path in the Middle East. It would be welcome if that effort began today.

High oil prices fuel the Iranian and Russian war machines (and almost certainly Trump’s pocket book) while hurting American consumers and businesses:Elevated energy prices sent inflation soaring in September, as the Consumer Price Index rose a staggering 0.6%, or more than 3 times the Fed’s target. Here’s the CPI trendline:Tariffs, huge budget-busting tax cuts, the war, and his titanic idiocy have caused inflation to double under Trump:Meanwhile signs of regime rot, idiocy, failure, and treachery are everywhere in today’s new coverage:

  • WaPo - Reflecting pool liner failed in 85 places after flawed renovation, inspection found
  • Politico - Administration delays release of IRS data showing impact of GOP tax cuts (the regime has withheld damning econ data from the public since July)
  • The Guardian - Judge extends White House access to banned media outlets CNN, MS Now and Politico
  • NYT - I’ve Worked in Congo for Decades. I’ve Never Seen an Ebola Crisis Like This. Trump and Elon have committed crimes against humanity.

Trump’s obsession with the Minnesota Somali community and Rep. Ilhan Omar has become completely unhinged. From The WaPo:

It is extremely unusual for federal agents to take public investigative actions related to a member of Congress just weeks before an election because doing so could cast a candidate who is not criminally charged in a negative light.

In Omar’s case, the investigation is notable for other reasons as well: It involves long-ago paperwork from when she was a teenager, and Omar is a lawmaker who has frequently been singled out for criticism and vitriol by President Donald Trump and his allies.

The president condemned her again in a social media post Tuesday, after U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro told Fox News that her office had launched a separate inquiry into Omar’s financial disclosure forms — a matter that has previously drawn the attention of House Republicans.

“America wants answers, and we want them, NOW!” wrote Trump, mirroring his previous calls for Justice Department investigations of his perceived political enemies……

Some members of Omar’s family have received grand jury subpoenas tied to the investigation in recent days, according to another person familiar with the matter who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss investigative details.

Finally, so the new ridiculous Press Secretary not only bombed, badly, yesterday; is not only a raging and dangerous conspiracy theorist; but she has also lied about being a lawyer for many, many years now. She may be following the disgraced Kimberly Guilfoyle out the door soon as new scandals flow out of the regime 24/7/365.

Yes, my friends, all of this -- all of it -- is why it is time now to….

Kick These Corrupt Traitors’ Asses, Win The Midterms, And Prepare For The Fuckery To Come - For It Is Coming (And May Already Be Here)

 

texas map

PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: James Talarico Is Close To Victory In Texas, Jason Easley, right, Oct. 14, 2026. Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico is leading Republican Ken Paxton by two points in a poll that was (+14) Republican because that was Trump’s margin of victory in 2024.

It is clear now why Republicans are spending hundreds of millions of dollars in Texas, beyond trying to prop up the worst Senate candidate in the country. Ken Paxton is unpopular and scandal-riddled, but he was Donald Trump’s choice to be the state’s Senate nominee, so the Republican Party is left trying to figure out how to get Paxton elected or face humiliation in one of the flagship states for conservatism in the United States.

It is not going great. Paxton has been everything his critics thought he was and more. The Republican candidate has spent more time complaining about his own party and Trump weighing him down than he has debating his opponent, because Ken Paxton has ignored pleas from his party and refused to debate.

Republicans in Texas have become so comfortable because they haven’t faced a real threat of losing statewide in decades. The state Republican Party has worked tirelessly to suppress the vote and redraw congressional districts to keep themselves in power.

Their reinforced statewide one-party rule was working great until Donald Trump came along and broke everything.

Trump made himself and his party so unpopular that the backbone of the Republican base has started to crack. Rural voters, white voters, and soft Republicans (non-MAGAs) are fleeing the party. The 2024 gains with Hispanic voters look like a mirage.

On Tuesday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson echoed Republican Party talking points by suggesting that all of the polls are wrong because they aren’t talking to enough Republicans.

A new poll of Texas measured the electorate based on the results of the 2024 election (Trump +14), and it showed that James Talarico is on course to win.Even When High Republican Turnout Is Modeled James Talarico Leads

A new Marist Poll of Texas revealed:

Two points separate Talarico (47%) and Paxton (45%) among likely voters in the U.S. Senate race in Texas. Among independents who say they are likely to vote, a majority (52%) support Talarico. A majority (53%) of likely voters statewide think, regardless of whom they support, Paxton will win the Senate seat.

51% of likely voters report they are more inclined to support the Republican running for Congress in their district than the Democrat (46%) on the ballot. 60% of likely voters say they also think the Republican congressional candidate will actually win.

Nearly four in ten likely voters statewide (38%) say their congressional vote is mainly a vote against President Trump while 27% say their ballot is mostly a vote for the president. 34% say President Trump does not matter much to their vote. Of those who say President Trump has little bearing on their vote, a majority approves of his job performance.

Republicans wanted polling that looked exactly like 2024.

They got it in Texas, and they are still losing the Senate race. The problem is that all data points for turnout in the midterm election suggest that the turnout is not going to look like the 2024 election.

Democratic and Independent turnout looks very high, while Republican turnout has dropped.

In Texas, that means that the electorate won’t be Trump (+14). Trump’s approval rating in Texas is a net (-8). The electorate is likely to look much more like the (-8) than (+14).

Because of all of the structural advantages that Republicans have built for themselves in Texas, they could still narrowly win, but less than three weeks before Election Day, the Texas Senate race is showing that if Democrats keep their feet on the gas, they could land a historic Senate seat flip. 

New York Times, A Trump Backlash Endangers Susan Collins, the Only Blue-State G.O.P. Senator, Tim Balk, Oct. 14, 2026. The race in Maine, which could decide Senate control, is testing whether there is still room for Ms. Collins’s brand of moderation during a sharply polarizing presidency.

Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, is facing a moment like no other in her three decades in office, one that is testing whether her moderate brand of politics can survive perhaps the most polarizing presidency in modern history.

Ms. Collins, a symbol of centrism and a paragon of decorum, has won five elections in a state that reliably votes for Democrats in presidential races by burnishing her reputation as an independent-minded Republican who delivers for Maine. But this year, she is battling forces that are squeezing her from several directions: a working-class rage about rising prices, a call for generational change and, above all, a burning desire among many voters to make a statement against President Trump’s divisive second term.

“I respect her,” Liz McCormack, 65, a Democrat and retired professor in the coastal college town of Brunswick, said one recent day as she cast a ballot for Ms. Collins’s Democratic challenger, Troy Jackson. Ms. McCormack voted for Ms. Collins in 2020, she said. But this time, she added, “it’s important to send a message.”

New York Times, Becerra Is a Quiet Trailblazer for Latinos in California, Laurel Rosenhall, Jennifer Medina and Orlando Mayorquín, Oct. 14, 2026. Xavier Becerra is a heavy favorite to become California’s first Latino governor in the modern era, though he does not talk much about the milestone.

The table decorations at a Los Angeles event earlier this year told the story of the guest of honor, Xavier Becerra, a son of Mexican immigrants who has emerged as the front-runner to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.

Colorful cards in the style of a Mexican lotería game represented his political rise, in Spanish, from El Congresista to El Fiscal General to El Secretario de Salud. The final card, El Gobernador, captured the hope of many of the Hispanic leaders at the event that Mr. Becerra would become California’s first Latino governor since 1875.

Those leaders have been more animated about the potential milestone than the candidate himself has been.

“I certainly am Latino, and I’m certainly proud of it,” Mr. Becerra said in an interview. “But identity has never been what has fueled my campaigns for office or public service.” 

New York Times, Trump’s Latest Effort to Fire a Fed Official Underscores Political Motives, Tony Romm and Colby Smith, Oct. 14, 2026. President Trump tapped his political appointees to determine whether he could oust Lisa Cook, a Fed governor he had already tried to oust.

One day after announcing a special committee to investigate a sitting governor at the Federal Reserve, President Trump offered an unvarnished glimpse into what he expected his handpicked panel might find.

“I think she’s dishonest,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Saturday, referring to the Fed governor, Lisa D. Cook, whom he has been trying to oust since August last year.

The president barely acknowledged the stated reason for opening that inquiry: a set of year-old allegations, neither charged nor proven in court, that Ms. Cook had engaged in mortgage fraud. Instead, Mr. Trump pivoted to his longstanding complaint that Ms. Cook had not voted for the sharply lower interest rates he desires.

“She’s an automatic no vote, and that’s not a good thing,” he said.

The brief exchange laid bare the unusual scrutiny that awaits Ms. Cook, an economist and the first Black woman to serve as a Fed governor.

At the center are a set of allegations, first raised by Bill Pulte, the federal housing director, that Ms. Cook designated two homes as primary residences in mortgage applications. She and her lawyers have described one instance of that designation as an inadvertent oversight, not fraud, while supplying other records that show the property was classified appropriately.

Still, the fate of her tenure may rest in the hands of an unorthodox panel, assembled by Mr. Trump and staffed with his staunchest allies when he has made no secret of his belief that the Fed governor should lose her job. The White House has scheduled a hearing to question Ms. Cook for Nov. 5, though her lawyers said on Tuesday that she would not be able to attend because of a scheduling conflict and raised issues with the legitimacy of the inquiry.

Mr. Trump’s first attempt to fire Ms. Cook was blocked by the Supreme Court, which ruled in June that the president had not afforded her ample opportunity to defend herself. The decision seemed to grant the White House great deference to determine how to proceed, and Mr. Trump’s decision to subject Ms. Cook to a hearing appeared to fulfill the technical requirements outlined by the Supreme Court.

But the way Mr. Trump has forged ahead — and the people he tapped to decide Ms. Cook’s future — raised concerns that the entire construct will be unfair.

Kathryn Judge, a professor at Columbia Law School who has long studied the central bank, said the Trump administration on its face had “created a process that — if it was in good faith — does seem like it would suffice to get at the truth of what actually happened.”

But, she said, “pretextual” forces were likely to overshadow the hearing, particularly given Mr. Trump’s past comments about the Fed.

“It feels like they are going through a bunch of procedural hurdles, but that they likely have the outcome that they want already decided,” Ms. Judge said.

The White House declined to answer a set of detailed questions about the hearing and how it would work. But Matthew Middleton, a spokesman, defended the president’s investigation in a statement on Tuesday as an extension of his “constitutional duty.”

“The president is going beyond what the Supreme Court required by offering Lisa Cook an in-person hearing that will be conducted in a fair and open process,” he added.

The heightened scrutiny of Ms. Cook fits a pattern under Mr. Trump, who has taken a series of aggressive steps to pressure the central bank to lower interest rates — and to try to force out members who do not agree with his views.

Last year, the president subjected the Fed’s chair at the time, Jerome H. Powell, to a withering investigation into a renovation of the Fed’s headquarters. The central bank’s internal watchdog later found no wrongdoing by Mr. Powell, whose term as chair ended in May, but that did not stop Mr. Trump from calling for him to resign from his role as a governor, a position he can remain in until 2028.

At one point, Mr. Trump even mused aloud that other members of the Fed had been installed through illegitimate means, though he never raised the matter again. After the Fed raised rates last month, the president attacked the board of governors for being political, though he spared Kevin M. Warsh, his new chairman, from the criticism.

“We want low interest rates,” Mr. Trump said on Saturday during a rally in Clarksville, Tenn. “Unfortunately, we have a bad board put in by other presidents, to a large extent.” 

New York Times, Kimberly Guilfoyle Resigns as Ambassador to Greece, Tyler Pager, Oct. 14, 2026 (print ed.). Ms. Guilfoyle was asked to quit by the White House after a string of damaging reports, including that she had asked a Republican donor to pay off a credit card.

Kimberly Guilfoyle resigned as the U.S. ambassador to Greece on Tuesday after the White House asked her to do so following a string of damaging reports, including that she had asked a Republican donor to pay off her credit card.

In response to a question from a reporter about Ms. Guilfoyle’s status, President Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, said: “We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign. She has been a wonderful asset to the team, and we wish her well.”

Mr. Trump said Tuesday that Ms. Guilfoyle “was doing a good job” but that he “didn’t like what I read.” The president also downplayed his connection to Ms. Guilfoyle, who was once engaged to his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr.

“She wasn’t a member of my family,” he told reporters before leaving the White House for Alaska. “She, I guess, dated my son a long time ago.”

In a lengthy post on social media, Ms. Guilfoyle said that her time as ambassador was “coming to an end” and that she planned to “vigorously defend my name, my reputation, and my integrity.”

“I will not allow false accusations to define my decades of public service,” she wrote.

A donor, Eric Deters, first told The Wall Street Journal that Ms. Guilfoyle asked him to wire her $100,000 to pay off her American Express card just before her Senate confirmation hearing in July 2025. According to messages Mr. Deters provided to The New York Times, Ms. Guilfoyle promised to serve as his “ride or die in Trump world” if he sent her the money.

Ms. Guilfoyle was one of the first ambassadors to be nominated in the president’s second term. In Greece, she has been a highly visible ambassador, appearing on the cover of Vogue Greece and at parties around Athens. Ms. Guilfoyle told The Times last year that her active social life demonstrated her commitment to the job.

In her resignation post, Ms. Guilfoyle said she was proud of her work to expand American liquefied natural gas exports to Europe and strengthen defense and security partnerships with NATO.

In Athens, the reports of her potential conflicts of interest have generated exasperation.

“The fact that they would send someone like that here, with no tact or diplomacy skills, shows how low we rank in Trump’s priorities, how insignificant Greece is for them,” Maria Stefanou, a 68-year-old retiree, told The Times last week

Greece’s foreign ministry declined to comment, but opposition parties said the reports that had led to Ms. Guilfoyle’s resignation raised important questions about foreign interference in Greek politics and the country’s business interests.

The resignation caps a remarkable rise and fall for Ms. Guilfoyle, a former Fox News personality. Decades ago, she was married to Gavin Newsom, then the mayor of San Francisco, and in 2004, Harper’s Bazaar predicted their marriage would be “one of the most glamorous political unions since Jack and Jackie.” They divorced in 2006.

Ms. Guilfoyle then became a legal analyst for CNN and ABC before joining Fox News. She was forced out of Fox in 2018 over questions about inappropriate workplace behavior. That same year, she started dating Donald Trump Jr. and working for a pro-Trump super PAC. The two were engaged in 2020, and Ms. Guilfoyle spoke at both the 2020 and 2024 Republican National Conventions. In May, the president’s son married Bettina Anderson, a Palm Beach socialite.

“While my time as Ambassador may be coming to an end, my commitment to President Trump, the America First movement, and the country I love will never end,” Ms. Guilfoyle wrote on social media.

Special Report: VP Vance Stresses 'Not' Attracted To Men 

 


Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha Vance (Facebook photo).Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha Vance (Facebook photo).

Hope for America, Opinion: J.D.Vance is auditioning for his next role, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Oct. 14, 2026. heather delaney reeseAt 11:51 this morning, Vice President JD Vance landed at a small regional airport in Texas, exited Air Force Two, and had a six-vehicle motorcade drive him 295 feet, a trip that took just seconds, to the nearby rally podium outside an airplane hangar. With his plane visible right behind him, he opened his remarks by making sure the crowd knew two things: first, that he was the vice president of the United States, and second, that he was not attracted to men.

“I love you too, sir, in a totally platonic way, to be clear,” Vance told a man in the crowd who had shouted that he loved the vice president, before adding, “I’m the vice president, not James Talarico.”

Talarico, or as the Republicans have taken to calling him, “Talafreako,” is the Democratic candidate running for U.S. Senate in Texas against Ken Paxton, and a major threat to Trump’s unchecked power over this country. So much so that Vance flew halfway across the country to hold a rally on the tarmac of an airport. With little more than a handful of manufactured controversies and the usual culture war scare tactics at his disposal, Vance picked up where others had left off, attacking Talarico for things like buying vegan products from local businesses, supporting transgender rights, and expressing Christian beliefs that challenge the religious far right.

They are right to be concerned. Talarico is a former teacher and devout Presbyterian Christian who has been able to reach voters way beyond the Texas Democratic base because of how he speaks about his faith and the compassion he shows to people on both sides of issues. That was enough for Vance to spend an entire morning building an innuendo campaign designed to make voters associate a political opponent with something sexually deviant, without ever saying the word out loud.

jd vance oBefore boarding Air Force Two for his flight to Texas, Vance, right, stopped to answer questions from the press. A reporter asked what he meant when he said people wouldn’t want to see Talarico’s internet search history. Vance responded by talking about transgender children and drag queens, claiming that people who make comments like Talarico’s tend to have “some pretty unusual search histories.” Then he added, “Maybe he doesn’t. Just guessing, but I wouldn’t want to see it.”

By the time he was talking at the podium today, he had decided to go all in on the performance to try to convince Texas voters that even though Paxton had been impeached and acquitted, faced felony securities fraud charges that were later dismissed, and been accused of abusing his office, he was still the better choice than a candidate who had never faced such serious charges, or any charges at all. In fact, Talarico has faced no credible controversies at all.

When Vance brought up Talarico’s views on religion and transgender youth, he called him “a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” and told the crowd, “Ladies and gentlemen, you don’t want to find out,” referring again to that baseless claim about Talarico’s supposed search history. He called Talarico “Tali-freako” once more, and he told the crowd, “Ladies and gentlemen, this guy is a freak. Don’t elect him.” He became increasingly animated and told the audience that they needed to keep Talarico’s “freaky paws” out of their schools, whatever that means. He even found a way to mock Talarico for sharing about buying from a local vegan business, which is an interesting line of attack coming from JD Vance, since his own wife is a vegetarian. He also went on an odd tangent about education and told the audience, “Elect Ken Paxton so that our kids learn how to read at school. That’s all they need to be doing.”

When a woman in the crowd trolled Vance by waving a Mexican flag, Vance called her a “crazy person,” and told her to leave, adding that, “We’re talking about how to save America.” He continued, telling her to “Get the hell out of here.”

JD repeated many of the same talking points this administration keeps recycling, but one thing he said stood out was that he is now describing Talarico’s candidacy as a “plot to seize power.” The Republicans have reached the point where they are describing political opposition as a threat to the country itself, rather than an ordinary part of the democratic process.

This is who JD Vance is and always has been. He is a chameleon who can be bought by the highest bidder. He is great at repeating whatever he is told to say. Today was another audition for the presidency more than it was about the Texas election, at least for JD. He wants people to see that he can do the work, stand in front of a crowd and say the cruel, ugly things to keep the MAGA base engaged, while still keeping the MAGA donors satisfied by delivering on their demands.

Donald Trump and Vance both had rallies today, and I had the general displeasure of watching both. I watched Donald Trump in Wasilla, Alaska, performing much of the same act he’s been doing for months now. He shared the same recycled stories, talked about how “brilliant” he is, and made the same claim that America was a “dead country” before he came along. He told that ridiculous windburn swimmer story again, where he claims a female swimmer suffered serious burns all over her body because a transgender competitor passed her so fast that the wind burned her skin. Both swimmers were underwater in a pool. The story changed ever so slightly this time, but he still managed to tell it with a straight face, apparently convinced that his followers are not quite as “brilliant” as he is and would believe such a preposterous story.

Watching Vance speak earlier in the day showed how he continues to try to carry the same persona that Donald Trump does. He is copying, albeit very poorly, the insults, name-calling, and same targets: transgender people and migrants. He was really putting in the effort to follow the same playbook Trump uses. But he just does not have it. He is lacking the charisma and stage presence that Trump brings to his rallies, and nearly everyone can see it. He doesn’t have the same cult following Donald Trump does, and try as he might, he has remained unable to recreate that connection with the crowd.

This should make him less dangerous than the president. But the reality is that it might not be true. Because we have already seen multiple versions of JD. He changes with the wind, and we need to ask ourselves what would happen if someone like him were called upon to take over the presidency. What happens if he actually has to be the person in charge?

Because we all know what is coming. Whether it’s his health, or the 25th Amendment, or a post-midterm reckoning where the party finally decides Trump is more of a liability than an asset, we could be stuck with JD, and I don’t know if any of us know if we would be better off. Part of me thinks yes, because Trump is volatile and impulsive and increasingly detached from reality, and replacing him with someone who can at least finish a coherent thought and a sentence might reduce the daily chaos we are all living in. But the other part of me recognizes that it could be a lot worse. Trump is a shell of a man who doesn’t care about the day-to-day of running a government, or maybe he made some sort of deal to get himself elected to stay out of jail in exchange for letting the direction of the country be determined by someone else.

Vance on the other side is very different. Vance is committed to some of the worst things being done to this country in ways that Trump isn’t. Trump is surface level while Vance is deeply embedded in it. Vance knows this, and he knows what he is doing and who he is doing it with. He once compared Donald Trump to Hitler. Then the right amount of tech money found him, and they groomed him and told him it was his job to execute the vision Trump was never capable of carrying out on his own. The visions he is willing to carry out are the ones from Stephen Miller and the Heritage Foundation. He doesn’t really care about their missions; he only cares about the money. JD is extremely awkward; he offends people, and he carries himself with a strange combination of arrogance and insecurity that makes it difficult for anyone to take him seriously. Our allies would see through him in a heartbeat.

Trump is the evil we know, and JD Vance is the evil in the wings. Trump is a wrecking ball swinging in every direction, breaking things all over the place. Vance would be easier to control and more strategic as he destroys whatever guardrails remain around executive power.

We are now just three weeks from the midterms. We need to remember that even though Donald Trump and JD Vance are not on the ballot, they really are. When we vote, we are sending a message that we are done with the uncertainty and chaos. If we can flip the House and possibly the Senate, we can build a firewall, not just against Trump’s remaining time, but against whatever version of this movement comes next.

It’s been a while, but the next No Kings movement is this Saturday, October 17th. They will be holding over fifteen hundred events across the country focused entirely on voter turnout, early voting, and election protection. These events have grown from four million people in June of 2025 to an estimated 8 million in March of this year. This one on Saturday is expected to be the largest one yet.

Vance said something today that he probably wishes he could take back. When a reporter asked about the midterms, he said, “We know that we’re swimming upstream,” admitting that it is going to be hard to hold onto all of the unchecked power they have right now. Meanwhile, the No Kings movement just keeps getting bigger. They know what is coming, and so do we.  

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

Public Notice, News and Opinion: Republicans learn to love DOJ weaponization, Liz Dye, right, liz dye twitterOct. 14, 2026. Just kidding, they always love it when they’re holding the weapon.

On August 8, 2022, after more than a year of trying to cajole Donald Trump into voluntarily returning government property he’d stolen, FBI agents executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago at a time when they knew Trump and his family would be elsewhere.

They convinced a federal magistrate judge there was probable cause to believe they’d find wrongfully retained national security information at Trump’s private club … which they did.

At 6 a.m. on October 12, 2026, Homeland Security Investigations banged on the door of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s DC residence, rousting the legislator’s family, including two of her children, ages 14 and 21. The government sought evidence that her deceased father falsified his own immigration paperwork in the mid-90s, when Rep. Omar was a teenager, thus invalidating her naturalization as a US citizen.

This is not a “crime” that could be prosecuted today, and there is no indication that the government tried any less-intrusive means of retrieving the information.

Guess which one of these Republicans are furious about?Every accusation is a confession

Trump howled for years that every charge against him is a hoax, but the case against Omar is literally a conspiracy theory with no basis in fact.

As right-wing-watcher Will Sommer explained at the Daily Beast, an anonymous user on a Somali diaspora forum claimed in 2016 that Omar married her brother to get him a green card. The story became conservative dogma, despite a total lack of evidence that it’s true.Trump wants a race war. Minnesotans won’t take the bait.Trump wants a race war. Minnesotans won’t take the bait.Lisa Needham·Oct 12Read full story

This year AJ Kern, a crank who ran for election in Minnesota as both a Republican and a Democrat and got clobbered both times, spun up a couple of new theories to un-person her erstwhile rival.

In 2023, Kern filed a FOIA request for Omar’s father’s naturalization paperwork and got back a notice that USCIS couldn’t locate it. From this she concluded that he was never naturalized at all, and thus could not have been the source of Omar’s citizenship. Alternatively, Kern claims that Omar lied about her age, meaning that she was actually 18 when her father was naturalized, and thus could not derive citizenship through her parent.

Republicans aren’t too pressed about the details — they just know that Rep. Omar, like the nation’s first Black president, cannot possibly be a real American.

“You know there was immigration fraud involved,” America’s racist uncle Tom Homan grunted on Newsmax in December, complaining that the Biden DOJ had allowed the statute of limitations to expire.

“We know that she’s committed immigration fraud,” Vice President Vance assured plagiarist podcaster Benny Johnson in March, lamenting that the government would have to go to the trouble of actually proving it in court.

“We know that she married her brother to try to bring him to the United States,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin blustered to Johnson last month at the Republican midterm “convention,” vowing that “something will happen.”

It’s not clear which of these crackpot theories HSI went with, but something did indeed happen on Monday.

The Justice Department says that HSI “executed a judicially authorized search warrant” as part of “an ongoing federal criminal investigation.” According to the New York Times, the warrant lists false statements and fraud in immigration paperwork, plus a general conspiracy charge. With the caveat that we haven’t seen this document, these legal claims appear shaky at best — particularly in light of the five-year statute of limitations for most federal crimes.

As former prosecutor Joyce Vance notes, Omar arrived in 1995, and was a child when her immigration paperwork was filed, so good luck proving criminal intent. Omar’s father died in 2020, and so, even if you credit the theory that her “crime” is ongoing (so as to defeat the statute of limitations problem), it's not clear whom she could have conspired with in the last five years.

As for the marriage fraud, Omar was married to Ahmed Elmi — who is not her brother — in 2009 and divorced in 2017, so any “fraud” charges related to the marriage would also appear to be time-barred.

Meanwhile, the threats against Omar are all too real. On January 27, Trump told a crowd in Iowa that immigrants need to be proud of America, "not like Ilhan Omar." Hours later, a man charged her at a Minneapolis town hall and squirted her with a syringe full of apple cider vinegar. That night, Trump sneered that Omar "probably had herself sprayed, knowing her."

When Trump’s legal team went looking for evidence of malicious prosecution, the best they could come up with was an article in the New York Times wherein Biden allegedly “confided to his inner circle that he believed former President Donald J. Trump was a threat to democracy and should be prosecuted.” According to Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche, this was a subliminal message to Garland to take out Trump — something so inappropriate that the Judges Aileen Cannon and Tanya Chutkan should immediately dismiss all charges.

Here, Trump and his Cabinet publicly brayed for Omar’s prosecution for years on end. But Attorney General Todd Blanche insists that it’s entirely appropriate for the president to direct the prosecution of his enemies. Luckily Blanche suppressed his capacity for shame, and so he feels nary a twinge at staging a pre-dawn raid on a sitting member of Congress while simultaneously calling the search of Mar-a-Lago as a gross abuse of law enforcement.Todd Blanche is Roy Cohn ... but worseTodd Blanche is Roy Cohn ... but worseLiz Dye·Jul 15Read full story

On October 2, the White House invited a hand-picked cadre of reporters to a briefing on DOJ “weaponization.” It was led by John Solomon, who was drummed out of The Hill for laundering discredited sources to help Trump gin up lies about Hunter Biden in Ukraine. Solomon wandered off to launder conservative talking points at his own site, Just the News. And now he’s moonlighting as a “special government employee,” chairing a White House “transparency” task force wherein he feeds reporters decontextualized tidbits in an effort to prove that Trump was wrongfully framed by evil Joe Biden.

On Sunday, the Times’s Charlie Savage stripped the bark off of Solomon’s “revelations.” The headliner was a July 2022 email from the FBI’s Washington field office questioning whether there was probable cause to search Mar-a-Lago. Republicans claim that internal debate over the relative merits of executing a warrant or continuing to negotiate with Trump is evidence of the impropriety. With respect to Omar, Blanche felt no need to engage in such accommodation.

In reality, Sen. Chuck Grassley published the FBI email last December. And Solomon conveniently forgot to mention that the message predated the discovery that Trump’s henchmen were moving the boxes of stolen documents around the club to evade both the FBI and Trump’s own lawyer Evan Corcoran — which entirely resolved the probable cause question.

“It isn’t an effort at subterfuge,” wheedled Solomon, who has the nerve to refer to himself as a “pool reporter.”

“It isn’t an effort at not giving you something in context,” he told the Times. “It’s giving you what the government made available and then giving you a chance to go find the rest of the story.”

Solomon similarly mischaracterized the government’s effort to minimize the disruption for Trump’s wife and son.

“The first family’s trips were traced as the bureau plotted the best time to search Trump’s Palm Beach home,” screeched the New York Post after the presser.

With Omar, HSI seems to have deliberately staged the raid so as to traumatize her family, including her children.

Congressional Republicans are currently demanding that Jack Smith be prosecuted for subpoenaing the toll records of at least nine members of Congress who were in contact with Trump’s team before and during the attack on the Capitol. Toll records are logs of numbers and call lengths, with no content. And since the Supreme Court’s 1979 decision in Smith v. Maryland, no one, not even a senator, has had an expectation of privacy in them.

And yet, Republicans responded as though Smith had kicked down the door of the Capitol himself. At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last month, Sen. Mike Lee said Smith’s conduct made “what Richard Nixon did with Watergate look like a Sunday picnic.” Sen. Katie Britt accused him of deliberately depriving members of the chance to assert their privilege under the Speech or Debate Clause. Sen. John Kennedy said anyone who knows “a law book from a J. Crew catalog” could see the violation. The next day, Sen. Marsha Blackburn actually sued Smith in Tennessee.

Ironically, Blackburn’s lawsuit leans heavily on United States v. Rayburn House Office Building, the DC Circuit’s 2007 decision holding that the FBI violated the Speech or Debate Clause when it searched Rep. William Jefferson’s office and reviewed his papers without first letting him claim legislative privilege.

That case is of zero use for Blackburn, since the toll records belonged to Verizon and did not implicate legislative matters. But it might well help Omar, whose house is in Northeast Washington, squarely within the DC Circuit.

Strangely, Blackburn, Lee, Britt, and Kennedy are unbothered by the raid on a fellow legislator’s actual home.60 days

Rep. Omar is in no danger of losing her seat. And she’s clearly not backing down.

But this aggressive act of intimidation on the eve of the election violates longstanding norms, as well as the DOJ’s own internal policies.

This is something Blanche used to be quite the stickler for. In July 2023, he warned Judge Cannon that “even Department of Justice policy cautions against taking prosecutorial action for the purpose of affecting an election or helping a candidate or party.”

By February 2024, Blanche and his law partner Emil Bove — now Judge Bove of the Third Circuit — insisted that “a fair trial cannot be conducted this year.” Putting the president’s chief political rival on trial before November “would also violate Justice Manual § 9-85.500, which applies to the Special Counsel’s Office, and prohibits ‘Actions that May Have an Impact on an Election.’” They even invoked DOJ’s “longstanding policy of non-interference in elections.”

And yet, 22 days before the midterms, with early voting already underway in Minnesota, Blanche’s DOJ searched a candidate’s home over paperwork a dead man filed three decades ago.

For four years, Republicans insisted that the search of Mar-a-Lago was the most shocking abuse of power in American history. A former president who stonewalled the National Archives for a year, ignored a grand jury subpoena, and had his staff hide boxes from his own lawyer got searched when he and his family were safely out of town.

With early voting underway, Ilhan Omar got agents at her door at 6 a.m., when her 14-year-old was inside, over a theory cooked up on an anonymous message board and a FOIA response to a failed candidate — a theory the administration’s own border czar admits is far outside the statute of limitations.

Republicans never objected to weaponizing the Justice Department. They just wanted custody of the weapon.

New York Times, Judge Orders Trump Administration to Answer for Tree Removals at D.C. Golf Course, Zach Montague, Oct. 13, 2026 (print ed.). During a four-hour hearing, a federal judge demanded answers from the Trump administration about who authorized the removal of hundreds of trees at the East Potomac Golf Links.

A federal judge on Monday excoriated the Trump administration for ripping up hundreds of mature trees at a Washington golf course over the holiday weekend, even though she had directed officials to disclose any major changes before work was started.

In an explosive, four-hour emergency hearing, Judge Ana C. Reyes of the Federal District Court in Washington ordered a one-day halt to any more tree removal at East Potomac Golf Links, and said she would continue proceedings on Tuesday.

But first she directed Justice Department lawyers to track down a succession of progressively more senior officials involved in the decision, and ordered them to testify on the spot, as she demanded answers about who had authorized the trees to be cleared and whether the decision was linked to the White House. President Trump has eyed the municipal course in southeastern Washington for redevelopment into a luxury championship course similar to those on his personal properties.

“I am thoroughly unamused right now,” Judge Reyes said, appearing remotely from Istanbul, where she had been traveling. She raised her voice at several points to near shouting level.

“What has happened has cost the government all of its credibility with me in this case,” she said, before listing all of the times she had directed the government to alert her to major alterations.

The Monday morning hearing was technically to address the tree removal, but Judge Reyes made clear that her larger concern was the possibility that the Trump administration had flouted her instructions. Since Mr. Trump returned to office last year, judges have repeatedly been forced to interrogate whether the government has complied with orders across a variety of cases.

Two Washington residents and a preservationist organization had sued in February over the president’s stated goal to redevelop the affordable municipal course into a championship-level one. In June, Mr. Trump was photographed touring the grounds and studying blueprints with Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, and Tom Fazio, a well-known architect who has designed other courses owned by the Trump Organization.

At a hearing in July, Judge Reyes, a Biden appointee, ordered the Trump administration to notify the court before making sudden alterations to the course. She said that she was worried about how quickly plans were taking shape, and that she did not want to find out work had begun too late to “stop the trains.”

On Friday evening, the Justice Department filed documents showing the administration intended to remove 529 trees as part of a larger restoration. By Saturday morning, machinery could be seen cutting down trees. The government acknowledged on Monday that more than 400 were removed in one fell swoop over the weekend.

In a filing on Sunday night, lawyers representing the D.C. Preservation League asked Judge Reyes to block further action, noting that the government had indicated that there were still “hundreds more” trees to be cut, prompting her to call for the emergency hearing.

More On U.S. Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets

New York Times, Live Update: Soaring Energy Prices Push Inflation Higher, Colby Smith, Oct. 14, 2026. The Consumer Price Index rose 3.7 percent in September from a year earlier, faster than a month earlier, as gas prices surged 34 percent.

Higher energy prices drove up inflation in the United States in September, a warning shot to President Trump ahead of midterm elections that have centered primarily on affordability concerns. The uptick in consumer prices will also keep the Federal Reserve under pressure to raise interest rates again after last month’s move.

The Consumer Price Index Report, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday, showed overall prices rose 0.6 percent, the largest monthly increase in five months. Compared with the same time last year, prices were 3.7 percent higher.

The bulk of the increase stemmed directly from energy prices, which have shot higher this year because of the war with Iran. Gasoline prices, which in late September rose to the highest level in four months at nearly $4.50 a gallon, surged 9.1 percent for the month. That accounted for more than half of the overall monthly increase in prices. They are up 34.2 percent over the past year.

Fuel oil prices, used for heating in many homes in the northeast, have also shot higher, rising 15.3 percent in September, or 74.2 percent on an annual basis.

“Core” inflation, which excludes volatile energy and food prices, edged higher as well, but by a smaller magnitude. Over the course of September, these prices were up only 0.3 percent. Over the past year, they were up 2.6 percent.

Here’s what else to know:

  • Price pressures: Inflation has surged over the past year not only because of the Iran war, but also President Trump’s tariffs and soaring costs associated with the boom in artificial intelligence investment. In September, the primary driver of price pressures was energy prices, which on the whole rose 5.2 percent for the month, or 20.4 percent over the past year. Higher fuel costs are driving up airfares, which were up 1.2 percent in September and 22.4 percent over the year.
  • Tariffs still hitting certain sectors: Prices on toys were up 4.2 percent in September. But other categories that are heavily exposed to tariffs showed fairly minimal effects. Apparel was up 0.3 percent last month, and prices on household furnishings fell 0.2 percent. Spending on the A.I. buildout helped to push up prices for computers and related equipment by 9.7 percent over the past year. Software prices have risen 28.4 percent over that time period. Still, smartphone prices have fallen nearly 10 percent.
  • Zero wage growth: The combination of higher inflation and weaker wage growth means that Americans are earning less for every hour of work. Average hourly earnings, adjusted for inflation, fell 0.5 percent in August, and were down 0.7 percent from a year earlier. It was the sixth straight months of year-over-year declines in real earnings. Average hourly earnings are now back to almost exactly where they were when President Trump was sworn into office for the second time, meaning that, on average, Americans have experienced zero wage growth, in real terms, since he returned to the White House.
  • Fed watch: Fed officials pay closest attention to the core measure, which they see as the best gauge of underlying inflation. Policymakers also track an even more granular metric, known as “supercore” inflation. It measures prices for core services once housing costs are excluded. For a second-straight month, it came in hot, rising 0.4 percent in September. Over the past three months, supercore prices have risen at an annual rate of nearly 4.6 percent. Those price gains will reinforce the central bank’s view that it will need to further tighten its grip on the economy to ease price pressures. So far, officials have argued that they can take their time before raising borrowing costs again, but September’s higher-than-expected inflation report will keep pressure on them to contine tightening. That was the message from the U.S. government bond market. The 2-year Treasury yield rose sharply by 0.1 percentage point to 4.88 percent in the wake of the report.

New York Times, Social Security Says Retirees Will Get a 3.6% Raise for 2027, Mark Miller, Oct. 14, 2026. The cost of living adjustment, or COLA, for next year will be the largest since 2023. Retirees will see the extra money in their benefit checks starting in January.

Retirees and other beneficiaries will receive the largest annual cost-of-living adjustment since 2023 in their Social Security checks next year, driven mainly by persistently high inflation.

The Social Security Administration announced a 3.6 percent annual cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, on Wednesday after the release of government inflation data for September. The COLA is determined using the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, or CPI-W. The index values for July, August and September are averaged to produce the official adjustment figure.

For the average Social Security beneficiary, the COLA will translate to a $75 monthly increase, the government said. However, the actual amount for any retiree enrolled in Medicare will vary. The Part B premium, which covers outpatient care, is usually deducted from Social Security benefits, changing net COLAs. Separately, Social Security said the maximum amount of earnings subject to the Social Security payroll tax would rise to $192,300, up from $184,500 this year.

The Medicare board of trustees has projected that the monthly Part B premium will rise $6.60 in 2027 to $209.50. The final figure will be released this fall, but if the projection holds, most beneficiaries will receive net COLAs of at least 3 percent.

Other Medicare costs are rising, too. Monthly premiums for some prescription drug plans, which are known as Part D, will jump $50 or more next year — although plenty of lower-cost options are available for people who shop the market during the annual enrollment period that begins Thursday. In addition, costs will rise and supplemental benefits will be reduced in private Medicare Advantage plans next year.

More On Epstein Files, Trump Coverup, #MeToo Allegations

 

djt epstein birthday card

The collage above portrays Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein and a notorious birthday card that Trump sent Epstein some two decades ago addressed "to a Terrific Guy," illustrated with a seemingly naked portrayal of a young female. 

bulwark morning shots logoMorning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Epstein in Iowa, Jason Ferdman, Oct. 14, 2026. “This week I had to explain to my boys, ‘No, mom does not protect pedophiles,’” opines Ashley Hinson, the Republican senate candidate in Iowa, in a video she released to social media yesterday.

In the video, Hinson accuses her opponent Josh Turek of “lying” about “men who hurt children . . . to win an election.” It’s a response to Turek’s ad attacking Hinson for having “skipped three votes to help expose the Epstein files” ad for “protecting predators and billionaire donors.”

bulwark logo big shipHinson’s rebuttal—“Of course I voted to release the Epstein files”—is technically true. Like every House Republican but one, she did vote for the Epstein Files Transparency Act when it eventually came to the floor for a full vote. But the discharge petition to get it that vote was dormant for more than fifty days while Speaker Mike Johnson avoided swearing in a Democrat who won a special election. The Democrat Adelita Grijalva (AZ-07) ultimately delivered the key 218th signature to force a vote on the Epstein bill.

Hinson—or any other Republican in Congress—could have delivered the signature. Like almost all of her fellow Republicans, she waited for the go-ahead from the president.

Turek’s ad is not unique; CNN reported last week that this midterm cycle, candidates and outside groups have aired more than 160 distinct Epstein-related ads, amounting to a cumulative total of more than $35 million in airtime.

And Turek has been hitting Hinson on her Epstein votes for almost a year, since before he was officially the Democratic nominee: “Ashley Hinson did not sign onto the discharge petition to release the Epstein files, but Iowans are demanding that she vote YES when it comes to a full House vote,” Turek said in November 2025. “We don’t need our voice in Washington covering for Jeffrey Epstein.”

“Men like Epstein, who hurt children, they’ll have to answer to God,” Hinson says at the end of the video posted Tuesday. “But men who lie about it to win an election, they’ll have to answer to you.” Turek, a state legislator, doesn’t have a record on the Epstein Files Transparency Act, but Hinson will have to answer for hers in about three weeks.

New York Times, 3 Men Accused by Nancy Mace in House Speech Are Charged With Sex Crimes, Mark Walker and Ishani Desai, Oct. 14, 2026. The former fiancé of the South Carolina representative and two of his business associates were charged on Wednesday with sex crimes and voyeurism in connection with a 2018 incident.

nancy maceU.S. Representative Nancy Mace’s former fiancé and two of his business associates were charged on Wednesday with a number of sex crimes in connection with an episode she described at length last year in a speech on the House floor, according to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.

Brendan Patrick Bryant, 53, Ms. Mace’s former fiancé, was charged with voyeurism. John Douglas Osborne, 46, whom Ms. Mace described in her speech as Mr. Bryant’s business associate, was charged with first-degree assault and battery and two counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct. Eric Bernard Bowman, 46, another of Mr. Bryant’s business associates, was charged with voyeurism, obstruction of justice and publishing the name of a victim of criminal sexual conduct.

The three men were booked into the Sheriff Al Cannon Detention Center in Charleston County. The charges stem from events that occurred on an evening in October 2018 in Charleston, S.C.

The victim, a woman who was 23 years old at the time of the incident, had fallen into a pool and later passed out on a couch, where she lay covering herself with a pillow after removing her wet clothes, according to an arrest affidavit. The police described her as drunk and incapacitated, according to the records.

Mr. Osborne then performed sex acts on her while Mr. Bryant and Mr. Bowman watched, according to the documents.

The men discussed who should assault the woman first, and they photographed and recorded the assault, according to the affidavit.

The episode came to light after it was captured on a security system feed, according to the affidavit. A witness monitoring the feed wrote a detailed account of the incident, according to court records.

The charge against Mr. Bowman of publishing a victim’s name stems from his posting of the woman’s name along with a video of her on social media, according to the affidavit.

In her speech delivered in February last year, Ms. Mace accused her former fiancé and three other men of raping her and other women. Ms. Mace, a Republican of South Carolina, also said the men had filmed and photographed women and underage girls without their consent.

“You’ve booked yourself a one-way ticket to hell,” she said during the speech, which ran nearly an hour. “It is nonstop. There are no connections. So I and all of your victims can watch you rot into eternity.”

In an extraordinary departure from House custom, she displayed the men’s names and photographs on a placard. Because she spoke on the House floor, her remarks were protected by the Speech or Debate Clause, which shields members of Congress from criminal prosecution and civil suits over their legislative acts.

Ms. Mace offered no evidence for the accusations at the time, though she said she had plenty. A fourth man Ms. Mace accused in her speech was not arrested on Wednesday.

Mr. Bryant, at the time, denied the accusations. All three men posted their bond and were released on Wednesday, according to officials at the jail.

Lawyers for Mr. Bryant and Mr. Osborne did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A lawyer for Mr. Bowman could not be reached.

A victim’s advocate with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division read a statement in court from the woman in the case on Wednesday, according to The Post and Courier, a newspaper in the state.

The woman compared her experiences to that of the victim at the center of a sexual assault episode that is roiling Cornell University, and said her world turned upside down after realizing she had been recorded while incapacitated.

“Since then, my sense of safety, privacy and trust has been shattered,” the statement said. “I constantly worry about being watched, followed or secretly recorded.” 

More On Middle East Wars

New York Times, Oil Prices Rise as Iran Steps Up Attacks and Houthi-Saudi Fighting Intensifies, Jenny Gross and Lisa Friedman, Oct. 14, 2026. In a volatile moment for energy markets, more vessels are being hit while transiting the Strait of Hormuz, while the Houthis and Saudi Arabia traded attacks.

Oil prices remained elevated on Wednesday, amid increasing attacks on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz and an escalation of fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis, an Iran-backed militia.

The Houthis, emboldened by regional instability, late Tuesday struck a building owned by the state-owned energy giant Saudi Aramco, the kingdom’s energy ministry said, as Saudi and Houthi forces traded attacks. Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s most important energy suppliers, has bombed Houthi positions in Yemen in support of the internationally recognized Yemeni government, which is fighting to retake territory seized by the Houthis.

At the same time, more ships were attacked in the Strait of Hormuz in the last week than in the entire month of September. More than 100 ships have been struck since the start of the war in Iran, now in its eighth month.

In Saudi Arabia, the Houthis over the weekend carried out the deadliest attack on the kingdom in more than a decade, striking King Khalid International Airport and killing at least 13 people and wounding more than 300.

The Houthi assault on the headquarters of Saudi Aramco, in Dhahran in the east of the kingdom on Tuesday, resulted in no casualties or injuries but caused a “limited fire,” the Saudi authorities said.

The strike damaged the office tower’s top three floors, according to two people with knowledge of the impact who spoke on condition of anonymity. No oil production or export infrastructure was damaged in the attack.

The global oil benchmark, Brent crude, was trading about 1 percent higher on Wednesday, a relatively modest rise that pushed the price above $106 a barrel. The global price was just under $70 a barrel on the eve of the war in late February.

“Given the attack did not impact oil operations, the market did not react,” said Amena Bakr, head of Middle East & OPEC+ Insights at Kpler, a maritime data firm.

Saudi Aramco is the world’s largest oil producer, and its headquarters — as well as a large residential community of employees — has been in Dhahran for about 90 years. From there, the company manages its vast network of onshore and offshore oil rigs, pipelines, refineries and export terminals.

The strike on Aramco’s nerve center came during the third day of the WPC Energy Congress, a weeklong oil and gas summit in Riyadh. The conference went forward as planned on Wednesday, with panel discussions on topics like the future of hydrogen and the outlook for natural gas.

But most of the prominent attendees canceled their trips to Riyadh, including the chief executives of BP, Exxon, Shell, Chevron and TotalEnergies.

More oil has been getting out of the region to global customers in the past several weeks, in large part because U.S. military forces have been guiding and protecting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz along the Omani coast, opposite the strait from Iran.

New York Times, ‘Why Did They Kill Him?’ Mourning Victims of Houthi Attack on a Saudi Airport, Vivian Nereim, Oct. 14, 2026. The strike was the Iran-backed militia’s most lethal against Saudi Arabia, by far, during their long conflict.

Mohammad Nasrullah was boarding a flight to Mecca, Islam’s holiest city, leading a group of pilgrims from Bangladesh.

Buthaina Owaida, a Syrian woman who had moved to Saudi Arabia, was on the phone with her grandson.

Mahmoud Barqawi was working in a restaurant at the airport, hoping to save enough money to build a home back in Jordan.

All three were among the people killed on Saturday afternoon when a cruise missile launched by Yemen’s Houthi militia smashed into Terminal 3 of the international airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital.

The attack by the Houthis — an Iranian-backed militia that has been battling Saudi Arabia on and off for more than a decade — set the terminal ablaze and brought chunks of the roof crashing down on travelers, killing at least 13 people and wounding more than 300, the Saudi authorities said.

Saturday’s assault was the deadliest in a Gulf Arab country since the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began in February. It was also the Houthis’ most lethal attack, by far, during their long conflict with Saudi Arabia, which continues to escalate. On Tuesday night, explosions rocked the Saudi and Yemeni capitals as the two sides exchanged intense strikes.

Days after the calamity at the airport, Saudis and foreign residents of the kingdom are still in shock, struggling to make sense of what happened.

“There is no justification for targeting civilians,” said Majed Alessa, a 25-year-old engineer, who said he had been eating lunch in an adjacent terminal and had just opened a book when he saw the blast through the panoramic windows. He was shaken but unscathed.

“What happened to these innocent people — they have nothing to do with anything,” he said.

Mr. Nasrullah, 37, was an Islamic studies teacher in Bangladesh and father of three, according to his brother, Mohammad Ahsanullah.

More Global News

 

pope leo xiv vatican media

New York Times, News Analysis: Leo XIV’s Cancer Diagnosis Tests the Assumption of a Long Papacy, Motoko Rich, Updated Oct. 14, 2026. For a pope who appeared to have time on his side, cancer has raised questions about his longevity and brought a new urgency to his plans for the church.

For a pope who appeared to have time on his side, cancer has raised questions about his longevity and brought a new urgency to his plans for the church.

When Leo XIV was elected pope less than 18 months ago, he seemed to have years ahead of him to shape the Roman Catholic Church. At 69, he was young by recent papal standards, and the faithful marveled at his energy and apparently robust health. He was known to play tennis regularly and had no reported medical problems. He reintroduced summer vacations to make sure he remained fresh and rested.

Leo, the first pope born in the United States, marked a break from his predecessor, Francis, who started his papacy at age 76 but had already had a lung condition at a young age. A year into his papacy, Francis told reporters that he thought he would serve as pope for only two or three years before going “off to the house of the Father.” Francis lasted a dozen years, but toward the end of his papacy had a bad knee, intestinal problems and finally, pneumonia in both lungs.

Now, Leo, who was diagnosed with lung cancer on Tuesday, suddenly faces the same sense of urgency and questions of longevity that had hung over Francis.

The diagnosis poses a lurching shift in the outlook for a pope whose relative youth and health indicated he had decades to reign. It casts uncertainty over his travel schedule, his agenda and his efforts to unite the church. And in the worst-case scenario, it raises questions about succession that most thought would not have to be addressed for years to come.

“The common consensus was he’s young, we’re in for a long papacy,” said Christopher White, a senior fellow at the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University and the author of “Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy.”

While Leo was not as young as Pope John Paul II, who was just 58 when he was elected in 1978, Leo’s apparent healthy lifestyle added to an impression of his vitality. “Leo has the profile of someone who takes care of himself,” Mr. White said. “So that has added to the shock.” 

Wayne Madsen Report, There is no record of Pope Leo having ever smoked tobacco, Wayne Madsen, Oct. 14, 2026. But did his lung cancer come from exposure to cancer-causing chemicals the U.S. used to spray coca fields in Peru?

One chemical used was tebuthiuron, marketed as Spike. Environmental organizations opposed the proposal because of potential damage to the Amazonian ecosystem. Another herbicide used was hexazinone.

America’s aerial drug eradication program coincided with Father Robert Prevost's missionary years in Peru.  

More On U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Religion

 

katie zacharia uncredited smile first day

bulwark morning shots logoMorning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: A Blast from the Past, Andrew Egger, right, andrew eggerOct. 14, 2026. Is Katie Zacharia, above, already blowing it? Karoline Leavitt’s replacement at the White House podium had a first day to forget yesterday, somehow managing to bungle her inaugural briefing despite it lasting only fifteen minutes and featuring zero adversarial questions. 

bulwark logo big shipAs if that weren’t enough, she then found herself facing uncomfortable questions about whether she has been misrepresenting herself as a lawyer for years. “Where did you pass the bar exam?” a reporter asked her after the briefing. “When I moved to China,” she replied.

Speaking to MSNOW, an anonymous White House official invoked the name no new Trump flack wants to hear: “She needs to get much better, fast, otherwise she’ll break Scaramucci’s record.” Anthony Scaramucci, of course, became notorious in 2017 for flaming out after just eleven days on the job as White House communications director.

We don’t know how long Zacharia will last, of course, but the comparison was apt in at least one sense. Her debut was the sort of personnel spectacle that was a constant of Trump’s first term and has been largely absent—so far—from his second. Katie Zacharia is a Trump One figure, somehow transported here to bless us in 2026.

Random, bizarre characters like this spent Trump’s first term popping in and out of government for a simple reason: Trump didn’t have a clue who to put in. He tried a bunch of different things and a bunch of different people, hiring and firing often. Sometimes he’d go with an “establishment” pick his GOP-veteran allies were pushing on him. Other times he’d flip through his Mar-a-Lago Rolodex and pull out, say, Linda McMahon.

Term Two has been different. The president knows the kind of people he likes: Blindly loyal ones who are willing to subvert everything—their dignity, their independence, their convictions, the law—to his every whim. His interregnum was extremely helpful in screening for these people, the ones who stuck with him through all the lows: the humiliating aftermath of January 6th, the criminal charges, and so on. He brought a pack of them back to Washington and put them in charge of everything.

But these tried-and-true loyalists are in ever-diminishing supply. Some, like Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi, became liabilities he needed to cut loose. Others, like Karoline Leavitt and Tulsi Gabbard, left on their own. Much to his own chagrin, Trump finds himself needing new people again.

Blind loyalty, of course, remains the top priority. Zacharia certainly has that. “I want to thank President Trump for his trust that he has placed in me,” she gushed at the top of yesterday’s baby-sized briefing. “I have wanted to work for him for a very long time.” Politico reported Tuesday that Zacharia auditioned for the role by monitoring the president’s public schedule and Truth Social posts to estimate when he’d be likeliest to be watching TV, and booking her own gushingly pro-Trump interviews on Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN to align to that schedule as much as possible. Trump, a sucker for that sort of thing, was reeled right in.

But finding blindly loyal figures who are also able to present as normal and sane is a little trickier. This was always Leavitt’s superpower: She could take the craziest, most intolerable Trump utterances or actions and argue for them as though they were the most normal, natural thing in the world, without ever giving the impression that she herself was insane. Maybe Zacharia will learn how to do this. Or maybe she’ll discover, as so many before her have, that the “trust he has placed in me” has a short half-life.

AROUND THE BULWARK

  • Trump’s Final Humiliation of Lindsey Graham… The ink was barely dry on the law named for the late senator when Trump broke it, writes MONA CHAREN.
  • bulwark logo big shipAmerica Is Making Its Own Problems Worse… All of the crises facing us around the world have one thing in common, observes MARK HERTLING.
  • “Superpower Suicide”: Dissecting Trump’s Deal With Putin… CHRYSTIA FREELAND, the former Canadian finance minister, explains to CATHERINE RAMPELL how Trump has crossed the Rubicon with Russia, and why decent people in the administration should resign.
  • The Road to a Democratic House Runs Through Iowa… After years of Republican dominance, anger over costs and the Iran war is creating a path back, reports JOE PERTICONE in Press Pass.
  • ‘You Can See Everything’ Review… SONNY BUNCH on Elizabeth Holmes, Nathan Fielder, and the reality of perception.

Quick Hits

THE GORILLA CHANNEL: Last weekend, a mentally ill man entered a tiger enclosure at a UK zoo and was mauled to death. It was a horrible tragedy, much discussed on social media. Including, now, by Donald Trump. Yesterday afternoon, the president posted grisly video footage of the killing to Truth Social, adding only the inscrutable caption: “Don’t ever mess with nature! President DJT.”

But then it got weirder, and worse. Minutes later, as if to underscore his point, Trump posted another 24-second sizzle reel of clips of big cats attacking people. Some of these clips might have been real footage of attacks, but many were unmistakably AI-generated. The whole thing was set to strange, jaunty electronic music. This time there was no caption. Perhaps worried that even this was still too tasteful, Trump then followed that with a second AI-generated version of the clip of this weekend’s fatal attack, this time with Trump himself digitally replacing the unfortunate UK man. In the AI video, the tiger starts to attack Trump, who then jumps up and chases the tiger down himself. The two playfully roughhouse. The song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” plays. He’d have been fine, is the idea.

Do you remember the “gorilla channel”? If you paid sicko-grade attention to politics during Trump’s first term, you might. It was an internet joke, an invented excerpt from Michael Wolff’s buzzy book Fire and Fury that a surprising number of people thought was real. The fake excerpt had Trump complaining that the White House TV didn’t carry “the gorilla channel,” forcing harried aides to slap together gorilla footage from nature documentaries to pipe into Trump’s bedroom—then, when Trump complained it was all too boring, editing out “all the parts of the documentaries where the gorillas weren’t hitting each other.”

Again: it was fake. But truth can be stranger than fiction. Trump has his hands on AI now; when he’s got animal maulings on the brain, he can pump out as much gorilla channel as he wants.

GUILFOYLED: How much scandal is Donald Trump willing to tolerate from his son’s ex-girlfriends? Not quite that much. Kimberly Guilfoyle resigned yesterday as ambassador to Greece, forced out by the president over allegations, reported in the Wall Street Journal, that she had spent her time in government selling access to the Trump family and schmoozing foreign businessmen to bankroll her lifestyle. Trump and his top advisers, it seems, were ultimately unconvinced by Guilfoyle’s frantic claims that the damning texts in the stories—like her begging a donor to wire $100,000 to American Express on her behalf—were AI-generated.

In her resignation post, Guilfoyle gauzily denied the various well-documented allegations against her, saying that “I intend to vigorously defend my name, my reputation, and my integrity.” Best of luck with that, Kimberly!

Meanwhile, Trump had already declared her banished from his own inner circle. “She wasn’t a member of my family,” he told reporters yesterday. “She, I guess, dated my son a long time ago. She went to Greece, she was doing a good job, but we didn’t like what we were reading.” Guilfoyle should have known: If she wanted to get away with incredible amounts of open corruption during Trump 2.0, she should have figured out how to lock Don Jr. down. That stuff is a family concern.

THE WORLD’S TINIEST VIOLIN: It’s genuinely difficult to overstate how bad morale is getting in the GOP House, which spent most of 2026 doing literally nothing and is now waking up to the fact that it’s not likely to get much done in the post-election lame-duck session either. Here’s Politico:

Republicans have had to defer many of their legislative dreams, hoping the post-election release of political pressure could set up a productive “lame duck” session before a new Congress is seated.

Fat chance, many GOP lawmakers now say.

Beyond the uncertainties surrounding the midterms and a potential transition of power on Capitol Hill, members will return to Washington facing a considerable list of must-pass bipartisan bills but also potentially messy internal leadership fights, a foul national mood and a mere 24 legislative days to get anything done.

One thing on Republicans’ minds is whether some of their members even come back to vote.

“The question becomes: Who shows up for work after the elections?” Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) said in an interview. “Attendance is an issue right now.”

You sure do hate to see it. 

 

jonathan v last jvl triad logo

The Triad Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Katie Zacharia and Pyongyang on the Potomac, Jonathan V. Last, above, Oct. 14, 2026. Everyone is dunking on Katie Zacharia’s debut as White House press secretary. And fair enough. It was extra, super-duper, not-great.

Will she make it a full Scaramucci!?!? America can’t wait to find out!

bulwark logo big shipBut I want us to look a little deeper. Because as ridiculous as she may be, Katie Zacharia is another consequence of Trumpism: the transformation of the White House press room into a simulacrum of the Korean Central News Agency.

Walk with me through the press conference, beat by beat.

Zacharia spoke for a few minutes before taking seven questions from the “press.”

The first two questions came from Breitbart News. Breitbart is indistinguishable from a state-run organ. How tightly is the company tied to Donald Trump?

In 2016, Trump hired Breitbart executive chairman Steve Bannon to run his presidential campaign and, after he won, made Bannon his chief White House strategist. In 2016, the Mercer family—part of the Breitbart ownership group—gave $3.4 million to “Trump’s campaign, the Republican Party and a family super PAC that backed the businessman’s presidential bid and was run by Kellyanne Conway.” You will recall that Kellyanne Conway would go on to work in Trump’s White House, too.

The second questioner was from Fox News. Peter Doocy asked one policy question—“Has the U.S. stopped sharing intel with Ukraine?”—for which Zacharia had no answer. That exchange took less than seven seconds and came after his much longer exchange with Zacharia, taking more than a minute, in which he asked Zacharia about herself. (More on this in a moment.)

Again, remember the context: Like Breitbart, Fox News is functionally state-controlled. Fox’s independence is so nonexistent that its “journalists” routinely function as informal advisers to Trump. See the rich history of texts between the Trump administrations and Sean Hannity and Maria Bartiromo. And that’s the unofficial pipeline. At least twenty-three Fox “journalists,” contributors, and other alumni were hired by the administration this term alone.

Never forget: Fox isn’t just partisan or compromised. The network was willing to pay $787 million in damages so that it could support Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. Fox isn’t “journalism.” It’s not even a “business.” It’s a state-directed propaganda outlet with cable carriage fees and an ad sales team.

The third questioner was from NewsNation, a young cable outlet that depicts itself as centrist and does give airtime to an eclectic collection of hosts and contributors—but that has increasingly tilted toward the right. And the reporter asked a question that appeared to have been planted by the White House.

After the previous gauzy, softball questions in response to which Zacharia stuttered, twirled her hair, and groped for words, the NewsNation reporter asked a serious question about Kimberly Guilfoyle and suddenly—miraculously!—Zacharia looked down at her notes and delivered a perfectly poised and formulated response with a clear beginning, middle, and end:

We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign. She has been a wonderful asset to the team, and we wish her well.

So that’s your White House briefing room. Largely fluff questions from state-aligned media, and then a rightward-tilting media outlet regurgitating a question that sure looks like it was given to them by the White House.

How is this different from North Korea?

Hold on to your butts, though. It gets worse.2. Who’s the Boss?

Let’s revisit the main question posed to Zacharia by Fox News: “Is your job just to speak about White House matters, or is it to make things less tough for Republicans in the midterms?”

Here’s how Zacharia answered:

I get to do what I was doing on the outside already, which was hoping to amplify, multiply, and expand upon President Trump's incredible agenda for the American people. And what I hope to do in this position is to take that into an official capacity and only build on, only amplify, and only multiply, to the extent possible, all of the wins he’s making for Americans.

Hold the phone—what was Zacharia “doing on the outside already”?

Immediately prior to working for the White House, Zacharia was a “senior communications advisor” for the Trump Media & Technology Group—the Trump-owned propaganda operation that operates Trump’s Truth Social platform.

Zacharia was being paid by Trump, to do propaganda—sorry, “communications”—for Trump.¹

And now she wants to do the same work. But, you know, officially.

There’s just one problem with that: Katie Zacharia no longer works for Donald Trump. She works for the president of the United States. Which is to say: She works for the American people.

Her duty is not to Trump. Her duty is to the country. Which means that her duty is to truth, because she answers not just to Donald Trump and the people who voted for him, but to the millions of Americans who voted against him, too.

Once upon a time all government employees, up to and including the president, understood that they worked “for the American people.” The phrase was a cliché because it was true. Washington had its share of venal, corrupt strivers and cynics. But these mountebanks understood that they were working on the sly, putting one over on the system.

Donald Trump changed all that because he believes—truly believes—that he is the American people.

That’s what it means to be an autocrat. Trump views his person as inseparable from the state. By definition, Donald Trump can have no interests counter to the interests of the state. And vice versa.

It’s a subtle but meaningful shift.

From: My boss is the American people.

To: My boss is the American people.

At least Katie Zacharia is open about who, and what, she is.

Oh, and don’t forget the president’s other new hire in the press shop. It was just two weeks ago that one of the White House press pool reporters, Beni Rae Harmony, stopped “covering” the president as a journalist and took a job speaking on behalf of the president as a paid surrogate.

I ask again: How is any of this different from the way Moscow or Beijing view “press relations”?

I wonder: Do you think mainstream media will report the statements of Zacharia, or Harmony, with the same studied neutrality of the Before Times?

That’s funny. Of course they will.

But the funniest part is that the mainstream media will pretend that the Trump administration is functioning like a normal government, operating under regular order, even as Trump’s own propagandists have given up the pretense.

Katie Zacharia is comfortable admitting what she is.

It’s the rest of the “real” media that is loath to acknowledge it. Because doing so would require them to make some uncomfortable changes.

The Bulwark, Opinion: Ramaswamy Campaign Ad Accidentally Featured a Sex Offender, Jim Swift, The campaign says it’s recutting the spot, which was meant to be about the plague of high property taxes.

PROPERTY TAXES ARE A HOT-BUTTON ISSUE in Ohio, where Republican Vivek Ramaswamy is trying to run as a change candidate for governor in a state long run by Republicans. And in his latest campaign ad, he tried to press the button hard. The spot featured a woman from Amherst (a Cleveland suburb) named Patricia “Patty” Edwards, who is fretting about losing the family farm.

But while the topic may resonate with voters, the featured couple has created complications for Ramaswamy’s camp.

That’s because Vernon Edwards—Patty’s husband, who appears a few times in b-roll alongside her in the ad—is a registered sex offender.

According to court records, Edwards entered into a plea deal in October 2006, in which he pleaded guilty to two counts of “gross sexual imposition”—that is, according to Ohio statute, nonconsensual sexual contact—with a minor. Though there were allegations that he committed similar acts against several nieces, he was ultimately charged in a case involving one of them, a girl under the age of 13, because the statute of limitations had expired in the other instances. He was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Vernon Edwards isn’t the main focus of the Ramaswamy campaign ad. But he does appear several times in it, with footage drawn from a prior interaction he and his wife had with Ramaswamy at the Lorain County Fair in September this year. That interaction, posted in September by Ramaswamy to his X account, took place while he was glad-handing voters. Vernon Edwards greeted Ramaswamy with a handshake, and the candidate complimented his patriotic shirt. Later, Patty Edwards introduced herself to Ramaswamy and grew emotional while talking with him about the heavy weight of property taxes and her fears she would lose her farm. Six weeks later, the campaign produced the television ad featuring Patty Edwards talking directly to camera and at a kitchen table expressing those same fears.

Asked about Vernon Edwards’s criminal history, Evan Machan, a spokesperson for the Ramaswamy campaign, said they had no prior knowledge of it and were changing the version of the ad currently in rotation in order to remove him.

“This ad was based on a real interaction between Vivek and an Ohio woman who was distraught at a county fair because she may have to move out of her home due to rising property taxes. We had no knowledge of the circumstances now being reported,” said Machan. “The man has been removed from the ad. The fact of the matter is that property taxes are insanely high and causing many Ohioans to consider moving out of their homes. Vivek is the leader who will fix it.”

After offering the comment, the campaign also quietly took down the social video featuring Vernon Edwards, as did at least one Republican Ohio state representative who had shared the video as well—suggesting a coordinated effort to wipe the record.

The inclusion of Vernon Edwards in the original social video and the television ad raises questions about the aspiring governor’s campaign—specifically, whether it is conducting due diligence. Ramaswamy is running for chief executive of the Buckeye State—and asking Ohioans to trust his judgment enough to make him governor—on the strength of his personal narrative, which pictures him as a competent business leader.

In a phone call with The Bulwark, Patty said that the campaign reached out to her about recording the ad. She stressed that the commercial was about her story and had nothing to do with her husband.

“I am a normal American citizen, and the ad was with me and with Vivek. That’s who was involved with us, and that’s who they reached out to,” she said. As for her husband’s past history, she called the accusations against him “false,” saying that the prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence. “Even if that [the allegations] were true,” she added, “the man did do his time back to society, and he has been an exemplary citizen at this point. And again, Vivek reached out to me. I am not accused of anything. I am an American citizen. I’m allowed to do this.”

Campaigns typically vet the individuals they put forward in ads to ensure both that their stories are true and that there are no red flags in their biographies. Among the records that could have been discovered were court documents showing a Vernon Edwards from the same Amherst address as Patty listed in the Lorain County sex offender registry. In addition, a Google search would have shown Edwards appearing to wear the exact same patriotic shirt in the sex offender registry as the one Ramaswamy complimented him for wearing when they met at the fair.

New York Times, Elon Musk, Delta Airlines and a Feud Over In-Flight Wi-Fi, Niraj Chokshi, Updated Oct. 12, 2026. Mr. Musk, whose company SpaceX owns Starlink, has attacked the top executive of Delta Air Lines for not selecting the internet provider.

Airplane Wi-Fi has long been slow and balky. But airlines are racing to change that.

Hoping that faster, more reliable internet access will help them attract and retain customers, many carriers are upgrading their planes to use Starlink, the satellite internet service operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. On Thursday, American Airlines said it would outfit more than 1,000 planes with Starlink.

But Delta Air Lines has chosen not to go with Starlink, which has upset Mr. Musk, SpaceX’s chief executive.

Mr. Musk said last month that Delta’s chief executive would “lose his job” for choosing Amazon’s satellite service, and he earlier attacked the top executive of Ryanair, the European carrier, for snubbing Starlink, too. This week, he said Indian oligarchs were blocking Starlink there, which he called a “a crime against the people of India.”From fee to free.

Lufthansa was the first commercial airline to offer in-flight internet access in 2004, using a service developed by Boeing. But Boeing shut down the project just two years later.

Other providers filled the void, and U.S. airlines started to offer Wi-Fi in the late 2000s. But few passengers used those services, which were often expensive, slow and unreliable. Over the years, the costs started to fall.

In 2023, Delta eliminated Wi-Fi fees for members of the company’s loyalty program. JetBlue Airways had been offering free internet access for years — but Delta kicked off an industry shift.Why is Wi-Fi so important?

Many airlines offer free internet service to passengers who sign up for frequent flier programs. The programs allow the companies to collect more information about travelers and to encourage them to buy more tickets and sign up for credit cards.

At an industry conference last month, Robert Isom, the chief executive of American, said the airline was expanding its loyalty program at record rates. “A lot of that is driven by the free Wi-Fi,” he said.

Executives also say they are switching to Starlink because the earlier internet services they offered were subpar. This summer, executives at Alaska Airlines said customer satisfaction was about 20 percent higher on flights with Starlink.

But some industry experts say that most travelers pick airlines for many reasons and that Wi-Fi is not the most important one.

“People who are going to fly a lot in the future are going to self-select and gradually find the right program that fits best for them,” said Jay Sorensen, who runs IdeaWorksCompany, an aviation industry consulting firm. “You can’t really create that.”

That doesn’t mean Wi-Fi is irrelevant. Like soft drinks and snacks, internet access has become an expectation among passengers, Mr. Sorensen said.

Why is Mr. Musk feuding with Delta?

Most major U.S. airlines upgrading to high-speed Wi-Fi are going with Starlink, whose satellites orbit closer to Earth than older satellites.

American, Alaska, United and Southwest Airlines have selected Starlink. But Delta, the most profitable U.S. airline, and JetBlue have chosen Amazon Leo, a satellite service that is not yet available.

After Delta announced the partnership this year, Mr. Musk said the airline “wanted to make it painful, difficult and expensive for their customers.” Last week, he said Delta’s chief, Ed Bastian, had made an error that could cost him his position. Mr. Musk was responding to an unverified report that Mr. Bastian had said it was not wise to work with Mr. Musk.

In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Bastian disputed that report.

“I wouldn’t say that in a public setting or a private setting,” he said. “What we said is that we’re not working with Starlink because we decided to go a different direction.”

espn logo

Columbia Journalism Review, Interview: ‘I’m Not Going to Have Blood on My Hands’ -- Why Nicole Noren, a decorated ESPN producer, quit in protest, Danny Funt, Oct. 14, 2026. For years, ESPN wanted nothing to do with sports gambling.

columbia journalism review logoThat stance had softened a bit as of 2018, when the Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on bookmaking, but the following year, Bob Iger, who was then the CEO of ESPN’s parent, Disney, told investors: “I don’t see the Walt Disney Company, certainly in the near term, getting involved in the business of gambling, in effect, by facilitating gambling in any way.”

So it came as a shock to many people, including Nicole Noren, a longtime ESPN producer, when ESPN licensed its name to a gambling app in 2023. By then, ESPN, like so many sports outlets, was promoting betting at virtually every opportunity; now it would encourage fans to use ESPN Bet. The app, which stood to generate a billion and a half dollars for the network over ten years, proved to be an embarrassing flop. But it was promptly replaced by a partnership with DraftKings, the sports gambling giant. These days, DraftKings ads blanket ESPN coverage, and this past March the companies enabled customers to link their ESPN and DraftKings accounts. It’s a partnership, a press release explained, “that goes beyond a traditional marketing arrangement, redefining how fans engage with sports.”

For Noren, ESPN Bet was the last straw. “I was out,” she told me. “I’m not going to work for a gambling company and have blood on my hands.” ESPN wasn’t an easy place to leave. Noren had worked there for twenty-four years, winning Emmy, Murrow, and Peabody awards, mainly for her work on Outside the Lines, the investigative newsmagazine. She was entrusted with some of the network’s most serious and sensitive reporting, involving topics such as gender-based violence, the mental health of college students, and concussions. With the NFL back in full swing—and ESPN preparing to carry its first-ever Super Bowl, in February—Noren spoke publicly for the first time about her own family’s experience with compulsive gambling. “Addiction dictated every part of our life,” she said. “It’s very, very personal to me.” Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Oct. 13

Top Headlines

 

Presidents Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin have a long history of deal-making and mutual support on key issues, while occassionally creating temporary disputes to obscure their larger goals.

Presidents Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin have a long history of deal-making and mutual support on key issues, while occassionally creating temporary disputes to obscure their larger goals.

Special Reports: Elon Musk

 

President Trump and Elon Musk (graphic via Proof).President Trump and Elon Musk (Photographic via Proof).

  • Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Oct. 12, 2026 [Musk's Money and Elections], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 13, 2026. Billionaire Elon Musk has already funneled at least $366 million into the midterms to try to make sure voters elect Republicans. Theodore Schleifer of the New York Times reported today that Musk has put more than $276 million of that money into groups and political action committees just since July. More than $76 million has gone into his own super PAC, which is focused on seven Senate seats in battleground states, and more than thirty House races.
  • Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Elon Musk Shows Us Why Oligarchy is a Danger, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 13, 2026. Mega-billionairres are more dangerous to democracy than the merely rich. Dismissing mega-billionaires — hey, they only own 4 percent or so of America — is deeply misleading, for these ultra-rich are at the heart of the rising power of big money in U.S. politics.
  • Emptywheel, Analysis and Opinion:GOP Accepts $296M Bribe to Protect African Immigrant CSAM Purveyor, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), marcy wheelerOct. 13, 2026. There are several ways to understand the $276M Elon Musk is spending to keep right wingers in power, to say nothing of the election disinformation he is spreading.

News Roundups

Special Reports: More On Russia, Ukraine, Assaults On West

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

  • U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsHopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion: Elections Are Decided In November, But They’re Won In October, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 13, 2026. The big news today is that we are now only three weeks till Election Day, and that over the next week more than twenty states will turn on early in person. Very soon tens of millions of Americans will soon be voting all across the country. Some very important states start voting this week - Alaska, Georgia, Kansas, Iowa, and North Carolina. So away we go, people!
  • New York Times, Top G.O.P. Groups Pull Support From First House Incumbents, Shane Goldmacher, Oct. 13, 2026. Two major Republican super PACs are said to be withdrawing cash from the races of the incumbent Representatives Thomas H. Kean Jr. of New Jersey and Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa in an effort to triage the midterm map.
  • New York Times, Kimberly Guilfoyle Resigns as Ambassador to Greece, Tyler Pager, Oct. 13, 2026. Ms. Guilfoyle was asked to quit by the White House after a string of damaging reports, including that she had asked a Republican donor to pay off a credit card.
  • Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Our Elites Booked It, William Kristol, right, william bill kristol imdbOct. 13, 2026. Yesterday I remarked that “seeing support for President Trump collapse among the public—with very little help from our pitifully complacent and fearful elites—is heartening. Even inspiring.”The Contrarian, Opinion: Words & Phrases: “I regret,” Jennifer Rubin, right, jennifer rubin new headshotOct. 13, 2026. 🚨 21 Days to the Midterms 🚨 The Congress is filled with Republican lawmakers who are too dim-witted, ignorant, and spineless to cross Donald Trump. The voters who sent them to D.C. were aware of their moral and intellectualincapacities. It has never been a secret that Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri is a white nationalist and conspiratorialist nut; no one mistakes Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama for a man of keen even modest intellect. But those lawmakers who style themselves as thoughtful “moderates,” yet continually betray their constituents and fail to screw up the courage to counter a despotic, dangerous, and racist president deserve special opprobrium.
  • The Hartmann Report, Commentary: Is Gavin Newsom Repeating the Billionaire Mistake That's Tearing France Apart? Thom Hartmann, right, thom hartmann newOct. 13, 2026. France's unrest exposes the consequences of failing to tax the wealthy. California's billionaire-tax fight raises the same fundamental question about who should pay to make a nation succeed...
  • New York Times, Hillary Clinton Steps to the Podcast Mic as Midterms Approach, Benjamin Mullin, Oct. 13, 2026. With “High Stakes,” Mrs. Clinton is teaming up with “Pivot” co-host Kara Swisher to break down the consequential battle for the House and the Senate.
  • New York Times, He Would Be Florida’s First Black Governor. Can He Sway Black Voters? David Ovalle, Oct. 13, 2026. Byron Donalds, the Republican nominee for governor, is working to win over Black voters who usually support Democrats as his party girds for the possibility of low turnout.
  • New York Times, Republicans Promoted a False Rumor That James Talarico Was in Ohio, Bayliss Wagner, Oct. 13, 2026 (print ed.). The Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas spent nine days off the trail with what he and his campaign said was a bad case of the flu. His opponents fueled rumors, including one that spread widely before it was debunked.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption  

 

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Reporting: Trump: the not-so-closeted bisexual, Wayne Madsen, Oct. 13, 2026. Trump’s comments speak volumes about his sexual preferences.

wayne madsen new observerWayne Madsen Report, Investigative Reporting: Trump: the not-so-closeted bisexual, Wayne Madsen, right, Oct. 13, 2026. Trump’s comments speak volumes about his sexual preferences. 

  • Hope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump is facing a dire situation, Heather Delaney Reese, right, helen delaney reese djtOct. 13, 2026. At 7:21 tonight, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, walked straight onto the stage in Covelli Centre in Youngstown, Ohio, and told the crowd how much he liked the “ass” of one of the men he was there to campaign for to keep his position in federal office. The rest of his nearly 1½-hour-long rally showed much of the same bizarre ramblings and just how much Trump seems to be struggling mentally, not even halfway through his second term. The man with the body Trump admired was actually Senator Jon Husted, one of the two men that Trump had flown to Ohio to campaign for. The other was Vivek Ramaswamy, who he had actually campaigned against during the Republican presidential primaries. But Trump seemed particularly fascinated by Husted, because that wasn’t the only time that he commented on Husted’s body.
  • Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Nothing Left to Give, Andrew Egger, right, andrew eggerOct. 13, 2026. Donald Trump’s rallies all have so much in common—the stock grievances, the stock insults, the stock anecdotes, the decade-old bits—that they can run together. But there are differences.

U.S. Immigration Attacks On Minnesota, California, Congresswoman

More On Middle East Wars

 

  • New York Times, The Oct. 7 Attack Changed Israel, but Not Its Politics, Isabel Kershner, Oct. 13, 2026. As Israelis prepare to vote for the first time since the Hamas-led assault, they remain divided over whether to hold Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responsible for negligence or fault the “treason” of his generals.

More Global News

More On U.S. Media, Sports, Religion 

 

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

  • New York Times, Opinion: The Supreme Court Has Grown Too Powerful. This Is How to Rein It In, Kate Shaw, Oct. 13, 2026. The Supreme Court justices took the bench last week to hear oral arguments, but the start of this term feels different from previous ones. For one thing, with the sharp increase in activity on the shadow docket, the justices don’t really take the summers off the way they used to.

More On U.S. Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets

Top Stories

 

 

Presidents Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin have a long history of deal-making and mutual support on key issues, while occassionally creating temporary disputes to obscure their larger goals.

Presidents Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin have a long history of deal-making and mutual support on key issues, while occassionally creating temporary disputes to obscure their larger goals.

New York Times, U.K. and Europe Recoil From Trump’s Diesel Deal With Putin, Michael D. Shear and Jeanna Smialek, Oct. 13, 2026. Shocked by the U.S. agreement with Russia, which Ukraine has called “a gift” to President Putin, officials in Europe have coalesced around a cautious diplomatic message.

European and British officials were stunned by President Trump’s unexpected announcement that he had made a deal with President Vladimir V. Putin to purchase Russian diesel fuel. But they were in a bind on how to respond.

The arrangement, which President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine called “a gift” to President Putin, directly undercuts years of effort by dozens of countries — including the United States — to cut Russia off from the money that fuels Mr. Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine.

Energy experts have said that the diesel agreement, if it goes ahead, could send some $4 billion of American money into the Russian economy.

Mr. Trump’s announcement on Friday afternoon of his “highly successful discussion” with Mr. Putin was all the more shocking in Europe as it came after Russia conducted several brutal strikes in Ukraine, killing 22 people including three babies in an apartment block on Wednesday and at least 30 people in a bus on Thursday.

For European leaders, the dilemma over the past three days has been familiar: How to support Ukraine in a moment of acute diplomatic peril, without triggering Mr. Trump’s ire?

As they scrambled for a response, they have stopped short of directly criticizing the American president and coalesced around a single diplomatic message: We are not changing our own approach to Russia, and we stand by Ukraine.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Eastern Europe, Northern Europe and Western Europe? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

On Saturday, Britain announced that Prime Minister Andy Burnham had spoken to Mr. Zelensky, noting that he had begun the call “by recognizing the last 24 hours had been difficult for Ukraine” — an oblique reference to Mr. Trump’s intervention — and had “reiterated his complete solidarity.” The statement added that Mr. Burnham would meet with Mr. Zelensky in the coming days.

A spokesman for the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, told reporters that the government was “standing by the sanctions decisions against Russia and is working together with its European partners on further sanctions.”

Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat, began her comments to reporters on Monday with a conciliatory nod to the United States, before saying that the bloc was “continuing our path” of trying to keep Russia from enriching itself by blocking the sale of oil and gas on the global market.

“The U.S. is our biggest ally, but our message is clear,” she said while entering a meeting of foreign affairs ministers in Luxembourg. “If we want to end this war, the only way we can do this is by putting more pressure on Russia.”

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Donald Trump Got Mugged by Reality, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Oct. 13, 2026. bulwark morning shots logoAll he has now is shtick.

The midterms hammer hasn’t fallen yet, but it’s getting closer every day. Today, the New York Times reported that top Republican super PACs are giving up on two embattled House incumbents, Iowa bulwark logo big shipRep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and New Jersey Rep. Thomas Kean Jr. The PACs are pulling more than $10 million out of the two races, essentially giving them up for lost in an effort to spend more on other seats they hope will be more defensible.

A bit of in-house news: George Conway is back! His new Bulwark show, Psycho Politics, will drop weekly on Monday nights. Happy Tuesday.

 Special Reports: Elon Musk

 

President Trump and Elon Musk (graphic via Proof).President Trump and Elon Musk (Photographic via Proof).

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Oct. 12, 2026 [Musk's Money and Elections], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 13, 2026. Billionaire Elon Musk has already funneled at least $366 million into the midterms to try to make sure voters elect Republicans. Theodore Schleifer of the New York Times reported today that Musk has put more than $276 million of that money into groups and political action committees just since July. More than $76 million has gone into his own super PAC, which is focused on seven Senate seats in battleground states, and more than thirty House races.

Schleifer notes that this is just the money that law requires must be disclosed; sources told Schleifer that in both this election and in 2024, Musk has made seven-figure donations to candidates through so-called “dark money” groups: ones that aren’t required to disclose their donors.

Adam Wren, Meredith Lee Hill, and Will Steakin of Politico report that Trump’s super PAC, “MAGA Inc.,” is coordinating with other super PACs to try to salvage the Republicans’ control of the Senate. The Republican Senate Leadership Fund has poured close to $100 million into Ohio alone to defeat former senator Sherrod Brown and is expecting to dump close to $200 million into Texas to defeat James Talarico. It’s also throwing money at Iowa to defeat Josh Turek, at Alaska to defeat Mary Peltola, at Michigan to defeat Abdul El-Sayed, and even at Kansas, to defeat Adam Hamilton.

Among other projects, Musk’s money is producing literature accusing Democrats of being radicals.

And yet the real radicalism in American politics today comes from those like Musk, those on the right who are consolidating the power of the government and the money of the American people into their own hands: Musk’s businesses depend on government contracts, after all, contracts a Democratic-run Congress would likely revisit.

That right-wing radicalism was on full display this morning, when agents from the Department of Homeland Security conducted a predawn raid on the Washington, D.C., home of Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN). According to the Fox News Channel, which appears to have been read into the raid ahead of time, the Justice Department claimed that the search “stems from a criminal fraud investigation” over immigration paperwork filled out by her late father in the 1990s when Omar was a child.

Not only is it unlikely that evidence of a potential crime committed when the congresswoman was a child would be in her Washington, D.C., residence decades later, but also, as legal analyst Joyce White Vance noted: “To state what’s obvious to prosecutors here, we are within the period before an election where [the Department of Justice] doesn’t take overt steps in an investigation that might influence its outcome. Another hard norm out the window.” More to the point was the comment by Mark Jacob of Stop the Presses, who noted: “This search was conducted by the Homeland Security Department, where lying and harassment are routine.”

Indeed, this latest attack on Omar follows Trump’s social media post of last Thursday, when he urged “[t]he people of Minnesota” to “fight back!” against Minnesotans of Somali heritage. Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, a MAGA Republican, promptly echoed Trump, referring to Somali-Americans as “enemy combatants” and complaining that Democrats were not “rounding them up [and] putting them in jail.”

This new attack on a Democratic representative is the second attempt of the administration to cow Democratic representatives. It has an ongoing case against New Jersey representative LaMonica McIver, whom it accuses of assaulting immigration agents in a skirmish outside of Delaney Hall detention center, in which no one was hurt. If McIver is convicted, she faces up to 17 years in prison. Both Omar and McIver are women of color. The attempt of the president to arrest and imprison his political opponents in the legislative branch is a direct assault on our democracy.

Indeed, the administration is trying to make their opponents live in fear. The latest target of their ire is Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide to Trump’s first-term chief of staff Mark Meadows. Hutchinson was working in the White House in the weeks when Trump was trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and she testified before Congress about Trump’s behavior during that time. Federal prosecutors are trying to get a grand jury in Washington, D.C., to indict her for perjury.

As the attack on Omar shows, in their attempt to grasp complete control of the country, Trump and his loyalists are working hard to divide the American people along the old culture war lines that worked in the past. But Americans are concerned primarily about the economy as the war on Iran drives prices upward, so Republicans are becoming more and more extreme in their actions and their ads.

As Morgan Trau of WEWS wrote in a piece reprinted by the Ohio Capital Journal, an ad paid for by the Senate Leadership Fund featuring a woman who accuses Ohio Senate candidate Sherrod Brown of “pushing transgender surgeries on minors ‘like her,’” and who, in another ad, claims she had “surgery without my parents’ consent” as “a kid,” actually shows a woman from Texas who had gender-affirming surgery in that state as an adult. She has no connection to Ohio, where such surgery on minors is illegal.

Brown’s statement on healthcare was that he believes families and their doctors, not politicians, should make healthcare decisions.

An even more extreme meltdown took place over the weekend as MAGA tried to insist that Texas Democratic candidate James Talarico had suffered a mental breakdown and had been admitted to a treatment facility in Ohio. As Will Sommer and Andrew Egger of The Bulwark explained yesterday, MAGA influencers Nick Sortor and Rhein Amacher claimed they had proof that Talarico had been at the Lindner Center of Hope in Mason, Ohio. They claimed they had a tape of a Lindner employee telling them over the phone that Talarico had just been released.

With Musk pushing it, Sortor’s social media post alleging that “proof” garnered millions of views in hours.

But, predictably, the story fell apart fast. Neither the logic (why would Talarico go to Ohio for medical treatment rather than stay in Texas?) nor the timeline (Tararico was out in public in Texas during the time Sortor suggested he was in treatment) made sense. Then Sommer and Egger got access to the full recording of the alleged “proof.” It showed Amacher lying to the Lindner employee to get her to expose private health information. It also showed her repeatedly denying that anyone named James Talarico was in the system.

On Sunday night, the Lindner Center publicly announced that Talarico had never been treated there. Talarico himself posted a laughing emoji beside the information that he has never even been to Ohio. To a reporter, he added his own assessment of his opponent’s health, “I’ve heard credible reports that Ken Paxton has a serious medical condition that causes clinical levels of cowardice,” and noted that Paxton has refused to debate Talarico about actual issues.

Sommer and Egger note that while HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, says medical providers can’t disclose patients’ information, it also penalizes individuals who try to get that information improperly, imposing heavier penalties for those who commit that offense “under false pretenses.” Those who access that information “for commercial advantage, personal gain, or malicious harm” can be fined up to $250,000 and be imprisoned for up to ten years.

Amacher later told Jesse Singal that he did not do “any after-the-fact fact-checking work and pointed to the fact that he’s a political advocate, not a journalist, and is therefore held to different standards.”

Trump’s choice of Katie Zacharia on Friday to become the new White House press secretary illustrates that the administration is fully committed to pushing its dominance through disinformation. As Judd Legum explained yesterday in Popular Information, Zacharia is a conspiracy theorist who pushed the “Pizzagate” conspiracy, the lie popular in 2016 that leading Democrats and Hollywood figures were sexually trafficking children and engaging in cannibalism in an organization run out of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant.

As Legum notes, Zacharia was relatively obscure before Trump tapped her. Her major qualification is that she posts a lot on Trump’s social media site and has worked as a senior communications advisor for the site.

On Saturday, Trump told a crowd in Clarksville, Tennessee: “There’s such love. Like, I mean, it’s amazing. When you stand up here, it’s just like—the love. I could say the stupidest things and you’d clap me.” He claimed that, in fact, what he does say is “things of common sense” and called for renaming the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean either “‘Trump Ocean’ or ‘Ocean of the Americas.’”

Media figures are increasingly showing that Trump’s promises are false. Although Trump suggested after public outcry about $20 million in tax dollars going to his ads promoting himself that he would pay for them, the ads were apparently paid for with money Republicans in Congress allocated to the Department of Homeland Security. When asked on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday about a reimbursement for taxpayers, Department of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin answered: “Any time we can do a public service announcement and brag about America, I’m all about it.... I think 99% of the coverage from President Trump is negative…. I commend the opportunity of President Trump to give us the opportunity to brag about America.” “So, no reimbursement,” host Margaret Brennan concluded.

Last night, U.S. District Judge Jennifer Rochon ordered the administration to immediately stop running the ads, which have been running on national media for two weeks, saying they likely “exceed the purposes authorized by Congress and violate restrictions on publicity and propaganda.” Kyle Cheney of Politico explained that the administration tried to avoid a ruling on the legality of the ad campaign by saying it was going to stop it after Sunday.

Scott Nover, Aaron Schaffer, and Aoife Walsh of the Washington Post reported that the administration ignored the order and continued to run the ads today.

The administration also appears to have ignored the law on Saturday, when it felled more than 400 trees on the East Potomac Golf Links course that Trump wants to turn into another of his projects.

U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes had previously warned the administration not to make any irreversible changes to the landscape, but she did not forbid it from doing maintenance work. The administration maintains the Saturday cutting was routine maintenance. Reyes was furious, telling the administration’s lawyers she didn’t know how she could have made it any clearer that she was trying to stop it from doing precisely what it did. She warned that the government had lost all credibility with her. The administration’s lawyer said they still planned to cut several hundred more trees.

Trump’s announcement on Sunday that both Russia and Ukraine had agreed to an “energy ceasefire” has also been exposed as a devastating lie. At the time, Ukraine said it had heard nothing about any such plan until it appeared on social media, and Russia promptly attacked Ukrainian power plants.

Foreign affairs journalist Anne Applebaum wrote today in The Atlantic that Trump’s dropping of sanctions against Russian oil looks like “an abrupt, Hail Mary attempt to force Ukraine to surrender and to save the Russian economy, perhaps in order to finally complete the multiple business deals that the Russians are known to have discussed with American negotiators and others in Trump’s orbit.”

Meanwhile, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have attacked Saudi Arabia’s main airport, killing at least 20 people, including a U.S. national. Oil prices are rising again, and Trump is said to be considering joining the Saudi fight against the Houthis.

On Friday evening, before the long weekend, the Pentagon quietly raised the number of U.S. service members killed in the Iran war from 18 to 21, and the number of wounded from 767 to 865, updating the numbers that had been on the Defense Casualty Analysis System website since August.

As John Ismay of the New York Times noted, when the Washington Post reported in September that the Pentagon was hiding the true numbers of those killed in the Iran war, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on social media: “This is DISGUSTING and FAKE. A complete LIE.”

On Wednesday, Barak Ravid of Axios reported that the U.S. military is drawing up plans for another round of major combat operations in Iran.

Hegseth has named Elon Musk, who is pouring money into the midterms, to Project Meridian, a group charged with plotting out the future of the American military.

Identifying where the actual radicalism in American politics lies at this moment is important.

 

 

President Trump and the world's first trillionairre, Elon Musk, right, have renewed and enhanced their alliance to install ultra-right governments in the United States and around the Western World (File photo)..dj elon musk politicoPresident Trump and the world's first trillionairre, Elon Musk, right, have renewed and enhanced their alliance to install ultra-right governments in the United States and around the Western World (File photo).

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Elon Musk Shows Us Why Oligarchy is a Danger, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 13, 2026. Mega-billionairres are more dangerous to democracy than the merely rich.

Today a relatively short note about how some political news bears on a controversy that has been brewing among some economists. Basically, some analysts are saying that we talk too much about mega-billionaires, and not enough about the merely very rich. Thus a new book by Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick, “The Everywhere Millionaire” — their Substack is here — points out that there are about 5 million Americans whose wealth exceeds $5 million. Of these, 3 million are what they call Main Street Millionaires, wealthy small business owners. And as they say, “Collectively, Main Street Millionaires have more than thirteen times the wealth of the Forbes 400.”

And they’re right that focusing only on the extremely (obscenely) rich misses the role played by wealthy small business owners.

Yet dismissing mega-billionaires — hey, they only own 4 percent or so of America — is deeply misleading, for these ultra-rich are at the heart of the rising power of big money in U.S. politics.

First, an economic observation: While the ultra-rich still don’t own as much of America’s wealthy as some may imagine, they have played a dominant role in the rising concentration of wealth.

Using data from realtimeinequality.org, the share of the top 1 percent — roughly corresponding to Zidar and Zwick’s definition of the wealthy — in U.S. wealth rose from 23.2 percent of total wealth in 1979 to 38.3 percent today. So one might think that the great rise in concentrated wealth was a “1 percent” phenomenon. But if we look at the changes in wealth share within the 1 percent, we find that very little of it involved the bottom 90 percent of that group, and most of it came from the top 0.01 percent — the one percent of the one percent:

The big rise in wealth concentration has come from the soaring wealth of a very small group, not the everyday millionaires.

And when it comes to political influence, billionaires wield power that vastly exceeds even their share of wealth. The Forbes 400 may only own 4 percent of U.S. wealth; but the New York Times found that 300 billionaires accounted for 19 percent of all reported federal campaign contributions in the 2024 election. And these are only reported, cash donations. Include other forms of influence — exemplified by Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and his conversion of the former public square into a site that elevates extreme right-wing propaganda — and it’s obvious that the malign political influence of a handful of the ultra-rich is much bigger than even those stunningly large donations suggest.

Now the Times reports that Musk is giving even more money in an attempt to help Republicans stave off midterm disaster than he gave in 2024:

Oh, and you won’t be surprised to learn that Musk repeatedly pushed a quickly refuted smear against James Talarico, the Democratic Senate nominee in Texas, and used his ownership of X, formerly Twitter, to amplify the smear.

Massive spending by Musk and other oligarchs probably won’t save Donald Trump’s party from a severe defeat — this time. And the vile smear against Talarico appears to be blowing up in Musk’s face (although how many voters heard the smear but never heard about its falsity?) But if Trump weren’t such a disaster as president, all that money might indeed have been effective.

And the only sustainable way to keep mega-billionaires from having so much power, so much ability to degrade democracy, is for them not to be so wealthy. Basically, a society that contains a class of ultra-wealthy oligarchs is well on its way to becoming a full-blown oligarchy.

So by all means let’s acknowledge that Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg et al don’t own everything, that there are a lot of rich people who get less attention. But the oligarchs, not the Main Street Millionaires, are the clear and present danger to democracy.

Emptywheel, Analysis and Opinion:GOP Accepts $296M Bribe to Protect African Immigrant CSAM Purveyor, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), marcy wheelerOct. 13, 2026. There are several ways to understand the $276M Elon Musk is spending to keep right wingers in power, to say nothing of the election disinformation he is spreading.

In an effort to save Republicans’ Senate majority, he gave a total of $158 million this summer to the Senate Leadership Fund, the main super PAC backing the party’s candidates for the chamber, according to his team. In sum, that is one of the largest political donations in American history, and more than the group’s Democratic rival raised from all of its donors that quarter.

Mr. Musk has also built a major Republican turnout operation through a super PAC he founded in 2024, America PAC. He donated over $76 million this summer to the group, which in turn spent that much on building a sprawling canvassing program to try to turn out hard-to-reach Republican voters. The group is active in seven Senate battlegrounds and nearly three dozen House races.

[snip]

Beyond Mr. Musk’s donations to his super PAC and the Senate Leadership Fund, his representatives said that from July through September, he had given smaller but still substantial amounts to other conservative groups:

$20 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the main super PAC for House Republicans$10 million to Lone Star Liberty PAC, a group supporting Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee for Senate in Texas$10 million to the Republican Governors Association$2 million to the Republican Attorneys General Association

On the one hand, it implicates every right winger accepting this money in the AI CSAM Elon Musk’s robot was disseminating earlier this year.

Here’s how three Tennessee teenagers (one has turned 18 since this happened) described having their photos turned into non-consensual CSAM material by Grok in a lawsuit filed in March.

79. Eventually, the anonymous user sent Jane Doe 1 a series of AI-generated images and videos which depicted her as well as other minor females. Jane Doe 1 was immediately disturbed by the sexually explicit content. At least five of these files, one video and four images, depicted her actual face and body in settings with which she was familiar, but morphed into sexually explicit poses. The images showed her entire body, including her genitals, without any clothes. The video depicted her undressing until she was entirely nude.

[snip]

90. On or about February 12, 2026, Jane Doe 2 learned through the ongoing criminal investigation that at least two of her images had also been used by the perpetrator to produce AI-generated CSAM using xAI. Local law enforcement informed Jane Doe 2, a minor, and her mother that these images included one photograph taken of Jane Doe 2 on the beach in a blue bikini which had been morphed to depict her without any clothes. Jane Doe 2 reviewed her Instagram photographs and found a series of images taken on October 12, 2025, depicting her in a blue bikini top in a beach setting.

[snip]

100. Local law enforcement informed Jane Doe 3, a minor, and her mother that the AI-generated images found on the perpetrator’s phone included one image of Jane Doe 3 which had been morphed to depict her fully nude.

Here’s how another victim described how hashed CSAM images of her created decades ago, when she was preschool-aged, got used and disseminated in Grok’s training set.

85. Plaintiff was preschool-aged when she was first repeatedly raped and sexually exploited by an adult male to produce CSAM to meet the demands of pedophiles on the internet. This abuse continued for years. The child sex abuse images and videos depicting her child sexual abuse will forever memorialize Plaintiff being forced to endure horrific crimes as a young child.

86. Plaintiff was repeatedly raped and sexually abused as a minor specifically to produce CSAM to share on the internet, which continues to circulate online to the present day. CSAM depicting Plaintiff has been previously hashed and included in the NCMEC Child Sexual Abuse Material Hash List and Plaintiff was identified by NCMEC in this material.

87. CSAM depicting Plaintiff has been found on xAI as part of investigative reporting, takedown request efforts, and criminal investigations, arrests, and convictions for violations of state and federal laws. Indeed, online forums of offenders include messages between offenders chatting about creating AI generated CSAM of Plaintiff and other similarly situated known, legacy, victims of CSAM.

88. CSAM depicting Plaintiff with its longstanding well-known hash values has been used as a part of the dataset used by xAI.

Another complaint (these will likely all be joined) describes how a photographer who did school photos in Arkansas used some of those photos to develop CSAM, including both girls and boys, using Elon’s robot.

107. On June 8, 2026, the Bentonville Police Department received a CyberTip from NCMEC reporting that X.AI LLC had flagged content associated with an account linked to Bloodworth.

108. On June 10, 2026, Bentonville police executed a search warrant at Bloodworth’s residence seeking, among other things, devices capable of accessing Grok. Upon accessing Bloodworth’s phone, officers discovered a hidden photo folder containing approximately 1,700 images and videos of prepubescent and pubescent children in various states of undress and in sexually explicit poses. Some of these images and videos were, on information and belief, produced using Grok, and others appeared to be genuine photographs.

112. During the relevant period, Jane Doe I was a young child enrolled at a school in Arkansas that had retained Bloodworth to provide school photograph services, including formal portraits and candid classroom photography.

113. Bloodworth photographed Jane Doe I on at least one occasion using a professional camera during a formal school photography session.

114. Law enforcement identified Jane Doe I among the images recovered from Bloodworth’s device and, in early July 2026, notified Jane Doe I’s guardians that images of Jane Doe I had been identified among the material recovered from Bloodworth’s phone.

A report in June described how Grok has increasingly relied on porn traffic to keep up with competitors.

The report claims xAI is actively doubling down on its explicit video and image-generation tools and that adult-content dominance extends into Grok’s coding model, which The Information reports frequently receives requests for pornographic material.Well over half of Grok’s overall traffic is driven by pornographic images and videos, adult role-play chats or other such activity, according to the report, which Vital Knowledge analyst Adam Crisafulli called “a desperate attempt for relevancy.”The move comes as xAI has “fallen further behind” competitor chatbots from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Meta, per Crisafulli, and Grok recorded the largest drop in web traffic of any single AI model this year, Similarweb data shows.

Elon Musk is using nonconsensual porn to compete. And children are being abused in the process.

And the entire Republican Party is accepting his filthy money.

But that’s not all. Elon Musk committed visa fraud when he first started working in the US — the kind of alleged visa fraud Trump is using to target Ilhan Omar (with the critical difference that Omar was a child when she came to the US).

South African-born Elon Musk worked illegally in the United States as he launched his entrepreneurial career after ditching a graduate studies program in California, according to former business associates, court records and company documents obtained by The Washington Post.

[snip]

What Musk has not publicly disclosed is that he did not have the legal right to work while building the company that became Zip2, which sold for about $300 million in 1999. It was Musk’s steppingstone to Tesla and the other ventures that have made him the world’s wealthiest person — and arguably America’s most successful immigrant.

This is the kind of violation that Stephen Miller is using to deport other African immigrants, even while Stephen’s spouse remains one of Elon’s loudest propagandists.

Worse still for the right wing’s favorite African immigrant, DOJ has started filing denaturalization cases against immigrants. While most target people — like Ghislaine Maxwell, though she has not been targeted — who hid their crimes when they naturalized, the effort also focuses on people engaged in CSAM dissemination.

Elon Musk is at least accused of doing everything the far right claims to hate: An allegedly illegal African immigrant who came to the US and started preying on children.

Yet they are taking every cent he pays them in hopes to cling to power.

Elon Musk clings to AI porn to remain competitive, and self-imagined immigration hard-liners cling to him.Dockets

As noted above, these cases are in the process of being consolidated. So far, these dockets are included in the motion to consolidate, with a request to certify a class.

Doe 1 v. X.AI Corp. (5:26-cv-02246): A man in Tennessee groomed three teenagers and used their photos, including a Homecoming photo and a yearbook photo, to generate CSAM (they are teenagers, though one has turned 18) on Grok; he then disseminated the images on Discord.

Doe I v. X.AI Corp. (3:26-cv-08567): A school photographer in Bentonville, Arkansas, Russell Bloodworth, used pictures he took at schools, of both girls and boys, to generate CSAM using Grok; xAI referred the photos to NCMEC.

DOE v. X.AI Corp. (5:26-cv-00772): The photo an adult woman in Denmark, South Carolina posted on January 2 was turned into nonconsensual porn on January 3; it took three days to get Xitter to take down the nonconsensual porn. Grok agreed that the photo was “shitty” and “invasive.”

Doe 1 v. X.AI Corp. (5:26-cv-09016): CSAM, including rape, created when a woman was preschool-aged, has been used to create new CSAM using Grok, with criminals discussing doing so in CSAM fora.

Jane Doe 1 v. X.AI Corp. (5:26-cv-09617): A Pennsylvania man accessed photos of three women from when they were teenagers from a victim’s Apple iCloud account and used Grok to make them into CSAM. [Content warning: Four particularly explicit descriptions of CSAM.] When arrested he said, “he was just using a computer program.”

News Roundups

Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Trump’s Disturbing Truth Social Spree Alarms Even MAGA, Press Secretary’s “Brutal” Debut Has Her on Thin Ice, and Conspiracies, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 13, 2026. The president spent his afternoon posting videos of animals mauling and killing people on Truth Social, his brand-new press secretary stumbled through a 14-minute debut and couldn’t say where she passed the bar, Kimberly Guilfoyle was pushed out as ambassador to Greece, and Elon Musk used his massive platform to spread a false conspiracy theory about James Talarico just three weeks before Election Day.

I’m excited to share that my interview with Dr. Annie Andrews, the Democratic Senate candidate in South Carolina, is in the video above. We talked about the Iran war, record gas prices, AI data centers, and why she thinks South Carolina is ready for change. You won’t want to miss it.

I also want to take a moment to say thank you. Truly. On a day when the most powerful people in the country are spreading lies, pushing conspiracy theories, and posting things no president should ever post, you keep showing up for honest, independent journalism. Every read, every share, and every subscription is the reason I can keep doing this work, from sitting down with candidates like Dr. Andrews to cutting through the noise every single day.

I don’t have a corporate owner, a billionaire backer, or an advertiser telling me what to say. I answer only to you. And with the midterms just three weeks away, independent reporting has never mattered more.

Now, let’s get into today’s news.

Trump spends afternoon posting animal ‘snuff films.’ The President’s Truth Social account this afternoon included videos of animals maiming, eating, and killing humans. MAGA supporters of his are now even questioning the President’s mental fitness after watching the video. I am not going to share the full video with you because it is graphic and horrific, but I will share with you a screen grab from the beginning of the video just so you can get the idea of where this video went:

In response, his supporters took it as a call to violence:

Trump Not Happy Behind the Scenes With Katie Zacharia’s “Brutal” First Briefing as She Could Be Ousted Sooner Than Expected

Behind the scenes, Trump’s team isn’t happy with Katie Zacharia’s first briefing, even as the president praised her in public. White House officials told CNN her performance was unlikely to satisfy Trump, with one adviser calling it “brutal” and others describing it as awkward, stilted, and uncomfortable. Zacharia was at the podium for only about 14 minutes, spending roughly eight of them reading an opening statement praising Trump before taking questions from just three outlets: Breitbart, Fox News, and the Daily Mail. Photos of her notes suggest she had planned those three reporters in advance, yet she still stumbled over their names. Publicly, Trump said, “I thought she was very good,” but the private reviews from his own team told a very different story. “No question we’re all missing Karoline,” one adviser said.

Trump’s own aides are baffled that she was rushed to the podium on just her second day. “She should have been doing murder boards for two weeks before going up there,” one Trump adviser told CNN, adding that “the best thing she did was break the news about Guilfoyle,” because it took the focus off her performance. A White House official said there was “literally zero reason to put her out on her second day, unprepared.” At one point, Zacharia referred to “my president, excuse me, my husband,” and she ended the briefing by claiming Trump was heading to Marine One, even though he didn’t leave for more than an hour. Trump had grown “infatuated” with her Fox News appearances before hiring her, but one adviser noted that a cable panel and the White House podium “were two different things.” Chief of Staff Susie Wiles had not pushed for her selection, and many senior officials didn’t know Trump was picking a new press secretary until just before he did.

Questions are now mounting over whether she’s actually a licensed attorney, as Trump has claimed. When a reporter asked Trump which state she passed the bar exam in, Trump turned to her and asked, “Which state?” Her answer: “When I moved to China.” CNN found no evidence she has passed the bar in any state where she has lived and worked, and the White House didn’t answer follow-up questions. Zacharia later told NewsNation she practiced international transaction law “with all the appropriate credentials,” pointing to two years at a law firm in Beijing. She has repeatedly called herself a lawyer on Fox News, and Trump introduced her as “an attorney.” She previously lasted just weeks as a Homeland Security spokesperson before being swept out in a staff shakeup.

Zacharia could be ousted sooner than expected, with White House officials already questioning how long she’ll last. Several officials openly wondered how long she would keep the job after Tuesday’s performance, and a body language expert quoted by the New York Post put it bluntly: “She’s definitely no Karoline Leavitt.” Some allies urged patience, with one adviser expecting Trump to give her “the benefit of the doubt” and another official calling her critics “a–holes” for judging her after just 24 hours of prep. But a person close to the White House noted that Trump “doesn’t exactly love saying he was wrong,” which may be the only thing keeping her in place for now. Her one real headline was announcing that Trump had asked Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle to resign. If her next briefing goes like this one, she may not get many more chances.

Elon Musk Used His X Megaphone to Spread the False Talarico Psych Hospital Conspiracy Theory

Elon Musk pushed the false claim that James Talarico was secretly treated at a psychiatric hospital to hundreds of thousands of people on X. “The Talarico campaign is hiding something big that voters ought to know about,” Musk wrote Sunday, replying to a post claiming Talarico had been checked into the Lindner Center of Hope in Ohio. His reply got more than 870,000 views, more than double the original post, and he later told his more than 240 million followers that if the claim weren’t true, Talarico would “immediately authorize the release of the records.” Five hours after Musk’s first posts, the hospital itself said Talarico “has never received treatment” there, and Talarico replied that he’d “never even been to Ohio.” Musk had posted about Talarico only twice in the past year, but at least a dozen times since last Wednesday. A Washington Post analysis found the conspiracy pushed mentions of Talarico among top right-wing figures to their highest level on record.

Experts warn Musk is using X as an “influence machine” in the midterms, timed so the damage is done before anyone can be held accountable. Musk has quietly poured at least $276 million into helping Republicans since July, making him the GOP’s top individual donor, while using X to boost fringe attacks. “It is like a thumb on the scale that we haven’t really ever seen,” said University of Virginia law professor Danielle Citron, warning that falsehoods spread within 30 days of an election are “timed just right,” since lawsuits can’t be resolved in time. A disinformation researcher said Musk’s posts “likely served to legitimize” the claims, warning the same online ecosystem has fueled threats against schools, hospitals, and election offices. Musk has a long history of spreading false claims, including a conspiracy theory about the attack on Paul Pelosi and fraud allegations against Somali Americans. The Talarico smear was also pushed by Ken Paxton, who promoted a “Tala-Freak-Out Tip Line,” and by Trump, who claimed Talarico’s illness was too long to be the “flu bug.”

Trump’s New Press Secretary Pushed Pizzagate and QAnon Conspiracy Theories

White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia repeatedly promoted the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy theory on Truth Social, according to a Popular Information report. Pizzagate falsely claims that top Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and her campaign chairman John Podesta, ran a child sex trafficking ring out of a D.C. pizzeria. In 2022, Zacharia posted “Pedo Podesta. #pedoPodesta,” tagged Trump and Sean Hannity asking “why doesn’t Fox News do a ‘feature’ on what a pedophile Podesta is,” and later followed up asking Hannity, “where’s the feature on John Podesta?” That same day, she wrote, “The radical left Hollywood elites are sick pedo cannibals. Change my mind.” She also shared a post claiming, “Democrats want to mask and rape your children. That’s their satanic platform.” Pizzagate has been thoroughly debunked, and in 2016 it inspired a man to fire a rifle inside the pizzeria.

Zacharia also engaged with QAnon, and the White House refused to address her history. In November 2022, she replied to a user who suggested Trump drinking bottled water during a speech might be a coded signal tied to specific “Q posts,” writing, “I was wondering the same thing…” QAnon, which grew out of Pizzagate, claims Trump is secretly battling a child-abuse ring of Democrats, Hollywood figures, and the “deep state.” When asked about her posts, the White House simply pointed to Trump’s announcement calling her “a devoted fan and member of MAGA” with “an unblemished record of support.” Before taking the job, Zacharia worked at Trump Media and briefly served about a month as a Homeland Security spokesperson. She has also written an op-ed calling Trump “the greatest president in U.S. history.”

Trump Threatens Houthis but Won’t Say if U.S. Will Strike as Saudi Arabia Escalates and Houthis Target Aramco

Trump threatened the Houthis on Truth Social but refused to say whether the U.S. will join Saudi Arabia’s strikes against them. “The Houthis are behaving very badly. I thought they learned their lesson a year ago when we bombed the HELL out of them,” Trump wrote, claiming they had returned “probably at the behest of Iran.” He accused the group of “purposefully trying to drive up Oil prices, probably prior to the U.S. Elections,” adding, “NOT NICE.” Trump said he had spoken with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, but when asked if he’d decided to join the offensive, he told reporters, “Do you really think I can tell you that? I’d love to tell you, but I’m not going to tell you that.” He also said he “might” ask Turkey’s President Erdoğan to help Saudi Arabia, insisting Erdoğan “would do as I ask.” The last U.S. bombing campaign against the Houthis, from March to May 2025, killed more than 150 civilians, according to a Pentagon report released in August.

The war between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis is escalating fast, with both sides now threatening each other’s capitals. The Saudi-led coalition warned civilians in part of Sanaa, Yemen’s Houthi-held capital, to evacuate ahead of a “targeted operation,” and explosions were later reported in the city, with a Houthi broadcaster claiming strikes hit oil facilities nearby. The Houthis vowed a “harsh and painful” response in Riyadh, threatening Saudi Aramco’s headquarters in Dammam, its refinery in Riyadh, and the city’s main airport, which they’ve already hit with deadly strikes. They also told civilians and workers to evacuate any Aramco facility, calling them “legitimate targets.” Reuters reported that Saudi Arabia’s public missile warning system had gone silent days before last week’s attacks, which killed at least 20 people, including an American. Turkey, which signed a mutual defense pact with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in August, pledged its “full solidarity” with the kingdom.

Iran is also stepping up attacks in the Strait of Hormuz, apparently targeting ships moving oil with U.S. help. The Institute for the Study of War said Iran appears to be hitting vessels conducting ship-to-ship oil transfers in and near the strait to undermine the flow of energy. At least three vessels were struck by unknown projectiles over the weekend, and a top Iranian security official boasted that Iranian forces are hitting an average of five “smuggling ships” every night. That appears to refer to U.S. efforts to escort oil shipments through a southern route before transferring the oil to larger tankers. The think tank also warned that Iran may be developing its anti-ship missile capabilities. Oil prices remain elevated, with Brent crude back above $105 a barrel despite Trump’s Russian diesel deal.

The fighting is deepening a humanitarian crisis in Yemen and spreading travel warnings across Saudi Arabia. The World Health Organization said suspected cholera cases in Yemen tripled in just three weeks, from 217 to 647 a week, as the war and mass displacement strain hospitals already overwhelmed with casualties. Yemen has recorded more than 8,000 suspected cholera cases and 27 deaths this year, with a quarter of them in the past four weeks alone. “Families fleeing conflict are now facing another threat from diseases that can be prevented and treated,” a WHO official warned. The U.K. now advises against all but essential travel to large parts of Saudi Arabia, including Riyadh. The U.S. has barred government employees from going within 20 miles of the Yemeni border and “strongly recommends” Americans avoid Riyadh’s main airport.

Other news:

The White House has hired an Ambassador to target human trafficking efforts. The internet quickly reacted to the appointment of Barbara Thornhill, urging her to begin with the Epstein co-conspirators.

Kimberly Guilfoyle has resigned as U.S. ambassador to Greece after the White House asked her to step down, ending her tenure in less than a year. The move came after Trump and Rubio reportedly grew furious over Wall Street Journal reports that she pressed Trump donor Eric Deters to pay off her $100,000 American Express bill days before her 2025 confirmation hearing, offering to use her influence on his tax and legal problems in return. According to Signal messages cited by the Journal, she wrote, “Honey please I need you to get this done for me today,” and later warned him, “You’ll literally cost me my ambassadorship stop writing.” The Journal has also reported she accepted improper gifts, allegedly threatened a Greek official, and promoted a Greek company during official events, claims her lawyer disputes. In a defiant statement, Guilfoyle called the job the “honor of a lifetime” and vowed to “vigorously defend my name, my reputation, and my integrity” against what she called “false” allegations. Just hours before the announcement, Greece’s government had denied she was on her way out, and one former U.S. diplomat said it “would not surprise me if the Greek public reacts with joy” at the news.

Cornell has banned fraternity parties for the rest of the school year as it faces fallout from a former student’s sexual assault allegations. The university is suspending all “parties and social events” at fraternity houses and bringing in “experienced, trauma-informed criminal investigators” to review sexual assault allegations on campus. The former student, known as Jane Doe, says she was drugged and sexually assaulted by members of the Chi Phi fraternity in October 2024, and has sued the university, the fraternity, her sorority, and seven former Chi Phi members. Attorneys for four of the men deny the allegations, and none of the seven have been criminally charged. “I am deeply sorry for the harm Jane Doe suffered,” Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff said, adding, “It is clear that women on our campus continue to question whether they are safe.” Her lawyer called the changes “helpful” but “too late to protect Ms. Doe,” while Gov. Kathy Hochul has appointed Attorney General Letitia James to take over the case.

Kacey Musgraves shut down Kristi Noem with a brutal reference to the dog she infamously shot after Noem attacked her over James Talarico. The feud started after Talarico posted about attending Musgraves’ concert in Dallas on Saturday, prompting Noem to write, “I’ll take Ella Langley over Kacey Musgraves any day. And if I’m choosin’ Texas, I’ll take Ken Paxton over James Talarico.” Musgraves fired back, “I don’t think you have a dog in this fight but if you did you would have shot it.” The jab referred to Noem’s admission in her 2024 memoir that she shot her 14-month-old puppy, Cricket, after deciding it was “untrainable,” a story that drew mockery across the political spectrum. Noem, who was fired as Homeland Security secretary in March and now serves as a special envoy, didn’t respond, while Talarico posted another photo with Musgraves captioned “Don’t mess with Texas.” Even Ella Langley didn’t seem to appreciate being dragged into it, untagging herself from Noem’s post.

Anthropic says one of its AI models submitted a false homicide tip to Philadelphia police. The company’s Claude Haiku 4.5 model was running test tasks on randomly selected websites in July when it landed on a page about an unsolved murder and filled out the police tip form. The fake tip claimed to have seen “someone matching the description in the area” around the time of the crime. Philadelphia police said the tip was flagged as spam and never reached investigators, stressing that every tip is vetted by a human first. Anthropic said the incident “had minimal impact,” but warned that “the same behaviors could do far more harm as models become more powerful.” The disclosure is the latest example of AI agents taking actions their human operators never intended.

A federal judge extended her order blocking the Trump administration from cutting down any more trees at a historic D.C. golf course. Judge Ana Reyes barred any further tree removal at East Potomac Golf Links through October 26, a day after accusing the government of misleading her to chop down 430 trees over the holiday weekend. The Justice Department notified the court just before 5 p.m. Friday that roughly 500 trees would come down, and crews started Saturday morning. A Park Service official testified that about 300 more trees had been marked for removal, but rain halted work Sunday. “I trusted you all not to do precisely what you have done,” Reyes said, adding that the government had lost “all of its credibility.” She has ordered top Interior Department and Park Service officials to testify next week about how the decision was made.

Diesel futures jumped 5% on Tuesday, signaling prices will keep rising despite Trump’s diesel deal with Putin. Diesel prices are already up 70% since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in February, and gas prices are up more than 45%. One top energy analyst called it “absolutely stunning price spikes,” warning the record of $6.53 a gallon could be broken before the midterms. Analysts say the Russian diesel in Trump’s deal would cover less than two weeks of U.S. demand at best, and that the market is “clearly not believing that Russian oil is on the way.” Trump’s claim that Europe would release diesel reserves also turned out to be false, and his order easing restrictions on “red dye” diesel has had no clear impact. “Truckers and farmers not going to see any relief anytime soon,” GasBuddy’s top analyst warned.

Britain’s top domestic spy chief says the country has entered a “new era” of threats from Iran and Russia, with Iran now targeting military sites. MI5 Director General Ken McCallum said the agency now spends more resources countering foreign threats than it did during the Cold War. He said Iran had shifted from targeting dissidents and Jewish communities to “harder targets, like military sites,” with more than 50 Iran-linked arrests in Britain over the past year. McCallum referenced last month’s incident at RAF Fairford, the base U.S. bombers used against Iran, which the prime minister says was “almost certainly directed” by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. He called Russia “aggressor No. 1,” accusing it of paying criminals to carry out sabotage. He also warned about the risks of AI, saying, “Human history has given us no experience of facing an actor which is smarter than we are.”

Palantir’s chief technology officer claimed, without evidence, that AI researchers are taking up smoking to show how sure they are that AI will cure cancer. “So many researchers have started smoking as a way of signaling to other researchers how much they believe in AI,” Shyam Sankar said on CBS’ Face the Nation, calling it part of a “mass psychosis, social delusion” gripping Silicon Valley. He argued that many of the people building AI have filled a spiritual void with “the machine god of AGI,” and claimed, again without evidence, that “the vast majority” of U.S. AI researchers follow effective altruism, which he called a “millenarian doomsday cult.” His company isn’t exactly smoke-free itself, since Palantir has stocked its D.C. office vending machines with free nicotine pouches for employees. One AI startup CEO recently joked to Business Insider that “by the time you do get lung cancer, our AI robots are supposed to have cured that.” Sankar’s comments come as concerns about AI keep growing, with a recent Politico poll finding that 63% of Americans believe AI poses at least a moderate risk of destroying humanity.

Southern California coastal communities are cleaning up after the remnants of Tropical Storm Rachel battered homes with massive waves. In Long Beach, waves destroyed a boardwalk and smashed into beachfront homes, with at least nine deemed unsafe to enter and the city spending more than $1 million from emergency reserves. Newport Beach declared a local emergency and briefly closed its piers as high surf flooded streets. Las Vegas also tied its all-time October rainfall record as water rushed down a street near the Strip. Experts say an exceptionally strong El Niño is supercharging Pacific storms, with the last five Pacific hurricanes all reaching major status. One hurricane researcher called the past month “berserk,” and forecasters warn California could face a historic winter of storms, landslides, and destructive high tides.

The man who died after being thrown from a Six Flags roller coaster in Georgia has been identified as an Atlanta teacher. Hassan Jihad Ibn Kariem, 42, was riding the Goliath coaster with his son at Six Flags Over Georgia on Monday when he was ejected, hitting the cars and other riders before landing on the roof of a haunted house attraction below. His family described him as a passionate educator who loved his city and was dedicated to bringing families together. His wife and daughter were waiting at the bottom of the ride and had no idea what had happened. Police and the state agency that oversees amusement parks are investigating, and it’s still unclear how he fell. Six Flags has closed similar coasters at several parks “out of an abundance of caution.”

Jury selection began in the federal hate crimes trial of the gunman who killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket in 2022. Payton Gendron, a white supremacist, is already serving life in prison after pleading guilty to state murder charges, but now faces a possible death sentence. His lawyers won’t dispute his guilt, focusing only on sparing his life. The attack at Tops Friendly Market is believed to be the deadliest hate-motivated shooting targeting Black people by a lone gunman in the last century, and Gendron had promoted the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory. Victims’ families are divided on the death penalty, with one son saying the shooter should “sit and have to think about it year after year,” while a mother whose son survived called the attack “domestic terrorism.” The Justice Department under Biden chose to seek the death penalty and rejected Gendron’s offer to plead guilty in exchange for life in prison.

The Supreme Court will decide whether the Trump administration can deny asylum to a Nigerian man who says he was a cook at a terrorist group’s camp. Izuchukwu Ozurumba says he took a job as a camp cook in 2022 before learning it was run by a separatist group, then escaped after about six months, half of them unpaid. He sought asylum in the U.S. in 2023, saying the group had threatened to kill him. An immigration judge ruled that cooking three meals a day counted as “material support” for terrorism, which bars asylum. Ozurumba was deported in April 2025, but an appeals court later ruled in his favor, saying cooking didn’t qualify. The justices will hear the case this term, with a ruling expected by June.

The University of Maryland suspended its club tennis team after it sent other schools a tournament program with racist imagery, including KKK hoods. The graphic, emailed to visiting teams, replaced part of the Maryland state flag with pointed KKK hood masks beneath the team’s logo. Howard University’s team, from a historically Black school, flagged it and posted it publicly, saying, “True accountability has yet to come.” The university suspended the entire team pending an investigation and referred the matter to campus police. Maryland President Darryll Pines called the image “deeply harmful and offensive” and apologized. Howard’s team is asking for public apologies, an investigation into who made the document, sensitivity training, and a donation of tournament funds to the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

The Supreme Court will hear the Trump administration’s bid to keep DOGE records secret. The case centers on whether the Department of Government Efficiency, once led by Elon Musk, is a government agency subject to public records requests. The watchdog group CREW is seeking DOGE’s guidance to staff on canceling contracts and firing federal workers. The administration argues DOGE is just a presidential advisory body that doesn’t have to comply with the Freedom of Information Act. Lower courts have ruled against DOGE every time, with one judge saying the public “would be irreparably harmed” by delays in getting the records. A ruling is expected by the end of June.

Former gang leader Duane “Keffe D” Davis was sentenced to 40 years in prison for orchestrating the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur. A jury convicted the 63-year-old in September, making him the first person convicted in one of America’s most famous cold cases, nearly 30 years after Shakur was gunned down in a Las Vegas drive-by shooting. Prosecutors said Davis, a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips, didn’t fire the gun himself but ordered the shooting and supplied the weapon used by his nephew, Orlando Anderson, who died in an unrelated shooting in 1998. The key evidence was Davis’ own words: he described his role in a secret 2008 police interview and again in his 2019 memoir, Compton Street Legend. That book and the interviews that followed voided an earlier deal that had shielded him from prosecution. His defense argued his comments were just bravado meant to sell books, and Davis says he will appeal. Shakur was 25 and at the height of his career when he was killed, and he has since sold more than 75 million records worldwide.

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: ‘A Disaster’—New Press Secretary Bombs First Briefing, Republicans Abandon Their Own Incumbents, Paxton Partied With Fugitives, Aaron Parnas, right,aaron parnas new headshot Oct. 13, 2026. It’s already been a busy morning. The new White House press secretary stumbled through her first briefing, taking only about three questions, and announced that the administration has asked Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle to resign. Republicans are abandoning their own incumbents three weeks before the midterms, Trump’s Ohio rally featured a protester punched in the stands and chants of “deport,” and Ken Paxton was caught partying in Dubai with two indicted fugitives.

I also have an update on something I shared with you yesterday: Good Morning America publicly apologized on air this morning for attributing a fake quote to me.

Thank you, everyone. So many of you reached out, flagged it, and spoke up, and it made a real difference. That’s the power of this community.

And this matters beyond me. Lately I’ve been facing a steady stream of attacks, from bots and AI accounts impersonating me to people trying to discredit this work. Moments like this are a reminder of why we do what we do. We are building a better form of media, one based on truth and accountability. When someone gets it wrong, even a major network, we push back, and we get it corrected.

Now, let’s get into today’s news.

New White House Press Secretary Struggles During First Briefing:

New White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia struggled during her first press briefing today. Katie Zacharia, the new White House Press Secretary visibly struggled during her first press briefing today with many conservative commentators noting that they hoped to have Karoline Leavitt back in the press briefing room. Zacharia opened her press briefing by reading off a prepared speech, yet struggled to do so throughout. Zacharia answered only about three questions before abruptly ending the press conference. Many around the White House are noting this could rival one of the worst press briefings of all time.

Zacharia said that the White House has asked US Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle to resign. Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle could now face a Senate investigation, with a top Republican calling the allegations against her “very troubling.” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso said on CBS’ Face the Nation, “I’m sure there’s gonna be an investigation,” adding that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will look into it and “the public has a right to know what was found.” The State Department’s inspector general is already investigating her, and the Daily Mail reported the probe includes allegations of mistreating staff, substance abuse, and improperly accepting gifts. The latest claim, from Trump donor Eric Deters, is that Guilfoyle asked him to pay off her $100,000 American Express bill directly, urged him not to leave a paper trail, and offered access to top officials in return. Trump and Rubio are reportedly “extremely pissed off” and weighing her removal, even after Rubio initially brushed off the reporting, saying, “It’s not the gospel.”

Republicans Abandon Their Own Incumbents as GOP Enters “Triage Mode” Three Weeks Before the Midterms

Top Republican super PACs are pulling all support from two sitting GOP House members, the first time this cycle the party has abandoned its own incumbents. The groups canceled all remaining ads booked for Rep. Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey and Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa after internal GOP polling showed their chances fading. Combined with last week’s decision to walk away from retiring Rep. Don Bacon’s open Nebraska seat, Republicans have now essentially ceded three House districts they currently hold. They also gave up on trying to flip seats held by Democratic Reps. Greg Landsman of Ohio and Kristen McDonald Rivet of Michigan. The super PAC aligned with Speaker Mike Johnson is redirecting $10 million from those races to shore up 16 other districts, including Republicans who haven’t needed help until now. One source said more seats could be abandoned as soon as this week.

Republicans are now being forced to spend big to defend seats in deep-red states that should have been safe. After abandoning North Carolina’s Senate race, a state Trump won three times, the top GOP Senate super PAC poured at least $10 million into Kansas, which hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932. It also sent $5 million to South Carolina, a state Trump won by 18 points, to prop up Sen. Darline Graham. Republicans have spent more than $100 million on Ken Paxton’s Texas race, with one subsidiary burning through $131 million in just 17 days. They’re also spending tens of millions in Alaska, Ohio, Michigan, and Maine, where Susan Collins’ total support has hit $50 million. “We shouldn’t have a fight in a place like Texas, but obviously we do,” one Trump adviser admitted.

Even some Republicans now say Trump himself is the problem. “Trump is dragging the party down,” one House Republican running for reelection told CNN, as the president’s approval ratings sit near record lows amid anger over the Iran war and rising costs. Trump has largely avoided swing districts, instead rallying in deep-red states like Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Nebraska to fire up the base. He’s not expected to campaign in Maine, where Collins is trying to keep her distance from him. A Michigan GOP strategist summed up the mood: “I don’t know that the environment could possibly get worse than it is.” Another House Republican insisted, “Do we get wiped out? No, we aren’t gonna get wiped out.”

Democrats, meanwhile, are pulling back spending in races they believe they’ve already locked up. After Republicans retreated from North Carolina’s Senate race, Democrats went dark there too, confident in their lead. The Cook Political Report just moved 18 House races toward Democrats, including five toss-ups in Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Washington. Democrats hold polling leads in Georgia and North Carolina and are mounting serious challenges in red states like Alaska and Kansas. The White House is still projecting confidence, with one official calling the GOP panic “unwarranted” and betting on turnout from low-propensity voters. But as Axios put it, polls can be wrong, but money “rarely lies,” and right now, Republican money is flowing to defend places they never expected to lose.

Trump Mocks Protester’s Weight After She’s Punched at His Ohio Rally as Crowd Chants “Deport” During Attacks on Omar

A protester wearing a “Release the Epstein Files” shirt was attacked by rallygoers at Trump’s rally in Youngstown, Ohio, and Trump responded by mocking her weight. Video showed a man who appeared to be a Trump supporter shove the woman, punch her in the face, grab her by the hair, and try to slam her face toward the ground as the crowd chanted “USA!” At least four people were seen grappling with her before police arrived, broke up the fight, and escorted her out of the arena. Meanwhile, the man who struck her stayed inside and was seen exchanging high-fives with other attendees. Trump, apparently believing the protester was a man, called her a “paid protester” and “scum” without evidence, then said, “Oh, he’s gotta go on a diet! He’s a fat guy.” It was the second violent incident at a Trump rally in a week, after a man in a MAGA hat grabbed a heckler by the hair and pulled him to the ground in San Antonio.

Just hours after federal agents raided Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home, Trump attacked her at the rally as the crowd chanted “Deport!” Trump insisted he had “nothing to do” with the search, but then called Omar, a U.S. citizen, a “disaster” and attacked the country where she was born. “She comes in from a country without laws, without police, without military, where all they do is shoot each other, and she comes into our country and she says, ‘I have a constitutional right,’” Trump said. He also mocked Somali Americans, saying, “They think they’re in Somalia, where they don’t have pants to wear,” and repeated his insult about “low IQ people.” Trump then turned to Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, who was born in Michigan, calling him “a jihadist” and declaring that “jihadist sympathizers” should “get the hell out of here.” El-Sayed has responded to such attacks by saying, “My name did not raise your gas prices. My faith is not the reason you can’t afford your groceries.”

Trump also doubled down on his debunked claim about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio. Moments after attacking Omar and El-Sayed, Trump brought up Springfield, saying, “All of a sudden, they dropped 35,000 people in from Haiti, and it didn’t work out too well.” He then referenced his false 2024 debate claim that Haitian immigrants were eating their neighbors’ pets, defiantly declaring, “I was right.” He warned voters that Ohio could be “plundered, ransacked, and destroyed like Minnesota” if they elect Democrats. The rally was part of a week of red-state campaigning, with stops next in Alaska and Montana, states Trump won by double digits. Despite the energy in the room, large sections of seats were left empty in the same arena he packed during a 2017 “thank you” tour.

Trump gushed about Sen. Jon Husted’s body, telling the crowd, “I looked at his a.”** Trump said he started “examining” Husted after former NFL coach Jon Gruden, who introduced him, mentioned the two had played college football together at the University of Dayton. “I don’t do this with men very often,” Trump said. “I looked at his a**, and I looked at the whole, and then I looked at his hands. Look at his hands. He’s got these like claws.” After Husted joined him on stage, Trump added that he patted him on the back and “hurt my hand a little bit. He’s like a piece of steel.” Trump also went on a tangent about female kickers in football and called WNBA player Sophie Cunningham “beautiful,” before adding, “You’re not allowed to say that anymore.” The odd remarks came as Husted trails Democrat Sherrod Brown by six points, 49% to 43%, in a recent CNN poll.

The rally came as Republicans scramble to hold Ohio’s Senate seat, where Democrat Sherrod Brown is leading. Trump was in Youngstown to boost Sen. Jon Husted and gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy, his second trip to Ohio in less than 10 days. Brown, a former three-term senator, holds a 6-point lead over Husted in recent CNN polling, and early voting data shows Democrats turning out in larger numbers than in 2024, even in the state’s reddest counties. Trump tried to paint Brown as “the candidate of the Marxists, the communists, the anti-American radicals” and claimed he wants the Midwest “turned into Mogadishu.” He again urged voters to “pretend” he’s on the ballot. Seemingly acknowledging Brown’s past appeal in the state, Trump warned that “one vote can steer Congress into a direction that you’re not going to be happy with.”

Ken Paxton Partied in Dubai With His Girlfriend and Two Indicted Fugitives as New Report Exposes Donor Ties

Ken Paxton rang in 2025 in Dubai alongside his girlfriend and two men wanted on federal fraud charges, according to The Wall Street Journal. Video from the New Year’s Eve party shows Paxton and Tracy Duhon watching fireworks over the Burj Khalifa from a luxury high-rise, with one of the men standing right behind them. Paxton’s wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, is divorcing him on “biblical grounds.” The two men, Anosh Ahmed and Sameer Suhail, had been indicted months earlier for allegedly stealing $15 million from a Chicago hospital where Ahmed was chief financial officer, and neither had returned to the U.S. to face the charges at the time. Ahmed has also been charged in a separate scheme involving at least $195 million in government payments for bogus COVID-19 tests. Rather than answer questions about the party, a Paxton adviser said that “like President Trump, Ken Paxton has been politically persecuted for years.”

One of the fugitives gave Paxton about $190,000, including $25,000 that came in after he was charged. Campaign finance records reviewed by the Journal show Ahmed was a major donor to Paxton’s past campaigns, with one donation made just days after his indictment. Both men have since returned to the U.S. to face prosecution, and Ahmed remains in custody after pleading not guilty to the additional charges. The revelation adds to a long list of scandals, including securities fraud charges Paxton settled in 2024 without admitting guilt and his 2023 impeachment on bribery and corruption charges, of which he was acquitted. Paxton has also been hit by at least five leaked audio clips from a September fundraiser, including one where he blamed Trump’s war with Iran for his low poll numbers. “Just because they were able to clip a few things doesn’t mean that’s actually what I meant,” Paxton told Fox News on Monday, insisting, “I love President Trump.”

A separate Washington Post investigation found Paxton took campaign money from donors with business before his office. This spring, executives tied to a slot machine-like game gave Paxton’s campaign more than $100,000 while his office was reviewing whether those games counted as gambling, though the company says the donations were unrelated. In 2018, Paxton issued an opinion suggesting a donor’s controversial concrete plant could be built over Fort Worth’s objections, and that donor gave him another $10,000 two months later. In 2019, anesthesiologist groups gave him $24,000 a month after he issued an opinion they had pushed for. Earlier this year, the chair of Texas Tech’s board donated $247,300 to Paxton the day before Paxton threatened to sue the Big 12 on behalf of a Texas Tech football player disciplined for gambling. “Ideally you would avoid obvious conflicts of interest,” said one money-in-politics expert, “but that’s very hard to do in the system we have right now, which is basically a free-for-all.”

Houthis Threaten “Swift and Painful” Response If U.S. Joins Saudi War as Deadly Airport Attacks Kill an American

The Iran-backed Houthis are threatening to strike the U.S. and its interests across the region if Trump joins Saudi Arabia’s offensive against them. “There will be a swift and painful response targeting the U.S. and all its interests in the region,” a senior Houthi official told AFP. The warning came after Trump said he was considering joining the Saudi strikes, saying Monday, “The Houthis are misbehaving very badly.” Trump had reportedly turned down earlier Saudi requests for help, and just days ago promised not to attack Iran before the midterms. Asked whether the latest attacks would change that pledge, he said only, “We’re gonna take a look.” The Houthis also warned workers at Saudi oil facilities and airports to stay away, calling those sites “legitimate targets.”

At least 20 people, including an American, have been killed in a week of Houthi attacks on Saudi airports. The deadliest strike hit Riyadh’s main airport Saturday, killing 13 people and wounding more than 300, with security footage showing pilgrims in religious attire waiting in a departure lounge before a flash tore through the building. Another strike hit the same terminal Sunday, killing one more person, and the airport has been shut down ever since. Saudi Arabia has launched an investigation into how its air defenses failed, with early findings showing the Houthis used drones to clear a path for cruise and ballistic missiles that flew more than 600 miles. The U.S. Embassy urged Americans to use “extreme caution” at all major Saudi airports and said some U.S. citizens had been detained for photographing the attacks. Delta has also delayed its planned new nonstop flights from Atlanta to Riyadh until March 2027.

The wider Iran war is heating up again, sending oil prices climbing. Brent crude rose above $105 a barrel, a two-week high, despite Trump’s controversial deal to buy Russian diesel meant to bring fuel prices down. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard claims it struck three supertankers in the Strait of Hormuz over two days, warning that any ship cooperating with the U.S. “will be met with a decisive response.” The U.S. military, meanwhile, said a fighter jet fired on and disabled a commercial ship in the Gulf of Oman that had just left an Iranian port. Since the U.S. blockade began in July, American forces have disabled four commercial vessels, turned back 135 ships, and destroyed 10 tankers believed to be smuggling Iranian oil. Iran said it’s still reviewing the U.S. response to its seven-day ceasefire proposal, with messages continuing to pass through mediators.

The fighting in Yemen is also escalating, raising fears of a humanitarian catastrophe. The Houthis have laid siege to Taiz, a major city in southwest Yemen, where more than 60 people were killed in a single day of fighting, and officials warn medicine, medical equipment, and fuel are nearly gone. Saudi airstrikes hit the Houthi-held capital Sanaa, killing one person and wounding 12, including three children. Egypt called for an immediate halt to Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, saying there’s “no justification” for them. Meanwhile, Trump said he doesn’t believe China and Russia are helping Iran, insisting “they have too much to lose.” Inside Iran, the government admitted the country is under “extensive pressures,” rationing foreign currency for essential goods as the war drags into its eighth month.

Other news:

Zelensky says Ukraine got no warning from its partners before a Russian ballistic missile barrage on Kyiv. Five missiles hit civilian infrastructure in the capital, in an attack Zelensky called “particularly vile.” He stressed that early intelligence on ballistic missiles “helps save lives,” but did not say who failed to provide it. Russia launched more than 100 weapons at Ukraine since Monday evening, destroying an apartment building in Kharkiv and killing four people, with 41 wounded in that city alone. A Russian drone also hit a school building in the city of Rivne, wounding 14 people. Zelensky said Ukraine has not struck a single Russian oil refinery or energy site in the two days since Trump announced his “energy ceasefire,” while Russia kept hitting Ukrainian energy and infrastructure. “These are absolutely clear signals that they have no intention of refraining from strikes on Ukraine,” he said, as the Kremlin still would only say that “contacts on this matter continue.”

Millions of Medicaid recipients will face strict new work requirements starting January 1, as the most controversial parts of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” take effect. About 20 million people in the 44 states that expanded Medicaid will have to prove they are working, studying, or volunteering at least 80 hours a month, or earning $580, and recertify every six months instead of once a year. The law cut roughly $1 trillion from federal health spending, the largest clawback in history, and combined with expiring Obamacare subsidies, it is expected to leave about 17 million more Americans uninsured by 2034. Experts warn that many people who still qualify will lose coverage simply because of paperwork, like someone whose depression keeps them from working enough hours one month and then loses the medication that helps them work. One emergency physician said the requirements are “really just a way to decrease the rolls,” warning they will drive up medical debt for patients and hospitals alike. The Urban Institute projects $278 billion in unpaid hospital bills by 2034, and researchers say urban hospitals are now closing at the same rate as rural ones. Children could be hit too, with the head of the American Academy of Pediatrics warning that “when parents lose their health insurance, children may lose their coverage, too, even if they remain eligible.”

A man riding a Six Flags roller coaster in Georgia with his son died after being thrown from the ride. The deadly incident happened Monday on the Goliath coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia, which reaches 200 feet high and 70 miles per hour. Witnesses said the man was ejected and hit by the cars several times, with one saying, “He fell and hit the cart three different times,” and landed on a girl two rows ahead of them. His son was sitting right next to him, while his wife and daughter waited at the bottom with no idea what had happened. Police have opened an investigation but have not confirmed how he died or what injured the other riders. Six Flags said it was “deeply saddened” and has closed similar coasters at parks in several states “out of an abundance of caution.” It comes just weeks after Six Flags permanently shut down its X2 coaster in California following lawsuits alleging serious brain injuries and two deaths.

Florida is set to execute a prisoner who says he killed his cellmate so he could be sentenced to death. James Robertson, 63, strangled Frank Hart with knotted socks while Hart slept in 2008, telling investigators he did it so he wouldn’t have to spend the rest of his life in prison. Robertson first went to prison at 17 for burglary and assault in 1980, and his sentence kept growing through escapes and other crimes behind bars. He pleaded guilty, skipped the sentencing jury, and waived every appeal. A death penalty opposition group said the case shows the punishment “may have caused the very violence it purportedly prevents.” Robertson would be Florida’s 17th execution this year, and the state has carried out more than half of all U.S. executions in 2026. Two more are already scheduled in Florida, which would match last year’s record of 19.

A Florida Republican on the outs with Trump just got an endorsement from Colombia’s president. Rep. María Elvira Salazar posted a video of President Abelardo de la Espriella calling her “Colombia’s best friend in U.S. Congress.” De la Espriella owns property in her district, and he and his wife have donated nearly $90,000 to her campaigns. She also recently posted an endorsement from Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, a nod to a district that’s more than 74% Hispanic. Salazar broke with Trump last month in an ad warning him that Hispanic voters who helped elect him “feel betrayed today” over his immigration crackdown. Trump has since boosted posts calling for her to be replaced, even with the election weeks away. Her Miami-area race, once considered safe, has tightened, and Democrats have added it to their target list.

Pope Leo XIV checked into a Rome hospital Tuesday for surgery to remove a lung nodule. Doctors say the operation will determine whether the small, localized nodule is cancerous and whether more treatment is needed. The 71-year-old pope walked in through the main entrance and waved to well-wishers before the procedure, which requires about a week in the hospital. Because the hospital’s special papal apartment is being renovated, he’s staying in a nearby room instead. The Vatican canceled all his audiences through October 20. A cardinal who saw him Monday said Leo feels fine and chose to have the surgery right away so he wouldn’t have to change his November trip to Uruguay, Argentina, and Peru. It’s the first major health issue publicly disclosed in his 17-month papacy.

Eleven sailors are missing after a drone attack sank a cargo ship off the coast of Bulgaria in the Black Sea. Two ships were hit by drones overnight, and five crew members were rescued from the one that sank. It’s possibly the second deadly sinking in the area in a week, after 10 sailors were lost when another ship was hit last week. Bulgaria summoned Russia’s ambassador, and its prime minister said the attacks benefit Russia, though he stopped short of directly blaming Moscow. The ambassador said she had no information about the attacks and suggested they could be a provocation by a third party. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the Black Sea “has become another front of escalation” in Russia’s war, adding, “Those responsible should be held accountable.” Bulgaria is asking the EU and NATO for help strengthening its sea and air surveillance.

At least five people have been killed in Mexico as Hurricane Simon and the remnants of Tropical Storm Rachel batter the region. In the Baja California city of Ensenada, floodwaters swept away cars and damaged homes, killing a 13-year-old girl, two women, and a 4-year-old boy, with six people still missing. The military used helicopters to rescue 32 people, including Americans and Germans, from a ranch cut off by flooding. Simon has weakened to a Category 2 storm but is expected to remain a hurricane through midweek, with possible landfall late Friday. Puerto Vallarta’s international airport shut down until Tuesday morning as the storm lingered offshore. In the U.S., Rachel’s remnants tore apart a boardwalk in Long Beach and helped Las Vegas tie an October rainfall record dating back to 1947. Meanwhile, about 106,000 customers in Florida and Alabama were still without power Monday night after Hurricane Isaias.

Greta Thunberg joined French students protesting crumbling schools and teacher shortages near Paris. The nationwide student movement is now in its fourth week, with marches, blockades of hundreds of schools, and repeated clashes with police. Thunberg told students that “all over the world we are following these developments,” calling on young people to step up and reclaim their future. She also slammed the police response as “extremely violent,” as riot police have used tear gas and charged protesters, injuring hundreds and arresting thousands. The government suspended the use of stun grenades last week after a teenager lost a hand. The cash-strapped government has promised to address students’ concerns but has little room to spend, with borrowing costs at their highest in years. The unrest comes six months before a presidential election in which far-right leader Marine Le Pen is the frontrunner.

Hackers took control of refrigerators at more than 350 French supermarkets, spoiling food and sparking fires. The cyberattack overrode cooling temperatures at chains including Carrefour, Monoprix, Intermarché, and Coopérative U, forcing staff to throw out boxes of spoiled meat and frozen goods. Intermarché’s CEO called the attack “unprecedented” and said losses could reach “tens of millions of euros nationwide in a single day.” France’s prime minister ordered the national cybersecurity agency to investigate and is working with other European countries in case they are also at risk. No group has claimed responsibility, and there has been no ransom demand. The fridges ran on software from the Danish company Danfoss, which said many of the hacked units were outdated and no longer received security updates. Experts say the hack was easy to pull off and could even be “kids messing around,” warning that at least 4,500 Danfoss control panels are still reachable online.

Character.AI has filed for bankruptcy and agreed to sell some of its assets to Disney for $20 million. The chatbot company has faced mounting lawsuits, including one from the mother of a 14-year-old Florida boy who died by suicide after a chatbot allegedly encouraged him, which it settled earlier this year. Kentucky has also sued, saying its chatbots encouraged users to harm themselves, while Pennsylvania alleges its bots posed as doctors. Disney’s offer is a starting bid, so other buyers can still top it. The service will keep running for now but will shut down if no buyer is found. The company was founded in 2021 by two former Google employees, whom Google later rehired while licensing the startup’s technology. In a twist, Disney sent the company a cease-and-desist letter just last year for using its characters without permission.  

Special Reports: More On Russia, Ukraine, Assaults On West

The Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Reporting and Commentary: Ukraine’s destruction of Russian bot farms directly benefits the West’s war against Russian influence operations, Wayne Madsen, right, wayne madsen new observerOct. 12, 2026. Ukraine’s battle is democracy’s battle and the West must answer the call.

Ukraine's attacks on Russian internet infrastructure has already had important consequences for the West's efforts to counter Russian disinformation, cyberespionage, troll farms, and covert political influence operations. And Ukraine’s attack could not have occurred at a better time as the United States prepares for important midterm elections, Brazilian voters head to the polls for a run-off presidential election, Alberta holds a referendum on the future of the province within Canada, and Bulgarians vote for president. Russian bot and troll farms have been active in spreading misinformation to affect the outcomes of these and other election to boost pro-Moscow and Moscow-friendly political parties and causes.

The Ukrainian attack was buttressed by UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham being the first serving prime minister to state publicly that Russia interfered in the 2016 Brexit referendum. In an interview released October 12, 2026, Burnham said he asked officials after entering Downing Street in July and received a “clear answer” that interference occurred. Russia’s Yandex and other platforms, aided and abetted by Twitter and Facebook, directly contributed to the Brexit referendum outcome.

By knocking Yandex’s major data centers offline, Ukraine forced a collapse in automated bot traffic—down to roughly 0.4% of normal levels—dramatically reducing Russia’s ability to seed and amplify disinformation across Europe and the U.S. Multiple monitoring systems (Cloudflare Radar, NetBlocks, IODA) observed a precipitous drop in automated traffic from Yandex’s network after the strikes.

After the first strike on Sasovo on Oct. 8, bot traffic fell to 57% of normal. After subsequent strikes on Kaluga and Vladimir, traffic collapsed to 0.4% of peak levels. IODA found 78% of Yandex Cloud unreachable from outside Russia. Ukraine’s hobbling of Yandex disabled a central launchpad for Russian botnets, troll farms, and automated political influence operations.

The outages directly affected pro‑Kremlin bot networks pushing hate, division, and political agitation on X and Facebook. Bot campaigns supporting Germany’s AfD, Reform UK, and U.S. MAGA‑aligned narratives saw sudden drops in activity. Engagement on planted posts, including on U.S. immigration topics, collapsed. Far-right “news” websites, many of which are credentialed as White House press, saw their “sources” temporarily dry up.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky noted that social media became “easier to breathe,” with less hate and fewer provocations, demonstrated by the observed bot decline. Zelensky also stated there was “less hatred, less discord, and fewer provocations because there were fewer bots.” A member of the European Parliament observed that online activity around Germany’s AfD appeared to plummet after the strikes. Historian Timothy Snyder noted similar patterns around pro‑Trump and pro‑AfD bot work.

Donald Trump’s decision to buy diesel fuel from Russia and call for Zelensky to be replaced as Ukraine’s president may have had just as much to do with Ukraine’s crippling of Yandex, a source for much of Trump’s and the far right’s on-line digital slop, as Ukraine’s attacks on Russian refineries.

Yandex is not just a search engine, it is Russia’s largest cloud provider. It is host to AI systems (Chervonenkis, Lyapunov, Galushkin) used for machine‑learning and automated content generation; the Backbone for ride‑sharing, payments, logistics, and authentication systems; and a key infrastructure node in Russia’s closed domestic internet, meaning no foreign failover is possible.

Drone strikes on Yandex facilities in Sasovo (Oct. 8), Kaluga (Oct. 9), and Vladimir (Oct. 11) produced fires, shutdowns, and full suspension of operations. The Vladimir strike alone forced Yandex to suspend operations at the entire facility. This physical destruction translated into service outages across Russia, including banking, retail, railways, Google access, and RuTube. Cloud infrastructure degradation to 30% of normal traffic levels was also experienced. More importantly for Ukraine and the West, AI and bot infrastructure went dark. Ukraine’s attack was a masterful stroke and one that, hopefully, will be repeated.

Russia’s information warfare abilities also suffered. Ukraine severely reduced Russia’s ability to coordinate troll farms, limited automated amplification of narratives in Europe and North America, interrupted Russia’s ability to rapidly deploy new botnets, exposed the fragility of Russia’s closed internet architecture, and forced Yandex to add wartime force‑majeure clauses to service contracts, acknowledging systemic vulnerability.

Ir is noteworthy that the disabling of Yandex impacted Russia’s operations to influence several elections in which Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump have a stake. In addition to the November 3 midterm election, for which early and absentee voting is already taking place, there are other important elections in which Putin and Trump share favorite parties, candidates, and causes. These include the Oct. 19 Alberta referendum in which voters will decide if the province should pursue separation from Canada; the Oct. 25 second=round presidential election in Brazil (anti-Trump Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva vs. Trump-aligned fascist Flavio Bolsonaro); the Oct. 25 first-round Bulgarian presidential election in which the pro-Putin and pro-Trump Kostadin Kostadinov is one of three major candidates; the Oct. 25 Serbian parliamentary election in which the pro-Putin former Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, is vying to become prime minister; the Oct. 27 Israeli Knesset election in which Binyamin Netanyahu is seeking re-election for his far-right coalition; the Nov. 7 New Zealand general election in which Labor leader Chris Hipkins is running to replace the conservative National government (Hipkins, a supporter of Ukraine and a former minister in charge of Covid-19 response, is being targeted by an anti-vaxxer campaign originating in Russia); the Nov. 15 Cabo Verde presidential election; and the Nov. 29 Spanish general election that pits conservative and pro-Israel People’s Party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo against incumbent Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

An expanded Ukrainian attack strategy on Russia’s internet infrastructure could deal a devastating blow on such Russian disinfo ops as the Social Design Agency’s (SDA) and Struktura’s Doppelganger cloned‑media operations. Doppelganger fake news websites include those mimicking: Der Spiegel, Le Monde, Le Figaro, Le Parisien, France’s 20 Minutes, Fox News, The Guardian, Washington Post, Germany’s ARD, Bild, BBC, Italian news agency ANSA, and NATO and French Foreign Ministry sites. CZ24.news, a Czech/Slovak site, systematically republishes RT content verbatim, acting as a “relay station” for Russian propaganda.

Reliable Recent News, Doppelganger’s sister operation, acts as a central narrative hub — a clearinghouse for messaging that feeds the cloned sites. Other Russian disinfo sites that could be disrupted by a massive attack on Russian internet nodes include WarOnFakes — a Russian “fake fact‑checker” operation operating several Telegram channels and which pushes Kremlin narratives by “debunking” Western reporting and is often used to launder propaganda into more legitimate‑looking formats and Ukraine Inc., which frames Ukraine as corrupt, incompetent, or controlled by oligarchs. It uses business‑style branding to appear neutral or analytical.

Other Russian influence programs disrupted by the attacks on Yandex included Operation Overload, Portal Kombat/Pravda Network, Matryoshka, and Storm‑1516. On Oct. 12, Zelensky indicated that Ukraine’s successful attacks on the Yandex would continue. Ukraine attacked three of five Yandex sites. The other two that could come under attack are those located in Ivanteevka and Mytishchi. Attacks on them and additional cyber-infrastructure sites would be a wise decision for the good of Ukraine and Western democracy.

New York Times, Zelensky Comment Raises Fear That U.S. Is Cutting Intelligence Sharing, Constant Méheut and Carlotta Gall, Oct. 13, 2026. The Ukrainian leader said Kyiv had no early warning from its Western partners before a Russian ballistic missile attack. But some such attacks do go undetected.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on Tuesday that Kyiv had received no warning from its Western partners before a Russian ballistic missile attack the night before. His statement came days after the Trump administration appeared to threaten to cut off intelligence sharing unless Ukraine stopped striking Russian oil refineries.

It was unclear whether Mr. Zelensky was suggesting that the United States had stopped sharing satellite intelligence, which would be a major escalation in Mr. Trump’s latest feud with Ukraine, or whether Washington had simply failed to detect the attack. Ukraine relies on the intelligence to detect incoming missile attacks.

In a social media post, Mr. Zelensky said that five Russian missiles had hit civilian infrastructure in the strike, without specifying whether it had caused any casualties.

Russia has previously fired missiles that Western satellites have struggled to track, including S-400 missiles, which Ukraine has at times described as ballistic weapons. Serhiy Beskrestnov, a military expert who advises Mr. Zelensky, said after the attack on Monday that it was not the first time Western partners had failed to detect a launch of S-400 missiles.

Hours later, at a security conference in Warsaw on Tuesday morning, Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said that intelligence sharing continued and that the attack went undetected “because of a special type of weaponry which was used by the Russian side.”

Fears that Washington might cut off intelligence sharing with Ukraine emerged after Mr. Trump struck a deal with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to buy millions of tons of Russian fuel. The agreement, before the U.S. midterm elections, is part of an effort to bring down sky-high diesel prices caused mostly by the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

As they presented the deal to the Ukrainians at a meeting last week in Miami, Trump administration officials asked Kyiv to stop striking Russian oil refineries so that Russian diesel could flow back onto the market. They said Kyiv owed Washington for critical U.S. intelligence assistance, which some in the room took as a veiled threat. A U.S. official later denied any suggestion that intelligence support would be withheld.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

 

U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsHopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion: Elections Are Decided In November, But They’re Won In October, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 13, 2026. The big news today is that we are now only three weeks till Election Day, and that over the next week more than twenty states will turn on early in person. Very soon tens of millions of Americans will soon be voting all across the country. Some very important states start voting this week - Alaska, Georgia, Kansas, Iowa, and North Carolina. So away we go, people!

Let’s recall what Anderson Clayton told us last week:“Elections are decided in November, but they’re won in October”

Here’s what I wrote to you a few months ago about why we must all now be doing everything we possibly can to drive the early vote, run up the score, and win the election in October:

Our elections have changed a lot in recent years. Most voters can now vote early in person or with no-excuse mail/drop box ballots. This has made it far easier for people to vote which is one reason we’ve seen such a big increase in turnout in recent years. It also has forced our campaigns to move away from Election Day-focused Get-Out-The-Vote programs, and begin our work to get our folks to vote much earlier. Our Election Day is now as Tom Bonier calls it “just the last day of voting.”

This new early vote electoral system is important for Democrats, who traditionally have more episodic and new voters in our coalition. This extra time to do GOTV allows us, if we have the money and the volunteers, to reach down and touch voters less likely to vote than we could in the past, and this increases our turnout and helps us win.

Practically, the faster our voters vote the quicker our campaigns can reach and turnout these less likely voters. Every night campaigns get the list of people who voted that day, so when you vote early you come off the campaign GOTV rolls (and you stop getting canvassed and called!!!!) allowing the campaign to move on to other people who have not voted yet. So having our voters vote as early as possible, on Day 1 as a I call it, is something that increases turnout for us and helps us win.

All of this is why I want to encourage everyone in the Hopium community to become an advocate for Voting Early/Voting On Day 1. Make sure you do it yourself. Educate your networks about why it matters.

Voting on Day 1 has other benefits. A heavy early turnout leads to stories about “hey everyone is voting” putting social pressure on people to go vote, which also increases turnout. Voting early in big numbers also becomes a very public affirmation that our democracy and election system is working as intended, which creates a greater incentive for people to vote and makes it far harder for the Republicans to cheat, disrupt or contest the election.

As we’ve said here driving the early vote makes it more likely we win and harder for them to cheat. So pedal to the metal this week everyone!

While it is still very early there are three states where we are clearly seeing very strong and promising Dem performance in the early vote so far.

Last week national Republican groups began the official crap election triage process and pulled their advertising from the Georgia and North Carolina Senate races, redirecting their dollars to Kansas and other battleground states (yes Kansas is officially part of the battleground!). Today the NYT is reporting (gift link) national Republican groups have now pulled out of three House districts they currently hold - IA-1 (Christina Bohannan), NJ-7 (Rebecca Bennett), and NE-2 (Denise Powell) - and have also pulled advertising from Dem seats they were trying to flip in MI-8 (McDonald Rivet) and OH-1 (Landsman). The story also reports that these House aligned GOP SuperPACs are moving money to defend incumbents in many states we are playing hard in right now including CA-22 (Villegas), CO-8 (Rutinel), MI-10 (Hines), VA-2 (Luria), and SC-01 (Lacore).

Other stories we are tracking this morning….

Here’s a remarkable new chart from Gallup:Image

Here’s the lead story on The Guardian right now:

The new White House Press Secretary is a dangerous conspiracy theorist and deeply unfit for this important job. More on Trump’s escalating attempts to sell out Ukraine, Europe, and America itself in tomorrows post (not forgetting, but ran out of room today).

Finally, while I am not a fan of polling averages as a way of understanding a race (due to the flood of GOP polls this fall) here are the averages Republicans are seeing on Real Clear Politics, their data site. It shows the Dems flipping the Senate even with dozens and dozens of bullshit right-aligned polls: Lev Remembers, Commentary, Lev Parnas, right, Oct. 13, 2026.

New York Times, Top G.O.P. Groups Pull Support From First House Incumbents, Shane Goldmacher, Oct. 13, 2026. Two major Republican super PACs are said to be withdrawing cash from the races of the incumbent Representatives Thomas H. Kean Jr. of New Jersey and Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa in an effort to triage the midterm map.

Top Republican super PACs aligned with President Trump and congressional Republican leadership are cutting off financial support for two Republican House members seeking re-election, according to three people with direct knowledge of the plans.

The decision represents the first instance this cycle of national Republican groups abandoning incumbents as the party scrambles to prevent more widespread losses in the midterm elections.

Officials with the two super PACs decided to cancel all remaining advertising booked for Representative Thomas H. Kean Jr. of New Jersey and Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa over the weekend after internal G.O.P. polling had showed their re-election chances dimming.

National Republicans, after withdrawing funds last week from the open Nebraska seat of Representative Don Bacon, who is retiring, have now essentially ceded three House districts the party currently holds.

In 2024, Republicans emerged from the election holding only a three-seat majority in the House. Since then, the party has tried to pad that slim margin through an aggressive redistricting push that reshaped the 2026 map.

The Republican triage efforts also include withdrawing all of the remaining funds that had been reserved for targeting two Democrats running for re-election, Representatives Greg Landsman of Ohio and Kristen McDonald Rivet of Michigan, according to the three people with direct knowledge. One of the people said other seats were under active consideration to be abandoned as soon as this week.

All told, the super PAC aligned with Speaker Mike Johnson, the Congressional Leadership Fund, is redirecting $10 million from the seats it is effectively ceding in Iowa, Michigan, New Jersey and Ohio and spreading it across 16 new districts, two of the people said.

“For two years, we’ve built the resources and infrastructure that allow us to maneuver in a difficult environment,” Chris Winkelman, the president of the Congressional Leadership Fund, said in a statement. “These moves keep the pressure on the most vulnerable Democrats and preserve a path to 218 seats.”

It was unclear how much money was being redirected from the constellation of super PACs aligned with Mr. Trump. Those groups have reserved more than $6 million in the districts in Iowa, New Jersey and Ohio, according to AdImpact, the ad-tracking service.

The new money from C.L.F. is being redirected to shore up a number of incumbent Republicans, including some whom the group has not previously spent money on this year.

Two of those notable Republicans include Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, who represents a swing district in the Philadelphia suburbs that President Trump lost in 2024, and Representative Monica De La Cruz of Texas, who holds a seat that Mr. Trump carried by 18 points in 2024.

Other Republicans set to receive new support from C.L.F. include Representative Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, Representative Rob Wittman of Virginia and Representative Bill Huizenga of Michigan.

C.L.F. officials declined to disclose how much would be spent in the new seats in which it was investing.

Mr. Kean, whose father was once governor of New Jersey, had vanished from Congress for months earlier this year with almost no explanation, only later revealing he had been hospitalized to treat depression. He is facing a top Democratic recruit, Rebecca Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot.

The leadership fund has spent more than $2 million against Ms. Bennett in October alone, federal records show.

Ms. Miller-Meeks of Iowa has won two of the closest House races in the country in recent years, including a remarkable six-vote margin in 2020. Both parties have already spent more than $36 million on the race, according to AdImpact, with $5 million coming from the Congressional Leadership Fund, according to federal records. An affiliated nonprofit group spent $4 million on more ads.

New York Times, Kimberly Guilfoyle Resigns as Ambassador to Greece, Tyler Pager, Oct. 13, 2026. Ms. Guilfoyle was asked to quit by the White House after a string of damaging reports, including that she had asked a Republican donor to pay off a credit card.

Kimberly Guilfoyle resigned as the U.S. ambassador to Greece on Tuesday after the White House asked her to do so following a string of damaging reports, including that she had asked a Republican donor to pay off her credit card.

In response to a question from a reporter about Ms. Guilfoyle’s status, President Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, said: “We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign. She has been a wonderful asset to the team, and we wish her well.”

Mr. Trump said Tuesday that Ms. Guilfoyle “was doing a good job” but that he “didn’t like what I read.” The president also downplayed his connection to Ms. Guilfoyle, who was once engaged to his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr.

“She wasn’t a member of my family,” he told reporters before leaving the White House for Alaska. “She, I guess, dated my son a long time ago.”

In a lengthy post on social media, Ms. Guilfoyle said that her time as ambassador was “coming to an end” and that she planned to “vigorously defend my name, my reputation, and my integrity.”

“I will not allow false accusations to define my decades of public service,” she wrote.

A donor, Eric Deters, first told The Wall Street Journal that Ms. Guilfoyle asked him to wire her $100,000 to pay off her American Express card just before her Senate confirmation hearing in July 2025. According to messages Mr. Deters provided to The New York Times, Ms. Guilfoyle promised to serve as his “ride or die in Trump world” if he sent her the money.

Ms. Guilfoyle was one of the first ambassadors to be nominated in the president’s second term. In Greece, she has been a highly visible ambassador, appearing on the cover of Vogue Greece and at parties around Athens. Ms. Guilfoyle told The Times last year that her active social life demonstrated her commitment to the job.

In her resignation post, Ms. Guilfoyle said she was proud of her work to expand American liquefied natural gas exports to Europe and strengthen defense and security partnerships with NATO.

In Athens, the reports of her potential conflicts of interest have generated exasperation.

“The fact that they would send someone like that here, with no tact or diplomacy skills, shows how low we rank in Trump’s priorities, how insignificant Greece is for them,” Maria Stefanou, a 68-year-old retiree, told The Times last week

Greece’s foreign ministry declined to comment, but opposition parties said the reports that had led to Ms. Guilfoyle’s resignation raised important questions about foreign interference in Greek politics and the country’s business interests.

“The decision to remove the ambassador implicitly lends credence to these reports, which in essence confirm a model of transactional diplomacy, far removed from the principled foreign policy that Greece should be pursuing,” Dimitris Mantzos, a spokesman for Pasok, the main center-left opposition party, wrote in a statement.

Mr. Mantzos said his party had asked for details about the energy and defense agreements signed last week during Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to Athens.

Ms. Guilfoyle welcomed Mr. Rubio upon his arrival, and the two spent much of the trip together, as is customary when a top official travels overseas. When asked about the reports, Mr. Rubio defended Ms. Guilfoyle and said she “has been a strong ambassador.” But when the Journal article with Mr. Deters’s allegations published shortly before Mr. Rubio departed Greece, he brushed aside questions about the matter, saying, “I’m not going to comment on a story that literally posted a few hours ago.”

The resignation caps a remarkable rise and fall for Ms. Guilfoyle, a former Fox News personality. Decades ago, she was married to Gavin Newsom, then the mayor of San Francisco, and in 2004, Harper’s Bazaar predicted their marriage would be “one of the most glamorous political unions since Jack and Jackie.” They divorced in 2006.

Ms. Guilfoyle then became a legal analyst for CNN and ABC before joining Fox News. She was forced out of Fox in 2018 over questions about inappropriate workplace behavior. That same year, she started dating Donald Trump Jr. and working for a pro-Trump super PAC. The two were engaged in 2020, and Ms. Guilfoyle spoke at both the 2020 and 2024 Republican National Conventions. In May, the president’s son married Bettina Anderson, a Palm Beach socialite.

“While my time as Ambassador may be coming to an end, my commitment to President Trump, the America First movement, and the country I love will never end,” Ms. Guilfoyle wrote on social media.

New York Times, Pope Leo Found to Have Lung Cancer During Surgery, Vatican Says, Elisabetta Povoledo, Oct. 13, 2026. The surgeons removed the lower lobe of the pope’s right lung after finding a cancerous nodule.

Pope Leo was diagnosed with lung cancer on Tuesday, and a lower lobe of his right lung was removed during surgery, ​the Vatican said in a statement.

It said an examination of a nodule during the operation had confirmed a diagnosis of ​lung adenocarcinoma. It said cancer had been “suspected by preoperative tests.”

The surgery itself lasted approximately 90 minutes, and the pope, 71, was in the operating room for about 3 hours. “The surgery was successful, and there were no complications,” the statement said.

The statement did not say whether the pope would undergo further treatment. A Vatican spokesman said that the statement spoke for itself.

Lung adenocarcinoma is a common form of lung cancer. Survival rates for it vary greatly depending on the stage of the cancer and a patient’s overall health.

The information released about Leo thus far seems to indicate he has early-stage lung cancer, which is typically treated with surgery and tends to have a very high survival rate, said Dr. Sudish Murthy, a thoracic surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic.

The surgery was performed at a hospital in Rome, the Policlinico A. Gemelli. The Vatican had said previously that Leo was expected to spend about a week recovering in the hospital after the surgery and that all audiences with him would be canceled until Oct. 20.

The cancer diagnosis came only about a year and a half into Leo’s papacy. The first American pope, he was elected to lead the Roman Catholic Church in May 2025.

The pope announced during his weekly blessing and prayer in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday that doctors had advised the surgical intervention after detecting a “very early-stage and well-localized” nodule during recent medical tests.

He said he still planned to travel to South America next month, and a Vatican spokesman said those plans had not changed. The pope was aware of his condition when he spoke on Sunday, the spokesman said.

Medical advances and increasingly effective drug therapies mean that a lung cancer diagnosis is no longer a death sentence.

“You can heal from a lung tumor,” said Dr. Lorenzo Spaggiari, a thoracic surgical oncologist at the European Institute of Oncology in Milan who is not part of the pope’s medical team. A patient of his once ran the New York Marathon after having a lung removed, he said.

“The important thing is to catch it an initial stage,” Dr. Spaggiari said.

The medical bulletin did not say whether any lymph nodes had been removed, but Dr. Spaggiari said that was standard procedure.

 

bulwark morning shots logoMorning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Our Elites Booked It, William Kristol, right, william bill kristol imdbOct. 13, 2026. Yesterday I remarked that “seeing support for President Trump collapse among the public—with very little help from our pitifully complacent and fearful elites—is heartening. Even inspiring.”

I didn’t go into any detail to justify my swipe at our elites. I don’t really think much justification is bulwark logo big shipneeded. But I thought I might mention here one of the most helpful characterizations I’ve heard of their behavior. It came from Leah Greenberg, co-founder of the grassroots activist organization Indivisible and a key organizer of the No Kings demonstrations, in a conversation we had under the auspices of the New Haven Democracy Project.

I was lamenting the performance of our elites, and asked Leah what she thought of them. Her reply:

So there’s a 2014 Swedish dark comedy called Force Majeure in which a family goes to a ski lodge. It’s a husband and a wife and their two small children, and there is an optical illusion of a controlled avalanche that makes them think that an avalanche is coming at the ski lodge. And the husband just books it. He grabs his phone and he runs and he leaves the wife and their two small children. You know, the wife is desperately trying to shield the children from what they think is an oncoming avalanche. And it turns out it was an optical illusion. Everyone’s safe. It’s fine.

But now they have to live with what that moment has revealed about the fact that the husband will flee and save himself at the drop of a hat. That is kind of how I feel about elites in American society right now. That’s the best metaphor that I’ve been able to come up with for what we have experienced over the last year and a half, which is to say that I think we’ve got a lot of really revealing data about when the chips are down, what people will do, how much they will fold . . . to save themselves, how much they will risk to push back. And, you know, it’s a lot faster to make a list of the people who did push back in early 2025 than the people who did not.

I haven’t seen the movie (or for that matter its 2020 American adaptation, Downhill, starring Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus). But from what I can gather, it’s pretty clear by the end of the movie—if not earlier than that—that the husband/father won’t be able to regain trust or respect, and that the family won’t be getting back together. The status quo ante can’t be restored.

Nor can ours.

Nor should it be.

And so, assuming we survive our current political avalanche, we’ll have to keep two things in mind: Every society has elites. And we need to figure out how to produce a better class of them.

AROUND THE BULWARK

  • Trump’s Mental Decline Is Now a National Emergency… On the premiere episode of Psycho Politics with George Conway, JIM ACOSTA joins GEORGE to discuss Trump’s increasingly bizarre ramblings, his conspiracy-minded White House, and the media’s reluctance to confront his behavior.
  • bulwark logo big shipTrump Jokes as a Woman Is Beaten at His Rally… SAM STEIN and ANDREW EGGER break down Donald Trump’s bizarre and disturbing Ohio rally, from his repeated comments about Sen. Jon Husted’s physique to mocking a woman who was assaulted by a fellow rally goer for wearing a shirt demanding the release of the Epstein files.
  • The Paxton Nightmare Is Costing Republicans Big Time… BILL KRISTOL joins TIM MILLER on The Bulwark Daily to discuss the October surprise that blew up in Ken Paxton’s face.
  • Elon Musk Came Crawling Back to Trump... JVL explains why to SARAH LONGWELL on a bonus Secret Podcast.

Quick Hits

SHOWDOWN AT POTOMAC LINKS: Two years in, Donald Trump seems unwilling to risk crossing federal judges except on issues he really, really cares about. So, of course, the administration’s latest mini-constitutional crisis is unfolding over his lawless “renovation” of a local DC golf course. Here’s WaPo:

A “furious” federal judge excoriated the Trump administration Monday morning for cutting down hundreds of trees at East Potomac Golf Links, the historic course eyed for redevelopment by President Donald Trump, telling government lawyers they had cost their credibility by ignoring her repeated warnings to give notice before work continued.

Government lawyers told U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes at an emergency hearing that approximately 430 trees were removed Saturday and that another 299 are still targeted for removal. Reyes ordered the government to stop cutting down trees until at least 2 p.m. Tuesday, by when she hopes to hear testimony from another administration official involved in the tree removal.

Reyes says she had been reluctant to issue a temporary restraining order in the case. But, she added, “I have no faith that the government isn’t going to cut them down unless there’s an order in place not to do so.”

Violating her order “by two seconds” would prompt contempt proceedings, the judge said.

Is it good when a federal judge has so little confidence that the government will operate in basic good faith in her courtroom that she feels the need to threaten its lawyers with punishment just to keep things proceeding in a routine manner? Doesn’t seem great. Read the whole thing.

ALL OVER BUT THE CRYING: Americans are hopping mad pretty much across the board about the state of things two years into Donald Trump’s second term. Trump isn’t going to pull a rabbit out of his hat to fix any of them ahead of the midterms. And a new Politico poll suggests it might not matter even if he did.

The poll, which was conducted last week, quizzed undecided voters on whether they would be wooed by a number of (forgive us) implausible future scenarios. Would it make you more likely to vote Republican, the pollster asked, if gas prices went down a dollar a gallon? If President Trump announced the Iran war was over? If data showed that inflation had fallen to its lowest level in five years?

Across the board, respondents were unimpressed. Only about 10 percent of undecided voters suggested that any of these scenarios would make them look more favorably on Republicans. The most favorable possibility—and perhaps the least likely—was the inflation question: A whopping 12 percent said such a drop in inflation would make them more likely to vote Republican.

Maybe such a poll is a silly thought experiment. But it underscores a gloomy reality for Republicans with midterms just weeks away: The cake is looking baked. “There’s nothing that Trump could do,” one GOP operative working on battleground races told Politico, “and frankly, even if he did something, no one would believe it anyway at this point.” Ouch.

 U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, the retiring North Carolina Republican, has after voting for certain Trump-nominated cabinet members. Columnist Jennifer Rubin is not impressed.

U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, the retiring North Carolina Republican, has regrets after voting for certain Trump-nominated cabinet members. Columnist Jennifer Rubin is not impressed. 

The Contrarian, Opinion: Words & Phrases: “I regret,” Jennifer Rubin, right, jennifer rubin new headshotOct. 13, 2026. 🚨 21 Days to the Midterms 🚨 The Congress is filled with Republican lawmakers who are too dim-witted, ignorant, and spineless to cross Donald Trump. The voters who sent them to D.C. were aware of their moral and intellectual contrarian logoincapacities. It has never been a secret that Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri is a white nationalist and conspiratorialist nut; no one mistakes Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama for a man of keen even modest intellect. But those lawmakers who style themselves as thoughtful “moderates,” yet continually betray their constituents and fail to screw up the courage to counter a despotic, dangerous, and racist president deserve special opprobrium.

Included in that group is Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who is currently hawking his book on his way out the door of a Senate career marked by repeated instances of abject cowardice and hypocrisy.

Paige Masten writes about Tillis’ confession that he “regrets” his vote to confirm Pete Hegseth when he knew Hegseth to be unfit:

[Tillis] was concerned about his lack of qualifications, as well as allegations about his management style, treatment of women and excessive alcohol use. After doing his due diligence, Tillis found “compelling evidence” that those allegations did, in fact, have substance. Nothing was able to convince him that Hegseth was the right guy for the job….

“My vote would be the one to sink him, and in the first weeks of a new administration, for a president I supported and for whom this meant so much, I just couldn’t do it,” Tillis wrote. “When the time came, I voted yes.”

Wut?! Why not uphold his oath of office and keep out of power someone so clearly unqualified for a critical post? Why not summon the courage to do the right thing? It remains a mystery why he lacked the decency to defend the troops, the country, and the Constitution.

But Tillis has been a habitual coward. Masten also relays the account of his capitulation to confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for secretary of Health and Human Services:

Tillis had “serious doubts” about Kennedy’s qualifications, and his own conversations with Kennedy did little to assuage them. Still, though, Tillis wanted a “good reason” to vote against the nomination, because apparently Kennedy’s inexperience and questionable judgment weren’t enough. Tillis told his Republican colleagues, some of whom were medical doctors, that he would be happy to join them in opposition to Kennedy if they gave him an excuse to do so. But none of them had the courage to vote no, so Tillis didn’t, either. “I wasn’t going to be the lone voice in the wilderness keeping the president’s pick from getting across the finish line,” Tillis wrote. “I had no intention of letting my colleagues outsource their courage to me while they pretended to go along with the questionable nomination President Trump had put forward.”

He had no intention of doing the right thing because everyone else was behaving despicably. That’s the bottom line.

Tillis shares the blame for a reckless, illegal war that Hegseth has waged; the deaths of American service personnel and innocent Iranian civilians — including dozens of schoolgirls who were murdered by the strikes; the extrajudicial killings on the high seas of suspected drug runners; the existential damage to the military’s reputation; and the billions in material losses incurred in an irresponsible war. He is also complicit in upending the lives of hundreds and thousands of people, Americans and others, who suffered physical injuries or saw their careers undeservedly and prematurely ended because of Hegseth’s blustery incompetence.

Tillis also bears the responsibility for the measles deaths and illnesses enabled under RFK Jr.’s watch, for the generational damage to our health system, and for the loss of thousands of skilled doctors, researchers, scientists, and public health officials forced out under the manifestly unqualified and dangerous HHS secretary Tillis installed.

But how much does Tillis truly regret? And when did he develop this pang of conscience? Tillis could have demanded these officials’ removal, sought to hold them in contempt for refusing to cooperate with congressional investigations, or voted against the Iran War (before he finally broke with Trump in September). He did none of those things, so count me as utterly unimpressed by any belated political deathbed confession.Subscribed

Even worse, Tillis showed precisely the same level of moral cowardice even after announcing his retirement when, despite replete evidence of Todd Blanche’s unfitness, he voted to confirm him for attorney general. He did so over the objections of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, who have pleaded to end the coverup and follow the law to disclose the files of his pedophile racket. Tillis has learned nothing from past episodes of moral cravenness. He was presented with the opportunity to thwart a deputy attorney general who refused to follow the law, participated in the coverup, helped concoct a Jan. 6 slush fund/immunity scam for Trump, pursued baseless, vindictive prosecutions, presided over the debasement and corruption of the Justice Department, and showed every indication he would be a political pawn of the president. Instead, Tillis rubber-stamped his nomination, shedding crocodile tears that his vote would bring criticism. As it should.

Tillis would like us to think he has “regrets.” But if those regrets were sincere, we would have seen some evidence of a change of heart, or some modicum of political spine. We have seen none of that and, indeed, when presented with chances to make amends by standing up to Trump and his MAGA party, he caved. Again. So spare us the talk of “regrets.”

Tillis’s legacy will be one of betrayal, cravenness, and hypocrisy. The only ones with some legitimate claim to “regrets” may be the voters of North Carolina who last elected him, hoping he’d show some fidelity to them or to his oath of office. At least they have a chance to make amends by voting against Republicans in November.

The Hartmann Report, Commentary: Is Gavin Newsom Repeating the Billionaire Mistake That's Tearing France Apart? Thom Hartmann, right, thom hartmann newOct. 13, 2026. France's unrest exposes the consequences of failing to tax the wealthy. California's billionaire-tax fight raises the same fundamental question about who should pay to make a nation succeed...

hartmann report newIs Gavin Newsom Repeating the Billionaire Mistake That's Tearing France Apart?France's unrest exposes the consequences of failing to tax the wealthy. California's billionaire-tax fight raises the same fundamental question about who should pay to make a nation succeed...

Before we get into it, please hit that heart button and the little circle above the picture to restack this Daily Take on Notes. Every restack — which is free and you can add comments to — puts this info in front of readers the billionaires’ propaganda machine (whose social media sites have all shadow-banned me) would rather never see it.

Three weeks from today, California voters will have their ballots tallied on Proposition 40 (and 41 and 42, which would negate 40) that will impose a one-time 5% tax on the assets — the wealth — of the state’s 200+ billionaires.

The money will be used to make up for the massive almost-trillion-dollar cuts to Medicaid, called Medi-Cal in that state, that hits in January because the Republican’s Big Beautiful Billionaire’s Bill used it to pay for their trillions in tax cuts for billionaires.

The California Democratic Party has formally endorsed Prop 40 along with the California Nurses Association and the state AFL-CIO, and if the state’s Democratic politicians had backed the tax across the board, odds are very high that it would pass and 42 (which is now polling over 50%) would fail.

But Governor Gavin Newsom has come out against it, making an argument that dates back to the Reagan years:

“If you ask the morbidly rich to pay more in taxes they’ll simply leave the state.”

That threat is the beating heart of a bizarre economic and governing philosophy called neoliberalism. I remember the late Milton Friedman hustling this crap back in the 1970s and was horrified when Reagan dusted off its variation in the old Horse and Sparrow economics that Warren Harding had tried in the 1920s, calling it “trickle down.”

Harding told people that if you feed horses [rich people] extra oats, that will pass through into their patties on the road where the sparrows [working class people] can pick them out. He cut the top tax rate on the morbidly rich from 73 to 25 percent, which kicked off the Roaring 20’s and led directly to Black Tuesday and the Republican Great Depression.

It took FDR almost a decade to completely repudiate Harding’s policies and put the nation back together and, with his 90 percent top tax rate on the morbidly rich, create the first middle class to encompass more than half a nation in the history of the world.

Reagan cut the top rate from 70 percent down to 28 percent and raised taxes on working-class people 11 times, according to his own economic advisor Bruce Bartlett, to partially cover the hole that blew in the nation’s budget (Reagan tripled our national debt in a mere 8 years, a non-wartime record at the time.)

Thus began the destruction of FDR’s vaunted middle class and the explosion of today’s predatory billionaire class.

The “tax burden” (a favorite Republican phrase) moved down the income ladder from the rich to working class people and has kept moving in that direction through every Republican administration since.

But neoliberalism wasn’t limited to America; it swept the democratic world in the 1980s and 1990s, most famously embraced by the French and the British but popping up measurably in virtually all the European nations. The result is today most visible in the student riots that are tearing France apart.

I was listening to The New York Times “Daily” podcast on the topic yesterday and they started out by blaming France’s debt and school crisis on decades of over-spending on social policy without mentioning the revenue (taxes) side of the equation. Interestingly, the top comment (as I’m writing this) on the podcast says:

“Is it any surprise that the neoliberal Times ignored the effect of cutting taxes on the rich & went immediately for France’s social welfare programs? Instead of cutting taxes, France should have raised them. Ask Kansas how trickle-down economics actually works.”

Macron — a neoliberal “conservative” and former investment banker — is still doubling down on tax-cutting neoliberalilsm. This week their legislature, the National Assembly, opens debate on an austerity budget that cuts pensions and freezes wages for public workers.

Young people are in the streets, around 400 high schools have shut down, and the government’s borrowing costs have hit their highest level in at least two decades. And France is probably just the beginning; Bloomberg is warning that the turmoil could and probably will spread across the Eurozone.

France does spend a lot on its people: everybody has healthcare, childcare, college, and a dignified retirement and the trains generally run on time. And those costs are what the neoliberal politicians and press in America are focusing on.

Almost nobody, though, is asking why the morbidly rich in France are paying less and working class people are paying more in the years since the ’80s, just like it’s been here in America since our very own neoliberal Reagan Revolution.

From 1914 through 1986, France’s top income tax rate on the morbidly rich was generally above 60 percent and it’s middle class was steadily growing. Until 1985 its corporations paid a 50 percent tax on profits. Then the neoliberals arrived, and today the top personal rate is 45 percent, the top corporate rate is 25 percent, and, while French billionaires have never had it so good, the French middle class is in crisis.

While total taxes actually climbed from 33.7 percent of the economy in 1965 to 43.5 percent today, the money that used to come from the top tiers of society and business was replaced with flat levies on paychecks and on purchases that everybody buys. As a result, the progressive income tax went from 12 percent of public revenue in 1981 to 6 percent by 2014.

The result is that the effective tax rate on the richest 0.1 percent is 26 percent rather than the 45 percent that an affluent doctor or lawyer might pay, as France’s Institut des Politiques Publiques points out.

Economist Gabriel Zucman puts it more bluntly, noting that the average French person pays about 51 percent of their income in taxes of all kinds while billionaires pay about 25 percent. Which is why, over that same period, the fortunes of France’s 500 richest people swelled from 6 percent of the country’s GDP to 42 percent.

Demonstrating that old cliché about the definition of insanity, Macron stupidly poured gasoline on the fire his predecessors had started.

He scrapped the country’s wealth tax and cut the corporate rate from 33 percent to 25 percent; France’s own national auditor, the Cour des comptes, concluded that his tax cuts have cost the treasury more than €60 billion a year and produced no savings whatsoever to offset them. (That’s a bit more than a third of this year’s entire French government’s deficit.)

And make no mistake: the French people understand exactly what’s been done to them. When French-American economist Gabriel Zucman suggested France should levy a 2 percent minimum wealth tax (like Prop 40 in California, but smaller and permanent) on family fortunes over €100 million (about 1,800 French households) fully 86 percent of the public supported it, including 92 percent of Macron’s own party.

Nonetheless, Macron’s conservative allies joined up with Le Pen’s hard right to kill it in the Assembly last fall, warning that — wait for it — if it passed, “The rich would flee France.”

So now Macron is trying to extract that money from the nation’s retirees, just like Republicans here in America are right now talking about the need to cut Social Security and Medicare to sustain their tax cuts for Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

France is almost certainly just the first domino to fall from neoliberal stupidity, as I detailed in The Hidden History of Neoliberalism: How Reaganism Gutted America. When you look at income taxes across the developed world in 1981, the average hit to the morbidly rich was 66 percent. By 2013 it had fallen to 43 percent, as the worldwide average corporate tax rate fell from 47 to 25 percent.

When two British scholars looked at 50 years of tax cuts for the rich in 18 wealthy countries, they showed how these neoliberal tax cuts consistently made the rich richer but did nothing measurable for growth or jobs. The sparrows (and us trickle-ees) are still waiting for the oats and drips.

Which brings us back to California and Newsom’s political calculations. Economists Saez and Zucman calculate that California’s billionaires currently pay about 0.2 percent of their wealth in state taxes each year, so even if fully a quarter of them stormed off to Texas or Florida it’d take a century for that lost income tax to equal what this one-time wealth tax would bring in even with only three-quarters of them still there to pay it.

Study after study shows most of them don’t leave anyway, because their homes, their companies, and their friends are where they made their money.

In 2022, for example, Massachusetts voters approved a 4 percent surtax on incomes over a million dollars, and sure enough, billionaires like Patriots owner Robert Kraft and New Balance’s Jim Davis shrilly warned that the rich would flee the state.

Instead, the tax brought in $3.38 billion last year, the third year in a row it’s more than doubled the state’s original estimate. Federal tax data from Massachusetts proves higher-income households were less likely to leave the year after it passed than the year before. And that money is now paying for quality schools, free community college, and low-cost public transit.

Newsome, of course, knows all this. But he also knows that five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized billionaires buying our elections, so having access to billionaires’ money could be a big factor in his all-but-announced run for president in 2028.

What the French students are showing the world right now is what happens when politicians with real power across the political spectrum cling to neoliberal low-tax doctrine. The debt piles up, the bond traders start circling like chum-drawn sharks, and pretty soon everybody is talking about “fixing” Social Security, schools, and the rest of the social safety net to “restore fiscal responsibility.”

Meanwhile the morbidly rich see their wealth explode and — in America with this corrupt Supreme Court — their political power rises right along with it, which just accelerates the process.

So, if you live in California, vote “Yes!” on Prop 40 and “No!!!” on 41 and 42. And keep an eye and ear out for potential Democratic contenders for 2028 who — like Congressman Ro Khanna — have the courage to tell the truth about these things.

New York Times, Hillary Clinton Steps to the Podcast Mic as Midterms Approach, Benjamin Mullin, Oct. 13, 2026. With “High Stakes,” Mrs. Clinton is teaming up with “Pivot” co-host Kara Swisher to break down the consequential battle for the House and the Senate.

Hillary Clinton has rarely been far from the spotlight since her 2016 presidential bid. She has written best-selling books, taught at Columbia University and even tried her hand on Broadway as a producer for the Tony Award-winning musical “Suffs.”

Her next act? Podcaster.

With the midterm elections looming, Mrs. Clinton is preparing to make her voice heard on a new podcast series, called “High Stakes,” alongside the well-known technology journalist Kara Swisher. Starting Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Swisher will break down the race to control the House and the Senate in weekly episodes that run through mid-November.

“I don’t think the stakes for the country and the world could be any higher,” Mrs. Clinton said in an interview with The New York Times last week. “If we don’t reverse this chaos and corruption and cruelty that is being visited upon us by this administration, we won’t recognize our country.”

The podcast is launched with Vox Media, which also produces, distributes and sells advertising for two other podcasts that Ms. Swisher hosts: “Pivot” and “On With Kara Swisher.” “High Stakes” will be distributed through the same feed of Ms. Swisher’s “On” podcast. Ms. Swisher, Mrs. Clinton and Vox Media will share advertising revenue from the episodes.

The idea for the podcast came this spring at the sprawling home of former Atlantic owner David Bradley in Washington’s upscale Kalorama neighborhood. Ms. Swisher turned up to the soireé, which was being held for Mrs. Clinton, wearing a T-shirt and jeans and began peppering the former secretary of state with questions about a variety of topics — from the upcoming midterm elections to the continuing war in Ukraine.

Ms. Swisher said she thought Mrs. Clinton’s answers were concise and intelligible, and Ms. Swisher wondered why Mrs. Clinton had not taken another swing at podcasting after her solo interview show, “You and Me Both With Hillary Clinton,” ended in 2023.

The two got a test-run when Mrs. Clinton filled in for Ms. Swisher’s regular “Pivot” co-host, Scott Galloway, in August. Ms. Swisher wanted to give listeners the version of Mrs. Clinton she saw that evening, and persuaded her to team up.

“There’s a thing about the secretary, where it’s like, ‘Oh, if you knew her in the room, she’s so funny,’” Ms. Swisher said, adding, “We’re going to try to show you that room.”

New York Times, He Would Be Florida’s First Black Governor. Can He Sway Black Voters? David Ovalle, Oct. 13, 2026. Byron Donalds, the Republican nominee for governor, is working to win over Black voters who usually support Democrats as his party girds for the possibility of low turnout.

The Black men at the Caribbean restaurant outside Miami wanted to hear how Byron Donalds would fix Florida’s soaring cost of living when he stopped there to mingle this month.

But they also pressed him about whether he would be a puppet for another Florida voter: Donald J. Trump, the increasingly unpopular president.

Mr. Donalds, the Republican congressman hoping to become Florida’s first Black governor, assured them during the private meal in Miami Gardens, Fla., that he was on the ballot — not Mr. Trump.

“I was persuaded,” said Drumene Woodside, 53, who said he would cast his ballot for Mr. Donalds though he normally votes for Democrats.

Mr. Donalds is working to win over Black Floridians like Mr. Woodside in the final stretch, as his party girds for the possibility of low turnout among many of the voters who powered Mr. Trump to victory two years ago.

The race has been surprisingly competitive for a state that has been reliably red for well over a decade. Mr. Donalds’s Democratic opponent is David Jolly, a white former Republican congressman who left the party in 2018.

In recent weeks, Mr. Donalds has held several campaign events focused on Black voters, including a forum at Florida A&M University, the historically Black college he attended in the 1990s, where he was grilled by some of the students in attendance.

He is rolling out endorsements from local Black leaders, including longtime Democrats. He is also buying ads in news outlets with large Black audiences in voter-rich South Florida, and visiting Black churches to share his conservative vision. His campaign staff includes Janiyah Thomas, who was the Black media director for the Trump campaign in 2024.

It’s an uphill battle in a state where Black voters have historically backed Democrats by wide margins. Florida, with more than 13 million registered voters, has fewer than 100,000 Black Republicans.

New York Times, Republicans Promoted a False Rumor That James Talarico Was in Ohio, Bayliss Wagner, Oct. 13, 2026 (print ed.). The Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas spent nine days off the trail with what he and his campaign said was a bad case of the flu. His opponents fueled rumors, including one that spread widely before it was debunked.

After James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas, spent more than a week with no campaign appearances because of what he and his aides described as a bad case of the flu, a false rumor circulated by conservatives exploded online.

By Sunday, a post on X claiming that Mr. Talarico had been at a mental health facility in Ohio — a story promoted by Republican allies of Mr. Talarico’s opponent, Ken Paxton — had been viewed millions of times. Then the Ohio facility took the remarkable step of publicly announcing on Sunday night that Mr. Talarico had in fact never been treated there.

“I’ve never even been to Ohio,” Mr. Talarico, who returned to the campaign trail on Friday, wrote in a post sharing the center’s statement. He called the theory “the craziest thing I’ve ever heard” in an interview with MS NOW.

The New York Times reviewed time-stamped images from a security camera at Mr. Talarico’s home, which were provided by his campaign on the condition they not be published for security reasons. The images showed Mr. Talarico around the exterior of the home and at its entrances between Oct. 1 and Oct. 8.

The episode represented a wild stretch in the Texas Senate race — one of this year’s highest-profile, ugliest and most expensive contests and one that could help decide control of the upper chamber.

The furor over Mr. Talarico’s absence was extraordinary on several levels. It showed how mistrust of politicians and the mainstream news media, combined with online algorithms that incentivize outrageous theories, has created a Wild West of misinformation. It offered a lesson for Democrats: In such an era, it is politically risky for a candidate, even one too ill to campaign, to disappear for nine days.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption  

 

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Reporting: Trump: the not-so-closeted bisexual, Wayne Madsen, Oct. 13, 2026. Trump’s comments speak volumes about his sexual preferences.

wayne madsen new observerWayne Madsen Report, Investigative Reporting: Trump: the not-so-closeted bisexual, Wayne Madsen, right, Oct. 13, 2026. Trump’s comments speak volumes about his sexual preferences. 

 

helen delaney reese djt

Hope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump is facing a dire situation, Heather Delaney Reese, above right, Oct. 13, 2026. At 7:21 tonight, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, walked straight onto the stage in Covelli Centre in Youngstown, Ohio, and told the crowd how much he liked the “ass” of one of the men he was there to campaign for to keep his position in federal office.

“I don’t do this with men very often. I started examining his body … and I looked and I watched up and down. I looked at his ass and I looked at the whole... And then I looked at his hands. Look at his hands. He’s got these claws.”

The rest of his nearly 1½-hour-long rally showed much of the same bizarre ramblings and just how much Trump seems to be struggling mentally, not even halfway through his second term.

The man with the body Trump admired was actually Senator Jon Husted, one of the two men that Trump had flown to Ohio to campaign for. The other was Vivek Ramaswamy, who he had actually campaigned against during the Republican presidential primaries. But Trump seemed particularly fascinated by Husted, because that wasn’t the only time that he commented on Husted’s body. At one point, he even stopped what he was about to say and blurted out, “Look at that jawline,” and “I’ll tell you, I never saw that. I never studied him and now I study him. I say, why was he such a good football? Look at the jawline. He’s tough as hell.”

As the rally went on, it moved past embarrassing and into the reminder that there really is nothing Donald Trump will not say. With no impulse control, whatever enters his mind exits his mouth without hesitation, and that is a terrible trait for a president to have. One of the first things he said at a campaign rally, where his party’s polling numbers keep falling, was to talk about how impressed he was with a senator’s backside. He has lost the ability to regulate what he says in public, and there is nobody who will stop him. The only people around him are the ones pushing him to get even more extreme. But what this really reveals isn’t just that there are no limits to what he will say, but that we may very well be reaching the point where there is nothing he will not do as well.

Later in his speech, the crowd, who had been cheering at the worst of what he said and laughing when they should have been concerned, started chanting “four more years.” Trump did not skip a beat and, with a grin and a smirk, responded, “I would love to do that. I’ll be honest.” He had said a week ago that he only teases another run to upset Democrats. “We’ve driven them crazy. They’re sick individuals.” No doubt if he thought he could actually do it, he would, and law-and-order supporters would cheer him on.

Then came the threats. He said that if Democrats ever regained power, “He’s going to be the last Republican president in the history of our country. I will be. I will be. I will be the last Republican president.” He is desperate to make Democrats, and really anyone who has not completely bowed down to him, the enemy and a grave threat to life in the United States. The people in that room with him seemed to think that the only thing standing between them and some unnamed but frightening threat is keeping Republicans in power forever, even as their daily lives become more expensive and uncertain under Republican control of all three branches of government.

Not too long after that, he brought up eliminating the Senate filibuster, which would allow Republicans to pass most legislation with a simple majority instead of needing 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, when he said, “Frankly, we should terminate the filibuster.” He kept going, “You terminate the filibuster, you get everything. It’ll be so beautiful. You’ll do it all.” He then let it slip exactly why he wants the filibuster gone so badly, “We will never lose an election again because we’ll have really good safeguards. All strict.” He wants to eliminate the filibuster so that he can push through changes to our election laws that would ensure he truly will never lose an election again, or most likely ever even have them again, and if we do, they will be in name only, like in Russia and Belarus. He is openly advocating for the end of our democratic republic in the United States.

His comments are especially concerning when you consider that just a couple of weeks ago, it was announced that the Trump administration had refused to invite international election observers to monitor our upcoming midterm elections. This breaks a long-standing tradition that has been in place for more than two decades. Since 2002, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe has monitored every federal election in the United States and provided independent observation of how our elections are conducted. They have been shut out for the first time ever. The countries that have also refused to allow these observers include Russia and Belarus. These are the last countries we should be following when it comes to protecting free and fair elections, and yet once again, under the leadership, or lack thereof, of Donald Trump, here we are.

Not everybody in the audience just nodded along with everything he said. There were two protesters who broke through the dangerous rhetoric coming from Donald Trump. The second was a woman wearing a shirt that read “Release the Epstein Files” and whom a Trump supporter ended up punching in the face, shoving into the bleachers, grabbing by the hair, and attempting to shove her head into the ground. Security arrived and removed the woman, however the man who attacked her was not removed. He stayed in the arena and exchanged high-fives with other attendees while she was escorted out.

Trump watched all of this happen from the stage and just took it in, never once condemning the violence. He called the protesters “scum” and said they were “paid by the lefties in order to destroy our country.” When it came to the protester who was beaten, he went even further, mocking her appearance and misgendering her, calling her a “fat guy” going “back home to mom,” and the crowd laughed.

The president of the United States stood at the podium and made it clear whose side he was on when he laughed along with this latest show of violence. This is the world that Donald Trump has created, where violence is no longer viewed as a bad thing, and it’s not just accepted. It’s now encouraged. Much like everything this administration does, there are parallels to past times of the rise of dictators, authoritarianism, and fascism.

Back in the early 1920s, before Mussolini had even consolidated full power in Italy, his Blackshirts, the squadristi, beat socialists, trade unionists, journalists, and political opponents at rallies and in public spaces. Police stood by and watched, and in many towns, they enabled it. Historians have long said that violence is not a side effect of fascism. They have said that it is one of the essential components of a fascist takeover, with the populace learning to see violence as patriotic, and even heroic.

When what happened tonight is seen in the bigger picture alongside Pete Hegseth’s announcement of a livestreamed public execution by firing squad, it all makes more sense. This is just the Trump administration following the modern-day strongman playbook.

The rest of what Trump said focused on his continued efforts to divide us and make us see each other, and especially our black and brown migrant communities, as the enemy and a threat. He once again shared the fake claims about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio: “Remember during the debate I said some of the things they were doing. I was right.” He was most certainly not right about any of those ugly lies. He called Somali immigrants “low IQ” and said they come from a place where “they don’t have pants to wear.” He called the Democratic candidate for Michigan governor “a jihadist” twice. He attacked the woman he is obsessed with, Representative Ilhan Omar, calling her “a disaster” who “comes in from a country without laws, without police, without military, without all they do is shoot each other,” while the crowd chanted for her deportation. This happened on the same day that federal agents searched Omar’s home under a judicial warrant in his administration’s attempt to harass her.

He continued to make very little sense in the context of why he was there at that rally, going on a rambling tangent about how he fired more than a million federal workers and compared it to his reality television show: “We fired. Fired. We whatever we did. I don’t know what you call it like the apprentice. You’re fired. Get the hell out of here.” There is nothing Donald Trump will not say to a cheering crowd, to try to keep unchecked power ahead of the midterm elections, or even beyond that.

There was a time before Donald Trump entered politics when our “politics” were not like this. Obama and McCain ran a civil, respectful campaign. There were moments when McCain stopped his own supporters from going too far, correcting a woman at a town hall who called Obama an Arab by saying, “No ma’am, he’s a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign is all about.” He even told supporters who said they were afraid of an Obama presidency that Obama was a decent person and someone they did not need to fear. Obama and Romney debated their differences in policy without trying to dehumanize each other or tear the country apart. When Romney lost in 2012, he congratulated Obama and said he prayed that the president would succeed in guiding the country. Obama, in turn, praised Romney’s family’s record of public service and spoke about finding ways they could work together.

Even George W. Bush, just days after the September 11 attacks, went to a mosque in Washington, D.C., and reminded Americans that Muslim citizens deserved respect and should not be blamed for the actions of terrorists. He understood that anger and fear could turn Americans against one another, and that part of his responsibility as president was to prevent that from happening. These were not politicians who always agreed, and their campaigns were certainly not without ugly moments. But there were still moments when leaders understood that winning an election did not require turning fellow Americans against each other. They were trying to win elections; they were not trying to destroy the shared understanding of decency that holds our country together.

The one common denominator in the ugliness that has overshadowed the United States since this country lost its civility is Donald Trump. He has gone way past just changing the tone of our politics. He has been systematically trying to destroy everything that still ties us to each other and to our country: our shared sense of morality, history, and ability to disagree without dehumanizing each other. He does this because he needs us broken and without hope. He knows that a united country does not need a strongman; only a broken one does. He is not, and never has, tried to make America great. He is trying to completely destroy this country to change it from the United States of America to the United States of Trump.

What is concerning so many of us right now isn’t just what he said today. We have heard all of it before. It’s what he is willing to do, and the speed he is moving right now. He said he would ban Muslims, and then he did. He said the election was stolen, and then his supporters stormed the Capitol. He said he would go after his enemies, and he has, but now he is sending federal agents to search a sitting, duly elected congresswoman’s home in the morning, and that night he is on stage encouraging a crowd to chant for her deportation. The things that he teases become the things he does next. So when he talks about all of these terrible things happening, we need to hear it as planning, not threats.

If we do not deliver a blue wave of historic proportions, the country our children and grandchildren inherit will be unrecognizable to the one we grew up in. One election will not fix all of our problems, but it will cause a major roadblock in the completion of everything he described tonight. The alternative, with him holding unchecked power, is not a future I am willing to accept. Not for my family or yours. And not for the entire world suffering through a madman occupying the Oval Office.

The real reason Donald Trump was in Ohio tonight had nothing to do with how much he claims to love the state. He was there because his support is slipping, and the numbers are showing just how much trouble he is in, even in a state he won comfortably just two years ago. His approval rating there has fallen to 36 percent. The proof was in that building tonight, with The Washington Post reporting that large sections of the Covelli Centre, including the upper seating areas, were mostly empty. He posted on Truth Social, “Big Crowd at Ohio Rally. Tremendous Response to Radical Left Socialists, Communists, and Lunatics trying to take over our Country. See you later, Ohio! President DONALD J. TRUMP,” but his attempts to cover up just how unpopular he has become are getting harder to pull off when the empty seats are there for everyone to see.

He wants us to be hopeless because hopelessness is a sign that his authoritarian takeover is complete or primed to succeed. But we are not hopeless, and we are not giving up. Yes, things are going to get harder. We will be dealing with the consequences of what he and his enablers have done to this country and the world for years and decades to come. But we have faced hard times before, and every single time, we have come out on the other side vowing to make our country better. The pendulum always swings. We just have to catch it and push it further to the right side of history this time. At the end of the day, when we start to feel tired, we have to keep reminding ourselves that what we are doing is working, or he wouldn’t be fighting so hard to convince us otherwise.  

bulwark morning shots logoMorning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Nothing Left to Give, Andrew Egger, right, andrew eggerOct. 13, 2026. Donald Trump’s rallies all have so much in common—the stock grievances, the stock insults, the stock anecdotes, the decade-old bits—that they can run together. But there are differences.

Two years ago yesterday, Trump had a rally in Coachella, California, and he was riding high. His political comeback had once looked impossible, unthinkable, and now he was close enough to taste it. He was in Kamala Harris’s backyard. The Biden administration was deeply unpopular, and Harris was bulwark logo big shipstruggling to get out of its shadow. Trump, out of power, had no recent record to defend. He was the outsider again, back on attack, and he had a vision to offer.

“The Republican party will always put America first,” he said, “and lead us on to victories like you have never seen before.”

What victories? “We had no wars, and I’ll keep you out of wars,” Trump bragged. “I will end the war in Ukraine, stop the chaos in the Middle East, and I will prevent, very definitely, World War III.”

Or take prices. “I will cut your energy prices in half within twelve months,” Trump promised.

Yesterday, Trump had another rally. And while much was the same, the basic vibe couldn’t have been more different. No time for blue-state stops now: Trump is currently on a lightning tour through some of the reddest states in the union, trying desperately to revive his base’s sagging energy. Yesterday was Youngstown, Ohio—his second Ohio stop in just over a week.

In some ways, the crowd got what they came for. There were the usual moments of surreal shtick, like Trump’s bizarrely lustful description of Sen. Jon Husted’s post-football physique: “I started examining his body, because I didn’t know he was a great athlete. And I looked and I watched, up and down. I looked at his ass. . . . Look at his hands, he’s got these, like, claws. And I got it. You are a great athlete.”

And there was the usual current of xenophobia and violence. Trump led the crowd in chanting for the deportations of two prominent Muslim Democrats, Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed. And a woman who stood up to protest was physically assaulted by the people around her, while Trump jeered her from the stage. Police quickly whisked the protester away; the man who had punched her, pushed her, and yanked her hair was allowed to return to his seat.

It’s easy to dwell on all the gross stuff. (Sam and I did plenty of that in a video we cut after the rally last night.) But the gross stuff, unfortunately, isn’t why Trump’s in trouble. He’s been doing that stuff for a decade now; his people eat it up.

The reason Trump is in trouble is because, beyond the gross stuff, he has nothing else to give them. That was the most extraordinary thing about the rally yesterday, about all Trump’s rallies these days: The remarkable absence of an actual positive case for what his administration has been doing and still intends to do. All those 2024 promises about ending wars, abundant cheap energy, and so on—so easy to make as an insurgent outsider—have simply fallen away.

There are the usual stabs at branding the administration. The forever-repeated story that Biden handed over a “dead country,” but that Arab princes now tell him America is the “hottest country in the world”; the usual hallucinated numbers like the supposed $21 trillion in foreign investment now “pouring” into the country. But mostly, Trump now offers excuses for why things aren’t as good as they will be at some point off in the future—and an endless supply of fearmongering about “radical left Dumbocrat communists.”

The lying, the bigotry, the love of violence—a critical mass of Americans has been and remains enchanted by all this. And a larger group is willing to put up with it. What’s amazing is that Trump, the figure who unlocked and channeled that energy like nobody before in American politics, is now falling apart for so much sillier a reason: He just can’t make the trains run on time. 

U.S. Immigration Attacks On Minnesota, California, Congresswoman

ilhan omar profile uncreditedLance's Substack, Analysis: We Warned Three Days Ago Trump Would Launch Federal Law Enforcement Attack On Minnesota, Lance F Rosen, right, lance rosenOct. 13, 2026. Ilhan Omar, above, was the convenient target, but it isn't about her.

In our report from October 10th On Trump's Diesel fuel deal with Putin, and his pathetic attempt at setting up an "October Surprise" before the midterms, we wrote the following: (unedited)

["He knows he is screwed. Therefore we should expect a series of wildly manic and reckless moves and provocations on his part over the next three weeks. He'll also throw out some more bribe offers in exchange for votes, and count on his red state Governors and election fixers to do their worst. But as for him,

<HE IS GOING TO DO THINGS INTENDED TO START RIOTS.>

Such as more ICE shootings, possibly a larger scale invasion of Minnesota to arrest Somalian-Americans, his "boogeyman of the week." We know his FBI tried to manufacture a terrorist incident by setting up a weapons sale sting with a Somali immigrant patsy they had under surveillance for two years. (Read HCR today) The Hegseth plan to livestream their execution of Nidal Hasan fits this pattern of Hitlerian domestic state terrorism."]

The important thing about this lawless politically motivated attack on Congresswoman Omar is not so much that it is an attempt to silence her personally, though that is a secondary motive. It isn't about her or her immigration history or "fraud" by Somali immigrants. The actual primary purpose behind this ploy is what I wrote in caps and put brackets around. They are following Hitler's playbook, that's the story.

Don't get into tit-for-tat whataboutism games over Melania's and Musk's immigration history as some populist knee- jerk response to this. That is schoolyard stuff, not strategic thinking.

He is desperate, and needs to manufacture a national emergency to justify the dictatorial measures which would enable him to deploy the military, invoke the 1807 Act, and void election results. There is a strong possibility he will try to either prevent Congress from reconvening or even suspend Habeus Corpus. But he needs a spectacular incident, or a spreading wildfire of events that add up to an emergency to invoke dictatorial powers.

The "play" is to incite violence and counterviolence in Minnesota in reaction to what he did, and we should expect his likely escalation along similar lines elsewhere.

We have to take away his "Reichstag Fire" strategy by exposing it beforehand, and making sure that our resistance movement is on the same page. Be prepared for more provocations by Trump. We have to overdeploy to prevent a violent reaction and chaos because he will be doing more of this, and it will be worse. No rioting or looting. It's a time for cool heads. Be on the lookout for provocateurs and false flag actors sent into our demos to instigate a chaos scenario. Follow the lead of the blue state Governors and Mayors, because they saw much of this coming just as we did and have made contingency plans for things like this, especially involving ICE.

The Trump regime's attack on Ilhan Omar is them tossing matches into a dynamite shack. Let's not throw gasoline on it to put the fire out. 

joyce vance civil discourse logoCivil Discourse, Analysis: Why Now? DOJ executed a search warrant at Rep. Ilhan Omar’s D.C. residence Monday, Joyce Vance, right, joyce vanceOct. 13, 2026.  I’ve always pushed back on characterizing the execution of a lawful, court-ordered search warrant as a “raid.” I’ll do my best to stick to that tonight, although the context of the search warrant executed at Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar’s D.C. residence early Monday morning makes it difficult.

We do not yet know what charges the government may be contemplating; we haven’t seen the affidavit accompanying the warrant. There are a lot of unanswered questions. Omar came to this country in 1995—she was 12—and there is a five-year statute of limitations on most federal crimes. There’s a possible way around that because some immigration offenses are treated as continuing crimes for statute-of-limitations purposes. But that doesn't necessarily help the government here. Anonymous sources have characterized this investigation as involving her original immigration paperwork, perhaps some type of false statements case.

That raises additional questions. The government would already have all of the paperwork that accompanied her entry into the country. So what are they looking for? And what probable cause do they have to believe it would be found in her temporary D.C. residence, not her family home in Minnesota, which does not seem to have been searched?

We don’t know who the target of the investigation is. Omar’s age at the time would make it hard to establish criminal intent. And while others involved might have some technical liability depending on the facts, her father, who allegedly completed her paperwork, is deceased.

Here’s another question: Why now? DOJ has a longstanding policy against taking overt steps, like executing a search warrant or announcing an indictment, this close to an election. Often referred to as the 60-day rule, it’s meant to prevent prosecutors from using their power to unfairly influence an election's outcome. The concern is that the target has little meaningful opportunity to clear their name of the damaging insinuations before voters cast their ballots.

Without knowing what the government proposes to charge and who it proposes to charge, it’s difficult to assess whether this is another rank political investigation that will never develop into an indictment, a pure political stunt, or whether there’s more to it. But given the bad faith with which this administration has abused the criminal justice system to go after people Trump considers enemies, it’s hard to rule it out. Given the timing, you’d expect the government to make it known if there was some risk of evidence being destroyed, one situation that might warrant an action like this. But it hasn’t offered any explanation despite the unusual circumstances.

Omar was quick to respond.

While there is a lot left to learn, we do know for certain that the election is already underway in Minnesota. Early voting is in progress and Omar is on the ballot. Even if this is a legitimate investigation, there was no apparent urgent need to execute a search warrant today. The original “crime” is decades old. It’s hard to imagine that DOJ just learned about the existence of evidence it so urgently needed to recover that it couldn’t wait the few weeks for the election to be over before striking.

It seems more likely that this is about politics than legitimate prosecution. And isn’t that what the Trump administration has turned the Justice Department into? A political tool in the president’s toolkit, no longer a bastion of the rule of law. No longer a place that prides itself on being above the political fray and doing justice regardless of who is in the White House.

The search warrant was signed by a judge. But we don’t know what facts the government shared with the judge to justify issuance of the warrant. It could be a solid case. Or it could be another revenge operation where they’ll never obtain an indictment. And it probably doesn’t matter to the man in the Oval Office who seems to be calling the shots at DOJ. Another investigation is open. That’s all it takes. Early voting in Minnesota is underway. The Trump administration has accomplished its mission. But whether it will have the effect the man calling the shots wants is an entirely different question. There’s already outrage over the timing of the search warrant. It could easily backfire.

One thing I’ve learned from my years in the Justice Department is that the questions we ask can be just as important as the answers we get. That’s what we try to do here at Civil Discourse: ask good questions, follow the evidence, and understand what the law tells us.

More On Middle East Wars

 

New York Times, The Oct. 7 Attack Changed Israel, but Not Its Politics, Isabel Kershner, Oct. 13, 2026. As Israelis prepare to vote for the first time since the Hamas-led assault, they remain divided over whether to hold Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responsible for negligence or fault the “treason” of his generals.

For one day last week, much of Israel united to commemorate the anniversary of the deadliest attack in the country’s history.

But when Israelis head to the ballot box this month, they will be carrying sharply disparate versions of who is to blame for failing to prevent the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led assault. Though the attack traumatized Israel, it did not produce the kind of rage that would create a political transformation, leaving the country more polarized than ever.

The political divide is nowhere clearer than among the Israelis living closest to the Gaza border, where thousands of gunmen overran communities, army bases and a music festival.

In Nahal Oz, a pastoral kibbutz half a mile from the border, the gardens are blooming again with the return of residents evacuated during the war. Many in this liberal bastion are likely to vote against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his hawkish policies, holding him responsible for failures leading to Oct. 7, said Daniel Rahamim, 72, a spokesman for the community, who survived the assault along with his family.

“We don’t have the privilege of giving up on peace,” he said.

Barely eight miles away in the working-class town of Sderot, the scene of a fierce firefight during the Hamas-led attack, Mr. Netanyahu remains a hero. In the view of many residents, he was let down — or even betrayed — by his security chiefs in the run-up to Oct. 7 and on the day of the assault.

“If the left wins, we’re done for, it will be the end of Israel,” said Shlomi Aragon, 55, referring to anybody critical of Mr. Netanyahu.

The election, set for Oct. 27, will be the first since Hamas militants and their allies surged across the border from Gaza, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to the Israeli authorities, and taking 251 hostages.

Israel’s devastating war in response reduced much of the Palestinian enclave to rubble and left more than 74,000 people dead, including thousands of children, according to Gaza health officials, who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Many Israelis view this month’s vote as the most momentous since their country’s establishment nearly eight decades ago, and for reasons that are not limited to Oct. 7. Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition, Israel’s most hard-line and religiously conservative, has undermined the country’s democratic foundations, critics say, and left it diplomatically isolated.

More Global News

New York Times, America’s Favorite Fruit Is Being Bruised by the Iran War, Ana Swanson, Oct. 13, 2026 (print ed.). The journey of one banana from farm to store shows how the war’s economic effects have cascaded into some surprising industries.

The war in Iran has rippled through the global economy in many ways, pushing up prices for oil, fertilizer and other products. It has also created challenges for America’s most popular fruit: bananas.

The banana business has long been an underappreciated feat of logistics. It involves transporting a fragile and finicky fruit thousands of miles from the tropics, only to be sold for less than a quarter each. And it’s a business that is even trickier of late as the war raises the costs of fuel and other materials banana producers need.

That has put even more financial pressure on banana producers, who operate with thin margins and have little ability to raise prices. Compounding the industry’s problems are the threat of disease, climate change, tariffs and an exceptionally severe El Niño this year.

The banana might be America’s most unassuming fruit, a cheaply priced staple of smoothies and school cafeterias. It is the most consumed fruit in the United States, with Americans eating around 80 bananas a year, on average.

But bananas make little profit for grocery stores or the companies growing them. Instead, stores price them cheaply to draw shoppers in the door. The average price of bananas in the United States — about 65 cents a pound in August — has changed little over the last decade, despite rising costs.

“Everything is costing more money,” said Danny Dumas, a senior vice president at Del Monte North America. “If you ask me, it is a crisis.”

More On U.S. Media, Sports, Religion 

 

katie zacharia rfk interviewPopular Information, Accountability Journalism: Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, claims she’s a lawyer. Is she? Judd Legum, right, judd legumOct. 13, 2026. When President Trump plucked Katie Zacharia from obscurity and appointed her as his new press secretary, he called her “an attorney.”

This is also how Zacharia, repeatedly and publicly, describes herself. “I’m a lawyer,” Zacharia said during an appearance on the Greg Kelly Show on October 5, 2026. “[A]s a lawyer, the procedural steps are absolutely critical,” Zacharia opined during the August 31, 2026, edition of Fox & Friends First. “I’m a lawyer, I went to Pepperdine, Pepperdine Law,” Zacharia said on the “In Front of Us” podcast on August 14, 2026. “[A]s a lawyer, there’s a big difference between answering something under oath and answering something to the media,” Zacharia explained on CNN on February 7, 2026. There are many more examples.

Zacharia was also identified on screen as a lawyer during at least 18 appearances on Fox News since March 2025.

Yet, there is no evidence that Zacharia ever passed a bar exam or has been admitted to practice law in any state. She is not listed as a member of the State Bar of California, the state where she lives. According to her LinkedIn account, she worked as “General Counsel” for a nonprofit in the state called Fix California. Zacharia is also not listed as a member of the State Bar of Texas or as a member of the D.C. Bar, two other places where she worked.

Popular Information searched for evidence in all 50 states, plus D.C., that Zacharia was admitted to practice law anywhere — and found none.

On Sunday, Popular Information emailed White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly with detailed questions about Zacharia’s professional history, including whether she was ever admitted to practice law in any state. Popular Information received the following response from a general White House Press Office email account: “Refer you to the President’s TRUTH on Katie.” That is the social media post that calls Zacharia an attorney.

A lawyer, by definition, is “an individual who is authorized to practice law.” Merely holding a J.D. degree, as Zacharia does, does not authorize her to practice law. To become a lawyer, she would need to be admitted to a bar, which in most cases involves passing a bar exam.

This is not an academic distinction. In California, where Zacharia says she was employed as “General Counsel” to a nonprofit, holding yourself out as a lawyer when you are not admitted to the state bar (or otherwise authorized to practice) is a crime. According to the law, any person “holding himself or herself out as practicing or entitled to practice law or otherwise practicing law who is not an active licensee of the State Bar, or otherwise authorized pursuant to statute or court rule to practice law… is guilty of a misdemeanor.”Zacharia’s conflicting accounts of her work as “General Counsel” in California

Zacharia’s current LinkedIn page claims that she worked full-time as “General Counsel” to Fix California, a right-wing nonprofit founded by Trump ally Ric Grenell, from January 2024 to March 2025. A general counsel is an organization’s chief legal officer, who represents the organization as an attorney.

It is unclear, exactly, what work Zacharia did as General Counsel for Fix California. If she was engaged in the practice of law, which is typical work for a general counsel, without being an attorney, she would have violated state law. If she did not perform any legal work, why was she claiming to be the organization’s General Counsel?

While her LinkedIn page claims her work as General Counsel at Fix California ended in March 2025, she continued to publicly claim the position long after. In September 2025, Zacharia changed her X bio to “Fox News & Newsmax Analyst General Counsel to Fix California | Lawyer | Political Strategist | Former OPA,” according to an archive of her account. She dropped the General Counsel title from her X bio in November 2025 but put it back in April 2026. An archive of Zacharia’s X bio on May 1, 2026 says: “Fox News, CNN, Newsmax, & OANN et al. Commentator | General Counsel, Fix California | Lawyer | Fmr. Department of Homeland Security Spokeswoman | Sicilian.”The title remained in her X bio until July 2026.

Over the years, Zacharia has also claimed a number of other roles with Fix California, including Senior Advisor and Chief Administrative Officer. According to Fix California’s IRS filings, Zacharia was never paid a salary. In 2024, she was paid $27,367 as a commission on her fundraising efforts. (The organization has not yet filed its 2025 report with the IRS.)Zacharia’s conflicting accounts of her legal work in China

After graduating from law school in 2011, Zacharia moved to China, where she worked at Zhong Lun, a large Chinese law firm. It is quite plausible for a law school graduate who is not admitted to practice law in any state to work for a firm in China, since the work may not involve American courts.

But Zacharia has claimed that, while in China, she served as “outside counsel” to both the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC). “I was the outside counsel to the IFC and the World Bank,” Zacharia said on the Buck Sexton Show on February 28, 2025. “It was an interesting and exciting experience.” She repeated this description of her work many times, and it was included in her biography for the California Globe, where she was a columnist.

The World Bank and the IFC employing a recent law school graduate with little to no experience as “outside counsel” is less plausible. Indeed, Zacharia’s description of her work while in China has varied. A June 2026 press release announcing Zacharia’s appointment to NovaRed, a mineral exploration company, describes something far narrower: work on “matters involving organizations associated with” the World Bank Group and the IFC.

New York Times, FIFA’s Trump Tower Deal: 7 Years, $4 Million, One Mostly Unused Office, Tariq Panja, Oct. 13, 2026. The deal is another sign of how Gianni Infantino, the leader of soccer’s global governing body, has sought closer ties to President Trump.

About a year before the World Cup, FIFA held a splashy opening for its latest office, a 17th-floor suite in Trump Tower. President Trump’s son Eric Trump said his family’s organization was “honored” to host the global soccer body.

FIFA signed a more than seven-year lease, worth about $4 million, according to two officials directly involved in the deal and documents reviewed by The New York Times. The suite mostly sits empty.

The terms of the deal, which have not been previously reported, raised concern among some senior FIFA officials about renting space in a Trump-linked building, in a high-tax state, without a clear need.

The deal offers another example of how FIFA and its president, Gianni Infantino, sought closer ties to President Trump ahead of the 2026 World Cup, despite pushback from senior soccer officials.

Mr. Infantino has lavished praise on the American president, even creating a special peace prize in his honor. During the World Cup, FIFA rescinded the suspension of Folarin Balogun, a star striker for the U.S. team, after a call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Infantino, prompting accusations of bias and political interference.

Since the tournament, Mr. Infantino has faced intense scrutiny over his conduct, including for engaging in secret talks to sell a portion of future tournaments to a private fund run by the brother of Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The plan prompted European soccer’s governing body to threaten to bring a complaint to criminal court. Mr. Infantino has accused his critics of a harassment campaign.

FIFA’s American operations are mostly based in two offices in Miami. The organization has no plans to fully staff the Trump Tower location and the office sits largely idle, according to current and former FIFA officials who, like others cited in this article, requested anonymity to discuss private discussions and business deals.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

New York Times, Opinion: The Supreme Court Has Grown Too Powerful. This Is How to Rein It In, Kate Shaw, Oct. 13, 2026. The Supreme Court justices took the bench last week to hear oral arguments, but the start of this term feels different from previous ones. For one thing, with the sharp increase in activity on the shadow docket, the justices don’t really take the summers off the way they used to.

It also feels different because this is a precarious moment for American democracy and for the mechanisms of democratic participation — and because it’s impossible to ignore the Supreme Court’s role in creating this instability. In this election cycle, state legislatures have aggressively redrawn congressional districts to maximize their partisan advantage and, in Southern states, to extinguish Black political power; the ultrarich are spending tens of millions of dollars helping to elect their preferred candidates; and the president has sought to radically change the rules for voting by mail, while openly promising voters payouts for helping his party retain control of Congress.

True, the court has rebuffed some of the most egregious efforts at election subversion this year. But it has laid the foundation for the electoral upheaval we are experiencing.

That’s one of the reasons fixing the Supreme Court must be a top priority — and why Democrats, if they take control of one or both houses of Congress in November, must place Supreme Court reform at or near the top of their list.

Beginning with John Marshall’s 1803 pronouncement in Marbury v. Madison that “it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is,” we have gradually come to view the Supreme Court as the final arbiter of the meaning of laws and the Constitution. When the court is functioning properly — when it plays a meaningful but limited role in our system — that’s a reasonable state of affairs, whatever the merits of any particular Supreme Court decision.Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

But when the court develops an outsize sense of its own authority and when it uses that authority to impose its policy preferences and, increasingly, its partisan preferences on the rest of us, the arrangement becomes untenable. That has happened before, and it is manifestly the case now.

This court has asserted extraordinary power and has, again and again, used that power to undermine democratic participation and thwart meaningful self-governance. It substituted its judgment for the judgment of Congress about how to make real the Constitution’s promises of equality and voting rights. It insulated the president from various criminal laws. It hobbled the ability of administrative agencies to respond to pressing problems like climate change. Many of these decisions conspicuously depart from the court’s professed commitments about how legal interpretation should be done, leaving the distinct impression that the court is simply announcing its policy preferences as binding law.

The consequences of these decisions are everywhere. Take presidential lawlessness. Since it declared presidents all but above the law in Trump v. United States two years ago, the court has created a permission structure for much of President Trump’s second-term lawlessness. In the June decision Trump v. Slaughter, it handed Mr. Trump complete control over most of the last remaining pockets of independence — and checks on the president — inside the executive branch.

When the lower courts have challenged his lawlessness, the Supreme Court has regularly interceded to greenlight the president’s actions — allowing the unilateral canceling of billions in funding, granting the so-called Department of Government Efficiency access to sensitive Social Security information, permitting the rendition of individuals to third countries without complying with the Convention Against Torture, letting ICE agents stop citizens and noncitizens alike simply because of their appearance. Both the court’s rulings in these cases and its approach to them — rushed dispositions, failure to provide full reasoning and disregard for the careful rulings of lower courts — are impossible to square with the rule of law.

Then there are the court’s decisions overriding congressional efforts to protect the democratic process. The ones invalidating key provisions of the Voting Rights Act have undermined both electoral stability and an inclusive and representative democracy. The most recent case, last term’s Louisiana v. Callais, functionally rendered the Voting Rights Act a dead letter while declaring partisan gerrymandering a god-given right. After that decision, orders from the shadow docket — also now referred to as the emergency or interim docket, the practice of issuing orders and summary decisions typically without full briefing or oral arguments — allowed states to put the decision into effect immediately. That rushed effort resulted in the elimination of majority Black districts throughout the South and ever more extreme partisan gerrymanders. The court has also, through Citizens United and its progeny, paved the way for wild distortions of our electoral process by ultrawealthy individuals and corporations.

When the delegates to the Constitutional Convention gathered in Philadelphia in 1787, they considered a number of approaches to designing the process of lawmaking. One proposal, part of the Virginia Plan, would have included judges in a “council of revision” that, together with the executive, would review proposed legislation and either approve or reject it. The convention actively debated this proposal, and in the end decided against including judges in a council of revision; instead, the delegates gave the president alone the power to sign or veto legislation.

The current court has fashioned itself into a council of revision, with the power to decide whether it approves of laws passed by Congress and thus whether those laws will have force at all.

Facing the reality of what the Supreme Court has become is critically important — especially for people, and I count myself among them, who think of themselves as institutionalists. If you detest the Supreme Court, I probably don’t need to convince you that the court needs fixing. But if you’re a fan of the Supreme Court, you should also support Supreme Court reform.

As a new book by the law professors Nikolas Bowie and Daphna Renan argues, there is a rich American tradition of pursuing court reform. At critical moments in our history — before and after the Civil War; leading up to and during the New Deal era — the Supreme Court acted to undermine democratic participation and to routinely substitute its judgment for the will of the people as expressed by their elected representatives. In response, political actors and the people pushed back, including legislatively. The current moment calls for nothing less.

A legislative package should include term limits, for which there is now bipartisan support. According to a recent Brennan Center analysis of polls, 73 percent of the public supports such limits, including 61 percent of Republicans. With a law that sets terms at 18 years, justices could transition to senior justice status and would no longer be able to spend decades wielding enormous public power without any meaningful accountability.

Any law imposing term limits should contain binding ethics rules that would prohibit justices from receiving large gifts and luxury travel from wealthy benefactors. The rules should also mandate detailed financial disclosures and include a meaningful enforcement mechanism — either an inspector general for the judiciary or a committee of current or former federal judges.

Congress could also rein in the court from issuing too many rulings on the shadow docket by codifying which cases deserve emergency consideration and requiring the justices to provide reasons for any shadow-docket ruling. It could require the agreement of a supermajority of justices to disturb a lower court ruling on the shadow docket. It could also impose such a voting rule more generally, requiring a supermajority to invalidate any act of Congress.

Finally, the law should include a mechanism for regularizing appointments across presidential terms while also increasing the size of the court. Each president might get two or even four Supreme Court nominations at designated points during a presidential term.

This list is just a start. If Democrats win the upcoming midterm elections handily, there will be much debate about the specific shape a reform package should take. But for the future of the court and the country, it’s critical that the discussions begin now.More on the Supreme CourtOpinion | Emily Bazelon and David French

More On U.S. Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets

New York Times, The Forces Driving Up Bond Yields Take a Troubling Turn, Joe Rennison, Oct. 13, 2026. Some analysts say investors are demanding a higher “term premium” to buy government debt, reflecting growing worries about debt levels and deficits.

Analysts have attributed much of the rise in government bond yields this year to inflationary pressures from the war in Iran and the bullish growth expectations tied to the build-out of artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The rising yields, they say, reflect expectations that the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates elevated to tamp down inflation from higher oil prices and prevent the economy from overheating from the A.I. build out.

But those analysts say there is a new driver of higher yields, and it is sending more troubling signals.

That driver is called the “term premium,” which accounts for the extra return investors want to be paid for the risk of lending to the government. And based on the moves in the Treasury market, those risks are rising. Last week, the term premium reached its highest level in more than a decade, reflecting investors’ growing concerns about mounting government debts, rising deficits and other fiscal challenges around the world.

Mostly regarded as an obscure concept from the bond market, the term premium is now having a real-word impact.

Investors’ demand for a higher term premium is driving up yields on Treasuries, which influence interest rates on a range of consumer and corporate debt.

Here is what you need to know about it.What is term premium?

Loosely speaking, there are three main factors that determine government bond yields: the expected level of interest rates set by the Federal Reserve; inflation expectations; and a final, more fuzzy category to account for the additional yield that is not explainable by economic expectations. This is term premium.

A number of factors get lumped into term premium, including but not limited to investor demand to own Treasuries, investors’ perception of the risk of lending to the U.S. government, the ease of buying and selling the government’s debt, and the likelihood that the market will swing sharply higher or lower.

Term premium is estimated by various models produced by banks, economists and others. Based on the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure, term premium ended last week at 0.9 percent of the overall 10-year yield, which stands at 5.24 percent.

And that rise in term premium has helped push overall yields higher, even as growth and inflation expectations have held steady. This measure of term premium last week reached its highest level since 2014.Why has term premium risen?

Analysts said the recent moves point, in part, to a slow global reckoning, as governments that have built up huge debts have started to come under pressure from bond investors to rein in spending and reduce the amount they borrow.

In Europe, these concerns have come to the fore as France battles a fiscal crisis, with worries over its government finances helping to push the country’s 10-year note to 4.85 percent on Tuesday, roughly a percentage point higher from just three months ago. In Britain, the country’s 10-year note has climbed about half a percentage point, to 5.4 percent, over the same period. And in Germany, the 10-year note has also risen roughly 0.5 percentage points.

Investors have also become increasingly concerned about debts at home. Foreign central banks have already been shedding Treasuries for years, helping push up yields. More recently, analysts said, the government has had to compete for capital with a spate of borrowing from big technology companies, also pushing yields higher.

Analysts also said the Iran war had underscored a perception among investors that the world had become less predictable, with higher yields also reflecting an added “uncertainty premium.”

“Growth has been the story for the full year,” said George Goncalves, head of U.S. macro strategy at MUFG Securities. “The last bit has been about fiscal worries and global markets becoming a concern.”

Oct. 12

Top Headlines

 

President Trump and the world's first trillionairre, Elon Musk, right, have renewed and enhanced their alliance to install ultra-right governments in the United States and around the Western World (File photo)..dj elon musk politicoPresident Trump and the world's first trillionairre, Elon Musk, right, have renewed and enhanced their alliance to install ultra-right governments in the United States and around the Western World (File photo).

Special Reports:

 

  • wmr Russian influence In WestThe Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Reporting and Commentary: Ukraine’s destruction of Russian bot farms directly benefits the West’s war against Russian influence operations, Wayne Madsen, right, wayne madsen new observerauthor of 28 books, biographer of the Trump familly and former Navy intelligence officer and NSA analyst, Oct. 12, 2026. Ukraine’s battleis democracy’s battle and the West must answer the call. Ukraine's attacks on Russian internet infrastructure has already had important consequences for the West's efforts to counter Russian disinformation, cyberespionage, troll farms, and covert political influence operations. And Ukraine’s attack could nothave occurred at a better time as the United States prepares for important midterm elections, Brazilian voters head to the polls for a run-off presidential election, Alberta holds a referendum on the future of the province within Canada, and Bulgarians vote for president. Russian bot and troll farms have been active in spreading misinformation to affect the outcomes of these and other election to boost pro-Moscow and Moscow-friendly political parties and causes.
  • The Hartmann Report, Opinion: Benedict Arnold Sold Out America Once. Is Trump Doing It Again, This Time for Putin? Thom Hartmann, right, thom hartmann newOct. 12, 2026. Trump's latest Russia decision threatens to enrich a hostile dictator, undermine American sanctions, and leave Ukraine bleeding. Congress must confront the question Republicans keep avoiding...

News Roundups

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption 

 

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (AFP photo by Jim Watson via Getty Images).

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (AFP photo by Jim Watson via Getty Images).

  • The New Republic, Opinion: If the Nidal Hasan Execution Is Livestreamed, We Are a Barbaric Nation, Michael Tomasky, right, michael tomaskyOct. 12, 2026. The only countries to carry out public executions in 2025? Iran and Afghanistan. That’s the company Pete Hegseth wants America to keep.
  • Everyone Is Entitled To My Own Opinion, Commentary: The livestreamed executions will continue until morale improves, Jeff Tiedrich, right, jeff tiedrichDidn’t anyone think this through? Depraved brutality? I’m sorry, but what ‘American values’ are being restored by turning a death sentence into public entertainment? When was that ever an ‘American value’? Did I blink and miss it? Was there some early draft of the Declaration of Independence that I’m not aware of, extolling the virtues of ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of gunning down some f____ in a wheelchair’?
  • New York Times, Democrats Tie Corruption to High Costs in Final Midterms Push, Carl Hulse, Oct. 12, 2026. Party leaders are working to connect Washington profiteering and the influence of billionaires and corporate America to affordability, in what they hope will be a potent closing message.
  • Hope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump’s latest disappearing act, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Oct. 11, helen delaney reese djt2026. At 12:07 this afternoon, the White House abruptly canceled all of Donald Trump’s scheduled events, right before he was scheduled to leave, and told the press that the President of the United States would not be seen again for the rest of the day. Instead of attending a MAGA Inc. fundraiser at his Virginia golf course, Trump locked himself away inside the White House and went on a posting spree on Truth Social. 

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance  

  • U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsThe Contrarian, Opinion: Republicans Have Destroyed the ‘Conservative’ Agenda, Jennifer Rubin, right, jennifer rubin new headshotOct. 12, 2026. 🚨 22 Days to the Midterms 🚨 Republicans’ midterm prospects are in free fall, with only the number of casualties of the blue wave in doubt. When Republicans finish picking through the electoral rubble, they will need to confront the absence of any plausible conservative governing philosophy or, for that matter, any coherent critique of Democrats. Sensing their dilemma, some are madly trying to redefine terms.
  • Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, With Three Weeks To Go Everything Around Our Ridiculous Flailer-In-Chief Is Turning To Sh-t, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 12, 2026. Ole Donnie is not having a good Columbus day……This morning Russia rejected/ignored/laughed at Trump’s announcement of an imaginary ceasefire in the Russian-Ukrainian war:Trump’s failed Middle Eastern war keeps failing - badly. Saudi Arabia’s main airport has been struck by the Houthis in each of the last two days and remains closed today.
  • New York Times, Who’s winning the race for Congress? Reid J. Epstein, Oct. 12, 2026. The election is in 22 days. The Republican Party’s hopes of saving its majorities in Congress increasingly appear to depend on a few possible outcomes: G.O.P. advantages in money and on the map pay off, the polls are wrong, or a major news development suddenly brightens the party’s prospects.
  • Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Revitalizing Liberalism, William Kristol, right, william bill kristol imdbOct. 12, 2026. In three weeks, we’re likely to see a Democratic wave breaching—perhaps overwhelming—Republican electoral fortifications. In present circumstances, that Democratic wave will be a pro-democracy wave, and that will be something to celebrate.

More On U.S. Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets

  • Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Arithmetic Suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 12, 2026. Of fuels and fools. First, the big news on U.S. foreign policy was that Trump announced that he was buying 300,000 tons of Russian diesel. He’s not allowed to do this: Sanctions preventing purchase of Russian oil are law, not a choice on Trump’s part. But under Trump laws are suggestions at most, so it might happen anyway. In any case, the main lesson here, as Phillips O’Brien explains, is that Trump isn’t even hiding the fact that he is supporting Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine.

More Global News

More On Middle East Wars

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice 

 djt as king 11 23 2025

President Trump frequently portrays himself on his Truth Social or via White House as an all-powerful king or emporer annointed by God and backed by security forces and the military, as in this portrayal above by former Repubicans who organized the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. The political, military and economic chaos extends to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, selective tariffs helping insiders and Trump's transformation of U.S. longstanding alliances with Canada, Europe and NATO into adversaries whom he disdains while courting profitable deals from Russia, as newly documented this week, benefiting his family and allies. Separately, The New York Times published on Sunday an in-depth investigation excerpted below showing that the fascist, White nationalist themes of Trump's MAGA movement have inspired unprecendented threats of violence from both the right and left against U.S. public officials that are transforming governance.President Trump frequently portrays himself on his Truth Social or via White House as an all-powerful king (as at top) or emporer annointed by God and backed by security forces and the military, as in this portrayal above by former Repubicans who organized the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. The political, military and economic chaos extends to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, selective tariffs helping insiders and Trump's transformation of U.S. longstanding alliances with Canada, Europe and NATO into adversaries whom he disdains while courting profitable deals from Russia, as newly documented this week, benefiting his family and allies. Separately, The New York Times published on Sunday an in-depth investigation excerpted below showing that the fascist, White nationalist themes of Trump's MAGA movement have inspired unprecendented threats of violence from both the right and left against U.S. public officials that are transforming governance.

More On U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Religion 

  • Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Rapid Unscheduled Dissembling, Andrew Egger, right, andrew eggerOct. 12, 2026. Yesterday, MAGA media thought they’d hooked a whale. James Talarico had been absent from the Texas campaign trail for nearly two weeks, and they weren’t buying that he’d simply been down with flu. Then a pair of influencers released what they claimed was proof that Talarico had actually been receiving treatment at an Ohio mental health facility. The claims went turbo-viral—then fell immediately and hilariously apart.

Top Stories

 

President Trump and the world's first trillionairre, Elon Musk, right, have renewed and enhanced their alliance to install ultra-right governments in the United States and around the Western World (File photo)..dj elon musk politicoPresident Trump and the world's first trillionairre, Elon Musk, right, have renewed and enhanced their alliance to install ultra-right governments in the United States and around the Western World (File photo).

New York Times, Inside Elon Musk’s $276 Million Midterm Rescue Mission for Republicans, Theodore Schleifer,Oct. 12, 2026. The world’s richest person has quietly become by far the biggest known midterm donor, trying to save Republicans’ Senate majority with some of the largest donations in American political history.

Elon Musk has quietly funneled more than $276 million into Republican groups and his super PAC since the start of July, building a huge turnout operation to help the party battle headwinds in the midterm elections.

The staggering amount of money makes Mr. Musk, the richest person in the world, by far the largest known donor in the midterms. Representatives for Mr. Musk supplied the previously unreported figures on his political giving to The New York Times before a federal filing deadline on Thursday.

In an effort to save Republicans’ Senate majority, gave a total of $158 million this summer to the Senate Leadership Fund, the main super PAC backing the party’s candidates for the chamber, according to his team. In sum, that is one of the largest political donations in American history, and more than the group’s Democratic rival raised from all of its donors that quarter.

Mr. Musk has also built a major Republican turnout operation through a super PAC he founded in 2024, America PAC. He donated over $76 million this summer to the group, which in turn spent that much on building a sprawling canvassing program to try to turn out hard-to-reach Republican voters. The group is active in seven Senate battlegrounds and nearly three dozen House races.

Mr. Musk has already given far more money, about $366 million, to federal committees during the 2025-26 election cycle than he did during the 2024 election, when he laid out roughly $290 million to help return President Trump and Republicans to power. He has given even more in undisclosed donations during both elections, according to people briefed on the giving.

The latest torrent of spending has helped give the Republican Party a financial advantage in the midterms, as well-funded outside groups like Mr. Trump’s powerful super PAC flood the airwaves with advertising in the final weeks. No Democratic billionaire is spending nearly as much as Mr. Musk, and money remains a central worry for the party in an otherwise favorable political environment.

The donations also clear up the mystery of how much staying power Mr. Musk wants to have in American politics.

“In terms of political spending, I’m going to do a lot less in the future,” he said in May 2025.

Mr. Musk, who oversees a vast business empire that has benefited from enormous federal contracts, is famously unpredictable and often jumps from one project to another. He has been far quieter about his political work since his dramatic blowup with Mr. Trump last year. After months of wielding vast influence inside the White House and overseeing Mr. Trump’s government cost-cutting project, he raged against the president’s major domestic policy bill and floated threats to start a third party.But the two men have warmed back up, appearing together at three events in the last two weeks and praising each other. 

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Winning the Midterms Is Not Enough, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Oct. 12, 2026. bulwark morning shots logoOne wave election won’t defeat Trumpism.

bulwark logo big shipElon Musk has spent $276 million trying to help Republicans win the midterms, according to a new report from the New York Times. The bulk of that money went into the main Republican Senate super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund.

Musk has a net approval rating of -16.2, according to Nate Silver. But that’s still better than Donald Trump’s -22.4. Happy Monday.

Special Reports:

 

wmr Russian influence In WestThe Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Reporting and Commentary: Ukraine’s destruction of Russian bot farms directly benefits the West’s war against Russian influence operations, Wayne Madsen, right, wayne madsen new observerauthor of 28 books, biographer of the Trump familly and former Navy intelligence officer and NSA analyst, Oct. 12, 2026. Ukraine’s battleis democracy’s battle and the West must answer the call.

Ukraine's attacks on Russian internet infrastructure has already had important consequences for the West's efforts to counter Russian disinformation, cyberespionage, troll farms, and covert political influence operations. And Ukraine’s attack could not wmr logo since 2005have occurred at a better time as the United States prepares for important midterm elections, Brazilian voters head to the polls for a run-off presidential election, Alberta holds a referendum on the future of the province within Canada, and Bulgarians vote for president. Russian bot and troll farms have been active in spreading misinformation to affect the outcomes of these and other election to boost pro-Moscow and Moscow-friendly political parties and causes.

The Ukrainian attack was buttressed by UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham being the first serving prime minister to state publicly that Russia interfered in the 2016 Brexit referendum. In an interview released October 12, 2026, Burnham said he asked officials after entering Downing Street in July and received a “clear answer” that interference occurred. Russia’s Yandex and other platforms, aided and abetted by Twitter and Facebook, directly contributed to the Brexit referendum outcome.

By knocking Yandex’s major data centers offline, Ukraine forced a collapse in automated bot traffic—down to roughly 0.4% of normal levels—dramatically reducing Russia’s ability to seed and amplify disinformation across Europe and the U.S. Multiple monitoring systems (Cloudflare Radar, NetBlocks, IODA) observed a precipitous drop in automated traffic from Yandex’s network after the strikes.

After the first strike on Sasovo on Oct. 8, bot traffic fell to 57% of normal. After subsequent strikes on Kaluga and Vladimir, traffic collapsed to 0.4% of peak levels. IODA found 78% of Yandex Cloud unreachable from outside Russia. Ukraine’s hobbling of Yandex disabled a central launchpad for Russian botnets, troll farms, and automated political influence operations.

The outages directly affected pro‑Kremlin bot networks pushing hate, division, and political agitation on X and Facebook. Bot campaigns supporting Germany’s AfD, Reform UK, and U.S. MAGA‑aligned narratives saw sudden drops in activity. Engagement on planted posts, including on U.S. immigration topics, collapsed. Far-right “news” websites, many of which are credentialed as White House press, saw their “sources” temporarily dry up.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky noted that social media became “easier to breathe,” with less hate and fewer provocations, demonstrated by the observed bot decline. Zelensky also stated there was “less hatred, less discord, and fewer provocations because there were fewer bots.” A member of the European Parliament observed that online activity around Germany’s AfD appeared to plummet after the strikes. Historian Timothy Snyder noted similar patterns around pro‑Trump and pro‑AfD bot work.

Donald Trump’s decision to buy diesel fuel from Russia and call for Zelensky to be replaced as Ukraine’s president may have had just as much to do with Ukraine’s crippling of Yandex, a source for much of Trump’s and the far right’s on-line digital slop, as Ukraine’s attacks on Russian refineries.

Yandex is not just a search engine, it is Russia’s largest cloud provider. It is host to AI systems (Chervonenkis, Lyapunov, Galushkin) used for machine‑learning and automated content generation; the Backbone for ride‑sharing, payments, logistics, and authentication systems; and a key infrastructure node in Russia’s closed domestic internet, meaning no foreign failover is possible.

Drone strikes on Yandex facilities in Sasovo (Oct. 8), Kaluga (Oct. 9), and Vladimir (Oct. 11) produced fires, shutdowns, and full suspension of operations. The Vladimir strike alone forced Yandex to suspend operations at the entire facility. This physical destruction translated into service outages across Russia, including banking, retail, railways, Google access, and RuTube. Cloud infrastructure degradation to 30% of normal traffic levels was also experienced. More importantly for Ukraine and the West, AI and bot infrastructure went dark. Ukraine’s attack was a masterful stroke and one that, hopefully, will be repeated.

Russia’s information warfare abilities also suffered. Ukraine severely reduced Russia’s ability to coordinate troll farms, limited automated amplification of narratives in Europe and North America, interrupted Russia’s ability to rapidly deploy new botnets, exposed the fragility of Russia’s closed internet architecture, and forced Yandex to add wartime force‑majeure clauses to service contracts, acknowledging systemic vulnerability.

Ir is noteworthy that the disabling of Yandex impacted Russia’s operations to influence several elections in which Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump have a stake. In addition to the November 3 midterm election, for which early and absentee voting is already taking place, there are other important elections in which Putin and Trump share favorite parties, candidates, and causes.

These include the Oct. 19 Alberta referendum in which voters will decide if the province should pursue separation from Canada; the Oct. 25 second=round presidential election in Brazil (anti-Trump Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva vs. Trump-aligned fascist Flavio Bolsonaro); the Oct. 25 first-round Bulgarian presidential election in which the pro-Putin and pro-Trump Kostadin Kostadinov is one of three major candidates; the Oct. 25 Serbian parliamentary election in which the pro-Putin former Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, is vying to become prime minister; the Oct. 27 Israeli Knesset election in which Binyamin Netanyahu is seeking re-election for his far-right coalition; the Nov. 7 New Zealand general election in which Labor leader Chris Hipkins is running to replace the conservative National government (Hipkins, a supporter of Ukraine and a former minister in charge of Covid-19 response, is being targeted by an anti-vaxxer campaign originating in Russia); the Nov. 15 Cabo Verde presidential election; and the Nov. 29 Spanish general election that pits conservative and pro-Israel People’s Party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo against incumbent Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

An expanded Ukrainian attack strategy on Russia’s internet infrastructure could deal a devastating blow on such Russian disinfo ops as the Social Design Agency’s (SDA) and Struktura’s Doppelganger cloned‑media operations. Doppelganger fake news websites include those mimicking: Der Spiegel, Le Monde, Le Figaro, Le Parisien, France’s 20 Minutes, Fox News, The Guardian, Washington Post, Germany’s ARD, Bild, BBC, Italian news agency ANSA, and NATO and French Foreign Ministry sites. CZ24.news, a Czech/Slovak site, systematically republishes RT content verbatim, acting as a “relay station” for Russian propaganda.

Reliable Recent News, Doppelganger’s sister operation, acts as a central narrative hub — a clearinghouse for messaging that feeds the cloned sites. Other Russian disinfo sites that could be disrupted by a massive attack on Russian internet nodes include WarOnFakes — a Russian “fake fact‑checker” operation operating several Telegram channels and which pushes Kremlin narratives by “debunking” Western reporting and is often used to launder propaganda into more legitimate‑looking formats and Ukraine Inc., which frames Ukraine as corrupt, incompetent, or controlled by oligarchs. It uses business‑style branding to appear neutral or analytical.

Other Russian influence programs disrupted by the attacks on Yandex included Operation Overload, Portal Kombat/Pravda Network, Matryoshka, and Storm‑1516. On Oct. 12, Zelensky indicated that Ukraine’s successful attacks on the Yandex would continue. Ukraine attacked three of five Yandex sites. The other two that could come under attack are those located in Ivanteevka and Mytishchi. Attacks on them and additional cyber-infrastructure sites would be a wise decision for the good of Ukraine and Western democracy.

The Hartmann Report, Opinion: Benedict Arnold Sold Out America Once. Is Trump Doing It Again, This Time for Putin? Thom Hartmann, right, thom hartmann newOct. 12, 2026. Trump's latest Russia decision threatens to enrich a hostile dictator, undermine American sanctions, and leave Ukraine bleeding. Congress must confront the question Republicans keep avoiding...

Is Putin running America through Trump, is Trump just a “useful idiot” for the Russians, or is he the worst traitor America’s seen since the days of Benedict Arnold?

hartmann report newYesterday morning, Trump took to his Nazi-infested social media site to announce to the world (and a bit earlier to people who give him $100,000 a month for market-moving information) that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to an “energy ceasefire,” telling the world “Both parties have agreed. Do not break it!”

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy responded that the deal was “news for me,” and the Kremlin spokesman said three days earlier that Russia wasn’t interested in any sort of a limited truce like Trump announced. But Trump made an identical announcement back in September, which was also a lie, and the night of his announcement both countries continued to bomb each other’s refineries and power plants.

I’m guessing that Trump’s announcement was designed to shift the news cycle away from reporting on the most nakedly pro-Russia act by any American president in our nation’s history that happened on Friday.

After one of his regular roughly-every-two-weeks-since-he-was-inaugurated phone calls with Putin, Trump announced that he’d just suspended our worldwide sanctions against any country that buys oil or refined products from Russia so that country could put millions of tons of diesel on the world market.

Every past sanction suspension — there have been a few — have lasted just 30 days, but Trump extended this one for six months, giving Russia billions they’re desperate for to keep up their violent, illegal war against our democratic ally, Ukraine.

As if to give Ukraine, Europe, the free world, and every American who believes in democracy instead of naked autocracy the middle finger, Trump stood in front of the White House and told reporters:

“I want to thank President Putin.”

This won’t do a thing for American diesel prices, although Trump is hoping that pissed off truckers and farmers believe it will. Even if every drop of that diesel ended up here — and most of it won’t — it would only cover about nine days of what we burn here.

But in reality this is simply Trump bailing out his mentor, owner, blackmailer, or whatever Putin is. Russia’s diesel output right now is down 30 percent and Putin’s hold on the country is getting shaky, as Terrence Goggin (The West Point History Professor) argues so cogently. With prices this high, this deal will give Putin billions.

Following Trump’s announcement, Putin showed America and the world exactly how seriously he took Trump’s Friday statement: Saturday morning, Russian guided bombs killed at least 20 people, three of them children, in a residential neighborhood in Zaporizhzhia.

Trump’s response that afternoon, instead of calling Putin out, was to blame our diesel prices on Zelenskyy for hitting Russian refineries and to declare:

“I think it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president.”

In fact, diesel is high because refinery capacity in the Gulf states has crashed due to being hit over and over again by both Iranian and Houthi missiles. While Ukraine’s strikes are hurting Russian diesel supplies, as Putin noted two weeks ago at his annual Valdai forum in Moscow, that has nothing to do with America; we refine virtually all of our diesel right here at home.

Prices are high here because of scarcity-driven pricing around tight international supplies, and our oil companies are using those international rates to price-gouge American drivers on both diesel and gasoline. The industry that Trump said he’d do anything for if they gave him a billion dollars is now making tens of billions in windfall profits every week.

But this is just the beginning of Trump’s most recent anti-American crime spree.

Remember the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act? It passed and was signed into law a mere three weeks ago and gives the Trump administration until Sunday of this week to begin punishing countries that still buy Putin’s oil.

He’s breaking that law right in front of us all.

And that’s on top of the Ending Importation of Russian Oil Act that flat-out banned all imports of any Russian energy products to the United States. If Trump wanted to issue waivers in a way that would comply with that law — which has been on the books for four years now, dating back to the Biden years — he’d first have to give Congress 45 days advance notice, certify in writing that Russia has withdrawn all of its troops from Ukraine and stopped all bombing, and then wait a full 90 days for Congress to give him a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.

As Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen noted, Trump and his lickspittles have totally bypassed every one of those requirements; Republican Senator Thom Tillis said yesterday that the deal is both illegal and will put more American lives at risk.

Which provoked former Illinois Republican Congressman Joe Walsh — a frequent guest on my radio/TV program — to say:

“Trump is a traitor to the free world.”

Walsh used to be a lonely voice in his old party, but now he’s rapidly getting company. Mike Pence called the deal a “betrayal” of Graham’s legacy. Senator Lisa Murkowski and Congressmen Don Bacon and Michael McCaul have all condemned it.

Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick has warned Mike Johnson that he’ll use a discharge petition to force a vote on a bill he’s calling the Ronald Reagan Peace Through Strength Act that would block any purchase of Russian oil (even though two other laws already make it illegal).

Which caused Democratic Senator Mark Kelly to ask out loud the question a lot of Americans are wondering:

“Whose side is Trump on?”

I can think of two possible answers, and both are insane.

The first is that Putin is actually steering Trump’s presidency. First, weaken America and gut our military, and then give Putin whatever he wants:

Put an alcoholic B-list weekend TV guy in charge of the Pentagon, a plumber in charge of DHS, a fracking guy in charge of Energy, a wrestling billionaire in charge of Education, a brain-worm-disabled former heroin- and sex-addicted lawyer in charge of our nation’s health, let a ketamine-addled trillionaire rip apart our federal government and destroy our soft power around the world by taking down USAID, shut down our pro-democracy propaganda operations (VOA, etc.), put a weight-loss “miracle pill” hawker in charge of Medicare and Medicaid, a C-list former reality TV star in charge of our airlines, his own criminal defense lawyer to run the coverup of Epstein at the Department of Justice, etc. The list is virtually endless.

The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee documented that Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was also passing internal campaign data to a Russian intelligence officer while running the campaign and the two of them worked on a plan to hand eastern Ukraine to Moscow. Then there was Helsinki where Trump humiliated our intelligence service while all but shining Putin’s shoes on live TV.

In his first months in office, Trump outed an Israeli spy to the Russian Ambassador in what he thought was going to be a “secret Oval Office meeting” (the Russians released the photo to the press), resulting in MOSAD having to “burn” (relocate, change identity of) that spy.

The undercover agent was apparently working in Syria that year against the Russians, who were embroiled in the midst of Assad’s Civil War and indiscriminately bombing Aleppo into rubble.

That, in turn, prompted the CIA to worry that a longtime American spy buried deep in the Kremlin was similarly vulnerable to Trump handing him over to Putin.

As CNN noted (when the story leaked two years later):

“The source was considered the highest level source for the US inside the Kremlin, high up in the national security infrastructure, according to the source familiar with the matter and a former senior intelligence official.

“According to CNN’s sources, the spy had access to Putin and could even provide images of documents on the Russian leader’s desk.”

The CIA concluded that the risk Trump had burned or was about to burn our spy inside the Kremlin was so great that — at massive loss to US intelligence abilities that may even have otherwise helped forestall the invasion of Ukraine — they pulled our spy out of Russia in the first year of Trump’s first presidency, 2017.

Similarly, when they met in Helsinki on July 16, 2018, Trump and Putin talked in private for several hours and Trump ordered his translators’ notes destroyed; there is also concern that much of their conversation was done out of the hearing of the US’s translator (Putin is fluent in English) who may have been relegated to a distant part of the rather large empty ballroom in which they met.

The Washington Post reported, after a leak six months later, that when Trump met privately for those two hours with Putin the CIA went into “panic mode.” A US intelligence official told the Post:

“There was this gasp’ at the CIA’s Langley, Virginia headquarters. You literally had people in panic mode watching it at Langley. On all floors. Just shock.”

Things were picking up in 2019, as Putin was planning his invasion of Ukraine while Trump was preparing for the 2020 election.

In July 2019, Trump had conversations with five foreign leaders during and just before a presidential visit that month to Mar-a-Lago; they included Putin and the Emir of Qatar.

In one of those conversations, according to a high-level US Intelligence source, Trump “made promises” to a “world leader” that were so alarming it provoked a national security scramble across multiple agencies.

As The Washington Post noted in an article titled “Trump’s communications with foreign leader are part of whistleblower complaint that spurred standoff between spy chief and Congress”:

“Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson determined that the complaint [against Trump] was credible and troubling enough to be considered a matter of ‘urgent concern,’ a legal threshold that requires notification of congressional oversight committees.”

On the last day of that month, July 31, Trump had another private conversation with Putin.

The White House spokespeople told Congress and the press that Trump said that he and Putin discussed “wildfires” and “trade between the nations.” No droids in this car…

But the following week, on August 2nd, The Daily Beast’s Betsy Swan reported that Trump had that week asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for a list of all its employees (including all our “spies”) who had worked there more than 90 days, and the request had intelligence officials experiencing “disquiet.”

Perhaps just by coincidence, months after Trump left office with cases of classified documents, The New York Times ran a story with the headline Captured, Killed or Compromised: C.I.A. Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants:

“Top American counterintelligence officials warned every C.I.A. station and base around the world last week,” the Times’ story’s lede began, “about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said. (emphasis added)

Then there was the red carpet in Alaska last year, where Russia’s foreign minister showed up in a sweatshirt reading “CCCP,” as if to announce who’d won the Cold War after all. There’s the invitation to Putin, a man under indictment for war crimes and stealing children from Ukraine, to come to Mar-a-Lago for the G20 in December. Historian Heather Cox Richardson walked through that whole history Saturday night and closed by asking “how much more evidence is necessary” before we conclude that this president is working for Russia.

The second possibility is that nobody’s blackmailing or threatening Trump and he’s doing all of this of his own free will because he thinks it’ll make him richer.

The midterms were 25 days off when he made that call, diesel prices are killing Republican candidates, and Trump desperately needed a positive-sounding headline.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that Putin personally pitched Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner at the Kremlin on the sale of Lukoil’s $20 billion in overseas assets to a group led by a Trump megadonor and including business partners of both the Kushner and Witkoff families.

Selling out your country for money and advantage has a name in American history, Benedict Arnold, who offered to hand West Point to the British for 20,000 pounds because — like with Trump and the Nobel Prize — he felt underappreciated.

But Arnold, at least, had been a real patriot before he turned. He’d been shot in the left leg storming Quebec and then had that same leg shattered leading the charge that won the Battle of Saratoga. There’s a monument on that battlefield today, a single carved boot honoring the leg while pointedly leaving off the name of the man it was attached to.

Unlike Arnold, Donald Trump used a diagnosis of bone spurs to stay out of Vietnam that the podiatrist’s own daughters say was a favor to Fred Trump, who just happened to be the doctor’s landlord and patron.

My dad was a Republican activist in Michigan. The Republican Party he loved defined itself by standing up to the Kremlin.

I can’t imagine what he’d make of a Republican president publicly thanking the man in the Kremlin for suggesting that America bankroll his bloody, unprovoked war, or of the Senate’s number two Republican going on Sunday television to defend this insanity.

US intelligence agencies have determined — and told Trump — that Putin has provided Iran with the satellite data and intelligence that country’s IRGC used to attack our bases and troops in the Gulf, killing at least 21 and sending hundreds of others to the hospital. And now Trump’s handing him billions while cutting off our ally Ukraine from American-made Patriot missile interceptors?

I’ll leave it to the lawyers and the impeachment committees to determine if that fits the definition of treason in the Constitution, which says:

“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”

But whatever it is, when a president knowingly breaks his own country’s laws to send billions to a hostile nation’s dictator who’s slaughtering the people of a nation we promised — in writing in 1994 — to protect, most Americans know in their gut what to call it.

Whether Putin is giving the orders or Trump is freelancing to hustle more money into his kids Uday and Qusay’s investments, Ukraine’s children end up just as dead and America’s word and reputation ends up just as worthless.

Congress has the power to find out which it is and to stop it, but only if enough of us make enough noise. Call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 and tell your representative to sign Fitzpatrick’s discharge petition the day the House comes back.

Demand that your senators get the written certification from Trump that the 2022 law requires and to insist the Graham Act’s sanctions actually kick in by their October 18th deadline.

Then check your registration at vote.org and show up on November 3 like the country depends on it. And if this piece was useful to you, please share it with friends and family, and consider subscribing to and supporting the Hartmann Report so we can keep doing this work together.Thanks for subscribing to The Hartmann Report. This post is public, so feel free to share it.

News Roundups

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Trump’s DHS Raids Congresswoman’s Home in Major Escalation, Trump’s Crowds Shrink as the GOP Turns on Itself, Judge Blocks Trump Ads, Aaron Parnas,aaron parnas new headshot right, Oct. 12, 2026. If last week felt intense, this week is already raising the stakes. Before the sun came up this morning, federal agents raided the home of Rep. Ilhan Omar, a sitting member of Congress the president has openly said should be in jail. That comes just days after Trump’s Justice Department opened an investigation into five major TV networks for standing up to the White House. Meanwhile, a MAGA conspiracy theory about James Talarico collapsed in spectacular fashion, two federal judges stepped in to stop the administration, and Russia ignored Trump’s “ceasefire” within hours.

Raids. Investigations. Pressure on the press. With the midterms just three weeks away, it’s becoming clear that this administration is willing to use the full weight of the federal government against the people it sees as enemies. Lawmakers, networks, and yes, journalists.

I’m not going to stop telling you the truth, no matter how much pressure comes our way.

But staying independent takes resources, and it’s only possible because of readers like you. 

Now, let’s get into today’s news.

Federal Agents Raid Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Home as Trump’s Campaign Against His Critics Escalates

Federal agents carried out a predawn raid Monday on the Washington-area home of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar. Homeland Security Investigations executed a search warrant secured by the Justice Department, according to Fox News Digital, which first reported the raid. A DOJ spokesperson said the warrant was “judicially authorized” and that the action is “part of an ongoing federal investigation.” The raid is reportedly tied to a criminal fraud probe into Omar’s immigration paperwork, which was filled out by her late father after the family came to the U.S. from Somalia when she was a child. Omar, 44, has been a U.S. citizen since 2000. Neither her office nor the Justice Department immediately responded to requests for comment, and the story is still developing. This move today violates longstanding DOJ policy:

The raid follows years of attacks from Trump, who has openly said he wants Omar in jail. In a Truth Social post in January, Trump called her a “scammer” and wrote that she and her “absolutely terrible friends from Somalia should all be in jail right now, or far worse, send them back to Somalia.” Trump has repeatedly cast the Somali American community as a threat to Minnesota in a burst of anti-Somali and anti-Muslim rhetoric. Last month, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan announced that the Department of Homeland Security had opened a criminal investigation into the congresswoman. Now, just weeks later, federal agents are searching her home. The sequence raises serious questions about whether the president’s political grudges are driving federal law enforcement.

The raid on a sitting member of Congress marks a dramatic escalation in the Trump administration’s use of federal power against its critics. It comes just days after Trump’s Justice Department opened an antitrust investigation into five major TV networks that stood together against the White House’s press ban. Omar has also faced a wave of threats in recent years, including an incident at a January town hall in Minneapolis where a person with a syringe charged the podium as she spoke. Executing a search warrant at the home of a member of Congress is an extraordinary step, especially over paperwork filed by a parent when the lawmaker was a child. With the midterms just three weeks away, the move is likely to intensify concerns among Democrats that the administration is targeting political opponents. More details are expected as the story develops.

Trump Faces Shrinking Crowds and a Fractured GOP as Republicans Fight to Hold Texas and South Carolina

Trump is holding near-daily rallies to fire up a Republican base that is showing signs of fatigue, but the crowds are shrinking. He has already held eight rallies in October and plans to campaign in 35 races before Election Day, often in heavily Republican areas. Instead of packed arenas, he’s now speaking in smaller venues, often in front of empty seats and watching people leave before he finishes. At a much-hyped rally in San Antonio, he didn’t come close to filling an 11,000-seat coliseum, and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has skipped both of Trump’s Texas rallies this month. A former senior Trump campaign aide said bluntly, “I don’t think they’re getting the same thing anymore.” Trump is now leaning on celebrities like Kid Rock, Mike Tyson, and Dennis Rodman to draw crowds, while even some supporters doubt his promise of $5,000 checks, with one saying, “He does a lot of talking.”

Trump’s rally pitch has turned bizarre, telling voters to back Republicans “even if you hate” them. In Ohio, he told the crowd, “Go out and vote, even if you hate Jon Husted, even if you hate Vivek Ramaswamy.” In Texas, he called his own hand-picked Senate candidate Ken Paxton a “pain in the ass” and has mocked the way Paxton looks, dresses, and talks. He has also gone off script in ways that hurt his candidates, praising AI data centers in Ohio even though Republicans have warned the issue could sink Husted’s campaign against Sherrod Brown. “We want them,” Trump said of the data centers. “They’ll go to China.” His stump speech has otherwise settled into a familiar routine of touting his record, calling Democrats “communists,” and attacking Democratic nominees.

In Texas, the Republican Party is tearing itself apart as Paxton trails Democrat James Talarico. Months after Trump helped Paxton oust Sen. John Cornyn in a bitter primary, the two camps remain at war, with Paxton’s allies convinced Cornyn’s side is leaking damaging recordings to sabotage him. In one leaked audio clip, Paxton said of Cornyn, “He’s clearly not helping. He wants me to lose.” Cornyn has refused to endorse Paxton by name, has called him “lazy,” a “poor campaigner,” and a “crook,” and is raising money for other Senate races instead. Karl Rove has gone even further, saying, “If John Cornyn were the nominee, this race would be over,” while pointing to Paxton’s affairs and corruption scandals. Republicans have now poured $179 million into ads in the race since September, more than three times what Democrats have spent, yet polls still show Talarico narrowly ahead.

In deep-red South Carolina, Republicans are spending $5 million to protect their Senate candidate after the race tightened. Republican Sen. Darline Graham, appointed to replace her late brother Lindsey Graham after his death in July, faced Democratic pediatrician Annie Andrews in a fiery debate Sunday night. Andrews mocked Graham as “the White House’s ambassador to South Carolina” and called her “unserious and unqualified,” pointing to Graham’s earlier admission that “national security is not my thing.” Graham tried to paint Andrews as the state’s “most radical liberal,” but Andrews fired back, “My name is Annie Andrews,” touting her support for the Second Amendment and border security. Andrews also blamed record gas prices on the Iran war, noting Graham voted three times against a war powers resolution that could have ended it. Whoever wins will become the first woman elected to the Senate from South Carolina.

Taken together, the races show a Republican Party struggling to hold even its safest ground. Texas hasn’t elected a Democrat statewide in more than three decades, yet a former state GOP finance chair warned the threat is “real” and “not just nonsense in the public polls.” Polls also show Latino voters in Texas swinging back toward Democrats after backing Trump in 2024. In South Carolina, AI data centers have become a major flash point, with Andrews dubbing her opponent “Data Center Darline” and calling for a two-year moratorium to protect families from rising power bills. Meanwhile, Trump’s dismal approval ratings and an unpopular Iran war are weighing on Republicans across the map. With three weeks to go, Republicans are spending heavily just to defend seats they once considered safe.

MAGA’s “Bombshell” Talarico Conspiracy Collapses After Ohio Hospital Says He Was Never a Patient

A viral MAGA claim that James Talarico was secretly treated at a psychiatric hospital completely fell apart within hours. Pro-Trump influencer Nick Sortor posted an “exclusive” claiming that the Lindner Center of Hope, a mental health facility in Ohio, had “CONFIRMED” Talarico was discharged there, calling his flu explanation a “BIG FAT LIE.” Elon Musk amplified the post, Trump ally Richard Grenell accused Talarico’s campaign of a cover-up, and another influencer demanded he drop out of the race. But on Sunday, the hospital itself shot it down, posting that “Representative James Talarico has never received treatment from Lindner Center of Hope.” Talarico shared the statement, adding, “I’ve never even been to Ohio.” His spokesman called it “a lie designed to promote a pathetic conspiracy theory.”

The influencers’ own timeline didn’t even add up. Their supposed evidence claimed Talarico was discharged from the Ohio facility on the evening of October 10, but he had already been seen back on the campaign trail at Austin City Limits on October 9 and on stage with Kacey Musgraves in Dallas on October 10. The claim relied on a recording of a phone call with a purported hospital employee, and questions are now being raised about whether it was real and how it was obtained, since the hospital requires a patient-selected code to share any information. One of the influencers even appeared to admit the real goal, writing, “Nah, public humiliation is the end goal here.” Legal experts note that obtaining protected health information under false pretenses can carry federal penalties, though no wrongdoing has been established. Rather than apologize, Sortor mocked Talarico again, posting that he’d “caught the flu” and would respond “in 12-15 days (maybe).”

Talarico says he simply had “a nasty case of the flu,” and the smear campaign has only drawn more attention to Paxton’s refusal to debate. “I was in bed, drinking lots of liquids,” Talarico told NBC Dallas-Fort Worth, adding that he stayed home because he didn’t want to get anyone else sick. “You can’t believe everything you read on the internet,” he said. He also turned Trump’s own words against Paxton, saying, “I agree with President Trump. I think Ken Paxton should debate,” noting Paxton has ignored his debate requests for 85 days. A recent YouGov poll shows Talarico leading Paxton 50% to 44% among registered Texas voters. A win would make him the first Democrat to win a statewide race in Texas in more than 30 years.

Federal Judges Hit the Brakes on Trump’s Taxpayer-Funded TV Ads and DC Golf Course Tree Cutting

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to immediately stop airing taxpayer-funded TV ads that critics call political propaganda ahead of the midterms. Judge Jennifer Rochon issued a temporary restraining order Sunday night barring the Department of Homeland Security from spending any more of the $20 million set aside for the ad campaign, about $19 million of which has already been spent. The ads, labeled “Paid for by the U.S. Government,” feature rapid shots of Trump alongside claims like “Largest Tax Cuts in History,” while flashing the words “AMERICA WILL NEVER BE A COMMUNIST COUNTRY.” The money was appropriated by Congress for immigration enforcement. Rochon also canceled all scheduled ads, blocked any new ad contracts, and froze a purchase order with the contractor running the campaign. The order lasts 14 days unless extended.

The judge rejected the administration’s argument that it was “too late” to act, and the government didn’t even defend the ads on the merits. The Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office told the court the ads would stop after Sunday, but the plaintiffs pointed out that more ads were still set to air during Sunday evening programming watched by millions. Rochon ruled the case was not moot, found the coalition was likely to win, and said an injunction “serves the public interest.” The lawsuit was filed by Common Cause and the SEIU, while the Democratic National Committee filed a separate challenge. Trump said earlier this month that he or his super PAC would pay for the ads going forward, but the White House said he would not reimburse taxpayers for the millions already spent. The coalition called the ads “blatantly unlawful political propaganda,” adding there is “no legal justification and no precedent” for using government money to sway an election.

A separate federal judge halted all tree cutting at the historic East Potomac Golf Links that Trump wants to turn into a championship course. Judge Ana Reyes ordered a stop to the removals until at least Tuesday morning, just days after the National Park Service began clearing 169 trees as part of a plan to remove more than 500 in total. She also ordered the superintendent of the National Mall to testify under oath Monday about who ordered the tree removals and when he received that order. The Park Service has insisted the cutting is routine maintenance separate from Trump’s redesign plans. But the DC Preservation League and local residents suing to stop the project told the court that even if the administration deserves the benefit of the doubt, “they’re not entitled to a suspension of disbelief.” The project is part of Trump’s broader push to remake Washington in his vision.

Kremlin Rejects Ceasefire and Ignores Trump’s “Energy Truce” as Zelensky Quips “Putin Does Not Read Truth Social”

Russia kept bombing Ukraine’s power grid within hours of Trump announcing an “energy ceasefire,” and the Kremlin still won’t even acknowledge it. Russian drones hit a power plant in Kyiv on Sunday, causing blackouts in the capital, followed by a “targeted attack” on a power station in Kharkiv. “It’s clear that Putin does not read Truth Social,” Zelensky quipped on Monday. Asked about Trump’s ceasefire, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment, saying only, “Contacts continue.” Zelensky said Ukraine learned about the ceasefire “from the media” like everyone else. Russian strikes killed six people in Ukraine on Sunday, including three at a grocery store in Kharkiv, where 20 more were wounded, including two children.

The Kremlin flatly rejected Zelensky’s offer of a 60-day ceasefire to hold elections, offering just one day instead. Zelensky had proposed a “total” 60-day ceasefire so Ukraine could hold the elections Trump demanded when he said it was “time for Ukraine to get a new president.” Peskov dismissed the idea, saying, “We do not want a ceasefire. We want long-term peace.” In a remarkable counteroffer, he said Putin would be willing to halt strikes on Ukraine only on election day itself. Zelensky said holding elections now is nearly impossible, with more than a million soldiers on the front lines who would need to vote. He said he’s willing to find ways to change the constitution to hold elections “very quickly” if a full ceasefire is put in place.

Zelensky vowed that Ukraine will strike back if Russia keeps attacking its power grid this winter. “If Russia does not agree to an energy ceasefire this winter, we will respond,” he told European security officials in Warsaw. He said Ukraine already showed good faith by holding off on hitting Russian oil refineries Sunday night, only for Russia to launch a jet-powered drone strike on a Ukrainian facility at midnight. “We agree, if they agree,” he said, calling on the U.S. to apply “real pressure” on the Kremlin instead of sanctions relief. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas noted that Trump’s proposal to halt refinery strikes favors Russia, which has far more refineries than Ukraine. Meanwhile, the Financial Times reported that the Trump administration is threatening to cut off a key weapons procurement system for Ukraine to pressure Kyiv to stop its strikes on Russian energy.

Europe is moving in the opposite direction from Trump, approving the largest round of Russia sanctions since the war began. The EU added nearly 1,600 individuals and entities to its sanctions blacklist, with more than half tied to Russia’s ballistic missile production. “Europe is again showing a united front,” Kallas said. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said a diesel deal like Trump’s is “out of the question” for Europe, adding, “Russia will only negotiate seriously under pressure.” Lithuania’s foreign minister said the deal “doesn’t help” and damages transatlantic unity, while Estonia’s top diplomat said it won’t actually change diesel prices and linked it to Trump’s midterm worries. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney also said the diesel deal “is in direct opposition” to efforts to bring peace to Europe.

Other news:

Trump’s new White House press secretary, Katie Zacharia, has a history of pushing the debunked Pizzagate and QAnon conspiracy theories. According to a report by Popular Information, Zacharia repeatedly posted on Truth Social promoting Pizzagate, the baseless claim that top Democrats ran a child sex trafficking ring out of a D.C. pizzeria. She called John Podesta a “pedo,” wrote that “Hollywood elites are sick pedo cannibals,” and shared a post claiming Democrats have a “satanic platform.” She also engaged with QAnon posts, agreeing with a user who suggested Trump drinking bottled water during a speech might be a coded signal tied to specific “Q posts.” When asked about her history, the White House simply pointed to Trump’s post announcing her hire, in which he called her “a devoted fan and member of MAGA.” The 41-year-old previously worked at Trump Media and once wrote an op-ed calling Trump “the greatest president in U.S. history.”

Trump reposted a rant from Kid Rock warning of a future “civil war over religious ideology” with Muslims in Michigan. On Lara Trump’s Fox News show, Kid Rock attacked Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed as “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” and said he feared his grandchildren would one day have to fight a religious civil war. Trump shared the clip on Truth Social, the latest in a string of attacks in which he has called El-Sayed a “Jihadist lunatic” and “Terrorist Sympathizer” and repeatedly called him “Mohammad.” “He knows my name is Abdul,” El-Sayed responded. “He’s not just attacking me. He’s attacking all of us.” At a Trump rally in Tennessee on Saturday, Kid Rock also questioned whether Islam is “a religion, ideology, a cult,” offering no evidence for his claims, and Trump later said he’d “like it” if the rapper ran for office. The attacks come as El-Sayed’s race against Republican Mike Rogers remains tight in the final weeks of the campaign.

Saudi Arabia extended the shutdown of all flights at Riyadh’s main airport after another deadly Houthi missile attack. Houthi strikes on Saturday killed 13 people and injured more than 300, and Saudi state TV aired security footage showing passengers waiting to board being engulfed in smoke and falling debris. A further attack left one more person dead, and the military said it has detected additional missile and drone threats. The Houthis have repeatedly broken through Saudi Arabia’s stretched air defenses, destroying a parked passenger plane and damaging at least five others, and they have vowed to target airports across the country. Schoolchildren and some workers have been told to stay home, while Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman hasn’t been seen in public since last week. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman also took a shot at Trump over his treatment of Zelensky, saying, “Being an enemy of America can be dangerous, but being a friend of America is deadly.”

Anti-vaccine activists are targeting the doctors who treated children who died of measles, as RFK Jr. disputes the rising death toll. Measles has now killed eight people in the U.S. in less than two years, including two unvaccinated young girls in Texas and several people in Pennsylvania’s outbreak, the state’s largest in decades. Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group RFK Jr. once led, claims it has sparked medical board reviews of the Texas doctors, blaming the deaths on antibiotics rather than measles. Kennedy has suggested Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro made up measles deaths for political reasons, and the CDC has only listed two of Pennsylvania’s five deaths this year. Leading vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit says the goal is to “distract, distract, distract” from the damage anti-vaccine messaging has caused. A Texas public health director noted that during her area’s outbreak, hesitant parents rushed to get their kids vaccinated as soon as cases appeared.

Two American economists won the Nobel Prize in economics for work that helps governments fight recessions and inflation. Robert Hall of Stanford and Michael Woodford of Columbia were honored for building the economic models that central banks and finance ministries around the world now use to stabilize their economies. Their work improved on older Keynesian models, which struggled to explain the 1970s, when countries faced high inflation and high unemployment at the same time. Woodford’s “New Keynesian” framework was used by policymakers to steer the global economy away from a second Great Depression after the 2008 financial crisis. Their research also led to “forward guidance,” where central banks signal where interest rates are headed. Woodford said he was “elated,” calling the award “a tremendous honour.”

Republican Sen. Roger Marshall finally paid off a six-year-old bakery bill after a small business owner’s post went viral. Kansas baker Holly Thomas wrote that Marshall’s campaign ordered cookies and treats for a 2020 election watch party but never paid the $678.75 invoice, despite nearly a year of calls and emails during the pandemic. “Every single dollar mattered,” she wrote, adding that the experience is why Marshall “will never get my vote.” After the post blew up, Marshall said he had “absolutely no idea how this happened” and paid $1,300, claiming he’d repaid the bill “double,” though critics quickly pointed out that doubled would actually be $1,357.50. The episode comes as the Cook Political Report moved Marshall’s race to a toss-up and after reports that his medical practice has sued hundreds of patients over unpaid bills. Thomas acknowledged the payment, writing, “Better late than never, right?”

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

 

 

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (AFP photo by Jim Watson via Getty Images).

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (AFP photo by Jim Watson via Getty Images).

The New Republic, Opinion: If the Nidal Hasan Execution Is Livestreamed, We Are a Barbaric Nation, Michael Tomasky, right, michael tomaskyOct. 12, 2026. The only countries to carry out public executions in 2025? Iran and Afghanistan. That’s the company Pete Hegseth wants America to keep.

Very early on the morning of August 14, 1936, in Owensboro, Kentucky, Rainey Bethea woke up for the last time. He was a young Black mannew republic daily— Wikipedia pegs his age at the time at 27, while another more authoritative-seeming source I read said he was 22 —who had lost his mother and father while young and drifted into a life of itinerant labor and, eventually, crime. Earlier that summer, he broke into the home of 70-year-old Lishia Edwards, who was white. He raped her and killed her and stole some of her jewelry. Or at least it seems like he did—he confessed more than once, but never in the presence of counsel, and at one point he told police he was drunk at the time of his first confession. But a ring was found at the scene that did belong to him.

His execution, by hanging, was set for sunrise that mid-August day. A crowd of 20,000 gathered; vendors sold candy, popcorn, Coca-Cola, and watermelon; some men climbed utility poles, and parents held their small children aloft, for a better view. The Louisville Courier-Journal enthused: “Kentucky is already famous for her hospitality. Her Derby parties are known all over the country. Her hanging parties should have an even wider fame. Most people are interested in horse-racing, but all people are interested in death.”

Coverage was national and intense. The northern papers were horrified by this macabre spectacle (here’s a photo of the scene). The people of Owensboro resented the way they were portrayed. But the state legislature and the governor had enough of a conscience that not long after, they passed a law outlawing public executions. And the hanging of Rainey Bethea was, by most accounts, the last public execution in the United States (the Death Penalty Information Center’s website says that one more took place, in Missouri in 1937).

In either case, it’s been nine decades, nearly a century, since the United States of America or any of its states decided that turning the killing of a human being into a public entertainment was a good idea. France banned the practice soon thereafter, in 1939. In the U.K., public execution was outlawed back in 1868. In 2025, according to Amnesty International, just two countries carried out public executions. The theocrats in Iran held 11, and the Taliban in Afghanistan hosted six. And that’s the company in which Pete Hegseth—the testosterone-Department of Defense Sealobsessed, man-boy “war” secretary—wishes to place the United States of America.

Donald Trump has done a lot of repulsive things as president and taken this country down moral sinkholes most of us never thought we’d encounter. But if he approves the livestreaming of the execution of Nidal Hasan—and Hegseth’s announcement last week was just a recommendation; Trump said over the weekend that he will decide—it will easily be the most depraved thing he’s done.

Hasan’s crimes are sickening. He killed 13 people, including a pregnant woman, and injured 32 more when he opened fire at Fort Hood, Texas, on November 5, 2009. I’m an opponent of the death penalty, mainly because there’s just way too much evidence that our justice system wrongly convicts people. Since 1972, 203 people sentenced to death in this country have been later exonerated. I’ll admit, though, that in cases of premeditated mass murder like this one, where the crime was unspeakable and the guilt is clear, I don’t lose much sleep when I learn that the perp will be put to death.

But televising it is barbaric. Turning the killing of a human being, any human being, into a spectator sport is about as sick as it gets. The United States of the mid-1930s was not exactly a progressive Eden, to say nothing of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. A Black man was lynched in the state just two years before Bethea was put to death. But even in that place and at that time, people in positions of power knew that killing a person for public amusement was one moral bridge too far and moved to outlaw it.

It’s not too far for Hegseth. The man who has overseen a disastrous war that has cost you and me $45 billion and 81 aircraft worth more than $3 billion thinks it’s a grand idea. He laid it out last week to some right-wing “news” outfit called Real America’s Voice. A “no-brainer,” he said. “It hadn’t been since World War II since we’ve done that. Well, I kinda like the mentality we had in World War II. Which was win.”

Where does one even begin? As if turning murder into a piece of theater is on par with the global fight to stop fascism. As if taking a human life on TV is a “win” comparable to the defeat of Hitler. What kind of monster talks like this?

At another point in the interview, Hegseth gave away what really makes people like him seethe. Of Hasan’s act, he said: “Remember what Obama called it? ‘Workplace violence’? I mean, that’s what we’re up against.” Wow. Did Obama really say that? “Workplace violence” is Andy Bernard punching a wall, not a religious extremist executing 13 innocent people and perpetrating a bloodbath.

But Obama never personally uttered the phrase. In the shootings’ immediate aftermath, he called them a “horrific outburst of violence.” Instead, the Pentagon categorized Hasan’s act as an incident of workplace violence until it much later decided to call it what it obviously was, an act of terrorism (Hasan shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he opened fire). So that’s what’s eating at Hegseth here—that a Pentagon full of beardos and weirdos, no doubt acting at the behest of a commander in chief who would never meet Hegseth’s perverse definition of manhood, was engaged in a bunch of low-testosterone wokery until he came along.

One can agree with Hegseth on that score that if one wishes. But it doesn’t excuse, nothing excuses, livestreaming the event. It still may not happen. JD Vance threw a little cold water on the idea over the weekend, announcing that it wasn’t a done deal and in any case he wouldn’t be watching. Trump, in his remarks, left the door open for an about-face.

If it does happen, though: Can there be any doubt there will be watch parties—mini-Owensboros, so to speak—all over the country, or at least certain parts of it? And remember: This will take place on December 3, during the first week of Advent, in between the Sundays dedicated to hope and peace.

I wonder what Hegseth—who fancies himself a devout Christian and sports a tattoo saying “Deus Vult” (God wills it), which was a rallying cry among the Christian crusaders massacring Muslims—makes of that little piece of irony. Or the irony that adheres in the fact that he wants to punish an Islamic religious extremist by doing something that will link the United States of America arm-in-arm with what are almost surely the two most extremist theocratic Islamic regimes in the world. One doubts that irony has occurred to him. And of course it will elude Trump. Our hope is that one of those plastic-faced denizens of Mar-a-Lago might point it out to him in time. And if not, December 3 will take its place as one of the darkest days in modern American history.

Everyone Is Entitled To My Own Opinion, Commentary: The livestreamed executions will continue until morale improves, Jeff Tiedrich, right, jeff tiedrichDidn’t anyone think this through? Depraved brutality?

CBS News Anchor Margaret Brennan: “Nidal Hasan is in a wheelchair. Doesn’t the administration risk livestreaming this and making him a martyr? Couldn’t this be a risk to the homeland?”

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin: “No one has to watch it.”

Brennan: “Well then, why are you livestreaming it?”

Mullin: “The president is restoring American values.”

I’m sorry, but what ‘American values’ are being restored by turning a death sentence into public entertainment? When was that ever an ‘American value’? Did I blink and miss it? Was there some early draft of the Declaration of Independence that I’m not aware of, extolling the virtues of ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of gunning down some f____ in a wheelchair’?

Oh, and thanks for clarifying that ‘no one has to watch it,’ Marky Two-Names. I was really worried there....That’s Marky’s answer to a disgusting violation of human rights — ‘just pretend it’s not happening.’

Oh yeah, that’ll work. Just look away, and try to think about how this savagery is being perpetrated in our names. Awesome idea, Marky. Thanks for your contribution to the national discourse. You’ve really done us all a solid.

cbs news logoMargaret Brennan has it exactly right in that clip. Donny and Petey are going to turn some asshole who murdered a bunch of soldiers into a martyr. They’re going to turn him into a cause.

And then what? Did not one of these nitwits think about what could happen next? Did they not game that s___ out? Of course they didn’t. These are the morons who quite famously act first and think never. 

It’s this kind of lack of foresight that’s landed us up to our necks in an unwinnable don’t-you-dare-call-it-a-war on Iran that’s raised the price of everything, killed more service members than our piss-drunk Secretary of Death is willing to admit, and destroyed our nation’s ability to defend itself.

Here’s Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat from Connecticut, to brilliantly lay it out in terms so simple that even a cultist could understand.

“We don’t have an acceptable base in Qatar because minutes into the war, the Iranians took those bases out. Donald Trump was so fundamentally unprepared for this war that within days of the war starting, our billion-dollar air bases and naval bases in the region were obliterated by the Iranians. Every single American should be furious about that. Not just because Americans died, but because their taxpayer dollars, at scale, were wasted.”

Now these dumb-asses are going to take that tra-la-la-we-don’t-care mindset and apply it to the public spectacle of a livestreamed death — and who knows what might happen next?

Economies, foreign policies, human rights — all this shit is interconnected in ways that are too complex for thimble-brains like Donny and Piss-Drunk Pete and Marky Two-Names to ever comprehend. It’s like some huge fucking Jenga tower, and these nitwits are just pulling out blocks at random.

You drop some bombs on Iran, and eight months later, airports in Saudi Arabia are on fire. You didn’t foresee that, did you?

Lucky us.

I cannot wait for the adults to be back in charge in America.

And when I say adults, I don’t mean New York Times columnist David Brooks.

David is very very very very sad right now, because that mean old Jon Ossoff is being — wait for it — uncivil. The horror.

Jon Ossoff, my advice to him is, if you start calling your political opponents Nazis, maybe it’s time to shut up. That’s just not what we do here in this country.

Oh, please — fuck straight off into the ocean, David. Don’t you dare presume you can lecture us on ‘that’s not what we do.’ You want to talk about uncivil? Have you met the asshole who heads your party right now? He started this shit.

Here’s a prime slice of advice: if you don’t want to be called a Nazi, don’t be a Nazi. Clean up your act. Start with the government storm troopers rounding up undesirables and disappearing them into slave-labor camps. Nazism doesn’t get any more Nazi than that. 

And now, here’s a heartfelt drama that recently played out in three acts.

In Act One, Ukraine droned..... one of Russia’s largest data centers, taking it completely off line. It blowed up good. It blowed up real good.

You’ll never guess what happened in Act Two: Russian bot traffic cratered. Troll accounts with user names like ‘ChristianPatriot34545674543’ suddenly went silent.

“According to Cloudflare Data Explorer the amount of russian bot traffic has dropped to 49% after Ukraine struck a yandex data center.”

And Zelenskyy was all, ‘you’re welcome, world.’

“And when our strikes reached Yandex data centers, it suddenly became a little easier breathe, on many social media platforms. A lot of people, a lot of people, noticed it. And there was less hate, less division, a fewer provocations — because there were fewer bots. And it’s pretty clear where those bots were coming from.”

A massive drop in Russian bot traffic, three weeks before the midterms? Shoot that shit straight into my veins.

Now we come to Act Three, in which the proprietor of the world’s largest Nazi Bar and Child Porn Emporium completely loses his s___.

“Zelenskyy has gone too far.”

elon musk zelinsky has gone too far
Now comes the part where we throw our heads back in laughter. 

 

donald trump money palmer report Custom

New York Times, Democrats Tie Corruption to High Costs in Final Midterms Push, Carl Hulse, Oct. 12, 2026. Party leaders are working to connect Washington profiteering and the influence of billionaires and corporate America to affordability, in what they hope will be a potent closing message.

Democrats who have spent months emphasizing the high cost of living in their fight to win control of Congress are increasingly invoking corruption in Washington to sharpen that message in the closing weeks of the campaign, blaming self-dealing by politicians for driving up prices.

Armed with research showing that voters have grown numb to the idea that politicians cannot be trusted, Democrats are using the message to stoke anti-incumbent sentiment as Republicans attempt to defend their slim House and Senate majorities. Their claim is that rampant corruption in Congress and the administration is directly costing average citizens who are paying more for necessities like groceries, gas and medicine while those in power get rich through insider knowledge, pay-to-play schemes and the backing of billionaires and powerful corporations.

That message is taking center stage in political ads, speeches and debates in some of the most competitive races in the country.

“You aren’t the problem and neither are your fellow Americans,” Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat running for re-election in Georgia, says in a campaign video. “Corruption is why things don’t work for the American people.”

Democrats are using the message in multiple competitive House and Senate contests, with candidates pointing to increases in the net worth of lawmakers and administration officials and vowing to embrace an anti-corruption agenda, including banning congressional stock trading and ending the revolving door between lawmakers on Capitol Hill and lobbyists on K Street.

Democratic candidates also are hitting Republican members of Congress with accusations of protecting enablers of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, after the G.O.P. had to be forced into taking up and passing legislation directing the Justice Department to release files in his case.

It is yet another way that Democratic leaders are trying to yoke Republican candidates to President Trump. Multiple accounts have shown his family and others connected to the government enriching themselves during his presidency through cryptocurrency trading, peddling influence, securing lucrative real estate deals with foreign entities and negotiating pardons.

Hope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump’s latest disappearing act, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Oct. 11, helen delaney reese djt2026. At 12:07 this afternoon, the White House abruptly canceled all of Donald Trump’s scheduled events, right before he was scheduled to leave, and told the press that the President of the United States would not be seen again for the rest of the day.

Instead of attending a MAGA Inc. fundraiser at his Virginia golf course, Trump locked himself away inside the White House and went on a posting spree on Truth Social. He did not share anything that might explain his sudden disappearance from public view, but he did post a tribute to his former press secretary before announcing that her replacement, an even more dangerous woman with strong ties to QAnon and a troubling history of sharing and believing conspiracy theories, would begin her new role tomorrow morning.President Trump Gaggles with Press at Joint Base Andrews, Oct. 10, 2026In Donald Trump’s farewell post to Karoline Leavitt, which read more like a eulogy than a farewell, he called her “fantastic” and said she “could not have been better.” A half an hour later, he announced that his newest press secretary, 41-year-old Katie Zacharia from California, would begin her first day in the White House role tomorrow, with an “introductory news conference” on Tuesday at 9:30 AM from the Brady Briefing Room. He described her as someone who “has been with me, in spirit, from the very beginning.”

Karoline Leavitt made history as the youngest White House press secretary in American history and also for her uncanny ability to spin the truth and defend Donald Trump against criticism of even his most indefensible actions. After a short return to the White House following the birth of her second child, she left for good in August to “spend more time with her family,” only to announce just last week that she would be joining Fox News on November 1 as a contributor.

She joins a long list of others who have taken this very same career path. Sarah Huckabee Sanders left her position as Trump’s press secretary during his first term in 2019 and secured a job at Fox News just months later. Kayleigh McEnany did the same thing after Trump’s first term ended, eventually becoming a co-host of Outnumbered. Sean Spicer, Trump’s very first press secretary, took a slightly different path after Fox reportedly refused to offer him a position on the network; he ended up hosting his own show on Newsmax. That is what makes this revolving door between the White House and conservative media so important. The people standing behind that podium are supposed to be answering questions on behalf of the American government, not auditioning for their next television contract. But when defending the president through carefully choreographed, nationally watched performances can lead to a lucrative career in right-wing media, it raises serious questions about their motives and whether they are more interested in protecting the president than keeping the American people informed. Now Karoline Leavitt is following that same path. Of course, this isn’t exclusive to Trump’s administrations. Democratic ones have also seen their press secretaries make similar moves, but not nearly to the same extent.

Katie Zacharia is no doubt familiar with the career opportunities that have followed other Trump press secretaries. A native of Huntington Beach, California, a neighboring town to where I was born and raised, she was already part of Trump’s media ecosystem before being named White House press secretary. After leaving the Department of Homeland Security, she served as a senior communications adviser at Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, Trump’s personal social media platform. She was employed by the company behind the platform he uses to communicate directly with his supporters, and she regularly appeared on Fox News and Newsmax as a commentator defending his agenda.

She worked at the Department of Homeland Security while it was still under the leadership and control of Kristi Noem. Her work was done alongside Corey Lewandowski, Noem’s reported romantic partner, who served as an unpaid special government employee but reportedly wielded wide influence over contracts, personnel, and operations inside the agency. The Daily Beast reported that Zacharia was ousted due to her close ties with Lewandowski, and that there was a blacklist of Noem loyalists inside DHS who were likely to get fired. She left the position when the Lewandowski-Noem scandal was intensifying, and House Democrats were heightening their investigation into Lewandowski over accusations of mismanagement and corruption. Zacharia denied that account and told Just the News that her departure was motivated by the strain of regular travel between Washington and California on her family, which makes it all the more strange that she is now returning to the very place she claimed she needed to leave.

Since Leavitt’s abrupt departure back in August, there have only been two formal briefings in the press room, one with Vice President J.D. Vance and the other with Attorney General Todd Blanche. For nearly two months, the room where the American people are supposed to receive truthful information from their government has sat empty. Tuesday morning, that changes, and the woman stepping behind that podium this time may very well be the most controversial of them all. Never before has there been someone who has spent years spreading conspiracy theories and disinformation online to the level she has.

For all of the bouncing around that Katie Zacharia has done, she has an impressive educational background, having earned both her undergraduate degree and a law degree from Pepperdine University. But it’s what she has repeatedly posted online over the years that raises serious questions about her judgment now that she is being entrusted with speaking on behalf of the United States government.

Back in 2022, she posted on her verified Truth Social account that: “The radical left Hollywood elitists are sick pedo cannibals. Change my mind.” She also reposted a message from far-right activist Ali Alexander that said, “Democrats want to mask and r*pe your children.” There was also a post that she tagged Donald Trump and Sean Hannity in, demanding to know why Fox News would not run a feature on “what a pedophile Podesta is.” After a conspiracy theorist named Robert David Steele died of COVID, she honored him by writing that he “was exposing the pedo rings of the elite cabal.”

These are not the words of a teenager still learning how to separate fact from fiction or how to use social media responsibly. These statements were made by an adult who, tomorrow morning, will begin speaking on behalf of the President of the United States.

Unfortunately, it only gets worse from there. She has even more history of openly engaging with QAnon, the conspiracy that claims Donald Trump is secretly fighting a satanic, cannibalistic, child-abusing network made up of Democrats, Hollywood figures, and members of what they call the deep state. When another Truth Social user posted that Trump drinking bottled water during an announcement reminded them of a QAnon-coded message from Trump, Zacharia responded: “I was wondering the same thing.” She also promoted the “Devolution” theory, that Trump secretly retained control of the United States military while he was out of office.

Since March 2022, she has posted over 2,500 times on Truth Social, including both original posts and ones that she reposted, and this doesn’t include posts she made and later deleted on other platforms, like one from June of 2025, when she called for the United States government to “suspend habeas corpus.”

Habeas corpus is one of the most fundamental constitutional protections against unlawful detention guaranteed to us, and something the Founding Fathers made sure to include in the Constitution because of the abuses of power they had witnessed under British rule. She wrote at the time that the federal government “should take over all of California because clearly you can’t be trusted to do a single thing.” She also shared an article falsely claiming that eight in ten women had a miscarriage after receiving the COVID vaccine. She accused “leftist transgender assailants” of being responsible for “at least a dozen” school shootings. She encouraged Trump to run for a third presidential term. And on a podcast, she falsely stated that the abortion pill mifepristone uses the same chemical that was used in Nazi extermination camps.

Every time I thought I had reached the bottom of what she has said, while I was researching for this post, she would outdo herself with the next thing I found. That is the most concerning part of her appointment to this important and highly visible position. She is not going to be a random commentator on a fringe network. Starting tomorrow morning, she will be the voice of the executive branch of the United States of America.

Hours after we first learned that she would be taking over the role, she appeared on Jesse Watters’ show on Fox News to give her first interview as the incoming press secretary. When asked about her new responsibilities, she said: “I just get to continue doing what I’ve been doing, which is promote all of the things that President Trump is doing on behalf of the American people.” She went on to close the interview by telling Watters: “I am looking forward to serving him and the American people and working more with you, Jesse.”

CNN reported that during the selection process, others who were under consideration for the position were disqualified after White House officials discovered they had previously criticized Donald Trump. They were not looking for credibility or experience with the press corps. They wanted someone who had demonstrated unwavering loyalty to the president and would continue to do so. Trump said so himself when he praised her “unblemished record of support.”

Having seen everything that comes from the Trump Regime, this is not a surprising move on their part. But it is still deeply disturbing because it takes us one more step further away from anything resembling a functioning democracy. When the person responsible for communicating government information to the American people is a QAnon believer who has called Democrats satanic cannibals, and called for the suspension of constitutional rights, we are moving dangerously close to a complete system collapse into state media propaganda under authoritarian rule.

This will not get better without our commitment to making it better. Pushing back against this government has to become our day job and our night job. For the next two-plus years, it has to be part of our everyday lives, in the conversations we have, the decisions we make about where our money goes, the people we support, and the voices we help keep alive. We need to be there to encourage each other to keep going and to keep resisting.

I know these next two years are going to be difficult. I know how exhausting it already feels, and I know that there are days when even opening the news is more than some of us can bear. But I also know how much it means when we see others pushing through all of that and still showing up to take a stand against what the Trump Regime and his enablers are doing to our country, and thus the world.

I’m writing this from a very soggy San Diego where we just had another band of what was Tropical Storm Rachel push through. All of my children are currently home after traveling for work and fun. I sat for a moment and thought about just how lucky I am to be close to them still, and what I want for them in the future, and for any children they might have someday. A stable government that truly works toward a world where they can feel safe, where their rights and freedoms are protected, where they can afford to build a life for themselves, and where they can look forward to the future instead of worrying about what might be taken away from them. A country where they can raise their own children with the same sense of security and possibility that I always hoped to give them. And a world where children everywhere have the chance to grow up in peace and security, without having their futures threatened by wars, instability, and the decisions of powerful people who seem to care so little about the lives they are affecting.

We are all being forced to learn to live in this strange place of joy and heartbreak right now, but I found comfort in knowing that Donald Trump hasn’t completely taken over our country and that there is still time to save it.

Knowing who we are fighting for, future generations, and just how much is on the line for the entire planet in November made me emotional and more determined than ever. But mostly it reminded me how much we still have to lose, which is exactly why we cannot afford to give up. We are doing this because we still believe there is a better future for our children, the children growing up around us, and for all of us. And as long as there are millions of us who still believe that and are willing to do something about it, Donald Trump has not and never will win.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance  

U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsThe Contrarian, Opinion: Republicans Have Destroyed the ‘Conservative’ Agenda, Jennifer Rubin, right, jennifer rubin new headshotOct. 12, 2026. 🚨 22 Days to the Midterms 🚨

Republicans’ midterm prospects are in free fall, with only the number of casualties of the blue contrarian logowave in doubt. When Republicans finish picking through the electoral rubble, they will need to confront the absence of any plausible conservative governing philosophy or, for that matter, any coherent critique of Democrats. Sensing their dilemma, some are madly trying to redefine terms.

Vice President JD Vance, right, has lamely tried to redefine “socialism” as having something to do with “replac[ing] American workers with foreigners workers” and wanting “boys to play in girls’ sports,” a formulation that bears no resemblance to any real-world political platform and that has nothing to do with socialism. But he jd vance ocannot talk about actual socialism given that Republicans are the ones who, among other blunders, have resorted to a control-and-command economy and run up the debt.

Vance’s nonsense reminds us of the bankruptcy of any Republican political “philosophy” and its betrayal of traditional party views. This intellectual incoherence is especially evident in three key areas.(White House photo)

Trump decries ‘communism’ but acts like a Marxist. Donald Trump talks a good game about capitalism. “We will defeat the communists, and that’s what they are. They’re not socialists, they’re not Democrats, they’re communists,” Trump said at the Republicans’ midterm convention.” He vowed in an illegally taxpayer-funded ad to “defeat communism, socialism, and Marxism in America.”

But, in practice, he has acted like a communist central planner. NPR reported recently, “The Trump administration has announced equity stakes in more than 30 private companies, imposed dozens of tariffs, and taken the unusual step of trying to lower interest rates via the Treasury Department.” It has not gone unnoticed that in the past a discrete crisis (e.g. the collapse of the car companies) necessitated government action, but now the only urgency is Trump’s frantic race to grab as much graft as possible before leaving office and to bully private actors into flattering and supporting him (e.g. intimidating news/media companies).

What he and his Republican flunkies will leave behind, however, is not merely a hobbled economy but the wreckage of a party that once demanded markets, not governments, direct economic activity. Cronyism, corruption, and protectionism are about as far from market capitalism as one can get.

Trump has created a fiscal disaster. The Congressional Budget Office reported last week: “The federal budget deficit totaled $2.0 trillion in fiscal year 2026, CBO estimates, $218 billion more than the deficit recorded in fiscal year 2025.” A president who vowed to balance the budget (!) and a party that has scorned every social spending proposal as unaffordable have rung up unprecedented debt that will put intense pressure on interest rates, create a drumbeat to slash vital spending (domestic and defense), hamstring the ability of future presidents and Congresses to meet policy challenges (e.g. rebuild the military Trump wrecked in the Iran war), and deprive the feds of fiscal spending capacity when a recession does arrive.

The fiscally conservative Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget last Wednesday explained that depending on the future trajectory of debt spending, “debt would grow to between 124% of GDP and 133% of GDP” (emphasis in original). In comparison with the overall size of the economy, “Deficits by 2036 would grow to as high as 8.8% of GDP by 2036 — nearly three times the 3% target — based on our estimates and relative to CBO’s February baseline.”

Trump may want to direct his wrath at the Fed when it comes to interest rates, but he should try looking in the mirror. “Long-term interest rates have been marching upwards — and not because of anything that the Federal Reserve is doing,” former car czar Steve Rattner explained. “The rise brings higher costs for mortgage-seekers and businesses and may signal increasing worries about the state of federal finances.”

Rattner observed:

Trump came back into office promising to reduce the national debt and even begin to start paying it off. But the opposite has happened. A variety of policies — particularly his signature tax legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill — are adding to the deficit, at a time when we should be reducing it.

This looming debt creates a “premium” — investors will demand a higher long-term return on investment for the added risk. (Foreign investors may also pull back on U.S. holdings, leaving the burden of debt funding on an even shakier ground.)

For someone who worships the stock market, Trump should understand that higher Treasury and other debt rates make stocks comparatively less attractive, Rattner pointed out. And though stock prices are elevated for now, “if you separate out the artificial intelligence related stocks from the rest of the public companies, the market is actually down more than 5% from its peak just over a month ago.” (That might explain why Trump continues to hawk AI. It’s all that is holding the stock market together.)

Republicans wreck the military. While betraying conservative economic principles, Trump has obliterated any Republican claim to be the pro-military, strong-on-national-security party. He and his depraved secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, have lost a war and weakened U.S. military posture in the Middle East and globally (forcing us to beat a humiliating retreat from the UK [!] because we can no longer defend our bases against threat of Iranian drones). As Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said on Face the Nation, “Donald Trump was so fundamentally unprepared for this war that within days of the war starting, our billion-dollar air bases and naval bases in the region were obliterated by the Iranians. Every single American should be furious about that.”

Moreover, Hegseth is doing generational damage to the military, as AEI’s Kori Schake explained, by “importing the culture wars into the force in a way that damages both the military and the public’s trust in it.” She recounted:

He convenes troops for partisan purposes. . . . He relieved or coerced into retirement without explanation 23 senior officers, and in at least two cases replaced them with dramatically less qualified successors. He removed 80 officers from merit-based promotion lists, and precipitated the resignation in protest of the secretary of the Army. He attempted to censure and court martial a sitting senator. He revoked press access to the Pentagon. The U.S. has been at war for five months without a single Pentagon press briefing. Most dangerously, as the Quantico meeting demonstrated, he and the president are corroding the chain of command by encouraging disrespect for “the generals” and inculcating loyalty to themselves instead. Such politicization of the military destroys republics.

Democrats, once back in power, will uncover Hegseth’s malfeasance (e.g., potential war crimes, critical depletion of munitions). Repairing the damage will take years, and the Republican Party’s reputation as the party “strong on national security” may never recover.

In sum, MAGA’s fiscal recklessness, cronyism, corruption, spasms of central control, and military malpractice will be its enduring disastrous policy legacy and rob the party of any coherent conservative purpose or direction. Perhaps Republicans’ decision to hand their party and souls over to an unhinged, narcissistic ignoramus was ill-advised.

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, With Three Weeks To Go Everything Around Our Ridiculous Flailer-In-Chief Is Turning To Sh-t, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 12, 2026. Ole Donnie is not having a good Columbus day……This morning Russia rejected/ignored/laughed at Trump’s announcement of an imaginary ceasefire in the Russian-Ukrainian war:Trump’s failed Middle Eastern war keeps failing - badly. Saudi Arabia’s main airport has been struck by the Houthis in each of the last two days and remains closed today.

Brent crude is back up to $106 a barrel this morning:Interest rates of all kinds remain far, far too elevated. Look at mortgage rates: up almost 20% since May.The condemnations of his rancid, traitorous Russian oil deal keep piling up. Here’s more from The Washington Sun:

A bipartisan group of six senators on Sunday called for President Donald Trump’s administration to “immediately reverse course” on a plan to purchase diesel from Russia as part of an effort to lower high fuel prices.

……Four Republican senators and two Democratic senators signed onto the statement released Sunday in protesting the deal. They said the administration failed to consult with Congress or submit any explanation to justify its decision as required by statute.

…..Trump’s announcement came just a few weeks after Congress passed legislation that directed Trump to impose substantial tariffs on the top importers of Russian oil or natural gas, with an exception for countries that import less than 15% of Russia’s natural gas exports and have taken significant steps to reduce those imports.

The congressional effort was aimed at cutting the flow of money Russia receives from oil and gas sales to finance its war against Ukraine.

The lawmakers also noted that Congress explicitly banned Russia energy imports in 2022 to prevent the United States from financing the war.

“Congress was clear: the U.S. should not import oil from Russia until it ends its aggression against Ukraine and ceases threats against our NATO Allies,” the six lawmakers wrote in their statement. “President Trump’s decision to allow Russian diesel imports to the U.S. runs directly counter to that law.”

Last night a Federal judge blocked the regime from cutting down more trees on a golf course just off the National Mall:

A federal judge has ordered the regime to stop airing its illegal ads with funds stolen from taxpayers, ads that have been running all week despite Trump claiming they are coming to an end (shocker, he lied!!!!!!!!!!):The lead story on the Washington Post’ home page is about Republicans growing very, very worried about losing the Senate:

Here are some fun bits from the story:

In his six years in the White House, President Donald Trump has never had to contend with a Democratic Senate majority — but that could change in January.

Senate Republicans are staring down the prospect of losing control of the chamber in the November midterm elections — and are sounding the alarm that it could be a disaster for Trump’s final two years……

…..A Democratic-led Senate would give the party the power to block Trump’s nominees, which Democrats could not do if they flip just the House. Senate Democrats would also gain subpoena power if they retake the majority, giving the party more firepower to investigate Trump.

And full control of Congress could also allow Democrats to pass some of their agenda — though Trump could still veto the party’s legislation…..

…..Republicans have expressed particular concern that Democrats would not confirm a Trump nominee to fill a Supreme Court vacancy if one of the justices dies or decides to retire — and some Democrats say they’re right to be worried.

On Friday Trump turned to Putin to help bail him out of what looks like a terrible election. He is also now increasingly turning to Elon Musk too. Oligarchs and authoritarians as far as the eye can see:

Ole Donnie is having a crap day. Let’s make it a good one for us and go….. 

Kick These Corrupt Traitors’ Asses, Win The Midterms, And Prepare For The Fuckery To Come -- For It Is Coming (And May Already Be Here)

 

New York Times, Who’s winning the race for Congress? Reid J. Epstein, Oct. 12, 2026. The election is in 22 days. The Republican Party’s hopes of saving its majorities in Congress increasingly appear to depend on a few possible outcomes: G.O.P. advantages in money and on the map pay off, the polls are wrong, or a major news development suddenly brightens the party’s prospects.

In the meantime, Republicans in competitive races are doing whatever they can to try to loosen their ties to President Trump’s agenda, which is dragging their party down with just over three weeks to go before the midterm elections.

There have been new ads stating opposition to Trump’s tariffs from candidates who supported them, calls to end the war in Iran from candidates who backed it and efforts to look bipartisan from candidates who pledged to be Trump’s top allies.

The debates last week made clear that Republicans are on the back foot. Questions about high prices, tariffs and the war dominated the sessions in battleground states. While G.O.P. advertising often aims to link Democrats to their party’s left-wing figures and stoke disputes about transgender athletes, cost-of-living issues are paramount to voters this year.

Trump’s rhetoric is not helping his party. Even as his own approval ratings have plummeted, he urges voters to pretend that he is on the ballot. He touts data centers that are even less popular than he is. And he has shown no inclination to back off from his positions on the war in Iran or tariffs.

But then there is the money.

Thanks to Trump’s super PACs and well-heeled political allies, Republicans still hold a commanding financial advantage. The billionaire Elon Musk has directed more than $276 million to Republicans since the start of July.

Republicans hope that will help them pull through on a House map they sought to redraw in their favor and Senate map that features plenty of races in red states. But the time to change minds and move votes is shrinking by the day. 

 

bulwark morning shots logoMorning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Revitalizing Liberalism, William Kristol, right, william bill kristol imdbOct. 12, 2026. In three weeks, we’re likely to see a Democratic wave breaching—perhaps overwhelming—Republican electoral fortifications. In present circumstances, that Democratic wave will be a pro-democracy wave, and that will be something to celebrate.

bulwark logo big shipYes, I acknowledge that gas prices and other material concerns are probably more important to the voters than the theory and practice of liberal democracy. And, yes, I realize that this election will be more of a referendum on the failures of President Trump and his party than a deep reflection on the principles and institutions of a free society. Still, a thoroughgoing defeat for Trump and Trumpism will be a crucial victory for liberal democracy.

But it won’t be a decisive victory. It won’t even guarantee success in 2028—though, as Ron Brownstein noted in our conversation yesterday, there are very few instances in American history of a party retaining the White House when its outgoing president is strikingly unpopular. Which means one of the key tasks of Democrats in 2027–2028 is to not let up the pressure, and to keep Trump from recovering politically. If Democrats can succeed in doing this, they may have a couple more years of grace to work out their own problems.

But if you really do want to save the country, at some point you can’t simply depend on the failures of your rivals. We remember Franklin Roosevelt today not for capitalizing from the failures of Herbert Hoover in the 1932 election, but for what he then did as president. If the task we face over the next decade of reconstructing our government, our economy, and even our society is comparable to the challenge that FDR faced—and I think it is—it won’t be enough to enjoy the failures of our opponents. A reconstructed liberal democracy will need a revitalized liberalism.

Is a re-thought and re-invigorated liberalism possible? The political philosopher Harvey Mansfield, writing “in defense of liberalism” and as “a friend of liberalism,” posed the challenge back in 1978: “From having been the aggressive doctrine of vigorous, spirited men, liberalism has become hardly more than a trembling in the presence of illiberalism . . . Who today is called a liberal for strength and confidence in defense of liberty?”

Looking across our fair land, you can wonder if you have a compelling answer to Mansfield’s question. But look abroad: at Volodymyr Zelensky, at Péter Magyar, at Mark Carney, at Pope Leo XIV. You see strong and confident defenders of liberty.

Is what they are doing over there beyond our power here?

If Zelensky could rally his nation to resist the brutal aggression of a neighboring dictator and show the world what free men and women can do in the jaws of peril, can’t we summon the courage and ability to defeat cut-rate Putinism here at home?

If Magyar could organize to defeat Viktor Orbán when all the powers and institutions were stacked against him, can’t we rout Trumpist authoritarianism on a far more advantageous playing field?

If Carney could rally Canadians to stand up to Trump’s bullying, can’t we Americans show as much strength as our neighbors to the north?

If Pope Leo XIV could use his pulpit in Rome to powerfully remind us of liberal principles—indeed, of American principles—can’t other leaders back home, not necessarily of his faith, follow his example?

At moments like these, things can change suddenly. Zelensky became president of Ukraine in 2019, and a world-historical figure in 2022. Magyar, Carney, and Robert Prevost all took office only within the last two years. What could the next few years hold for us?

I’ll add that a revitalized American liberalism could incorporate aspects of the achievements of each of these figures: Zelensky’s inspirational courage, Magyar’s organizing ability, Carney’s calm competence, and Pope Leo’s moral grounding. Is it too much to hope that we could combine some or all of these elements, if not in one candidate, then at least in one political movement?

Perhaps. But you know what else gives me hope for a revitalized liberalism? The American people, or at least an increasing percentage of them. Seeing support for President Trump collapse among the public—with very little help from our pitifully complacent and fearful elites—is heartening. Even inspiring.

And so when you attend the final pre-election No Kings rally this Saturday, take heart from the coming setback to Trump and Trumpism. Begin to think about turning this reversal in 2026 into a decisive defeat in 2028. But give thought as well to the prospect of a revitalization of liberalism that may lie ahead. That is the true prize for which we fight.

Quick Hits

OUR PUTIN-BRAINED PRESIDENT: Donald Trump desperately wants Russia and Ukraine to stop attacking one another’s energy infrastructure, as the ongoing war in Iran makes any additional shocks to energy production even more costly and painful for global markets. Unfortunately, Trump’s insane, bizarre soft spot for Vladimir Putin seems to be guaranteeing that he draws exactly the conclusions about the Russia–Ukraine war and global energy markets that the Russian leader wants him to.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly said that Ukraine would be willing to agree to a bilateral energy ceasefire, if Russia would agree to the same. But Trump continues to believe, remarkably, that Ukraine is the prime aggressor in the conflict when it comes to infrastructure attacks. “He wants to make problems for the world,” Trump said Saturday of Zelensky. “He wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers with diesel fuel. . . . He better damn well stop.”

Those comments came one day after Trump’s surprise announcement that the United States would begin buying more diesel from Russia—a deal hashed out Friday on an extraordinarily chummy call between Trump and Putin. Zelensky reacted with dismay to that deal, telling Axios that “it looks like a happy birthday present for Putin,” that it was “not fair and not honest,” and that the United States had blindsided Ukraine with the announcement. “It gives Putin money and he spends money only on this war,” Zelensky added Sunday. “Kill us. Kill our children.”

It’s not immediately clear if Russia can or will export more diesel, even under the handshake agreement with Trump. While energy exports account for a sizable percentage of the Russian government’s revenues, the country banned diesel exports earlier this summer—and renewed the ban late last week, just before the deal with Trump—to help satisfy domestic demand, much of which comes from the Russian military. Ukrainian strikes against Russian refineries have hampered production, dealing a blow to Russia’s economy and complicating its ability to finance and feed its war in Ukraine.

On Sunday, Trump suddenly took to Truth Social for a surprise announcement: Russia and Ukraine, he said, had agreed to an “ENERGY CEASEFIRE,” which was “effective immediately.” Had both sides actually agreed? Zelensky said later Sunday that Russia struck its CHPP-5 power plant in Kharkiv after Trump’s announcement, the very same day.

Nevertheless, it appears that at least for now Putin has Trump right where he wants him. He is whispering in Trump’s ear that Zelensky is the prime impediment to an energy ceasefire, and Trump believes him. And he has managed to convince the president to look away from the fact that Putin is the one unwilling to strike such a ceasefire in the first place.

STATE PROPAGANDA, BEGONE: Better late than never. A federal judge yesterday barred the Trump administration from running any more taxpayer-funded campaign ads—even though the White House already spent about $19 million of the $20 million in the Department of Homeland Security account used for the ads.

“Defendants are enjoined from using, disbursing, or transferring funds appropriated to the Department of Homeland Security to develop, create, disseminate, place, distribute, publish, or air the challenged advertisements,” wrote U.S. District Judge Rochon in her restraining order. The order blocked the White House from airing its final tranche of ads, which had been scheduled to run last night.

Last Monday, Trump had said that he would begin paying for the ads with money from his super PAC. But the federally funded ads, bought with money appropriated for “commemorating efforts and events related to border security” in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill, had continued to air until Rochon’s order halted them. Politico reported last week that Trump also has no plans to reimburse the taxpayer for the ads.

The upside of all this shameless and illegal propaganda: Voters hate the taxpayer-funded ads, so it’s not clear they did him any good.

More On U.S. Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Arithmetic Suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 12, 2026. Of fuels and fools.

At a conference in Naples, so no time for a full post. Just three notes.

First, the big news on U.S. foreign policy was that Trump announced that he was buying 300,000 tons of Russian diesel. He’s not allowed to do this: Sanctions preventing purchase of Russian oil are law, not a choice on Trump’s part. But under Trump laws are suggestions at most, so it might happen anyway. In any case, the main lesson here, as Phillips O’Brien explains, is that Trump isn’t even hiding the fact that he is supporting Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine.

But being a nerdy economist, my first printable reaction to the announcement was, 300,000 tons??? That’s a bit over 2 million barrels. America consumes approximately 4 million barrels of distillates — diesel (mostly) and heating oil — every day.

So Trump is betraying an embattled democracy, demonstrating our faithlessness to the whole world, seriously damaging whatever is left of America’s leadership in the world, for the sake of maybe 12 hours’ worth of diesel. Really?

Of course, Trump and those around him don’t care about the national interest. But I would strongly guess that they didn’t do the math, that 300,000 tons sounded like a lot to them and that they had no idea that it was trivial for an economy the size of America’s. I might add that this is general issue with Trump: he often touts trivial policies as major achievement, and it often seems obvious that he has no idea how big America and the world are.

Arithmetic, I guess, suffers from Trump derangement syndrome.

In other news, remember how Scott Bessent was a highly qualified and credible choice as Treasury Secretary? Neither do I. In the latest news, he has now hired Judy Shelton as an adviser. Some readers may remember that in 2019 Trump tried to put Shelton on the Federal Reserve Board. He failed in the face of bipartisan opposition: Even Republican senators considered Shelton too extreme and incompetent for the job.

And now she will be advising Bessent — who, as I wrote recently, is becoming the Baghdad Bob of bonds — on currency policy.

On a completely different subject, last week I briefly noted that I found official numbers showing essentially no Italian productivity growth since 2000 implausible. Sergio De Nardis of LUISS sent me a paper arguing that there really is a measurement problem. Using national accounts data, Italy appears to have lagged far behind Germany and France since 2005; using purchasing power parity it hasn’t lagged at all:

This divergence isn’t an indication that any one nation’s statistical agencies are incompetent or dishonest. What it really tells us is that GDP may seem like a solid, hard number, but estimating that number actually involves a lot of educated guesswork — and different agencies may guess differently. In this case it appears that Italian statisticians are more cautious about “hedonic” adjustments — placing value on radically improved goods and entirely new products (no smartphones in 2005!) than their counterparts in other countries.

More Global News

New York Times, World’s Energy Order Tested Again as Iran War’s Reach Extends Further, Lisa Friedman, Oct. 12, 2026.  “We are entering an age of prolonged insecurity,” one former U.S. energy official said of what have become chronic threats on the Middle East’s energy core.

The intensifying war in the Middle East threatens to further strain a weary energy industry that has already endured waves of disruptions and could test a market resilience built on a series of extraordinary government and private-sector measures.

Over the weekend, the Iranian-backed Houthi militia attacked an international airport in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, including one strike that killed at least 12 people and injured hundreds. It was the deadliest attack in a Gulf Arab country since the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began in February and brought the war to the center of the Middle East’s oil industry.

The attack forced the temporary suspension of operations at the airport just as energy executives and government officials were set to arrive in Riyadh for a major business and policy conference. The event, the World ⁠Petroleum Congress, proceeded as planned, although some attendees were diverted to other airports and others, including the U.S. energy secretary, Chris Wright, and ministers from Italy and Japan, addressed the conference by video link.

Many oil industry leaders — including the chief executives of Exxon Mobil and BP — canceled their trips to Saudi Arabia, according to two industry officials who were not authorized to discuss executive schedules.

In remarks on Monday, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the Saudi energy minister, acknowledged that recent attacks had “tested our infrastructure, our institutions, our people and our resilience.”

Meanwhile, oil tankers are facing persistent peril while attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow passage between Iran and Oman that was a fairly uncomplicated excursion before the war. At least 16 vessels have been attacked this month.

The widening of the fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Houthi militia in Yemen, amid no public signs of a diplomatic resolution between the United States and Iran, underscores the potent two-front threat facing energy infrastructure in an area crucial to global supplies of crude oil and its many byproducts like diesel and gasoline.

More On Middle East Wars

New York Times, Israel’s Destruction of Southern Lebanon Intensified After the Cease-Fire, Christina Goldbaum, Samuel Granados and Adina Renner, Oct. 12, 2026. Today, 48 of the roughly 60 villages and towns within Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon are mostly leveled, the Times analysis shows.

The scale of Israel’s systematic demolition has fueled fears among many Lebanese that Israel is seeking to permanently empty the territory of its population.

Israeli officials say they have razed villages both to eliminate Hezbollah military facilities, like tunnels and weapons depots, and to prevent Hezbollah from returning to the border area. The Lebanese territory that the Israeli military has seized and occupied since fighting resumed in March extends as far as eight miles north of the Israeli border. 

New York Times, Saudi Arabia Faces More Attacks as It Reels From Airport Strikes, Erika Solomon, Oct. 12, 2026. The Saudi authorities said they were fending off drone and missile attacks after a weekend of confrontation with the Houthi militia in Yemen, whose patrons Iran offered to mediate.

The Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen was fending off drones and cruise missiles fired toward Saudi Arabia on Monday, according to Saudi state media, the latest in a surge of attacks by the Iran-backed Houthi militia that have targeted the kingdom’s airports.

There was no immediate confirmation of whether the attacks were successfully intercepted. At least 13 people were killed when the Houthi militia struck an airport in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, on Saturday — the deadliest attack on a Persian Gulf country since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.

The Saudi authorities said on Monday that operations would remain suspended at the airport in Riyadh after they reported another deadly attack on the facility on Sunday.

Fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis rapidly escalated last month when Houthi forces seized Yemen’s Red Sea coast, taking territory that sits alongside a strategic waterway for global trade and a key export route for Saudi oil. Saudi warplanes have been bombing Houthi positions in support of the internationally recognized Yemeni government, as its forces fight to retake the territory.

The Houthi militia has targeted Saudi oil facilities, and it attacked Riyadh on the eve of the WPC Energy Congress, an international gathering of oil officials and executives there.

“The events of recent weeks are serious,” Prince Abdul Aziz bin Salman, the Saudi energy minister, told delegates at the event on Monday. “Our response must be equally serious.”

New York Times, Iran Offers to Mediate Between Its Houthi Allies and Saudi Arabia, Erika Solomon, Oct. 12, 2026 Iran has long backed the Houthis, a Yemeni militia, and it made the offer as Saudi Arabia contends with increasingly deadly attacks from them.

Iran has offered to mediate between Saudi Arabia and the Tehran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen, after a string of deadly attacks on the kingdom, warning that overlapping conflicts in the region had no military solution.

The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, made the offer to his Saudi counterpart, Faisal bin Farhan, during a telephone call on Sunday night, according to a statement posted on social media by the Iranian minister’s office.

“Insisting on a military approach and ignoring a political solution will further complicate the current situation,” the statement, posted on Mr. Araghchi’s Telegram channel, said. Mr. Araghchi said Iran stood “ready to provide any assistance to help initiate a dialogue” between the two sides.

The Saudi government said that the two ministers had spoken, though it made no reference to any mediation offer from Iran. The call was a day after the deadliest attack on a Persian Gulf country since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.

On Saturday, a Houthi strike on an airport in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, killed at least 12 people, with hundreds injured. That sparked an exchange of strikes with Saudi-led forces targeting the airport in Sanaa, Yemen’s Houthi-controlled capital, according to reports on Sunday in local news media affiliated with the group. The Houthi-run health ministry said that a child had also been killed in a strike on a residential building in Sanaa.

The Saudi authorities have not commented on those assertions, but reported another deadly Houthi attack on Riyadh’s airport on Sunday.

On Monday, a state-owned Saudi television channel, Al Ekhbariya, warned that the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen was fending off drones and cruise missiles headed toward Saudi Arabia. Saudi authorities have not commented publicly.

Fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis rapidly escalated last month when Houthi forces seized Yemen’s Red Sea coast, taking territory that sits alongside a strategic waterway for global trade and a key export route for Saudi oil.

The militia has been fighting the internationally recognized government of Yemen, which is backed by Saudi Arabia, since 2014. A fragile truce agreed in 2022 has unraveled in recent months.

The conflict has stoked further upheaval in the oil-rich Persian Gulf region, which was already reeling from the economic fallout of the U.S.-Iran war.

American and Iranian officials appear braced for the possibility that their stalemated regional conflict could spill back into the open, with the Pentagon drawing up new plans for strikes. Iran’s national security adviser, Mohsen Rezaei, threatened on Sunday that if fighting were to resume, Iranian forces would target digital infrastructure in the Gulf, including data centers, cables, and artificial intelligence facilities.

The Houthis are one of several militant groups that Iran is allied with across the region, and part of what the Islamic republic calls its “Axis of Resistance.”

Though the Houthis have benefited from years of military and financial support from Iran, regional experts have long described them as among the most independent of these allied forces, with ambitions distinct from Tehran’s.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

More On U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Religion 

 

bulwark morning shots logoMorning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Rapid Unscheduled Dissembling, Andrew Egger, right, andrew eggerOct. 12, 2026. Yesterday, MAGA media thought they’d hooked a whale. James Talarico had been absent from the Texas campaign trail for nearly two weeks, and they weren’t buying that he’d simply been down with flu. Then a pair of influencers released what they claimed was proof that Talarico had actually been receiving treatment at an Ohio mental health facility. The claims went turbo-viral—then fell immediately and hilariously apart.

bulwark logo big shipLast night, Will Sommer and I wrote the whole thing up in an emergency edition of his False Flag newsletter. If you want all the gory details, you can read them there. (It’s a fun story!)

This morning, however, what I’m left thinking about is the bizarre experience of watching the story fall apart in real time—and of watching the MAGA media ecosystem try to cope with the collapse of a story they so desperately wanted to be true. This space is full of self-styled “citizen journalists” and “independent investigators” who carry themselves like plucky truth-seekers. But they behave more like, well, conspiracy theorists: forever concocting ever-more-elaborate explanations for how—with a little faith, hope, trust, and a sprinkling of pixie dust—their hallucinations might still end up true.

Last night, we got a more illuminating glimpse than usual into this coping process—because many of the conspiracy theory’s principal believers were live on a Twitter space as their complicated knot of red string was unraveling. “Is this necessarily provably false?” one wondered. “I don’t know.” Another thanked the influencers “for breaking the story, whether it’s true or not.” He added: “People deserve to know, um, the potential of this.” Others just kept tripling down. One influencer at the heart of the conspiracy, who goes by “Tickle Texts” online, predicted that video would come out by Tuesday proving Talarico had been at the hospital. “It is my hope,” she said. “It is my plan.”

Online, others quickly pivoted to more defensible terrain. “It genuinely doesn’t matter if it was a mental health hospital or the flu,” TPUSA spokesman Andrew Kolvet tweeted. “Bailing on the biggest job interview of your life by disappearing for two weeks is damning enough all by itself.”

That’s right, folks: MAGA media had been going absolutely insane all day on the supposed revelation that Talarico had been in a mental hospital, not suffering from flu. When that story fell apart, however, the flu was suddenly just as bad.

It’s all very funny, of course, but I personally fear they’re wasting their effort. If they’re so sure Talarico is a quivering pile of nerves who’s one bad break away from a breakdown, it seems like all this detective work is a little bit superfluous. Why not just talk Talarico’s opponent Ken Paxton into getting up on stage with him for a debate? Expose him, Ken! What have you got to lose?

AROUND THE BULWARK

  • Trump Superfan Running for Congress Pledges Total Obedience… Meet Anthony Constantino, the MAGA rapper who is trailing in the polls despite his over-the-top devotion to the president, writes BRENDAN HARTNETT.
  • Top Senate Dem to Trump Underlings: Lawyer Up… SEN. BRIAN SCHATZ talks to SAM STEIN about fundraising, oversight, and whether JD Vance has the juice to win the presidency.
  • Welcome to the ‘Neporuption’... The fathers wield the power. The sons cash in. AMANDA CARPENTER on the many Neporuption empires within Trump world.
  • Trump’s Most Loyal Supporters Are Abandoning Him.. SUSAN GLASSER joins MONA CHAREN to discuss possible polling flaws and learning the right lessons from victory.

 

Oct. 11

Top Headlines 

 djt as king 11 23 2025

President Trump frequently portrays himself on his Truth Social or via White House as an all-powerful king or emporer annointed by God and backed by security forces and the military, as in this portrayal above by former Repubicans who organized the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. The political, military and economic chaos extends to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, selective tariffs helping insiders and Trump's transformation of U.S. longstanding alliances with Canada, Europe and NATO into adversaries whom he disdains while courting profitable deals from Russia, as newly documented this week, benefiting his family and allies. Separately, The New York Times published on Sunday an in-depth investigation excerpted below showing that the fascist, White nationalist themes of Trump's MAGA movement have inspired unprecendented threats of violence from both the right and left against U.S. public officials that are transforming governance.President Trump frequently portrays himself on his Truth Social or via White House as an all-powerful king (as at top) or emporer annointed by God and backed by security forces and the military, as in this portrayal above by former Repubicans who organized the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. The political, military and economic chaos extends to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, selective tariffs helping insiders and Trump's transformation of U.S. longstanding alliances with Canada, Europe and NATO into adversaries whom he disdains while courting profitable deals from Russia, as newly documented this week, benefiting his family and allies. Separately, The New York Times published on Sunday an in-depth investigation excerpted below showing that the fascist, White nationalist themes of Trump's MAGA movement have inspired unprecendented threats of violence from both the right and left against U.S. public officials that are transforming governance.

Special Reports: Trump Team Helps Russia, Sabotages Ukraine, Europe

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, is shown in a pool photo last month with Trump Administration special emissaries Jared Kushner, left, President Trump's son-in-law and Steve Witkoff, Trump's longtime real estate crony and golfing partner, both of whom have been pursuing huge business deals with Russia and Middle Eastern monarchies for their private companies and allies while ostensibly seeking to negotiate peace on behalf of the United States in the Russia-Ukraine and U.S.-Iran wars.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, is shown in a pool photo last month with Trump Administration special emissaries Jared Kushner, left, President Trump's son-in-law and Steve Witkoff, Trump's longtime real estate crony and golfing partner, both of whom have been pursuing huge business deals with Russia and Middle Eastern monarchies for their private companies and allies while ostensibly seeking to negotiate peace and economic deals on behalf of the United States in the Russia-Ukraine and U.S.-Iran wars.

  • New York Times, Trump Told Ukrainians to ‘Get a New President.’ Ukraine Shrugged, Maria Varenikova, Dzvinka Pinchuk and Ivan Nechepurenko, Oct. 11, 2026. President Trump lashed out at President Volodymyr Zelensky for striking Russian oil refineries. Mr. Zelensky said he‘ll stop — if Russia does too.
  • The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Musk Launches Election Interference Campaign, Trump Demands Regime Change in Ukraine, Senate Republicans in Trouble, Aaron Parnas, aaron parnas new headshotright, Oct. 10, 2026. It’s Saturday evening and today might have been one of the most consequential days of this entire stretch. In the span of a few hours, Trump called for Ukraine to replace its wartime president after cutting a deal with Putin behind Kyiv’s back, the Kremlin bragged that the two leaders were so friendly neither wanted to hang up the phone, and Trump floated pulling the U.S. deeper into the Middle East just weeks after promising he wouldn’t. Meanwhile, election officials are warning voters about misleading texts and a data-harvesting website from Elon Musk’s PAC, and the fight for control of the Senate is looking a lot more competitive than Republicans ever expected.
  • PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: Under Trump, The United States Is Now Funding Russian Terrorism, Jason Easley, right, Oct. 10, 2026.jason easley Thanks to Trump’s “deal” to import diesel from Russia, an amount which will not lower prices, the United States is now funding Russian terrorism.
  • New York Times, Some Republicans Reject Trump’s Move to Import Diesel Fuel From Russia, Tim Balk and Evan Gorelick, Oct. 11, 2026 (print ed.). High diesel costs have posed a problem for Republicans in the midterms, but President Trump’s decision did not satisfy some candidates in key Senate races.
  • Emptywheel, Analysis and Opinion: Agent of a Foreign Power, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), marcy wheelerOct. 11, 2026. I think it is a mistake to center stories about the corrupt deal Trump made with Vladimir Putin yesterday around Donald Trump’s tweet (which I have corrected for accuracy).

More On Middle East Wars

Special Reports: Courageous American Women: Pt. 1

Ashley St. Clair at her home in New York (New York Times photo by Elinor Kry).

Ashley St. Clair at her home in New York (New York Times photo by Elinor Kry). “I would say it felt emotionally intimate. We were in contact every day,” St. Clair said about her relationship with Elon Musk."

Special Reports: Courageous American Women: Pt. 2

jojo jerz djt threat

  • The Ken Harbaugh Show via The MeidasTouch Network, JoJofromJeerz Stands Strong, Fights Back, Oct. 10, 2026.Ken Harbaugh welcomes back JoJofromJerz, shown above left in the collage, a single mom from New Jersey (blogging at JoJofromJerz) whom President and First Lady Trump threatened with ruinous consequences unless she apologized for her criticism. 

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption 

djt energy deal exposed clash 10 11 26

djt energy deal exposed 10 11 2026

  • Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Trump’s “Energy Ceasefire” Exposed Instantly as a LIE!!  Ben Meiselas, right, ben meiselas daily beastOct. 11, 2026. Zelenskyy Says It Was “News to Me,” Russia Calls It “Market Manipulation,” and Corporate Media Fell for It Again.
  • Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Oct. 9, 2026 [Trump Exposes His Support For Russia], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 11, 2026. So now, after more than a decade of pretending that he is not associated with Russia and that he would honor the U.S. national security position of support for Ukraine and our European allies, Trump is openly backing Russia’s president Vladimir Putin.
  • Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, Trump Throws Himself Into Putin’s Arms, Slava Ukraini!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 11, 2026. I try to keep things light and easy on Sundays but I cannot close out today without mentioning Trump’s wild, emotional embrace of Putin over the past two days. Whatever the cause -- desperation, insecurity, compromise -- Trump is clearly now aligning the United States with Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China against Ukraine, Europe, and NATO. Trump crossed a big, bright, traitorous line in the last forty-eight hours, and we need to become loud and proud in our opposition.
  • Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: New White House press secretary is a Pizzagate conspiracy theorist, Judd Legum, right, judd legumOct. 11, 2026. Katie Zacharia, who was appointed White House press secretary by President Trump on Friday, repeatedly promoted the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy on social media, accusing elites from the Democratic Party and Hollywood of sexually trafficking children and eating people.
  • The Hartmann Report, The Best of the Rest of the News and Opinion: Where is the missing $50 million? Thom Hartmann, right, thom hartmann newOct. 10, 2026. Maybe look for piles of cash in the bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago?  Donald Trump woke up from a nap in the Oval Office this week just in time to remember Vladimir Putin’s birthday. While his own Treasury Secretary was speaking, Trump nodded off at his own event, then perked right up to announce he had a call scheduled to wish his mentor (my word, not his) a happy 74th. By Friday we learned what the birthday boy got. Trump crowed on his Nazi-infested social media site that us taxpayers will buy five million tons of diesel — a deal worth billions to the Kremlin’s deeply troubled war chest — at today’s record-high prices.

Special Recent Reports: Collusion Between Russia and Trump's Negotiators To Enrich Trump Allies

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

  • New York Times, U.S.-Russia Talks on Ukraine Now Involve an Oil Deal Tied to Trump Allies, Anton Troianovski and Eric Lipton, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). russian flag wavingPresident Vladimir V. Putin brought up a sale of Russian energy assets with President Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, pushing a deal that raises new questions about conflicts of interest.
  • New York Times, Trump, Putin, Ukraine and an Oil Deal: 5 Takeaways, Eric Lipton and Anton Troianovski, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). A proposal to bolster relations with the Kremlin through the purchase of Russian energy assets is striking even for an administration that regularly mixes personal business interests with foreign policy
  • New York Times, Russia Turns to Striking Kyiv’s Bridges, Threatening a Vital Lifeline, Constant Méheut, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). The bridges, used by many commuters in the Ukrainian capital, are the latest target in a broad Russian bombing campaign against infrastructure.

News Roundups

djt putin discussion 10 9 26

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance 

 

More On U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Religion

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More Global News

  • Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Reporting: About that repealed UN General Assembly “Zionism is racism” resolution, Wayne Madsen, right, wayne madsen new observerOct. 11, 2026. Is it time to edit the original and adopt it again? In 1975, the United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution that equated Zionism with racism. There was the typical hue and cry from Israel and their supporters in the West. But since the very inception of the UN, the General Assembly had consistently passed resolutions condemning Nazism, neo-Nazism, fascism, racial supremacy, and the glorification of Nazi ideology.
  • New York Times, India’s ‘Cockroach’ Leaders Released as Small Protests Go On in Delhi, Somini Sengupta and Suhasini Raj, Oct. 11, 2026. The leaders of the Cockroach Janta Party, an Indian youth movement, had been detained by the police on Saturday before they could lead protests over voting rights.

Top Stories 

 djt as king 11 23 2025

djt armed thugsPresident Trump frequently portrays himself on his Truth Social or via White House as an all-powerful king (as at top, with subdued Democrats cowering at his feet) or as an emporer annointed by God and backed by security forces and the military, as in this portrayal immediately above by former Repubicans who organized the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. The political, military and economic chaos extends to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, selective tariffs helping insiders and Trump's transformation of U.S. longstanding alliances with Canada, Europe and NATO into adversaries whom he disdains while courting profitable deals from Russia, as newly documented this week, benefiting his family and allies like the Kushners, Stephen Witkoff, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. Separately, The New York Times published on Sunday an in-depth investigation excerpted below showing that the fascist, White nationalist themes of Trump's MAGA movement have inspired unprecendented threats of violence from both the right and left against U.S. public officials that are transforming governance.

New York Times, America’s Elected Officials Are Living in Fear, Nick Corasaniti, Photographs by Haiyun Jiang, Oct. 11, 2026. A Times investigation has found that violent threats have become a new normal among public officials, reshaped private lives, cost millions in security and pushed people out of office.

These threats [excerpted in a graphic illustrating this story] were acquired via Freedom of Information Act requests, court documents and correspondence with politicians and their staff.

In January, a caller began leaving threats in the voice mail inboxes of members of Congress: “I want to see their throat cut from ear to ear.”

Another caller left a blunt threat for a U.S. senator: “I’m going to murder you, and I’m going to start with your children.”

A state attorney general received this three-word missive: “Bang, bang, bang.”

Serving in public office in the United States is dangerous. From state and local government to Congress, an unending river of violent threats is washing through the mailboxes, offices, voice mail and texts of those who govern the nation. Thousands of public servants are living, working and, in the final weeks of election season, campaigning in a state of fear.

And it’s getting worse, officeholders said in dozens of interviews.

An investigation by The New York Times examining hundreds of records obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, court documents and law enforcement logs has found that, over a two-year period from 2024 to August of this year, thousands of violent threats inundated the lives of elected officials in unprecedented ways.

Some threats were vague; some were frighteningly specific. They promised torture, stabbing, rape and murder. They aimed at Republicans and Democrats alike, and at a range of officeholders from county clerks to United States senators. They targeted spouses, parents, siblings and children.

At least 44 governors, as well as their staff and families, have been subjected to violent threats over the past two years, The Times’s investigation found. That’s also true of at least 70 of the nation’s 100 senators, and at least 185 members of the House of Representatives — nearly half the body. More than half of the country’s secretaries of state, most of whom serve as their states’ chief election officers, have received threats of violence.

Actual violence also spiked during that period: assassination attempts against Donald Trump, the killing of Charlie Kirk, the assassination of a legislative leader and her husband in Minnesota, the firebombing of Gov. Josh Shapiro’s home in Pennsylvania. For many elected officials, the escalation is a grim testament to the toxicity of violent rhetoric and how it can shake the country’s democratic institutions.

I hope you die.

I hope your family dies.

We need to feed your,

your family tree

into a wood chipper.

We don’t need that shit

The threats have also reshaped private lives. Dozens of officials have fortified their homes, installed cameras and hired private security guards, often at their own expense. They’ve changed their daily routines, moved their children to new schools, grocery-shopped only at certain times and places. They’ve scrubbed the internet to remove personal information about themselves and their loved ones.

Some of them have altered what they say in public and, in rare cases, how they govern. Some, including members of Congress, have quit. Both parties have struggled to recruit candidates, especially women.

And policing violent threats against officials is a difficult task. The Times’s review of federal court data from the past two years found only 53 cases in which individuals were charged with threatening public officials, excluding the president.

Vague state and federal laws and free speech protections can make prosecution challenging. Anonymous letters and screen names can be hard to track. The sheer volume of threats can make hunting down those responsible virtually impossible.

This new normal can also be measured in dollars spent. In the 2017-2018 election cycle, candidates for federal office spent roughly $6 million on security-related items, according to campaign finance records. In the current midterm cycle, candidates had already spent at least $25 million by Aug. 1, with the final general election sprint still to come. That excludes what many officials are spending from their own pockets.

Overall, the threats tallied by The Times are likely undercounts; state laws and communication policies bar many offices from disclosing security issues. Many members of Congress said privately that it’s hard to imagine any remaining offices on Capitol Hill that have not experienced a violent threat this decade.

The rhetoric is abetted by the anonymity of the internet, a polarized political landscape and the entrenched public opinion that politicians are not improving American lives. Those receiving threats include divisive figures who have juiced the increasingly belligerent tone of political rhetoric, as well as others who avoid inflammatory talk but are targeted for their policies, ideology or party affiliation.

Representative Derrick Van Orden, a Republican from Wisconsin seeking re-election next month, attended the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, in support of President Trump’s false claim that he had won the 2020 election. Mr. Van Orden was outside the U.S. Capitol that day when a mob attacked it, though he has denied entering the building. He was elected to Congress in 2022.

That’s when the threats began.

“I was a Navy SEAL for over 22 years,” Mr. Van Orden said in an interview with The Times. “I hunted terrorists around the world a lot and was very successful at that. Never had a single threat to my family. Ever.”I had to move my house physically due to death threats — credible — that were investigated by the F.B.I. to my family. That’s where we’re at.

Now, Mr. Van Orden travels with armed security personnel. His family, he said, is “protected 24 hours a day.”‘This is just not worth it’

For much of her political career, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a former Republican House member from Georgia, injected herself into the most pitched political battles. Her liberal foes said she courted controversy to raise her profile. But her rapid rise also came at a cost.

What started out as a flood of threats primarily from the left evolved into menace from the right, too, after Ms. Greene’s break with President Trump last fall.

New York Times, After Many Threats, an Arizona Lawmaker Asks: ‘Is It Really Worth It?’ Reis Thebault, Oct. 11, 2026. Threats have altered the lives of State Representative Alma Hernandez, her family, friends and neighbors. They have even transformed her policymaking.

Alma Hernandez’s home used to feel like her sanctuary. Now it feels like a fortress.

In recent years she has installed cameras, alarms and a lock that opens with her fingerprint. She put iron bars on her windows and a blinding floodlight on her front porch. She cut down two trees in her yard after the police told her they could aid an intruder, and her brother moved in to protect her when the death threats intensified.

Ms. Hernandez, an Arizona state representative since 2019, did not know she was signing up for a dangerous job. But these days, serving in public office increasingly means looking over your shoulder.

“Politicians are no longer treated like we’re human,” she said.

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, is shown in a pool photo last month with Trump Administration special emissaries Jared Kushner, left, President Trump's son-in-law and Steve Witkoff, Trump's longtime real estate crony and golfing partner, both of whom have been pursuing huge business deals with Russia and Middle Eastern monarchies for their private companies and allies while ostensibly seeking to negotiate peace on behalf of the United States in the Russia-Ukraine and U.S.-Iran wars.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, is shown in a pool photo last month with Trump Administration special emissaries Jared Kushner, left, President Trump's son-in-law and Steve Witkoff, Trump's longtime real estate crony and golfing partner, both of whom have been pursuing huge business deals with Russia and Middle Eastern monarchies for their private companies and allies while ostensibly seeking to negotiate peace and economic deals on behalf of the United States in the Russia-Ukraine and U.S.-Iran wars.

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Musk Launches Election Interference Campaign, Trump Demands Regime Change in Ukraine, Senate Republicans in Trouble, Aaron Parnas, right,aaron parnas new headshot Oct. 10, 2026. It’s Saturday evening and today might have been one of the most consequential days of this entire stretch. In the span of a few hours, Trump called for Ukraine to replace its wartime president after cutting a deal with Putin behind Kyiv’s back, the Kremlin bragged that the two leaders were so friendly neither wanted to hang up the phone, and Trump floated pulling the U.S. deeper into the Middle East just weeks after promising he wouldn’t.

Meanwhile, election officials are warning voters about misleading texts and a data-harvesting website from Elon Musk’s PAC, and the fight for control of the Senate is looking a lot more competitive than Republicans ever expected.

We are now just over three weeks from Election Day, and moments like this are exactly why independent journalism matters. When the President of the United States sides with Putin over an ally, when billionaires are spending hundreds of millions to shape an election, and when voters are being fed bad information about how to cast their ballots, you deserve someone who will tell you the truth without fear or favor.

That’s what I’m trying to do here every single day. But I can’t do it alone. I don’t have a corporate owner, a billionaire backer, or a big media company behind me. This work is funded entirely by readers like you.

So here’s my ask: if you’ve been reading for a while and haven’t yet, please become a paid subscriber today. It’s the single most important thing you can do to support this work, and it directly funds the reporting, the travel to swing states, and everything it takes to cover this election the way it deserves to be covered. If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you, truly. Please consider forwarding this to one person who needs to read it. Every new reader makes a difference, especially right now.

Now, let’s get into today’s news.

Trump’s endorsement choices could cost Republicans the Senate majority, just as they arguably did in 2020 and 2022. The biggest example is Texas, where Trump backed Ken Paxton over Sen. John Cornyn, and Paxton now trails Democrat James Talarico by as much as six points in multiple polls, with one Fox News poll showing Talarico winning 20% of Cornyn’s primary voters. In North Carolina, Trump’s attacks pushed Sen. Thom Tillis into retirement, opening the door for popular Democrat Roy Cooper, and the GOP now appears to be giving up on the state. In Georgia, Trump backed Rep. Mike Collins, whose campaign has been hit by disclosures about apparent ties to white nationalists, and Republicans may be throwing in the towel there too. Even in deep-red South Carolina, the GOP had to spend $5 million to shore up Trump’s pick, Darline Graham, the little-known sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, whose rocky campaign has rattled the party establishment. And this time, if Republicans lose the Senate, Trump will have to govern with a Democratic majority for the rest of his term.

The Pentagon quietly raised the official death toll of U.S. troops lost in the Iran war to 21, weeks after Hegseth called reports of a higher count “a complete lie.” The update, made late Friday, adds two noncombat deaths, an Army National Guard major who died in Kuwait in March and a Navy suicide in September, while 865 service members have now been wounded. The Washington Post had reported last month, based on six U.S. officials, that the Pentagon was undercounting deaths in its public casualty database. Critics say the confusion stems from the administration changing how it tracks casualties mid-conflict after Trump declared Operation Epic Fury over, even as the U.S. and Iran kept exchanging fire. Top House Armed Services Democrats Adam Smith and Chrissy Houlahan said “there is no excuse for a mistake of this magnitude,” calling it “an embarrassment” that Congress had to step in to force a correction. The Pentagon did not acknowledge the changed numbers, instead announcing a new “pending adjudication” category and insisting it remains committed to “transparent, accurate accounting.”

Election Officials Warn Voters About Musk PAC’s Misleading Texts and Data-Harvesting Voting Website

Election officials in Colorado and Washington are warning voters about inaccurate information coming from Elon Musk’s America PAC. In Colorado, voters received texts reading “Your ballot request is in” and urging them to confirm where to return it, even though every active registered voter in the state automatically gets a mail ballot. The messages sparked a wave of confused calls to county offices, with residents worried someone had submitted a request on their behalf. Weld County’s Republican election chief said people asked, “Is something fishy going on?” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold called the messaging “misleading,” noting the texts targeted voters in a tossup House race where America PAC has spent more than $228,000 to help Republican Rep. Gabe Evans.

Washington’s top election official is telling voters to stay away from VoteSafe.org, Musk’s voter registration website. Secretary of State Steve Hobbs pointed out that the site’s own disclaimer says its voting information “may not necessarily be accurate.” “Don’t go on this website. Why would you give your information to Elon Musk?” Hobbs said. He urged voters to get information directly from state and local election offices instead of a third party that can’t actually register them to vote. America PAC fired back on X, accusing Washington officials of trying to “suppress” voter registration.

Critics warn VoteSafe.org is a sophisticated data operation disguised as a public service. According to UCLA election law professor Rick Hasen, the site collects users’ full names, birth dates, home addresses, phone numbers, emails, IP addresses, and every link and page they click. Users who provide their contact information also consent to receive calls, texts, and emails from America PAC through Election Day. In an op-ed, Vote.org CEO Andrea Hailey wrote that America PAC reportedly rewrote the site’s privacy policy in August to allow sharing personal data with advertisers and political groups. She said the policy also allows the PAC to sell “inferences” about users, including their “psychological trends,” attitudes, and intelligence, calling the site a “Trojan horse.”

Musk is pouring tens of millions of dollars into the midterms to help Republicans keep control of Congress. America PAC has reported spending nearly $40 million on Senate and House races, with more than $31 million going to Senate contests, led by Texas. Musk has disclosed donating about $50 million to America PAC and another $40 million to other GOP-aligned super PACs this cycle. He was the largest publicly disclosed donor of the 2024 election, spending nearly $300 million to elect Trump and Republicans. The PAC’s digital ads often use provocative messages attacking Democrats before steering users to VoteSafe.org to hand over their personal information.

Trump Abandons Ukraine, Calls for Zelensky’s Ouster After Cutting Diesel Deal with Putin Behind Kyiv’s Back

Trump turned on Ukraine Saturday, saying “it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president” after Zelensky criticized his deal with Putin. Speaking outside the White House on his way to a rally in Tennessee, Trump said Zelensky could have ended the war many times “but chooses not to.” “I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal,” Trump said, effectively calling for the removal of the wartime leader of a U.S. partner under Russian attack. He also told reporters that Ukraine has “lost 30% of your country” and suffered over a million deaths, echoing a framing that places the blame on Kyiv rather than Moscow. Axios called it the most serious crisis between the two leaders since their February 2025 Oval Office meeting blew up in front of cameras.

Trump sided with Putin over Ukraine, lifting sanctions on Russian diesel while demanding Ukraine stop striking Russian refineries. The deal, negotiated directly with Putin and made behind Ukraine’s back, opens a new stream of revenue for the Kremlin through April. Trump said he told Zelensky he could “do whatever you want to Russia, don’t hit the refineries,” and warned, “He’d better damn well stop.” A U.S. official told Axios that Trump cut the deal after Zelensky ignored half a dozen U.S. requests to halt the strikes, which have been one of Ukraine’s most effective tools against Russia’s war economy. Zelensky called the agreement “not fair and not honest,” a “sign of weakness,” and a “birthday gift” to Putin, and suggested his negotiating team in Florida was used as a “smokescreen.”

The Kremlin celebrated Trump’s attack on Zelensky while America’s allies rallied to Ukraine’s side. Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev called Trump’s remarks “iconic and historic,” saying Ukraine needs leadership “focused on peace.” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas warned that easing sanctions “provides Moscow with more revenues to wage war,” adding, “This is not the time to ease pressure on Russia, and Europe won’t.” European ministers plan to approve their biggest package of Russia sanctions since the full-scale invasion began, moving in the opposite direction from Washington. Even Republican Rep. Michael McCaul warned that lifting sanctions “will only fund the Kremlin’s war machine.”

Ukrainians are paying the price as Trump trades Ukraine’s security for lower gas prices before the midterms. Hours after the deal was announced, a Russian glide bomb attack on Zaporizhzhia killed at least 15 people, including children, which Zelensky called Russia’s “thanks” for the diesel deal. Diesel now averages $6.28 a gallon, up from $3.68 a year ago, and Republicans are facing tight races in farm states like Iowa and Kansas where fuel costs are biting. But with Russia’s diesel production down an estimated 30% from Ukrainian strikes, experts doubt the deal will meaningfully lower prices at all. And Trump’s call for a “new president” ignores that Ukraine has been under martial law since 2022, meaning elections are suspended while it fights for its survival. Republicans even opposed Trump’s comments today:

The Kremlin says Trump and Putin’s call was so “very friendly” that neither leader wanted to hang up first. Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said the 90-minute conversation was “very substantive and friendly,” adding that the two presidents “hung up simultaneously, literally at the same time.” It was during this call that Trump and Putin agreed on the diesel deal that eased U.S. sanctions on Russian fuel and drew blunt condemnation from Zelensky. The Kremlin said most of the conversation focused on the war in Ukraine, though Putin downplayed the chances of three-way peace talks resuming anytime soon. The warm account came as negotiators from the U.S., Ukraine, and Europe met in Miami to work on a unified peace proposal, and just a day before Trump said it was “time for Ukraine to get a new president.”

Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick announced a bipartisan bill to block Trump from buying Russian oil after his diesel deal with Putin. Fitzpatrick said the legislation, called the “Ronald Reagan Peace Through Strength Act,” would ban “any and all purchases of Russian oil,” though its Democratic sponsors have not yet been named. He plans to force a vote through a discharge petition, which bypasses House leadership, and predicted it will pass “overwhelmingly.” Republican Rep. Don Bacon quickly signed on as an original cosponsor, writing, “Congress must make a stand.” Democrats also blasted the deal, with Rep. Gabe Amo saying Trump is “paying Putin for oil to deal with the high gas prices caused by his choice of war with Iran,” adding, “That’s not punishing Putin, that’s profit.” A 2022 law already bans Russian oil imports, but it includes an exception allowing the president to permit them if deemed in the national interest.

Trump Says U.S. “May” Join Saudi Strikes on Houthis as Putin Relays Iran’s Peace Terms

Trump left the door open to joining Saudi Arabia’s war against the Iran-backed Houthis after another attack on Riyadh’s airport. “We may. We’re gonna look at it,” Trump told reporters Saturday as he left for a rally in Tennessee. Asked whether the strike would change his pledge not to attack Iran before the midterms, he said, “Well, we’re gonna take a look.” Just two days earlier, Trump had promised on Truth Social that the U.S. would not attack Iran “at any time prior to the Midterm Elections.” The comments raise the prospect of a new U.S. military escalation in the final weeks before Election Day.

The Houthis’ campaign against Saudi Arabia is escalating, with Riyadh’s airport hit again on Saturday. Saudi aviation officials confirmed multiple injuries and suspended airport operations, and more than 320 flights were canceled Saturday. Houthi attacks on the airport this week had already killed four people, including a Saudia Airlines pilot. The U.S. Embassy “strongly” urged Americans to avoid the airport, while the U.K., France, Germany, Australia, and Canada have warned against travel to parts or all of Saudi Arabia. The Houthis have even declared Saudi skies “a theater” for their military operations, and the fighting in Yemen now appears to be the new center of the wider Iran war.

Putin used his “very friendly” call with Trump to pass along Iran’s position on a peace deal. The Kremlin said Putin, coordinating with Iran’s president, relayed Tehran’s views on a possible resolution to the conflict, but did not say how Trump responded. Putin met with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian earlier this week and has expressed interest in brokering peace. Pezeshkian said Iran has revised its proposals for talks with the U.S. and is ready to finalize them through mediators, though he accused Washington of attacking “every time we hold talks.” Trump rejected a “seven-day plan” from Iran in late September, and diplomacy has been stalled since the summer.

Trump issued a stark ultimatum to Iran even as he positions Putin as a go-between. At his Syracuse rally Friday night, Trump said, “Either they give us everything, or they don’t exist any longer.” He made the remark in the middle of his tirade against the Nobel Committee for not awarding him the Peace Prize. The war, which began with U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran in February, has sent diesel prices soaring to $6.28 a gallon, up from $3.68 a year ago. Meanwhile, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard says it struck a gas tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, insisting the waterway remains closed despite U.S. claims that oil is flowing in record numbers.

Other news:

Greeks are reacting with exasperation and cynicism to the growing scandal surrounding U.S. Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle. Republican donor Eric Deters says Guilfoyle asked him to pay off her $100,000 American Express bill before her confirmation hearing in exchange for access to senior Trump officials, the latest in a string of reports about her conduct, including potential conflicts of interest in Greek energy deals. Many Athens residents told The New York Times the allegations were “hardly a shock,” with one saying Greece is a small country that “has to play along with the U.S.” Some were more troubled by reports that Guilfoyle insinuated at a dinner in March that the U.S. could replace the Greek government, a claim her lawyer and Greek officials dispute. Trump said he didn’t “know too much” about the allegations, adding, “she was always very nice,” while Rubio has refused to answer questions about her. Greece’s government has avoided summoning her, saying it would only create a diplomatic incident, while left-wing lawmakers warned that “favors from Trump’s America come with a price tag.” 

 President Trump has long worked closely with top Russian officials, often in secret, as in his meeting at the White House shown above, from which U.S. media were barred, with the result that all photos as here were from Russian state media: Portrayed with Trump were Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, left, and Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak, with all concerned seeking to thwart then-current investigations into Russian influence to help Trump during the 2016 presidential elections and advance his and his allies' private business interests (Tass photo May 10, 2017).

President Trump has long worked closely with top Russian officials, often in secret, as in his meeting at the White House shown above, from which U.S. media were barred, with the result that all photos as here were from Russian state media: Portrayed with Trump were Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, left, and Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak, with all concerned reportedly seeking to thwart then-current FBI, congressional and media investigations into Russian influence to help Trump during the 2016 presidential elections and advance his and his allies' private business interests (Tass photo May 10, 2017). 

PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: Under Trump, The United States Is Now Funding Russian Terrorism, Jason Easley, right, Oct. 10, 2026.jason easley Thanks to Trump’s “deal” to import diesel from Russia, an amount which will not lower prices, the United States is now funding Russian terrorism.

When Trump announced his deal with Putin to import Russian diesel that he just sanctioned other countries for importing, the president posted on Truth Social:

I have just concluded a highly successful discussion with President Vladimir Putin, of Russia, wherein it was agreed that Russia will immediately supply over 300,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel to the American and Global Marketplace, another 500,000 Tons during the month of November, and 1,000,000 Tons immediately thereafter. Additionally, based on the condition of their Diesel Refineries, Russia will then deliver, within a short period of time, 3,000,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel.

Between our TOTAL CONTROL of the Strait of Hormuz, and this great announcement on Russian Energy, Diesel Prices for Americans and, indeed, the World, will be COMING DOWN, IN RECORD NUMBERS, AND FAST! Lower prices for Americans, especially our Great Farmers, Ranchers, and Truckers, is my Greatest Priority. This is a very big and important announcement. Additionally, it must be understood, that Iran will not have a Nuclear Weapon!

russian flag wavingThe 300,000 tons of diesel fuel sounds like a lot, but diesel is a liquid that is measured in gallons, and when broken down into gallons, the truth about Trump’s deal is revealed.Trump Got A Week’s Worth Of Diesel In Exchange For Funding Russian Terrorism

Trump was bragging about 85 million gallons. 3 million tons of diesel is 930-945 million gallons. The US uses 151 million to 168 million gallons of diesel a day, so Trump got about a week’s worth of diesel to be delivered over the next 3 months.

Trump’s deal is a joke, but it does have real-world consequences. Under Trump, the US has been favoring Russia in its invasion and terrorism campaign against Ukraine. Trump will be putting US tax dollars into the Russian government, which will give Putin more resources to carry out his campaign against democracy in Ukraine.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) posted on X in response to Trump’s announcement:

The United States government is now a funder of state sponsored terrorism. I know that sounds political and hyperbolic, but it is factually true. Russia is intentionally targeting civilians in Ukraine at scale, and Trump is intentionally funding their efforts.

The United States is now funding terror attacks against civilians in Ukraine.

Trump’s “deal” doesn’t solve the diesel crisis. It won’t lower the price at the pump, but it will help Putin kill more people in Ukraine.

Donald Trump has positioned the United States to be on the wrong side of the nation’s principles and values.

Trump’s diesel deal is another smoke-and-mirrors show that is designed only to help Putin and continue to leave the American people out in the cold.

 

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine during a news conference in Kyiv on Thurday. “We have a special people, an extraordinary people,” he said (Photo by Lynsey Addario for The New York Times).

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine during a news conference in Kyiv “We have a special people, an extraordinary people,” he said (File photo by Lynsey Addario for The New York Times). Another file photo shown below achieved iconic status when he asked for ammunition for Ukraine from Western allies, not a safe haven for VIPs from Ukraine like himself to flee the Russian invaders.

 

volodmyer zelinsky graphic

ny times logoNew York Times, Some Republicans Reject Trump’s Move to Import Diesel Fuel From Russia, Tim Balk and Evan Gorelick, Oct. 11, 2026 (print ed.). High diesel costs have posed a problem for Republicans in the midterms, but President Trump’s decision did not satisfy some candidates in key Senate races.

President Trump’s announcement of a deal with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to import Russian diesel has drawn criticism from some Republicans running in the most competitive midterm races, as the party grasps for ways to contain soaring energy prices.
republican elephant logoThe president announced the arrangement, which undercuts U.S. sanctions on Moscow, under pressure to rein in the surging price of diesel. The product’s cost has climbed because of the war with Iran, which has clogged a vital oil-shipping corridor, and high energy prices have become a severe campaign liability for Republican candidates in the midterms.

ukraine flagBut the campaigns of two Republicans running in pivotal Senate races — former Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan and Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska — expressed disapproval of the deal with Russia. And other Republicans running in competitive Senate and House races had little to say about the agreement, which Mr. Trump trumpeted Friday on social media as a “very big and important” deal, claiming it would swiftly bring down energy costs.

“It’s a grave error by the president,” said Representative Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican from a battleground district who is not running for re-election. “People realize that the sanctions on Russia are appropriate when Russia’s invading a country and bombing cities at night.”

Mr. Bacon predicted the deal would have little effect on soaring diesel prices but would offer a victory for one of America’s adversaries. And the congressman said that the agreement would not help Republican candidates. “It looks desperate,” he said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The deal received some Republican praise. Representative Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican running in a competitive race, wrote on social media that it would “massively benefit the American people.”

The United States introduced sanctions on energy exports from Russia after the country started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Mr. Trump’s deal, and his declaration Saturday that Ukraine should “get a new president,” escalated U.S. tensions with Kyiv. The issue of U.S. support for the country has for years divided Republicans; the two Republican Senate candidates who questioned the deal have long been supporters of Ukraine.

Some Midwestern Republicans have called for a pause on diesel exports to try to lower costs for American consumers, a notion that Mr. Trump has ruled out.

Energy experts say the deal is not likely to have a major impact on the cost of diesel, which has spiked to around $6.28 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club, up from $3.67 a year ago. Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, an energy consulting firm in Houston, said the deal would introduce a “very small” amount of diesel into the market “compared to U.S. demand.”

In Michigan, Mr. Rogers, who has recently sought distance from Mr. Trump by calling for the president to end both the Iran war and his tariff fight with Canada, told reporters on Friday that he supported an agricultural rebate for diesel, but not the president’s approach.

Mr. Rogers, long a foreign policy hawk, cited concern about offering Mr. Putin a victory. “You just don’t want to give that guy an inch,” he said.

In Alaska, a spokesman for Mr. Sullivan, Nate Adams, said in a statement that the senator “believes American energy dominance is the answer to high prices, and that means producing more of it in Alaska, for Alaskans, by Alaskans, not importing it from Russia.”

Democrats pounced on the deal. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, wrote on social media that the president had made a “deal with the devil to try to help his flailing political fortunes.”

Representative Chris Pappas, the Democratic nominee in the competitive Senate race in New Hampshire, said in a statement that the agreement was a “slap in the face to Ukraine and our allies overseas.” The campaign of his Republican opponent, former Senator John E. Sununu, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The high cost of diesel poses a particular risk for Republicans running in states whose farming-heavy economies are powered by diesel, such as Nebraska, Iowa and Kansas.

The campaigns of the Republican Senate candidates in two of those states, Representative Ashley Hinson of Iowa and Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the president’s deal with Russia. Their hotly contested races, staged in conservative states, could help decide control of the Senate.

More On Middle East Wars

New York Times, At Least 12 Killed and 300 Injured in Houthi Attack on Saudi Airport, Vivian Nereim and Euan Ward, Oct. 11, 2026 (print ed.). The strike on Saturday was the deadliest attack in a Gulf Arab country since the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began in February, and forced the airport to temporarily suspend operations.

The Iran-backed Houthi militia launched a deadly attack on an international airport in Saudi Arabia’s capital on Saturday that Saudi officials said killed at least 12 people and injured over 300 more, in a dramatic escalation of the war between the kingdom and the Houthis.

The strike, which a senior Houthi official said the militia was responsible for, was the deadliest attack in a Gulf Arab country since the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began in February.

The latest toll was announced early Sunday morning by the Saudi civil aviation authority, which said four Saudi nationals and one U.S. citizen were among the 12 dead. It added that of the 309 people injured, some were in critical condition.

The strike on Saturday was the deadliest attack in a Gulf Arab country since the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began in February, and forced the airport to temporarily suspend operations.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption 

 

djt energy deal exposed clash 10 11 26

djt energy deal exposed 10 11 2026

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Trump’s “Energy Ceasefire” Exposed Instantly as a LIE!!  Ben Meiselas, right, ben meiselas daily beastOct. 11, 2026. Zelenskyy Says It Was “News to Me,” Russia Calls It “Market Manipulation,” and Corporate Media Fell for It Again.

Trump announced a Russia-Ukraine energy truce on social media while diesel and gas prices climb. Neither country had heard of it, and the alerts went out anyway.MeidasTouch NetworkOct 11READ IN APP

mtn meidas touch networkDonald Trump woke up Sunday and announced peace, at least for oil refineries. “Effective immediately, there is an Energy Ceasefire in the War between Russia and Ukraine,” he posted. “Both parties have agreed. Do not break it. Thank you for your attention to this matter.” Corporate outlets pushed out “ceasefire” alerts within minutes, taking him at his word. Within hours the story fell apart, because neither of the “parties” knew anything about it. It was a lie.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Axios’s Barak Ravid by phone that the announcement “was news to me.” He added that if Russia agreed to stop striking energy infrastructure, Ukraine would too: “If President Trump agreed to this with Putin, please let us know when the ceasefire begins. We are ready.” Zelenskyy then publicly called the bluff. After calls with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, and NATO’s Secretary General, he posted that Ukraine supports the ceasefire Trump announced, that Russia needs to support it as well, and that Kyiv is “awaiting details from the American side.”Subscribed

Moscow was less polite. The first deputy chairman of the Russian Duma’s Energy Committee said the committee knew nothing about any energy truce and called the announcement a market play. “We all know that Trump often says things to keep oil prices down, so-called verbal interventions,” he said. “I don’t know how true this is.” When even the Kremlin’s own legislature calls your peace deal a pump-and-dump... Wow!

Trump offered no details. His next posts were old photos of himself with Mike Tyson and a celebration of Kid Rock calling the press “public enemy number one” at a rally.

The timing is no mystery. Diesel and gas prices keep climbing, and Trump is facing bipartisan condemnation for his Russian diesel deal: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent lifted sanctions and issued a general license allowing Russian diesel into the United States. That move appears to conflict with the Ending Importation of Russian Oil Act of 2022, which requires the administration to certify to Congress before the ban can be lifted, and with the 2017 sanctions law Trump himself signed, which gives Congress 30 days to review and potentially block Russia sanctions relief. We believe that Bessent, who has no presidential immunity, violated the law and could face prosecution later. On Sunday shows, Bessent blamed Europe, calling European objections to “a respite in diesel pricing” “completely hypocritical.”

Hours before Trump’s post, Zelenskyy had seemed to anticipate it. On ABC he said prices are rising “because of the war in Middle East,” including the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, and that tying them to Ukraine is easier than confronting Putin. “Don’t play games with people,” he said. He offered Putin a simpler deal: “Don’t attack us. Don’t kill our children. We will stop attack your diesel.” Asked why the Trump administration keeps blaming Ukraine, he said it’s because “it’s more difficult to stop Putin than to pressure others.” He also rejected Trump’s claim that Ukraine needs a new president: “It’s up to our society, up to our people to choose.”

Meanwhile, the war Trump started is still escalating. On Sunday the IRGC struck another tanker in the Gulf of Oman. That brings the total close to 20 tankers hit in roughly 10 days, many of them while trying ship-to-ship transfers along the Omani coast to get around the Strait of Hormuz. Tankers that make it out reportedly earn $1.5 million a day, which is why they keep trying. In Saudi Arabia, Terminal 4 of Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport was struck one day after a strike on Terminal 3 killed about 12 people, including one American civilian, and injured more than 320. Over the past two weeks, airports in Riyadh, Abha, Dammam, Khamis Mushait, Najran, and Jazan have all been hit. Bessent’s response this morning was that Iran will soon “cry uncle.” He said the same thing on September 24. In April he said Iran had three days left. In March, Trump said the war would be over in four to six weeks. These people are liars. And they are flailing as the situation continues to get worse as midterms approach.

Senator Chris Murphy, back from the region, said he was denied access to U.S. bases that he says Iran “obliterated” within days of the war starting, including the naval base in Bahrain and the air base in Qatar. “There is a cover up underway,” Murphy said, aimed at hiding the cost of the war from the American public and from Congress.

So to wrap up the big news just in: Trump announced a fake ceasefire, Ukraine and Russia both debunked it, and the newsrooms that amplified it owe readers a correction. Trump’s own announcements are not evidence of anything until they are confirmed by outside parties, and the media keeps having to relearn that.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Oct. 9, 2026 [Trump Exposes His Support For Russia], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 11, 2026. So now, after more than a decade of pretending that he is not associated with Russia and that he would honor the U.S. national security position of support for Ukraine and our European allies, Trump is openly backing Russia’s president Vladimir Putin.

Asked today by a reporter about concerns that his dropping of sanctions against Russian oil yesterday would funnel money to Putin’s war on Ukraine, Trump blamed Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky for prolonging the war:

“Zelensky could have settled this war many times. Many, many times,” Trump said, “And he chooses not to.” Trump blamed Zelensky for the high cost of diesel because Ukrainian forces have targeted Russian oil refineries, although since Russian oil was sanctioned, the actual chokepoint for diesel prices is the Strait of Hormuz, largely closed because of Trump’s war on Iran.

Trump accused Zelensky of wanting “to make problems for the world. He wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers, with diesel fuel, because Russia supplies a large portion of the diesel fuel throughout the world.” Ukrainians have hit Russian oil refineries to stop the flow of money into Russia as it evades sanctions and sells oil through its so-called shadow fleet. Russia, in contrast, has been striking civilian targets in violation of the laws of war.

Trump continued with a warning to Zelensky, saying “he’d better damn well stop.”

Ukraine continues to fight against Russia because Russia has invaded Ukraine and is trying to occupy Ukraine’s eastern industrial area in violation of the United Nations charter that vows no country will use threats or force against another’s territorial integrity. Until Trump took office, the United States was the key guarantor of this principle.

The U.S. has stood against Russia’s 2014 and 2022 invasions of Ukraine not only because of the principle of territorial sovereignty, but also because of security guarantees the U.S., along with the United Kingdom and Russia, gave to Ukraine in 1994. After the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991, Ukraine had the third-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. In exchange for Ukraine’s giving up those weapons, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia agreed to secure Ukraine’s borders. In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, they agreed they would not use military force or economic coercion against Ukraine.

Then Russian leader Vladimir Putin worked to bring Ukraine under the sway of the Russian oligarchs who rose to replace the region’s communist leaders, monopolizing formerly publicly held industries as those industries were privatized. American journalist Paul Klebnikov, the chief editor of Forbes in Russia, was murdered in 2004 after calling attention to what the oligarchs were doing.

In that same year, a Russian-backed politician, Viktor Yanukovych, appeared to be elected president of Ukraine. But the election was so full of fraud—including the poisoning of a key rival who wanted to break ties with Russia and align Ukraine with Europe—the government voided the election and called for a do-over. Yanukovych needed a makeover fast, and for that he called on an American political consultant with a reputation for making unsavory characters palatable to the media: Paul Manafort.

For ten years, from 2004 to 2014, Manafort worked for Yanukovych and his party, trying to make what the U.S. State Department called a party of “mobsters and oligarchs” look legitimate. He made a fortune thanks to his new friends. In 2010, Yanukovych finally won the presidency on a platform of rejecting NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization through which Europe joined together to oppose first the USSR, and then the rising threat of Russia. Immediately, Yanukovych turned Ukraine toward Russia. Then, in 2014, after months of popular protests, Ukrainians ousted Yanukovych from power in what is known as the Revolution of Dignity. He fled to Russia.

Shortly after Yanukovych’s ouster, Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimea and annexed it, prompting the United States and the European Union to impose economic sanctions on Russia itself and also on specific Russian businesses and oligarchs, prohibiting them from doing business in the United States and in its territories. These sanctions hurt Russia and froze the assets of key Russian oligarchs, including Putin.

Now without his main source of income, Manafort owed about $17 million to allies of Yanukovych and Putin, especially Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. By 2016, his longtime friend and business partner Roger Stone was advising the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, and Manafort was happy to step in to help. He did not take a salary. He began as an advisor in March 2016 and became the campaign chairman in late June, after meeting on June 9 with Don Jr., Jared Kushner, and Russian operatives.

It turned out that Russia was looking for a way to grab the Ukrainian land it wanted without continuing to fight. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 2019 report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election explained that Manafort and his partner, Russian operative Konstantin Kilimnik, in summer 2016 “discussed a plan to resolve the ongoing political problems in Ukraine by creating an autonomous republic in its more industrialized eastern region of Donbas, and having [Russian-backed Viktor] Yanukovych, the Ukrainian President ousted in 2014, elected to head that republic.”

The Mueller Report continued: “That plan, Manafort later acknowledged, constituted a ‘backdoor’ means for Russia to control eastern Ukraine.” The region that Putin wanted was the country’s industrial heartland. He was offering a “peace” plan that would carve off much of Ukraine and make it subservient to him. This was the exact opposite of U.S. policy for a free and united Ukraine, and there was no chance that former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who was running for the presidency against Trump, would stand for it. But if Trump were elected, the equation changed.

According to the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee, Kilimnik wrote: “[a]ll that is required to start the process is a very minor ‘wink’ (or slight push) from D[onald] T[rump] saying ‘he wants peace in Ukraine and Donbass back in Ukraine’ and a decision to be a ‘special representative’ and manage this process.” Kilimnik further suggested that Manafort “could start the process and within 10 days visit Russia ([Yanukovych] guarantees your reception at the very top level, cutting through all the bullsh*t and getting down to business), Ukraine, and key EU capitals,” and that “once then–Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko understood this ‘message’ from the United States, the process ‘will go very fast and DT could have peace in Ukraine basically within a few months after inauguration.’”

According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, the men continued to work on what they called the “Mariupol Plan” at least until 2018. Trump could not make it happen during his first term, although his operatives spent a great deal of time messing around in Ukraine and trying to smear Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden from there, and after Biden took office, Putin invaded Ukraine again in 2022.

As Jim Rutenberg wrote in his coverage of the Mariupol Plan in the New York Times Magazine, once his troops were in Ukraine, Putin claimed he had annexed Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, two of which were specifically named in the Mariupol Plan, and instituted martial law in them, claiming that the people there had voted to join Russia.

Biden pulled together countries from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), along with other allies and partners, to stop Russia’s attack and to support Ukraine’s heroic efforts to repel the Russian invasion. Russia’s troops, meanwhile, have committed atrocities and are attacking civilians. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has indicted several Russian officials and commanders, including Putin himself, for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

But once Trump was back in office in 2025, he promptly tried to swing the U.S. behind Russia. His appointees insisted that the real story of the 2016 campaign was not Russia’s support for Trump, but rather a Democratic conspiracy to push the story of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. Repeatedly, Trump has threatened Zelensky and tried to cajole him into surrendering the territory Russia wants.

After the ICC indictment, Trump welcomed Putin to American soil in Alaska in August 2025, ordering U.S. soldiers to roll out a red carpet for him, and he has invited Putin to a gathering of the Group of 20 nations with advanced economies at Mar-a-Lago in December. Yesterday, the U.S. announced sanctions on the ICC itself, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has vowed to take the organization apart “brick by brick.”

Meanwhile, Putin has behaved like someone who has a strong hand over Trump. In August 2025, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov showed up at the Alaska meeting wearing a sweatshirt with the Cyrillic letters “CCCP,” which translates to USSR, suggesting that the Soviet Union had won the Cold War after all.

On Friday, despite the fact that Russia is backing Iran, whose military is killing U.S. soldiers, Trump proudly announced he was removing sanctions to let Russia sell its oil on global markets. Ukrainian attacks have curtailed Russian production, so the amount it has available to help the diesel squeeze in the U.S. is negligible, but the ability to rake in cash as the world’s current oil shortage has driven up prices is invaluable to Putin for his desperate war effort.

Also yesterday, Trump asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on a lawsuit over the 2016 election that he brought in 2022 against Hillary Clinton and former members of the Department of Justice, including former director of the FBI James Comey, Clinton’s campaign chair, and a grab bag of others. Trump sued them for conspiring to tie him to Russia in order to undermine his campaign.

As John Fritze of CNN reported yesterday, a federal court dismissed the lawsuit as “frivolous” and ruled that Trump’s attorneys were liable for nearly $1 million in sanctions. The 11th U.S. Circuit of Appeals upheld most of that decision last year. “This case should never have been brought,” U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks of the Southern District of Florida wrote. “Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start. No reasonable lawyer would have filed it.” Now Trump is appealing to the Supreme Court.

But at this point, how much more evidence is necessary to assess that Trump has undermined U.S. national security and is working for Russia? And how much longer will Republicans in Congress continue to protect him as he does it?

rancid russia deal simon rosenbergHopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, Trump Throws Himself Into Putin’s Arms, Slava Ukraini!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 11, 2026. I try to keep things light and easy on Sundays but I cannot close out today without mentioning Trump’s wild, emotional embrace of Putin over the past two days.

Whatever the cause -- desperation, insecurity, compromise -- Trump is clearly now aligning the United States with Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China against Ukraine, Europe, and NATO. Trump crossed a big, bright, traitorous line in the last forty-eight hours, and we need to become loud and proud in our opposition.

Here is what Mike Pence posted on Twitter yesterday:

russia deal mike pence 10 11 2026

Here’s is Dr. Phillips O’Brien this morning:

Poor Donald Trump. For the last 21 months he had to do a great deal of lying. He had to pretend at times that he really cared about the people dying in the Russo-Ukraine War, that he really wanted a deal that was good for Ukraine, that he was getting frustrated with Vladimir Putin, and that he even liked Volodymyr Zelensky. At times Trump had to push himself to lie with real commitment and panache, fooling almost all the world’s press into believing that he might send Ukraine advanced weapons, that he might put harsh sanctions on Russia, that he might “pivot” away from supporting Putin towards helping Ukraine.

It obviously took a real toll on him. Having to pretend that he was not wholeheartedly committed to Putin or desperate for a Russian victory, that he did not despise Ukraine and Zelensky, was really difficult. Donald Trump has been serially disloyal and unfaithful to every person in his life, except for Vladimir Putin. He craves the affection and approval of the Russian dictator, loves talking with him, loves doing Putin’s bidding and, most of all, loves being with him. Even in the midst of Trump’s most outrageous lies (remember when he was going to send Ukraine Tomahawk missiles in September/October 2025?), the truth was there for those willing to see it. At exactly that time, he also hung a picture of himself next to Putin very prominently in the White House (above a picture of himself with a granddaughter). His real affections were always there for those who wanted to admit it—indeed they were on display.

Now, the lying is over. Donald is free to be what he always wanted to be and to sing it loudly to the world. He, and by extension the government of the United States of America, is Vladimir Putin’s friend and partner. He will help Putin, protect Putin, and do what he can to get the best possible deal for Vladimir Putin.

This time he probably cannot go back. The expressions of intense emotion of the last 24 hours are too clear for even the most gullible of the press (and that is most of them) to ever again start writing about the next, supposed Trump “pivot” to Ukraine.

Trump is free now. His heart can sing the song he has always wanted to sing, and the American people can no longer deny that the USA is run by a Russian useful idiot or agent of influence (depending on the nomenclature you prefer). Personally I prefer agent of influence, because vast sums of money are also involved. Trump not only loves Putin, he wants to get paid. I tried to describe this concept not long after Trump’s second term began.

This reality coming out so openly is obviously the story of the week. It also emerged as the Russians ramped up their terror bombing, which provided the most horrible counterpoint to how Trump wants to see the war. And it leaves Ukraine and the rest of Europe facing only one question. Are they strong enough to do what needs to happen to save themselves?

In a related story this morning the new PM of the UK Andy Burnham became the first leader of the UK to openly acknowledge the role Russia played in passing Brexit and forcing the UK out of Europe:

 

russia brexit the independent headlines 10 11 2026

After we win these midterms we are going to have a lot of work to do put things right here in America. Among the most important things we will have to is to make clear that our party, and the parts of the co-equal branches of our government that we control, stands firmly with Ukraine, Europe, NATO, democracy, freedom and not Putin, Le Pen, the AfD, and other elements of the Illiberal Internationale. In a moment of crisis for his political project here and around the world Trump has thrown himself once again into Putin’s loving arms, hoping that his “dear friend” will bail him out of a losing election as he did for him in 2016. But we are not going to let that happen are we, fellow proud, plucky, patriots?

Desperate men do desperate things, and that’s why it’s now time to go:

Kick These Corrupt Traitors’ Asses, Win The Midterms, And Prepare For The Fuckery To Come - For It Is Coming (And May Already Be Here)

 

Trump-nominated U.S. Ambassador To Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle, in a file photo by J. Scott Applewhite of the Associated Press when she was campaigning for his presidential election. ap j scott applewhite

Trump-nominated U.S. Ambassador To Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle, in a file photo by J. Scott Applewhite of the Associated Press when she was campaigning for his presidential election.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Oct. 9, 2026 [The Grifting Ambassador To Greece], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 10, 2026. Late Wednesday afternoon, Dana Mattioli, Drew Hinshaw, Rebecca Ballhaus, and Joe Parkinson of the Wall Street Journal reported on the tawdry grifting of Kimberly Guilfoyle, former fiancee of Donald Trump Jr. and now Trump’s ambassador to Greece.

Panicked about how much money she owed on her American Express credit card, Guilfoyle reached out to Eric Deters, who wanted the administration’s help with tax and legal issues. Deters had promised Guilfoyle as much as a million dollars if she was successful in getting him the help he wanted.

With her confirmation hearing for the ambassador post coming up, Guilfoyle begged Deters to pay $100,000 to American Express. “It won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express,” she wrote on the secure messaging app Signal, the Wall Street Journal reporters explained. “Please.” She reiterated over text: “Honey please I need you to get this done for me today.” “Your needing $100,000 urgent unfortunately is not going to work,” Deters wrote. “I can’t do this without getting a divorce.”

In their months of correspondence, Guilfoyle often complained that he was not being careful enough. “Eric, I really wish you would stop papering all these things,” she wrote. “It’s really dangerous and not helpful to you or me while you could simply just call me on signal.” She wrote: “It’s unbelievable when we have a private arrangement with you that you would now CC a producer talking about money.” And later: “What a nightmare you’ll literally cost me my ambassadorship stop writing.”

Looking back today at stories of corruption involving Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, former secretary of homeland security Kristi Noem, and so on, Chris Hayes of MS NOW explained that Trump’s inner circle “works a lot like a crime family…. [E]veryone gets their fiefdoms. They can get their beaks wet. But they’ve always got to make sure they’re giving the boss his due.”

On Tuesday, Samantha Subin of CNBC reported that just days after Palmer Luckey joined the Pentagon’s new Project Meridian, set up to report on the military’s future needs, the company Luckey co-founded—Anduril—landed a $2.9 billion contract with the U.S. Navy. And today, Reuters reported that Kalshi is investigating suspicious trades having to do with Trump’s selection of Katie Zacharia as the new White House press secretary.

Americans don’t like corruption, and with the midterms shaping up to be a disaster for the Republicans, Trump has launched an all-out offensive to solidify his base. That offensive includes spinning the Iran War, calling for a public execution, attacking immigrants both rhetorically and in real life, and shifting the United States against the defense of international law and allying with authoritarian governments.

On Wednesday, October 7, Jonathan Saul of Reuters reported that attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz hit the highest level since the war on Iran began. Shortly after noon yesterday, October 8, Trump tried to spin the situation there to make it sound like he was in control. He posted that “Iran is in a very bad condition, both Economically and Militarily,” that the U.S. blockade is still in effect, that oil is flowing “in Record Numbers of Barrels through the Hormuz Strait,” and that the administration is having “productive discussions” with Iran. He added: “[W]e will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd. IRAN WILL NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!”

In an interview with far-right podcaster Jack Posobiec on board the USS Abraham Lincoln on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appealed to the MAGA religious base with a promise that the execution of former Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the mass shooter who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, would be public. An active Army officer when he committed the murders, Hasan was court-martialed and sentenced to death.

“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” Hegseth said. CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen noted that a livestream of the execution would be a rallying cry for terrorists.

The backlash against Hegseth’s plan has been swift and bipartisan.

Representative Jason Crow (D-CO), who served as a paratrooper and Army Ranger and is now on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Intelligence Committee, said: “Pete Hegseth has taken our military’s tradition of selfless service and flipped it on its head. With this public execution, he is degrading the culture of our military and turning a culture of service into one of vengeance and spectacle, performed for cameras and attention on social media. The Fort Hood shooter’s actions were horrific. Responding to it by livestreaming a violent execution is not an answer. A public execution only gives our adversaries fodder for anti-American propaganda that makes us less safe. Pete Hegseth’s self-absorbed hunger for power, attention, and violence is disgusting and beneath the office he holds. He is not fit to lead.”

The idea was “beyond disgusting,” Senator Tom Tillis (R-NC) wrote. “Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America.”

Trump then tried to rile up his supporters by turning them against an invented “enemy,” a tactic that is Authoritarianism 101. On Wednesday the FBI said it had prevented an attack on Minnesota’s Mall of America by a teenaged American-born U.S. citizen of Somalian descent whom they had been monitoring since December 2024 and to whom an FBI agent sold the assault rifle and ammunition for the attack.

At 4:30 on the afternoon of October 8, Trump wrote: “The once Great State of Minnesota is being taken over by Somali Immigrants. There is Violence, Murder, and Mayhem all over the State. The people of Minnesota must fight back. You have been robbed, and abandoned by your State Government. Your Governor is an incompetent thief who doesn’t want to get involved. He just wants to get out of town with as much as he can steal, and then, lead a quiet life. The Somalians should not be allowed to get away with what they are doing. They view you as weak and stupid people. Fight back Minnesota, fight back! If you need, the Federal Government will come to your rescue. Governor Tim Walz, and Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, must immediately ask for Federal help—and leave the rest to us!”

Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, a MAGA Republican, promptly referred to Somali-Americans as “enemy combatants” and complained that Democrats were not “rounding them up and putting them in jail.”

On Thursday, October 8, Priscilla Alvarez and Michael Williams of CNN reported that on Tuesday, the leaders of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) verbally told agents across the country to ramp up their arrests by another 1,000 people a day, bringing arrests back to 3,000 daily.

On Thursday afternoon, as ICE agents in New York City surrounded a Dominican man and his five-year-old son in a car, one of the agents fired several shots. It is not clear how badly injured Oscar Belgal is; he was shot in the neck, treated at a hospital, and then moved to an ICE facility outside of New York. His son was not hit by a bullet. New Yorkers immediately began to protest, calling for an end to ICE. New York governor Kathy Hochul and New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, both Democrats, have demanded ICE stop operations in the state. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin refused. “No, we’re not putting a pause on enforcement,” he said. “I’m sorry, we’re not. In fact, I’m not sorry.”

The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, a South-African-born jurist and former chief of human rights at the United Nations. There she led a U.N. commission that concluded Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians. She is currently a judge at the International Court of Justice. The committee’s message with their choice seemed pointed: Pillay has promoted peace through her protection of international law, they said, and the committee chair said the award was “a message to those who are attacking” international law. The committee said Pillay was “instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted.”

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted that the “Nobel Prize committee has lost its moral compass,” calling Pillay “a bigot who built her career around inventing and propagating blood libels against the one and only Jewish state.”

Hours after the prize announcement, Humeyra Pamuk, Steve Holland, and Anthony Deutsch of Reuters reported that Trump’s administration was imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC), founded in 2002 to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The U.S. has imposed sanctions on judges and prosecutors before; now it is sanctioning companies that provide services to the court itself.

The ICC has issued arrest warrants for Israeli officials including Netanyahu, as well as Russian officials including Vladimir Putin. Today Secretary of State Marco Rubio said: “President Trump will never allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Americans.”

Sanctioning the ICC sets the U.S. against its allies in Europe, who are increasingly worried about hybrid attacks from Russia, attacks that avoid direct war while destabilizing another country, methods like cyberwarfare or disinformation. Today, after ten years of cozying up to Vladimir Putin, Trump openly allied the United States with Russia against Ukraine.

Three weeks ago, by large bipartisan votes, Congress passed new sanctions against Russia and countries that were continuing to use Russian oil and gas and gave Trump sweeping powers to expand those sanctions. At the time, Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX) said: “This bill will cripple Russia’s war machine and finally bring Putin to the negotiating table. It will ensure America’s adversaries, not only Russia, but also China and Iran, suffer for their coordinated campaign of aggression.”

But today, Trump used the law for the opposite of what Congress apparently intended: “I have just concluded a highly successful discussion with President Vladimir Putin, of Russia, wherein it was agreed that Russia will immediately supply over 300,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel to the American and Global Marketplace, another 500,000 Tons during the month of November, and 1,000,000 Tons immediately thereafter. Additionally, based on the condition of their Diesel Refineries, Russia will then deliver, within a short period of time, 3,000,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel. Between our TOTAL CONTROL of the Strait of Hormuz, and this great announcement on Russian Energy, Diesel Prices for Americans and, indeed, the World, will be COMING DOWN, IN RECORD NUMBERS, AND FAST! Lower prices for Americans, especially our Great Farmers, Ranchers, and Truckers, is my Greatest Priority. This is a very big and important announcement. Additionally, it must be understood, that Iran will not have a Nuclear Weapon!”

The Treasury Department promptly announced it was issuing a temporary license to permit Russian diesel to sell on the global market. The sales will likely do little for U.S. oil prices, but they will funnel money to Russia for its war on Ukraine.

Trump’s smash-and-grab suggests concern he will lose the midterms. The latest poll from the Pew Research Center shows that 68% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the presidency. Cook Political Report has moved 18 more House ratings toward the Democrats. Myah Ward of Politico reported that 26% of those who voted for Trump in 2024 think the Republican Party should break with Trump in order to win in November. In Kansas on Wednesday, more than 100 prominent Republicans launched a coalition called “Republicans for Hamilton” to back Democrat Adam Hamilton for the U.S. Senate. Their announcement referred to “a growing network of everyday Republican voters…who are ready for change.”

Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark, who conducts focus groups with voters, says Trump’s campaign ads boosting himself have backfired: people hate them. They object to using taxpayer money for them by a margin of 86 to9. Furthermore, Longwell finds that Trump 2024 voters in Florida whom Trump needs to energize for this election, really hate them—the word Longwell used is “revulsion.” One said: “We need to get rid of all these people. Even if the Republicans don’t win for the next ten years, it’s probably best to wash these people out, you know, so you can get cleaned—clean slate.” 

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: New White House press secretary is a Pizzagate conspiracy theorist, Judd Legum, right, judd legumOct. 11, 2026. Katie Zacharia, who was appointed White House press secretary by President Trump on Friday, repeatedly promoted the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy on social media, accusing elites from the Democratic Party and Hollywood of sexually trafficking children and eating people.

Trump plucked Zacharia from relative obscurity. According to Zacharia’s LinkedIn profile, since graduating from Pepperdine Law School in 2011, she has held a variety of legal and media positions, including as a pundit on Newsmax and Fox News. Prior to her appointment, Zacharia’s most recent position was a senior communications advisor for Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform.

Zacharia did not just work for Truth Social; she was also a prolific poster. Since March 2022, Zacharia has posted 2,696 “Truths,” including 1,534 original posts and 1,162 “ReTruths” of posts from other users. While Zacharia’s deleted tweets have attracted some media coverage, her more unguarded use of Truth Social has been overlooked.

Zacharia repeatedly used Truth Social to promote Pizzagate and other fringe conspiracy theories. Pizzagate, which originated in the closing days of the 2016 presidential campaign, is the unfounded conspiracy that prominent Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and her 2016 presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta, were involved in a child sex trafficking ring.

Pizzagate’s name comes from the baseless claim that Podesta and others held child sex slaves in the basement of Comet Ping Pong, a pizzeria in Washington, D.C., where they also performed satanic rituals. (The establishment does not have a basement.) Online commentators claimed they had uncovered Pizzagate by decoding hacked messages from Podesta’s email account. In December 2016, a man traveled from North Carolina to Comet Ping Pong and opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle. Pizzagate formed the basis for the QAnon conspiracy, a more elaborate theory that contends Satan-worshiping Democrats and Hollywood elites ritually murder and cannibalize children.

“[W]hy doesn’t Fox News do a ‘feature’ on what a pedophile Podesta is,” Zacharia posted on her verified Truth Social account on September 7, 2022, tagging Trump and Fox News host Sean Hannity.

This followed a similar post from Zacharia on September 4, 2022: “Pedo Podesta. #pedoPodesta.” (These posts were apparently in response to the news that Podesta was joining the Biden White House as an advisor on climate change.) On the same day, Zacharia posted, “The radical left Hollywood elitists are sick pedo cannibals. Change my mind.”

The post was commenting on a story in Variety about the movie “Bones and All,” in which Timothée Chalamet plays a cannibal.

Zacharia continued her campaign for Pizzagate coverage in an October 17, 2022 post, tagging Hannity again and writing, “[W]here’s the feature on John Podesta?”

Several months earlier, on April 8, 2022, Zacharia posted a “ReTruth” from Ali Alexander, a far-right activist and conspiracy theorist: “Democrats want to mask and rape your children. That’s their satanic platform.”

On November 18, 2022, Zacharia honored conspiracy theorist Robert David Steele, who had died of COVID. Steele, a regular guest on Alex Jones’ show, claimed that “there is a colony on Mars that is populated by children who were kidnapped and sent into space on a 20-year ride.” The Mars colony, Steele asserted, was connected to an elaborate pedophilia ring.

“He was exposing the pedo rings of the elite cabal,” Zacharia posted. “May he Rest In Peace and the work of his hands not have been in vain.”

Zacharia also posted openly about QAnon, the related conspiracy that contends Trump is secretly fighting a Satanic, cannibalistic, child-abusing cabal made up of elites in the Democratic Party, Hollywood, and “the deep state.” The details of all of this, according to QAnon adherents, are revealed through online postings through an anonymous account known as Q and coded signals from Trump himself.

On November 16, 2022, a Truth Social user, “mistercho,” posted, “Did you notice Trump drinking bottled water last night during his announcement. He drank at least 2-3 times. I have not seen him do that at his speeches or rallies. It reminds me of Q posts 765, 767, and 847. Or was it a signal for something else; by land or by sea.” Zacharia responded “I was wondering the same thing…”

Zacharia also posted about her beliefs on “devolution,” the QAnon theory that, after leaving office in 2021, Trump retained control over the military. In response to an April 3, 2022 post asking for evidence of devolution from “patelpatriot,” Zacharia suggested the military signaled that Biden wasn’t really in charge by not giving him a real 21-gun salute on Inauguration Day. “On Biden’s inaugural day, he received a 3 cannon, ~ 9 shot every 8-9 second gun salute versus a true presidential 21 gun salute,” Zacharia wrote.

Four days later, Zacharia posted a “ReTruth” of the same account suggesting that Trump would have been “derelict in his duties” had he not retained control of the military after leaving office.

In response to a request for comment, the White House Press Office referred Popular Information “to the President’s TRUTH on Katie.” In his post, Trump called Zacharia “outstanding” and praised her as “a loyal and brilliant supporter, right from the beginning.”

The Hartmann Report, The Best of the Rest of the News and Opinion: Where is the missing $50 million? Thom Hartmann, right, thom hartmann newOct. 10, 2026. Maybe look for piles of cash in the bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago? 

Donald Trump woke up from a nap in the Oval Office this week just in time to remember Vladimir Putin’s birthday. While his own Treasury Secretary was speaking, Trump nodded off at his own event, then perked right up to announce he had a call scheduled to wish his mentor (my word, not his) a happy 74th.

By Friday we learned what the birthday boy got. Trump crowed on his Nazi-infested social media site that us taxpayers will buy five million tons of diesel — a deal worth billions to the Kremlin’s deeply troubled war chest — at today’s record-high prices.

As a sweetener, a birthday cupcake you could call it, Trump ordered his Treasury Department to suspend sanctions on Russian diesel for the next half-year. And he and little Marco Rubio are going after the International Criminal Court, which has indicted Putin, and are trying to quite literally destroy it.

And, shortly, Ka$h Patel will be visiting Moscow.

Bizarrely, this all happened just a few weeks after he signed Lindsey Graham’s Russia sanctions bill. This is the same Putin whose government, US officials have confirmed, is providing Iran with detailed, specific targeting information on American troops, ships, and planes that’s been used to kill our service members. It’s the same Putin Trump’s invited to December’s G20, which he’s holding, corruptly, at his own shabby golf resort motel in Florida.

Ukraine, meanwhile, was told no by Trump and Vance (who called it one of his “proudest moments”) when Zelensky asked for Patriot interceptors to stop Russian missiles from daily killing its civilians, a war crime. How much more of this treasonous behavior will the American people, and the congressional Republicans — who swore an oath to the Constitution rather than to Trump — tolerate? The Capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121. Ask them.

— Time magazine interviewed the President of the United States, wrote down twelve things he said, and then had to publish a second article explaining that most of them weren’t true. Raw Story has the rundown. Trump told the reporters he won 86 percent of the popular vote (it was 49.8 percent). He said he’s at 99 percent approval in Israel. He said his convention speech drew 107 million viewers and beat the NFL opener (Nielsen says he had 2.5 million viewers against football’s 25.1 million). He said Iran’s inflation is 300 percent (it’s 83.8) and blamed the American press for the idea that his war would be over in four or five weeks, something he promised in the early days of the war (originally it was going to be “a few weeks”). Time’s fact-checkers described Trump’s popular vote whopper by gently saying, “He’s conflating two figures.” Conflating is what Grandpa does with the grandkids’ names at Thanksgiving. How much longer will our media continue to tuck his blatant, daily lies into a polite sidebar while the lies themselves get the headline? This has been going on since 2015; no wonder we’re in such deep trouble and our democracy is in such a crisis. Our media needs to grow a damn spine.Subscribed

— Trump’s meme coin buyers have lost 97 percent of their “investments,” so naturally he’s throwing another dinner to sell more of them. As Lisa Needham lays out at Aaron Rupar’s Public Notice, the top 185 holders of $TRUMP will “win” seats at a November 22 gala at his Virginia golf club, complete with a swag bag of Trump cologne, and the four biggest buyers get an 18-karat gold Trump watch. The so-called coin peaked above $73 and now trades around $1.79. Trump is making billions off crypto while the suckers who bought his and Melania’s meme coins were out $3.81 billion by the end of June. But wait: there’s more! While regular buyers are being told to hold tight for a shot at being invited to this super-special dinner, the coin’s biggest insider wallet has moved tens of millions of dollars’ worth of them into a position to sell. One investor who’s lost $400,000 summed it up, saying, “The grift continues until morale improves.” In fact, there are two kinds of buyers for these “collectible” tokens: suckers and people — including foreigners — wanting to buy influence or pardons from Trump. The Founders had a word for this (emoluments) and so does the criminal code (bribery), and if Republicans in Congress had even the faintest semblance of integrity they would shut the whole grift down tomorrow. Vote!

— The bond market, which doesn’t watch Fox “News,” is telling us what it really thinks of Trump’s America. Bloomberg reports that something called the “term premium” — the extra interest investors demand before they’ll lend Uncle Sam money by buying 10-year bonds — has shoved Treasury yields to a 24-year high. As a result, we’re all paying more for mortgages, car loans, and credit cards because America’s lenders (Treasury buyers) don’t trust Trump, Bessent, and the Republicans who control Congress and keep borrowing trillions to give to Trump and his billionaire buddies as tax breaks. There are energy shocks from Trump’s illegal (and stupid) war on Iran leaving oil stuck above $100 a barrel, as well as a $2 trillion federal deficit just so far this year. This is the end product of 45 years of Reaganomics, decades of GOP lies, and an accumulated $40 trillion in tax breaks for the morbidly rich and giant corporations. We need to tax the morbidly rich like we did when America built the world’s largest middle class, strengthen the social safety net, and stop starting illegal wars that we can’t even afford to pay for.

— Somebody seems to have misplaced fifty million dollars, and nobody in Trump’s orbit is in any hurry to find it. A decade ago, Congress set aside money for an America 250 celebration of our anniversary, but Trump ignored that (other than taking the money) and created his own, privatized “Freedom 250” celebration as a new grift to squeeze millions out of major donors like Chevron, United Airlines, and the defense giant RTX. Now documents uncovered by the watchdog group PEER discovered that the events cost $128 million and at least $114 million of that came from our tax dollars, even though The Wall Street Journal says the “donors” kicked in at least $50 million and (my guess) probably much more. Trump passed out that money to his contractor friends with no competitive bidding whatsoever, and now refuses to say who gave him money, or how much, or even where the money went. Democrats suspect he just turned it into another slush fund for himself and his family; perhaps they should look for piles of cash in the bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago?

— The people building artificial intelligence are holding private rehearsals for the day it hurts a whole lot of us. Axios reports that top executives at Anthropic, OpenAI, and other AI companies are gaming out what happens after a catastrophic AI event, “most likely a cyberattack,” that could knock out banking, the internet, or even power and water. Axios reports that industry insiders told them they expect “something big” within the next six to twelve months. But when Mediaite dug into it, they concluded that this is really more PR planning than anything else; handling the public and political revolt and a panicked Congress. Trump, who is now heavily invested financially in AI, calls the danger a “hoax” and says the industry should just police itself. You know, like tobacco, asbestos, the Pinto, leaded gasoline, Oxycontin and the Sacklers, and the banks in 2008. That’s always worked out so well for America. Even some Republicans think that’s nuts; there’s already a bipartisan bill requiring a kill switch on advanced AI. Pass it now, while the lights are still on.

— Having lost at the Supreme Court, Trump has decided to hold his own trial of Lisa Cook at the White House, with his own appointees as the jury. The Supreme Court ruled against him in June when he tried to fire the nation’s first Black female Federal Reserve governor. So this week he signed a memo creating a “committee of inquiry” made up of his economic adviser, his EEOC chairman, and his ethics director, who will decide Cook’s fate. As the Guardian reports, she’s being summoned to a kangaroo court that will be closed to the public, capped at four hours, and held on November 5, two days after the midterms, when it’s too late to piss off voters. In an administration that fired the Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the first woman to lead the Navy, it appears that her race and gender are her real offense. The Senate confirmed her; the Senate should defend her. But don’t count on the Trump lickspittles and cowards (and probably quite a few racists and misogynists) in today’s Republican-run Congress to do squat.

— Hypocrisy Alert! The senator who sued new mothers over medical bills as small as $101 apparently doesn’t pay for his own cookies. Holly Thomas, who owns Holly’s Sweet Treats in Hutchinson, Kansas, says Senator Roger Marshall’s campaign took delivery of $678.75 worth of cookies and treats for his 2020 primary watch party and never paid for them. She’s been calling and emailing Marshall — without any response — as she was then a brand-new business owner trying to survive the pandemic. This is the same Senator/Dr. Marshall whose OB-GYN practice, the New York Times found, sued more than 700 of his female patients — many of them low-income people — and charged them 18 percent interest. He even had 81 of them arrested after missing court dates in those cases. He calls that reporting a “hit job.” At the 18 percent he charged his patients, Holly’s invoice would be north of $1,400 by now. Congress abolished federal debtors’ prisons way back in 1833, and that principle is supposed to work the same way for a working mom with a hospital bill just the same as it does for a senator with a bakery invoice. But this is Republican-run America, where we’ve got one set of rules for the rich and powerful and another for everybody else. Kansans get to settle this particular account on November 3

Special Reports: Courageous American Women: Part 1

Ashley St. Clair at her home in New York (New York Times photo by Elinor Kry).

Ashley St. Clair at her home in New York (New York Times photo by Elinor Kry). “I would say it felt emotionally intimate. We were in contact every day,” St. Clair said about her relationship with Elon Musk."

New York Times Magazine, She Was Offered $40 Million for Silence on Elon Musk. She Spoke Out Instead, Coralie Kraft, Oct. 11, 2026 (print ed.). In the documentary “Musk,” Ashley St. Clair, a former right-wing influencer and mother of one of Musk’s children, speaks about her relationship with him.

Ashley St. Clair is sick of people asking her the same questions about Elon Musk. “People treat me like I’m some Elon psychoanalyst,” she said during a visit to The New York Times in September. “They want to know, ‘What’s it like to hang out with him?’ or they say, ‘Not many people have spent time with him one-on-one.’” She sighed. “It’s annoying and laborious.”

You can’t blame them for asking. St. Clair, a former conservative influencer, gave birth to one of Musk’s children in 2024. (At the time, she also had another child from a previous relationship.) This fall, she’s a significant figure in “Musk,” Alex Gibney’s nearly four-hour-long documentary about the world’s first trillionaire, and she has more pressing points. “This is about a deeper rot in our society, where we’ve equated capital with morality,” she said. “There’s a level of societal and individual trust that we give to people if they have money.”

Musk did not respond to requests for comment. After TMZ reported that Ashley St. Clair rejected a $40 million N.D.A., Musk responded via X, stating, “She was never offered that and has a history of making false claims.” He also condemned Gibney’s documentary with another post on X reading, “Gibney just assembled a hit list of people who either have an axe to grind or don’t even know me.”

Gibney, the Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker, first met St. Clair in December 2025. “Beyond Musk’s baby obsession, Ashley had a front-row seat during the 2024 campaign and was able to tell me things I didn’t know about Musk’s motivations,” he said in an email.

Below, St. Clair shares her side of the story.

What did your life look like when you met Musk in 2023?

I worked at a conservative news site, The Babylon Bee, and I was a single mom. I also had a public persona, primarily on Twitter, where I was repeating MAGA talking points. Elon followed me on Twitter and slid into my DMs.

How did you feel when he followed you?

I don’t think people understand the number of eyeballs that were on everyone Elon interacted with at that time. I was getting “Congratulations!” texts from people in MAGA. Right away, there were people saying, “She’s going to be his next baby mama.” I was about to turn 24.

And when did you meet in person for the first time?

We’d been DMing on Twitter, and then during an interview for the Bee, he asked, “Feel like going to Providence, R.I.?” Within an hour, I was on his plane. In Providence, we shared a hotel room, and he fell asleep listening to a podcast about Kublai Khan. It was all very surreal.

Did it feel like a romantic relationship?

I would say it felt emotionally intimate. We were in contact every day. But also I was never like, “I’m the chosen one.” At the time, he was this savior of free speech, and I was very wrapped up in all of that. I’d say there was a bit of idolization going on, too.

When did you start talking about having a child together?

In January 2024, we went on vacation to St. Bart’s, and he said, “You should have 10 kids! Let’s have a kid. My only limited resource is time.”

What did that mean to you?

I wanted more children, so it meant that I would always be able to take care of my kids financially. Also, within MAGA, it was seen as a stain on your character to be a single mom. So to have this bastion of the right who is very validating of that choice — that meant so much to me.

Did you have any hesitations?

Not until I was pregnant and I watched the custody battle between Elon and Grimes [who share three children]. It made me think, “I have to protect myself.”

When did you receive the N.D.A.?

I was two months postpartum. Jared Birchall, Elon’s money manager and henchman, sent the document in a disappearing message on Signal. We didn’t have a formal financial agreement, so at that moment, getting the N.D.A. felt like, “If you would like any kind of support, sign this.”

I see. They were saying, “If you want support, sign this.” What were the terms of the N.D.A.?

I couldn’t speak about Elon or anything related to our relationship for eternity, and those terms would also apply to my heirs. I could tell our child who his father is, but I couldn’t tell my other child, or anyone else. He offered $15 million lump sum, and then $100,000 a month for 21 years.

But you decided not to sign.

For me, it was more a moral question than a legal one. I told Jared I couldn’t sign it, and he responded with, “Why? Sounds like you want to use your speech as a weapon.” I told him my children’s dignity is not a commodity.

Did Musk ever talk to you about the N.D.A.?

No.

And now you’re a significant voice in Gibney’s documentary.

People need to understand that part of the reason I’m featured prominently in the documentary is that other people cannot speak. I don’t think we should lose sight of that. I don’t want to have to speak publicly. I don’t want to be doing this interview right now. But there is a web of N.D.A.s. I feel a moral obligation to talk about my experience.

Let’s talk about your transition away from MAGA. When did that start?

It happened slowly and then all at once. There were moments where I wasn’t OK with the things I was witnessing — the misogyny, the racism — but I was a coward.

What would you say to people who think, “She’s only turning left because the right rejected her”?

I’m not dumb. I was aware what would happen when I came out against Elon, and I was OK with it. There’s a video from before I was pregnant where I say I’m not a conservative. So there were already moments where you can see these breaks from the conservative establishment.

You posted a lot of transphobic, racist and misogynistic commentary. Did other people pay the price for your public image?

I think about that all the time. Recently I got a notification about hospitals ending gender-affirming care. When I read that, I felt immensely remorseful. I know that probably would’ve happened without me, but I still feel guilt for my role.

How do you see your role today?

My only job after years of propaganda and dishonesty and being involved in MAGA for almost a decade is to be honest and set an example for my kids. My job is not to set a new narrative about myself. My only job is to be held accountable.

These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Were you at all nervous about participating in the film?

No. I was familiar with some of Alex’s documentary work, like “Going Clear.” I liked that he didn’t have any fear. He has a history of treating facts and narratives with respect.

You’ve seen the film. How did you feel watching it?

What was both validating and terrifying was the way the narratives harmonized. Me, Justine [Wilson, Musk’s first wife], Sam Harris [the New Atheist philosopher] and Geoffrey Hinton [the so-called Godfather of A.I.] — there are so many similarities in our experiences with Elon. I think when you’re able to take people who have never spoken to each other and harmonize a narrative, that is the truth.

Special Reports: Courageous American Women: Part 2

jojo jerz djt threat

The Ken Harbaugh Show via The MeidasTouch Network, JoJofromJeerz Stands Strong, Fights Back, Oct. 10, 2026. mtn meidas touch networkKen Harbaugh welcomes back JoJofromJerz, shown above left in the collage, a single mom from New Jersey (blogging at JoJofromJerz) whom President and First Lady Trump threatened with ruinous consequences unless she apologized for her criticism.

Her refusal to back down shows why it matters not to obey in advance when those in power try to silence their critics.

News Roundups

 

djt putin discussion 10 9 26Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Saturday Updates: Trump Just Lashed Out at Zelenskyy After Thanking Putin, Brett Meiselas, right, brett meiselasOct. 10, 2026. Trump is absolutely losing it as his presidency continues to crash.

mtn meidas touch networkBy any measure, Trump has failed. He promised to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, and it rages on. He dragged us into a new war in the Middle East, rattling the global economy and sending prices soaring. Now he’s hunting for someone to blame. Because that’s what losers do. Read the latest below and you will see EXACTLY what I mean. And remember to like and re-stack to spread this news far and wide.

Here are the top headlines today:

  • After making an oil deal with Putin, Trump says “it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president”
  • Speaking of that deal, we’ll tell you what it’s really about
  • While Trump brags about executions and attacks our allies, he’s also been melting down over losing the Nobel Peace Prize, and he’s now also attacking Norway
  • The White House announced the new press secretary, MAGA commentator and Trump Media adviser, Katie Zacharia
  • Updates on Hormuz, Iran, a suspected Houthi strike on Riyadh, and Trump saying the U.S. “may” join in on Saudi strikes
  • Vance, Vivek, and the midterm clown show
  • A mass shooting in Erie, PA

Yesterday, we reported extensively on Trump’s announcement that Russia would “immediately” supply 300,000 tons of diesel, another 500,000 tons in November, a million tons after that, and eventually 3 million more “based on the condition of their Diesel Refineries.” Leaving for Syracuse yesterday, Trump said he wanted “to thank President Putin.”

We gave detailed analysis here yesterday about why Trump’s announcement is not only traitorous, but a sham designed to pretend he’s doing something to help oil costs while removing sanctions on Russia, funding the Russian war machine, and trying to push Ukraine to surrender.BREAKING: The Truth About Trump’s Oil Deal With PutinBREAKING: The Truth About Trump’s Oil Deal With PutinBen Meiselas and MeidasTouch Network·Oct 9Watch now

But I can break down some quick facts now. Let’s do some basic math. Diesel runs around 7.5 barrels per ton, so the first tranche is supposedly 2.2 million barrels. The U.S. uses about 4 million barrels of distillate a day, which means that’s about half a day’s worth. Bill Browder put it at 15 hours. Some analysts have put it at even less. When added up, the entire 4.8 million tons Trump promised adds to roughly 9 days of U.S. demand, and that assumes Russia even has the surplus, which it doesn’t appear to have. Poland’s foreign minister noted that Russia has fuel shortages even in Moscow and that Ukraine has damaged about half its refining capacity.

So what’s the deal with this? Well, that line about the “condition” of Russia’s refineries in Trump’s post is the tell. A Ukrainian official, via Axios, said that Witkoff and Kushner threatened to cut off intelligence sharing with Ukraine if Kyiv kept striking Russian refineries. A U.S. official denied the threat was made. Who do you trust?

Zelenskyy offered to stop hitting refineries if Russia stopped hitting Ukraine’s energy grid. Seems fair. Not to Trump. The Trump regime demanded a unilateral halt, and Zelenskyy said hell no. Now, Russia’s refineries are apparently part of an American deal. Browder laid out 3 ugly results: leverage to threaten Ukraine, a pretext for insider business with Russia, and a door to more sanctions relief for Putin.

Ben also pointed out a legal issue. The Ending Importation of Russian Oil Act, passed in 2022, allows the president to lift the ban only if Russia has agreed to withdraw from Ukraine and poses no immediate threat to NATO. Neither condition has been met. The U.S. has now authorized these imports through April 2027.

Zelenskyy, whose negotiators were meeting in Miami with Witkoff and Kushner when Trump made the announcement, said that his team was used “as a smokescreen” and called it a “weak decision.” The Ukrainian delegation left Miami and canceled the second day of talks. A bipartisan Senate delegation led by Sen. Roger Wicker was in Ukraine at the time, talking about implementing tougher sanctions.

This is a pattern with the Trump regime, isn’t it? Distract a party to a negotiation with talks, then attack them when their guard is down. We’ve seen it with Iran. Now, we’re seeing it with Ukraine. It shows the world that the U.S. under Trump is not a good-faith actor.

Russia responded with 5 glide bombs on residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia, killing at least 12, including 3 children. Ballistic missiles followed on Kyiv. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Russian strikes killed over 80 Ukrainian civilians in 2 days and announced that EU foreign ministers plan to approve their biggest sanctions package of the war Monday. Ukraine hit back too, striking the Samara oil pumping station a third time and setting the Novoshakhtinsk oil terminal in Rostov on fire.

On Fox & Friends, Rachel Campos-Duffy, wife of Trump Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, spread false and shameful Russian propaganda, claiming Ukraine has killed “a million kids on the Russian side” and called Zelenskyy an “ingrate” who keeps blowing up refineries “ahead of the midterms.” The new White House press secretary nodded along. These are sick, sick people.

The receipts are endless. At the UN in 2025, Trump said NATO countries buying Russian energy were “funding the war against themselves.” He put a 50% tariff on India over Russian oil. Senate Republicans posted as recently as July 28 that targeting those who buy Russian oil “will crush Putin’s ability to fund his war.” Marco Rubio in 2022: “Stop importing Russian oil.” Just take a look at these receipts we’ve compiled:Trump’s Nobel Meltdown Continues

We reported yesterday about the Nobel Peace Prize going to Navi Pillay, the South African anti-apartheid jurist, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, former ICC judge, and former president of the Rwanda tribunal. Trump posted a rant claiming that nobody had heard of her other than the fact that she “hates Israel,” that he should have won “8 Nobel Peace Prizes,” and that the award is “an indelible stain on Norway.” At 5 AM he was at it again, misspelling it “Noble” Peace Prize.

It was still on his mind outside the White House just moments ago. He claimed, “I stopped China and I stopped Taiwan,” he called Pillay “a person that nobody ever heard of” who is “very anti-Israel,” and declared, “There’s something wrong in Norway.” He claims he settled “Israel and Iran.” Maariv reports his regime was pushing Israel to strike again before the midterms. He says Russia-Ukraine is moving “at breakneck speed.”

First off, I bet Republicans are cringing that this is Trump’s biggest concern just weeks before the midterms. He spent at least 10 minutes ranting about this at his rally last night in Syracuse.

Secondly, nothing says “I deserve the Nobel Peace Prize” quite like threatening the country where it’s awarded. Or bombing a little girls’ school. Or threatening all your allies. Or funding Russia’s war machine so they can continue to kill Ukrainian civilians. Objectively, this is a disgraceful individual.SubscribedHurricane Isaias

Trump skipped the Alabama-Georgia game because of the storm and instead “quickly called a Big Rally” in Clarksville, Tennessee. He said “we think we have” the hurricane “under control,” then walked away when asked for a message to people in its path.

At the same time, the National Hurricane Center warned of a life-threatening storm surge, with sustained winds of 100mph and an 83mph gust recorded in Panama City Beach. As of this morning, around 925,000 customers across Florida, Alabama and Georgia were without power.I had to share this with you before the day ended.Ben Meiselas and MeidasTouch Network·12:00 AMI had to share this with you before the day ended.

The box just arrived: WTF America, the book I wrote with my brothers. I opened it with my daughter, Ximena, and it brought me so much joy.

DHS’s Bribes

Bloomberg reports the regime is offering migrant children as young as 5 years old $3,000 to voluntarily leave the country, expanding an earlier $2,500 offer for unaccompanied minors 14 years and older. Lawyers say some kids are being pressured to decide on the spot, sometimes without a lawyer, potentially giving up asylum rights.Hormuz, Iran, and Riyadh

About that “TOTAL CONTROL” of the Strait of Hormuz…

Iranian state media reports the IRGC is warning ships to stick to designated routes, satellite imagery from today shows just 2 large vessels crossing, and Iran has been striking tankers off the UAE and Qatar. Daily rates for very large crude carriers have soared from around $30,000 to about $1.5 million, adding roughly $33 a barrel in shipping alone. OilPrice.com reported that Kpler’s Michelle Brohard suspects some Gulf producers are quietly paying Iran tolls for safe passage, something we’ve been saying for weeks.

As I said earlier, Maariv reports the U.S. urged Israel to strike Iran unilaterally so Trump wouldn’t take the political hit before the midterms, until Israel’s military chief warned it could affect their own elections. After Rubio’s “civilizational” speech in Athens, Iran’s parliament speaker invoked Roman emperor Valerian, captured by Persia in 260 AD, and warned, “you will kneel.”

And Riyadh’s airport was evacuated after another suspected Houthi missile strike. Saudi authorities still haven’t said much. Trump said this morning that the U.S. “may” join in on strikes against the Houthis.The Midterm Clown Show

Did you catch JD Vance yesterday in Ohio? He has all the charisma of watching paint dry. And like all of them, he just lies. All the time. He told voters that Vivek Ramaswamy “saved billions and billions of dollars at DOGE.” Putting aside the fact that DOGE was a complete disaster and did nothing more than steal Americans’ data for the oligarchs, Vivek left DOGE literally on day one. Vance also complained that all Democrats want to talk about is men in women’s sports. That’s kinda all you talk about, dude. He also said “America belongs to those who love it,” right as Trump was doing an oil deal with Putin.Tragedy in Erie

And in Erie, Pennsylvania, 9 people, including the suspect and 2 children, are dead following a mass shooting and an hours-long standoff. This is still developing. Our hearts are with Erie.

That’s today’s news roundup. There’s more to come throughout the day.

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Trump Melts Down Over Nobel Prize, Hegseth Faces Impeachment Calls Over Public Execution, ICE Surge Empties California Towns, Aaron Parnas, aaron parnas new headshotright, Oct. 10, 2026. A president threatening an ally over a prize, a Pentagon turning an execution into content, and the backlash building against both.

Trump spent Friday night raging at Norway over the Nobel Peace Prize, the backlash to Hegseth’s plan to livestream an execution is now reaching the Vatican and fueling an impeachment push, and ICE is tearing through California’s farm towns. There’s a lot to get through, so I’ll keep this short.

With the midterms just over three weeks away, I want to let you in on what’s coming. We’re likely going to be hitting the road and traveling to swing states ahead of Election Day, talking to voters, covering the races that will decide control of Congress, and bringing you the stories you won’t see anywhere else. And that’s just the start. We have more planned for the stretch run, and I can’t wait to share it with you. If there is a candidate you want on the platform, let me know!

Now, let’s get into today’s news.

Trump Rages at Norway After Losing Nobel Peace Prize, Calls Decision an “Indelible Stain”

Trump lashed out at Norway after the Nobel Peace Prize went to former ICC judge Navi Pillay instead of him. At a campaign rally in Syracuse, New York, Friday night, Trump spent about 10 minutes railing against the decision, calling it “disgraceful and embarrassing.” He declared it “an indelible stain on the country of Norway” and warned, “We will not forget, Norway, that you didn’t give this prize.” Trump then followed up with a nearly 600-word Truth Social post just before midnight, claiming the prize had been “forever discredited” by “Radical Ideologues” who are “Enemies of Civilization.” Norway’s government doesn’t actually award the prize, which is chosen by an independent committee. Trump has previously pressured Norwegian leaders directly over the award, including calling the country’s finance minister and texting its prime minister.

Trump dismissed Pillay as a “mystery person” and claimed she “very obviously, hates Israel.” He said he knew “nothing about this woman” and that no one else had ever heard of her either. In reality, the 85-year-old South African jurist is a former UN human rights chief who led the international tribunal investigating the Rwandan genocide and defended anti-apartheid activists. She also served as an ICC judge and chaired a UN commission that concluded Israel committed genocide in Gaza, a finding Israel rejects. Trump also took a swipe at the United Nations, saying it was “of no help” in any of the wars he claims to have settled. Pillay herself joked when she learned of her win that if the crowd clapped a little more, she “may share this prize with Trump.”

Trump repeated exaggerated claims that he “settled 8 Wars” and should have won eight Nobel Prizes. He wrote that he is “about to settle, or win, two more,” pointing to Iran and Russia-Ukraine, even as he wages an eight-month war against Iran. At his rally, he also claimed without evidence that he prevented wars between North and South Korea, Japan and North Korea, and China and Taiwan. Some of the conflicts Trump says he resolved are still ongoing, while others were ended largely by other parties. Trump wrote that ending any one of them, particularly between Pakistan and India, “would be far more than necessary to win the Nobel Prize.” He concluded, “In actuality, I should have won 8 Nobel Peace Prizes, not just 1.”

The Nobel Committee stood firm, and experts called Trump’s reaction “bullying.” Committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes said the panel is independent of the Norwegian government and honored Pillay for leading the way toward “a more comprehensive global legal order.” The head of the Peace Research Institute Oslo said the ICC sanctions imposed the same day Pillay won “underscores exactly why this award matters,” calling it “a brave decision by the Committee, and a worryingly bullying reaction.” Pillay dedicated her award to survivors of war crimes and criticized threats against the ICC as attempts to weaken international justice. Last year’s winner, María Corina Machado, gave Trump her medal in January, but the committee said the prize “cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred to others.” The award remains one Trump has publicly chased every year of his presidency.

About 2,500 people protested Trump in Syracuse ahead of his campaign rally for New York GOP gubernatorial nominee Bruce Blakeman. Demonstrators packed Clinton Square, less than a mile from the rally, holding signs reading “Impeach” and “This Orange isn’t welcome in Syracuse.” Syracuse Mayor Sharon Owens joined the crowd and called for ICE to be dismantled, while state Sen. Rachel May noted that several local Republicans skipped Trump’s event, calling it “cowardice.” Around 1,500 protesters then marched toward the rally venue as Trump’s motorcade arrived, before police, some in riot gear, stopped them at barricades two blocks away. Attendees included veterans, retirees, and teachers who spoke about cuts to Social Security, Medicare, SNAP, and education, with one Army veteran saying Trump is “putting the Constitution in the shredder.” One organizer said the turnout gave people hope, adding that the administration “has made people feel small, alone. But today doesn’t seem lonely.”

Hegseth Faces Growing Impeachment Push as Livestreamed Execution Plan Blindsides the Army and Sparks Bipartisan Outrage

Hegseth’s plan to livestream the Fort Hood shooter’s execution caught the Army and Pentagon completely off guard. Three sources told CNN that many officials first heard the idea when Hegseth floated it in an interview with far-right podcaster Jack Posobiec aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. Hegseth, acting Army Secretary Adam Telle, and Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell then decided that “public” would mean a livestream, and the Pentagon confirmed it before key details were worked out. Officials are still scrambling over basic questions, including whether soldiers can refuse to take part and how to hide the shooters’ identities. Asked whether Nidal Hasan had any final requests, Hegseth replied: “Don’t care. We’ll see him on Dec. 3.”

Troops and veterans are warning the plan could cause lasting harm to the soldiers ordered to carry it out. A specific unit has already been selected for the firing squad, and officials say they are weighing the psychological toll on those involved. One Army officer with multiple Middle East deployments told CNN that making troops shoot a man in a wheelchair on camera would cause “irreparable” generational harm. Another source noted that Hasan, who is partially paralyzed, will be “immobile and put up like a target.”

Pope Leo XIV declared the death penalty “inadmissible” just days after the Pentagon announced plans to livestream the Fort Hood shooter’s execution. In a post on X marking the World Day Against the Death Penalty, the Pope said capital punishment is “an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” He argued that justice and public safety can be achieved through effective detention systems that still leave room for redemption. His message came a day after the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, called the planned livestream “truly incomprehensible” and said it is “unacceptable to turn death into a spectacle.” The head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Paul Coakley, also condemned the plan as “a barbaric promotion of a culture of death.” Nidal Hasan’s execution by firing squad is scheduled for December 3, though further legal proceedings could delay it.

The backlash is bipartisan, with Republicans joining Democrats in condemning the plan. Sen. Mark Kelly called for Hegseth to be removed “immediately,” comparing the livestream to public executions carried out by Iran and the Taliban. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis called it “beyond disgusting,” while Sen. Chris Murphy asked whether Hegseth was “mimicking ISIS executions.” In Utah, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson called the plan “deeply disturbing,” and Gov. Spencer Cox shared a post calling it barbaric. Sen. John Curtis urged Hegseth to reconsider, though Sen. Mike Lee has previously called for public executions himself.

Democrats are now uniting around impeaching Hegseth if they win the House next month. While Hakeem Jeffries and party leaders remain wary of a third Trump impeachment, many Democrats see Hegseth as a safer and more urgent target over his handling of the Iran war. Rep. Melanie Stansbury called him “a dangerous war criminal” and said his removal should be a top priority, and even Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet, who represents a Trump-won district, said she is open to it. The effort could be bipartisan: Republican Rep. Thomas Massie has filed an impeachment resolution that the House will be forced to vote on after the midterms, and top Armed Services Democrat Adam Smith has signaled he could support it. Only two Cabinet secretaries have ever been impeached in U.S. history.

ICE Surge Turns California Farm Towns into Ghost Towns as Agency Quietly Separates Children from Their Parents

A sudden surge in ICE arrests has swept California’s San Joaquin Valley, with at least 100 people detained in just three days. A local activist who monitors the ICE office in downtown Fresno says the number of vans bringing in detainees has jumped from a couple per day to 10 to 15. The crackdown follows an August appeals court ruling that lifted an injunction barring Border Patrol from conducting indiscriminate sweeps in the region. ICE refused to confirm the operation, citing “operational security.” State Assemblymember Esmeralda Soria dismissed federal claims that the arrests are “targeted enforcement” as “a flat lie.”

Entire communities are now living in fear, with workers staying home and parents afraid to pick up their kids from school. In the farm town of Mendota, a lawful permanent resident said agents stopped him and demanded his papers simply “because I’m Latino,” describing the streets as empty “like a ghost town.” He said only people with documents are picking up children from school because other parents are too afraid to leave home. In Fresno, the family of Luis Arreguin, a 54-year-old who has lived in the U.S. for 49 years, held an “ICE memorial” after he was arrested on his way to work. His daughter said the family was told to say their goodbyes through partitioned glass, and they still don’t know where he is being sent.

Meanwhile, an off-duty ICE agent from Texas was shot and arrested in Fresno after allegedly assaulting a 72-year-old man and his daughter. Police say a woman found agent David Gonzalez asleep on her lawn early Friday, and when her father woke him up, Gonzalez appeared “intoxicated and agitated” and attacked them both. The father, who legally owned his gun, shot Gonzalez once and is not facing charges. Gonzalez was charged with felony assault and vandalism, and police did not say why he was in Fresno. Fresno City Council President Nelson Esparza responded that ICE is operating beyond its legal authority and “the people of Fresno are paying the price.”

A Mother Jones investigation found that ICE is once again separating immigrant children from their parents, this time far from the border. Agents have been labeling children “unaccompanied” even when they were arrested alongside a parent, then sending them into federal shelters and foster care. In one case, ICE pulled an 11-year-old Venezuelan boy from his father’s arms at midnight, and his family couldn’t find him for days. Interior referrals, once just 3 to 5 percent of cases, now make up about 20 percent or more, and average stays in custody have jumped from about one month to roughly six. When the boy was finally deported months later, no one told his mother when he would arrive, and he was left waiting alone on the side of the road outside the airport in Venezuela. This is what happened in New Jersey:

Other news:

Zelensky slammed Trump’s diesel deal with Putin as “a weak decision of strong partners.” He called the agreement an “investment in a war that must be ended, not prolonged,” and urged the U.S. and Europe to send strong signals aimed at limiting Russia’s ability to wage war. The announcement landed just as a top Ukrainian delegation arrived in Miami for peace talks with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. “In this exact moment when our team is talking to the American team in Florida, the US President has a conversation with Kremlin leader,” Zelensky said. Hours after Trump’s announcement, a Russian attack on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region killed 17 people, including three children. That came a day after a Russian strike on a bus stop in eastern Ukraine killed more than 30.

Hurricane Isaias slammed into the Florida Panhandle overnight, knocking out power to more than 900,000 people across the Southeast. The storm made landfall near Destin late Friday as a Category 2 hurricane with 105 mph winds before weakening to a post-tropical cyclone early Saturday. Florida and Alabama were hit hardest, with more than 436,000 outages in Florida and over 316,000 in Alabama. Forecasters warn the biggest remaining threat is flash flooding across southern Alabama, the Panhandle, and southwest Georgia, and Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey cautioned that spinoff tornadoes are possible. Ron DeSantis said no search and rescue requests had come in, calling it “cautiously, a good sign,” and no deaths had been reported as of Saturday morning. Isaias arrived as the latest first Atlantic hurricane on record, a full month later than the previous record set in 2002 and 2013.

The FDA is quietly moving to let some of the world’s most toxic chemicals be added directly to food without a safety review. A loophole called the “threshold of regulation” exemption currently allows non-cancer-causing chemicals in food packaging at very low levels, and the new proposal would expand it to ingredients added straight into food, like flavorings and preservatives. Experts warn that many hormone-disrupting chemicals, including some PFAS “forever chemicals,” can cause harm at levels far below the threshold. The existing loophole has already backfired: after the rocket fuel chemical perchlorate was approved for grain bags, levels in kids’ cereal rose, raising concerns about brain development and lower IQs in children. The expansion was buried inside a rule RFK Jr. publicly celebrated as “closing” a different food safety loophole, leading advocates to accuse him of deception. Consumers would have no way of knowing whether a product contains these exempted chemicals.

Kash Patel is seeking a no-bid contract to have UFC trainers teach FBI agents hand-to-hand combat. According to an FBI document released in September, Patel wants a one-year “sole source” deal with Dana White’s UFC, bypassing the normal competitive bidding process. The FBI called the UFC “uniquely qualified” to train agents in striking, grappling, and weapon defense, but the contract’s value was redacted. White is a longtime friend of Trump, who hosted a UFC event on the White House South Lawn in June for his 80th birthday. Patel attended that event and previously brought UFC fighters to Quantico for a training seminar in March. The move follows other no-bid contracts under Trump, including one to a firm tied to a Trump donor whose Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool repair turned the water green with algae.

Nine people, including two children, were reportedly killed in a mass shooting and hours-long standoff in Erie, Pennsylvania. Police were called to Perry Street around 5 p.m. Friday after witnesses saw a man firing a gun before he entered a home. Two women were found dead in the street, and more victims were found inside the house. The suspect was also found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, though it is unclear whether he is included in the reported death toll. Erie Police Chief Rick Lorah said “there are no words that can adequately express the magnitude of the loss of life,” and officials say there is no ongoing threat to the public as investigators work to determine a motive.

PepsiCo is raising prices on Doritos, Ruffles, SunChips, and some sodas as rising costs and weak sales squeeze the company. The company blamed higher prices for fuel, aluminum, and farm commodities, and said the increases will be in the single digits. PepsiCo had used a $178 million tariff refund, issued after the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s global tariffs, to offset costs, but that money won’t carry into future quarters. The company cut its full-year earnings forecast as North American snack volumes stayed flat and beverage volumes fell 2%. The CEO admitted, “We don’t feel good about the beverage business.” PepsiCo had already cut prices by up to 15% earlier this year after years of steep hikes drove shoppers away.

A federal judge ordered the Kennedy Center to hand over more financial records as the DOJ fights to keep Trump’s role secret. The DOJ has invoked executive privilege to block questions about Trump’s involvement in running the arts center, where he installed loyalists and was elected board chairman. During a deposition this week, a DOJ lawyer even told the center’s executive director not to answer what Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said to him. The lawsuit was filed by Rep. Joyce Beatty, a board member who is fighting Trump’s plan to close the center for two years. She already won a court order forcing Trump’s name to be removed from the building. Legal experts say the privilege claim is highly unusual, since Trump is acting as the chair of a nonprofit board, not as president.

D.C. election officials asked the National Guard to stay away from ballot drop boxes after troops were spotted standing next to one. Residents complained after Guard members were seen beside a drop box in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood, the same day the District’s 55 drop boxes opened for the midterms. The D.C. Board of Elections said it is addressing the concerns directly and requested limits on where troops can be stationed near voting locations. Deploying troops near polling places violates federal criminal law, though it is unclear whether these soldiers were posted there or just passing through on patrol. The D.C. Joint Task Force said troops are explicitly directed not to monitor or secure polling locations and that it is addressing the incident. Nearly 3,000 National Guard troops are currently deployed across the city.

A man named Hitler Mussolini Simeon Flores was just elected mayor of a remote district in Peru. The 45-year-old freight transportation businessman won the race in Queropalca, in Peru’s Andean Huánuco region, and will take office on January 1. Running with the left-wing Ahora Nación party, he won 229 of 663 votes, narrowly beating a far-right candidate who received 204. Flores had been a member of the party of Peru’s right-wing president, Keiko Fujimori, until last year. Surprisingly, he isn’t the first politician named Hitler to win office in Peru. A doctor named Hitler was elected to Congress in 2021, and in 2018 another Hitler won a mayor’s race after campaigning as “the good Hitler.” 

Nine people were killed in a shooting in Erie, Pennsylvania, and officials say every death occurred before police arrived. Officers reached the scene within minutes of a ShotSpotter alert Friday night, and no shots were fired after they got there. Officials say the shooter is dead and there is no ongoing threat to the public, though they have not said whether the shooter is included in the death toll. When officers first arrived, they had limited information, including whether the gunman was still inside or posed a continuing danger. Gov. Josh Shapiro said he spoke with Erie Mayor Daria Devlin and offered his administration’s “full support,” writing, “My heart breaks for this family.”

Portugal suspended Cristiano Ronaldo and opened disciplinary proceedings after he walked out on the national team. The 41-year-old left the team’s camp during the international break in a dispute with new coach Jorge Jesus over his lack of playing time. Ronaldo played only in Portugal’s first Nations League game, and after he left, his replacement Gonçalo Ramos scored three goals as Portugal won every match to reach the quarterfinals. Under federation rules, a player who abandons the team without justification faces a suspension of one to six months plus a fine. Ronaldo apologized in a long Instagram post to his 679 million followers, writing that “actions must have consequences.” He also promised fans “one or more farewell matches.”

The death toll from Isaias has risen to at least four as the storm breaks apart over Alabama. Two people died in Florida’s Escambia County, one crushed by a falling tree and another found in a closed garage with a running generator, and two more died in Alabama, including one after a tree fell on a Birmingham home. Nearly 700,000 customers across five states remain without power, including more than 420,000 in Florida. About 10 million people from Florida to Virginia are still under flood alerts, with some areas already seeing more than a foot of rain. Ron DeSantis warned residents not to run generators indoors and said deaths often happen in the days after a storm. Still, one local sheriff said, “It could have been a lot worse.”

A New Orleans deputy who handcuffed a journalist was disciplined, but only for arguing with a court official, not for the arrest itself. Deputy Herschel Green handcuffed WWL investigative producer Danny Monteverde, and another deputy cuffed the station’s attorney, after they refused to leave a public courthouse hallway in July. They were there to cover the indictment of Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill and to object to the judge closing the courtroom, since state law requires indictments to be returned in open court. An internal report found Green violated professionalism rules only for a heated argument with the court’s administrator, who objected to him parading the handcuffed journalist past waiting media. The report did find “deficiencies” in planning, training, and supervision, and said handcuffing should not be used for “verbal disagreement or passive refusal.” The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press called the handcuffings “outrageous.”

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance 

 

U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsPolitico Poll, ‘Ship has sailed’: New poll shows even an end to the war or lower gas prices may not save Republicans, Erin Doherty and Jessie Blaeser, Oct. 10, 2026. A new Politico Poll shows most Americans, especially Democratic and undecided voters, would not be moved even if Trump ended the Iran war or brought down gas prices.

Republicans are running out of ways to reverse their gloomy midterm prospects.

The Politico Poll finds most Americans see no clear way for the party to regain the advantage as the election reaches its final weeks, with even Republican voters skeptical that President Donald Trump could pull off a last-minute move that could shake up the campaign. And majorities of voters say they would not be more likely to vote Republican even if Trump were to pull off a major political feat before November — like announcing the Iran war was over, bringing the price of gasoline down by $1 or creating 100,000 new jobs.

This article is part of an ongoing project from Politico  and PF Global, an independent polling company headquartered in London, to measure public opinion across a broad range of policy areas.

That’s especially true of Democratic midterm and undecided voters: No matter the scenario or how significant the accomplishment, both groups hardly moved, the poll shows.

Voters’ perception of Trump’s actions and the economy are largely baked — a worrying sign for the GOP staring down an increasingly difficult landscape.

Hopium Chronicles, We’re Seeing Strong Turnout Among Voters Of Color, Slava Ukraini!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 11, 2026. Early in person voting kicks off in North Carolina this week and in more than twenty states over the next ten days.

Happy Sunday everyone. I’m really enjoying the stories of all the ways people in this remarkable community are busting their butt to vote early, and working the early vote in their networks, families, and organizations. In the next ten days more than twenty states turn on early in person voting including Alaska, Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin. Tens of millions are going to be voting soon. It is going to be very exciting to see, and we need to keep working it all.

My main message to you today is just as we are all planning on voting early it’s time now to make the call on where you are going to make your final investments of the cycle. Everyone should plan on having all your money spent by October 25th for money that comes in after that just gets hard to spend strategically. While we have hit important fundraising goals this cycle, and raised now more than $6.5m for our battleground candidates and party committees, we still have some critical goals I hope we can hit before October 25th - together.

Note that we have added Adam Hamilton of Kansas to our Winning the Senate Fund -- for it is now clear that yes we now have a real shot at winning a Senate seat there for the first time in nearly 100 years!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

To help inform your final decision making I encourage you to spend some time with our library of battleground candidate and state party leader interviews this long weekend. For watching these interviews will remind you that one of the central reasons we are closing strong is that we have a remarkable set of leaders who have stepped up to run and fight for their country this cycle. The candidates we’ve met are passionate, committed, inspiring, and determined to win and make things better for their communities. You can hear it in their voices and see it in their ads. For as we’ve been discussing the American people have once again put their faith back in us and our candidates after the extraordinary abandonment and betrayal of Trump, MAGA and the oligarchs these past two years. And now we must win, decisively, and start the hard work of making things better.

As we’ve been discussing (here, here) if anything the polling and news environment got worse for Republicans this week. There literally has been no good news for them, no good polling, and Trump keeps falling, growing more distant to the American people. Here’s Civiqs today, down to 33% approval, his lowest of the term.

We are also now starting to see encouraging data coming in from the early vote. While it’s early, and we cannot make broad judgements yet, let’s just look at this remarkable data from battleground Ohio. In 2022 at this point the two parties were even in the early vote. This year, today, Dems have a 14 point lead in a much bigger electorate…..

Our friend Tom Bonier just posted a new analysis on Bluesky that builds on some of the early vote data we’ve been discussing here this week (link to his thread). It’s encouraging stuff…….

 

us electios black early voting bonier 10 11 2026

us elections political id 10 11 26

PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: Rev. Adam Hamilton Drops The Holy Hammer And Humiliates JD Vance, Sarah Jones and Jason Easley, right, jason easleyOct. 11, 2026. Kansas Democratic Senate candidate Rev. Adam Hamilton called JD Vance’s attacks on him and his faith sad and pathetic, and said, “Let's compare our faith and the impact we're having on the world.”

Did anyone think that red-state Kansas would be a political hotbed during the 2026 midterm politicus usa logoelection?

The fact that Kansas is in play for Democrats, not just in the Senate election but also in House races and state races, is due to the level of economic damage, hardship, and pain that Donald Trump and his policies have brought down upon the Midwest.

In a normal midterm election where the out of power party is expected to do well, the Kansas US Senate race would not be expected to be closely contested.

Republicans are so worried about Kansas that they sent Vice President JD Vance to the state to campaign. When Vance was in Kansas, he drew a small crowd and got heckled, which revealed a lot about the mood toward Trump and Republicans in the state.

ABC This Week’s Jon Karl said to Hamilton, “The vice president came to campaign against you.”

Hamilton responded, “ I consider that a great compliment, that the second most powerful man in America came here to try to save Roger Marshall.”

It was when Hamilton was asked about Vance’s attacks on his religion that the Kansas Democrat destroyed the VP.Adam Hamilton Calls Out JD Vance As Desperate, Sad, and Pathetic

Karl asked Hamilton:  He really went after you. He did. T- he said, He called your views, "Left-wing radicalism dressed in the skin suit of our religion." Yeah. Saying that of your religion, of you, of your beliefs, that is not Christianity. This was the president, the vice president of the United States- Yeah ... taking aim at your religious practice. Yeah. Yeah. You're a pastor of a very large congregation. What did you make of that?

Rev. Hamilton answered:

 I thought it was a sign of desperation, and I thought it was really sad. It was pathetic. He doesn't know me doesn't know anything about my faith. He came in attacking... when did we start attacking people's faith? But beyond that, I just say I wake up every morning, I slip to my knees, I offer my life to Christ. I pray for the Holy Spirit to lead me. I read scripture. I carry the Bible with me everywhere I go. This is just, it is my defining story. I memorize it. I was reading the Psalms this morning, three of them, before I started my day. I not only seek to be a follower of Jesus, but to practice that in how I treat other people.

And I just would say examine my life, examine the way I've tried to live, and then I wanna see, Mr. Vice President, let's compare. Let's compare theology, let's compare our faith and the impact we're having on the world, and I just... I don't even wanna compare myself to him. I just wanna say I'm doing the best I can as a follower of Jesus Christ every day, and I thought it was a sad statement that the vice president of the United States would come here and attack the faith of the pastor of the largest church in the state of Kansas, the largest United Methodist church in the country.

I've written 36 books on theology, faith, and scripture, and I just think it was a sign of desperation.

Karl then played a quote from Vance’s speech:

Let's look specifically at at what he said. A- another quote, "Democratic pastor Adam Hamilton thinks it's a sin to be white and a sin to raise cattle and eat meat, but he's okay with supporting groups that spit on God-fearing Americans and mock everything that we hold dear. Ladies and gentlemen, that is not Christianity."

Hamilton said, “Yeah, so every single line of what you just read was a lie. It was a falsehood. It was like 180 degrees different from the reality. So there was no part of what he said was true.”

Karl then went point by point with Hamilton, “So- a sin to be white? “

Hamilton: “No, it's not a sin to be white.”

Karl: “A sin to raise cattle and eat meat?”

Hamilton: “No, it's not a sin to raise cattle and eat beef. So there was a sermon that I talked about repenting as changing the way you think about things. It's seeing... Literally, the Greek word is metanoia for repent. It means to s- have a change of mind that leads to a change of heart that leads to a change of behavior. And I talked about racism. And in the context of racism, part of what you're trying to do is see the world through somebody else's eyes. I never talked about repenting for being white. You can't find that in anything I've ever said. Or repenting for eating beef.”

Adam Hamilton is a moderate red-state Democrat who is considered anti-Christian by people like JD Vance because he isn’t racist or hateful toward women and trans people. Hamilton believes in kindness and helping others through service.

It takes all kinds of Democrats in the tent to win seats all around the country. Democrats are not a one-size-fits-all party.

The “fake Christian” here isn’t Adam Hamilton. It is JD Vance, and if Vance had any shame, he would have never come to Kansas and attacked a pastor for trying to help others.

Lance's Substack, Opinion: Trump’s Pathetic Effort At “October Surprise” Falls Flat, Lance F Rosen, right, lance rosenOct. 10, 2026. His Russia Diesel Purchase Will Only Kill Ukrainians;,A Quick Assessment Responding To Comments And Professor HCR’s Letter, Within Context Of The Midterms. 

The obvious point worth making is that the approximately two million tons of diesel fuel he’s says he's purchasing from his pal Vlad are “a drop in the bucket” according to most analysts, which will hardly affect prices at all or relieve shortages even marginally for at least three months, and even then not much. According to BBC (which is known to be the leak sheet for MI-6 on strategic issues) there are reasons to doubt Russia can even fill the order because of their overstretched refining capacity.

The whole thing is a fraud, a desperate attempt to prevent electoral mass defections from his midwestern red state voter base currently being hit the hardest by the consequences of his and Bibi’s insane war. It’s a bit too little too late there, and his lame attempts to appear presidential are making him look exactly like the dangerous escaped mental patient which he is.

Plus he has antagonized the MAGA Congressional leadership by reversing the bipartisan Lindsey O. Graham sanctions bill they just passed three weeks ago. Heather covered this today, but didn’t address the mechanism in the bill which allowed him to do it. Written into the bill was a section which gives him authority to void the sanctions if he can show it’s in the national interest. This is why the bill itself turns out to be an empty piece of pre-election performance art, and the Democrats should have waged a fight to take that section out, but didn’t.

More importantly, his own party is so furious at him for this and other reasons, that he is undermining his own strategy for challenging and overturning Democratic victories, because many of them secretly are prepared to lose both Houses if it helps get rid of him, and then start over from scratch. Trump has succeeded in performing an anatomical miracle, and screwed himself.

Not incidentally the administration’s leading consultant for implementing the Graham sanctions bill is the infamous law firm Sullivan and Cromwell, whose historically perfidious role in profiteering off of authoritarian regimes when they were run by the Dulles brothers, Allen and John Foster, is well documented. Sullivan and Cromwell were the registered financial agents for Nazi Germany and the Dulleses managed their US investment portfolio. They also incorporated the pro-Hitler organization “America First.”

There is no “national interest” here in Trump’s reversal of these sanctions. It is Trump acting to give a two billion dollar gift to Putin, all so he can send out a Truth Social post announcing “the diesel problem is solved,” in order to try and dupe his own voters and head off his own impeachment.

Americans will not benefit one iota from this “deal.” More Ukrainians will die as a result. Trump is aiding the war machine currently waging hybrid warfare against NATO member countries, an escalation just short of actions that would trigger article five and world war.

Meanwhile he claims to be negotiating with Iran and that the Strait is 100% open, both of which claims are about as real as his “greatest ever economy.”

This solves nothing. The tanker delivering the Diesel should be named after the Russian battleship “The Potemkin” because his so-called solution is as fake as a Potemkin Village. It only builds the case for Trump’s impeachment for aiding and abetting the enemy. Which in my view is 100% warranted, but will not happen if Jared Kushner’s lunch companion Hakeem Jeffries is installed as the next House Speaker by the corrupt corporate blob known as the Democratic National Committee.

Meanwhile Trump just solved a bunch of the Russian military's logistical problems, and is paying Putin to help blow Ukrainians to bits in exchange for a .005% uptick in the polls. In that sense, he is not just a Russian “asset” but a full-fledged agent.

He is now boxed in on Iran, prevented from launching the expected big pre-election attack that everyone and their mothers would recognize as a hastily contrived “October Surprise.” He has already conceded on that front saying he won’t do it, but this doesn’t preclude the possibility of Netanyahu hitting Iran first in order to give Trump a pretext to follow on.

Either way, Trump is going to have a surprise alright, but it’ll be arriving late, sometime in the early morning of November 4th.

He knows he is screwed. Therefore we should expect a series of wildly manic and reckless moves and provocations on his part over the next three weeks. He’ll also throw out some more bribe offers in exchange for votes, and count on his red state Governors and election fixers to do their worst. But as for him,

HE IS GOING TO DO THINGS INTENDED TO START RIOTS.

Such as more ICE shootings, possibly a larger scale invasion of Minnesota to arrest Somalian-Americans, his “boogeyman of the week.” We know his FBI tried to manufacture a terrorist incident by setting up a weapons sale sting with a Somali immigrant patsy they had under surveillance for two years. (Read HCR today) The Hegseth plan to livestream their execution of Nidal Hasan fits this pattern of Hitlerian domestic state terrorism.

There are more ops like that in the works, this I can say with relative certainty, but they need something spectacular in order to declare a national emergency to derail the vote, something much bigger than an incident.

Everyone who is cognizant can see it coming. It is like a hitter in baseball with a 3-0 count and the bases loaded. Unless they are Barry Bonds they are getting a fastball for a strike and sitting on it.

New York Times, Republicans Held Onto the Great Plains for Years. Now They’re Nervous, Mitch Smith, Oct. 11, 2026. Republicans have dominated the center of the country for a quarter-century. Now they face several tough races for Senate and governor.

Across the Great Plains, a region that Republicans have dominated for a generation, Democratic and independent candidates are polling well and expanding the electoral battlefield.

States that seldom swing could determine control of Congress. Governorships are up for grabs. Commercial breaks during college football games have become montages of attack ads.

The close races have turned the region’s challenges, like soaring diesel costs and the struggling cattle industry, into top-tier national issues. Democrats, who have long struggled to connect with rural voters, are now focused on turning angst over President Trump’s policies into support for their candidates. And Republicans are pouring advertising money into Kansas and sending Mr. Trump to stump in Oklahoma and Nebraska, proof that voters have real races on their ballots.

“They’re in trouble,” said Judy Vohland, a former Democratic Party chair in the conservative Central Nebraska county where Mr. Trump spoke last week. Otherwise, she asked, “Why the hell would you come out to Grand Island, Nebraska?”

Whether Republicans’ new vulnerability translates into losses is highly uncertain. The party has decades’ worth of voter good will and political infrastructure in the region, and Democrats have a tarnished brand and limited resources.

Still, Democrats and independents see an opening.

New York Times, Economic Pain and an Unpopular Trump Put G.O.P. on its Heels With Three Weeks to Go, Patricia Mazzei and Shane Goldmacher, Oct. 11, 2026 (print ed.). Inflation has hurt Americans at many levels: Farmers, truckers, consumers. It has also expanded the electoral map into what was safely Republican country just a few months ago.

Three weeks from Election Day, deep frustration over an economy that feels unworkable for Americans at most every level, from farmers to truckers to consumers, has expanded the map of competitive electoral contests into areas that seemed safely Republican just a couple of months ago.

Sustained high prices are putting at risk some of the constituencies, states and congressional districts that President Trump and Republicans won decisively in 2024. The widespread discontent has prompted candidates, parties and major G.O.P. fund-raising groups to shift their messages and ad spending in crucial races to try to move voters in the final days of the midterm campaign.

With control of the House, Senate and the vast majority of the country’s governor’s offices and legislatures at stake, Republicans are examining their own deteriorating internal polling, along with their experiences with voters, and say they are reassessing their odds and triaging the map.

On Friday, for example, the leading Senate Republican super PAC began to plunge another $30 million into advertising in Texas to try to save the state’s Senate seat for Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general.

Several races that are likely to determine the overall outcome on Election Day — the Maine and Michigan Senate elections, for example — remain tight. Control of the chamber could easily boil down to one or two of these razor-thin contests.

Still, Republican baggage is piling up, regionally and nationally. Mr. Trump is facing backlash to mass deportations in South Texas and South Florida. His party is bracing for anger at expanding data centers in states including Ohio and Michigan. In big farming states, record diesel prices have arrived just in time for harvest season. In colder northern states, spiking heating oil costs loom for families.

“When you’ve got a sitting president whose job approval rating is in the high 30s,” said Colin Reed, a veteran Republican strategist, “it makes it really difficult for any Republican candidate to compete and win.”

The White House is racing for stopgap solutions. Mr. Trump announced $90 payouts for millions of seniors on Medicare, and on Friday began sending $500 rebate checks he had promised for some Affordable Care Act customers. He has also promised a $5,000 check for every adult U.S. citizen if his party retains control of Congress. This week, in Nebraska — a typically solidly Republican state — Mr. Trump announced an executive order to loosen restrictions on the use of tax-free diesel on the roads.

On Friday, Mr. Trump said he would allow Russian diesel imports after years of sanctions, in an attempt to lower prices.

Mr. Trump’s unpopularity over his handling of the economy — one of his biggest strengths when he ran two years ago — is driving Republican troubles in a nationalized political environment.

The party still holds structural advantages over Democrats, including a Senate map with more contests in states that Mr. Trump won in 2024; redrawn congressional maps that made more seats favorable to the G.O.P.; and a wide financial lead, bolstered in part by Mr. Trump’s own powerful super PAC, MAGA Inc. In past elections, particularly when Mr. Trump has been on the ballot, some polls have underestimated his popularity.

Those advantages have provided little comfort to Republicans who see their candidates faltering in increasingly red corners of the nation.

The leading House Republican super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, all but ceded the first Republican-held seat of the election this week, moving money out of a district in Nebraska where Representative Don Bacon is retiring. Mr. Bacon occupies the most Democratic-leaning seat of any Republican in the House.

Politico Poll, Arizona Republicans Refuse to Move Past 2020 — And It’s Hurting Them in 2026, Samuel Benson and Andrew Howard, Oct. 10, 2026. The long shadow of 2020 still hangs over this swing state.

Arizona voters come and go at a polling location on primary election day, Tuesday, July 21, 2026, in Phoenix. | AP Photo/Ross D. FranklinBy In retirement, Craig Berland has a lot to look forward to. He lives in perpetually sunny Maricopa County, Arizona. He chairs the Republican Party in Arizona’s most populous and most affluent county. He hobnobs with the rich and famous on golf courses and in private hangars, funneling a career in an aerospace manufacturing company’s corner office into a retirement on private jets.

But Berland can’t stop thinking about 2020.

Too many people in his county, he says, are blinded by propaganda. “If they’re watching CNN and MSNBC, all they know is untruth,” he said. “They’ve never heard the truth about Covid-19. They never heard the truth about the 2020 election.”

To this day, Berland is convinced — convinced — that President Joe Biden’s victory in Maricopa County was fraudulent, and he wants everyone to know it. He doesn’t call himself an election denier; once, while dining at Mar-a-Lago, a reporter made the mistake of calling him such. “I said, ‘That’s just absolutely not true,’” Berland recounted. “I know for a fact that the 2020 election in Maricopa County was fraudulent, when it comes to mail-in ballots,” he told POLITICO Magazine, a claim that has been widely debunked.

Berland is hardly alone. Atop the Arizona ticket this cycle, Republicans nominated a string of candidates who called foul on the 2020 election or were actively involved in trying to subvert it. Rep. Andy Biggs, the GOP nominee for governor, challenged electoral results on Jan. 6, 2021 and was later subpoenaed in an Arizona probe. Secretary of State nominee Alex Kolodin — who, if he wins, would oversee the state’s elections — represented clients who challenged the results of the 2020 election, leading to discipline from the Arizona state bar, and filed lawsuits to try to overturn both the 2020 and 2022 elections. And Attorney General nominee Warren Petersen urged then-Vice President Mike Pence to delay certifying the electoral votes.

Where Berland deviates from his party is his eagerness to talk about it. The Republicans on the ticket hem and haw when asked about the 2020 election, saying they’d rather talk about the issues that matter now to Arizonans. Democrats, too, say they’d rather talk affordability and corruption — but can’t help but point out what their opponents said or did in 2020. And strategists on either side see a unilateral focus on 2020 as a millstone around their neck.

“I would be happy to never mention election denial again,” said Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, in an interview. “But it is a very real thing that still exists, and it’s almost a litmus test in Republican primaries here in Arizona.”

Biden won the 2020 election, and efforts to challenge that result have been repeatedly rejected in court, sometimes by judges appointed by President Donald Trump. Outside of the courtroom, serious investigations have yielded no substantive results: “There was no evidence of fraud in the 2020 presidential election on the magnitude necessary to shift the result in any precinct, let alone any state or the nation as a whole,” wrote former Judge Thomas B. Griffith, a George W. Bush appointee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, who investigated the stolen election claims alongside two other retired conservative jurors, two retired Republican U.S. senators and a former U.S. solicitor general. “Biden won.”

But the current occupant of the White House hasn’t let it go. Trump never conceded his loss in the 2020 race — not in Arizona, not anywhere — and in recent months, he reupped his crusade. In March, his administration subpoenaed 2020 voting records in Maricopa County, following an effort to investigate an election office in Georgia. In hearing after Senate confirmation hearing for Trump administration nominees this year, Democratic senators have asked whether Biden won the 2020 election — and nominees squirm and deflect, unwilling to cross their party’s leader. “We won the presidency three times,” Trump said triumphantly at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas in September.

The Bulwark, Ron Brownstein: Trump’s Collapse Is Unlike Anything We’ve Seen in Decades,  William Kristol, william bill kristol imdbright, Oct. 11, 2026. Trump’s midterm problem may be far worse than it was in 2018, and the warning signs are showing up in places Republicans never expected.

Bill Kristol and veteran political analyst Ron Brownstein examine Trump’s collapsing support among core MAGA voters, the surprising Senate races emerging in deep-red states, and how a Democratic wave could reshape the Supreme Court for decades.

The Bulwark, Focus Group Opinion: Republicans Thought Florida Was Safe. Then Everything Changed, Sarah Longwell with Kimberly Leonard, Oct. 10, 2026. Republicans Thought Florida Was Safe. Then Everything Changed.

Republicans have been on a long winning streak in Florida...but they might be playing defense in 2026...because they have one candidate who's REALLY into data centers, and another candidate running what's being called a 'Joe Biden Basement' campaign.

And the Democratic ticket may be one of the oddest couples in the history of politics, led by a former Republican Congressman (David Jolly) and a DSA-aligned state legislator (Angie Nixon). POLITICO's Kimberly Leonard joins Sarah to discuss whether Florida is back in the 'swing state' column in 2026.

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megyn kelly fox newsThe Daily with Sarah Jones via PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: ‘Pick Me’ Megyn Kelly Exploits the Women’s Movement While Destroying Other Women, Sarah Jones, right, sarah reese jonesOct. 10, 2026. Megyn Kelly, shown aboe in a file photo, is both a victim and a predator. But also, it’s way past time that we speak up to protect the movement and not allow it to be exploited by women who want to use it for their own gain.Megyn Kelly frequently defends men accused of heinous sexual acts.

politicus usa logoWhen the “Pick Me” enters the room, claiming the victim label she has denied to every other woman who has bravely come forward, it puts those of us who want to advance women’s rights at a disadvantage, and this is done on purpose. It’s a weaponization of decades of work by other women.

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Enter Megyn Kelly, to attack an alleged victim of a horrific gang rape.

Serial protector of predators Megyn Kelly has been making headlines in the last few days for her predictably stale and steeped in internalized misogyny insults about the Cornell 7 Jane Doe, including Kelly’s suggestion that Doe was “not the most attractive gal” and therefore “enjoyed it,” adding during an episode of The Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM that she’s "extremely beefy in her arms and legs.”

Kelly is on a crusade to protect the “boys” — just like she did with the Duggars, Epstein and Trump.

Yes, she’s that woman. The dreaded Pick Me, in an era when even Pick Mes have been left behind. Kelly seeks validation and approval from men by putting down other women, and that’s why in her mind the only sexual harassment that was real was her own.

She’s not like other girls.

After Jane Doe alleged that she was gang-raped by multiple Chi Phi fraternity members, Kelly actively sided with the seven men defendants to such an extent that she questioned the victim’s timeline, threatened to dox her, and made highly publicized personal attacks against both Jane Doe and her high-profile defenders.

Kelly went on to argue that she was never gang raped because she never put herself in that position. She says these things on her echo chamber of a YouTube, so no one can ask questions, but if we could, I’d ask her: ‘What position is that?’

How has she avoided places where women have been gang raped, including reporting on war zones, in an agent’s office and in backrooms of fast food joints? Does she never leave her house, and is this a good message to send to girls and women?

People are afraid to admit that something so awful could happen to them, and so they victim blame. If the victim did something to make this bad thing possible, then a person like Kelly can feel smug and safe by demeaning the victim for their own actions. But the truth is, bad things can happen to all of us. It’s a matter of luck that they haven’t happened to Megyn Kelly and instead of being grateful for that, she uses it to pump herself up and self-soothe with poisonous venom spat at someone who says she was gang raped.

Instead of blaming victims, she could tell boys and men that real heroes stand up for the humanity of others and say no to the leader. But Archie would never.

On this matter, Kelly is adamant that she is above a woman like Jane Doe, and therefore Jane Doe’s right to dignity is worthless. The inference is, she wasn’t raped and if she was, it’s her fault, and she also probably liked it because she’s unattractive.

Kelly is the woman who championed Donald Trump even after he mocked her after she asked a question he didn’t like, saying she had “blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever,” a remark widely interpreted as a crude insinuation about menstruation. Naturally, Trump denied that and later Kelly went on to cheer for him, as well as voting for him in 2020 and 2024.

Yes, she voted for an adjudicated rapist, because again: No one’s sexual misconduct experience is real, except hers.

Megyn’s argument has her suggesting that women can’t get raped if they want attention. For a lawyer, this argument is specious and reactionary, but Kelly worked in corporate law and business disputes where perhaps her inability to respect humanity was a bonus.

Rape is not an act of lust.

Like a good flying monkey, Kelly doesn’t stick to just attacking the victim. She goes for the blood of those defending the victim.

“Shut up and stick to singing,” Megyn said on her show to singer-songwriter and actress Olivia Rodrigo after Rodrigo defended Jane Doe. “You’re a know-nothing moron who doesn’t know what the f– you’re talking about... I liked you better when you were in front of a microphone singing your weird little depressing songs.”

Olivia Rodrigo probably doesn’t even know who Megyn Kelly is, let alone care about her antiquated, 1980s shaded opinion.

This is hardly new for Kelly, who whitewashed Epstein, saying he was “into the barely legal type, like, he liked 15-year-old girls” and “wasn’t into, like, 8-year-olds”.

That’s not the only time Kelly has made headlines with her rabid defense of predators. In June of 2015, I covered Kelly’s interview on Fox News with the Duggar family following the revelation of Josh Duggar’s past sexual molestation scandal. Her interview was so obsequious that she was accused of behaving like a defense attorney for the family, framing the parents as victims of “anti-Christian bias”.

This grotesque abuse of morality was brought to America by the woman who later claimed it was a “verifiable historical fact” that Santa Claus and Jesus were both white men, because of course there is always crossover with racism and sexism, both of which are used to prop up people who fear they can’t compete with everyone.

Megyn Kelly hates women so much that she can’t understand that not all of us judge each other based on appearances and not all of us go through life desperate for a man’s attention.

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Rape is about Power, Not Lust

Rape as an act of power, control, and aggression. It has nothing to do with the size of someone’s arms. It is not about desire. Research shows that gang rape frequently start with a de facto leader whose hostility incites the others.

One of the first elements present in rape is “‘hostile masculinity,’ which is characterized by distrust and resentment toward women in general,” Psychology Today reported.

“The assault becomes a way for men to prove themselves to one another, with the woman’s dehumanization and objectification becoming the foundation for that bonding,” Nicole K. McNichols Ph.D. wrote in Psychology Today.

Megyn Kelly spends her days pouring distrust and resentment of women into men’s brains. That is her whole persona.Kelly Believes She’s Above Other Women

Megyn Kelly as a persona was designed to feed Fox News to mostly male viewers and the women who want those male viewers’ attention. It’s slick, shiny skin, tight clothing, lots of makeup, and the thin veneer of objectivity bought with the network sneer that anchors use to suggest they are above it all.

This woman, who has made it her job to cast aspersions on the motives of other women and girls who come forward or are thrust into the limelight unwillingly after reports are made, expected everyone to believe her accusations of sexual harassment.

And she got it. We did believe her.

When Megyn Kelly ‘finally’ after a decade (according to her own timeline she’s imposed on Jane Doe) came forward about the sexual harassment she suffered via former Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes, I was the first to defend her and to explain that this also was not contained to Fox News, but rather it was everywhere in entertainment and media.

But for Megyn, it seems only her sexual harassment and assault are real.

She repaid that solidarity by abusing other girls and women who came forward. She’s still at it now, ten years later. The sexual harassment and assault are only real when they happened to her, and thanks for believing her, but she will never believe you.

As I wrote earlier, it’s not that feminists expect people to believe all women no matter what. That’s a strawman put up by anti-women rights agitators.

Feminists want women to be treated with dignity and to be believed when they first report something, enough to collect evidence, enough to not go after the alleged victim’s character as the first response. Women are not perfect, and yes some women do lie about sexual assault and harassment, but most do not. The research consistently shows that the rate of false reporting for rape and sexual assault is between 2% and 10%. That means most women are telling the truth. We want them treated accordingly.

Feminists want women’s reputations to matter as much as the accused, as in do not knee jerk smear and destroy a woman for coming forward. Investigate. Corroborate. And follow the evidence.

We keep seeing a certain kind of woman trying to exploit the labor of women who fought for all women, while they push down every other woman behind them.

New York Times, Justice Dept. Is Investigating TV Networks Over Trump Pool Coverage, David McCabe, Michael M. Grynbaum, Benjamin Mullin, Lauren Hirsch and Glenn Thrush, Oct. 11, 2026 (print ed.). Major TV networks were notified on Friday that the department was examining whether they violated antitrust laws when they suspended pool coverage of President Trump.

Justice Department log circularThe Justice Department is investigating whether the major television networks — ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Fox News — violated federal antitrust laws when the group briefly suspended their pooled coverage of President Trump, according to six people with knowledge of the department’s action.

Officials from the Justice Department contacted networks on Friday and demanded communications and materials related to the White House TV pool, the people said. The pool is a longstanding system where the networks share the responsibility of providing footage of the president and distributing it to other news outlets.

cnn logoLast month, the networks collectively suspended their pool footage of Mr. Trump for several days after the president barred CNN journalists from the White House grounds, which prevented CNN from participating in the pool. Video footage of some major events, including Mr. Trump’s greeting of President Xi Jinping of China, was not carried by any major news station.

In a statement on Saturday, a Justice Department spokeswoman, Emily Covington, described the five networks as having “proudly boycotted covering White House events.”

“Group boycotts among commercial competitors can violate the Sherman Act,” a core antitrust law, Ms. Covington wrote. “The Antitrust Division is simply investigating to determine whether these news organizations have violated the antitrust laws.”

The inquiry by the Justice Department is a profound escalation of the Trump administration’s ongoing battles with the White House press corps. It also follows a pattern of the Trump administration using the levers of government against its perceived foes in the media. The Justice Department has subpoenaed reporters from The New York Times and seized a laptop from a Washington Post journalist.

Officials at the Justice Department have discussed a potential investigation into the TV networks for at least a week, according to another person familiar with their deliberations. The investigation, which is still in its early stages, is being overseen by the department’s civil division, led by Stanley Woodward, the associate attorney general and a former White House lawyer.

In its letters on Friday, the Justice Department demanded copies of communications among network officials that concerned pool coverage of Mr. Trump, along with any communications about Mr. Trump’s revocation of CNN’s access to the White House grounds, according to two people with direct knowledge of the documents.

Organized boycotts can be considered anticompetitive if they are aimed at achieving commercial objectives, but not if their primary objective is political speech, said William E. Kovacic, a former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.

“The critical ingredient in successful antitrust cases is to demonstrate that there is unmistakably a commercial motive and that the commercial motive predominates,” Mr. Kovacic said. “And I don’t think they would ever be able to do that here.”

The administration’s latest skirmish with the media began when Mr. Trump, lamenting what he described as “purposely negative stories,” barred CNN, Politico and MS NOW from the White House on Sept. 18.

The three news organizations sued, calling the president’s action a violation of their First Amendment rights. The administration argued that access to the White House was a “privilege.”

A federal judge temporarily blocked the ban and restored the outlets’ access. But while CNN’s journalists could once again enter the White House campus, Trump administration officials continued to block the network from acting as the TV pool when the president travels on Air Force One.

The other major networks ended the suspension and resumed their own pool duties on Sept. 25. But on the days when CNN has been blocked, the TV pool has gone dark.

The collective action by the quintet of TV networks has irritated Mr. Trump. Last month, when the networks declined to show footage of some of his events with Mr. Xi, the president complained on social media that some news channels “refused to cover one of the Biggest and Most Beautiful Events to take place in many years.”

The Trump administration has previously turned to antitrust law to crack down on collective action by companies and nonprofits during Mr. Trump’s second term.

Last year, the Federal Trade Commission investigated whether a dozen advertising and advocacy groups violated antitrust law when they coordinated boycotts by advertisers who were seeking to avoid hateful online content. The ad companies ultimately settled with the F.T.C.

Antitrust law is aimed at protecting consumers from the negative consequences of companies amassing too much power and colluding to curb competition in the marketplace.

Members of the press corps have argued that access to the White House and their ability to cover the president’s events is an issue of First Amendment rights.

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Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Reporting: About that repealed UN General Assembly “Zionism is racism” resolution, Wayne Madsen, right, wayne madsen new observerOct. 11, 2026. Is it time to edit the original and adopt it again?

In 1975, the United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution that equated Zionism with racism. There was the typical hue and cry from Israel and their supporters in the West. But since the very inception of the UN, the General Assembly had consistently passed resolutions condemning Nazism, neo-Nazism, fascism, racial supremacy, and the glorification of Nazi ideology.

Just as South Africa was condemned for its system of racial supremacy — known as apartheid — Israel was cited for advancing Jewish privilege over Palestinians through land appropriation, demographic engineering, and legal distinctions between Jewish citizens and non‑Jewish citizens and people living under Israeli military occupation.

The 1975 UN Resolution 3379 (“Zionism is racism”) officially declared Zionism a form of racism and racial discrimination. This resolution was prompted by diplomats and government officials who believed that Zionism was nothing more than a racialized settler project. The resolution was adopted largely as a result of an alliances between Arab states and the Non‑Aligned Movement.

Seventy two nations voted for Resolution 3379. They were Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burundi, Byelorussian SSR, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, China, Congo (People’s Republic), Cuba, Cyprus, Czechoslovakia, Dahomey, Democratic Yemen, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, German Democratic Republic, Grenada, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Laos, Lebanon, Libya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukrainian SSR, USSR, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, and Yugoslavia.

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the Ford administration Henry Kissinger and the Gerald Ford administration exerted heavy diplomatic pressure on countries considering voting for Resolution 3379. Declassified State Department cables provide direct evidence of intense lobbying, particularly involving Mexico, Venezuela, and Jamaica. Kissinger also contemplated retaliatory measures against countries that voted in favor. Kissinger became known as a central figure in what became known as the Israel Lobby that was largely centralized in Washington, DC, New York, and Los Angeles.

A confidential State Department cable dated November 10, 1975 and drafted and approved by Assistant Secretary William D. Rogers was sent to U.S. Ambassador to the UN Daniel Patrick Moynihan and signed by Kissinger. It discussed last-minute efforts to persuade Mexico, Venezuela, and Jamaica to support postponement of the resolution. The cable reported that Mexico’s foreign minister had agreed to urge President Luis Echeverría to support postponement, but insisted that American pressure remain secret. The cable concluded that Washington’s lobbying efforts had been successful in obtaining certain assurances from Mexico City and should not be publicly acknowledged. Mexico nevertheless voted in favor of Resolution 3379.

The same November 10 cable sent to the American embassies in Mexico City was copied to the U.S. embassies in Caracas and Kingston. The same efforts applied to Mexico were also exerted on the other two countries. The cable states, “The same must hold true for Venezuela and Jamaica as well."

It was drafted and approved by Assistant Secretary William D. Rogers and transmitted under Kissinger’s name.

Moynihan’s October 1975 communications to Kissinger document another strategy: threatening to withdraw American support for the UN Decade to Combat Racism if Zionism were equated with racism. The United States also persuaded Western European governments to coordinate their positions. This was intended partly to influence African governments that supported the UN’s anti-racism initiatives.

A scholarly investigation of Mexico’s vote, published in Historia Mexicana, records Kissinger’s statement after Resolution 3379 passed: “We’re going to have to consider the votes individually before deciding what specific actions we’ll take toward various countries.” The study interprets this as an implied threat of retaliation, but concludes that the threatened U.S. government reprisals were never implemented.

Mexico also faced a tourism boycott organized by Jewish organizations outside the U.S. government following its affirmative vote.

U.S. Ambassador to Caracas Harry Shlaudeman informed Assistant Secretary Rogers that Venezuela’s foreign minister had confirmed Venezuela would support a motion to postpone the resolution. The cable explicitly reports that this assurance followed a telephone call involving the Venezuelan foreign minister and Venezuela’s ambassador to the United States. Venezuela ultimately abstained on the resolution itself.

Brazil is also an interesting case involving U.S. diplomatic pressure. A detailed historical investigation by Norma Breda dos Santos and Eduardo Uziel, published in Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional in 2015, reconstructs the episode using Brazilian and American diplomatic records.

On October 16, 1975, Brasília instructed its UN delegation to support the proposed Resolution 3379. Approximately one week later, an American Embassy diplomat approached Brazil’s Foreign Ministry to express Washington’s displeasure. The American démarche became public in Brazil, generating resentment over perceived U.S. interference. Brazilian officials increasingly viewed changing their vote as potentially appearing to submit to Washington’s demands. Brazil maintained its affirmative vote on November 10. It was largely public exposure of American pressure made a reversal of Brazil’s vote politically difficult.

Countries that voted no on 3379 were: Australia, Austria,Bahamas, Barbados, Belgium, Canada, Central African Republic, Costa Rica, Denmark,Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany (Federal Republic of), Haiti, Honduras, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Luxembourg, Malawi, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Swaziland, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States, and Uruguay.

Countries abstaining were Argentina, Bhutan, Bolivia, Botswana, Burma, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Lesotho, Mauritius, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Thailand, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Upper Volta, Venezuela, Zaire, and Zambia.

Three countries did not vote. They were Romania, a Warsaw Pact member that pursued an independent foreign policy; Spain, which was still under Francisco Franco’s government with Franco dying ten days later; and South Africa, then governed under apartheid. Romania's continuing diplomatic relationship with Israel gave Bucharest reasons to avoid endorsing a resolution that Israel strongly opposed. Spain's absence is more complicated because it supported other Palestine-related resolutions on the same day. In 1975, Spain had close relations with several Arab states but it had not yet established relations with Israel.

In 1974, the General Assembly rejected the credentials of South Africa's delegation because of the apartheid government's systematic racial discrimination. South Africa consequently could not participate in the 1975 General Assembly vote on Resolution 3379. Apartheid-era South Africa would most plausibly have voted against Resolution 3379 in November 1975. The principal reason is that South Africa and Israel had developed a relationship that Pretoria valued, particularly as international opposition to apartheid intensified. South Africa supported Israel during the 1973 Arab–Israeli War. A UN Special Committee report records that South African Defense Minister P. W. Botha offered assistance to Israel and that Pretoria facilitated financial transfers to Israel. Resolution 3379 itself referred to Israeli–South African relations. It recalled an earlier UN resolution condemning the relationship between South African racism and Zionism. Pretoria would therefore have been voting on a text that directly criticized its own international relationships.

The passage of 3379 occurred against the backdrop of a profound transformation in international power: the American defeat in Indochina, the 1973 Arab–Israeli War and subsequent oil embargo, the collapse of the Nixon presidency in August 1974, the rise of the Non-Aligned Movement, the expansion of the United Nations, and the increasing diplomatic influence of the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. Kissinger and Ford encountered an international organization whose membership, priorities, and political alliances had changed dramatically since its founding in 1945. This change in power politics within the UN was demonstrated in 1974 when Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat addressed the General Assembly. The PLO was also invited to participate in General Assembly proceedings as an observer.

Many African governments had spent years campaigning against apartheid South Africa and white-minority rule in Rhodesia and South West Africa. By placing Zionism within the same conceptual framework, the resolution's sponsors sought to appeal to existing anti-colonial solidarity.

One of the most revealing documents is a declassified conversation between Kissinger and Guyana’s foreign minister, Fred Wills, in early 1976. Wills complained that Moynihan’s confrontational diplomacy had alienated developing countries that might otherwise have compromised with Washington. He claimed that African and other developing-country delegations had explored procedural alternatives that could have defused the Zionism controversy, but that Moynihan had obstructed them. Wills also argued that the Non-Aligned Movement had previously resisted more extreme proposals, including attempts to expel Israel from the United Nations. With the United States and Israel currently seen as pariah nations within the UN, the 1970s-era proposals to expel the U.S. and Israel from the UN may gain renewed support.

A separate October 15 telegram, THE HAGUE 5257, documents an American diplomatic approach to the Netherlands. Dutch officials indicated agreement with Washington's opposition to the resolution. This establishes that the lobbying was implemented in at least some European capitals.

The repeal of UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 on December 16, 1991, was the product of an extraordinary convergence of geopolitical developments: the collapse of Soviet communism, the end of the Cold War, the American-led victory in the Gulf War, the diplomatic isolation of Saddam Hussein, and the opening of Arab–Israeli peace negotiations in Madrid. The most decisive factor, however, was the United States and Israel prioritizing the revocation of the 1975 resolution as a diplomatic priority. Washington was able to assemble a coalition during a chaotic period in international affairs that would have been almost unimaginable sixteen years earlier.

In 1991, 111 members of the UN voted to repeal 3379 with a mere 25 opposed. By September 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet government was seeking cooperation with Washington and reducing the ideological confrontation that had characterized Soviet foreign policy. Soviet Foreign Minister Boris Pankin publicly supported repeal of 3379, describing the need to remove ideological confrontation from the United Nations.

The Soviet Union voted for revocation, as did several former communist allies, including Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Albania. The resolution was repealed on December 16, 1991, just ten days before the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Unlike the Ford administration's largely defensive lobbying in 1975, the George H W Bush administration undertook an affirmative campaign to reverse the earlier decision. On June 29, 1990, Bush signed a congressional joint resolution calling for repeal and requiring periodic reports on diplomatic progress. On September 23, 1991, Bush addressed the General Assembly and explicitly demanded unconditional repeal of 3379:

“And I call now for its repeal.”

He argued that equating Zionism with racism challenged Israel’s legitimacy as a UN member and undermined the organization’s role in peacemaking. Bush had domestic political reasons to support repeal. Bush's repeal initiative was intended partly to improve strained relations with Israel and its American supporters during a dispute over $10 billion in housing loan guarantees. Secretary of State James A. Baker III made several unusually blunt statements about Israel, particularly over Israel's request for $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to house Jewish immigrants arriving from the collapsing Soviet Union. In May 1992, Baker told representatives of the American Jewish Committee that Israel had failed to honor an understanding reached in February 1991 concerning settlement expansion. At one point, Baker said about Israel’s supporters among Jewish-Americans, “Fuck the Jews. They didn't vote for us anyway.” The revocation of 3379 had quite a bit to do with the 1992 presidential election and Bush’s chances for re-election.

Voting to repeal 3379 were: Albania, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chile, Colombia, Congo, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Cyprus, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, Germany, Greece, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Latvia, Lesotho, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mexico, Micronesia, Mongolia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Romania, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, São Tomé and Príncipe, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Spain, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Thailand, Togo, Ukraine, USSR, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, Yugoslavia, Zaire, and Zambia.

The 25 countries voting against repeal of 3379 were: Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Brunei, Cuba, Democratic Republic of Korea, Djibouti, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

Countries abstaining were: Angola, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, India, Laos, Mauritius, Myanmar, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.

Countries not voting were: Bahrain, Chad, China, Comoros, Egypt, Fiji, Kuwait, Morocco, Niger, Oman, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Senegal, Togo, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Tanzania, and Vanuatu.

Two particularly noteworthy votes: India voted in favor of repeal, not abstention, and Turkey abstained rather than voting in favor.

Considering the world’s outrage at Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the West Bank, and south Lebanon, there is a plausible path to majority support in the UN General Assembly for a new resolution strongly condemning Israeli policies while also mentioning the politico-religious doctrine being used to justify the Israeli actions. In other words, condemning Zionism without actually naming it.

We can estimate how such a resolution would fare in the General Assembly based on two recent votes concerning Palestine, the September 2025 vote endorsing the New York Declaration supporting Palestinian statehood and a negotiated two-state settlement and the September 2026 vote allowing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to address the General Assembly remotely after the United States denied him a visa.

The vote count on the September 2025 resolution — Decision 80/506 — on the Palestine question and implementation of the two-state solution was 142 yes, 10 no, 12 abstentions, and 29 not voting. The yes votes were: Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Canada, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo (Republic), Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guinea, Guyana, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, ,South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname. Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Türkiye, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Tanzania, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen, and Zimbabwe.

Several notable affirmative votes were cast by France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Australia, Japan, and India.

Countries voting no were: Argentina, Hungary, Israel, Micronesia (Federated States of), Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Tonga, and United States.

Countries abstaining were: Albania, Cameroon, Czechia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Fiji, Guatemala, North Macedonia, Republic of Moldova, Samoa, and South Sudan.

Countries not voting were: Afghanistan, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Central African Republic, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Eswatini, Georgia, Grenada, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Honduras, Iran, Iraq, Kiribati, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Monaco, Panama, São Tomé and Príncipe, Tunisia, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Venezuela, and Zambia.

Just as was the case with the Zionism resolution in 1975 and its repeal in 1991, the United States, along with Israel, pressured member states on their votes on Palestine. On September 22, 2025, Axios reported, citing American officials and European diplomats, that Rubio instructed U.S. diplomats around the world to lobby governments against recognizing Palestine or participating in the French–Saudi conference on a two-state solution. The report said the campaign achieved very little success.

The United States also openly urged countries to vote against the New York Declaration. In the General Assembly debate immediately before the vote, the American representative said:

“The United States urges delegations to join us in voting against the resolution.”

That statement appears in the official UN meeting transcript.

On September 4, 2025, eight days before the vote, Rubio told reporters in Ecuador that Washington had warned other governments that recognizing Palestine would create additional problems. He also suggested that recognition could provoke Israeli responses and complicate ceasefire negotiations.

Netanyahu personally opposed the recognition initiative and criticized governments supporting it. On August 17, 2025, Netanyahu sent President Emmanuel Macron a letter criticizing France’s planned recognition of Palestine and linking French policy to concerns about antisemitism. On August 26: Macron responded, defending France’s position. On September 2: Rubio conveyed American opposition to recognition directly to French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot.

On August 29, 2025, the State Department announced visa restrictions affecting Palestinian Authority and PLO officials, including President Mahmoud Abbas. The administration linked its decision partly to Palestinian efforts to obtain recognition and pursue international legal proceedings. UN human-rights experts criticized the restrictions on September 9, arguing that they interfered with participation in UN proceedings and violated the United States' obligations as host country.

In summation, a UN General Assembly resolution condemning territorial expansionism, permanent Israeli domination over Palestinians, and laws or policies that institutionalize ethnic or religious inequality could plausibly command a substantial majority—even without mentioning Zionism. Indeed, such a resolution would have a stronger foundation in existing international law than an attempt to revive the 1975 Zionism-is-racism resolution.

In fact, a resolution along these lines has already won 146 votes, General Assembly Resolution 80/81, adopted on December 5, 2025. It condemns annexation, land confiscation, forced displacement, and settlement expansion (including the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and Golan Heights); identifies unequal rights and discrimination associated with Israeli settlement policies; recalls the International Court of Justice’s finding that Israeli measures maintaining near-complete separation between settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank breach Article 3 of the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination; and calls for accountability measures against extremist settlers and organizations supporting them.

The distinction between abstract ideology and government policy is particularly relevant to Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. In September 2026, Smotrich advocated further territorial annexation, including territory in Gaza and southern Lebanon. Reporting also documents intensified West Bank settlement activity under Netanyahu’s government. A UN resolution could address the specific territorial claims and discriminatory policies associated with such positions without making a judgment about all forms of Jewish nationalism, i.e., the “Z word.”

The phrase Greater Israel has several meanings, ranging from claims to the West Bank to much broader territorial visions. Because it has no single legally defined boundary, a resolution using the phrase alone could create ambiguity.

International law provides a more precise test: whether a state asserts sovereignty over territory acquired through force, denies the population’s right to self-determination, or maintains unlawful discriminatory arrangements.

The ICJ’s July 2024 advisory opinion provides particularly strong support for examining these questions in the occupied Palestinian territory. The central finding is that the UN has already moved substantially beyond general criticism of settlements toward explicit findings about annexation, segregation, and unequal rights. Resolution 80/81 is an especially useful precedent because it received overwhelming support and did so without reopening the dispute over Resolution 3379.

Countries voting for 80/81 were: Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Canada, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Honduras, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, ,Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, ,Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russia Federation, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Türkiye, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen, and Zimbabwe.

Countries voting no were: Argentina, Fiji, Hungary, Israel, Micronesia (Federated States of), Nauru, North Macedonia, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, South Sudan, Tonga, and United States.

Countries abstaining were: Albania, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Costa Rica, Czechia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, Georgia, Haiti, Marshall Islands, Panama, Rwanda, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Togo, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.

Countries not voting were: Afghanistan, Bolivia, Botswana, Republic of Congo, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Grenada, Kiribati, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Nigeria, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, São Tomé and Príncipe, Venezuela, and Zambia.

Several of the countries voting no on 80/81 have longstanding diplomatic, economic, or security relationships with Washington or Israel. In addition, Israel and the Trump administration are known to use every coercive measure to ensure that targeted countries vote in alignment with Washington and Tel Aviv. None of this pressure and coercion should be an impediment to introducing a new UN resolution condemning Israeli expansionism and racism without stirring up a hornet’s nest by including the word “Zionism.” Looking over the last fifty years of UN diplomacy, Zionism = Racism would be the poison pill that would kill off any useful resolution condemning Israel and its supporters.

Oct. 10

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Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, is shown in a pool photo last month with Trump Administration special emissaries Jared Kushner, left, President Trump's son-in-law and Steve Witkoff, Trump's longtime real estate crony and golfing partner, both of whom have been pursuing huge business deals with Russia and Middle Eastern monarchies for their private companies and allies while ostensibly seeking to negotiate peace on behalf of the United States in the Russia-Ukraine and U.S.-Iran wars.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, is shown in a pool photo last month with Trump Administration special emissaries Jared Kushner, left, President Trump's son-in-law and Steve Witkoff, Trump's longtime real estate crony and golfing partner, both of whom have been pursuing huge business deals with Russia and Middle Eastern monarchies for their private companies and allies while ostensibly seeking to negotiate peace and economic deals on behalf of the United States in the Russia-Ukraine and U.S.-Iran wars.

More On Middle East Wars

Special Reports: Courageous American Women: Pt. 1

Ashley St. Clair at her home in New York (New York Times photo by Elinor Kry).

Ashley St. Clair at her home in New York (New York Times photo by Elinor Kry). “I would say it felt emotionally intimate. We were in contact every day,” St. Clair said about her relationship with Elon Musk."

Special Reports: Courageous American Women: Pt. 2

jojo jerz djt threat

  • The Ken Harbaugh Show via The MeidasTouch Network, JoJofromJeerz Stands Strong, Fights Back, Oct. 10, 2026.Ken Harbaugh welcomes back JoJofromJerz, shown above left in the collage, a single mom from New Jersey (blogging at JoJofromJerz) whom President and First Lady Trump threatened with ruinous consequences unless she apologized for her criticism. 

Special Recent Reports: Collusion Between Russia and Trump's Negotiators To Enrich Trump Allies

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

  • New York Times, U.S.-Russia Talks on Ukraine Now Involve an Oil Deal Tied to Trump Allies, Anton Troianovski and Eric Lipton, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). russian flag wavingPresident Vladimir V. Putin brought up a sale of Russian energy assets with President Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, pushing a deal that raises new questions about conflicts of interest.
  • New York Times, Trump, Putin, Ukraine and an Oil Deal: 5 Takeaways, Eric Lipton and Anton Troianovski, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). A proposal to bolster relations with the Kremlin through the purchase of Russian energy assets is striking even for an administration that regularly mixes personal business interests with foreign policy
  • New York Times, Russia Turns to Striking Kyiv’s Bridges, Threatening a Vital Lifeline, Constant Méheut, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). The bridges, used by many commuters in the Ukrainian capital, are the latest target in a broad Russian bombing campaign against infrastructure.

News Roundups

djt putin discussion 10 9 26

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption 

Trump-nominated U.S. Ambassador To Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle, in a file photo by J. Scott Applewhite of the Associated Press when she was campaigning for his presidential election. ap j scott applewhite

Trump-nominated U.S. Ambassador To Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle, in a file photo by J. Scott Applewhite of the Associated Press when she was campaigning for his presidential election.

  • Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Oct. 9, 2026 [The Grifting Ambassador To Greece], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 10, 2026. Late Wednesday afternoon, Dana Mattioli, Drew Hinshaw, Rebecca Ballhaus, and Joe Parkinson of the Wall Street Journal reported on the tawdry grifting of Kimberly Guilfoyle, former fiancee of Donald Trump Jr. and now Trump’s ambassador to Greece.
  • The Hartmann Report, The Best of the Rest of the News and Opinion: Where is the missing $50 million? Thom Hartmann, right, thom hartmann newOct. 10, 2026. Maybe look for piles of cash in the bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago?  Donald Trump woke up from a nap in the Oval Office this week just in time to remember Vladimir Putin’s birthday. While his own Treasury Secretary was speaking, Trump nodded off at his own event, then perked right up to announce he had a call scheduled to wish his mentor (my word, not his) a happy 74th. By Friday we learned what the birthday boy got. Trump crowed on his Nazi-infested social media site that us taxpayers will buy five million tons of diesel — a deal worth billions to the Kremlin’s deeply troubled war chest — at today’s record-high prices.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, is shown in a pool photo last month with Trump Administration special emissaries Jared Kushner, left, President Trump's son-in-law and Steve Witkoff, Trump's longtime real estate crony and golfing partner, both of whom have been pursuing huge business deals with Russia and Middle Eastern monarchies for their private companies and allies while ostensibly seeking to negotiate peace on behalf of the United States in the Russia-Ukraine and U.S.-Iran wars.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, is shown in a pool photo last month with Trump Administration special emissaries Jared Kushner, left, President Trump's son-in-law and Steve Witkoff, Trump's longtime real estate crony and golfing partner, both of whom have been pursuing huge business deals with Russia and Middle Eastern monarchies for their private companies and allies while ostensibly seeking to negotiate peace and economic deals on behalf of the United States in the Russia-Ukraine and U.S.-Iran wars.

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Musk Launches Election Interference Campaign, Trump Demands Regime Change in Ukraine, Senate Republicans in Trouble, Aaron Parnas, right,aaron parnas new headshot Oct. 10, 2026. It’s Saturday evening and today might have been one of the most consequential days of this entire stretch. In the span of a few hours, Trump called for Ukraine to replace its wartime president after cutting a deal with Putin behind Kyiv’s back, the Kremlin bragged that the two leaders were so friendly neither wanted to hang up the phone, and Trump floated pulling the U.S. deeper into the Middle East just weeks after promising he wouldn’t.

Meanwhile, election officials are warning voters about misleading texts and a data-harvesting website from Elon Musk’s PAC, and the fight for control of the Senate is looking a lot more competitive than Republicans ever expected.

We are now just over three weeks from Election Day, and moments like this are exactly why independent journalism matters. When the President of the United States sides with Putin over an ally, when billionaires are spending hundreds of millions to shape an election, and when voters are being fed bad information about how to cast their ballots, you deserve someone who will tell you the truth without fear or favor.

That’s what I’m trying to do here every single day. But I can’t do it alone. I don’t have a corporate owner, a billionaire backer, or a big media company behind me. This work is funded entirely by readers like you.

So here’s my ask: if you’ve been reading for a while and haven’t yet, please become a paid subscriber today. It’s the single most important thing you can do to support this work, and it directly funds the reporting, the travel to swing states, and everything it takes to cover this election the way it deserves to be covered. If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you, truly. Please consider forwarding this to one person who needs to read it. Every new reader makes a difference, especially right now.

Now, let’s get into today’s news.

Trump’s endorsement choices could cost Republicans the Senate majority, just as they arguably did in 2020 and 2022. The biggest example is Texas, where Trump backed Ken Paxton over Sen. John Cornyn, and Paxton now trails Democrat James Talarico by as much as six points in multiple polls, with one Fox News poll showing Talarico winning 20% of Cornyn’s primary voters. In North Carolina, Trump’s attacks pushed Sen. Thom Tillis into retirement, opening the door for popular Democrat Roy Cooper, and the GOP now appears to be giving up on the state. In Georgia, Trump backed Rep. Mike Collins, whose campaign has been hit by disclosures about apparent ties to white nationalists, and Republicans may be throwing in the towel there too. Even in deep-red South Carolina, the GOP had to spend $5 million to shore up Trump’s pick, Darline Graham, the little-known sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, whose rocky campaign has rattled the party establishment. And this time, if Republicans lose the Senate, Trump will have to govern with a Democratic majority for the rest of his term.

The Pentagon quietly raised the official death toll of U.S. troops lost in the Iran war to 21, weeks after Hegseth called reports of a higher count “a complete lie.” The update, made late Friday, adds two noncombat deaths, an Army National Guard major who died in Kuwait in March and a Navy suicide in September, while 865 service members have now been wounded. The Washington Post had reported last month, based on six U.S. officials, that the Pentagon was undercounting deaths in its public casualty database. Critics say the confusion stems from the administration changing how it tracks casualties mid-conflict after Trump declared Operation Epic Fury over, even as the U.S. and Iran kept exchanging fire. Top House Armed Services Democrats Adam Smith and Chrissy Houlahan said “there is no excuse for a mistake of this magnitude,” calling it “an embarrassment” that Congress had to step in to force a correction. The Pentagon did not acknowledge the changed numbers, instead announcing a new “pending adjudication” category and insisting it remains committed to “transparent, accurate accounting.”

Election Officials Warn Voters About Musk PAC’s Misleading Texts and Data-Harvesting Voting Website

Election officials in Colorado and Washington are warning voters about inaccurate information coming from Elon Musk’s America PAC. In Colorado, voters received texts reading “Your ballot request is in” and urging them to confirm where to return it, even though every active registered voter in the state automatically gets a mail ballot. The messages sparked a wave of confused calls to county offices, with residents worried someone had submitted a request on their behalf. Weld County’s Republican election chief said people asked, “Is something fishy going on?” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold called the messaging “misleading,” noting the texts targeted voters in a tossup House race where America PAC has spent more than $228,000 to help Republican Rep. Gabe Evans.

Washington’s top election official is telling voters to stay away from VoteSafe.org, Musk’s voter registration website. Secretary of State Steve Hobbs pointed out that the site’s own disclaimer says its voting information “may not necessarily be accurate.” “Don’t go on this website. Why would you give your information to Elon Musk?” Hobbs said. He urged voters to get information directly from state and local election offices instead of a third party that can’t actually register them to vote. America PAC fired back on X, accusing Washington officials of trying to “suppress” voter registration.

Critics warn VoteSafe.org is a sophisticated data operation disguised as a public service. According to UCLA election law professor Rick Hasen, the site collects users’ full names, birth dates, home addresses, phone numbers, emails, IP addresses, and every link and page they click. Users who provide their contact information also consent to receive calls, texts, and emails from America PAC through Election Day. In an op-ed, Vote.org CEO Andrea Hailey wrote that America PAC reportedly rewrote the site’s privacy policy in August to allow sharing personal data with advertisers and political groups. She said the policy also allows the PAC to sell “inferences” about users, including their “psychological trends,” attitudes, and intelligence, calling the site a “Trojan horse.”

Musk is pouring tens of millions of dollars into the midterms to help Republicans keep control of Congress. America PAC has reported spending nearly $40 million on Senate and House races, with more than $31 million going to Senate contests, led by Texas. Musk has disclosed donating about $50 million to America PAC and another $40 million to other GOP-aligned super PACs this cycle. He was the largest publicly disclosed donor of the 2024 election, spending nearly $300 million to elect Trump and Republicans. The PAC’s digital ads often use provocative messages attacking Democrats before steering users to VoteSafe.org to hand over their personal information.

Trump Abandons Ukraine, Calls for Zelensky’s Ouster After Cutting Diesel Deal with Putin Behind Kyiv’s Back

Trump turned on Ukraine Saturday, saying “it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president” after Zelensky criticized his deal with Putin. Speaking outside the White House on his way to a rally in Tennessee, Trump said Zelensky could have ended the war many times “but chooses not to.” “I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal,” Trump said, effectively calling for the removal of the wartime leader of a U.S. partner under Russian attack. He also told reporters that Ukraine has “lost 30% of your country” and suffered over a million deaths, echoing a framing that places the blame on Kyiv rather than Moscow. Axios called it the most serious crisis between the two leaders since their February 2025 Oval Office meeting blew up in front of cameras.

Trump sided with Putin over Ukraine, lifting sanctions on Russian diesel while demanding Ukraine stop striking Russian refineries. The deal, negotiated directly with Putin and made behind Ukraine’s back, opens a new stream of revenue for the Kremlin through April. Trump said he told Zelensky he could “do whatever you want to Russia, don’t hit the refineries,” and warned, “He’d better damn well stop.” A U.S. official told Axios that Trump cut the deal after Zelensky ignored half a dozen U.S. requests to halt the strikes, which have been one of Ukraine’s most effective tools against Russia’s war economy. Zelensky called the agreement “not fair and not honest,” a “sign of weakness,” and a “birthday gift” to Putin, and suggested his negotiating team in Florida was used as a “smokescreen.”

The Kremlin celebrated Trump’s attack on Zelensky while America’s allies rallied to Ukraine’s side. Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev called Trump’s remarks “iconic and historic,” saying Ukraine needs leadership “focused on peace.” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas warned that easing sanctions “provides Moscow with more revenues to wage war,” adding, “This is not the time to ease pressure on Russia, and Europe won’t.” European ministers plan to approve their biggest package of Russia sanctions since the full-scale invasion began, moving in the opposite direction from Washington. Even Republican Rep. Michael McCaul warned that lifting sanctions “will only fund the Kremlin’s war machine.”

Ukrainians are paying the price as Trump trades Ukraine’s security for lower gas prices before the midterms. Hours after the deal was announced, a Russian glide bomb attack on Zaporizhzhia killed at least 15 people, including children, which Zelensky called Russia’s “thanks” for the diesel deal. Diesel now averages $6.28 a gallon, up from $3.68 a year ago, and Republicans are facing tight races in farm states like Iowa and Kansas where fuel costs are biting. But with Russia’s diesel production down an estimated 30% from Ukrainian strikes, experts doubt the deal will meaningfully lower prices at all. And Trump’s call for a “new president” ignores that Ukraine has been under martial law since 2022, meaning elections are suspended while it fights for its survival. Republicans even opposed Trump’s comments today:

The Kremlin says Trump and Putin’s call was so “very friendly” that neither leader wanted to hang up first. Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said the 90-minute conversation was “very substantive and friendly,” adding that the two presidents “hung up simultaneously, literally at the same time.” It was during this call that Trump and Putin agreed on the diesel deal that eased U.S. sanctions on Russian fuel and drew blunt condemnation from Zelensky. The Kremlin said most of the conversation focused on the war in Ukraine, though Putin downplayed the chances of three-way peace talks resuming anytime soon. The warm account came as negotiators from the U.S., Ukraine, and Europe met in Miami to work on a unified peace proposal, and just a day before Trump said it was “time for Ukraine to get a new president.”

Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick announced a bipartisan bill to block Trump from buying Russian oil after his diesel deal with Putin. Fitzpatrick said the legislation, called the “Ronald Reagan Peace Through Strength Act,” would ban “any and all purchases of Russian oil,” though its Democratic sponsors have not yet been named. He plans to force a vote through a discharge petition, which bypasses House leadership, and predicted it will pass “overwhelmingly.” Republican Rep. Don Bacon quickly signed on as an original cosponsor, writing, “Congress must make a stand.” Democrats also blasted the deal, with Rep. Gabe Amo saying Trump is “paying Putin for oil to deal with the high gas prices caused by his choice of war with Iran,” adding, “That’s not punishing Putin, that’s profit.” A 2022 law already bans Russian oil imports, but it includes an exception allowing the president to permit them if deemed in the national interest.

Trump Says U.S. “May” Join Saudi Strikes on Houthis as Putin Relays Iran’s Peace Terms

Trump left the door open to joining Saudi Arabia’s war against the Iran-backed Houthis after another attack on Riyadh’s airport. “We may. We’re gonna look at it,” Trump told reporters Saturday as he left for a rally in Tennessee. Asked whether the strike would change his pledge not to attack Iran before the midterms, he said, “Well, we’re gonna take a look.” Just two days earlier, Trump had promised on Truth Social that the U.S. would not attack Iran “at any time prior to the Midterm Elections.” The comments raise the prospect of a new U.S. military escalation in the final weeks before Election Day.

The Houthis’ campaign against Saudi Arabia is escalating, with Riyadh’s airport hit again on Saturday. Saudi aviation officials confirmed multiple injuries and suspended airport operations, and more than 320 flights were canceled Saturday. Houthi attacks on the airport this week had already killed four people, including a Saudia Airlines pilot. The U.S. Embassy “strongly” urged Americans to avoid the airport, while the U.K., France, Germany, Australia, and Canada have warned against travel to parts or all of Saudi Arabia. The Houthis have even declared Saudi skies “a theater” for their military operations, and the fighting in Yemen now appears to be the new center of the wider Iran war.

Putin used his “very friendly” call with Trump to pass along Iran’s position on a peace deal. The Kremlin said Putin, coordinating with Iran’s president, relayed Tehran’s views on a possible resolution to the conflict, but did not say how Trump responded. Putin met with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian earlier this week and has expressed interest in brokering peace. Pezeshkian said Iran has revised its proposals for talks with the U.S. and is ready to finalize them through mediators, though he accused Washington of attacking “every time we hold talks.” Trump rejected a “seven-day plan” from Iran in late September, and diplomacy has been stalled since the summer.

Trump issued a stark ultimatum to Iran even as he positions Putin as a go-between. At his Syracuse rally Friday night, Trump said, “Either they give us everything, or they don’t exist any longer.” He made the remark in the middle of his tirade against the Nobel Committee for not awarding him the Peace Prize. The war, which began with U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran in February, has sent diesel prices soaring to $6.28 a gallon, up from $3.68 a year ago. Meanwhile, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard says it struck a gas tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, insisting the waterway remains closed despite U.S. claims that oil is flowing in record numbers.

Other news:

Greeks are reacting with exasperation and cynicism to the growing scandal surrounding U.S. Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle. Republican donor Eric Deters says Guilfoyle asked him to pay off her $100,000 American Express bill before her confirmation hearing in exchange for access to senior Trump officials, the latest in a string of reports about her conduct, including potential conflicts of interest in Greek energy deals. Many Athens residents told The New York Times the allegations were “hardly a shock,” with one saying Greece is a small country that “has to play along with the U.S.” Some were more troubled by reports that Guilfoyle insinuated at a dinner in March that the U.S. could replace the Greek government, a claim her lawyer and Greek officials dispute. Trump said he didn’t “know too much” about the allegations, adding, “she was always very nice,” while Rubio has refused to answer questions about her. Greece’s government has avoided summoning her, saying it would only create a diplomatic incident, while left-wing lawmakers warned that “favors from Trump’s America come with a price tag.” 

 President Trump has long worked closely with top Russian officials, often in secret, as in his meeting at the White House shown above, from which U.S. media were barred, with the result that all photos as here were from Russian state media: Portrayed with Trump were Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, left, and Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak, with all concerned seeking to thwart then-current investigations into Russian influence to help Trump during the 2016 presidential elections and advance his and his allies' private business interests (Tass photo May 10, 2017).

President Trump has long worked closely with top Russian officials, often in secret, as in his meeting at the White House shown above, from which U.S. media were barred, with the result that all photos as here were from Russian state media: Portrayed with Trump were Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, left, and Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak, with all concerned reportedly seeking to thwart then-current FBI, congressional and media investigations into Russian influence to help Trump during the 2016 presidential elections and advance his and his allies' private business interests (Tass photo May 10, 2017). 

PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: Under Trump, The United States Is Now Funding Russian Terrorism, Jason Easley, right, Oct. 10, 2026.jason easley Thanks to Trump’s “deal” to import diesel from Russia, an amount which will not lower prices, the United States is now funding Russian terrorism.

When Trump announced his deal with Putin to import Russian diesel that he just sanctioned other countries for importing, the president posted on Truth Social:

I have just concluded a highly successful discussion with President Vladimir Putin, of Russia, wherein it was agreed that Russia will immediately supply over 300,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel to the American and Global Marketplace, another 500,000 Tons during the month of November, and 1,000,000 Tons immediately thereafter. Additionally, based on the condition of their Diesel Refineries, Russia will then deliver, within a short period of time, 3,000,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel.

Between our TOTAL CONTROL of the Strait of Hormuz, and this great announcement on Russian Energy, Diesel Prices for Americans and, indeed, the World, will be COMING DOWN, IN RECORD NUMBERS, AND FAST! Lower prices for Americans, especially our Great Farmers, Ranchers, and Truckers, is my Greatest Priority. This is a very big and important announcement. Additionally, it must be understood, that Iran will not have a Nuclear Weapon!

russian flag wavingThe 300,000 tons of diesel fuel sounds like a lot, but diesel is a liquid that is measured in gallons, and when broken down into gallons, the truth about Trump’s deal is revealed.Trump Got A Week’s Worth Of Diesel In Exchange For Funding Russian Terrorism

Trump was bragging about 85 million gallons. 3 million tons of diesel is 930-945 million gallons. The US uses 151 million to 168 million gallons of diesel a day, so Trump got about a week’s worth of diesel to be delivered over the next 3 months.

Trump’s deal is a joke, but it does have real-world consequences. Under Trump, the US has been favoring Russia in its invasion and terrorism campaign against Ukraine. Trump will be putting US tax dollars into the Russian government, which will give Putin more resources to carry out his campaign against democracy in Ukraine.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) posted on X in response to Trump’s announcement:

The United States government is now a funder of state sponsored terrorism. I know that sounds political and hyperbolic, but it is factually true. Russia is intentionally targeting civilians in Ukraine at scale, and Trump is intentionally funding their efforts.

The United States is now funding terror attacks against civilians in Ukraine.

Trump’s “deal” doesn’t solve the diesel crisis. It won’t lower the price at the pump, but it will help Putin kill more people in Ukraine.

Donald Trump has positioned the United States to be on the wrong side of the nation’s principles and values.

Trump’s diesel deal is another smoke-and-mirrors show that is designed only to help Putin and continue to leave the American people out in the cold.

 

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine during a news conference in Kyiv on Thurday. “We have a special people, an extraordinary people,” he said (Photo by Lynsey Addario for The New York Times).

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine during a news conference in Kyiv “We have a special people, an extraordinary people,” he said (File photo by Lynsey Addario for The New York Times). Another file photo shown below achieved iconic status when he asked for ammunition for Ukraine from Western allies, not a safe haven for VIPs from Ukraine like himself to flee the Russian invaders.

 

volodmyer zelinsky graphic

ny times logoNew York Times, Some Republicans Reject Trump’s Move to Import Diesel Fuel From Russia, Tim Balk and Evan Gorelick, Oct. 10, 2026. High diesel costs have posed a problem for Republicans in the midterms, but President Trump’s decision did not satisfy some candidates in key Senate races.

President Trump’s announcement of a deal with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to import Russian diesel has drawn criticism from some Republicans running in the most competitive midterm races, as the party grasps for ways to contain soaring energy prices.
republican elephant logoThe president announced the arrangement, which undercuts U.S. sanctions on Moscow, under pressure to rein in the surging price of diesel. The product’s cost has climbed because of the war with Iran, which has clogged a vital oil-shipping corridor, and high energy prices have become a severe campaign liability for Republican candidates in the midterms.

ukraine flagBut the campaigns of two Republicans running in pivotal Senate races — former Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan and Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska — expressed disapproval of the deal with Russia. And other Republicans running in competitive Senate and House races had little to say about the agreement, which Mr. Trump trumpeted Friday on social media as a “very big and important” deal, claiming it would swiftly bring down energy costs.

“It’s a grave error by the president,” said Representative Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican from a battleground district who is not running for re-election. “People realize that the sanctions on Russia are appropriate when Russia’s invading a country and bombing cities at night.”

Mr. Bacon predicted the deal would have little effect on soaring diesel prices but would offer a victory for one of America’s adversaries. And the congressman said that the agreement would not help Republican candidates. “It looks desperate,” he said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The deal received some Republican praise. Representative Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican running in a competitive race, wrote on social media that it would “massively benefit the American people.”

The United States introduced sanctions on energy exports from Russia after the country started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Mr. Trump’s deal, and his declaration Saturday that Ukraine should “get a new president,” escalated U.S. tensions with Kyiv. The issue of U.S. support for the country has for years divided Republicans; the two Republican Senate candidates who questioned the deal have long been supporters of Ukraine.

Some Midwestern Republicans have called for a pause on diesel exports to try to lower costs for American consumers, a notion that Mr. Trump has ruled out.

Energy experts say the deal is not likely to have a major impact on the cost of diesel, which has spiked to around $6.28 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club, up from $3.67 a year ago. Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, an energy consulting firm in Houston, said the deal would introduce a “very small” amount of diesel into the market “compared to U.S. demand.”

In Michigan, Mr. Rogers, who has recently sought distance from Mr. Trump by calling for the president to end both the Iran war and his tariff fight with Canada, told reporters on Friday that he supported an agricultural rebate for diesel, but not the president’s approach.

Mr. Rogers, long a foreign policy hawk, cited concern about offering Mr. Putin a victory. “You just don’t want to give that guy an inch,” he said.

In Alaska, a spokesman for Mr. Sullivan, Nate Adams, said in a statement that the senator “believes American energy dominance is the answer to high prices, and that means producing more of it in Alaska, for Alaskans, by Alaskans, not importing it from Russia.”

Democrats pounced on the deal. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, wrote on social media that the president had made a “deal with the devil to try to help his flailing political fortunes.”

Representative Chris Pappas, the Democratic nominee in the competitive Senate race in New Hampshire, said in a statement that the agreement was a “slap in the face to Ukraine and our allies overseas.” The campaign of his Republican opponent, former Senator John E. Sununu, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The high cost of diesel poses a particular risk for Republicans running in states whose farming-heavy economies are powered by diesel, such as Nebraska, Iowa and Kansas.

The campaigns of the Republican Senate candidates in two of those states, Representative Ashley Hinson of Iowa and Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the president’s deal with Russia. Their hotly contested races, staged in conservative states, could help decide control of the Senate.

More On Middle East Wars

New York Times, At Least 12 Killed and 300 Injured in Houthi Attack on Saudi Airport, Vivian Nereim and Euan Ward, Oct. 10, 2026. The strike on Saturday was the deadliest attack in a Gulf Arab country since the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began in February, and forced the airport to temporarily suspend operations.

The Iran-backed Houthi militia launched a deadly attack on an international airport in Saudi Arabia’s capital on Saturday that Saudi officials said killed at least 12 people and injured over 300 more, in a dramatic escalation of the war between the kingdom and the Houthis.

The strike, which a senior Houthi official said the militia was responsible for, was the deadliest attack in a Gulf Arab country since the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began in February.

The latest toll was announced early Sunday morning by the Saudi civil aviation authority, which said four Saudi nationals and one U.S. citizen were among the 12 dead. It added that of the 309 people injured, some were in critical condition.

The strike on Saturday was the deadliest attack in a Gulf Arab country since the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began in February, and forced the airport to temporarily suspend operations.

Special Reports: Courageous American Women: Part 1

Ashley St. Clair at her home in New York (New York Times photo by Elinor Kry).

Ashley St. Clair at her home in New York (New York Times photo by Elinor Kry). “I would say it felt emotionally intimate. We were in contact every day,” St. Clair said about her relationship with Elon Musk."

New York Times Magazine, She Was Offered $40 Million for Silence on Elon Musk. She Spoke Out Instead, Coralie Kraft, Oct. 9, 2026. In the documentary “Musk,” Ashley St. Clair, a former right-wing influencer and mother of one of Musk’s children, speaks about her relationship with him.

Ashley St. Clair is sick of people asking her the same questions about Elon Musk. “People treat me like I’m some Elon psychoanalyst,” she said during a visit to The New York Times in September. “They want to know, ‘What’s it like to hang out with him?’ or they say, ‘Not many people have spent time with him one-on-one.’” She sighed. “It’s annoying and laborious.”

You can’t blame them for asking. St. Clair, a former conservative influencer, gave birth to one of Musk’s children in 2024. (At the time, she also had another child from a previous relationship.) This fall, she’s a significant figure in “Musk,” Alex Gibney’s nearly four-hour-long documentary about the world’s first trillionaire, and she has more pressing points. “This is about a deeper rot in our society, where we’ve equated capital with morality,” she said. “There’s a level of societal and individual trust that we give to people if they have money.”

Musk did not respond to requests for comment. After TMZ reported that Ashley St. Clair rejected a $40 million N.D.A., Musk responded via X, stating, “She was never offered that and has a history of making false claims.” He also condemned Gibney’s documentary with another post on X reading, “Gibney just assembled a hit list of people who either have an axe to grind or don’t even know me.”

Gibney, the Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker, first met St. Clair in December 2025. “Beyond Musk’s baby obsession, Ashley had a front-row seat during the 2024 campaign and was able to tell me things I didn’t know about Musk’s motivations,” he said in an email.

Below, St. Clair shares her side of the story.

What did your life look like when you met Musk in 2023?

I worked at a conservative news site, The Babylon Bee, and I was a single mom. I also had a public persona, primarily on Twitter, where I was repeating MAGA talking points. Elon followed me on Twitter and slid into my DMs.

How did you feel when he followed you?

I don’t think people understand the number of eyeballs that were on everyone Elon interacted with at that time. I was getting “Congratulations!” texts from people in MAGA. Right away, there were people saying, “She’s going to be his next baby mama.” I was about to turn 24.

And when did you meet in person for the first time?

We’d been DMing on Twitter, and then during an interview for the Bee, he asked, “Feel like going to Providence, R.I.?” Within an hour, I was on his plane. In Providence, we shared a hotel room, and he fell asleep listening to a podcast about Kublai Khan. It was all very surreal.

Did it feel like a romantic relationship?

I would say it felt emotionally intimate. We were in contact every day. But also I was never like, “I’m the chosen one.” At the time, he was this savior of free speech, and I was very wrapped up in all of that. I’d say there was a bit of idolization going on, too.

When did you start talking about having a child together?

In January 2024, we went on vacation to St. Bart’s, and he said, “You should have 10 kids! Let’s have a kid. My only limited resource is time.”

What did that mean to you?

I wanted more children, so it meant that I would always be able to take care of my kids financially. Also, within MAGA, it was seen as a stain on your character to be a single mom. So to have this bastion of the right who is very validating of that choice — that meant so much to me.

Did you have any hesitations?

Not until I was pregnant and I watched the custody battle between Elon and Grimes [who share three children]. It made me think, “I have to protect myself.”When did you receive the N.D.A.?

I was two months postpartum. Jared Birchall, Elon’s money manager and henchman, sent the document in a disappearing message on Signal. We didn’t have a formal financial agreement, so at that moment, getting the N.D.A. felt like, “If you would like any kind of support, sign this.”

I see. They were saying, “If you want support, sign this.” What were the terms of the N.D.A.?

I couldn’t speak about Elon or anything related to our relationship for eternity, and those terms would also apply to my heirs. I could tell our child who his father is, but I couldn’t tell my other child, or anyone else. He offered $15 million lump sum, and then $100,000 a month for 21 years.

But you decided not to sign.

For me, it was more a moral question than a legal one. I told Jared I couldn’t sign it, and he responded with, “Why? Sounds like you want to use your speech as a weapon.” I told him my children’s dignity is not a commodity.

Did Musk ever talk to you about the N.D.A.?

No.

And now you’re a significant voice in Gibney’s documentary.

People need to understand that part of the reason I’m featured prominently in the documentary is that other people cannot speak. I don’t think we should lose sight of that. I don’t want to have to speak publicly. I don’t want to be doing this interview right now. But there is a web of N.D.A.s. I feel a moral obligation to talk about my experience.

Let’s talk about your transition away from MAGA. When did that start?

It happened slowly and then all at once. There were moments where I wasn’t OK with the things I was witnessing — the misogyny, the racism — but I was a coward.

What would you say to people who think, “She’s only turning left because the right rejected her”?

I’m not dumb. I was aware what would happen when I came out against Elon, and I was OK with it. There’s a video from before I was pregnant where I say I’m not a conservative. So there were already moments where you can see these breaks from the conservative establishment.

You posted a lot of transphobic, racist and misogynistic commentary. Did other people pay the price for your public image?

I think about that all the time. Recently I got a notification about hospitals ending gender-affirming care. When I read that, I felt immensely remorseful. I know that probably would’ve happened without me, but I still feel guilt for my role.

How do you see your role today?

My only job after years of propaganda and dishonesty and being involved in MAGA for almost a decade is to be honest and set an example for my kids. My job is not to set a new narrative about myself. My only job is to be held accountable.

These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Were you at all nervous about participating in the film?

No. I was familiar with some of Alex’s documentary work, like “Going Clear.” I liked that he didn’t have any fear. He has a history of treating facts and narratives with respect.

You’ve seen the film. How did you feel watching it?

What was both validating and terrifying was the way the narratives harmonized. Me, Justine [Wilson, Musk’s first wife], Sam Harris [the New Atheist philosopher] and Geoffrey Hinton [the so-called Godfather of A.I.] — there are so many similarities in our experiences with Elon. I think when you’re able to take people who have never spoken to each other and harmonize a narrative, that is the truth.

Special Reports: Courageous American Women: Part 2

jojo jerz djt threat

The Ken Harbaugh Show via The MeidasTouch Network, JoJofromJeerz Stands Strong, Fights Back, Oct. 10, 2026. mtn meidas touch networkKen Harbaugh welcomes back JoJofromJerz, shown above left in the collage, a single mom from New Jersey (blogging at JoJofromJerz) whom President and First Lady Trump threatened with ruinous consequences unless she apologized for her criticism.

Her refusal to back down shows why it matters not to obey in advance when those in power try to silence their critics.

News Roundups

 

djt putin discussion 10 9 26Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Saturday Updates: Trump Just Lashed Out at Zelenskyy After Thanking Putin, Brett Meiselas, right, brett meiselasOct. 10, 2026. Trump is absolutely losing it as his presidency continues to crash.

mtn meidas touch networkBy any measure, Trump has failed. He promised to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, and it rages on. He dragged us into a new war in the Middle East, rattling the global economy and sending prices soaring. Now he’s hunting for someone to blame. Because that’s what losers do. Read the latest below and you will see EXACTLY what I mean. And remember to like and re-stack to spread this news far and wide.

Here are the top headlines today:

  • After making an oil deal with Putin, Trump says “it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president”
  • Speaking of that deal, we’ll tell you what it’s really about
  • While Trump brags about executions and attacks our allies, he’s also been melting down over losing the Nobel Peace Prize, and he’s now also attacking Norway
  • The White House announced the new press secretary, MAGA commentator and Trump Media adviser, Katie Zacharia
  • Updates on Hormuz, Iran, a suspected Houthi strike on Riyadh, and Trump saying the U.S. “may” join in on Saudi strikes
  • Vance, Vivek, and the midterm clown show
  • A mass shooting in Erie, PA

Yesterday, we reported extensively on Trump’s announcement that Russia would “immediately” supply 300,000 tons of diesel, another 500,000 tons in November, a million tons after that, and eventually 3 million more “based on the condition of their Diesel Refineries.” Leaving for Syracuse yesterday, Trump said he wanted “to thank President Putin.”

We gave detailed analysis here yesterday about why Trump’s announcement is not only traitorous, but a sham designed to pretend he’s doing something to help oil costs while removing sanctions on Russia, funding the Russian war machine, and trying to push Ukraine to surrender.BREAKING: The Truth About Trump’s Oil Deal With PutinBREAKING: The Truth About Trump’s Oil Deal With PutinBen Meiselas and MeidasTouch Network·Oct 9Watch now

But I can break down some quick facts now. Let’s do some basic math. Diesel runs around 7.5 barrels per ton, so the first tranche is supposedly 2.2 million barrels. The U.S. uses about 4 million barrels of distillate a day, which means that’s about half a day’s worth. Bill Browder put it at 15 hours. Some analysts have put it at even less. When added up, the entire 4.8 million tons Trump promised adds to roughly 9 days of U.S. demand, and that assumes Russia even has the surplus, which it doesn’t appear to have. Poland’s foreign minister noted that Russia has fuel shortages even in Moscow and that Ukraine has damaged about half its refining capacity.

So what’s the deal with this? Well, that line about the “condition” of Russia’s refineries in Trump’s post is the tell. A Ukrainian official, via Axios, said that Witkoff and Kushner threatened to cut off intelligence sharing with Ukraine if Kyiv kept striking Russian refineries. A U.S. official denied the threat was made. Who do you trust?

Zelenskyy offered to stop hitting refineries if Russia stopped hitting Ukraine’s energy grid. Seems fair. Not to Trump. The Trump regime demanded a unilateral halt, and Zelenskyy said hell no. Now, Russia’s refineries are apparently part of an American deal. Browder laid out 3 ugly results: leverage to threaten Ukraine, a pretext for insider business with Russia, and a door to more sanctions relief for Putin.

Ben also pointed out a legal issue. The Ending Importation of Russian Oil Act, passed in 2022, allows the president to lift the ban only if Russia has agreed to withdraw from Ukraine and poses no immediate threat to NATO. Neither condition has been met. The U.S. has now authorized these imports through April 2027.

Zelenskyy, whose negotiators were meeting in Miami with Witkoff and Kushner when Trump made the announcement, said that his team was used “as a smokescreen” and called it a “weak decision.” The Ukrainian delegation left Miami and canceled the second day of talks. A bipartisan Senate delegation led by Sen. Roger Wicker was in Ukraine at the time, talking about implementing tougher sanctions.

This is a pattern with the Trump regime, isn’t it? Distract a party to a negotiation with talks, then attack them when their guard is down. We’ve seen it with Iran. Now, we’re seeing it with Ukraine. It shows the world that the U.S. under Trump is not a good-faith actor.

Russia responded with 5 glide bombs on residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia, killing at least 12, including 3 children. Ballistic missiles followed on Kyiv. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Russian strikes killed over 80 Ukrainian civilians in 2 days and announced that EU foreign ministers plan to approve their biggest sanctions package of the war Monday. Ukraine hit back too, striking the Samara oil pumping station a third time and setting the Novoshakhtinsk oil terminal in Rostov on fire.

On Fox & Friends, Rachel Campos-Duffy, wife of Trump Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, spread false and shameful Russian propaganda, claiming Ukraine has killed “a million kids on the Russian side” and called Zelenskyy an “ingrate” who keeps blowing up refineries “ahead of the midterms.” The new White House press secretary nodded along. These are sick, sick people.

The receipts are endless. At the UN in 2025, Trump said NATO countries buying Russian energy were “funding the war against themselves.” He put a 50% tariff on India over Russian oil. Senate Republicans posted as recently as July 28 that targeting those who buy Russian oil “will crush Putin’s ability to fund his war.” Marco Rubio in 2022: “Stop importing Russian oil.” Just take a look at these receipts we’ve compiled:Trump’s Nobel Meltdown Continues

We reported yesterday about the Nobel Peace Prize going to Navi Pillay, the South African anti-apartheid jurist, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, former ICC judge, and former president of the Rwanda tribunal. Trump posted a rant claiming that nobody had heard of her other than the fact that she “hates Israel,” that he should have won “8 Nobel Peace Prizes,” and that the award is “an indelible stain on Norway.” At 5 AM he was at it again, misspelling it “Noble” Peace Prize.

It was still on his mind outside the White House just moments ago. He claimed, “I stopped China and I stopped Taiwan,” he called Pillay “a person that nobody ever heard of” who is “very anti-Israel,” and declared, “There’s something wrong in Norway.” He claims he settled “Israel and Iran.” Maariv reports his regime was pushing Israel to strike again before the midterms. He says Russia-Ukraine is moving “at breakneck speed.”

First off, I bet Republicans are cringing that this is Trump’s biggest concern just weeks before the midterms. He spent at least 10 minutes ranting about this at his rally last night in Syracuse.

Secondly, nothing says “I deserve the Nobel Peace Prize” quite like threatening the country where it’s awarded. Or bombing a little girls’ school. Or threatening all your allies. Or funding Russia’s war machine so they can continue to kill Ukrainian civilians. Objectively, this is a disgraceful individual.SubscribedHurricane Isaias

Trump skipped the Alabama-Georgia game because of the storm and instead “quickly called a Big Rally” in Clarksville, Tennessee. He said “we think we have” the hurricane “under control,” then walked away when asked for a message to people in its path.

At the same time, the National Hurricane Center warned of a life-threatening storm surge, with sustained winds of 100mph and an 83mph gust recorded in Panama City Beach. As of this morning, around 925,000 customers across Florida, Alabama and Georgia were without power.I had to share this with you before the day ended.Ben Meiselas and MeidasTouch Network·12:00 AMI had to share this with you before the day ended.

The box just arrived: WTF America, the book I wrote with my brothers. I opened it with my daughter, Ximena, and it brought me so much joy.

DHS’s Bribes

Bloomberg reports the regime is offering migrant children as young as 5 years old $3,000 to voluntarily leave the country, expanding an earlier $2,500 offer for unaccompanied minors 14 years and older. Lawyers say some kids are being pressured to decide on the spot, sometimes without a lawyer, potentially giving up asylum rights.Hormuz, Iran, and Riyadh

About that “TOTAL CONTROL” of the Strait of Hormuz…

Iranian state media reports the IRGC is warning ships to stick to designated routes, satellite imagery from today shows just 2 large vessels crossing, and Iran has been striking tankers off the UAE and Qatar. Daily rates for very large crude carriers have soared from around $30,000 to about $1.5 million, adding roughly $33 a barrel in shipping alone. OilPrice.com reported that Kpler’s Michelle Brohard suspects some Gulf producers are quietly paying Iran tolls for safe passage, something we’ve been saying for weeks.

As I said earlier, Maariv reports the U.S. urged Israel to strike Iran unilaterally so Trump wouldn’t take the political hit before the midterms, until Israel’s military chief warned it could affect their own elections. After Rubio’s “civilizational” speech in Athens, Iran’s parliament speaker invoked Roman emperor Valerian, captured by Persia in 260 AD, and warned, “you will kneel.”

And Riyadh’s airport was evacuated after another suspected Houthi missile strike. Saudi authorities still haven’t said much. Trump said this morning that the U.S. “may” join in on strikes against the Houthis.The Midterm Clown Show

Did you catch JD Vance yesterday in Ohio? He has all the charisma of watching paint dry. And like all of them, he just lies. All the time. He told voters that Vivek Ramaswamy “saved billions and billions of dollars at DOGE.” Putting aside the fact that DOGE was a complete disaster and did nothing more than steal Americans’ data for the oligarchs, Vivek left DOGE literally on day one. Vance also complained that all Democrats want to talk about is men in women’s sports. That’s kinda all you talk about, dude. He also said “America belongs to those who love it,” right as Trump was doing an oil deal with Putin.Tragedy in Erie

And in Erie, Pennsylvania, 9 people, including the suspect and 2 children, are dead following a mass shooting and an hours-long standoff. This is still developing. Our hearts are with Erie.

That’s today’s news roundup. There’s more to come throughout the day.

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Trump Melts Down Over Nobel Prize, Hegseth Faces Impeachment Calls Over Public Execution, ICE Surge Empties California Towns, Aaron Parnas, aaron parnas new headshotright, Oct. 10, 2026. A president threatening an ally over a prize, a Pentagon turning an execution into content, and the backlash building against both.

Trump spent Friday night raging at Norway over the Nobel Peace Prize, the backlash to Hegseth’s plan to livestream an execution is now reaching the Vatican and fueling an impeachment push, and ICE is tearing through California’s farm towns. There’s a lot to get through, so I’ll keep this short.

With the midterms just over three weeks away, I want to let you in on what’s coming. We’re likely going to be hitting the road and traveling to swing states ahead of Election Day, talking to voters, covering the races that will decide control of Congress, and bringing you the stories you won’t see anywhere else. And that’s just the start. We have more planned for the stretch run, and I can’t wait to share it with you. If there is a candidate you want on the platform, let me know!

Now, let’s get into today’s news.

Trump Rages at Norway After Losing Nobel Peace Prize, Calls Decision an “Indelible Stain”

Trump lashed out at Norway after the Nobel Peace Prize went to former ICC judge Navi Pillay instead of him. At a campaign rally in Syracuse, New York, Friday night, Trump spent about 10 minutes railing against the decision, calling it “disgraceful and embarrassing.” He declared it “an indelible stain on the country of Norway” and warned, “We will not forget, Norway, that you didn’t give this prize.” Trump then followed up with a nearly 600-word Truth Social post just before midnight, claiming the prize had been “forever discredited” by “Radical Ideologues” who are “Enemies of Civilization.” Norway’s government doesn’t actually award the prize, which is chosen by an independent committee. Trump has previously pressured Norwegian leaders directly over the award, including calling the country’s finance minister and texting its prime minister.

Trump dismissed Pillay as a “mystery person” and claimed she “very obviously, hates Israel.” He said he knew “nothing about this woman” and that no one else had ever heard of her either. In reality, the 85-year-old South African jurist is a former UN human rights chief who led the international tribunal investigating the Rwandan genocide and defended anti-apartheid activists. She also served as an ICC judge and chaired a UN commission that concluded Israel committed genocide in Gaza, a finding Israel rejects. Trump also took a swipe at the United Nations, saying it was “of no help” in any of the wars he claims to have settled. Pillay herself joked when she learned of her win that if the crowd clapped a little more, she “may share this prize with Trump.”

Trump repeated exaggerated claims that he “settled 8 Wars” and should have won eight Nobel Prizes. He wrote that he is “about to settle, or win, two more,” pointing to Iran and Russia-Ukraine, even as he wages an eight-month war against Iran. At his rally, he also claimed without evidence that he prevented wars between North and South Korea, Japan and North Korea, and China and Taiwan. Some of the conflicts Trump says he resolved are still ongoing, while others were ended largely by other parties. Trump wrote that ending any one of them, particularly between Pakistan and India, “would be far more than necessary to win the Nobel Prize.” He concluded, “In actuality, I should have won 8 Nobel Peace Prizes, not just 1.”

The Nobel Committee stood firm, and experts called Trump’s reaction “bullying.” Committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes said the panel is independent of the Norwegian government and honored Pillay for leading the way toward “a more comprehensive global legal order.” The head of the Peace Research Institute Oslo said the ICC sanctions imposed the same day Pillay won “underscores exactly why this award matters,” calling it “a brave decision by the Committee, and a worryingly bullying reaction.” Pillay dedicated her award to survivors of war crimes and criticized threats against the ICC as attempts to weaken international justice. Last year’s winner, María Corina Machado, gave Trump her medal in January, but the committee said the prize “cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred to others.” The award remains one Trump has publicly chased every year of his presidency.

About 2,500 people protested Trump in Syracuse ahead of his campaign rally for New York GOP gubernatorial nominee Bruce Blakeman. Demonstrators packed Clinton Square, less than a mile from the rally, holding signs reading “Impeach” and “This Orange isn’t welcome in Syracuse.” Syracuse Mayor Sharon Owens joined the crowd and called for ICE to be dismantled, while state Sen. Rachel May noted that several local Republicans skipped Trump’s event, calling it “cowardice.” Around 1,500 protesters then marched toward the rally venue as Trump’s motorcade arrived, before police, some in riot gear, stopped them at barricades two blocks away. Attendees included veterans, retirees, and teachers who spoke about cuts to Social Security, Medicare, SNAP, and education, with one Army veteran saying Trump is “putting the Constitution in the shredder.” One organizer said the turnout gave people hope, adding that the administration “has made people feel small, alone. But today doesn’t seem lonely.”

Hegseth Faces Growing Impeachment Push as Livestreamed Execution Plan Blindsides the Army and Sparks Bipartisan Outrage

Hegseth’s plan to livestream the Fort Hood shooter’s execution caught the Army and Pentagon completely off guard. Three sources told CNN that many officials first heard the idea when Hegseth floated it in an interview with far-right podcaster Jack Posobiec aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. Hegseth, acting Army Secretary Adam Telle, and Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell then decided that “public” would mean a livestream, and the Pentagon confirmed it before key details were worked out. Officials are still scrambling over basic questions, including whether soldiers can refuse to take part and how to hide the shooters’ identities. Asked whether Nidal Hasan had any final requests, Hegseth replied: “Don’t care. We’ll see him on Dec. 3.”

Troops and veterans are warning the plan could cause lasting harm to the soldiers ordered to carry it out. A specific unit has already been selected for the firing squad, and officials say they are weighing the psychological toll on those involved. One Army officer with multiple Middle East deployments told CNN that making troops shoot a man in a wheelchair on camera would cause “irreparable” generational harm. Another source noted that Hasan, who is partially paralyzed, will be “immobile and put up like a target.”

Pope Leo XIV declared the death penalty “inadmissible” just days after the Pentagon announced plans to livestream the Fort Hood shooter’s execution. In a post on X marking the World Day Against the Death Penalty, the Pope said capital punishment is “an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” He argued that justice and public safety can be achieved through effective detention systems that still leave room for redemption. His message came a day after the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, called the planned livestream “truly incomprehensible” and said it is “unacceptable to turn death into a spectacle.” The head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Paul Coakley, also condemned the plan as “a barbaric promotion of a culture of death.” Nidal Hasan’s execution by firing squad is scheduled for December 3, though further legal proceedings could delay it.

The backlash is bipartisan, with Republicans joining Democrats in condemning the plan. Sen. Mark Kelly called for Hegseth to be removed “immediately,” comparing the livestream to public executions carried out by Iran and the Taliban. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis called it “beyond disgusting,” while Sen. Chris Murphy asked whether Hegseth was “mimicking ISIS executions.” In Utah, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson called the plan “deeply disturbing,” and Gov. Spencer Cox shared a post calling it barbaric. Sen. John Curtis urged Hegseth to reconsider, though Sen. Mike Lee has previously called for public executions himself.

Democrats are now uniting around impeaching Hegseth if they win the House next month. While Hakeem Jeffries and party leaders remain wary of a third Trump impeachment, many Democrats see Hegseth as a safer and more urgent target over his handling of the Iran war. Rep. Melanie Stansbury called him “a dangerous war criminal” and said his removal should be a top priority, and even Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet, who represents a Trump-won district, said she is open to it. The effort could be bipartisan: Republican Rep. Thomas Massie has filed an impeachment resolution that the House will be forced to vote on after the midterms, and top Armed Services Democrat Adam Smith has signaled he could support it. Only two Cabinet secretaries have ever been impeached in U.S. history.

ICE Surge Turns California Farm Towns into Ghost Towns as Agency Quietly Separates Children from Their Parents

A sudden surge in ICE arrests has swept California’s San Joaquin Valley, with at least 100 people detained in just three days. A local activist who monitors the ICE office in downtown Fresno says the number of vans bringing in detainees has jumped from a couple per day to 10 to 15. The crackdown follows an August appeals court ruling that lifted an injunction barring Border Patrol from conducting indiscriminate sweeps in the region. ICE refused to confirm the operation, citing “operational security.” State Assemblymember Esmeralda Soria dismissed federal claims that the arrests are “targeted enforcement” as “a flat lie.”

Entire communities are now living in fear, with workers staying home and parents afraid to pick up their kids from school. In the farm town of Mendota, a lawful permanent resident said agents stopped him and demanded his papers simply “because I’m Latino,” describing the streets as empty “like a ghost town.” He said only people with documents are picking up children from school because other parents are too afraid to leave home. In Fresno, the family of Luis Arreguin, a 54-year-old who has lived in the U.S. for 49 years, held an “ICE memorial” after he was arrested on his way to work. His daughter said the family was told to say their goodbyes through partitioned glass, and they still don’t know where he is being sent.

Meanwhile, an off-duty ICE agent from Texas was shot and arrested in Fresno after allegedly assaulting a 72-year-old man and his daughter. Police say a woman found agent David Gonzalez asleep on her lawn early Friday, and when her father woke him up, Gonzalez appeared “intoxicated and agitated” and attacked them both. The father, who legally owned his gun, shot Gonzalez once and is not facing charges. Gonzalez was charged with felony assault and vandalism, and police did not say why he was in Fresno. Fresno City Council President Nelson Esparza responded that ICE is operating beyond its legal authority and “the people of Fresno are paying the price.”

A Mother Jones investigation found that ICE is once again separating immigrant children from their parents, this time far from the border. Agents have been labeling children “unaccompanied” even when they were arrested alongside a parent, then sending them into federal shelters and foster care. In one case, ICE pulled an 11-year-old Venezuelan boy from his father’s arms at midnight, and his family couldn’t find him for days. Interior referrals, once just 3 to 5 percent of cases, now make up about 20 percent or more, and average stays in custody have jumped from about one month to roughly six. When the boy was finally deported months later, no one told his mother when he would arrive, and he was left waiting alone on the side of the road outside the airport in Venezuela. This is what happened in New Jersey:

Other news:

Zelensky slammed Trump’s diesel deal with Putin as “a weak decision of strong partners.” He called the agreement an “investment in a war that must be ended, not prolonged,” and urged the U.S. and Europe to send strong signals aimed at limiting Russia’s ability to wage war. The announcement landed just as a top Ukrainian delegation arrived in Miami for peace talks with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. “In this exact moment when our team is talking to the American team in Florida, the US President has a conversation with Kremlin leader,” Zelensky said. Hours after Trump’s announcement, a Russian attack on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region killed 17 people, including three children. That came a day after a Russian strike on a bus stop in eastern Ukraine killed more than 30.

Hurricane Isaias slammed into the Florida Panhandle overnight, knocking out power to more than 900,000 people across the Southeast. The storm made landfall near Destin late Friday as a Category 2 hurricane with 105 mph winds before weakening to a post-tropical cyclone early Saturday. Florida and Alabama were hit hardest, with more than 436,000 outages in Florida and over 316,000 in Alabama. Forecasters warn the biggest remaining threat is flash flooding across southern Alabama, the Panhandle, and southwest Georgia, and Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey cautioned that spinoff tornadoes are possible. Ron DeSantis said no search and rescue requests had come in, calling it “cautiously, a good sign,” and no deaths had been reported as of Saturday morning. Isaias arrived as the latest first Atlantic hurricane on record, a full month later than the previous record set in 2002 and 2013.

The FDA is quietly moving to let some of the world’s most toxic chemicals be added directly to food without a safety review. A loophole called the “threshold of regulation” exemption currently allows non-cancer-causing chemicals in food packaging at very low levels, and the new proposal would expand it to ingredients added straight into food, like flavorings and preservatives. Experts warn that many hormone-disrupting chemicals, including some PFAS “forever chemicals,” can cause harm at levels far below the threshold. The existing loophole has already backfired: after the rocket fuel chemical perchlorate was approved for grain bags, levels in kids’ cereal rose, raising concerns about brain development and lower IQs in children. The expansion was buried inside a rule RFK Jr. publicly celebrated as “closing” a different food safety loophole, leading advocates to accuse him of deception. Consumers would have no way of knowing whether a product contains these exempted chemicals.

Kash Patel is seeking a no-bid contract to have UFC trainers teach FBI agents hand-to-hand combat. According to an FBI document released in September, Patel wants a one-year “sole source” deal with Dana White’s UFC, bypassing the normal competitive bidding process. The FBI called the UFC “uniquely qualified” to train agents in striking, grappling, and weapon defense, but the contract’s value was redacted. White is a longtime friend of Trump, who hosted a UFC event on the White House South Lawn in June for his 80th birthday. Patel attended that event and previously brought UFC fighters to Quantico for a training seminar in March. The move follows other no-bid contracts under Trump, including one to a firm tied to a Trump donor whose Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool repair turned the water green with algae.

Nine people, including two children, were reportedly killed in a mass shooting and hours-long standoff in Erie, Pennsylvania. Police were called to Perry Street around 5 p.m. Friday after witnesses saw a man firing a gun before he entered a home. Two women were found dead in the street, and more victims were found inside the house. The suspect was also found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, though it is unclear whether he is included in the reported death toll. Erie Police Chief Rick Lorah said “there are no words that can adequately express the magnitude of the loss of life,” and officials say there is no ongoing threat to the public as investigators work to determine a motive.

PepsiCo is raising prices on Doritos, Ruffles, SunChips, and some sodas as rising costs and weak sales squeeze the company. The company blamed higher prices for fuel, aluminum, and farm commodities, and said the increases will be in the single digits. PepsiCo had used a $178 million tariff refund, issued after the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s global tariffs, to offset costs, but that money won’t carry into future quarters. The company cut its full-year earnings forecast as North American snack volumes stayed flat and beverage volumes fell 2%. The CEO admitted, “We don’t feel good about the beverage business.” PepsiCo had already cut prices by up to 15% earlier this year after years of steep hikes drove shoppers away.

A federal judge ordered the Kennedy Center to hand over more financial records as the DOJ fights to keep Trump’s role secret. The DOJ has invoked executive privilege to block questions about Trump’s involvement in running the arts center, where he installed loyalists and was elected board chairman. During a deposition this week, a DOJ lawyer even told the center’s executive director not to answer what Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said to him. The lawsuit was filed by Rep. Joyce Beatty, a board member who is fighting Trump’s plan to close the center for two years. She already won a court order forcing Trump’s name to be removed from the building. Legal experts say the privilege claim is highly unusual, since Trump is acting as the chair of a nonprofit board, not as president.

D.C. election officials asked the National Guard to stay away from ballot drop boxes after troops were spotted standing next to one. Residents complained after Guard members were seen beside a drop box in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood, the same day the District’s 55 drop boxes opened for the midterms. The D.C. Board of Elections said it is addressing the concerns directly and requested limits on where troops can be stationed near voting locations. Deploying troops near polling places violates federal criminal law, though it is unclear whether these soldiers were posted there or just passing through on patrol. The D.C. Joint Task Force said troops are explicitly directed not to monitor or secure polling locations and that it is addressing the incident. Nearly 3,000 National Guard troops are currently deployed across the city.

A man named Hitler Mussolini Simeon Flores was just elected mayor of a remote district in Peru. The 45-year-old freight transportation businessman won the race in Queropalca, in Peru’s Andean Huánuco region, and will take office on January 1. Running with the left-wing Ahora Nación party, he won 229 of 663 votes, narrowly beating a far-right candidate who received 204. Flores had been a member of the party of Peru’s right-wing president, Keiko Fujimori, until last year. Surprisingly, he isn’t the first politician named Hitler to win office in Peru. A doctor named Hitler was elected to Congress in 2021, and in 2018 another Hitler won a mayor’s race after campaigning as “the good Hitler.” 

Nine people were killed in a shooting in Erie, Pennsylvania, and officials say every death occurred before police arrived. Officers reached the scene within minutes of a ShotSpotter alert Friday night, and no shots were fired after they got there. Officials say the shooter is dead and there is no ongoing threat to the public, though they have not said whether the shooter is included in the death toll. When officers first arrived, they had limited information, including whether the gunman was still inside or posed a continuing danger. Gov. Josh Shapiro said he spoke with Erie Mayor Daria Devlin and offered his administration’s “full support,” writing, “My heart breaks for this family.”

Portugal suspended Cristiano Ronaldo and opened disciplinary proceedings after he walked out on the national team. The 41-year-old left the team’s camp during the international break in a dispute with new coach Jorge Jesus over his lack of playing time. Ronaldo played only in Portugal’s first Nations League game, and after he left, his replacement Gonçalo Ramos scored three goals as Portugal won every match to reach the quarterfinals. Under federation rules, a player who abandons the team without justification faces a suspension of one to six months plus a fine. Ronaldo apologized in a long Instagram post to his 679 million followers, writing that “actions must have consequences.” He also promised fans “one or more farewell matches.”

The death toll from Isaias has risen to at least four as the storm breaks apart over Alabama. Two people died in Florida’s Escambia County, one crushed by a falling tree and another found in a closed garage with a running generator, and two more died in Alabama, including one after a tree fell on a Birmingham home. Nearly 700,000 customers across five states remain without power, including more than 420,000 in Florida. About 10 million people from Florida to Virginia are still under flood alerts, with some areas already seeing more than a foot of rain. Ron DeSantis warned residents not to run generators indoors and said deaths often happen in the days after a storm. Still, one local sheriff said, “It could have been a lot worse.”

Christa Pike, the first person known to survive a lethal injection execution, has been released from the hospital and sent back to prison. The 50-year-old survived two doses of pentobarbital when Tennessee tried to execute her on September 30. She had been in the hospital ever since and has now returned to the women’s prison where she was held for 30 years. Her attorneys said she is grateful to the first responders and medical staff who cared for her “in these extraordinary circumstances.” She will continue to receive medical care at the prison as her lawyers track her recovery. Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of a classmate, and her case has raised unprecedented legal questions about what happens next.

Riyadh’s airport was attacked again and evacuated as the Iran war’s new front in Saudi Arabia escalates. Explosions rocked the Saudi capital Saturday, flights were diverted, and at least 225 flights had been canceled in the past 24 hours. The airport has been hit multiple times since a Saudi-led coalition launched an offensive against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, including attacks this week that killed three Saudis and a Sudanese national. Airlines including Lufthansa, Air India, and FlyDubai have suspended flights to Saudi Arabia, and European aviation regulators warned of an increased risk of civilian planes being misidentified. Trump told reporters “It’s not good” and “I’m not happy,” but there has been no sign of new U.S. military support. The Houthis’ gains also give them more control over a key shipping route that serves as an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.

UAW President Shawn Fain won re-election in a landslide despite a Justice Department investigation. Fain took more than 68% of the vote, while his closest challenger, Rich Boyer, got just 13%, and 13 other candidates on Fain’s slate also won. In July, the DOJ announced it was investigating allegations that Fain pressured Boyer to provide benefits to his fiancée and sister, then retaliated when he refused. Fain denied the claims and called them an attempt to interfere in the election. He said the results are about “taking on corporate America” and pointed to upcoming contract fights at John Deere, Volvo, and the Big Three automakers in 2028. Fain first won as a reform candidate in 2023 and led the historic six-week strike against GM, Ford, and Stellantis that Joe Biden joined on the picket line.

A New Orleans deputy who handcuffed a journalist was disciplined, but only for arguing with a court official, not for the arrest itself. Deputy Herschel Green handcuffed WWL investigative producer Danny Monteverde, and another deputy cuffed the station’s attorney, after they refused to leave a public courthouse hallway in July. They were there to cover the indictment of Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill and to object to the judge closing the courtroom, since state law requires indictments to be returned in open court. An internal report found Green violated professionalism rules only for a heated argument with the court’s administrator, who objected to him parading the handcuffed journalist past waiting media. The report did find “deficiencies” in planning, training, and supervision, and said handcuffing should not be used for “verbal disagreement or passive refusal.” The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press called the handcuffings “outrageous.”

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption 

Trump-nominated U.S. Ambassador To Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle, in a file photo by J. Scott Applewhite of the Associated Press when she was campaigning for his presidential election. ap j scott applewhite

Trump-nominated U.S. Ambassador To Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle, in a file photo by J. Scott Applewhite of the Associated Press when she was campaigning for his presidential election.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Oct. 9, 2026 [The Grifting Ambassador To Greece], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 10, 2026. Late Wednesday afternoon, Dana Mattioli, Drew Hinshaw, Rebecca Ballhaus, and Joe Parkinson of the Wall Street Journal reported on the tawdry grifting of Kimberly Guilfoyle, former fiancee of Donald Trump Jr. and now Trump’s ambassador to Greece.

Panicked about how much money she owed on her American Express credit card, Guilfoyle reached out to Eric Deters, who wanted the administration’s help with tax and legal issues. Deters had promised Guilfoyle as much as a million dollars if she was successful in getting him the help he wanted.

With her confirmation hearing for the ambassador post coming up, Guilfoyle begged Deters to pay $100,000 to American Express. “It won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express,” she wrote on the secure messaging app Signal, the Wall Street Journal reporters explained. “Please.” She reiterated over text: “Honey please I need you to get this done for me today.” “Your needing $100,000 urgent unfortunately is not going to work,” Deters wrote. “I can’t do this without getting a divorce.”

In their months of correspondence, Guilfoyle often complained that he was not being careful enough. “Eric, I really wish you would stop papering all these things,” she wrote. “It’s really dangerous and not helpful to you or me while you could simply just call me on signal.” She wrote: “It’s unbelievable when we have a private arrangement with you that you would now CC a producer talking about money.” And later: “What a nightmare you’ll literally cost me my ambassadorship stop writing.”

Looking back today at stories of corruption involving Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, former secretary of homeland security Kristi Noem, and so on, Chris Hayes of MS NOW explained that Trump’s inner circle “works a lot like a crime family…. [E]veryone gets their fiefdoms. They can get their beaks wet. But they’ve always got to make sure they’re giving the boss his due.”

On Tuesday, Samantha Subin of CNBC reported that just days after Palmer Luckey joined the Pentagon’s new Project Meridian, set up to report on the military’s future needs, the company Luckey co-founded—Anduril—landed a $2.9 billion contract with the U.S. Navy. And today, Reuters reported that Kalshi is investigating suspicious trades having to do with Trump’s selection of Katie Zacharia as the new White House press secretary.

Americans don’t like corruption, and with the midterms shaping up to be a disaster for the Republicans, Trump has launched an all-out offensive to solidify his base. That offensive includes spinning the Iran War, calling for a public execution, attacking immigrants both rhetorically and in real life, and shifting the United States against the defense of international law and allying with authoritarian governments.

On Wednesday, October 7, Jonathan Saul of Reuters reported that attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz hit the highest level since the war on Iran began. Shortly after noon yesterday, October 8, Trump tried to spin the situation there to make it sound like he was in control. He posted that “Iran is in a very bad condition, both Economically and Militarily,” that the U.S. blockade is still in effect, that oil is flowing “in Record Numbers of Barrels through the Hormuz Strait,” and that the administration is having “productive discussions” with Iran. He added: “[W]e will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd. IRAN WILL NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!”

In an interview with far-right podcaster Jack Posobiec on board the USS Abraham Lincoln on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appealed to the MAGA religious base with a promise that the execution of former Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the mass shooter who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, would be public. An active Army officer when he committed the murders, Hasan was court-martialed and sentenced to death.

“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” Hegseth said. CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen noted that a livestream of the execution would be a rallying cry for terrorists.

The backlash against Hegseth’s plan has been swift and bipartisan.

Representative Jason Crow (D-CO), who served as a paratrooper and Army Ranger and is now on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Intelligence Committee, said: “Pete Hegseth has taken our military’s tradition of selfless service and flipped it on its head. With this public execution, he is degrading the culture of our military and turning a culture of service into one of vengeance and spectacle, performed for cameras and attention on social media. The Fort Hood shooter’s actions were horrific. Responding to it by livestreaming a violent execution is not an answer. A public execution only gives our adversaries fodder for anti-American propaganda that makes us less safe. Pete Hegseth’s self-absorbed hunger for power, attention, and violence is disgusting and beneath the office he holds. He is not fit to lead.”

The idea was “beyond disgusting,” Senator Tom Tillis (R-NC) wrote. “Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America.”

Trump then tried to rile up his supporters by turning them against an invented “enemy,” a tactic that is Authoritarianism 101. On Wednesday the FBI said it had prevented an attack on Minnesota’s Mall of America by a teenaged American-born U.S. citizen of Somalian descent whom they had been monitoring since December 2024 and to whom an FBI agent sold the assault rifle and ammunition for the attack.

At 4:30 on the afternoon of October 8, Trump wrote: “The once Great State of Minnesota is being taken over by Somali Immigrants. There is Violence, Murder, and Mayhem all over the State. The people of Minnesota must fight back. You have been robbed, and abandoned by your State Government. Your Governor is an incompetent thief who doesn’t want to get involved. He just wants to get out of town with as much as he can steal, and then, lead a quiet life. The Somalians should not be allowed to get away with what they are doing. They view you as weak and stupid people. Fight back Minnesota, fight back! If you need, the Federal Government will come to your rescue. Governor Tim Walz, and Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, must immediately ask for Federal help—and leave the rest to us!”

Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, a MAGA Republican, promptly referred to Somali-Americans as “enemy combatants” and complained that Democrats were not “rounding them up and putting them in jail.”

On Thursday, October 8, Priscilla Alvarez and Michael Williams of CNN reported that on Tuesday, the leaders of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) verbally told agents across the country to ramp up their arrests by another 1,000 people a day, bringing arrests back to 3,000 daily.

On Thursday afternoon, as ICE agents in New York City surrounded a Dominican man and his five-year-old son in a car, one of the agents fired several shots. It is not clear how badly injured Oscar Belgal is; he was shot in the neck, treated at a hospital, and then moved to an ICE facility outside of New York. His son was not hit by a bullet. New Yorkers immediately began to protest, calling for an end to ICE. New York governor Kathy Hochul and New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, both Democrats, have demanded ICE stop operations in the state. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin refused. “No, we’re not putting a pause on enforcement,” he said. “I’m sorry, we’re not. In fact, I’m not sorry.”

The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, a South-African-born jurist and former chief of human rights at the United Nations. There she led a U.N. commission that concluded Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians. She is currently a judge at the International Court of Justice. The committee’s message with their choice seemed pointed: Pillay has promoted peace through her protection of international law, they said, and the committee chair said the award was “a message to those who are attacking” international law. The committee said Pillay was “instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted.”

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted that the “Nobel Prize committee has lost its moral compass,” calling Pillay “a bigot who built her career around inventing and propagating blood libels against the one and only Jewish state.”

Hours after the prize announcement, Humeyra Pamuk, Steve Holland, and Anthony Deutsch of Reuters reported that Trump’s administration was imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC), founded in 2002 to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The U.S. has imposed sanctions on judges and prosecutors before; now it is sanctioning companies that provide services to the court itself.

The ICC has issued arrest warrants for Israeli officials including Netanyahu, as well as Russian officials including Vladimir Putin. Today Secretary of State Marco Rubio said: “President Trump will never allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Americans.”

Sanctioning the ICC sets the U.S. against its allies in Europe, who are increasingly worried about hybrid attacks from Russia, attacks that avoid direct war while destabilizing another country, methods like cyberwarfare or disinformation. Today, after ten years of cozying up to Vladimir Putin, Trump openly allied the United States with Russia against Ukraine.

Three weeks ago, by large bipartisan votes, Congress passed new sanctions against Russia and countries that were continuing to use Russian oil and gas and gave Trump sweeping powers to expand those sanctions. At the time, Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX) said: “This bill will cripple Russia’s war machine and finally bring Putin to the negotiating table. It will ensure America’s adversaries, not only Russia, but also China and Iran, suffer for their coordinated campaign of aggression.”

But today, Trump used the law for the opposite of what Congress apparently intended: “I have just concluded a highly successful discussion with President Vladimir Putin, of Russia, wherein it was agreed that Russia will immediately supply over 300,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel to the American and Global Marketplace, another 500,000 Tons during the month of November, and 1,000,000 Tons immediately thereafter. Additionally, based on the condition of their Diesel Refineries, Russia will then deliver, within a short period of time, 3,000,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel. Between our TOTAL CONTROL of the Strait of Hormuz, and this great announcement on Russian Energy, Diesel Prices for Americans and, indeed, the World, will be COMING DOWN, IN RECORD NUMBERS, AND FAST! Lower prices for Americans, especially our Great Farmers, Ranchers, and Truckers, is my Greatest Priority. This is a very big and important announcement. Additionally, it must be understood, that Iran will not have a Nuclear Weapon!”

The Treasury Department promptly announced it was issuing a temporary license to permit Russian diesel to sell on the global market. The sales will likely do little for U.S. oil prices, but they will funnel money to Russia for its war on Ukraine.

Trump’s smash-and-grab suggests concern he will lose the midterms. The latest poll from the Pew Research Center shows that 68% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the presidency. Cook Political Report has moved 18 more House ratings toward the Democrats. Myah Ward of Politico reported that 26% of those who voted for Trump in 2024 think the Republican Party should break with Trump in order to win in November. In Kansas on Wednesday, more than 100 prominent Republicans launched a coalition called “Republicans for Hamilton” to back Democrat Adam Hamilton for the U.S. Senate. Their announcement referred to “a growing network of everyday Republican voters…who are ready for change.”

Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark, who conducts focus groups with voters, says Trump’s campaign ads boosting himself have backfired: people hate them. They object to using taxpayer money for them by a margin of 86 to9. Furthermore, Longwell finds that Trump 2024 voters in Florida whom Trump needs to energize for this election, really hate them—the word Longwell used is “revulsion.” One said: “We need to get rid of all these people. Even if the Republicans don’t win for the next ten years, it’s probably best to wash these people out, you know, so you can get cleaned—clean slate.” 

The Hartmann Report, The Best of the Rest of the News and Opinion: Where is the missing $50 million? Thom Hartmann, right, thom hartmann newOct. 10, 2026. Maybe look for piles of cash in the bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago? 

Donald Trump woke up from a nap in the Oval Office this week just in time to remember Vladimir Putin’s birthday. While his own Treasury Secretary was speaking, Trump nodded off at his own event, then perked right up to announce he had a call scheduled to wish his mentor (my word, not his) a happy 74th.

By Friday we learned what the birthday boy got. Trump crowed on his Nazi-infested social media site that us taxpayers will buy five million tons of diesel — a deal worth billions to the Kremlin’s deeply troubled war chest — at today’s record-high prices.

As a sweetener, a birthday cupcake you could call it, Trump ordered his Treasury Department to suspend sanctions on Russian diesel for the next half-year. And he and little Marco Rubio are going after the International Criminal Court, which has indicted Putin, and are trying to quite literally destroy it.

And, shortly, Ka$h Patel will be visiting Moscow.

Bizarrely, this all happened just a few weeks after he signed Lindsey Graham’s Russia sanctions bill. This is the same Putin whose government, US officials have confirmed, is providing Iran with detailed, specific targeting information on American troops, ships, and planes that’s been used to kill our service members. It’s the same Putin Trump’s invited to December’s G20, which he’s holding, corruptly, at his own shabby golf resort motel in Florida.

Ukraine, meanwhile, was told no by Trump and Vance (who called it one of his “proudest moments”) when Zelensky asked for Patriot interceptors to stop Russian missiles from daily killing its civilians, a war crime. How much more of this treasonous behavior will the American people, and the congressional Republicans — who swore an oath to the Constitution rather than to Trump — tolerate? The Capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121. Ask them.

— Time magazine interviewed the President of the United States, wrote down twelve things he said, and then had to publish a second article explaining that most of them weren’t true. Raw Story has the rundown. Trump told the reporters he won 86 percent of the popular vote (it was 49.8 percent). He said he’s at 99 percent approval in Israel. He said his convention speech drew 107 million viewers and beat the NFL opener (Nielsen says he had 2.5 million viewers against football’s 25.1 million). He said Iran’s inflation is 300 percent (it’s 83.8) and blamed the American press for the idea that his war would be over in four or five weeks, something he promised in the early days of the war (originally it was going to be “a few weeks”). Time’s fact-checkers described Trump’s popular vote whopper by gently saying, “He’s conflating two figures.” Conflating is what Grandpa does with the grandkids’ names at Thanksgiving. How much longer will our media continue to tuck his blatant, daily lies into a polite sidebar while the lies themselves get the headline? This has been going on since 2015; no wonder we’re in such deep trouble and our democracy is in such a crisis. Our media needs to grow a damn spine.Subscribed

— Trump’s meme coin buyers have lost 97 percent of their “investments,” so naturally he’s throwing another dinner to sell more of them. As Lisa Needham lays out at Aaron Rupar’s Public Notice, the top 185 holders of $TRUMP will “win” seats at a November 22 gala at his Virginia golf club, complete with a swag bag of Trump cologne, and the four biggest buyers get an 18-karat gold Trump watch. The so-called coin peaked above $73 and now trades around $1.79. Trump is making billions off crypto while the suckers who bought his and Melania’s meme coins were out $3.81 billion by the end of June. But wait: there’s more! While regular buyers are being told to hold tight for a shot at being invited to this super-special dinner, the coin’s biggest insider wallet has moved tens of millions of dollars’ worth of them into a position to sell. One investor who’s lost $400,000 summed it up, saying, “The grift continues until morale improves.” In fact, there are two kinds of buyers for these “collectible” tokens: suckers and people — including foreigners — wanting to buy influence or pardons from Trump. The Founders had a word for this (emoluments) and so does the criminal code (bribery), and if Republicans in Congress had even the faintest semblance of integrity they would shut the whole grift down tomorrow. Vote!

— The bond market, which doesn’t watch Fox “News,” is telling us what it really thinks of Trump’s America. Bloomberg reports that something called the “term premium” — the extra interest investors demand before they’ll lend Uncle Sam money by buying 10-year bonds — has shoved Treasury yields to a 24-year high. As a result, we’re all paying more for mortgages, car loans, and credit cards because America’s lenders (Treasury buyers) don’t trust Trump, Bessent, and the Republicans who control Congress and keep borrowing trillions to give to Trump and his billionaire buddies as tax breaks. There are energy shocks from Trump’s illegal (and stupid) war on Iran leaving oil stuck above $100 a barrel, as well as a $2 trillion federal deficit just so far this year. This is the end product of 45 years of Reaganomics, decades of GOP lies, and an accumulated $40 trillion in tax breaks for the morbidly rich and giant corporations. We need to tax the morbidly rich like we did when America built the world’s largest middle class, strengthen the social safety net, and stop starting illegal wars that we can’t even afford to pay for.

— Somebody seems to have misplaced fifty million dollars, and nobody in Trump’s orbit is in any hurry to find it. A decade ago, Congress set aside money for an America 250 celebration of our anniversary, but Trump ignored that (other than taking the money) and created his own, privatized “Freedom 250” celebration as a new grift to squeeze millions out of major donors like Chevron, United Airlines, and the defense giant RTX. Now documents uncovered by the watchdog group PEER discovered that the events cost $128 million and at least $114 million of that came from our tax dollars, even though The Wall Street Journal says the “donors” kicked in at least $50 million and (my guess) probably much more. Trump passed out that money to his contractor friends with no competitive bidding whatsoever, and now refuses to say who gave him money, or how much, or even where the money went. Democrats suspect he just turned it into another slush fund for himself and his family; perhaps they should look for piles of cash in the bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago?

— The people building artificial intelligence are holding private rehearsals for the day it hurts a whole lot of us. Axios reports that top executives at Anthropic, OpenAI, and other AI companies are gaming out what happens after a catastrophic AI event, “most likely a cyberattack,” that could knock out banking, the internet, or even power and water. Axios reports that industry insiders told them they expect “something big” within the next six to twelve months. But when Mediaite dug into it, they concluded that this is really more PR planning than anything else; handling the public and political revolt and a panicked Congress. Trump, who is now heavily invested financially in AI, calls the danger a “hoax” and says the industry should just police itself. You know, like tobacco, asbestos, the Pinto, leaded gasoline, Oxycontin and the Sacklers, and the banks in 2008. That’s always worked out so well for America. Even some Republicans think that’s nuts; there’s already a bipartisan bill requiring a kill switch on advanced AI. Pass it now, while the lights are still on.

— Having lost at the Supreme Court, Trump has decided to hold his own trial of Lisa Cook at the White House, with his own appointees as the jury. The Supreme Court ruled against him in June when he tried to fire the nation’s first Black female Federal Reserve governor. So this week he signed a memo creating a “committee of inquiry” made up of his economic adviser, his EEOC chairman, and his ethics director, who will decide Cook’s fate. As the Guardian reports, she’s being summoned to a kangaroo court that will be closed to the public, capped at four hours, and held on November 5, two days after the midterms, when it’s too late to piss off voters. In an administration that fired the Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the first woman to lead the Navy, it appears that her race and gender are her real offense. The Senate confirmed her; the Senate should defend her. But don’t count on the Trump lickspittles and cowards (and probably quite a few racists and misogynists) in today’s Republican-run Congress to do squat.

— Hypocrisy Alert! The senator who sued new mothers over medical bills as small as $101 apparently doesn’t pay for his own cookies. Holly Thomas, who owns Holly’s Sweet Treats in Hutchinson, Kansas, says Senator Roger Marshall’s campaign took delivery of $678.75 worth of cookies and treats for his 2020 primary watch party and never paid for them. She’s been calling and emailing Marshall — without any response — as she was then a brand-new business owner trying to survive the pandemic. This is the same Senator/Dr. Marshall whose OB-GYN practice, the New York Times found, sued more than 700 of his female patients — many of them low-income people — and charged them 18 percent interest. He even had 81 of them arrested after missing court dates in those cases. He calls that reporting a “hit job.” At the 18 percent he charged his patients, Holly’s invoice would be north of $1,400 by now. Congress abolished federal debtors’ prisons way back in 1833, and that principle is supposed to work the same way for a working mom with a hospital bill just the same as it does for a senator with a bakery invoice. But this is Republican-run America, where we’ve got one set of rules for the rich and powerful and another for everybody else. Kansans get to settle this particular account on November 3

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance 

 

U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsPolitico Poll, ‘Ship has sailed’: New poll shows even an end to the war or lower gas prices may not save Republicans, Erin Doherty and Jessie Blaeser, Oct. 10, 2026. A new Politico Poll shows most Americans, especially Democratic and undecided voters, would not be moved even if Trump ended the Iran war or brought down gas prices.

Republicans are running out of ways to reverse their gloomy midterm prospects.

The Politico Poll finds most Americans see no clear way for the party to regain the advantage as the election reaches its final weeks, with even Republican voters skeptical that President Donald Trump could pull off a last-minute move that could shake up the campaign. And majorities of voters say they would not be more likely to vote Republican even if Trump were to pull off a major political feat before November — like announcing the Iran war was over, bringing the price of gasoline down by $1 or creating 100,000 new jobs.

This article is part of an ongoing project from Politico  and PF Global, an independent polling company headquartered in London, to measure public opinion across a broad range of policy areas.

That’s especially true of Democratic midterm and undecided voters: No matter the scenario or how significant the accomplishment, both groups hardly moved, the poll shows.

Voters’ perception of Trump’s actions and the economy are largely baked — a worrying sign for the GOP staring down an increasingly difficult landscape.

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion: Cook Moves 18 House Races Towards The Ds, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 10, 2026. Terrific New Candidate Discussions, We Need To Make These Elections About Taking The Keys Away From Our Terrible Leader. 

Cook moved 18 House races towards the Dems yesterday - yes 18! Their new, updated House handicapping chart is below. It’s great to see five of our most important races where we went in early and hard - Bohannan (IA-1), Garriott (IA-3), Bennett (NJ-7), Brooks (PA-7), Stelson (PA-10) - get upgraded to Lean Dem.

But this chart also reminds us how much remains in play, and why we need to keep working as hard as we can to take as much away from them as possible.

We’ve done a lot of great interviews of our intrepid battleground candidate and state party leaders in recent days - including Mary Peltola, Josh Turek, Roy Cooper, Paige Cognetti, Bob Brooks, Sarah Trone Garriott, and more - which you can find here. No better way to dive deep into the election this weekend than watching and listening to those on the front lines!

I want to share some of the demographic breakouts from the Pew poll that we reviewed yesterday. Note that Trump is at 21% approval with Hispanics, and 22% approval with 18-29 year olds. As ugly as it gets!

Mary Peltola just keeps bringing it:

While it is still early there are five states so far where Dems are doing very well in the early vote. All data via TargetEarly:

We will have time to go in depth about Trump’s desperate and traitorous decision to lift sanctions on Russian diesel and put America squarely on the side of Russia against Ukraine and the West yesterday, but let’s review two noted reactions this morning. Here’s Republican Rep. Mike McCaul, quoted in an excellent CNBC, article, who has chaired both the Homeland and Foreign Affairs committees in the House:

“Through the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, we gave the president significant authorities and leverage against China and Russia to bring Putin’s war to an end with a negotiated settlement,” Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said in an X post. “Unfortunately, while I understand the desire to bring down diesel prices, I am concerned the lifting of sanctions on Russian oil will only fund the Kremlin’s war machine—emboldening more violence and destruction, as we have seen in recent days,” McCaul said.

And here’s President Zelenskyy this morning:

Yes, it is time to take the keys away from our desperate, addled, corrupt, and traitorous leader by:

Kicking These Corrupt Traitors’ Asses, Winning The Midterms, And Preparing For The F____ To Come.  For It Is Coming (And May Already Be Here)

Lance's Substack, Opinion: Trump’s Pathetic Effort At “October Surprise” Falls Flat, Lance F Rosen, right, lance rosenOct. 10, 2026. His Russia Diesel Purchase Will Only Kill Ukrainians;,A Quick Assessment Responding To Comments And Professor HCR’s Letter, Within Context Of The Midterms. 

The obvious point worth making is that the approximately two million tons of diesel fuel he’s says he's purchasing from his pal Vlad are “a drop in the bucket” according to most analysts, which will hardly affect prices at all or relieve shortages even marginally for at least three months, and even then not much. According to BBC (which is known to be the leak sheet for MI-6 on strategic issues) there are reasons to doubt Russia can even fill the order because of their overstretched refining capacity.

The whole thing is a fraud, a desperate attempt to prevent electoral mass defections from his midwestern red state voter base currently being hit the hardest by the consequences of his and Bibi’s insane war. It’s a bit too little too late there, and his lame attempts to appear presidential are making him look exactly like the dangerous escaped mental patient which he is.

Plus he has antagonized the MAGA Congressional leadership by reversing the bipartisan Lindsey O. Graham sanctions bill they just passed three weeks ago. Heather covered this today, but didn’t address the mechanism in the bill which allowed him to do it. Written into the bill was a section which gives him authority to void the sanctions if he can show it’s in the national interest. This is why the bill itself turns out to be an empty piece of pre-election performance art, and the Democrats should have waged a fight to take that section out, but didn’t.

More importantly, his own party is so furious at him for this and other reasons, that he is undermining his own strategy for challenging and overturning Democratic victories, because many of them secretly are prepared to lose both Houses if it helps get rid of him, and then start over from scratch. Trump has succeeded in performing an anatomical miracle, and screwed himself.

Not incidentally the administration’s leading consultant for implementing the Graham sanctions bill is the infamous law firm Sullivan and Cromwell, whose historically perfidious role in profiteering off of authoritarian regimes when they were run by the Dulles brothers, Allen and John Foster, is well documented. Sullivan and Cromwell were the registered financial agents for Nazi Germany and the Dulleses managed their US investment portfolio. They also incorporated the pro-Hitler organization “America First.”

There is no “national interest” here in Trump’s reversal of these sanctions. It is Trump acting to give a two billion dollar gift to Putin, all so he can send out a Truth Social post announcing “the diesel problem is solved,” in order to try and dupe his own voters and head off his own impeachment.

Americans will not benefit one iota from this “deal.” More Ukrainians will die as a result. Trump is aiding the war machine currently waging hybrid warfare against NATO member countries, an escalation just short of actions that would trigger article five and world war.

Meanwhile he claims to be negotiating with Iran and that the Strait is 100% open, both of which claims are about as real as his “greatest ever economy.”

This solves nothing. The tanker delivering the Diesel should be named after the Russian battleship “The Potemkin” because his so-called solution is as fake as a Potemkin Village. It only builds the case for Trump’s impeachment for aiding and abetting the enemy. Which in my view is 100% warranted, but will not happen if Jared Kushner’s lunch companion Hakeem Jeffries is installed as the next House Speaker by the corrupt corporate blob known as the Democratic National Committee.

Meanwhile Trump just solved a bunch of the Russian military's logistical problems, and is paying Putin to help blow Ukrainians to bits in exchange for a .005% uptick in the polls. In that sense, he is not just a Russian “asset” but a full-fledged agent.

He is now boxed in on Iran, prevented from launching the expected big pre-election attack that everyone and their mothers would recognize as a hastily contrived “October Surprise.” He has already conceded on that front saying he won’t do it, but this doesn’t preclude the possibility of Netanyahu hitting Iran first in order to give Trump a pretext to follow on.

Either way, Trump is going to have a surprise alright, but it’ll be arriving late, sometime in the early morning of November 4th.

He knows he is screwed. Therefore we should expect a series of wildly manic and reckless moves and provocations on his part over the next three weeks. He’ll also throw out some more bribe offers in exchange for votes, and count on his red state Governors and election fixers to do their worst. But as for him,

HE IS GOING TO DO THINGS INTENDED TO START RIOTS.

Such as more ICE shootings, possibly a larger scale invasion of Minnesota to arrest Somalian-Americans, his “boogeyman of the week.” We know his FBI tried to manufacture a terrorist incident by setting up a weapons sale sting with a Somali immigrant patsy they had under surveillance for two years. (Read HCR today) The Hegseth plan to livestream their execution of Nidal Hasan fits this pattern of Hitlerian domestic state terrorism.

There are more ops like that in the works, this I can say with relative certainty, but they need something spectacular in order to declare a national emergency to derail the vote, something much bigger than an incident.

Everyone who is cognizant can see it coming. It is like a hitter in baseball with a 3-0 count and the bases loaded. Unless they are Barry Bonds they are getting a fastball for a strike and sitting on it.

New York Times, Economic Pain and an Unpopular Trump Put G.O.P. on its Heels With Three Weeks to Go, Patricia Mazzei and Shane Goldmacher, Oct. 10, 2026. Inflation has hurt Americans at many levels: Farmers, truckers, consumers. It has also expanded the electoral map into what was safely Republican country just a few months ago.

Three weeks from Election Day, deep frustration over an economy that feels unworkable for Americans at most every level, from farmers to truckers to consumers, has expanded the map of competitive electoral contests into areas that seemed safely Republican just a couple of months ago.

Sustained high prices are putting at risk some of the constituencies, states and congressional districts that President Trump and Republicans won decisively in 2024. The widespread discontent has prompted candidates, parties and major G.O.P. fund-raising groups to shift their messages and ad spending in crucial races to try to move voters in the final days of the midterm campaign.

With control of the House, Senate and the vast majority of the country’s governor’s offices and legislatures at stake, Republicans are examining their own deteriorating internal polling, along with their experiences with voters, and say they are reassessing their odds and triaging the map.

On Friday, for example, the leading Senate Republican super PAC began to plunge another $30 million into advertising in Texas to try to save the state’s Senate seat for Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general.

Several races that are likely to determine the overall outcome on Election Day — the Maine and Michigan Senate elections, for example — remain tight. Control of the chamber could easily boil down to one or two of these razor-thin contests.

Still, Republican baggage is piling up, regionally and nationally. Mr. Trump is facing backlash to mass deportations in South Texas and South Florida. His party is bracing for anger at expanding data centers in states including Ohio and Michigan. In big farming states, record diesel prices have arrived just in time for harvest season. In colder northern states, spiking heating oil costs loom for families.

“When you’ve got a sitting president whose job approval rating is in the high 30s,” said Colin Reed, a veteran Republican strategist, “it makes it really difficult for any Republican candidate to compete and win.”

The White House is racing for stopgap solutions. Mr. Trump announced $90 payouts for millions of seniors on Medicare, and on Friday began sending $500 rebate checks he had promised for some Affordable Care Act customers. He has also promised a $5,000 check for every adult U.S. citizen if his party retains control of Congress. This week, in Nebraska — a typically solidly Republican state — Mr. Trump announced an executive order to loosen restrictions on the use of tax-free diesel on the roads.

On Friday, Mr. Trump said he would allow Russian diesel imports after years of sanctions, in an attempt to lower prices.

Mr. Trump’s unpopularity over his handling of the economy — one of his biggest strengths when he ran two years ago — is driving Republican troubles in a nationalized political environment.

The party still holds structural advantages over Democrats, including a Senate map with more contests in states that Mr. Trump won in 2024; redrawn congressional maps that made more seats favorable to the G.O.P.; and a wide financial lead, bolstered in part by Mr. Trump’s own powerful super PAC, MAGA Inc. In past elections, particularly when Mr. Trump has been on the ballot, some polls have underestimated his popularity.

Those advantages have provided little comfort to Republicans who see their candidates faltering in increasingly red corners of the nation.

The leading House Republican super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, all but ceded the first Republican-held seat of the election this week, moving money out of a district in Nebraska where Representative Don Bacon is retiring. Mr. Bacon occupies the most Democratic-leaning seat of any Republican in the House.

Politico Poll, Arizona Republicans Refuse to Move Past 2020 — And It’s Hurting Them in 2026, Samuel Benson and Andrew Howard, Oct. 10, 2026. The long shadow of 2020 still hangs over this swing state.

Arizona voters come and go at a polling location on primary election day, Tuesday, July 21, 2026, in Phoenix. | AP Photo/Ross D. FranklinBy In retirement, Craig Berland has a lot to look forward to. He lives in perpetually sunny Maricopa County, Arizona. He chairs the Republican Party in Arizona’s most populous and most affluent county. He hobnobs with the rich and famous on golf courses and in private hangars, funneling a career in an aerospace manufacturing company’s corner office into a retirement on private jets.

But Berland can’t stop thinking about 2020.

Too many people in his county, he says, are blinded by propaganda. “If they’re watching CNN and MSNBC, all they know is untruth,” he said. “They’ve never heard the truth about Covid-19. They never heard the truth about the 2020 election.”

To this day, Berland is convinced — convinced — that President Joe Biden’s victory in Maricopa County was fraudulent, and he wants everyone to know it. He doesn’t call himself an election denier; once, while dining at Mar-a-Lago, a reporter made the mistake of calling him such. “I said, ‘That’s just absolutely not true,’” Berland recounted. “I know for a fact that the 2020 election in Maricopa County was fraudulent, when it comes to mail-in ballots,” he told POLITICO Magazine, a claim that has been widely debunked.

Berland is hardly alone. Atop the Arizona ticket this cycle, Republicans nominated a string of candidates who called foul on the 2020 election or were actively involved in trying to subvert it. Rep. Andy Biggs, the GOP nominee for governor, challenged electoral results on Jan. 6, 2021 and was later subpoenaed in an Arizona probe. Secretary of State nominee Alex Kolodin — who, if he wins, would oversee the state’s elections — represented clients who challenged the results of the 2020 election, leading to discipline from the Arizona state bar, and filed lawsuits to try to overturn both the 2020 and 2022 elections. And Attorney General nominee Warren Petersen urged then-Vice President Mike Pence to delay certifying the electoral votes.

Where Berland deviates from his party is his eagerness to talk about it. The Republicans on the ticket hem and haw when asked about the 2020 election, saying they’d rather talk about the issues that matter now to Arizonans. Democrats, too, say they’d rather talk affordability and corruption — but can’t help but point out what their opponents said or did in 2020. And strategists on either side see a unilateral focus on 2020 as a millstone around their neck.

“I would be happy to never mention election denial again,” said Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, in an interview. “But it is a very real thing that still exists, and it’s almost a litmus test in Republican primaries here in Arizona.”

Biden won the 2020 election, and efforts to challenge that result have been repeatedly rejected in court, sometimes by judges appointed by President Donald Trump. Outside of the courtroom, serious investigations have yielded no substantive results: “There was no evidence of fraud in the 2020 presidential election on the magnitude necessary to shift the result in any precinct, let alone any state or the nation as a whole,” wrote former Judge Thomas B. Griffith, a George W. Bush appointee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, who investigated the stolen election claims alongside two other retired conservative jurors, two retired Republican U.S. senators and a former U.S. solicitor general. “Biden won.”

But the current occupant of the White House hasn’t let it go. Trump never conceded his loss in the 2020 race — not in Arizona, not anywhere — and in recent months, he reupped his crusade. In March, his administration subpoenaed 2020 voting records in Maricopa County, following an effort to investigate an election office in Georgia. In hearing after Senate confirmation hearing for Trump administration nominees this year, Democratic senators have asked whether Biden won the 2020 election — and nominees squirm and deflect, unwilling to cross their party’s leader. “We won the presidency three times,” Trump said triumphantly at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas in September.

The Bulwark, Focus Group Opinion: Republicans Thought Florida Was Safe. Then Everything Changed, Sarah Longwell with Kimberly Leonard, Republicans Thought Florida Was Safe. Then Everything Changed.

Republicans have been on a long winning streak in Florida...but they might be playing defense in 2026...because they have one candidate who's REALLY into data centers, and another candidate running what's being called a 'Joe Biden Basement' campaign.

And the Democratic ticket may be one of the oddest couples in the history of politics, led by a former Republican Congressman (David Jolly) and a DSA-aligned state legislator (Angie Nixon). POLITICO's Kimberly Leonard joins Sarah to discuss whether Florida is back in the 'swing state' column in 2026.

More On U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Religion

megyn kelly fox newsThe Daily with Sarah Jones via PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: ‘Pick Me’ Megyn Kelly Exploits the Women’s Movement While Destroying Other Women, Sarah Jones, right, sarah reese jonesOct. 10, 2026. Megyn Kelly, shown aboe in a file photo, is both a victim and a predator. But also, it’s way past time that we speak up to protect the movement and not allow it to be exploited by women who want to use it for their own gain.Megyn Kelly frequently defends men accused of heinous sexual acts.

politicus usa logoWhen the “Pick Me” enters the room, claiming the victim label she has denied to every other woman who has bravely come forward, it puts those of us who want to advance women’s rights at a disadvantage, and this is done on purpose. It’s a weaponization of decades of work by other women.

The Daily is journalism that fights for human rights. Please support our work by becoming a subscriber.Subscribed

Enter Megyn Kelly, to attack an alleged victim of a horrific gang rape.

Serial protector of predators Megyn Kelly has been making headlines in the last few days for her predictably stale and steeped in internalized misogyny insults about the Cornell 7 Jane Doe, including Kelly’s suggestion that Doe was “not the most attractive gal” and therefore “enjoyed it,” adding during an episode of The Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM that she’s "extremely beefy in her arms and legs.”

Kelly is on a crusade to protect the “boys” — just like she did with the Duggars, Epstein and Trump.

Yes, she’s that woman. The dreaded Pick Me, in an era when even Pick Mes have been left behind. Kelly seeks validation and approval from men by putting down other women, and that’s why in her mind the only sexual harassment that was real was her own.

She’s not like other girls.

After Jane Doe alleged that she was gang-raped by multiple Chi Phi fraternity members, Kelly actively sided with the seven men defendants to such an extent that she questioned the victim’s timeline, threatened to dox her, and made highly publicized personal attacks against both Jane Doe and her high-profile defenders.

Kelly went on to argue that she was never gang raped because she never put herself in that position. She says these things on her echo chamber of a YouTube, so no one can ask questions, but if we could, I’d ask her: ‘What position is that?’

How has she avoided places where women have been gang raped, including reporting on war zones, in an agent’s office and in backrooms of fast food joints? Does she never leave her house, and is this a good message to send to girls and women?

People are afraid to admit that something so awful could happen to them, and so they victim blame. If the victim did something to make this bad thing possible, then a person like Kelly can feel smug and safe by demeaning the victim for their own actions. But the truth is, bad things can happen to all of us. It’s a matter of luck that they haven’t happened to Megyn Kelly and instead of being grateful for that, she uses it to pump herself up and self-soothe with poisonous venom spat at someone who says she was gang raped.

Instead of blaming victims, she could tell boys and men that real heroes stand up for the humanity of others and say no to the leader. But Archie would never.

On this matter, Kelly is adamant that she is above a woman like Jane Doe, and therefore Jane Doe’s right to dignity is worthless. The inference is, she wasn’t raped and if she was, it’s her fault, and she also probably liked it because she’s unattractive.

Kelly is the woman who championed Donald Trump even after he mocked her after she asked a question he didn’t like, saying she had “blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever,” a remark widely interpreted as a crude insinuation about menstruation. Naturally, Trump denied that and later Kelly went on to cheer for him, as well as voting for him in 2020 and 2024.

Yes, she voted for an adjudicated rapist, because again: No one’s sexual misconduct experience is real, except hers.

Megyn’s argument has her suggesting that women can’t get raped if they want attention. For a lawyer, this argument is specious and reactionary, but Kelly worked in corporate law and business disputes where perhaps her inability to respect humanity was a bonus.

Rape is not an act of lust.

Like a good flying monkey, Kelly doesn’t stick to just attacking the victim. She goes for the blood of those defending the victim.

“Shut up and stick to singing,” Megyn said on her show to singer-songwriter and actress Olivia Rodrigo after Rodrigo defended Jane Doe. “You’re a know-nothing moron who doesn’t know what the f– you’re talking about... I liked you better when you were in front of a microphone singing your weird little depressing songs.”

Olivia Rodrigo probably doesn’t even know who Megyn Kelly is, let alone care about her antiquated, 1980s shaded opinion.

This is hardly new for Kelly, who whitewashed Epstein, saying he was “into the barely legal type, like, he liked 15-year-old girls” and “wasn’t into, like, 8-year-olds”.

That’s not the only time Kelly has made headlines with her rabid defense of predators. In June of 2015, I covered Kelly’s interview on Fox News with the Duggar family following the revelation of Josh Duggar’s past sexual molestation scandal. Her interview was so obsequious that she was accused of behaving like a defense attorney for the family, framing the parents as victims of “anti-Christian bias”.

This grotesque abuse of morality was brought to America by the woman who later claimed it was a “verifiable historical fact” that Santa Claus and Jesus were both white men, because of course there is always crossover with racism and sexism, both of which are used to prop up people who fear they can’t compete with everyone.

Megyn Kelly hates women so much that she can’t understand that not all of us judge each other based on appearances and not all of us go through life desperate for a man’s attention.

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Rape is about Power, Not Lust

Rape as an act of power, control, and aggression. It has nothing to do with the size of someone’s arms. It is not about desire. Research shows that gang rape frequently start with a de facto leader whose hostility incites the others.

One of the first elements present in rape is “‘hostile masculinity,’ which is characterized by distrust and resentment toward women in general,” Psychology Today reported.

“The assault becomes a way for men to prove themselves to one another, with the woman’s dehumanization and objectification becoming the foundation for that bonding,” Nicole K. McNichols Ph.D. wrote in Psychology Today.

Megyn Kelly spends her days pouring distrust and resentment of women into men’s brains. That is her whole persona.Kelly Believes She’s Above Other Women

Megyn Kelly as a persona was designed to feed Fox News to mostly male viewers and the women who want those male viewers’ attention. It’s slick, shiny skin, tight clothing, lots of makeup, and the thin veneer of objectivity bought with the network sneer that anchors use to suggest they are above it all.

This woman, who has made it her job to cast aspersions on the motives of other women and girls who come forward or are thrust into the limelight unwillingly after reports are made, expected everyone to believe her accusations of sexual harassment.

And she got it. We did believe her.

When Megyn Kelly ‘finally’ after a decade (according to her own timeline she’s imposed on Jane Doe) came forward about the sexual harassment she suffered via former Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes, I was the first to defend her and to explain that this also was not contained to Fox News, but rather it was everywhere in entertainment and media.

But for Megyn, it seems only her sexual harassment and assault are real.

She repaid that solidarity by abusing other girls and women who came forward. She’s still at it now, ten years later. The sexual harassment and assault are only real when they happened to her, and thanks for believing her, but she will never believe you.

As I wrote earlier, it’s not that feminists expect people to believe all women no matter what. That’s a strawman put up by anti-women rights agitators.

Feminists want women to be treated with dignity and to be believed when they first report something, enough to collect evidence, enough to not go after the alleged victim’s character as the first response. Women are not perfect, and yes some women do lie about sexual assault and harassment, but most do not. The research consistently shows that the rate of false reporting for rape and sexual assault is between 2% and 10%. That means most women are telling the truth. We want them treated accordingly.

Feminists want women’s reputations to matter as much as the accused, as in do not knee jerk smear and destroy a woman for coming forward. Investigate. Corroborate. And follow the evidence.

We keep seeing a certain kind of woman trying to exploit the labor of women who fought for all women, while they push down every other woman behind them.

New York Times, Justice Dept. Is Investigating TV Networks Over Trump Pool Coverage, David McCabe, Michael M. Grynbaum, Benjamin Mullin, Lauren Hirsch and Glenn Thrush, Oct. 10, 2026. Major TV networks were notified on Friday that the department was examining whether they violated antitrust laws when they suspended pool coverage of President Trump.

Justice Department log circularThe Justice Department is investigating whether the major television networks — ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Fox News — violated federal antitrust laws when the group briefly suspended their pooled coverage of President Trump, according to six people with knowledge of the department’s action.

Officials from the Justice Department contacted networks on Friday and demanded communications and materials related to the White House TV pool, the people said. The pool is a longstanding system where the networks share the responsibility of providing footage of the president and distributing it to other news outlets.

cnn logoLast month, the networks collectively suspended their pool footage of Mr. Trump for several days after the president barred CNN journalists from the White House grounds, which prevented CNN from participating in the pool. Video footage of some major events, including Mr. Trump’s greeting of President Xi Jinping of China, was not carried by any major news station.

In a statement on Saturday, a Justice Department spokeswoman, Emily Covington, described the five networks as having “proudly boycotted covering White House events.”

“Group boycotts among commercial competitors can violate the Sherman Act,” a core antitrust law, Ms. Covington wrote. “The Antitrust Division is simply investigating to determine whether these news organizations have violated the antitrust laws.”

The inquiry by the Justice Department is a profound escalation of the Trump administration’s ongoing battles with the White House press corps. It also follows a pattern of the Trump administration using the levers of government against its perceived foes in the media. The Justice Department has subpoenaed reporters from The New York Times and seized a laptop from a Washington Post journalist.

Officials at the Justice Department have discussed a potential investigation into the TV networks for at least a week, according to another person familiar with their deliberations. The investigation, which is still in its early stages, is being overseen by the department’s civil division, led by Stanley Woodward, the associate attorney general and a former White House lawyer.

In its letters on Friday, the Justice Department demanded copies of communications among network officials that concerned pool coverage of Mr. Trump, along with any communications about Mr. Trump’s revocation of CNN’s access to the White House grounds, according to two people with direct knowledge of the documents.

Organized boycotts can be considered anticompetitive if they are aimed at achieving commercial objectives, but not if their primary objective is political speech, said William E. Kovacic, a former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.

“The critical ingredient in successful antitrust cases is to demonstrate that there is unmistakably a commercial motive and that the commercial motive predominates,” Mr. Kovacic said. “And I don’t think they would ever be able to do that here.”

The administration’s latest skirmish with the media began when Mr. Trump, lamenting what he described as “purposely negative stories,” barred CNN, Politico and MS NOW from the White House on Sept. 18.

The three news organizations sued, calling the president’s action a violation of their First Amendment rights. The administration argued that access to the White House was a “privilege.”

A federal judge temporarily blocked the ban and restored the outlets’ access. But while CNN’s journalists could once again enter the White House campus, Trump administration officials continued to block the network from acting as the TV pool when the president travels on Air Force One.

The other major networks ended the suspension and resumed their own pool duties on Sept. 25. But on the days when CNN has been blocked, the TV pool has gone dark.

The collective action by the quintet of TV networks has irritated Mr. Trump. Last month, when the networks declined to show footage of some of his events with Mr. Xi, the president complained on social media that some news channels “refused to cover one of the Biggest and Most Beautiful Events to take place in many years.”

The Trump administration has previously turned to antitrust law to crack down on collective action by companies and nonprofits during Mr. Trump’s second term.

Last year, the Federal Trade Commission investigated whether a dozen advertising and advocacy groups violated antitrust law when they coordinated boycotts by advertisers who were seeking to avoid hateful online content. The ad companies ultimately settled with the F.T.C.

Antitrust law is aimed at protecting consumers from the negative consequences of companies amassing too much power and colluding to curb competition in the marketplace.

Members of the press corps have argued that access to the White House and their ability to cover the president’s events is an issue of First Amendment rights.

 

Oct. 9

Top Headlines

President Trump is shown swearing in as U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche as then-Deputy Attorney General, enabling Trump's former criminal defense lawyer to unleash an unremitting campaign to smear, indict and imprison Democrats and former career law enforcers and intelligence professionals who have criticized Trump, particularly regarding long-documented evidence that Russia and its allied operatives work to advance Trump's U.S. political and financial prospects while undermining, U.S., European and allied economies and foreign policies.

President Trump is shown swearing in as U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche as then-Deputy Attorney General, enabling Trump's former criminal defense lawyer to unleash an unremitting campaign to smear, indict and imprison Democrats and former career law enforcers and intelligence professionals who have criticized Trump, particularly regarding his team's deep ties to Russia and its allied operatives undermining U.S. and European institutions. 

  • New York Times, How Trump’s Revenge Campaign Descended Into Turmoil, Alan Feuer and Glenn Thrush, Oct. 9, 2026. The president’s allies have sought to prove a “grand conspiracy” through a sprawling Justice Department inquiry. It has buckled under staffing shake-ups, internal disputes and trouble finding evidence. 
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, is shown in a pool photo last month with Trump Administration special emissaries Jared Kushner, left, President Trump's son-in-law and Steve Witkoff, Trump's longtime real estate crony and golfing partner, both of whom have been pursuing huge business deals with Russia and Middle Eastern monarchies for their private companies and allies while ostensibly seeking to negotiate peace on behalf of the United States in the Russia-Ukraine and U.S.-Iran wars.New York Times, As Putin Wages Shadow War, Europe Looks for a Way to Hit Back, Steven Erlanger, Oct. 9, 2026. Moscow has used tactics of fear and ambiguity to try to divide NATO and limit support for Ukraine. But how should Europe retaliate? And how hard? Russia is escalating its campaign of sabotage in NATO countries, trying to break European support for Kyiv — and Europe is struggling to respond.
  • The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Mass Outrage as Trump Cuts Deal With Putin, Personally Approves Public Execution, and Sanctions ICC After Nobel Prize Snub, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 9, 2026. Trump announced that Putin has agreed to release millions of tons of Russian diesel onto the global market. Trump said on Truth Social that the deal came out of a phone call with Putin and that Russia would begin supplying fuel “immediately.” The deal looks like a publicity stunt, because Russia has no diesel to spare. A country rationing its own fuel has no real surplus to ship abroad, which makes this less a supply deal than a conniving bid to cast Russia as America’s helper. Even if Russia delivers, the amount is a rounding error against U.S. demand. Zelenskyy blasted the move as a gift to Putin as Trump scrambles for relief before the midterms. Zelenskyy called the sanctions relief “an obvious weakness” and warned that Russia would “repay” the diesel with more terror, arguing it funds a war that should be ending. The announcement came hours after he hosted U.S. senators in Kyiv and just as Ukrainian negotiators left for peace talks in the U.S., which may now be in doubt. 
  • New York Times, In Trump’s Russian Oil Deal, Middle East Funds Are the Biggest Owners, Anton Troianovski and Eric Lipton, Oct. 9, 2026 (print ed.). A majority of ownership in a proposed multibillion-dollar deal russian flag wavingwould go to a group of Middle Eastern investors, including some with business ties to U.S. negotiators.
  • New York Times, Millions Lose Private Medicare Plans and Face Rising Costs, Christopher Rowland and Reed Abelson, Oct. 9, 2026. As enrollment for Medicare Advantage begins this month, older Americans are confronting fewer options because insurers are discontinuing coverage in many areas.
  • Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion:Hegseth Wants You to Watch a Snuff Film, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Oct. 9, 2026.bulwark morning shots logo Neo-fascism as spectacles of violence. Yesterday brought another ICE shooting, this time in New York City. Happy Friday.

News Roundups

ICE logo

More On U.S. Governance

  • The Contrarian, Opinion: Undaunted Democracy Fighters, Jennifer Rubin, right, jennifer rubin new headshotOct. 9, 2026. 🚨 25 Days to the Midterms 🚨 The Trump regime, its minions in Congress, and its MAGA partisan allies on the Supreme Court have taken a sledgehammer to pluralistic democracy, the rule of law, and the promise of shared prosperity. The backlash to Trump’s reign of incompetence, malfeasance, terror, and greed will play out in the midterm elections. However, two reform-minded groups have wasted no time in exposing the extent of the autocratic abuse and beginning to formulate reform plans. With their help, our task of restoring and bolstering our democracy will be less onerous.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

 

President Trump and Lee Greenwood are shown above selling branded President Trump and Lee Greenwood are shown above selling branded "God Bless the U.S." Bibles in a portrayal from the White House Oval Office.

  • Hope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump is the Great American Conman, Heather Delaney Reese, right, helen delaney reese djtOct. 9, 2026. This was another day when I struggled to choose what to write about because there was so much thrown at us all at once. We also learned that the Secretary of “War,” Pete Hegseth, recommended, and Trump later approved, what would be the first U.S. military execution in 65 years, and the first by military firing squad since 1945. They chose the most visually violent method available to send a message that the president holds the power to decide who lives and who dies. Death Penalty Action released a statement saying, “There is nothing Donald Trump loves more than the power to kill.” It was later revealed that the execution would be livestreamed for the public to watch.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance 

  • U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsHopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion: It Was Likely That As We Got Closer To The Election Things Would Get Worse For The Rs - And They Are, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 9, 2026. Yesterday the addled, white supremacist, titanic f-ck up got his worst major poll of his 2nd term, this one from Pew, one of the most respected pollsters out there. 30%!!!!! baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Citizens or Voyeurs? William Kristol, right, william bill kristol imdbOct. 9, 2026. Last Friday, I wrote that a recent speech by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was “all political bluster. But it’s a particular kind of political bluster. It’s neo-fascist bluster.” I cited Hegseth’s celebration of irrationalism and machismo. Another familiar feature of fascism is the transformation of politics into spectacle. Fascism wants to reduce active citizens to passive observers, indeed into voyeurs—especially voyeurs of cruelty and death. Such degradation of a democratic public is key to fascism’s project and to its success.
  • New York Times, Paxton Said in Deposition That Donor Gave Him Stocks to Please God, Lauren McGaugh, Oct. 9, 2026. The leaked deposition from a fraud inquiry in 2014 provides insight into the Senate candidate’s investments and his tactics for defending himself.
  • Washington Sun, MetroD.C. Elections Board Asks National Guard to Stay Away From Ballot Drop Boxes, Martin Austermuhle, Oct. 9, 2026. Guard members were seen standing next to a drop box in Foggy Bottom this week. It is against federal law for troops to be deployed around polling places. 

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice 

  The so-called

The so-called "Broadview Six." Clockwise from top left: Michael Rabbitt, Brian Straw, Kat Abughazaleh, Andre Martin, Joselyn Walsh and Catherine “Cat” Sharp.

More Global News

The South African judge Navi Pillay won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. She has served as a judge in her native South Africa and on international courts investigating war crimes. She led a U.N. panel that determined that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, a finding the Israeli government rejected (Fabrice Coffrini photo for Agence France-Presse via Getty Images).

The South African judge Navi Pillay won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. She has served as a judge in her native South Africa and on international courts investigating war crimes. She led a U.N. panel that determined that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, a finding the Israeli government rejected (Fabrice Coffrini photo for Agence France-Presse via Getty Images).

  • New York Times, Live Updates: Human Rights Lawyer Navi Pillay Is Awarded Nobel Peace Prize, Jonathan Wolfe and Aurelien Breeden, Oct. 9, 2026. Navi Pillay, a South African human rights lawyer and international judge, was announced on Friday as the recipient of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize for what the Norwegian Nobel Committee called her efforts to uphold a system of international law that is increasingly under attack.

More On Trump's Pro-Putin, Pro-Criminal, Pro-Genocide Edicts

More On U.S. Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets

More On Middle East Wars

  • Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Nationalist Right Is Done with Israel, Joshua Tait, Oct. 9, 2026. This year’s National Conservatism Conference, hosted this week in Jerusalem, should have been a homecoming for its head honcho, the Israeli-American nationalist thinker Yoram Hazony. Instead, it was a catastrophe.

Special Report

Great Chicago in Flames by Currier Ives 1871

  • Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Sept. Oct. 8, 2026 [Two horrible U.S. fires contrasted -- Along with a key political and racial legacy], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 9, 2026. On October 8, 1871, dry conditions and strong winds drove deadly fires through the Midwest. The Peshtigo Fire in northeastern Wisconsin and parts of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula burned more than 1.2 million acres (4,860 square kilometers) and 17 towns, claiming between 1,500 and 2,500 lives. The Great Chicago Fire burned 3.3 square miles (8.6 square kilometers) of the city, destroying the wooden structures that made up the relatively new town, killed about 300 people, and left more than 100,000 people homeless.

More On U.S. History, Disasters, Media, Education, Culture

Elon Musk with a model of the Tesla, as seen in the Alex Gibney documentary “Musk.” According to Gibney in the film, Musk has been able to consolidate political power via Starlink, the satellite arm of SpaceX, which provides internet access from space (Photo credit: Bleeker Street).

Elon Musk with a model of the Tesla, as seen in the Alex Gibney documentary “Musk.” According to Gibney in the film, Musk has been able to consolidate political power via Starlink, the satellite arm of SpaceX, which provides internet access from space (Photo credit: Bleeker Street). 

  • New York Times, What to Know About the New Elon Musk Documentary, Matthew Huff, Oct. 9, 2026. A supersized portrait of the world’s richest man reveals new details and resurfaces troubling incidents from a headline-making life.
  • Chicago Sun Times, Bears legend Mike Ditka dead at 86, Staff report, Oct. 9, 2026. Mike Ditka, the Hall of Fame tight end who played on the Bears’ 1963 NFL championship team and coached the team to its only Super Bowl championship after the 1985 season, has died. He was 86.

Top Stories

 

President Trump is shown swearing in as U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche as then-Deputy Attorney General, enabling Trump's former criminal defense lawyer to unleash an unremitting campaign to smear, indict and imprison Democrats and former career law enforcers and intelligence professionals who have criticized Trump, particularly regarding long-documented evidence that Russia and its allied operatives work to advance Trump's U.S. political and financial prospects while undermining, U.S., European and allied economies and foreign policies. President Trump is shown swearing in as U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche as then-Deputy Attorney General, enabling Trump's former criminal defense lawyer to unleash an unremitting campaign to smear, indict and imprison Democrats and former career law enforcers and intelligence professionals who have criticized Trump, particularly regarding long-documented evidence that Russia and its allied operatives work to advance Trump's U.S. political and financial prospects while undermining, U.S., European and allied economies and foreign policies. 

New York Times, How Trump’s Revenge Campaign Descended Into Turmoil, Alan Feuer and Glenn Thrush, Oct. 9, 2026. The president’s allies have sought to prove a “grand conspiracy” through a sprawling Justice Department inquiry. It has buckled under staffing shake-ups, internal disputes and trouble finding evidence.

Joseph diGenova, the man assigned by the White House to lead the investigation into those who investigated President Trump, was walking out of Chuck’s Seafood near the beach in Fort Pierce, Fla., and toward his Tesla last month when his cellphone buzzed.

It was his boss, Attorney General Todd Blanche. And he was spluttering mad.

Mr. Blanche had been cautiously supportive of Mr. Trump’s decision to call Mr. diGenova, 81, out of retirement in April to kick-start the so-called grand conspiracy case, the Justice Department’s most expansive effort to pursue people the president considers his enemies.

Now the attorney general, having soured on Mr. diGenova, was livid that he had lashed out at two prosecutors sent from Washington to help move the case along. Mr. Blanche ordered him to his office on Sept. 11 — or else, according to people briefed on the exchange.

Assuming he would be fired, Mr. diGenova quit, dealing the latest blow to a troubled investigation central to the president’s vengeance agenda. More trouble was to come.

Justice Department log circularSoon after, a top diGenova deputy, Kurt Olsen, also quit. It turned out he had failed a polygraph test about his contacts with foreigners, which imperiled his security clearance, according to two people familiar with the matter. Mr. Olsen said he complied with all requirements regarding foreign contacts and had not resigned over his clearance, but declined to say more.

Still, the dual departures laid bare months of dysfunction. They also offered fresh evidence that Mr. Trump’s demands for revenge have divided the Justice Department, diverted resources from other investigations and continued the erosion of the principle that politics must be kept strictly separate from federal law enforcement.

A New York Times examination of the inquiry, based on more than 20 interviews with current and former officials, found that it was star-crossed from the outset.

 

Former Trump Justice Department Special Prosecutor Joseph diGenova, right, is shown with his wife and longstanding law partner Victoria Toensing in a file photo illuminating one of their many appearances on right-wing media voicing conspiracy theories targeting law enforcers, intelligence professionals and Democrats.Former Trump Justice Department Special Prosecutor Joseph diGenova, right, is shown with his wife and longstanding law partner Victoria Toensing in a file photo illuminating one of their many appearances on right-wing media voicing conspiracy theories targeting law enforcers, intelligence professionals and Democrats.

The theory of the grand conspiracy case is a bedrock of Trumpist politics: that the various investigations into Mr. Trump, spanning nearly a decade, were all part of a nefarious scheme to take him down. That is, there was an ongoing plot stretching from the investigation into ties between Russia and his 2016 campaign to the two prosecutions overseen by the special counsel Jack Smith into his mishandling of classified documents and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

To date, Mr. diGenova and others involved in the case have found it difficult, and time-consuming, to meet the standards of evidence and jurisdiction needed to prove anything close to a conspiracy in a court of law.

Still, the pressure has not relented. The dozen prosecutors still pursuing the inquiry are fast-tracking narrower cases against some chief targets that could be brought quickly, according to people briefed on their work. Leadership of the effort has defaulted back to Washington, and is now being directly overseen by one of Mr. Blanche’s top deputies, Aakash Singh, those people said.

A Justice Department official said leaders in Washington had “full confidence” in the prosecutors now working on the case and would act to uphold the law should “evidence of misconduct present itself.”

Even if charges are never filed, Mr. Trump has already instilled fear in — and imposed steep financial costs on — potential targets, in his view giving them a taste of what he experienced when he was under investigation.

Two targets have borne a particular brunt: James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director fired by Mr. Trump in the early stages of the Russia inquiry, and John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director who played a role in instigating that investigation.

john brennan james comey nytJohn O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director, left, and James B. Comey, who was fired as F.B.I. director by Mr. Trump, have both been targeted in investigations by the president (New York Times photo by Al Drago).

Inside the Justice Department, another price is being paid.

The investigation has upended the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of Florida, one of the most important in the country, which has been plagued by staff departures and low morale under its Trump-appointed leader, Jason A. Reding Quiñones, according to current and former prosecutors. The problems with the grand conspiracy case have exacerbated what officials in Washington have described as a growing lack of confidence in Mr. Reding Quiñones by his superiors.

The office once had more than 200 lawyers. It is now slightly more than half that size, after a spate of firings and resignations.

Prosecutors have watched the case play out with embarrassment and horror. Many have been so unwilling to jason reding quiñonesjoin the investigation that Mr. Reding Quiñones, right, an Army reservist, was forced to bring in military lawyers to backfill the ranks.

The chief of the office’s criminal division has been sidelined. The office’s health care fraud unit has been decimated. Many prosecutors say the office feels leaderless, and are worried that a place once known for big drug and white-collar cases has pivoted to politics.

A Winding Path

It is not clear who coined the term “grand conspiracy,” or when it became shorthand for the catchall investigation. July 2025 is as good a place to start as any.

That is when John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, issued a criminal referral of Mr. Brennan to the F.B.I., accusing him of lying to Congress about an intelligence assessment in early 2017 that determined Russia had interfered in the 2016 election.

The case was sent to David Metcalf, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Philadelphia, but it quickly stalled as prosecutors struggled to make headway. Career prosecutors threatened to revolt if the office went forward.

By fall, Mr. Blanche, then the department’s second-in-command, plucked the case from Mr. Metcalf and gave it to Mr. Reding Quiñones, who was close to the right-wing influencers clamoring for a wide-ranging prosecution of the president’s opponents.

Loudest among them: Mike Davis, a media-savvy lawyer who has relentlessly promoted the case as the best way to prove that Mr. Trump has been undermined by the establishment from the moment he took office.

Mr. Davis, a former Senate aide adept at hurling social media thunderbolts that catch Mr. Trump’s eye, aimed high. He pushed the idea that the inquiry should expand to include targets like former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Davis was among those arguing to steer the case to Mr. Reding Quiñones in the president’s home state. The move made tactical sense. Prosecutors could avail themselves of a grand jury in the Fort Pierce courthouse where the only sitting judge is Aileen M. Cannon, a Trump appointee who issued several rulings favorable to the president, especially in the classified documents case against him.

Mr. Trump, impatient to see splashy results, cheered and coached from the sidelines, even posting a fake video showing Mr. Obama being arrested in the Oval Office.But the move to Florida did not translate into immediate success.

One big problem, in the view of Mr. Blanche’s aides, was Mr. Reding Quiñones, whom they viewed as a feckless and inexperienced manager not capable of running the day-to-day operations of his office, let alone the grand conspiracy case.

Moreover, they felt that Mr. Reding Quiñones spent too much time in Washington and too little in Florida. To address that concern, Mr. Singh recently removed him from the attorney general’s advisory committee, which meets at department headquarters, to refocus his energies on Miami, according to two people with knowledge of the move.

But he was hardly the only problem.

By early 2026, the case had landed on the desk of Maria Medetis Long, a respected national security prosecutor in Miami, who approached the inquiry with an open mind. She eventually determined that the evidence did not support indicting Mr. Brennan, according to people familiar with her account. In April, she put her findings in writing. She was suddenly removed from the case.

Since then, the investigation has expanded beyond Mr. Brennan. The flurry of grand jury subpoenas issued since last year, hailed as bombshells by Trump-friendly news outlets, hints at its breadth.

russian flag wavingProsecutors have demanded documents from other officials connected to the Russia investigation, including James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence; Andrew G. McCabe, the former deputy director of the F.B.I.; Peter Strzok, a former F.B.I. counterintelligence agent; and Lisa Page, a former lawyer at the bureau.

They have also issued subpoenas demanding testimony from Daniel C. Richman, who is a longtime confidant of Mr. Comey’s, and several F.B.I. agents who took part in the August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Palm Beach club and residence, a key investigative step in the classified documents case.

The prosecutors also want testimony from Mr. Brennan. But amid the recent turmoil, they pushed back his appearance from its initial date on Oct. 15 to at least early December.Fumbling for Evidence

Enter Mr. diGenova, who as U.S. attorney in Washington four decades ago led investigations of the Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard and Marion Barry, the city’s mayor.

He was a familiar presence in the capital, known as one of the more dulcet crooners to perform in musical skits at the annual Gridiron Club dinner.

But in recent years, Mr. diGenova has established himself as a stalwart and aggressive Trump defender who embraced unsubstantiated claims about the 2020 election championed by his close friend Rudolph W. Giuliani.

In early 2025, with the help of Mr. Davis, he secured an assignment in Miami as the head of that office’s civil rights division, where he intended to investigate Mr. Trump’s adversaries.

But Pam Bondi, the attorney general at the time, vetoed his hiring, according to two former department officials. Department officials thought he was too old for such a demanding job when his name came up a year later. Ms. Bondi, on the verge of being fired, argued that he had not been in a courtroom for many years.

Mr. Trump, then 79, thought otherwise.

He instructed Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, and Mr. Blanche to sign him on.

Mr. diGenova showed up for his first day at work with a 190-page memo on how to proceed, listing more than 50 “overt acts” in the conspiracy he wanted to investigate. They started with what he saw as the original deep-state sin — a December 2016 meeting in the White House that he believed to be the linchpin of the conspiracy against Mr. Trump.

At that meeting, Mr. Obama and his aides authorized the intelligence assessment that eventually showed Russia had interfered in the election Mr. Trump had just won. The participants have denied that anything illegal took place.

One of Mr. diGenova’s first moves reflected an understanding of the daunting challenges of proving his theory. He asked his predecessor, Ms. Medetis Long, to rejoin the investigation. She turned him down, according to the people familiar with her account. He also made it known that he was looking for cooperating witnesses among the targets of the inquiry, even though Mr. Brennan and Mr. Comey were unlikely to help him.

By May, he had begun hiring staff, including his wife, Victoria Toensing. He immediately encountered problems securing volunteers from either Miami or Washington.

Few career agents or attorneys wanted anything to do with it. As of now, most of the prosecutors on the team are military lawyers or were dispatched from other offices.

Among those who signed on: An F.B.I. agent who had investigated a conspiracy theory that the 2020 election had been hacked by Italian satellites and who was part of a special team assembled by Kash Patel, the bureau’s director. There were a largely unknown prosecutor from Fargo, N.D., and a Stanford law professor best known for having written memos justifying the use of torture during the global war on terrorism.

There was a young Justice Department official sent to Florida from Washington who had served as a clerk to Judge Cannon. And then there was Mr. Olsen, a longtime election denier who had no experience in working on criminal cases.

The case that Mr. diGenova hoped to build involved a wide array of targets — not only Mr. Brennan, Mr. Comey and others from the Russia inquiry, but also the prosecutors led by Mr. Smith, the special counsel.

He quickly confronted hurdles. The first: Any crimes arising from the Russia investigation, which ended in 2019, already fell outside the five-year statute of limitations, and had no obvious connection to South Florida. Other problems emerged.

jack eckenrodeJust as Mr. diGenova was settling in, Jack Eckenrode, left, an F.B.I. veteran best known for having gone after Mr. Brennan and Mr. Comey during the Russia inquiry, questioned a central premise of the investigation — that the court-approved search of Mr. Trump’s residence was a politically motivated intrusion that tainted everything that followed.

Mr. Eckenrode, part of a special squad assembled by F.B.I. leaders, told Mr. diGenova that Judge Cannon had already ruled that the search of Mar-a-Lago was lawful. That finding, he said, made it difficult to use the search as evidence of a conspiracy connecting Washington to Florida, according to people briefed on the exchange.

Mr. diGenova disagreed — he thought that point was legally irrelevant — and he called Mr. Patel, who pulled Mr. Eckenrode off the case, one of those people said.

By this time, Mr. diGenova was also becoming frustrated with the resources given to his inquiry. There were never enough lawyers, he told Washington, and the ones he had were so young that he had to block off time to teach them the basics, like grand jury presentations.

In late summer, Mr. Reding Quiñones agreed to set aside $1 million from the office’s allocated budget to build a secure facility in Fort Pierce to review classified materials.

Mr. Blanche’s staff rejected the idea.

Why waste money? There was already a facility nearby run by the F.B.I., they said, according to people with knowledge of the exchange.Escalating Pressure to Indict

Under the clash of personalities was a deeper divide on how best to move forward.

Mr. diGenova, who wanted to take aim at big-name targets, told one associate he believed that Mr. Blanche was less interested in proving the conspiracy to destroy the president than in securing rapid box-checking indictments of low-level players to keep Mr. Trump happy.

Mr. Blanche, he told that person, was so anxious to maintain his position that he did not want to tell Mr. Trump the truth: A successful investigation needed time.

The attorney general acknowledged the inquiry’s complexities on a podcast earlier this year. “I’m not suggesting that we don’t have that evidence,” he told Sean Hannity of Fox News. “I’m saying when you talk about the challenges, that’s the challenge.”

Mr. Blanche had his own complaints. His team thought Mr. diGenova was too scattered, too combative and too slow, according to three current and former officials. It did not help that around this time Mr. diGenova and Ms. Toensing left for a long-planned vacation to France.

By early September, Mr. Blanche dispatched two prosecutors from Washington to Florida to move things forward. During a heated meeting, they peppered Mr. diGenova’s staff with questions about its work before the grand jury.

The coda came when members of Mr. diGenova’s team offered him a readout of their closed-door meeting with the two prosecutors: Washington would now be running things.

Mr. diGenova, infuriated, said he would instruct U.S. marshals to remove the prosecutors from the grand jury room if they showed up there to interfere, the officials said.

Mr. Blanche responded with a profanity-laced phone call and summoned Mr. diGenova to Washington. The attorney general wanted to recount his grievances in person, but never actually planned to fire Mr. diGenova, according to a person close to Mr. Blanche.

He never got that chance.

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, is shown in a pool photo last month with Trump Administration special emissaries Jared Kushner, left, President Trump's son-in-law and Steve Witkoff, Trump's longtime real estate crony and golfing partner, both of whom have been pursuing huge business deals with Russia and Middle Eastern monarchies for their private companies and allies while ostensibly seeking to negotiate peace on behalf of the United States in the Russia-Ukraine and U.S.-Iran wars.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, is shown in a pool photo last month with Trump Administration special emissaries Jared Kushner, left, President Trump's son-in-law and Steve Witkoff, Trump's longtime real estate crony and golfing partner, both of whom have been pursuing huge business deals with Russia and Middle Eastern monarchies for their private companies and allies while ostensibly seeking to negotiate peace on behalf of the United States in the Russia-Ukraine and U.S.-Iran wars.

New York Times, As Putin Wages Shadow War, Europe Looks for a Way to Hit Back, Steven Erlanger, Oct. 9, 2026. Moscow has used tactics of fear and ambiguity to try to divide NATO and limit support for Ukraine. But how should Europe retaliate? And how hard?

russian flag wavingRussia is escalating its campaign of sabotage in NATO countries, trying to break European support for Kyiv — and Europe is struggling to respond.

European officials say they do not expect a major Russian invasion of a NATO country; in that sense, traditional deterrence has worked. But countries are grappling with how best to counter this heightened pattern of Russian attacks. What officials say they fear most is that, by accident or by intention, one of those attacks will cause a significant loss of life.

Moscow is “trying to break the will to support Ukraine and trying in a broader sense to change the security architecture of Europe,” said David Cattler, a former NATO intelligence official now at the Center for European Policy Analysis, a Washington think tank. Operationally, he said, the Russians are using tools “that are hard to attribute, that they believe are big enough to matter and yet small enough not to trigger” a larger war.

Internally, the debate among European officials, they said, is whether and how to retaliate by taking the fight to Russia. The first response should be to maintain calm and not fall into a Russian trap by overreacting, said Camille Grand, a former senior NATO official, while not being so complacent as to ignore reality. The Russian campaign is a continuation of a pattern, he said, but “the growth in the number and nature of the events is significant, and the dangerous nature of them.”

Europe is trying to increase deterrence against hybrid warfare — aggressive actions that fall short of direct military conflict — on three levels: first, by calling out Russia’s attacks and blaming the Kremlin directly; second, by increasing societal awareness and building stronger defenses around potential targets; and third, by imposing consequences on Moscow, whether overt or covert, with clear messaging to President Vladimir V. Putin.

“Any attack should be clearly linked to a concrete measure of response,” said Linas Kojala of the Geopolitics and Security Studies Center, a research group in Lithuania. “To make that work,” he added, “governments would need to have funding and legal authority prepared in advance, so the response is not delayed by a new political debate after every incident.”

That presumes collective European agreement on responses to unpredictable attacks that could quickly lead to war, decisions that countries have traditionally reserved to themselves. But producing such a consensus, as Mr. Cattler, the former NATO official, said dryly, “can be quite a challenge.”Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.Putin’s Strategy

Recent incidents directly attributed to Russia or thought ordered by Moscow include strikes on railroad infrastructure in Poland, a Russian frigate’s firing flares at a Danish helicopter, sabotage at factories, incursions by Russian reconnaissance drones and plots to kill executives of European armaments companies.

While many episodes are hard to pin on Russia, Berlin directly attributed to Moscow a recent explosive-laden but faulty drone at the Leipzig-Halle airport in eastern Germany, found near Ukrainian transport planes. The failed attack — the drone was discovered by an airport employee — was among several incidents that have spurred fresh warnings across Europe.The drone at Leipzig-Halle marked a shift, both for Russian risk-taking and for Germany’s willingness to point the finger at Moscow.

Claudia Major, a defense expert with the German Marshall Fund, said that Mr. Putin wanted “not only to show that support for Ukraine has a cost, but to undermine the trust of the populace that a democratic state can protect them.” Russia’s aim in Ukraine is not only territorial, she added, but also “to show that the West doesn’t hold together and can be undermined from within.”

The Russian president has been more explicit lately in warning NATO countries supporting Ukraine that they can be targeted. Russia is also suspected of trying to influence key elections in France, Italy, Poland and Spain, where far-right and pro-Russian parties are mounting significant challenges, European officials note.

Inducing fear in adversaries is a longstanding element of Russian strategy, said Hanna Notte, a Russia expert who has recently published a book about Mr. Putin’s effort to defeat the West called “We Shall Outlast Them.”

Ms. Notte noted that Sergey A. Karaganov, a hard-line Russian analyst, wrote in 2024 that for Moscow to prevail against the West, “There must be fear.” Another prominent analyst who came to support the war, Dmitri V. Trenin, she recalled, has written, “Where there is no fear, there is no security.”

Mr. Putin deterred former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. from doing more for Ukraine by threatening nuclear escalation, said Keir Giles, a Russia scholar at Chatham House, a research group in London. Under President Trump, Mr. Giles said, “It’s not the U.S. that needs to be deterred or coerced, but Europe.”

Raising the Cost to Russia

NATO is already increasing its conventional deterrence, conducting more and larger exercises along the Russian border. Europe’s efforts to increase deterrence against hybrid warfare are less advanced and less visible.

The region is increasingly focused on attribution, with leaders and intelligence agencies becoming more explicit about Russian responsibility and intentions, using words like “kinetic” rather than “hybrid,” to imply that this is a more active kind of war.

Europe is also investing heavily in protecting airports, critical infrastructure, railway junctions and important factories. Some countries, such as Denmark, Finland and Poland, are preparing citizens for potential warfare, with warnings and public-service notices. NATO countries can count such efforts toward the alliance goal of spending 5 percent of gross domestic product on defense by 2034.

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Mass Outrage as Trump Cuts Deal With Putin, Personally Approves Public Execution, and Sanctions ICC After Nobel Prize Snub, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 9, 2026. Between a diesel deal with Putin, sanctions on the International Criminal Court, and a plan to livestream an execution, it feels like we packed a month of news into five days. And it’s not slowing down anytime soon. The midterms are now less than four weeks away, and from here until November 3, this is going to be a full sprint. I’ll be here every step of the way, cutting through the noise and making sure you know what’s actually happening and why it matters.

I also want to acknowledge something. I hear from a lot of you about how heavy all of this feels. People tell me the news is making them more and more depressed, that they can’t take any more horrific headlines, that it has consumed them and taken away their sense of joy. One reader simply wrote, “Forgive me. Too emotional.”

If you’ve felt that way, there is nothing to forgive. What you’re feeling is a completely human response to an exhausting moment. Staying informed matters, but so does protecting your peace. It’s okay to step back, take a breath, and come back when you’re ready. And remember that every Sunday I share a good news update, because there are people out there doing incredible work, and you deserve to hear about that too.

Before we dive in, I want to say thank you. Seriously. Everything I do here is possible because of you: the people who read, share, comment, and support this work.

Now, let’s get into today’s news.

Trump Faces New Calls for Impeachment After Striking Diesel Supply Deal with Putin

Trump announced that Putin has agreed to release millions of tons of Russian diesel onto the global market. Trump said on Truth Social that the deal came out of a phone call with Putin and that Russia would begin supplying fuel “immediately.” Under the plan, Russia would deliver more than 300,000 tons right away, 500,000 tons in November, and 1 million tons after that, with another 3 million tons depending on the condition of Russia’s refineries. To make it happen, the Treasury Department issued a temporary license lifting sanctions on Russian diesel through April 7, 2027, including imports into the United States. Putin confirmed Russia’s “readiness” to supply the U.S. and global markets but offered no details on timing or volume.

The deal looks like a publicity stunt, because Russia has no diesel to spare. Russia is in the middle of a massive diesel shortage of its own, driven by sustained Ukrainian strikes on its refineries. That shortage is exactly why the Kremlin banned diesel exports in July and extended the ban through the end of October. A country rationing its own fuel has no real surplus to ship abroad, which makes this less a supply deal than a conniving bid to cast Russia as America’s helper. The likely outcome is that Russia sends a few hundred thousand tons, if that, and pockets a sanctions waiver and a public relations win in return.

Even if Russia delivers, the amount is a rounding error against U.S. demand. The United States consumes roughly 15 million tons of diesel per month. The initial 300,000-ton shipment equals about 2% of a single month of American consumption, and that shipment is meant for the entire global market, not just the U.S. Even the full 4 million tons, spread out over many months and contingent on Russia’s battered refineries, would cover only about a week of U.S. demand. Markets seem to agree: diesel futures dipped 4% Friday but remain more than 110% higher than at the start of the year, and Brent crude barely moved at around $104 a barrel.

Zelenskyy blasted the move as a gift to Putin as Trump scrambles for relief before the midterms. Zelenskyy called the sanctions relief “an obvious weakness” and warned that Russia would “repay” the diesel with more terror, arguing it funds a war that should be ending. The announcement came hours after he hosted U.S. senators in Kyiv and just as Ukrainian negotiators left for peace talks in the U.S., which may now be in doubt. Diesel prices have climbed nearly 70% since the Iran war began in February, and Republicans face tough races in places like Iowa, where farmers are feeling the squeeze. Trump has tried this before: a series of 30-day sanctions waivers on Russian oil this spring expired without slowing prices.

Trump Launches Sanctions on ICC After Losing Nobel Peace Prize to Former ICC Judge

Trump sanctioned the International Criminal Court just hours after a former ICC judge won the Nobel Peace Prize he has spent years coveting. On Friday morning, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the 2026 prize to South African jurist Navi Pillay, the former UN human rights chief who sat on the ICC’s Appeals Chamber from 2003 to 2008. Trump has made no secret of wanting the prize for himself. By that afternoon, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was announcing sweeping sanctions on the very court where Pillay once served, calling it a “rogue court.” The timing makes the move look less like policy and more like a president lashing out after being snubbed.

The Nobel Committee’s choice was a direct rebuke of attacks on international courts like the ones Trump has waged. The committee said Pillay’s award was meant as a show of support for tribunals at a time when judges and institutions of international law are under political attack. Trump’s administration has been the leading force behind those attacks, having already sanctioned 17 ICC judges and officials. Losing the prize to someone honored specifically for defending international justice put Trump on the wrong side of the Nobel Committee’s message. Within hours, he escalated from targeting individuals to targeting the court as a whole.

The sanctions are designed to bankrupt the court and could set accused war criminals free. The measures cut the ICC off from American banks, technology companies, and even the U.S. dollar, with a six-month window for U.S. businesses to wind down their dealings. Rubio warned that “either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC.” NYU law professor Ryan Goodman said that if the court can’t afford fair trials, detainees may have to be released as a matter of law. That includes former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, accused of thousands of extrajudicial killings, along with figures accused of war crimes in Libya, Sudan, and the Central African Republic.

America’s closest allies and the UN rushed to defend the court against Trump. Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, and Denmark issued a joint statement saying they “strongly disagree” with the sanctions and will keep supporting the court. UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the move a serious blow to international criminal justice, and the EU signaled it could invoke a “blocking statute” to stop European companies from complying. The ICC called the sanctions an assault on the rule of law and declared that “history will judge this moment.” Among world leaders, Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces an ICC arrest warrant, stood out for welcoming the move.

Pentagon’s Plan to Livestream Fort Hood Shooter’s Firing Squad Execution Sparks Bipartisan and Religious Backlash

Pete Hegseth announced that the military will livestream the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan. Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding 32 in the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas. Trump approved the execution, which is scheduled for December 3 at Fort Hood, and Hegseth said the government will “make sure that people are able to watch it.” It would be the first known livestream of a lawful execution in U.S. history and the first military firing squad execution since 1945. Hegseth even reposted a 2013 Trump post calling for public executions “for all to see.” Donald Trump today confirmed he personally approved the execution:

Religious leaders across faiths condemned the plan as barbaric and a public spectacle of death. Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, called it “a barbaric promotion of a culture of death” that must be reconsidered. The heads of the National Association of Evangelicals, the Episcopal Church, and the Union for Reform Judaism all denounced the livestream as well. Evangelical activist Shane Claiborne compared it to lynchings and other times America has made a spectacle of death. A few Trump-aligned pastors backed the idea, including Robert Jeffress and Doug Wilson, the Christian nationalist who leads Hegseth’s own church.

Even Republicans and JD Vance are distancing themselves from the livestream. Vance said he doesn’t know if the livestream will actually happen and that if it does, “I’m not going to be watching it.” Republican Sen. John Curtis warned that a civilization erodes when it treats executions as entertainment, while Rep. Austin Scott said livestreaming executions “is what jihadists do.” Former National Counterterrorism Center head Joe Kent warned it would hand terrorists free propaganda to radicalize and recruit. A senior White House official said Trump “doesn’t oppose the idea” but hasn’t made a final decision and is hearing concerns from lawmakers, allies, and religious leaders.

The plan raises serious legal and human rights questions as the death penalty debate heats up before the midterms. Federal law bans recording or broadcasting executions in the federal prison system, but military regulations don’t carry the same prohibition. The UN human rights office said public executions amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. If it goes forward, the U.S. would join countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia in carrying out public executions. The controversy comes just a week after a botched lethal injection in Tennessee and less than a month before the November 3 midterm elections.

Other news:

Trump picked conservative commentator Katie Zacharia to be the next White House press secretary. Zacharia, currently a senior communications adviser at Trump Media & Technology Group, will replace Karoline Leavitt, who left in late August and was just hired by Fox News as a contributor. She briefly worked in communications at the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year and regularly defends the administration on Fox News, Fox Business, Newsmax, and X. The pick comes as Trump complains that his accomplishments are being overshadowed by poor public relations ahead of the midterms, admitting at a recent event that his team is doing “an extremely poor job of promotion.” Zacharia lives in California, has four children, and earned her law degree from Pepperdine.

A second accused former fraternity member in the Cornell sexual assault case is trying to remove New York AG Letitia James from the investigation. Lawyers for Winston Lee, from the firm that represented Sean Combs and Harvey Weinstein, filed a motion asking a judge to bar James from any grand jury proceedings after Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed her special prosecutor. They argue James prejudged the case when she posted support for the accuser, known as Jane Doe, before her appointment. Another defendant, Gillio Lopes, filed a similar motion earlier this week, and a hearing in his case is set for October 29. Jane Doe’s civil suit accuses seven former Chi Phi members of sexual assault, which the men deny, and none have been criminally charged. The local district attorney previously declined to bring charges, finding in 2024 that Jane Doe’s statement to police did not describe a prosecutable crime.

The State Department’s watchdog is investigating Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle after a Trump donor accused her of demanding $100,000. Longtime Trump donor Eric Deters says Guilfoyle asked him to pay her $100,000 American Express bill before her 2025 confirmation hearing in exchange for access to top Trump officials, calling it a “quid pro quo.” Messages he provided appear to show Guilfoyle telling him to wire the money directly to American Express because “it won’t show up anywhere” that way. Guilfoyle’s attorney disputes the authenticity of the messages, and Deters says he never paid. JD Vance called the claims “one person’s story,” while Rubio scolded a reporter for asking about it while standing next to Guilfoyle in Athens. A senior diplomatic official said the probe set off alarm bells across the State Department, since the watchdog rarely investigates ambassadors.

Elon Musk’s plan to turn SpaceX into a major U.S. mobile carrier wiped more than $50 billion off AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. T-Mobile plunged 13.3%, AT&T fell 9.8%, and Verizon dropped 8.7%, its worst day since 2002. SpaceX said Starlink Mobile will combine satellites with ground infrastructure once it gets final FCC approval, and the FCC has already approved 15,000 new satellites. FCC Chair Brendan Carr praised the plan, while Musk’s America PAC has spent more than $36 million boosting Republicans in the midterms. Analysts at JPMorgan and UBS were skeptical, noting that building a competitive ground network will take years and huge investment. Musk, the world’s first trillionaire, received an award from Trump just this week and is a frequent guest at the White House.

Trump launched a new committee to investigate Fed Governor Lisa Cook, despite the Supreme Court ruling her firing unconstitutional. The committee will consult with Justice Department officials to determine whether there is “cause” to remove her over mortgage fraud allegations. The White House will hold a closed-door hearing on November 5, with a transcript to be published afterward. Cook’s lawyers said they have “grave doubts” the hearing will be legitimate and maintain the allegations stem from clerical errors. The Supreme Court ruled in June that Trump’s 2025 firing of Cook was unconstitutional because he denied her a chance to respond to the allegations first. Cook, appointed by Biden in 2022 as the Fed’s first Black governor, was fired amid Trump’s broader pressure campaign on the central bank to lower interest rates.

Ron DeSantis withdrew a death warrant for the first time as governor, calling off a Florida execution. William Lee Thompson, 74, was set to be executed Tuesday for a 1976 murder, and his lawyers say he suffers from dementia so severe he believed “Bush” was president. DeSantis gave no reason, and the results of Thompson’s psychiatric evaluation were never released. The move comes just over a week after Christa Pike survived two botched lethal injections in Tennessee, and as the Pentagon plans to livestream a firing squad execution. Florida carried out a record 19 executions last year, and a second execution scheduled for Tuesday is still set to proceed. Thompson remains on death row, and DeSantis could sign a new death warrant for him in the future.

A federal judge ruled the Trump DOJ’s policy of collecting state voter rolls to check against immigration data is unlawful. Judge Sparkle Sooknanan said the policy violated privacy laws, exceeded the department’s authority, and had already wrongly removed U.S. citizens from voter rolls. She wrote that the policy amounts to the federal government’s attempt to decide who gets to vote, a power Congress left with the states. Roughly 18 states had handed over sensitive data including names, birth dates, addresses, and partial Social Security numbers. The ruling, in a suit brought by Common Cause, is a major setback for Trump’s push on non-citizen voting ahead of the midterms. Sooknanan also found the DOJ ignored the risk that its unreliable citizenship records would lead to eligible Americans being purged.

DHS officials defended ICE officers who shot a Dominican immigrant in New York City while his 5-year-old son sat in the back seat. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin blamed Oscar Bergal, saying ICE didn’t know the child was there but “Oscar knew.” ICE says Bergal rammed their vehicles and drove toward officers, while his attorneys argue officers lacked a valid warrant and say he still has a bullet in his body. Mayor Zohran Mamdani said there is “no explanation” for firing that many rounds into a car with a child inside, and protests have led to arrests. The same day in New Jersey, video showed two children screaming and collapsing on a sidewalk as ICE detained a man in front of them. Asked what would happen to those children, Mullin said the parents would be given the option to bring them into detention.

A 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck Panama, triggering tsunami warnings across Latin America. The quake hit near Panama’s southern tip, followed by multiple strong aftershocks, and was felt in Panama City, where residents evacuated skyscrapers. Tsunami warnings were issued for nine countries, including Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Costa Rica. Damage was concentrated in central provinces, with video showing a cathedral collapsing in Penonomé and a hotel reduced to rubble in Playa Venao. Several injuries were reported, but no deaths were immediately confirmed. The U.S. Embassy said it is monitoring the situation and checking on Americans in Panama, a popular retirement destination.

Hurricane Isaias strengthened into a major Category 3 storm and is barreling toward the Gulf Coast. With sustained winds of 120 mph, Isaias is expected to make landfall late tonight or early Saturday between Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. Forecasters warn of life-threatening storm surge, with damaging winds reaching far inland into Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee. DeSantis urged Panhandle residents to evacuate now and told them to “assume power is going to go out,” as 5,000 Florida Guardsmen stand ready. Isaias is the first hurricane of the 2026 Atlantic season, and Trump canceled his trip to Saturday’s Alabama-Georgia football game because of the storm. Florida has activated its price gouging hotline, with violators facing fines of up to $25,000.

New York Times, Paxton Said in Deposition That Donor Gave Him Stocks to Please God, Lauren McGaugh, Oct. 9, 2026. The leaked deposition from a fraud inquiry in 2014 provides insight into the Senate candidate’s investments and his tactics for defending himself.

Ken Paxton sat for hours in a federal building in Fort Worth as government lawyers grilled him under oath about his growing wealth and questionable investing history.

At the time, in December 2014, Mr. Paxton was a fast-rising Republican star. He had just been elected the next attorney general of Texas. But outside of public view, he was under scrutiny as part of a federal investigation into possible fraud.

The deposition in the case, obtained by The New York Times, was one of the earliest episodes in what would become a decade-long pattern for Mr. Paxton: accusations of corruption and other illegal conduct repeatedly emerged, only to be resolved without a conviction.

Now, as Mr. Paxton is locked in a fierce Senate race in Texas, the deposition offers a previously unseen account of his finances, his attitude toward money and how he used his connections within the State Legislature to amass his wealth.

Since his first election to public office in 2002, Mr. Paxton has grown his wealth through business investments and real estate purchases into a personal fortune with a reported value of up to $23 million. His assets now include multiple mutual funds, a cellphone tower and 15 properties across six states.

Mr. Paxton has rarely answered questions publicly about how he accumulated this wealth on a government salary. His finances have been the subject of repeated investigations by local, state and federal authorities into alleged bribery, fraud and self-dealing. The issue has been a frequent line of attack from his political opponents, including James Talarico, the Democratic state lawmaker running against him for Senate.

The 2014 deposition was part of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into Servergy Inc., a technology start-up based in McKinney, Texas, which is part of the district that Mr. Paxton represented as a state lawmaker. The start-up’s founder, William Mapp III, known as Bill, was accused of making false claims to investors.

The S.E.C.’s lawyers wanted to know whether Mr. Paxton hid that he had received compensation for recruiting investors for the company.

The S.E.C. eventually brought civil fraud charges against Mr. Paxton that were dismissed. In addition to the federal inquiry, Mr. Paxton was indicted by a grand jury on state securities fraud charges in 2015. In 2024, he reached a deal to avoid trial while admitting no wrongdoing.

Under oath in 2014, Mr. Paxton told the federal lawyers that he had invested more than $400,000 in various companies. But between legislating and campaigning, he said he didn’t have time to track his investments. In fact, Mr. Paxton said, he could not locate stock certificates potentially worth $200,000.

“I’m so busy,” he said in the deposition, “I don’t always keep track of this kind of stuff.”

The deposition also shed more light on how he defended himself against the securities fraud allegations, which he spent the next decade fighting. Mr. Paxton used phrases like “I don’t remember” or “I don’t recall” more than 200 times when addressing questions. He also tried to deflect to other men he invested with and to his wife, Angela.

“I haven’t prepared a tax return in a long time because I don’t have time, so typically — actually my wife actually does them,” Mr. Paxton said, when asked about a line in his tax returns that seemed to contradict part of his testimony.

Nick Maddux, a senior adviser to Mr. Paxton, said the release of the deposition was meant to distract from the election and Mr. Paxton’s opponent.

“This is a 12-year-old deposition about a case that ended without a conviction, handed to the press by a political opponent less than a month before Election Day,” Mr. Maddux said. “Like President Trump, the attorney general has been politically persecuted for years for standing up to the establishment, and Texans have seen through it every time.”

 

Washington Sun, MetroD.C. Elections Board Asks National Guard to Stay Away From Ballot Drop Boxes, Martin Austermuhle, Oct. 9, 2026. Guard members were seen standing next to a drop box in Foggy Bottom this week. It is against federal law for troops to be deployed around polling places. 

Reports of National Guard troops standing next to a D.C. ballot drop box in Foggy Bottom on Thursday have prompted complaints from some residents and an official request from the D.C. Board of Elections that it not happen again.

“We are addressing the concerns with the National Guard directly and have requested that they impose limitations on the placement of National Guard service members near drop boxes and other voting locations in the District,” said board spokesperson Sarah Graham.

The ballot drop box wasn’t in use when the National Guard troops were filmed standing next to it.

“We are aware of imagery circulating online of service members standing near a ballot drop box. Maintaining public trust is a top priority, and JTF-DC service members are directed not to monitor or secure polling locations,” said a spokesperson for the Joint Task Force, which is in charge of the D.C. deployment, in response to questions from The Washington Sun.Trending

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“JTF-DC is actively addressing this specific instance and remains fully committed to conducting its missions professionally, lawfully, and with respect for the public’s constitutional rights,” the spokesperson said.

The city’s 55 drop boxes opened Friday morning and will be available for voters to drop off their ballots through the end of Election Day, which is Nov. 3.

Ballot drop boxes are popular with voters; for the June primary, more than 63,000 voters used them to return their ballots, representing roughly 40% of all votes cast. The boxes tend to be in high-traffic areas — including by Metro stations like in Foggy Bottom.

It is against federal law for troops to be deployed around polling places.

Reactions to the video that circulated on social media at least partly reflect the ongoing discomfort that some D.C. residents still feel with having the National Guard deployed in D.C. on President Donald Trump’s orders. While he has credited their presence with helping drive down crime, critics say their deployment is unnecessary and sets a troubling precedent around the use of the military for law enforcement.

As of Thursday, 2,864 National Guard troops were deployed in D.C., down from a high of more than 5,000 during the summer months. Roughly 2,300 of them are from 18 states outside of D.C., with Georgia, Mississippi and Florida having the biggest contingents.

There have been recent complaints about Guard members operating around D.C. schools, and city officials have asked that they refrain from doing so. Ward 2 D.C. Council member Brooke Pinto will hold a public hearing on Nov. 5 to hear from residents on their experiences with the National Guard in D.C.

Some of the concerns with the Guard members at the D.C. ballot box could also stem from broader worries about the Trump administration’s reported plans to deploy federal agents around polling places for the November election. This month, the Department of Homeland Security said it has no plans to station ICE agents at the polls.

The Trump administration also attempted to rein in mail voting generally this year; D.C. joins a handful of states that automatically send all registered voters a mail ballot, and most voters now prefer that to voting in person. Those efforts were stymied by litigation.

Still, changes to how the U.S. Postal Service postmarks ballots have prompted election officials to warn voters that if they’re going to use USPS to mail in their ballot, they should ensure that the postmark is not dated after Election Day, which would lead to the ballot being rejected.

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Mass Outrage as Trump Cuts Deal With Putin, Personally Approves Public Execution, and Sanctions ICC After Nobel Prize Snub, Aaron Parnas, right, Oct. 9, 2026. Trump announced that Putin has agreed to release millions of tons of Russian diesel onto the global market. Trump said on Truth Social that the deal came out of a phone call with Putin and that Russia would begin supplying fuel “immediately.” The deal looks like a publicity stunt, because Russia has no diesel to spare. A country rationing its own fuel has no real surplus to ship abroad, which makes this less a supply deal than a conniving bid to cast Russia as America’s helper. Even if Russia delivers, the amount is a rounding error against U.S. demand. Zelenskyy blasted the move as a gift to Putin as Trump scrambles for relief before the midterms. Zelenskyy called the sanctions relief “an obvious weakness” and warned that Russia would “repay” the diesel with more terror, arguing it funds a war that should be ending. The announcement came hours after he hosted U.S. senators in Kyiv and just as Ukrainian negotiators left for peace talks in the U.S., which may now be in doubt. 

New York Times, Paxton Said in Deposition That Donor Gave Him Stocks to Please God, Lauren McGaugh, Oct. 9, 2026. The leaked deposition from a fraud inquiry in 2014 provides insight into the Senate candidate’s investments and his tactics for defending himself.

Washington Sun, MetroD.C. Elections Board Asks National Guard to Stay Away From Ballot Drop Boxes, Martin Austermuhle, Oct. 9, 2026. Guard members were seen standing next to a drop box in Foggy Bottom this week. It is against federal law for troops to be deployed around polling places. 

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Mass Outrage as Trump Cuts Deal With Putin, Personally Approves Public Execution, and Sanctions ICC After Nobel Prize Snub, Aaron Parnas, right, Oct. 9, 2026. Between a diesel deal with Putin, sanctions on the International Criminal Court, and a plan to livestream an execution, it feels like we packed a month of news into five days. And it’s not slowing down anytime soon. The midterms are now less than four weeks away, and from here until November 3, this is going to be a full sprint. I’ll be here every step of the way, cutting through the noise and making sure you know what’s actually happening and why it matters.

I also want to acknowledge something. I hear from a lot of you about how heavy all of this feels. People tell me the news is making them more and more depressed, that they can’t take any more horrific headlines, that it has consumed them and taken away their sense of joy. One reader simply wrote, “Forgive me. Too emotional.”

If you’ve felt that way, there is nothing to forgive. What you’re feeling is a completely human response to an exhausting moment. Staying informed matters, but so does protecting your peace. It’s okay to step back, take a breath, and come back when you’re ready. And remember that every Sunday I share a good news update, because there are people out there doing incredible work, and you deserve to hear about that too.

Before we dive in, I want to say thank you. Seriously. Everything I do here is possible because of you: the people who read, share, comment, and support this work.

Now, let’s get into today’s news.

Trump Faces New Calls for Impeachment After Striking Diesel Supply Deal with Putin

Trump announced that Putin has agreed to release millions of tons of Russian diesel onto the global market. Trump said on Truth Social that the deal came out of a phone call with Putin and that Russia would begin supplying fuel “immediately.” Under the plan, Russia would deliver more than 300,000 tons right away, 500,000 tons in November, and 1 million tons after that, with another 3 million tons depending on the condition of Russia’s refineries. To make it happen, the Treasury Department issued a temporary license lifting sanctions on Russian diesel through April 7, 2027, including imports into the United States. Putin confirmed Russia’s “readiness” to supply the U.S. and global markets but offered no details on timing or volume.

The deal looks like a publicity stunt, because Russia has no diesel to spare. Russia is in the middle of a massive diesel shortage of its own, driven by sustained Ukrainian strikes on its refineries. That shortage is exactly why the Kremlin banned diesel exports in July and extended the ban through the end of October. A country rationing its own fuel has no real surplus to ship abroad, which makes this less a supply deal than a conniving bid to cast Russia as America’s helper. The likely outcome is that Russia sends a few hundred thousand tons, if that, and pockets a sanctions waiver and a public relations win in return.

Even if Russia delivers, the amount is a rounding error against U.S. demand. The United States consumes roughly 15 million tons of diesel per month. The initial 300,000-ton shipment equals about 2% of a single month of American consumption, and that shipment is meant for the entire global market, not just the U.S. Even the full 4 million tons, spread out over many months and contingent on Russia’s battered refineries, would cover only about a week of U.S. demand. Markets seem to agree: diesel futures dipped 4% Friday but remain more than 110% higher than at the start of the year, and Brent crude barely moved at around $104 a barrel.

Zelenskyy blasted the move as a gift to Putin as Trump scrambles for relief before the midterms. Zelenskyy called the sanctions relief “an obvious weakness” and warned that Russia would “repay” the diesel with more terror, arguing it funds a war that should be ending. The announcement came hours after he hosted U.S. senators in Kyiv and just as Ukrainian negotiators left for peace talks in the U.S., which may now be in doubt. Diesel prices have climbed nearly 70% since the Iran war began in February, and Republicans face tough races in places like Iowa, where farmers are feeling the squeeze. Trump has tried this before: a series of 30-day sanctions waivers on Russian oil this spring expired without slowing prices.

Trump Launches Sanctions on ICC After Losing Nobel Peace Prize to Former ICC Judge

Trump sanctioned the International Criminal Court just hours after a former ICC judge won the Nobel Peace Prize he has spent years coveting. On Friday morning, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the 2026 prize to South African jurist Navi Pillay, the former UN human rights chief who sat on the ICC’s Appeals Chamber from 2003 to 2008. Trump has made no secret of wanting the prize for himself. By that afternoon, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was announcing sweeping sanctions on the very court where Pillay once served, calling it a “rogue court.” The timing makes the move look less like policy and more like a president lashing out after being snubbed.

The Nobel Committee’s choice was a direct rebuke of attacks on international courts like the ones Trump has waged. The committee said Pillay’s award was meant as a show of support for tribunals at a time when judges and institutions of international law are under political attack. Trump’s administration has been the leading force behind those attacks, having already sanctioned 17 ICC judges and officials. Losing the prize to someone honored specifically for defending international justice put Trump on the wrong side of the Nobel Committee’s message. Within hours, he escalated from targeting individuals to targeting the court as a whole.

The sanctions are designed to bankrupt the court and could set accused war criminals free. The measures cut the ICC off from American banks, technology companies, and even the U.S. dollar, with a six-month window for U.S. businesses to wind down their dealings. Rubio warned that “either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC.” NYU law professor Ryan Goodman said that if the court can’t afford fair trials, detainees may have to be released as a matter of law. That includes former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, accused of thousands of extrajudicial killings, along with figures accused of war crimes in Libya, Sudan, and the Central African Republic.

America’s closest allies and the UN rushed to defend the court against Trump. Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, and Denmark issued a joint statement saying they “strongly disagree” with the sanctions and will keep supporting the court. UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the move a serious blow to international criminal justice, and the EU signaled it could invoke a “blocking statute” to stop European companies from complying. The ICC called the sanctions an assault on the rule of law and declared that “history will judge this moment.” Among world leaders, Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces an ICC arrest warrant, stood out for welcoming the move.

New York Times, Millions Lose Private Medicare Plans and Face Rising Costs, Christopher Rowland and Reed Abelson, Oct. 9, 2026. As enrollment for Medicare Advantage begins this month, older Americans are confronting fewer options because insurers are discontinuing coverage in many areas.

Millions of people with private Medicare coverage are being forced to change their insurance for 2027 and will pay higher prices for prescriptions and medical care, prompting some experts to warn that more older Americans will face greater financial hardship.

Major insurers, like UnitedHealth, Centene and state Blue Cross plans, have shuttered plans that they viewed as unprofitable in certain markets, leaving some people with fewer choices of policies, and even more limited choices of doctors in 2027. In some rural counties from Oregon to New Hampshire, older Americans shopping for private Medicare Advantage plans will find that options have vanished completely or are dwindling to just a few plans.

Overall, as open enrollment begins this month, roughly five million people will be forced to switch plans because their current policy has been canceled or is no longer offered in the county where they live, according to an estimate from Duos, a health technology firm. Other estimates are lower, but analysts who have been studying the issue said cancellations would probably surpass the number this year, which was the highest on record.

Dependent on Social Security and other fixed incomes, recipients also will be paying substantially more in out-of-pocket costs next year when they need a prescription drug or go to a doctor or hospital.

The upheaval and confusion in some areas of the country are in sharp contrast to the Trump administration’s claims that the Medicare Advantage program is “stable” and that average premiums will be lower next year. Now that about 35 million older Americans are covered by Medicare’s private plans, many will face an enrollment period that is likely to be volatile, according to insurance brokers, industry analysts and experts.

The disruptions risk angering older voters before the midterm elections. Many voters say they are unable to afford increases in health care, groceries and gas. A KFF poll released this week found that nearly twice as many likely voters trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle health care costs.

President Trump has announced that the administration was sending out pre-election payments of at least $90 to 20 million traditional Medicare beneficiaries — but not those covered by private plans. Democrats called it a “desperate” move in the face of voter disapproval.

The changes to Medicare Advantage will require members to carefully scrutinize the fine print of plan options, because costs are rising in multiple ways — from co-payments for doctors and prescriptions to deductibles, health analysts said.

In Pahoa, on the Big Island of Hawaii, Ann and Mick Kalber received a registered letter last week advising them their plan was being discontinued.

Mr. Kalber, 78, has a history of throat cancer and jaw surgeries, and he is now on a feeding tube. This year he was hospitalized twice in nearby Hilo. Together the couple are paying less than $300 in monthly premiums. Now they are bracing to pay hundreds more. A high priority for the couple is maintaining access to a Mayo Clinic surgeon in Florida who has operated on Mr. Kalber’s jaw.

Asked if they could afford any increase while living on a combination of Social Security income, an inheritance and savings from careers making videos of volcanic eruptions, Ms. Kalber said, “No — but we can’t afford not to.”

Republicans and many Democrats have long championed privatization of Medicare, but some supporters are concerned that Medicare Advantage is losing its luster. For years, the private market for Medicare plans seemed like a gold rush for insurers, which offered low-cost plans and policies that offered benefits like vision and dental care that were not available in the traditional program. By 2023, more than half of the people eligible to enroll had signed up for a private plan.

But the insurance companies soon came under sharp criticism for overbilling the program, prompting government officials to reduce reimbursements. Health care costs also began to climb more sharply, and some insurers say they struggled to make money.Counties without any Medicare Advantage plans

In 187 counties, insurers are not offering any Medicare Advantage plans next year. Rural counties with low populations, fewer hospitals and higher costs are disproportionately losing plans.

Health Care Service Corporation, which operates nonprofit Blue Cross plans in several states, is sharply reducing the number of places where it offers plans and exiting some half-dozen states.

Like other insurers, the company points to numerous reasons for dropping out of various regions of the country, including changing government policies, medical costs in certain communities and the number of people enrolled in its plans.

The company said it remained committed to the market. “Medicare Advantage is very important to us,” said Stephen Harris, who oversees government programs for the insurer.Get updates when new midterm election polls are added to our poll trackers. When new polling data drops we’ll send an update straight to your inbox. Get it sent to your inbox.

Cutbacks by UnitedHealth, the nation’s largest insurer, are causing some 390,000 people to switch policies.

The company emphasized that 94 percent of individuals eligible for the program would still have access to one of their plans. “The program is delivering real value today,” said Bobby Hunter, the president of UnitedHealthcare.

Some of the extra benefits, like dental care, that have made Medicare Advantage especially popular and have been used by insurers for years to woo new customers and build market share are being pared back.

In announcing what plans would be available for 2027, the Trump administration emphasized the program’s stability. It said people would pay lower premiums overall and pointed out that most parts of the country would have a robust number of plans competing for business.

Medicare “is fighting to keep high-quality care options affordable and accessible for the millions of beneficiaries who rely on Medicare Advantage and Part D prescription drug plans,” said Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “By slashing handouts to big insurance companies,” he said, the government “is keeping premiums stable.”

“Individual plans make business decisions every year about where and how they participate, but those decisions should not be confused with M.A. instability,” Dr. Oz said in a statement, referring to Medicare Advantage.

But industry experts estimate that millions of people will no longer have access to the plans they had chosen, particularly those plans that did not charge a premium.

“In my decade of working in the industry, I have never seen the announcement so disconnected with what the market is experiencing as a whole,” said Jenn Kerfoot, the president of Duos, which helps people navigate Medicare. “We’re seeing the compounding forces of changes in this program.”

ICE logoMorning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion:Hegseth Wants You to Watch a Snuff Film, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Oct. 9, 2026. Neo-fascism as spectacles of violence.

bulwark morning shots logoYesterday brought another ICE shooting, this time in New York City. Yesterday afternoon, officers opened fire on a man they were trying to arrest, 28-year-old Oscar Belgal, an bulwark logo big shipillegal immigrant from Senegal. An officer fired seven rounds into Belgal’s car, striking him in the neck, as his horrified five-year-old looked on from the back seat. Why was he shot? We don’t know: Homeland Security hasn’t claimed he was resisting arrest, attacking an officer, or anything else that might have provoked such a response. Given how often the department has falsely claimed that its victims were behaving violently, the absence of such a claim in this case is notable.

ICE officers aided Belgal at the scene, and he was treated at a local hospital before being taken back into ICE custody. Belgal is a criminal, with a grand larceny conviction and other cases pending against him. That ICE should arrest and deport such people is a good thing. That they should do it so hamfistedly that they empty a magazine into a car with a young child inside is not.

Happy Friday.

News Roundups

ICE logoThe Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Trump Loses Nobel Prize He Begged For, ICE Unleashed on California, Shoots Man in New York, UN Calls Trump’s Execution Torture, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 9, 2026. Donald Trump spent the week begging for the Nobel Peace Prize, insisting, “I’m not bragging. I’m just telling you the facts.” This morning, he was snubbed again, and MAGA world is furious. The prize went to Navi Pillay, a South African judge who defended Nelson Mandela, with the committee calling it “a message to those who are attacking” international law.

Meanwhile, ICE has quietly launched a 45-day crackdown across California where agents were told to “go after anybody,” just as early voting begins. In New York, an ICE agent fired seven rounds into a car, hitting a man in the neck while a 5-year-old boy sat in the back seat. And at the White House, a top Trump official openly confirmed the administration’s work “protecting white American men from discrimination.”

But I want to start with some good news, because we need it.

The Navy sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln are finally home, reunited with their families after a record-breaking 321-day deployment in the Middle East. Over the past several months, I was proud to expose much of what they faced on board, and because of you, we helped get them home sooner. Sailors who have been away for nearly a year are holding their kids again, some of them for the very first time.

That is the power of independent media. Stories like that don’t happen because a corporation or a billionaire decides they’re worth telling. They happen because you make them possible. Thank you for standing with me, especially on days like today when the news is hard to read. 

Here’s the latest.

Pentagon’s Plan to Livestream Fort Hood Shooter’s Firing Squad Execution Sparks Bipartisan and Religious Backlash

Pete Hegseth announced that the military will livestream the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan. Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding 32 in the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas. Trump approved the execution, which is scheduled for December 3 at Fort Hood, and Hegseth said the government will “make sure that people are able to watch it.” It would be the first known livestream of a lawful execution in U.S. history and the first military firing squad execution since 1945. Hegseth even reposted a 2013 Trump post calling for public executions “for all to see.” Donald Trump today confirmed he personally approved the execution:

Religious leaders across faiths condemned the plan as barbaric and a public spectacle of death. Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, called it “a barbaric promotion of a culture of death” that must be reconsidered. The heads of the National Association of Evangelicals, the Episcopal Church, and the Union for Reform Judaism all denounced the livestream as well. Evangelical activist Shane Claiborne compared it to lynchings and other times America has made a spectacle of death. A few Trump-aligned pastors backed the idea, including Robert Jeffress and Doug Wilson, the Christian nationalist who leads Hegseth’s own church.

Even Republicans and JD Vance are distancing themselves from the livestream. Vance said he doesn’t know if the livestream will actually happen and that if it does, “I’m not going to be watching it.” Republican Sen. John Curtis warned that a civilization erodes when it treats executions as entertainment, while Rep. Austin Scott said livestreaming executions “is what jihadists do.” Former National Counterterrorism Center head Joe Kent warned it would hand terrorists free propaganda to radicalize and recruit. A senior White House official said Trump “doesn’t oppose the idea” but hasn’t made a final decision and is hearing concerns from lawmakers, allies, and religious leaders.

The plan raises serious legal and human rights questions as the death penalty debate heats up before the midterms. Federal law bans recording or broadcasting executions in the federal prison system, but military regulations don’t carry the same prohibition. The UN human rights office said public executions amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. If it goes forward, the U.S. would join countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia in carrying out public executions. The controversy comes just a week after a botched lethal injection in Tennessee and less than a month before the November 3 midterm elections.

Other news:

Trump picked conservative commentator Katie Zacharia to be the next White House press secretary. Zacharia, currently a senior communications adviser at Trump Media & Technology Group, will replace Karoline Leavitt, who left in late August and was just hired by Fox News as a contributor. She briefly worked in communications at the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year and regularly defends the administration on Fox News, Fox Business, Newsmax, and X. The pick comes as Trump complains that his accomplishments are being overshadowed by poor public relations ahead of the midterms, admitting at a recent event that his team is doing “an extremely poor job of promotion.” Zacharia lives in California, has four children, and earned her law degree from Pepperdine.

A second accused former fraternity member in the Cornell sexual assault case is trying to remove New York AG Letitia James from the investigation. Lawyers for Winston Lee, from the firm that represented Sean Combs and Harvey Weinstein, filed a motion asking a judge to bar James from any grand jury proceedings after Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed her special prosecutor. They argue James prejudged the case when she posted support for the accuser, known as Jane Doe, before her appointment. Another defendant, Gillio Lopes, filed a similar motion earlier this week, and a hearing in his case is set for October 29. Jane Doe’s civil suit accuses seven former Chi Phi members of sexual assault, which the men deny, and none have been criminally charged. The local district attorney previously declined to bring charges, finding in 2024 that Jane Doe’s statement to police did not describe a prosecutable crime.

The State Department’s watchdog is investigating Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle after a Trump donor accused her of demanding $100,000. Longtime Trump donor Eric Deters says Guilfoyle asked him to pay her $100,000 American Express bill before her 2025 confirmation hearing in exchange for access to top Trump officials, calling it a “quid pro quo.” Messages he provided appear to show Guilfoyle telling him to wire the money directly to American Express because “it won’t show up anywhere” that way. Guilfoyle’s attorney disputes the authenticity of the messages, and Deters says he never paid. JD Vance called the claims “one person’s story,” while Rubio scolded a reporter for asking about it while standing next to Guilfoyle in Athens. A senior diplomatic official said the probe set off alarm bells across the State Department, since the watchdog rarely investigates ambassadors.

Elon Musk’s plan to turn SpaceX into a major U.S. mobile carrier wiped more than $50 billion off AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. T-Mobile plunged 13.3%, AT&T fell 9.8%, and Verizon dropped 8.7%, its worst day since 2002. SpaceX said Starlink Mobile will combine satellites with ground infrastructure once it gets final FCC approval, and the FCC has already approved 15,000 new satellites. FCC Chair Brendan Carr praised the plan, while Musk’s America PAC has spent more than $36 million boosting Republicans in the midterms. Analysts at JPMorgan and UBS were skeptical, noting that building a competitive ground network will take years and huge investment. Musk, the world’s first trillionaire, received an award from Trump just this week and is a frequent guest at the White House.

Trump launched a new committee to investigate Fed Governor Lisa Cook, despite the Supreme Court ruling her firing unconstitutional. The committee will consult with Justice Department officials to determine whether there is “cause” to remove her over mortgage fraud allegations. The White House will hold a closed-door hearing on November 5, with a transcript to be published afterward. Cook’s lawyers said they have “grave doubts” the hearing will be legitimate and maintain the allegations stem from clerical errors. The Supreme Court ruled in June that Trump’s 2025 firing of Cook was unconstitutional because he denied her a chance to respond to the allegations first. Cook, appointed by Biden in 2022 as the Fed’s first Black governor, was fired amid Trump’s broader pressure campaign on the central bank to lower interest rates.

Ron DeSantis withdrew a death warrant for the first time as governor, calling off a Florida execution. William Lee Thompson, 74, was set to be executed Tuesday for a 1976 murder, and his lawyers say he suffers from dementia so severe he believed “Bush” was president. DeSantis gave no reason, and the results of Thompson’s psychiatric evaluation were never released. The move comes just over a week after Christa Pike survived two botched lethal injections in Tennessee, and as the Pentagon plans to livestream a firing squad execution. Florida carried out a record 19 executions last year, and a second execution scheduled for Tuesday is still set to proceed. Thompson remains on death row, and DeSantis could sign a new death warrant for him in the future.

A federal judge ruled the Trump DOJ’s policy of collecting state voter rolls to check against immigration data is unlawful. Judge Sparkle Sooknanan said the policy violated privacy laws, exceeded the department’s authority, and had already wrongly removed U.S. citizens from voter rolls. She wrote that the policy amounts to the federal government’s attempt to decide who gets to vote, a power Congress left with the states. Roughly 18 states had handed over sensitive data including names, birth dates, addresses, and partial Social Security numbers. The ruling, in a suit brought by Common Cause, is a major setback for Trump’s push on non-citizen voting ahead of the midterms. Sooknanan also found the DOJ ignored the risk that its unreliable citizenship records would lead to eligible Americans being purged.

DHS officials defended ICE officers who shot a Dominican immigrant in New York City while his 5-year-old son sat in the back seat. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin blamed Oscar Bergal, saying ICE didn’t know the child was there but “Oscar knew.” ICE says Bergal rammed their vehicles and drove toward officers, while his attorneys argue officers lacked a valid warrant and say he still has a bullet in his body. Mayor Zohran Mamdani said there is “no explanation” for firing that many rounds into a car with a child inside, and protests have led to arrests. The same day in New Jersey, video showed two children screaming and collapsing on a sidewalk as ICE detained a man in front of them. Asked what would happen to those children, Mullin said the parents would be given the option to bring them into detention.

A 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck Panama, triggering tsunami warnings across Latin America. The quake hit near Panama’s southern tip, followed by multiple strong aftershocks, and was felt in Panama City, where residents evacuated skyscrapers. Tsunami warnings were issued for nine countries, including Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Costa Rica. Damage was concentrated in central provinces, with video showing a cathedral collapsing in Penonomé and a hotel reduced to rubble in Playa Venao. Several injuries were reported, but no deaths were immediately confirmed. The U.S. Embassy said it is monitoring the situation and checking on Americans in Panama, a popular retirement destination.

Hurricane Isaias strengthened into a major Category 3 storm and is barreling toward the Gulf Coast. With sustained winds of 120 mph, Isaias is expected to make landfall late tonight or early Saturday between Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. Forecasters warn of life-threatening storm surge, with damaging winds reaching far inland into Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee. DeSantis urged Panhandle residents to evacuate now and told them to “assume power is going to go out,” as 5,000 Florida Guardsmen stand ready. Isaias is the first hurricane of the 2026 Atlantic season, and Trump canceled his trip to Saturday’s Alabama-Georgia football game because of the storm. Florida has activated its price gouging hotline, with violators facing fines of up to $25,000.

ICE Agent Shoots Man in the Neck With 5-Year-Old in the Car as Trump Unleashes “Go After Anybody” Crackdown in California

An ICE agent fired seven rounds into a car in New York City, striking a man in the neck while a 5-year-old boy sat in the back seat. The shooting happened around 4 p.m. Thursday in the Marble Hill neighborhood as plainclothes agents tried to arrest 28-year-old Oscar Belgal, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said. Surveillance footage showed one federal officer approaching the driver’s side window with his gun drawn before the car moved forward out of view, though the camera did not capture the shooting itself. The child, believed to be Belgal’s son, was not physically injured, and a witness said she saw the boy crying in the back of the SUV. One man who lives at the scene said agents fired in his direction, adding, “I threw myself on the floor hoping I didn’t get shot.”

DHS has not explained why the agent opened fire, and federal agents have taken over the investigation into their own shooting. The Department of Homeland Security said Belgal was an undocumented immigrant from the Dominican Republic with a criminal record and alleged gang ties, and Tisch said he had a grand larceny conviction and a pending drug case. But DHS did not say why the agent fired or whether he knew a child was in the car. When NYPD officers arrived, they found Belgal handcuffed and bleeding on the ground, surrounded by men in masks and construction-style vests, at least one carrying a long gun. It was the first shooting by ICE in New York City since 2020, and at least two dozen people have been shot at by federal immigration agents since Trump took office, six of them fatally, including three US citizens.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul say they both called Trump directly, but ICE whisked the wounded man away anyway. Mamdani said he spent two hours on the phone with Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin trying to negotiate Belgal’s release, but “ICE put the man in an unmarked vehicle and whisked him away.” “Tonight, a 5-year-old child sits traumatized and terrified,” Mamdani said, calling for ICE to be abolished and accusing the administration of “terrorizing our city.” Hochul said she urged Trump and Mullin to halt ICE operations in New York and release any body camera footage, adding, “By the Grace of God, that child appears to have escaped without physical injury.” Hundreds of protesters gathered near the scene and outside the hospital into the night, where several people were arrested after scuffles with police.

ICE has quietly launched “Operation Safe California,” a 45-day crackdown where agents were told to “go after anybody.” The operation, first reported by the Washington Examiner, has not been publicly announced but began several days ago in San Diego and is expected to move north through Los Angeles to San Francisco by November. “Management want numbers,” one source said, while another said officers were “told to go after anybody, they can pick up anybody,” meaning immigrants without criminal records will also be targeted. ICE officers in California have been ordered back to mandatory six-day workweeks, with all approved time off canceled. DHS would not confirm or deny the operation, saying it does not discuss law enforcement operations.

The surge is hitting California just as early voting begins, raising fears of voter intimidation. Between 45 and 80 people have been arrested across Southern California since Monday, from Pacoima to East LA, according to LA Taco, and immigrant defense groups are urging vulnerable people to stay home and make plans for their families in case they’re detained. Voting rights groups flagged an ICE arrest in Santa Maria on Monday in the same area voters had to pass through to reach a ballot drop box. LA County election officials say they are deploying liaisons to polling sites to watch for interference and stressed that every eligible voter has the right to vote “without fear or interference.” The crackdown follows an arrest surge of about 100,000 people in July and August, as a new Pew poll shows 68% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s performance.

Trump Snubbed for Nobel Peace Prize After Last-Minute Push as Award Goes to Human Rights Judge

Trump was passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize he has long coveted, despite a last-minute public campaign for it. Just two days before the announcement, Trump argued in the Oval Office that he deserved the award for settling “eight wars,” insisting, “I’m not bragging. I’m just telling you the facts.” He also acknowledged the committee has “a reputation for maybe not giving it to people like me,” and said it would be “a great discredit to them” if he didn’t win. The snub comes months after Trump launched a military operation to capture Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and started a war with Iran that has now lasted more than seven months. Trump has repeatedly complained that Barack Obama “got a prize for doing nothing,” and has so far had to settle for a FIFA Peace Prize and the 2025 Nobel medal that María Corina Machado handed him, which the Nobel Institute says cannot be transferred.

The prize went to Navi Pillay, a South African human rights lawyer and judge who once defended Nelson Mandela. Pillay, 85, was honored “for her efforts to promote peace and international law,” with the Nobel Committee calling her “one of the most respected international jurists of our time.” Born in Durban under apartheid to a family of Indian Tamil origin, she served as the UN’s top human rights official, as a judge at the International Criminal Court and on the tribunal investigating the 1994 Rwandan genocide. She also led a UN commission that found Israel committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, which the committee chair called “an important part of the reasoning why she received the prize.” Israel’s Foreign Ministry blasted the decision as “the grotesque weaponization of an award to legitimize anti-Israel hatred and prejudice.”

The committee’s choice was widely seen as a rebuke of the Trump administration’s attacks on international law. “The system of international law is under tremendous pressure and its institutions are under attack,” committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes said, warning of “a shift towards power politics at the expense of legal frameworks.” Frydnes called the prize “a message to those who are attacking” international law. The award comes after the Trump administration sanctioned the International Criminal Court for issuing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The ICC said the honor was important recognition of international justice as “a cornerstone of peace.”

Pillay didn’t even know she’d won, and when she found out, she joked about sharing the prize with Trump. She was attending a conference of human rights lawyers in Nuremberg, Germany, the site of the Nazi war crimes trials, when the news broke, prompting Frydnes to plead publicly, “If you see a Norwegian number calling, please pick up.” Her colleagues gave her a long standing ovation with shouts of “Bravo!” “If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump,” Pillay quipped, drawing laughs from the room. Hours before the announcement, Jimmy Kimmel mocked Trump for believing he deserved a peace prize “seven months after starting a war for no reason.”

Trump Launches Government-Wide Effort to Protect White Men

The Trump administration is mounting a government-wide effort to protect “white American men from discrimination,” and top officials are openly bragging about it. At a White House press conference Thursday, FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson praised EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas for taking on issues “previous EEOCs refused to touch,” including “protecting white American men from discrimination” and protecting citizens from “national origin discrimination.” Ferguson, who also serves as vice chair of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, called Lucas “the greatest chairman of that institution, since Clarence Thomas back in the 1980s.” Lucas has previously urged white men who believe they faced workplace discrimination to come forward, saying, “You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws.” Ferguson shut down the FTC’s DEI office shortly after taking over, calling DEI “a scourge on our institutions.”

The effort stretches from the Vice President’s office to the Justice Department. At the same event, JD Vance suspended Microsoft from a green card program, accused it of replacing Americans with “foreign indentured servants,” and named nine top universities, including Harvard, Yale, Stanford and MIT, as meriting investigation over foreign workers. Vance suggested the H-1B program should be reserved for people like Elon Musk and AMD CEO Lisa Su. Meanwhile, the Justice Department’s civil rights division, created to protect minorities from discrimination, has shifted its focus toward conservative priorities like Second Amendment rights and dismantling diversity programs. Critics say the moves are part of a broader effort to curb non-white immigration and reshape civil rights enforcement in favor of white men.

The push comes as Vance tries to win back young men who have turned on Trump ahead of the midterms. Vance has been appearing on manosphere podcasts like Joe Rogan’s and Jack Posobiec’s, promising the administration will tackle “institutionalized anti-white, anti-male discrimination,” Politico reports. Trump won 18- to 24-year-old men by 3 points in 2024, but his net favorability with that group has plunged to minus 17, and one person close to the White House said Trump is now “reviled” by Gen Z men. Some allies worry young men may be “a lost cause” because of their opposition to the Iran war and soaring gas prices. When Posobiec asked followers what Vance should ask about winning young men, dozens of replies urged him to ask about winning “young white male support” instead.

Pentagon Confirms It Will Livestream the Fort Hood Shooter’s Execution as the UN Warns It Would Amount to Torture

A Defense Department official confirmed the Pentagon plans to livestream the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan. Hegseth told Real America’s Voice the execution will take place at Fort Hood at 1 p.m. on Thursday, December 3, and that “we’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public.” It would be the first US military execution in more than 60 years, the first military firing squad execution since 1945 and the first time the military has ever livestreamed an execution. The last public execution in the United States was in 1936. The Death Penalty Information Center noted there is currently “no regulation or precedent” for livestreaming an execution, suggesting Hegseth’s comments “may be simply aspirational.”

The plan sparked fierce backlash from both parties, with lawmakers comparing it to ISIS and oppressive dictatorships. “That’s disgusting. What, is he mimicking ISIS executions?” Sen. Chris Murphy said on CNN, calling public execution “medieval” and “one of the things that we abhor about terrorist groups.” Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said Hasan should face the death penalty, but “making his execution public and streaming it? Beyond disgusting,” adding that “public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do.” Sen. Patty Murray urged the Pentagon to “revoke this decision immediately,” asking, “Kids watch what our leaders do and say, is this kind of bloodshed really what we want them seeing?” But some hard-right Republicans cheered it on, with Rep. Andy Ogles posting, “Public execution is what this terrorist deserves. We will be watching.”

The United Nations says livestreaming the execution would amount to torture. The UN human rights office said “the livestreaming of an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture,” the same position it has taken on public executions in Afghanistan and Iran. Amnesty International says at least 17 public executions were carried out worldwide in 2025, all of them in Afghanistan and Iran. Amnesty Australia urged its prime minister to press the US to reverse course, calling the plan “an appalling disregard for human dignity.” New Zealand’s national censor said it would be unable to block the livestream from reaching viewers there.

Other news:

Hunger is gripping communities across the country as Trump’s cuts slash federal food aid while demand soars. An NBC News survey of 48 of the largest food banks found nearly three-quarters are seeing more people at their doors, while more than 80% say food and funding from the USDA has dropped and fuel costs from the Iran war are squeezing them further. More than 5 million people, including at least 1 million children, have lost food stamps since new work requirements in Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” took effect. In West Virginia’s coal country, one pantry director said he got just 2.5 pounds of food per household in August, compared with 20 pounds a month several years ago, calling it “the leanest we’ve been in the 23 years I’ve been doing this.” A 73-year-old woman waiting in line said she has lost 20 pounds this year from eating less, while a retired bus driver who voted for Trump said, “He’s disappointed me, he has.”

Christa Pike (shown in a mug shot) is walking with help and eating again after surviving Tennessee’s failed christa pike mugexecution. Her attorneys said she took limited first steps Wednesday and needed assistance Thursday, and she is regaining some mobility in her burned and blistered arms. But they warned she is dealing with “the profound psychological trauma of having survived a failed execution,” and continues to struggle with concentration and memory. It remains unclear whether Tennessee will try to execute her again, and her lawyers are pushing Gov. Bill Lee to commute her sentence to life without parole. State officials have still offered no explanation for what went wrong, though experts suspect the IV line failed and the drug pooled in her tissue instead of her bloodstream.

Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are presenting Ukraine with a “new, unified proposal” to end the war. A Ukrainian delegation led by Kyiv’s top intelligence and presidential officials is in the US for two days of talks starting Friday, a senior administration official told NBC News. Zelenskyy said he has spoken with the American side three times in recent days and hopes “for a good result.” The two sides remain deadlocked over the Donbas region, which Putin wants to seize entirely and Zelenskyy refuses to give up. Secretary of State Marco Rubio admitted “there don’t seem to be prospects of a negotiated settlement” right now, a view the Kremlin said it shared, despite Trump’s campaign promise to end the war in 24 hours.

Federal prosecutors charged Nicolás Maduro and his wife with running a state-sponsored torture machine that targeted Americans. The new indictment alleges Maduro suggested torture methods, watched a video of a forced confession, personally threatened to kill a prisoner’s child and sometimes laughed when told of prisoners’ abuse. Three American victims are described, including one who was subjected to electric shocks and forced to eat his own vomit, and another who was beaten every half hour for two days, suffering a permanent eye injury. Maduro denies the charges and “looks forward to his day in court,” his lawyer said. A judge denied his wife Cilia Flores’ request for release on house arrest for medical treatment, calling her an “extreme” flight risk.

A prison riot in Mexico’s Sinaloa state killed 10 people during family visiting hours. Nine inmates and one family member were killed and 16 prisoners were injured in the violence at the El Castillo Penitentiary in the port city of Mazatlán, state authorities said. Local media reported inmates used firearms during the fight, though officials have not said how the deaths occurred. Soldiers, the National Guard, the navy and state forces entered the prison to restore order, and federal officials say the facility, which houses 1,800 inmates, is now “under control.” Sinaloa has been engulfed in violence since 2024 amid a bloody power struggle between rival factions of the Sinaloa Cartel.

Hurricane Isaias has exploded into a major Category 3 storm with 120 mph winds as it closes in on the Gulf Coast. The National Hurricane Center said landfall is expected late Friday or early Saturday somewhere between Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, bringing dangerous storm surge, damaging winds, heavy rain and the risk of tornadoes. “Preparations should be rushed to completion as the weather will go downhill quickly today,” forecasters warned, adding that slight weakening is expected before landfall but it will remain dangerous. Residents have emptied grocery store shelves and boarded up businesses in Gulf Breeze, Florida, and Orange Beach, Alabama. Meanwhile, Hurricane Simon is rapidly intensifying in the Pacific and expected to approach Mexico’s tourist coast as a Category 4 storm.

Prince Harry revealed he fell into depression before stepping down from royal duties. Speaking on a Masterclass videocast about grief, Harry said he experienced an “adrenaline crash” days after arriving in Canada for a six-week break with Meghan in 2019. “I actually slipped into depression for about two weeks and I felt like I couldn’t function without adrenaline,” he said. He also said he spent years “emotionally numb” after his mother Princess Diana died when he was 12, “because nobody told me joy was still allowed.” Harry and Meghan moved back to Britain two months ago with their children after six years in California, though he remains barely on speaking terms with Prince William.

South Korea and Japan are being hit by a wave of cyberattacks as AI lowers the bar for hackers. Nine South Korean banks and two mega-churches are investigating attacks that may have involved AI tools, while Japanese companies including SoftBank, Daiwa Securities and convenience chain Lawson have been hit by a surge in incidents. CrowdStrike said a 26-year-old China-based attacker suspected in the South Korean bank breaches used a Chinese-developed AI agent and Anthropic’s Claude Code, and likely couldn’t have carried out the campaign without AI. Japan has already recorded more cyber incidents in the first nine months of the year than in all of last year, with one expert saying the country is being subjected to “carpet bombing.” Regulators in both countries are scrambling to respond, with experts warning that “the genie is out of the bottle.”

An award-winning Kashmiri filmmaker was released from ICE detention after being arrested at Dulles airport. Arfat Sheikh, whose work explores conflict in India-administered Kashmir, was detained by ICE on September 24 as he got off a flight from California and released on bond Thursday, his supporters said. His campaign said he entered the US on a student visa in 2019, filed for asylum in 2020 and was authorized to live and work in the country with a pending application. DHS claims he “illegally overstayed his lawful admittance” and that a pending application doesn’t confer legal status, and his deportation case continues. His 2024 feature film “Saffron Kingdom” won best feature at several festivals, including the Chicago Filmmakers Awards.

Houthi missile strikes on Riyadh’s main airport killed three Saudi nationals, including an attack that hit a Saudi passenger plane. Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation authority said the first strike Thursday targeted airport facilities, while the second struck an aircraft belonging to the state carrier Saudia, injuring several people. The Iran-aligned Houthis claimed they used two cruise missiles and also targeted an airport in Najran and an airbase in Khamis Mushait. The deaths come on top of three people killed in earlier strikes this week on airports in Riyadh and Abha. The fighting, an overspill of the US-Iran war, threatens to draw more countries into the regional conflict.

Malaysia shut down schools across several states as smoke from Indonesian forest fires pushed air pollution to unhealthy levels. Schools in Johor, Malacca, Negeri Sembilan, Selangor, the capital Kuala Lumpur and the administrative center Putrajaya were closed Friday, the education minister said. Thirty-seven areas recorded unhealthy air quality readings Friday morning. Indonesia has struggled to contain forest and land fires across several provinces, sending thick haze into neighboring Malaysia and Singapore. Malaysia’s prime minister said Indonesia’s president agreed to take steps to combat the haze and is pushing for a regional meeting of Southeast Asian ministers to coordinate a response.

More On U.S. Governance

The Contrarian, Opinion: Undaunted Democracy Fighters, Jennifer Rubin, right, jennifer rubin new headshotOct. 9, 2026. 🚨 25 Days to the Midterms 🚨 The Trump regime, its minions in Congress, and its MAGA partisan allies on the Supreme Court have taken a sledgehammer to pluralistic democracy, the rule of law, and the promise of shared prosperity. The backlash to Trump’s reign of incompetence, malfeasance, terror, and greed will play out in the midterm elections.

contrarian logoHowever, two reform-minded groups have wasted no time in exposing the extent of the autocratic abuse and beginning to formulate reform plans. With their help, our task of restoring and bolstering our democracy will be less onerous.

Let’s start with Common Cause, which has — among other things — been front and center in the effort to expose ICE abuse and regime-wide corruption. In April, Common Cause’s Senior Policy Director for Anti-Corruption & Accountability Abigail Bellows wrote:

President Trump has turned the White House into a gold mine, earning more in the last year than he did in his entire first term. Long-established forms of self-enrichment — such as emoluments violations — have been paired with a dazzling new array of money-making schemes. Many of these tactics are, shockingly, legal, despite their combined effect: a president getting rich off the presidency, a government increasingly captured by the wealthy, and the American public absorbing the costs. . .

From memecoins to real estate investments to licensing deals for the president’s name, the Trump family is cashing in on the power of the presidency in ever more creative ways. Issuing presidential pardons to campaign donors. Soliciting crypto investments from foreign governments. Hosting political events at Trump properties. Demanding settlements from tech and media companies awaiting federal regulatory decisions. Plus the Qatari jet, the Vietnam golf course, and the Melania documentary. These pursuits may not all constitute “corruption” in the narrow legal sense, but they reflect how most Americans use the term – to refer to a rigged system, where self-serving politicians are above the law.

The schemes and scams have only expanded since then. For example, the array of conflicts involving Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff has recently come to light.

Rather than play whack-a-mole trying to bat down each new scam and legislate in dozens of areas, Common Cause has come up with a devastatingly simple proposal; a clean anti-corruption reform every pro-democracy advocate should support:

“Congress should pass a clean prohibition on personal profit during the presidency. As is already established precedent for other senior government officials, the president and vice president would receive their official salaries — and that’s it. No side hustles.”

Its idea has intuitive appeal:

By curbing any outside income during the presidency, a profiteering ban would provide much more comprehensive coverage than just restricting “improper” or “illegal” enrichment. A flat ban would also be more likely to endure in the face of future profiteering tactics, avoiding a whack-a-mole approach. Drafters could create multiple avenues for enforcing the profiteering ban, in addition to the ban’s inherent deterrence value. And a federal ban could help prevent a cascade of profiteering by state officials, where there are myriad opportunities for graft plus far less scrutiny.

In addition to its legal impact, such a proposal could have narrative impact — providing a powerful counterpoint to the cynical ways in which Trump is seeking to monetize public office. It is simple by design, making it easily understandable for public audiences that have grown despondent about government corruption. It also resonates with the older notions of public service, patriotism, and morality that many Americans still hold dear. The idea of a profiteering ban is already popular: recent polling indicates that 77 percent of Americans believe a sitting president should not be allowed to profit from his business ventures while in office, including majorities across all parties.

Meanwhile, the ACLU has taken on another area of despotic abuse. Its new study on the reign of ICE and CBP abuse is chilling: “Among the administration’s most powerful and frequent tools in executing on its dangerous, anti-democratic vision is the mass deportation agenda.” The report tracks 76 ways the Trump regime has used its mass deportation agenda to undermine America’s multiracial democracy and civil rights and liberties. This includes “mass de-legalizing more than one million people, stripping them of legal status and work authorization.” It has literally created more than one million “illegal immigrants,” providing a pretext for uprooting them, devastating families and communities, and sowing fear among the broader non-white population.

The report breaks down the abuses into three areas: attacking civil liberties (e.g., targeting journalists, infiltrating and surveilling organizations engaged in peaceful protest and activism, expanding deadly immigration detention and offshore detention); attacking our democracy’s integrity and structural checks (e.g., deploying federal patrols indefinitely in American cities, racially profiling targets, using excessive violence and then lying about deaths, evading court orders); and attacking pluralistic, multiracial democracy (e.g., de-legalizing more than one million people, attacking birthright citizenship, attempting to “exclude non-white people from entering our country through extensive visa and travel bans and the exclusion of all but white South Africans from the refugee program,” disrupting naturalization and legal immigration processes).

The ACLU also offers a set of reforms that will be essential to repairing the damage and fixing our longtime dysfunctional immigration system. These include a broad-based path to citizenship process; abolishing and replacing ICE; modernizing border control and our asylum system to “create a workable border entry process, address the case backlogs and ensure that vulnerable people can get protection and an opportunity to rebuild their lives”; and creating mechanisms to hold federal officials responsible to Congress and the public for abuses, including the right of private legal action.

Its recommendation for an ICE abolition and replacement is especially noteworthy:

Congress should conduct rigorous oversight of abuses committed by immigration agencies across our nation. Oversight has already shown the need for reform. Congress should build on the immigration enforcement reforms it debated during the 2026 Department of Homeland Security funding negotiations. While important, reforms such as banning law enforcement masking and requiring the use of body-worn cameras are insufficient to address the myriad abuses and threats to our civil liberties.

Beyond those measures, Congress should amend our laws to dismantle, once and for all, the national deportation policing force, which cannibalizes federal, state and local agency personnel and diverts them to a single force that can be wielded not just against immigrants, but those who disagree with a government’s actions.

In its place, the ACLU recommends setting up a new immigration management agency that would set “clear rules to qualify for termination of removal proceedings and lawful status, including a pathway to citizenship.” (A fuller ACLU blueprint for such a system will be forthcoming.)

Both Common Cause and the ACLU have done essential work in exposing some of the worst aspects of the Trump regime, but also in beginning the process of formulating systemic, long-term reforms that will permanently insulate democracy from the abuses we have endured or witnessed. Their undaunted, unwavering, unabashed, uncompromising efforts to expose wrongdoing and set us on a path to reclaim our democracy deserve our gratitude and support.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

 

President Trump and Lee Greenwood are shown above selling branded President Trump and Lee Greenwood are shown above selling branded "God Bless the U.S." Bibles in a portrayal from the White House Oval Office.

Hope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump is the Great American Conman, Heather Delaney Reese, right, helen delaney reese djtOct. 9, 2026. At 1:35 this afternoon, the President of the United States carefully walked toward the podium, staring down at his feet with each deliberate step he took, inside the newly renamed Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, the building formerly known as the U.S. Institute of Peace. For the next 28 minutes of what was being called a celebration of the “Golden Age of Science,” he awarded medals to his friends, insulted the loyal followers who attend his rallies by declaring, of today’s guests, “We have an extremely high IQ audience for a change. For a change. It’s very nice,” and then went on to proclaim that America invented almost everything important.

“We tamed electricity, invented the light bulb, developed the airplane, harnessed the atom, unleashed the power of personal computers, created the internet, pioneered super intelligence, and invented almost everything else of genius and great importance anywhere in the world.”

The actual scientists in the room knew that most of those breakthroughs involved researchers from across the globe, but nobody corrected him. The people in the room were too busy applauding for themselves and each other. That is just what you do these days, in Donald Trump’s America, when the President of the United States holds yet another special event to bestow the nation’s highest scientific honors on his enablers and donors.

To Elon Musk, the man who spent more than 275 million dollars helping Donald Trump get elected, he awarded the National Medal of Science. He called him “our modern-day Thomas Edison.” Not wanting to feel left out, Donald Trump was also presented with an award, just not one that he actually earned. Instead, he was given his late uncle John Trump’s National Medal of Science in a wood frame.

During the 30-minute event, he announced more than 6 billion dollars in public and private money that will be going to science and technology, even though his own administration has gutted federal research funding and restructured the National Institutes of Health, all while he and his administration are actively driving scientists out of the country through their reckless immigration restrictions.

There was something else about this ceremony that was fundamentally wrong. Five of the six people who received medals today were immigrants. Elon Musk was born in South Africa. Sergey Brin was born in Russia. Jensen Huang and Lisa Su were both born in Taiwan. Satya Nadella was born in India. The only person born in the United States to receive an award was Michael Dell. The President of the United States stood in a room filled with people who had come to this country from somewhere else, accumulated massive wealth, and helped shape the modern tech industry, and he celebrated them as national treasures, praising their contributions to America, and then handed them the nation’s highest scientific and technological honors, all while his own Vice President had spent the morning restricting the immigration pathways that have allowed generations of scientists, engineers, and innovators to build their lives and careers in this country.

Even worse, JD Vance publicly accused Microsoft of abusing employment-based immigration programs, and suspended the company’s participation in a program they use to sponsor foreign workers for permanent residency. That was just this morning, but this afternoon, Donald Trump was presenting Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. Nadella was born in India and came to the United States as a student, eventually working here on an H-1B visa. That is the Trump Administration con led by the Great American Conman himself, Donald Trump. Trump puts on these theatrical events to flatter his wealthy donors and powerful allies, while JD Vance announces corruption crackdowns that allow the administration to present itself as tough on manufactured crime coming from foreign workers.

These were not the only messages that were sent to our migrant communities today. Just a few hours after Trump’s remarks at the pseudo-science event, at 4:30 PM, the President of the United States posted this on his personal social media platform, Truth Social:

At 1:35 PM, immigrants are geniuses in Trump’s eyes, who deserve the nation’s highest honors. At 4:30 PM, immigrants are now violent criminals who are “taking over” a state, and the people of Minnesota need to “fight back” against them. I don’t know if we have ever seen a president of the United States direct an entire state of people to attack or, in his words, “fight back” against a relatively small community of people who came to the United States for the very same reason most of our ancestors did. For safety, the chance to raise children in the “land of opportunity,” and to build a better future for themselves and future generations that follow. Whatever Donald Trump intended by those words, he still said them. It is heartbreaking to even try to imagine what it means for Somali families in Minnesota to hear the President of the United States describe their community as a threat and tell their neighbors to fight back. Many have lived through hardships most of us could never begin to comprehend, hardships that forced them to pack up their entire lives, leaving behind everything they have ever known and people they love, just to find a place where they and their children could live in safety and have a chance at a better future.

Some immigrants are useful to Trump and his sycophants. He loves the wealthy ones who fund his campaigns, make him look legitimate and powerful on the stage and do what he tells them to do. Those immigrants get medals. The other immigrants are useful too, just in a different way. He uses them as scapegoats, and as weapons against political enemies and other people he doesn’t like. He also loves to use them to terrify his base into staying loyal. This is just the start of what Donald Trump is going to do to other blue states as well, because he considers them his enemies and the greatest threat to his power.

This was another day when I struggled to choose what to write about because there was so much thrown at us all at once. We also learned that the Secretary of “War,” Pete Hegseth, recommended, and Trump later approved, what would be the first U.S. military execution in 65 years, and the first by military firing squad since 1945. They chose the most visually violent method available to send a message that the president holds the power to decide who lives and who dies. Death Penalty Action released a statement saying, “There is nothing Donald Trump loves more than the power to kill.” It was later revealed that the execution would be livestreamed for the public to watch.

Here in Southern California, there is still a lot of talk about Donald Trump’s disturbing words about Iran potentially taking out San Diego and Los Angeles. But now there is growing concern about the increasing ICE raids that have once again been unleashed here. I heard a conversation this morning from a woman and what appeared to be a group of her friends where they were talking about all of the things they had lived through and how devastating it was to now have to spend their retirement years fighting for their country’s survival.

They appeared to be in their 70s and they rightfully all looked so pained and concerned. It made me think again about how much older Americans have given up of the peace and quiet they were promised in the later years of their lives so that they could fight for what’s right, and for a just country for the generations that come after them. These are supposed to be their golden years. Time with grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Time to enjoy the world they spent their whole lives building. Instead, they’re having to spend their days protesting, and organizing the resistance to this authoritarian takeover.

Some of them were old enough to remember parts of World War II or at least the aftermath. Some of them had parents and grandparents who stormed Normandy, liberated camps, and came home, never speaking about the horrors that they saw. Many of them marched during the civil rights movement and were in grade school at the same time that Ruby Bridges walked into William Frantz Elementary in New Orleans.

They fought for women’s rights and equality. They fought against racism and they lived through Vietnam. They lost friends and loved ones to that war, and they had children who fought in the Gulf Wars. If this is you, please know that your sacrifices then and now are not forgotten, and I recognize how much it’s taking for you to stand up once again.

We are twenty-five days away from the midterm elections. All of the corruption and cruelty that we’ve been talking about, every night, for over a year and a half, comes down to what happens in November. If we take back Congress, we take back the ability to hold this administration accountable. If we don’t, they will have unchecked power for a very long time. We’ve already seen what they’re willing to do, and it will only get worse. Once we get through this election, our attention needs to switch to rebuilding our country and making sure this never happens again.

Jamie Raskin is already thinking about just that with the bill he introduced, called the “Preserving and Remembering the History of Trump and other Tyrants Act.” The bill would direct the Smithsonian to collect and preserve artifacts documenting the rise of government propaganda, corruption, and authoritarianism during Trump’s two presidencies, including the thirty-foot banners of Trump’s face that hang from federal buildings in Washington, D.C., and the propaganda signs the Trump administration has prepared to place outside the Smithsonian. It would also preserve photographs, videos, and personal accounts from Americans who resisted what Raskin describes as the rise of authoritarianism, all as part of a permanent exhibition at the National Museum of American History. Raskin explained why this matters: “Unlike President Trump’s project of censoring, whitewashing and fictionalizing American history, my legislation will forever preserve his manifestations of authoritarian narcissism and his propagandistic assault on American history and American democracy.”

Rep. Raskin is not the only one pushing back in creative ways.

 

djt naked eu statueThis week, inside the European Parliament building in Strasbourg, a sculpture was unveiled called “Orange Plague.” Standing over 8 feet tall, this sculpture of Donald Trump is made of copper and covered in twenty-three-carat gold leaf.

It shows the President completely naked and sitting on the back of a man who struggles to carry him while Trump holds a golf club in one hand and a balance of justice in the other, with his eyes closed.

It was created by Danish artist Jens Galschiot and was inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” A Danish member of the European Parliament facilitated it being displayed and said, “If someone is so easily offended that they cannot accept this sculpture being displayed in the European Parliament, then they have no business on the world stage.”

The words posted with it say the following:

THE ORANGE PLAGUE:

I am sitting on the Back of a man.

He is sinking under my burden.

I will do anything to help him.

Except step down from his back.

--The King of Injustice

The rest of the world sees him for exactly who he is. A con man. The great American con man. They aren’t afraid to put the truth, gilded and naked, for everyone to walk past and see. We shouldn’t be afraid, either. That statue is a reminder that even the most powerful people in the world can be exposed for who they really are, and that no amount of gold can hide the truth forever. When our votes are counted next month, we will finally stop carrying the weight of a naked Trump and start exposing him for who he really is.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance 

 

U.S. 2026 Midterm electionssimon rosenberg facebookHopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion: It Was Likely That As We Got Closer To The Election Things Would Get Worse For The Rs - And They Are, Simon Rosenberg, right,Oct. 9, 2026. Headlines like this are not helping them:

While it’s come down a little in recent weeks gas is 60+ cents a gallon higher today than in July:

 

gas price six month chart 10 8 2026

In FiftyPlusOne’s generic ballot we are now firmly over 50%, our lead is growing, and you can see in these trendlines how voters are breaking to us now:

generic ballot 10 9 2026

This data is very consistent with the Gallup Party ID data we’ve been gawking at all week. Note like the generic ballot we are at 50% here too:

Yesterday the addled, white supremacist, titanic f-ck up got his worst major poll of his 2nd term, this one from Pew, one of the most respected pollsters out there.

30%!!!!! baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In a new poll by Politico only 48% of Trump 2024 voters say their local candidates should align with Trump. 48%. Just wow.In polling these past few weeks Republicans do not have clear, definitive leads in any battleground Senate race, including in Kansas and Nebraska. Democrats, on the other hand, do have polls showing us winning everywhere in Alaska, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and now Kansas too. Here are two new snapshots from key Senate battlegrounds. First, for my talk yesterday OH Dem Chair Kathleen Clyde I pulled together recent Senate in Ohio. It’s very encouraging:

The second snapshot is a new Washington Post poll of Maine that looks a like other polls we’ve seen there in recent weeks. Susan Collins has a very high hill to climb, and she is running out of time:

Finally the most significant trend we are seeing in the early Early Vote so far is a clear spike in voting from voters of color, an ominous development for the Rs. Here’s today’s national data from TargetEarly:

If you haven’t gotten to my weekly comprehensive overview of the election yet it will be good weekend viewing or listening: " The Battlefield Keeps Eroding For The Rs, We’re On The Cusp Of Having The Election We All Want To Have, And Now We Need To Close Strong And Finish The Job."

Let’s end our morning time together with our new 2026 Election daily mantra, borrowed from the great Anderson Clayton:

Elections are decided in November, but they’re won in October

And yes, my friends, that means it is time to go…..

Kick These Corrupt Traitors’ Asses, Win The Midterms, And Prepare For The F___kry To Come -- For It Is Coming (And May Already Be Here)

Three things you can do in addition to supporting our intrepid candidates and state parties:

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bulwark morning shots logoMorning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Citizens or Voyeurs? William Kristol, right, william bill kristol imdbOct. 9, 2026. Last Friday, I wrote that a recent speech by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was “all political bluster. But it’s a particular kind of political bluster. It’s neo-fascist bluster.” I cited Hegseth’s celebration of irrationalism and machismo, identified by Umberto Eco as two key elements of what he calls “Ur-Fascism.”

Another familiar feature of fascism is the transformation of politics into spectacle. Fascism bulwark logo big shipwants to reduce active citizens to passive observers, indeed into voyeurs—especially voyeurs of cruelty and death. Such degradation of a democratic public is key to fascism’s project and to its success.

This has been understood for a long time. The Roman Empire, to which modern fascism appealed as a model, featured bread and circuses. Among those circuses were spectacles of death, including the killing of criminals—and of others—by wild animals. These spectacles were called damnatio ad bestias—condemnation to beasts—and were part of the inaugural games of the Roman Colosseum in 80 A.D.

Yesterday, the secretary of defense of the United States told far-right provocateur Jack Posobiec that he wanted the execution by firing squad of the Fort Hood mass murderer, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, to be a public spectacle. Hegseth said, “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it. That it’s public.” This wasn’t just Hegseth popping off. The Defense Department followed up a few hours later with an official statement that Hasan’s execution, scheduled for December 3, will be live-streamed for the public to watch.

Hegseth’s claimed rationale for the livestream is ludicrous: “People need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.” Really? Would the American people fail to understand that the death penalty has been carried out if the execution of the criminal weren’t live-streamed?

Of course not. The reason this is happening is that the Trump administration wants to join regimes like Iran and Afghanistan in making public executions spectacles. It’s eager to follow the example of terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS in livestreaming them.

Tuaut de La Bouverie, an official during the Terror in Revolutionary France, explained the need for public executions in the National Assembly in 1791: “It takes a terrifying spectacle to hold the people in check.”

But this isn’t merely about holding the people in check. It’s about degrading the people. It’s about desensitizing the public. It’s about normalizing cruelty. It’s about turning citizens into voyeurs—in this case, into voyeurs of a snuff film.

firing squad tortureThe United States military is far better than this. Senior officials should protest, and if necessary resign, rather than being complicit in the voyeuristic degradation of our democracy.

AROUND THE BULWARK

  • The Bigot Behind Brian Fitzpatrick’s Attack Ads… The embattled congressman has been pushing wild claims made by a family friend with a history of bizarre criminality and despicable social media posts, reports BRENDAN HARTNETT.
  • bulwark logo big shipHow Vance and Thiel Get the Antichrist Backwards… One is doing a bit of cynical pandering, the other is condemning anyone opposed to the tech future—and neither is willing to look in the mirror, writes MATTHEW D. TAYLOR.
  • The Knifeman and the Apparatchik… SONNY BUNCH on Ari Emanuel’s and Bob Chapek’s new memoirs. Plus: Let the Oscar race begin! KATEY RICH and CHRISTOPHER ROSEN, the Prestige Junkies, join to discuss Oscars 2027!

Quick Hits

SOCIALISM IS WHATEVER, MAN: Vladimir Lenin famously declared, “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the entire country.” JD Vance, the American vice president, has graced us with what is sure to be an equally legendary definition of socialism. At a presentation on “combating fraud and abuse in work visa programs,” Vance was asked how he defined the term. After some verbiage about socialists not “prioritizing workers,” Vance offered this zinger: “I think in reality what it actually means in the American context is that you want to replace American workers with foreign workers and you want boys to play in girls’ sports.”

In other words: Anything I don’t like is socialism. Or, in an acerbic addendum from Cato Institute Vice President Scott Lincicome: “Anything I don’t like is socialism—including capitalism.”

Lincicome also noted that if Vance had accurately defined socialism, he would have had to include the second Trump administration’s grab of ownership stakes in 35 corporations. Indeed, it’s not for nothing that in August, Robert Wolf, a former economic advisor to Barack Obama, called Trump “the most powerful socialist in the country today”—citing not only the state seizures but such market interventions as price controls on pharmaceuticals and farm bailouts. One could add “promising every American a $5,000 payout as a reward for keeping a one-party system in power”: Sounds pretty socialist to me!

Vance’s much-derided snark underscores what we all know already: The Trump administration’s anticommunist crusade is not about communism or socialism—it’s about tagging the Democrats with a scary buzzword. I can’t wait for Vance to offer his definition of communism: Insensitive comments about Charlie Kirk and Haitian migrants barbecuing cats?

IN ABSENTIA: As they try to shore up their chances of holding their Senate seat, Texas Republicans have suddenly seized on a new line: Where is James Talarico? Ted Cruz tweeted a picture of a missing-person ad on a milk carton: “Have you seen this man?” At a MAGA rally Wednesday, Ken Paxton tried to lead the crowd in a (rhythmless, shambolic) chant of “Where is James Talarico?” A little later, Donald Trump claimed that Talarico had gotten sick from having to eat meat at campaign events—because he’s vegan, you see.¹

They’ve got a point! Talarico hasn’t done an in-person campaign event since September 28—the result, he said at a virtual event September 30, of a flu diagnosis that had sent him to urgent care. “If I was passing on this illness to somebody and got someone’s grandmother or someone’s baby sick, I couldn’t live with myself,” Talarico said, “so I thought the best thing to do was to put safety first and put everyone’s health first.”

Texas is a weird place to campaign: It’s so enormous, populous, and sprawling that actual retail politics matters very little, except as a means of generating content. It’s simply not possible to establish a grip-and-grin connection with enough voters to matter. But that doesn’t mean these attacks don’t stand a chance of actually hurting Talarico: You don’t want voters to think of you as the candidate who got knocked out for weeks of the home stretch by the flu.

In a statement, Talarico spokesman JT Ennis said that the candidate would be back on the trail this weekend. “Ken Paxton has been ignoring Texans this entire campaign,” he added. “He doesn’t answer to the people of this state—he answers to his billionaire megadonors and special interests.”

SEE JEFF GROVEL: Being one of the richest people in history only gets you so far. In an interview on Fox News this week, Jeff Bezos accidentally committed a faux pas against the emperor: He referred to AI technology as “AI.” His interviewer, Bret Baier, was quick to press the question: “By the way, the president says ‘SI.’ Are you into ‘SI’?”

Bezos’s pivot was instant. “I do like ‘SI,’ because ‘artificial’ is not a very flattering thing. Like, nobody wants an artificial sweetener, artificial flavoring—‘artificial’ sort of means fake.”

Which, yeah: It is fake. It is constructed. AI is an insanely complex computer program performing a very compelling—but ultimately fake—simulacrum of intelligence. Bezos justifiably got roasted online for this servile display. But he knows what side his bread is buttered on, and Donald Trump has decided to make continued use of the term “AI” an excommunicable offense. “The White House considers anyone that uses the term, ‘Artificial Intelligence,’ as opposed to the highly accepted new and more accurate term, ‘Super Intelligence,’ THE ENEMY!” Trump posted yesterday on Truth Social. 

New York Times, Paxton Said in Deposition That Donor Gave Him Stocks to Please God, Lauren McGaugh, Oct. 9, 2026. The leaked deposition from a fraud inquiry in 2014 provides insight into the Senate candidate’s investments and his tactics for defending himself.

Ken Paxton sat for hours in a federal building in Fort Worth as government lawyers grilled him under oath about his growing wealth and questionable investing history.

At the time, in December 2014, Mr. Paxton was a fast-rising Republican star. He had just been elected the next attorney general of Texas. But outside of public view, he was under scrutiny as part of a federal investigation into possible fraud.

The deposition in the case, obtained by The New York Times, was one of the earliest episodes in what would become a decade-long pattern for Mr. Paxton: accusations of corruption and other illegal conduct repeatedly emerged, only to be resolved without a conviction.

Now, as Mr. Paxton is locked in a fierce Senate race in Texas, the deposition offers a previously unseen account of his finances, his attitude toward money and how he used his connections within the State Legislature to amass his wealth.

Since his first election to public office in 2002, Mr. Paxton has grown his wealth through business investments and real estate purchases into a personal fortune with a reported value of up to $23 million. His assets now include multiple mutual funds, a cellphone tower and 15 properties across six states.

Mr. Paxton has rarely answered questions publicly about how he accumulated this wealth on a government salary. His finances have been the subject of repeated investigations by local, state and federal authorities into alleged bribery, fraud and self-dealing. The issue has been a frequent line of attack from his political opponents, including James Talarico, the Democratic state lawmaker running against him for Senate.

The 2014 deposition was part of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into Servergy Inc., a technology start-up based in McKinney, Texas, which is part of the district that Mr. Paxton represented as a state lawmaker. The start-up’s founder, William Mapp III, known as Bill, was accused of making false claims to investors.

The S.E.C.’s lawyers wanted to know whether Mr. Paxton hid that he had received compensation for recruiting investors for the company.

The S.E.C. eventually brought civil fraud charges against Mr. Paxton that were dismissed. In addition to the federal inquiry, Mr. Paxton was indicted by a grand jury on state securities fraud charges in 2015. In 2024, he reached a deal to avoid trial while admitting no wrongdoing.

Under oath in 2014, Mr. Paxton told the federal lawyers that he had invested more than $400,000 in various companies. But between legislating and campaigning, he said he didn’t have time to track his investments. In fact, Mr. Paxton said, he could not locate stock certificates potentially worth $200,000.

“I’m so busy,” he said in the deposition, “I don’t always keep track of this kind of stuff.”

The deposition also shed more light on how he defended himself against the securities fraud allegations, which he spent the next decade fighting. Mr. Paxton used phrases like “I don’t remember” or “I don’t recall” more than 200 times when addressing questions. He also tried to deflect to other men he invested with and to his wife, Angela.

“I haven’t prepared a tax return in a long time because I don’t have time, so typically — actually my wife actually does them,” Mr. Paxton said, when asked about a line in his tax returns that seemed to contradict part of his testimony.

Nick Maddux, a senior adviser to Mr. Paxton, said the release of the deposition was meant to distract from the election and Mr. Paxton’s opponent.

“This is a 12-year-old deposition about a case that ended without a conviction, handed to the press by a political opponent less than a month before Election Day,” Mr. Maddux said. “Like President Trump, the attorney general has been politically persecuted for years for standing up to the establishment, and Texans have seen through it every time.” 

Washington Sun, MetroD.C. Elections Board Asks National Guard to Stay Away From Ballot Drop Boxes, Martin Austermuhle, Oct. 9, 2026. Guard members were seen standing next to a drop box in Foggy Bottom this week. It is against federal law for troops to be deployed around polling places. 

Reports of National Guard troops standing next to a D.C. ballot drop box in Foggy Bottom on Thursday have prompted complaints from some residents and an official request from the D.C. Board of Elections that it not happen again.

“We are addressing the concerns with the National Guard directly and have requested that they impose limitations on the placement of National Guard service members near drop boxes and other voting locations in the District,” said board spokesperson Sarah Graham.

The ballot drop box wasn’t in use when the National Guard troops were filmed standing next to it.

“We are aware of imagery circulating online of service members standing near a ballot drop box. Maintaining public trust is a top priority, and JTF-DC service members are directed not to monitor or secure polling locations,” said a spokesperson for the Joint Task Force, which is in charge of the D.C. deployment, in response to questions from The Washington Sun.

“JTF-DC is actively addressing this specific instance and remains fully committed to conducting its missions professionally, lawfully, and with respect for the public’s constitutional rights,” the spokesperson said.

The city’s 55 drop boxes opened Friday morning and will be available for voters to drop off their ballots through the end of Election Day, which is Nov. 3.

Ballot drop boxes are popular with voters; for the June primary, more than 63,000 voters used them to return their ballots, representing roughly 40% of all votes cast. The boxes tend to be in high-traffic areas — including by Metro stations like in Foggy Bottom.

Reactions to the video that circulated on social media at least partly reflect the ongoing discomfort that some D.C. residents still feel with having the National Guard deployed in D.C. on President Donald Trump’s orders. While he has credited their presence with helping drive down crime, critics say their deployment is unnecessary and sets a troubling precedent around the use of the military for law enforcement.

As of Thursday, 2,864 National Guard troops were deployed in D.C., down from a high of more than 5,000 during the summer months. Roughly 2,300 of them are from 18 states outside of D.C., with Georgia, Mississippi and Florida having the biggest contingents.

There have been recent complaints about Guard members operating around D.C. schools, and city officials have asked that they refrain from doing so. Ward 2 D.C. Council member Brooke Pinto will hold a public hearing on Nov. 5 to hear from residents on their experiences with the National Guard in D.C.

Some of the concerns with the Guard members at the D.C. ballot box could also stem from broader worries about the Trump administration’s reported plans to deploy federal agents around polling places for the November election. This month, the Department of Homeland Security said it has no plans to station ICE agents at the polls.

The Trump administration also attempted to rein in mail voting generally this year; D.C. joins a handful of states that automatically send all registered voters a mail ballot, and most voters now prefer that to voting in person. Those efforts were stymied by litigation.

Still, changes to how the U.S. Postal Service postmarks ballots have prompted election officials to warn voters that if they’re going to use USPS to mail in their ballot, they should ensure that the postmark is not dated after Election Day, which would lead to the ballot being rejected.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

 

The so-called

The so-called "Broadview Six." Clockwise from top left: Michael Rabbitt, Brian Straw, Kat Abughazaleh, Andre Martin, Joselyn Walsh and Catherine “Cat” Sharp.

Chicago Sun Times, Judge makes feds' 'Broadview Six' filing public after attorney's name is hidden from view, Jon Seidel, Oct. 9, 2026. U.S. District Judge April Perry on Friday also asked prosecutors for evidence to help her make “findings of fact regarding potential sanctions or criminal contempt.” 

A federal judge on Friday rejected an attempt by U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros’ office to shield parts of a new “Broadview Six” filing from the public, including the name of an attorney representing the United States government, as multiple inquiries into the tainted case appear to be moving forward.

Sensitivities to an ongoing investigation by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility appeared to trigger the partial redaction of documents. But U.S. District Judge April Perry noted that the government has already “publicly disclosed” that inquiry.

Perry ordered the unsealing of a document in which Boutros’ office sought permission to turn over grand jury materials from the “Broadview Six” case to counsel for former Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg and current Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Skiba, who presented the case to grand jurors.

The document was filed by Boutros’ civil chief, Thomas Walsh, and Suzanne Drouet, deputy counsel with the Justice Department. Boutros’ office had originally hidden Drouet’s name and signature block from a public filing, setting off a firestorm of speculation. A source said she works in the Office of Professional Responsibility, which conducts internal misconduct investigations of federal prosecutors.

Grand jury transcripts in the case have already been made public, something Perry noted on the court docket after Boutros’ request was apparently first made under seal this week. She otherwise granted the request.

Meanwhile, Perry on Friday also asked prosecutors for evidence to help her make “findings of fact regarding potential sanctions or criminal contempt.” Specifically, she asked for “all communications” between Boutros’ office and “anyone outside” of it, other than local FBI investigators, “regarding any investigatory or charging decisions for this case.”

The time frame she gave for her request begins Sept. 26, 2025, the day of the protest that led to the prosecution. It ends March 30, 2026, the day prosecutors denied such communications existed.

Perry also asked for the Oct. 14, 2025, email in which Boutros received a grand jury transcript that documented some of the apparent wrongdoing by his staff. The judge asked for all replies or forwards, all email chains it’s included on, along with “all associated metadata.” Boutros previously told the judge he’d learned of much of the misconduct in April.

Finally, the judge asked for details about any such communication that took place orally, rather than writing.

CNBC, Trump appoints committee to investigate statements by the Fed’s Lisa Cook, Oct. 9, 2026. President Donald Trump established a “committee of inquiry” to investigate allegations that Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook made false statements related to mortgages, the White House said.

Trump tried to fire Cook, a nominee of former President Joe Biden, but the Supreme Court blocked his first attempt.

President Donald Trump formally established a “committee of inquiry” to investigate allegations that Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook made false statements related to “one or more mortgage instruments,” the White House announced Friday.

The extraordinary announcement is the latest development in Trump’s long-running effort to fire Cook, a nominee of former President Joe Biden, from the central bank’s board. Trump, who frequently urges the Fed to lower interest rates, recently said the failure to do so by his handpicked chair Kevin Warsh is the fault of a “hostile” board.

The committee comprises three executive branch officials, including Kevin Hassett, Trump’s top economic aide and a chief defender of the administration’s economic record, according to a presidential memorandum posted on the White House website and shared Friday on social media.

The other two members are Keith Sonderling, acting head of the Office of Government Ethics, and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chair Andrea Lucas, according to the notice, which is dated Wednesday. No outside, independent arbiters are mentioned.

Stone Cold Truth, Opinion: Michael Cohen Has Not Recanted His Testimony Against Donald Trump, Roger Stone, Oct. 9, 2026. He now says he was pressured and coerced by prosecutors. But despite repeated claims to the contrary, Cohen still insists that the testimony he gave against Donald Trump was truthful.Roger StoneOct 9READ IN APP

There is an old rule in politics: words matter. There is an even older rule in a courtroom: sworn words matter even more.

That distinction is essential in understanding what seems to be the extraordinary reconciliation between President Donald Trump and his former personal attorney Michael Cohen — and the increasingly widespread claim that Cohen has now “recanted” the testimony he gave against Trump.

He has not.

Perhaps I am particularly sensitive to this question. Charged by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s thugs and pressured to give false testimony against President Trump in return for leniency in sentencing for the contrived process crimes I had been convicted for in a DC Soviet style show trial, I refused.

Michael Cohen chose a different path. He told Trump’s persecutors what they wanted to hear.

President Trump has understandably seized upon Cohen’s alleged about-face regarding the prosecutors who pursued him. In January, Cohen accused the offices of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James of pressuring him to provide testimony useful to their cases against Trump. Cohen wrote that he “felt pressured and coerced” to provide information and testimony that would satisfy the government’s desire to convict Trump.

I’m not sure President Trump understands that Michael Cohen has not recanted or withdrawn any of his testimony against Trump in the so-called hush money case brought by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg. But saying “I felt pressured and coerced” is not the same thing as saying “my testimony was false.”

Cohen himself has gone out of his way to make precisely that distinction.

When Cohen appeared with Dan Abrams on SiriusXM and was directly asked whether his allegations of prosecutorial pressure meant his previous testimony was untruthful, Cohen answered unequivocally: “No, to the exact contrary.” He then said that nothing about his allegations of pressure should suggest that the information he provided was anything other than “truthful and accurate”

There is simply no intellectually honest way to describe that as a recantation. A recantation means taking back a previous statement. It means saying, in substance: What I told you before under oath was not true.

 

ICE logoNew York Times, Live Updates: Mullin Criticizes Sanctuary City Policies After ICE Shooting in New York, Madeleine Ngo, Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Hamed Aleaziz, Oct. 9, 2026. Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, spoke a day after a federal immigration agent wounded a man in his car during an arrest attempt. At a news conference, Mr. Mullin highlighted the victim’s criminal record and lashed out at Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, attacked sanctuary city policies and lashed out at Mayor Zohran Mamdani at a news conference on Friday morning, one day after federal immigration agents shot a man in his car in New York City.

On Thursday afternoon, a federal agent shot and injured a man from the Dominican Republic in the Marble Hill neighborhood of New York City as immigration officers tried to apprehend him. The man, identified by local officials as Oscar Belgal, 28, was in a car with his 5-year-old son when agents surrounded the vehicle on a largely residential street, according to Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner. Federal officials have said Mr. Belgal was in the United States illegally, and they sought to highlight his criminal record on Friday.

At his news conference, Mr. Mullin harshly criticized sanctuary city policies that prohibit local cooperation with immigration enforcement, and took aim at New York’s in particular, saying they make citizens “less safe.” Mr. Mullin has frequently criticized cities with similar policies, saying they make it harder for the federal government to detain criminals. He repeatedly described Mr. Belgal as a “thug” and “the worst of the worst.”

Mr. Mullin and Marcos Charles, a top leader at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, repeatedly accused Mr. Belgal of being associated with a gang, and rattled off a list of charges against him, including forcible theft and grand larceny.

Mr. Charles accused Mr. Belgal of accelerating his car toward the ICE agents, causing them to fear for their safety and open fire. Video of the shooting verifying ICE’s account has not been made public.

ICE officers were not aware that there was a 5-year-old child in the vehicle, Mr. Mullin said. He also said that the officers involved in the shooting were wearing body cameras and that there is footage. “As the investigation moves forward, as I said, we’ll release the information,” he said.

Mr. Mullin said that he had spoken with President Trump, who said that Mr. Belgal could be released from custody if New York police agreed to take him into custody. But Mr. Mullin said that when he spoke to Mr. Mamdani, the mayor did not agree to that.

The homeland security secretary also said he spoke last night with Gov. Kathy Hochul. He said Ms. Hochul was open to working with the federal government to help them detain 100 criminals who are in the state illegally, if the federal government gave the state notice.

Many details about the shooting in New York City remain unclear, but Ms. Tisch said that one agent had fired his weapon seven times. Seven bullet casings were recovered at the scene; the vehicle’s front windshield sustained damage and the back window was shattered, she said.

Mr. Belgal was struck in the neck below his left ear and was transported to a nearby hospital by New York City police officers, who were not involved in the shooting, Ms. Tisch said. Mr. Mullin said that he had been transferred to a detention facility outside New York State, but declined to identify which one.

The shooting follows a string of violent and sometimes deadly incidents involving immigration agents. Last month, an ICE officer shot a Venezuelan man during a traffic stop in Austin, Texas. Over the summer, immigration agents fatally shot a Mexican man in Houston and a Colombian man in Maine.

More Global News

The South African judge Navi Pillay won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. She has served as a judge in her native South Africa and on international courts investigating war crimes. She led a U.N. panel that determined that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, a finding the Israeli government rejected (Fabrice Coffrini photo for Agence France-Presse via Getty Images).

The South African judge Navi Pillay won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. She has served as a judge in her native South Africa and on international courts investigating war crimes. She led a U.N. panel that determined that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, a finding the Israeli government rejected (Fabrice Coffrini photo for Agence France-Presse via Getty Images).

New York Times, Live Updates: Human Rights Lawyer Navi Pillay Is Awarded Nobel Peace Prize, Jonathan Wolfe and Aurelien Breeden, Oct. 9, 2026. Navi Pillay, a South African human rights lawyer and international judge, was announced on Friday as the recipient of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize for what the Norwegian Nobel Committee called her efforts to uphold a system of international law that is increasingly under attack.

The committee said that Ms. Pillay had been “instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted.” Formerly the United Nations’ top human rights official, and a judge at the International Criminal Court and on an international tribunal investigating the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, she is “one of the most respected international jurists of our time,” the committee said.

When Navi Pillay was announced as the recipient of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, her work as a human rights lawyer and international judge was thrust into the international spotlight.

But in her native South Africa, she was already known by many for fighting apartheid. Navi Pillay closed out her brief news conference in Nuremberg, Germany, with a reminder to any heads of state that might be listening: “My message to political leaders is that you are under legal obligation,” she said. “You have a legal obligation to protect human rights and refrain from war.”

She dedicated her award to “the survivors of international crimes and to the defenders of international justice.” She mused that “perhaps it was meant to be” that she received the news in a city whose famous post-war trials of Nazi leaders were foundational to creating the modern international justice system. But she offered a warning, too, saying that efforts to undermine the system “risk returning us to a world in which power rather than law determines whose suffering matters.”

Speaking at a conference of human rights lawyers in Nuremberg, Germany, Navi Pillay said she was “surprised” that some people had praised her courage. “Why would you need courage to speak the truth?” she said. “You interpret the law, you look at all the facts. So it’s an impartial, you know, impartial decision-making.”

She was attending a conference of human rights lawyers in Nuremberg, Germany, when she got the news that she had been given the Nobel Peace Prize.

A video posted online by Agnes Callamard, the secretary general of Amnesty International, showed her  smiling and being applauded by fellow attendees. “Thank you very much,” she told the crowd. “If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump,” she joked, apparently referring to President Trump, who has long coveted the award.

More On Trump's Pro-Putin, Pro-Criminal, Pro-Genocide Edicts

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

Chart by The New York Times.

New York Times, Trump Says He Will Import Russian Diesel Fuel Amid High Prices, Chris Cameron, Oct. 9, 2026. President Trump said Russia had agreed to ship potentially millions of tons of diesel fuel in the coming months. But Russia has an ongoing ban on exporting diesel.

President Trump said on Friday that he had reached an agreement with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to immediately import Russian diesel fuel to the U.S. market, despite a Russian ban on exporting fuel.

russian flag wavingIt was not immediately clear if Mr. Putin had signed off on that deal. But minutes after Mr. Trump’s announcement, the Treasury Department said it was lifting sanctions on Russian diesel exports “to allow the supply of Russian diesel to the global market.” The announcement gave Russian energy producers a general license to sell diesel fuel until April.

Russia, a crucial supplier of diesel to the rest of the world, said last week that it was extending its ban on diesel exports until the end of October, amid punishing Ukrainian strikes on oil refineries and other fuel infrastructure. Those attacks, and the export ban, have kept fuel prices high ahead of the midterm elections. Mr. Trump has recently criticized Ukraine for the strikes, saying they were driving up prices.

But Mr. Trump said in a social media post on Friday that Mr. Putin had approved shipping potentially millions of tons of diesel fuel in the coming months.

“It was agreed,” Mr. Trump said, “that Russia will immediately supply over 300,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel to the American and Global Marketplace, another 500,000 Tons during the month of November, and 1,000,000 Tons immediately thereafter. Additionally, based on the condition of their Diesel Refineries, Russia will then deliver, within a short period of time, 3,000,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel.”ImageGazprom Neft’s Moscow oil refinery in 2022. Credit...Natalia Kolesnikova/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The return of Russian diesel to international markets would be a win for Mr. Putin, who has sought for years to break the ice on U.S. sanctions against Moscow’s energy sector.

Despite suffering from the most acute gasoline crisis in decades, Moscow still has an excess supply of diesel. But Edward Fishman, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said he doubted that Russia could supply as much diesel fuel as Mr. Trump said it had promised.

“The reason Russia imposed an export ban was that Ukrainian strikes had degraded its refining output, necessitating fuel rationing for domestic use,” Mr. Fishman said. “This strikes me as classic Putin — empty promises aimed at sowing further divisions in the trans-Atlantic alliance.”

It is the latest effort by the Trump administration to ease sanctions on Russia in a bid to lower energy prices. At the beginning of the war with Iran, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent lifted sanctions on Russian oil that was at sea, saying that it would add hundreds of millions of barrels of crude to global markets, and would curb prices.

New York Times, Trump Administration Hits International Criminal Court With Severe Sanctions, Edward Wong and Jeanna Smialek, Oct. 9, 2026. U.S. officials announced the new, sweeping punishments just hours after the Nobel Peace Prize committee gave its annual honor to a former court judge.

The Trump administration announced on Friday that it was imposing severe financial sanctions on the International Criminal Court, its latest effort to cripple the global body that seeks to prosecute those accused of war crimes, genocide and other murderous criminal acts.

The new sanctions, unveiled by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the State Department, would prohibit transactions with the court after a grace period of six months. Any companies doing business with the court afterward could be subject to punishment by the U.S. government.

The threat of that could constrain the institution’s ability to carry out daily operations.

Although the State Department had been preparing the sanctions for months, Mr. Rubio’s announcement came just hours after a committee in Norway said it was awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, a South African lawyer who served for nine years as a judge on the International Criminal Court and worked as the top human rights official at the United Nations.

The sanctions are an intensification of the Trump administration’s push to undermine the court. In February 2025, just weeks after taking office, President Trump issued an executive order directing agencies to come up with sanctions to impose on the court.

At the time, he said the court was trying to violate American sovereignty and undermine “the critical national security and foreign policy work of the United States government and our allies, including Israel.”

Mr. Rubio said in a statement on Friday that Mr. Trump would never allow the court to prosecute Americans. “We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate,” he said.

Mr. Rubio announced in July that the United States planned to “systematically disable” the court, which Mr. Trump has long described as a threat to Americans.

The administration has imposed financial sanctions and visa bans on court judges and prosectors, but the measures announced on Friday are broader.

The I.C.C. said in a statement that the American move was “an assault on the rule of law and on the very foundations of the international legal order, which strikes at the simple principle that no one stands above the law.”

Many companies that have business ties with the court will be granted licenses over the next 180 days to continue their work without financial punishments, the State Department said.

During that period, the Trump administration will assess whether its concerns regarding the I.C.C. have been addressed, the department said in a statement. The administration can then adjust the licenses based on that.

The Treasury Department is helping to enact the sanctions and maintains a list of entities punished with financial restrictions.

Of nearly 200 nations in the world, 125 have signed the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and are subject to its rulings. The United States never ratified the treaty establishing the institution, and both it and Israel are among those that are not bound by the statute.

However, given the number of countries that are members of the court — including close American allies — the prosecution of U.S. citizens could put those people at risk of arrest and extradition in many parts of the world, in theory. But experts often say that the chances of foreign officials taking those actions are low.

Mr. Rubio announced the sanctions the day after he returned from a three-nation tour of Europe during which he was trying to strengthen alliances. The three countries he visited — Iceland, Greece and Portugal — are all members of the International Criminal Court.

The court, officially established in 2002 and based at The Hague in the Netherlands, has a mission to investigate and prosecute genocide, war crimes and other serious offenses. The Trump administration has in the past pushed back on the court’s ability to look into the conduct of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, and has also been highly critical of the court’s actions against Israel.

In November 2024, the court issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, and Yoav Gallant, the defense minister for much of Israel’s war in Gaza. Prosecutors had investigated the officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity in operations in Gaza, where thousands of Palestinian civilians have been killed and some have starved to death. Israel carried out airstrikes and ground operations after the deadly Hamas attacks in Israel in October 2023.

The Trump administration has already sanctioned 17 of the court’s officials, including judges and prosecutors. Mr. Rubio has suggested that even more sweeping punishments were necessary because of the possibility that the court could prosecute U.S. citizens, and American service members in particular.

Defenders of the court often point out that it has no police force of its own, and would be able to arrest and try U.S. citizens only if member states carry out arrests.

The Trump administration is not the first to take on the I.C.C.: Under George W. Bush, the United States also pushed back on the court’s ability to go after Americans.

Yet the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle the institution — “brick by brick, if necessary,” according to Mr. Rubio — is an escalation, from skepticism and rhetoric to outright dismemberment.

“This is incredibly disturbing,” said James A. Goldston, executive director of the legal organization the Open Society Justice Initiative, calling the sanctions a “calculated attack” on international justice.

Whether the American attack on the I.C.C. will cripple the institution will depend in part on how its member nations respond, he said, and whether they stand by the institution.

“We know that the court has been preparing for this much-rumored eventuality,” he said. “We’ll have to see.”

The European Union’s executive arm, whose 27 member countries are also members of the court, said in a statement that “The E.U. will work closely with the I.C.C. to ensure it continues to operate effectively,” and called the American move “deeply regrettable.”

The E.U. statement emphasized that the six-month delay leaves “room for dialogue.” Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and Britain also released a joint statement in defense of the court on Friday.

More On U.S. Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets

New York Times, Oil Prices Jump on Outburst of Violence in the Middle East, Lisa Friedman and Jenny Gross, Oct. 9, 2026 (print ed.). Attacks on ships around the Strait of Hormuz have continued as a war between Saudi Arabia and the Houthi militia intensified.

Oil prices surged on Thursday after an escalation of the conflict in the Middle East raised fresh concerns over supply disruptions, and the anxiety is reverberating in stock and bond markets.

Saudi Arabia’s capital was rattled as a war between the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen and a Saudi-led military coalition intensified. A Houthi military spokesman said early Thursday that the group had attacked Riyadh’s airport with a ballistic missile.

More On Middle East Wars

 

bulwark morning shots logoMorning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Nationalist Right Is Done with Israel, Joshua Tait, Oct. 9, 2026. This year’s National Conservatism Conference, hosted this week in Jerusalem, should have been a homecoming for its head honcho, the Israeli-American nationalist thinker Yoram Hazony. Instead, it was a catastrophe.

bulwark logo big shipRepresentatives of the various strands of the MAGA new right have taken the opportunity to break up with Israel—and, for good measure, to tell Jews to stop calling them antisemites. “America First,” it seems, doesn’t leave any room for Israel.

On the third anniversary of the October 7th attacks, a panel chaired by Hazony himself and nominally on the “American Right: The Next Generation” went totally off the rails. Matthew Peterson, editor in chief of the Blaze and formerly of the Claremont Institute, began by insisting that America and Israel had no special relationship. It only got worse for Hazony from there. Each panelist—from the right-wing filmmaker Amanda Milius to the racist podcaster Jonathan Keeperman and the Christian nationalist former Trump administration functionary William Wolfe—made the same points with increasing intensity.

Why is the right breaking with Israel? It “has become the perfect symbol of foreign policy excess,” said Keeperman, who is Jewish. Young right-wing Americans don’t have the attachment to Israel felt by their elders. Nor does special pleading work. “The Holocaust, and the on-again, off-again persecution of Jews . . . no longer resonates in the way it did when the Holocaust was still in living memory,” and may actually turn off the vitalist young right. “We want our national sovereignty back,” Wolfe declared. He described right-wing staffers who see congressmen with Israeli flags in front of their offices and think, “They say ‘America First,’ and this looks like sort of ‘America First plus Israel First.’”

Unlike their conservative forebears, young rightists don’t see their interests aligned with Israel, associating it instead with “forever wars” in the Middle East.

But of course, the other great offense was immigration. Peterson suggested the Israeli right needed to support American nativism, while Keeperman complained that Jewish neoconservatives’ opposition to Trump and liberal Jews’ support for mass immigration (and demonization of the right) has damaged any Jewish–right-wing alliance. The panelists seemed to see the Israelis as nationalists who ought to recognize that America has its own interests, while treating Jewish Americans as either part of the new right, with an “attenuated” relationship to Israel, or as a perhaps naive part of the progressive left.

The panelists were united on one specific point: Forget Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, and the groypers, Jews need to stop calling right-wingers antisemites. “Many of us stopped playing this game a long time ago because it was the left’s central tactic,” said Peterson.

Which is to say that the young right is shameless.

Some panelists pointed out that evangelicals, not Jews, are the main pro-Israel constituency in America. Wolfe, the Christian nationalist, dissented, suggesting that American Jews needed to “know their place.” “Why is it that so much of our national political conversation on the American right is dominated by people who compose one out of seventy or eighty of our voters?” he wondered aloud. After dwelling on Jewish views on abortion rights, Wolfe said that when he thinks of Jews, “I think of people who are my political opponents because they are.”

People used to get exiled from polite conservative society for this sort of stuff.

But Peterson, Keeperman, and Wolfe agreed that there’s no going back to an earlier conservative dispensation. In fact, they allege accusations of antisemitism are really about “the remnants of the prior establishment on the right in America [who] hope that when Trump leaves the scene, they will rise to power once again,” according to Peterson.

Well, guess what? “We support JD Vance. MAGA supports JD Vance,” Wolfe declared about the MAGA new right darling. And, he added, “JD Vance is not an antisemite.”

As for Hazony, who’s spent years attempting to wed a conservative America to a conservative Israel: You sow the nationalist wind, you reap the America First whirlwind.

More On U.S. History, Disasters, Media, Sports

 

Elon Musk with a model of the Tesla, as seen in the Alex Gibney documentary “Musk.” According to Gibney in the film, Musk has been able to consolidate political power via Starlink, the satellite arm of SpaceX, which provides internet access from space (Photo credit: Bleeker Street).

Elon Musk with a model of the Tesla, as seen in the Alex Gibney documentary “Musk.” According to Gibney in the film, Musk has been able to consolidate political power via Starlink, the satellite arm of SpaceX, which provides internet access from space (Photo credit: Bleeker Street). 

New York Times, What to Know About the New Elon Musk Documentary, Matthew Huff, Oct. 9, 2026. A supersized portrait of the world’s richest man reveals new details and resurfaces troubling incidents from a headline-making life.

Alex Gibney opens his documentary about the tech titan Elon Musk with a question: “How could Musk assume so much power, and why had we given it to him?”

The Oscar-winning filmmaker, whose previous subjects include Enron and Scientology, spends nearly four hours answering that question in “Musk,” tracing the rise of the Tesla chairman and chief executive from his childhood in South Africa to the I.P.O. of SpaceX in June, which made Musk the world’s first trillionaire. (The movie, in theaters, has a 10-minute intermission baked in.)

When news of Gibney’s project broke back in 2023, Musk took to Twitter (now X) to preemptively call it a “hit piece.” Combining interviews with ex-wives and former colleagues and clips from Musk’s 30-plus years in the spotlight with commentary from an A.I. version of Musk constructed from an archive of his own words, the film follows his rise from Silicon Valley start-ups to his brief tenure as the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Here are some takeaways.

Musk’s privileged childhood was marred by violence

“Musk” paints a harrowing portrait of Elon’s youth in apartheid-era South Africa. In one interview, his wealthy businessman father, Errol Musk, claims to have shot and killed three intruders, covering the floor of their home in a “swimming pool” of blood. In another, he describes Elon riding in a car alongside the body of a family friend who had just “dropped dead.” After Elon’s mother, Maye Musk, separated from Errol, claiming physical and mental abuse (charges her former husband has denied), Elon continued to live with his father. When Elon was bullied so badly at school that he was hospitalized for a week, his father, he later said, sided with his attackers.

He’s made a habit of failing upward

Gibney suggests that Elon Musk’s business blunders have been as lucrative as his successes. After a failed bid to become the chief executive of his first start-up, Zip2, Musk was pushed out of the company but earned a $22 million buyout. Only a few years later, the entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel pushed Musk out of PayPal with a $250 million parting gift.

More recently, according to Gibney, Twitter (now X) lost 80 percent of its value after Musk purchased it (though other estimates vary). Musk then rolled X and his A.I. start-up xAI into SpaceX for the largest I.P.O. on record to date, prompting Gibney to ask, “How can you keep screwing up and still make millions?”

Tesla is a lesson in entrepreneurial sleight of hand

While Musk claims to be a founder of Tesla, the automotive company was actually started by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003. However, Musk negotiated the title of co-founder for himself as part of a 2009 legal settlement. Later, he claimed that Tesla drivers could easily swap out their 1,000-pound car batteries, which helped him garner more than $100 million worth of environmental credits from the state of California, though he had only built a single battery swap facility in the desert.

Gibney also dedicates substantial time to Tesla’s self-driving Autopilot feature, which has been linked to deaths and injuries. In 2016, Musk oversaw the creation of a promotional video depicting a self-driving Tesla, causing the company’s stock to rise. However, it was later revealed that humans had controlled the car at certain points during filming and that the car had actually crashed.

He sees increasing the birthrate as a “national emergency”

“Musk” includes extended interviews with Justine Musk, Elon’s first wife, and Ashley St. Clair, a former conservative influencer who dated Elon from 2023 to 2025 and gave birth to one of his 14 known children. St. Clair claims to have received messages from multiple women on social media whom Musk offered to impregnate. “It’s like a Gatling gun of sperm in his DMs,” she says in one of the documentary’s more evocative lines.

Despite Musk’s preoccupation with procreating, both women suggest that Musk sustains little interest in his children or their mothers. Justine remembers Elon telling her, “I am the alpha in this relationship” at their wedding reception, and later telling her, “If you were my employee, I’d fire you.” St. Clair claims Musk openly called X Æ A-Xii (whose mother is Musk’s former partner Claire Boucher, the musician known as Grimes) his favorite and didn’t care to spend time with his other offspring.

Starlink and DOGE gave him global reach

According to Gibney, Musk has been able to consolidate political power via Starlink, the satellite arm of SpaceX, which provides internet access from space. While Musk supplied Ukrainian forces with necessary tech during their war with Russia, he’s also able to control and withhold access to it. That military bargaining chip has given Musk remarkable leverage in lucrative business deals around the world.

As part of his work with DOGE, Musk dispatched gatekeepers and regulations designed to check the A.I. industry. With those barriers removed, Gibney speculates that Musk could use A.I. to amass even more power.

 

Great Chicago in Flames by Currier Ives 1871

The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 (Currier & Ives Portrayal).

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Sept. Oct. 8, 2026 [Two horrible U.S. fires contrasted -- Along with a key political and racial legacy], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 9, 2026. On October 8, 1871, dry conditions and strong winds drove deadly fires through the Midwest. The Peshtigo Fire in northeastern Wisconsin and parts of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula burned more than 1.2 million acres (4,860 square kilometers) and 17 towns, claiming between 1,500 and 2,500 lives. The Great Chicago Fire burned 3.3 square miles (8.6 square kilometers) of the city, destroying the wooden structures that made up the relatively new town, killed about 300 people, and left more than 100,000 people homeless.

The Peshtigo Fire is the deadliest wildfire in U.S. history. The Chicago Fire is the one people remember.

The difference is in part because Chicago was a city, easy for newspapers to cover, while the Peshtigo fire killed people in lumber camps and small towns. But the Great Chicago Fire also told a political story that fit into an emerging narrative about the danger of organized labor.

It was not clear, coming out of the Civil War, how Republicans would stand with regard to workers. After all, the U.S. government had fought the war to protect the right of every man to enjoy the fruits of his own labor. But immediately after the war, workers had started organizing to demand adjustments to the wartime financial policies that favored men with money. By 1866 the Democratic Party had begun to listen to them, and leaders called for rewriting the terms of the Civil War debt, which had been generous to investors in the days when U.S. bonds were a risky investment. After the war, with the U.S. secure, the calculations changed, and Democrats charged that investors had gotten too good a deal.

Republicans, horrified at the idea of changing the terms of a debt already incurred, added to the Fourteenth Amendment the clause saying, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

They were also concerned when more than 60,000 people came together in August 1866 to launch the National Labor Union, calling for the government to level the playing field between workers and their employers. They asked for an eight-hour day, an end to monopolies, and cooperation between Black and white workers. In 1867, in what was almost certainly a misquoted comment, stories spread that Republican Benjamin Franklin Wade of Ohio had told an audience in Kansas that “property is not equally divided, and a more equal distribution of capital must be wrought out.”

Also in 1867, Congress passed the Military Reconstruction Act, which divided the ten unreconstructed states into five military districts and required new state constitutional conventions to rewrite the state constitutions. For the first time in history, the new law permitted Black men to vote for delegates to those conventions.

When former Confederates preferred to live under military rule rather than share political power with their Black neighbors, Congress amended the Military Reconstruction Act to permit the military to enroll voters. In 1868, Congress passed and then states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, protecting the right of all citizens to the equal protection of the laws. In 1870, Congress passed and the states ratified the Fifteenth Amendment, protecting Black male voting. And then, when white reactionaries organized as the Ku Klux Klan to keep Black men and white Republicans from voting for the constitutions the conventions had written, Congress created the Department of Justice to prosecute Ku Klux Klan members and protect Black rights in the South.

Attacks on Black political rights on grounds of race were now unconstitutional, and the federal government seemed prepared to back that principle up with the law. So reactionary southerners took a new tack.

Beginning in 1871, they argued that they had no objection to their Black neighbors on racial grounds. What they objected to, they said, was that these folks, newly out of enslavement, were poor. White leaders claimed that the South remained in a recession not because India and Egypt had taken over the global cotton market during the war, but because Black southerners were lazy and hoped to use their new political power to redistribute the wealth of white landowners into their own pockets.

When South Carolina voters put into office a majority-Black legislature, white South Carolinians railed against the Black voters “plundering” taxpayers. One observer commented that “a proletariat Parliament has been constituted, the like of which could not be produced under the widest suffrage in any part of the world save in some of these Southern States.” Democrats organized a “Tax-Payers’ Convention” to protest new taxes levied by the legislature.

While Republicans were unwilling to bow to the Ku Klux Klan’s violence against their Black colleagues on racial grounds, this attack had legs, thanks, in part, to events in Europe.

For two months in spring 1871, in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War, workers took over the city of Paris and established the Paris Commune. American newspapers plastered details of the Commune on their front pages, describing it as a propertied American’s worst nightmare. They highlighted the murder of priests, the burning of the Tuileries Palace, and the bombing of buildings by women who lobbed burning bottles of newfangled petroleum through cellar windows. American newspapers portrayed the Communards as a “wild, reckless, irresponsible, murderous mobocracy” who brought to life a chaotic world in which workers had taken over the government with a plan to confiscate all property and transfer all money, factories, and land to workers.

Republicans’ fear of workers grew. Organized laborers “are agrarians, levelers, revolutionists, inciters of anarchy, and, in fact, promoters of indiscriminate pillage and murder,” the Boston Evening Transcript charged. The Philadelphia Inquirer insisted the redistribution of wealth through law appealed to poor, lazy, vicious men who would rather steal from the nation’s small farmers and mechanics than work themselves. Scribner’s Monthly warned in italics: “the interference of ignorant labor with politics is dangerous to society.”

Turning first against Black southerners, Republican newspapers began to claim that African Americans were radical levelers. They were “ignorant, superstitious, semi-barbarians” who were “extremely indolent, and will make no exertion beyond what is necessary to obtain food enough to satisfy their hunger.” To these lazy louts, Republicans had given the vote, which gave them “absolute political supremacy.” They elected to office leaders who promised to confiscate wealth through taxation and give it to Black citizens in the form of roads, schools, and hospitals. “The most intelligent, the influential, the educated, the really useful men of the South, deprived of all political power,” wrote the New York Daily Tribune, “[are] taxed and swindled by a horde of rascally foreign adventurers, and by the ignorant class, which only yesterday hoed the fields and served in the kitchen.”

After the Paris Commune, Republicans began to sweep white workers into this equation as well, taking the lead of former Confederates. An article in the New York Daily Tribune quoted Georgia Democrat Robert Toombs, the first Confederate secretary of state, who explicitly compared formerly enslaved people to the Paris Communards. He called for a property requirement for voting, without which “the lower classes…the dangerous, irresponsible element,” would control the government and “attack the interests of the landed proprietors.” According to Toombs: “Only those who owned the country should govern it, and men who had no property had no right to make laws for property-holders.”

When Chicago went up in flames in October 1871, some Americans blamed the Great Fire on “communists” or “socialists” eager to take over the country. Even those unconvinced a deadly fire in a wooden city was part of a deliberate plot blamed the fire on stupid immigrant workers careless about fire. They blamed “Mrs. O’Leary and her cow,” claiming the animal had kicked over a lantern near straw, and even children knew not to put fire near straw.

The Great Chicago Fire spoke to politics as the rural Peshtigo Fire did not. It fanned the flames of fear that workers were trying to destroy America. Famous reformer Charles Loring Brace wrote, “In the judgment of one who has been familiar with our ‘dangerous classes’ for twenty years, there are just the same explosive social elements beneath the surface of New York as of Paris.”

And for those determined to make sure workers didn’t have a powerful voice in American society, the Great Chicago Fire could be framed as an illustration of precisely that. 

Chicago Sun Times, Bears legend Mike Ditka dead at 86, Staff report, Oct. 9, 2026. Mike Ditka, the Hall of Fame tight end who played on the Bears’ 1963 NFL championship team and coached the team to its only Super Bowl championship after the 1985 season, has died. He was 86.

A statement issued by the family said that “while the world knew Mike as a Hall of Fame football player, legendary coach and leader of the Chicago Bears’ Super Bowl XX championship team, we knew him as the heart of our family. Mike will be missed beyond measure and remembered forever.”

As a player, a coach and a larger-than-life personality who invigorated a generation of Bears fans, Ditka left an indelible mark on the Chicago sporting landscape — from the playing field to sports talk to pop culture — that few can match. Of Chicago’s impressive list of Hall of Fame athletes — Sid Luckman, Walter Payton, Bobby Hull, Ernie Banks, Stan Mikita, Frank Thomas among the all-time greats — only Michael Jordan can challenge Ditka’s legacy as a local sports icon.

As a Bears legend, Ditka was one of the last direct links to George Halas, the Bears’ founder and owner. Halas drafted Ditka out of Pittsburgh in 1961. And even after a falling out that led to Halas trading Ditka in the prime of Ditka’s career in 1967, Halas hand-picked Ditka to coach the Bears in 1982. Four years later, Halas was gone (he died in 1983), but Ditka led the Bears to victory in Super Bowl XX in the midst of the best run of Bears success since winning four NFL titles from 1940-47 with Luckman at quarterback.

Oct. 8

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President Trump's Russian and Iranian war negotiators ared Kushner, left, and Steve Witkoff have business ties to two of the Middle Eastern investors involved in the deal (Pool photo by Jacquelyn Martin).President Trump's Russian and Iranian war negotiators ared Kushner, left, and Steve Witkoff have business ties to two of the Middle Eastern investors involved in the deal (Pool photo by Jacquelyn Martin).

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More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

  • Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Quid Pro Guilfoyle, Andrew Egger, right, andrew eggerOct. 8, 2026. Some MAGA scandals take unpacking. Others, not so much. Yesterday, we got one of the latter. The Wall Street Journal headline: “‘Honey Please’: Kimberly Guilfoyle Pushed Donor to Wire $100,000 to Her Amex Account.” Sourced to her own smoking-gun text messages, the report is the latest example of this administration’s open, staggering corruption.
  • Israel FlagNew York Times, How a U.S. Diplomat Suppressed and Altered Reports Critical of Israel, Natan Odenheimer and Adam Rasgon, Oct. 8, 2026. A top aide to Ambassador Mike Huckabee skewed information to portray the Netanyahu government in a favorable light, according to multiple officials and documents obtained by The Times.
  • The Contrarian, Opinion: Trump: the Whining, Weak Wimp, Jennifer Rubin, right, jennifer rubin new headshotOct. 8, 2026. Donald Trump melted down when the New York Times reported that his Ohio rally arena was sparsely attended. He insisted that attendees “migrate down” to lower seats! Of course, he meant to fill empty seats, but his dilapidated logic was dwarfed by the sheer hysteria and venom of receiving such a sad crowd. He utterly lost it, demanding: “The New York Times, and many other Artificial Media Outlets, should be arrested for their dishonesty and disservice to our Country.”
  • The Hartmann Report, Commentary, Would Another 9/11 Be Trump’s Ultimate October Surprise? Thom Hartmann, right, thom hartmann newOct. 8, 2026. Trump is escalating Iran while talking about American cities as collateral damage. History shows just how dramatically an attack can reshape both an election and a presidency…On Monday night in Grand Island, Nebraska, Donald Trump was trying to convince a tiny rally crowd to vote Republican when, as he is wont to do, he wandered off-prompter into a riff about what Iran could do to two American cities and the crowd cheered.

Special Report 

  • christopher haleLetters from Leo, The American Pope Church and U.S. Politics: In Fourth Attack, Peter Thiel Accuses Pope Leo XIV of Using AI to Deflect From Sex Abuse, Christopher Hale, right, Oct. 8, 2026. JD Vance’s top donor also lumped the pope in with Barack Obama, saying “Obama knows the Democrats have no ideas, but they can at least oppose AI.” Vance has yet to be asked about it. Nashville is the latest stop in a yearlong campaign by JD Vance’s biggest benefactor against this pope. In leaked San Francisco lectures last fall, Thiel suggested Leo was a tool of the Antichrist. At the Aspen Ideas Festival in July, he said the pope was “working for the Chinese Communists.” 

The question for Vance takes one sentence. Does he agree with his top donor that the pope is hiding behind abuse survivors? As of Thursday night, no reporter has asked him. That silence is an abomination.

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djt empororDonald Trump increasingly publishes self-portraits suggesting that he is an all-powerful figure annointed by God for his leadership role and entitled to mete out punishment to any critics.

New York Times, ‘He’s Not Making Sense’: How Trump Has Alienated Voters for the G.O.P., Sabrina Tavernise, Oct. 8, 2026. Signs are emerging that dispirited Republican voters may stay home in November, bringing a Democratic surge without many conversions.

If Democrats make big gains in the midterm elections in four weeks, it may not only be because their most loyal voters come out in force, or because their candidates have converted Republican voters to their cause.

Instead, the Democrats’ dream blue wave could come from Republicans who sour on President Trump and stay home. It already has a name: the red undertow.

Across the country, signs are emerging of an enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans, even among those who consider themselves likely to vote. A stretch of rural southwest Michigan — long a Republican stronghold — illustrates the point, with more signs for blueberries and eggs than for political candidates. Volunteers are not showing up to door-knock. And many voters say they are tuning this election out.

“People are just more focused on everyday life,” said Lindsay Kronemeyer, 35, a conservative Christian mother of two who works in the construction industry. “I don’t hear the chatter on the Republican side of ‘Trump this, Trump that.’ He’s just not there in my head anymore.”

Jim Pasek, a retired pharmaceutical plant maintenance worker who lives in the tiny town of Gobles, Mich., was baffled by a president he has voted for twice.

“He’s not making sense,” Mr. Pasek, 80, said. “It confuses me, and then I just get disgusted and tune out.”

The idea of the red undertow was introduced last month by the political analyst Charlie Cook, who argued that the Democratic brand was still underwater, but that this election was not about a rising Democratic tide. It was about a drowning Trump brand.

In its wake, Mr. Cook wrote, an undertow will “pull many Republicans under.”


President Trump's Russian and Iranian war negotiators ared Kushner, left, and Steve Witkoff have business ties to two of the Middle Eastern investors involved in the deal (Pool photo by Jacquelyn Martin).President Trump's Russian and Iranian war negotiators ared Kushner, left, and Steve Witkoff have business ties to two of the Middle Eastern investors involved in the deal (Pool photo by Jacquelyn Martin).

New York Times, In Trump’s Russian Oil Deal, Middle East Funds Are the Biggest Owners, Anton Troianovski and Eric Lipton, Oct. 8, 2026. A majority of ownership in a proposed multibillion-dollar deal would go to a group of Middle Eastern investors, including some with business ties to U.S. negotiators.

The Trump administration argues that its proposed multibillion-dollar Russian oil deal would advance American foreign policy interests and lower energy prices.

But most of the ownership in the deal would go to a group of Middle Eastern investors, including some with business ties to key U.S. officials involved in the negotiations, according to people familiar with the talks.

The deal, for a worldwide portfolio of oil fields, refineries and gas stations now owned by the sanctioned Russian energy giant Lukoil, has become intertwined with the U.S. talks with Russia over ending the war in Ukraine, The New York Times reported last week.

The United States government, through the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, would get a stake of about 15 percent in the deal, without investing any cash up front, the people said.

The leader of the investor group, Todd Boehly, an American billionaire who has donated $2 million to pro-Trump causes in the last two years, would get a smaller minority stake

But more than half of the equity will be cumulatively held by investors in the Middle East, according to three participants in the negotiations. The investors include entities tied to the royal family in Abu Dhabi and to two billionaire Syrian-born Qatari brothers, who are business partners with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter.

The deal is structured in such a way that the United States — through Mr. Boehly and the government — would control a majority of the board of the resulting entity, some of the people close to the deal said. A senior administration official said the deal included a “substantial upfront payment and profits interest for the United States,” would enhance American “energy dominance” and outlast the current administration.

The Boehly group would acquire Lukoil stock with a face value of about $10 billion from non-Russian owners, although these purchases would be made at a significant discount, according to participants in the negotiations.

Once the purchase agreement is complete and approved by the Treasury Department, the assets would no longer be affected by U.S. sanctions on Lukoil, instantly driving up their value.

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Our Big Fat Greek Bribery Scandal, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Oct. 8, 2026. bulwark morning shots logoKimberly Guilfoyle’s corruption is shocking, damning, and—by now—chump change.

Last year, Donald Trump pardoned Democratic Rep. Harry Cuellar, who was under indictment for federal bulwark logo big shipbribery charges. All he expected in return was that Cuellar, out of gratitude, would immediately switch parties and become a Republican. To his shock, Cuellar never did. “Many considered this to be a tremendous act of disloyalty,” Trump fumed on Truth Social last night, “and certainly showed him to be an extremely ungrateful person.”

He then encouraged Texas voters to vote Cuellar out in November. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: It’s genuinely amazing how little Trump tries to hide his own mob-boss style. Happy Thursday.

News Roundups

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Important: Oval Office Meeting on Seizing Ballots as Lawyer Discusses ‘Civil War,’ Major Trump Ambassador Scandal, and Iran Strikes, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 8, 2026. A convicted election denier sat in the Oval Office this week to talk about “plans” for the midterms. Tina Peters’ attorney says her plan involves seizing ballots nationwide, and he’s discussed strategy for a potential civil war. The White House says she has no role in election policy, but a former Trump DOJ official says “the president’s taking it seriously.”

Meanwhile, the White House has reportedly asked the Pentagon for options to strike Iran before Election Day so Trump can “look like he got a win,” and Kimberly Guilfoyle allegedly begged a MAGA donor to pay her $100,000 Amex bill days before her confirmation hearing. I spoke with former Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice about all of it.

Before we get into the news, something personal. I know many of you enjoy when I share pieces of my life, whether it’s my daughter, my runs or what my days look like behind the scenes. That connection means a lot to me. But the threats against me have increased, and I need to take real steps to protect myself and the people I love. That means sharing less about where I am and what I’m doing moving forward. I hope you understand. It doesn’t change the work, and I’m not backing down. And don’t worry, I am looking into now hiring security and running threat assessments.

Here's the thing: the people sending these threats want me to go quiet. The best answer to that is making sure I can keep going louder. I don’t have a corporate owner, a billionaire or a network behind me, just readers who believe independent journalism matters. With less than four weeks until the midterms, that support has never been more important. If you’ve been reading for free, please consider becoming a paid subscriber today.

Here’s the latest.

Tina Peters Meets With Trump on Election “Plan” as Her Attorney Says It Involves Seizing Ballots and Discusses Civil War Strategy

Peters’ attorney says her election plan involves seizing ballots nationwide and has discussed strategy for a potential civil war. Peter Ticktin, who represents Peters and is a longtime friend of Trump, laid out the plan as Peters reportedly met with the President to discuss the midterms. Ticktin has a long record of pushing extreme measures, previously telling The Atlantic the choice was “either martial law, or step aside” and that “our armed forces are a lot bigger than they are” when asked about possible unrest. Earlier this year, he urged Trump to issue an executive order seizing control of the midterm elections.

Peters reportedly met with Trump in the Oval Office on Monday to discuss election “plans.” Former Trump DOJ official Ed Martin said on Real America’s Voice that Peters was in the Oval Office “talking about the plans” and that “the president’s taking it seriously.” Martin added that if Congress doesn’t pass the SAVE America Act, which would require documentary proof of citizenship to vote, “the president’s going to have to do what he’s going to do.” An unnamed source confirmed the meeting to ABC News. The White House said it does “not comment on private meetings that may or may not have happened.”

Peters and her allies are also pushing Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to assert federal control over voting machines. Peters and anti-voting lawyer Cleta Mitchell want Lutnick to use regulatory authority over critical infrastructure to intervene in states’ use of voting machines, based on false claims that foreign-made parts make them compromised, Democracy Docket reports. Peters’ own plan calls on Commerce to “impose mitigation or prohibition,” and she has previously urged Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to take voting machines into military custody. Election expert David Becker said the commerce secretary “has no authority” and that “the states would laugh at him.”

Peters is a convicted felon whose sentence was commuted after a Trump pressure campaign. A jury convicted her in August 2024 on seven of 10 charges, including four felonies, for allowing an unauthorized person linked to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to access voting equipment in search of fraud. She was sentenced to nine years, but Colorado Gov. Jared Polis commuted her sentence in May after months of public pressure from Trump. Since her release, she has met with top administration officials, including Lutnick and Justice Department civil rights chief Harmeet Dhillon, to pitch her plan. She has been touring the country promoting what she calls the “Tina Peters Plan.”

Colorado officials vow to fight any federal interference as the White House distances itself. A White House official has said Ticktin and Peters have no role in the administration’s election policy. Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold called Peters and Trump “election deniers who have repeatedly lied to the American people” and said the state has so far defeated Trump’s “unlawful attempts to influence election administration.” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has claimed, without evidence, that foreign adversaries have access to US voting machines. With the midterms less than four weeks away, the meeting raises fresh alarms about how far Trump’s allies are willing to go.

Kimberly Guilfoyle Allegedly Begged a MAGA Donor to Pay Her $100,000 Amex Bill Days Before Her Confirmation Hearing

Guilfoyle allegedly pressed a Trump donor to pay her $100,000 American Express bill while promising him access. Text messages reported by The Wall Street Journal show Guilfoyle, now US Ambassador to Greece, asking Kentucky attorney and Trump donor Eric Deters for the money on July 3, 2025, just days before her confirmation hearing. “Honey please I need you to get this done for me today,” she allegedly wrote over Signal, attaching Amex payment instructions and adding, “It won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express.” Deters had been seeking her help with his IRS tax and legal problems, and when he balked, she allegedly told him he “could be here meeting with Billy Long,” then the IRS commissioner. Deters says she promised to be his “Trump ride or die, forever and ever” if he paid, but he declined and says she “never came through on anything.”

The texts suggest Guilfoyle was worried about leaving a paper trail. “Eric, I really wish you would stop papering all these things,” she allegedly wrote in one message, urging him to call her on Signal instead. In another, she wrote, “What a nightmare you’ll literally cost me my ambassadorship stop writing.” Deters, who once paid Guilfoyle $300,000 to speak at a Covid-era event he founded in Kentucky, also gave $125,000 to a pro-Trump PAC in 2022. Guilfoyle’s lawyer, Jesse Binnall, disputed the authenticity of the messages but offered no specifics.

Marco Rubio refused to address the allegations while standing next to Guilfoyle in Athens. Speaking at the foot of his plane as Guilfoyle looked on, the Secretary of State said he was aware of the report but had no idea if it was true. “You guys walk around thinking that because some source told you something and you reported it, it’s the gospel. It’s not the gospel,” Rubio told reporters. A day earlier, he praised her as “a strong ambassador.” A US Embassy official said Guilfoyle was “fully vetted” by the Senate and remains committed to serving “with dedication and integrity.”

This is the second Wall Street Journal report raising serious questions about Guilfoyle’s conduct. Last month, the Journal reported that Guilfoyle told guests at a dinner that the US could bring about political change in Greece, invoking the collapse of Romania’s government. The same reporting found she promoted the interests of Greek construction and energy company Aktor Group and repeatedly brought its registered lobbyist, who was paid $160,000 by the company, into official meetings with foreign leaders, some of whom reportedly mistook him for her chief of staff. Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has called for her removal if the allegations are accurate. The top Democrats on the House and Senate foreign affairs committees are now calling for an investigation, but Rubio would not say whether he’d open one.

Trump Weighs Resuming Iran Strikes Before the Midterms to “Look Like He Got a Win,” Sending Oil Prices Soaring

The White House has asked the Pentagon to prepare options for striking Iran before the midterm elections. Citing two administration officials, The Atlantic reported that the size and targets of the potential strikes are still under discussion, with a wider operation possibly coming after November 3. Officials said the preparations reflect how eager Trump is to bring down gas prices and show progress in the war as Republicans risk losing both chambers of Congress. Even the plan’s supporters reportedly don’t believe the strikes would bring Iran to the table or reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but hope they would project strength heading into the vote. “It would make the president look like he got a win and that gas prices would start going down,” a Republican familiar with the deliberations told the magazine.

The report sent oil prices surging and stocks sliding on new inflation fears. Brent crude, the global benchmark, jumped more than 4% Thursday to around $105 a barrel, with US crude rising by a similar amount. The spike came just one day after Trump said oil prices would “drop like a rock” once the war ends, which he again claimed would be “very soon,” a promise he has been making since at least March. Oil had briefly dipped below $100 earlier this week on signs that Middle East exports were recovering, but Iran has stepped up attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Aramco’s CEO warned this week that global oil stockpiles are “scarily thin.”

The war is spreading across the region as Houthi attacks hit Saudi Arabia’s capital. The Iran-backed Houthis claimed Thursday to have struck Riyadh’s main airport with a ballistic missile, the third such claim this week, as repeated explosions were heard across the city. Diplomats were told to shelter in place in their embassies, at least one international school sent children into a basement, and some companies evacuated staff from Riyadh’s financial district. Houthi attacks on two Saudi airports earlier this week killed three people and wounded dozens. Iran’s army has also threatened preemptive strikes on US bases, saying it now has “large stockpiles” of weapons.

New footage and Gold Star families are raising fresh questions about the cost of the war. Videos obtained exclusively by CBS News show Iranian ballistic missiles, drones and what witnesses described as fighter jets attacking Camp Buehring, a major US base in Kuwait, at the start of the war, with soldiers running critically low on ammunition. The seven-month war has killed 19 US troops and wounded more than 800. Most families of the six soldiers killed in the war’s deadliest attack skipped a White House Gold Star event this week, with one widower demanding transparency about “what decisions were made” before the strike. Another military widow said she has “no interest in supporting an administration that has been so reckless with the lives of our service members.”

The administration’s own messaging on the war keeps contradicting itself. Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared Wednesday that Iran had “lost complete control” of the Strait of Hormuz, while an Iranian military adviser insisted the strait remains closed and vowed to block new shipping routes. Vice President JD Vance appeared to soften the US position on Iran’s nuclear program, saying Tehran must make a “meaningful” reduction in enrichment rather than ending it entirely as Trump previously demanded. An Iranian official said US proposals remain “at odds with Iran’s demands.” Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to meet Iran’s president Friday as the two countries deepen military ties.

Trump Trashes Paxton's Looks at Texas Rally as Leaked Audio Shows Paxton Eyeing Social Security Cuts

Trump rallied for Ken Paxton in Texas but spent more time talking about himself than the struggling Senate candidate. At a San Antonio rally Wednesday night, Trump called Paxton one of the best attorneys general in the country but only briefly brought him onstage, and it was former baseball star Roger Clemens, not Paxton, who introduced the President, The New York Times reports. Trump was interrupted nearly a dozen times by protesters, several of whom were led out in handcuffs, as he focused on the border, transgender issues and his own record, even playing clips of CNN’s Harry Enten praising his poll numbers. In recent weeks, Trump has offered a strange sales pitch for his own endorsed candidate, saying voters “may not like the way he looks,” that he doesn’t like the way Paxton dresses, and that he “could be a pain in the ass sometimes.” It was Trump’s third trip to Texas in a month, a sign of how worried Republicans are about a race the President shaped by endorsing Paxton over Sen. John Cornyn in the primary.

Trump is now demanding a debate, and Democrat James Talarico says he’s ready. Trump posted that Talarico “should immediately report to a debate stage against Ken Paxton, who is ready, willing, and able,” again calling him “Talafreako,” a nickname Talarico’s campaign is now printing on T-shirts. Talarico had been off the campaign trail for more than a week, prompting Paxton to ask, “Where are they hiding that little socialist?” before Talarico revealed he had the flu. “President Trump just said Ken Paxton should debate. I agree. Ball’s in your court,” Talarico responded. Talarico had already left Paxton a voicemail last month inviting him to debate on Fox News, accusing him of dodging debates.

Leaked audio catches Paxton calling for cuts to the programs that fund Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. In a recording from a September 24 event with lobbyists, Paxton said reasonable cuts to mandatory spending are essential to keep the country from going bankrupt. He blamed both parties for excessive spending but did not name specific programs he would cut. Democrats say the tape proves Paxton is ready to slash benefits for working families, while his supporters dismiss the attacks. It’s the second leaked Paxton recording this week, after audio surfaced of him blaming the Iran war and gas prices for his campaign’s struggles, in a race now rated a toss-up less than four weeks before Election Day.

Other news:

Stephen Miller spoke at an FBI counterterrorism training days before prosecutors charged a man with cyberstalking his wife. The White House homeland security adviser addressed counterterrorism agents at FBI headquarters, telling them no threat case is too small, whether it targets a congressman, a spouse or a loved one, CBS News reports. Two days later, federal prosecutors in Boston charged John Proia with cyberstalking Katie Miller and her family; he has pleaded not guilty. In the days before Miller’s appearance, the two top counterterrorism agents in the FBI’s Washington Field Office were reassigned after the Millers complained the case wasn’t moving fast enough, though the White House says the Millers didn’t request the change. The Millers previously pushed the FBI to investigate an Arlington activist who protested outside their home, with Stephen Miller asking agents to go undercover in his neighborhood’s activist group, even after a judge twice rejected a search warrant. Former Justice Department officials called Miller’s visit a violation of post-Watergate norms, with one saying, “Politically well-connected people who are related to victims do not have a right to jawbone FBI supervisors.”

ICE leadership has ordered agents to ramp up arrests to 3,000 people a day, even as Republicans grow uneasy before the midterms. Agents nationwide were verbally told on Tuesday to arrest 1,000 more people daily, up from the current average of about 2,000, and to aim for 19,000 arrests a week, CNN reports. That target is far beyond anything the agency has hit; its record week in late June was just over 12,500 arrests, though monthly arrests have already climbed to a high of about 51,000 in August. The Department of Homeland Security insists there are “NO quotas on arrests,” even as ICE seeks contractors to build temporary holding facilities, citing an “exceptionally high operational tempo with increased arrests.” The push comes as some Republicans, including Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, have broken with the administration over arrests of immigrants without criminal records, and the agriculture industry has raised alarms about disruptions to its workforce. ICE also recently restricted vehicle stops to trained officers in properly equipped vehicles, following several controversial stops that ended in fatal and non-fatal shootings.

Maduro and his wife are expected to face new charges over the alleged torture of Americans. Federal prosecutors are expected to charge former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, for allegedly torturing more than a dozen Americans wrongfully detained in Venezuelan prisons, with an announcement possible as soon as Thursday, CBS News reports. Additional people could also be charged. Maduro’s attorney says he has received no notice of new charges. The couple, captured in a US military raid in January, have pleaded not guilty to narco-terrorism and weapons charges, and a trial is tentatively set for June 2027. CBS News previously reported that prosecutors in Miami were ordered to open a new criminal investigation into Maduro amid concerns that the existing case against him is weak.

South Carolina Democrat Annie Andrews is fighting back in a new ad after Trump attacked her with an anti-annie andrewstransgender slur. In the 30-second spot, Andrews, right, a pediatrician and mother of three, speaks directly to the camera in a white lab coat and says she has always been committed to protecting children. “I don’t support biological men playing women’s sports and I don’t support, and haven’t ever performed, gender surgery for minors,” she says. The ad comes three days after Trump used an anti-transgender slur against her in a social media post, as he backs her Republican opponent, Sen. Darline Graham, who was appointed to the seat this summer after the death of her brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham. Pro-Graham groups have aggressively attacked Andrews on transgender issues, including one super PAC ad depicting a transgender person ominously approaching a young girl in a grocery store, and Republicans point to her 2022 post calling the state’s ban on transgender athletes “shameful.” The once solidly red race has tightened enough that the top Republican super PAC is pouring $5 million into it, and the two candidates face off in their first and possibly only debate on Sunday.

Isaias has become the first hurricane of the Atlantic season and is barreling toward the Gulf Coast. The storm strengthened overnight to 80 mph winds and is expected to make landfall late Friday or early Saturday, threatening Mississippi, Alabama and the western Florida Panhandle. A hurricane warning stretches from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, to Florida’s Bay/Gulf County line, and mandatory evacuations have been ordered in parts of Florida’s Okaloosa County. Governors in Florida and Alabama have declared states of emergency, and forecasters expect up to 10 inches of rain in some coastal areas. The National Hurricane Center expects further strengthening and urged residents to rush preparations against storm surge and damaging winds to completion. Isaias is the latest-forming first hurricane in 121 years, just missing a record set in 1905.

Christa Pike has pneumonia, a blood clot and can’t move her arms after surviving Tennessee’s botched execution. Her attorney said her hands looked “like if you were to blow up a surgical glove” and that it’s unclear what function she will regain. Pike’s lawyers had been told she was brain-dead on Monday, but she woke up the next day asking, “Where am I?” and “Who are you?” A judge ordered Tennessee to preserve all evidence from the failed execution and to try to “claw back” anything already destroyed. Her lawyers are urging Gov. Bill Lee to commute her sentence, warning the state has made no promise it won’t try to execute her again. Pike is the only known person in the modern death penalty era to survive after actually receiving lethal drugs.

CNN, MS NOW and Politico are back in court Thursday to fight Trump’s White House ban. Judge Timothy Kelly’s temporary order restoring the outlets’ White House access expires today, and their lawyers are asking for a longer-term injunction while the case proceeds. Kelly previously found the outlets were likely to win their due process claim, calling the articles the White House cited “routine.” The White House has still barred CNN and Politico from the Oval Office and Air Force One despite the order. The Justice Department argues the ban is justified on “professionalism” and national security grounds, insisting that “access to the White House is a privilege — not a right.” Trump, asked about the ban, said, “it’s just bad story after bad story.”

An alleged Chinese agent accused of spying on the Taiwanese president’s son will stay behind bars. A federal judge ruled that Wanying “Heather” Zhang, a 34-year-old Orange County realtor arrested at LAX while trying to board a flight to Shanghai, is too much of a flight risk to be released. Prosecutors say she secretly filmed Taiwan’s first son and his family near Seattle at the direction of Chinese intelligence officials. They also said her Chinese passport was never recovered and accused her of lying about her assets. Prosecutors added that her suspected accomplice on the Seattle trip left the US on a one-way ticket to China about two weeks ago. Zhang attended a Beijing university run by China’s Ministry of State Security, which the FBI says “recruits heavily” from its students.

Canadian poet Anne Carson has won the Nobel Prize in literature. The Swedish Academy honored the 76-year-old for genre-blending work that fuses ancient Greek and Roman literature with modern poetry, essay and fiction. Her best-known works include “Autobiography of Red,” “Eros the Bittersweet” and acclaimed translations of Sappho and Sophocles. Carson, who now lives in Iceland, was “listening to the wind” there when the academy reached her, and was “very taken by surprise.” She has also written about her own life, including the death of her brother and, more recently, her Parkinson’s diagnosis. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday.

A transgender woman deported to the Central African Republic says she’s living in hiding and fear. Daniela Fuentes, a 32-year-old Cuban who styled hair and performed in drag in Miami, was sent in August to a country she had never heard of until she was on the deportation flight. She now wears men’s clothes and lowers her voice to avoid attention in a country where transgender people have little to no legal protection. “My whole life, my whole identity, was taken away from me,” she said. She has no passport, can’t work and says she doesn’t understand why she was sent to Africa when Cuba has agreed to take her back. A new Human Rights Watch report found at least 12 LGBTQ people have been deported to African countries that criminalize same-sex relations as part of the Trump administration’s third-country deportation policy.

Eritrean troops have reportedly crossed into northern Ethiopia as fighting escalates. A commander allied with Ethiopia’s government said Eritrean soldiers entered two towns in the Tigray region, and a conflict monitoring group reported Ethiopian drones targeting Eritrean troops. Eritrea accused Ethiopia of fabricating a “self-defense” narrative to justify military action, and the two countries severed diplomatic ties last week. Tigrayan opposition forces have withdrawn from the city of Shire, where residents closed shops fearing looting. Ethiopia’s prime minister has repeatedly insisted his landlocked country must have access to the Red Sea, fueling fears of a wider war. The fighting threatens to unravel the 2022 peace deal that ended a devastating two-year war.

At least 30 people were killed when a Russian bomb struck two buses in eastern Ukraine. The aerial bomb hit a public transport stop in the frontline city of Kramatorsk Thursday morning, wounding 18 more. Images from the scene showed burned bus wreckage and bodies strewn across the road, and Zelenskyy said some victims still can’t be identified because of the severity of their injuries. The regional governor shut down public transport in Kramatorsk and nearby Sloviansk. Civilian casualties have surged in recent weeks as Russia steps up daytime attacks and Ukraine runs low on air defense munitions. The attack came a day after a missile strike on a residential building in northern Ukraine killed 22 people, including five children.

A Louisiana baby whose parents planned her funeral is defying the odds. Wren Michelle Roberts was born in September with an extremely rare form of heterotaxy syndrome, with her stomach in her chest, no spleen, spina bifida and multiple heart defects. Doctors found only 15 similar cases in all of medical literature and told her parents to prepare for the worst. But an unusual blood vessel in her heart turned out to keep her alive, and she’s now hitting milestones, including her first high school football game. Her doctor called each milestone “its own miracle in its own way.” “Don’t quit before your child quits,” her father said.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

 

bulwark morning shots logoMorning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Quid Pro Guilfoyle, Andrew Egger, right, andrew eggerOct. 8, 2026. Some MAGA scandals take unpacking. Others, not so much. Yesterday, we got one of the latter. The Wall Street Journal headline: “‘Honey Please’: Kimberly Guilfoyle Pushed Donor to Wire $100,000 to Her Amex Account.” Sourced to her own smoking-gun text messages, the report is the latest example of this administration’s open, staggering corruption.

bulwark logo big shipWe haven’t heard much from Guilfoyle lately. Once a fixture of Trumpworld as the girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr., the family quietly put her out to pasture after Don Jr. moved on to his next paramour and now wife, Bettina Anderson Trump. In true royal-court fashion, as thanks for years of services rendered, she got a lavish parting gift: an ambassadorship to Greece.

But Guilfoyle, who had evidently become accustomed to a certain lifestyle, was soon living beyond her means. Which is how she found herself last summer wheedling Eric Deters, a penumbral MAGA figure and Trump donor, for a little quid pro quo cash.

The transaction was simple. Deters wanted someone in the family—so to speak—to help get a few requests in front of the right people. He wanted the administration to ask Pakistan to extradite the defendant in a lawsuit he was involved in, and he was hoping the IRS could make a little audit problem he was having go away.

Guilfoyle assured Deters she was his guy. “Every secretary of you know defense, transportation, treasury commerce IRS commissioner everyone gets right back to me,” she texted. “Oh yeah, I’m forgetting cash Patel.¹” Deters had promised her as much as $1 million if she was successful, but she was happy to badger him for a little advance: Days before her July confirmation hearing last year, she asked Deters to wire $100,000 to American Express to pay off her credit card balance.

Eventually, Deters began to lose patience. Was Guilfoyle going to deliver the promised access or not? “I have paid you $300,000 over the years,” he wrote her. “As of this memo, I have not received one favor. I am not naive or a sucker. I need results.”

“Eric, I really wish you would stop papering all these things,” Guilfoyle responded. “It’s really dangerous and not helpful to you or me while you could simply just call me on signal.”²

Papering. It’s one thing to have a U.S. ambassador openly selling access to the government to cover her personal debts. It’s another thing to have her lecturing her briber on bribing best practices. And it’s yet another for her to be so fluent in those best practices that she is inventing slang to talk about them.

So far, Guilfoyle seems determined to brazen the story out, or at least to try. Through a lawyer, she engaged in the usual rote denials: Insisting without evidence or even specific argument that the texts were not “authentic,” that all money paid her by Deters had been to cover speaking and travel fees, and that she remains “committed to representing the American people with dedication and integrity.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio—who is in Greece—declined to comment this morning, instead treating reporters to a minute of silly bluster about how presumptuous it is to ask public figures to comment on stories they haven’t read yet. (Sure you haven’t, Jan.)

Will Trump keep Guilfoyle around? On the one hand, this is an open-and-shut case of staggering corruption—and it’s hard to imagine that this is the end of it. What’s more likely: that Guilfoyle only ever tried to sell access the one time, and got really unlucky with the dance partner she tried to sell it to? Or that the usual rules about seeing a roach in your kitchen apply?

In theory, Trump could get ahead of some headaches by cutting Guilfoyle loose now. But there’s a reason they gave her that ambassadorship in the first place: She was too close to the family for too long to put out on the streets safely. She knows where too many of the bodies are buried.

And after all, what’s $100,000 here or there? To you or me, that might sound like a hefty wad of cash. But on the scale of this administration’s graft, it’s chump change. Trump himself, recall, made more than $2 billion last year on his own various grifts and access-trading schemes. At her going rate, Guilfoyle would have had to shake down twenty thousand donors to get that kind of action.

That’s the grisly thing about any new story of corruption in this administration, of which this certainly won’t be the last. Every new outrage only serves to remind us how many the public has already, somehow, been willing to swallow.

AROUND THE BULWARK

  • ‘Trump Is the Picasso of Corruption’... The grift is relentless, the conflicts are everywhere, and the public keeps getting stuck with the tab, writes MONA CHAREN.
  • He Fled a Dictatorship. We Sent Him Back… Russian activist Leonid Melekhin sought refuge in America. His reward was a one-way trip to a penal colony, reports CATHY YOUNG.
  • bulwark logo big shipLeaked Kimberly Guilfoyle Texts Reveal Brazen Corruption… SAM STEIN, MARC POLYMEROPOULOS, and MICHAEL WEISS went live to take on the bombshell Wall Street Journal report about Kimberly Guilfoyle’s extraordinary private messages with a Trump donor, including a $100,000 request to pay her Amex bill and repeated warnings to stop creating a paper trail.
  • Republicans Are Panicking Over the Kansas Senate Race… LAUREN EGAN travels to Kansas to report on one of the most surprising Senate races of the 2026 midterms, where Democrat Adam Hamilton is running neck-and-neck with Republican incumbent Roger Marshall. Plus, in The Opposition: Why the Dems’ One Big Midterm Weakness Isn’t Looking So Bad Anymore.

Quick Hits

HE’S LOOKING INTO IT: In yesterday’s newsletter, we discussed how two top Trump aides are pulling in hundreds of thousands of dollars consulting on behalf of the pro-Russian government of the Republika Srpska, part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It turns out this may have been news to Trump, too. Yesterday, he had this to say on Truth Social:

Chris LaCivita and James Blair are outside consultants. They do not work for me, other than as outside consultants. They most likely have numerous clients, but for that, you would have to ask them. They are allowed to do work for others, just like all consultants in Washington, D.C. I do not have any idea who else they work for but will, on reflection, ask them and, if there’s a conflict, I will terminate them, immediately! Thank you for your attention to this matter.

So not to worry, then: On reflection, the president has decided to look into what foreign entanglements his own senior aides might have. Glad to have him on the case.

GREAT SCOTT: In theory, Scott Bessent—Donald Trump’s treasury secretary and Wall Street whisperer—is supposed to be an adult in the room. In reality, he’s as unserious as the rest of them: Unable or unwilling to talk the president out of his own economy-killing policy urges, and liable to turn and blame his own underlings for the ongoing economic under-performance. The Wall Street Journal gives the grim scorecard:

20 months into his tenure at the department, Bessent is facing skepticism on Wall Street and an economy that could wreck Republican chances in November’s midterm elections.

Bessent advised Trump to pursue a “3-3-3” policy: cutting the budget deficit to 3% of gross domestic product by 2028, spurring GDP growth of 3% and producing an additional three million barrels of oil a day. But growth has been around 2%, and oil production has increased less than a million barrels a day since Trump took office. The budget deficit is now over 6% of GDP, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. U.S. debt overall recently topped $40 trillion.

A deepening selloff in U.S. government bonds has driven the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note to highs last seen more than two decades ago, despite a stepped-up buyback program Bessent set into motion to contain the increase. The result is higher borrowing costs for Americans, a perilous trend for Republicans.

Benjamin Netanyahu smile TwitterEmbattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, above, faces a difficult reelection this month and lingering criminal corruption charges, but retains the support of the right-wing both at home and in the United States from the Trump Administration and others.

New York Times, How a U.S. Diplomat Suppressed and Altered Reports Critical of Israel, Natan Odenheimer and Adam Rasgon, Oct. 8, 2026. A top aide to Ambassador Mike Huckabee skewed information to portray the Netanyahu government in a favorable light, according to multiple officials and documents obtained by The Times.

In late March, at the height of the Iran war, Israel quietly approved more settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank than it ever had at one time.

Staff members at the United States Embassy in Jerusalem saw the move as potentially flouting one of President Trump’s explicit red lines for Israel — no annexation of the West Bank — and drafted an urgent report intended for policy makers in Washington.

That memo never reached Washington. It was quashed by David Milstein, a top aide to Ambassador Mike Huckabee, according to three U.S. officials briefed on the process.

This was no isolated incident.

Israel FlagSince taking up his post in April 2025, Mr. Milstein, 36, has repeatedly suppressed or significantly revised embassy reporting on Israeli activities to present the Netanyahu government in a favorable light, according to a dozen people who work with or interact with Mr. Milstein in both Jerusalem and Washington:

As settler violence in the West Bank surged in the spring, for instance, he stymied embassy reporting suggesting that the Israeli government was failing to take action, according to the three officials. Instead the embassy sent a cable to Washington, viewed by The New York Times, praising Israel for “cracking down” on the attacks.

When members of Congress pushed for accountability over the killings of nine Palestinian Americans by Israeli settlers and security forces, he suppressed a detailed report that the embassy staff had written, effectively stonewalling lawmakers’ efforts to gain information, according to multiple officials briefed on the matter.

Soon after arriving in Jerusalem, Mr. Milstein began insisting on approving communications from the embassy section that handles Palestinian affairs, multiple officials with direct knowledge of the process said. The flow of cables plummeted from several a week to a few a month, as some staffers refrained from writing reports for fear that Mr. Milstein would block or rewrite them, these officials said.

Mr. Milstein’s interventions go far beyond those of any recent predecessor, several officials said. They and others said they were speaking out of concern that officials in Washington were getting a distorted view of Israeli actions through core diplomatic channels.

Mr. Milstein’s efforts have helped insulate Israel’s right-wing government against potential blowback from a Trump Administration that has been its closest ally.

Among the most contentious issues on which Mr. Milstein has intervened is the accelerating expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

It’s an inflammatory subject that has soured Israel’s relationship with some of its longtime allies. Last month, Britain, Canada and France announced sanctions on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank in response to the Israeli policy on settlement expansion. Britain accused some settlers of “ethnic cleansing.”

It is unclear to what extent Mr. Huckabee is aware of his adviser’s actions. Both he and Mr. Milstein declined requests for an interview.

The ambassador, a longtime advocate for the Israeli settlement movement, has denounced specific attacks by settlers, calling them “Israeli terrorists,” but he has played down settler violence more broadly, saying it is being carried out by a small group.

The Contrarian, Opinion: Trump: the Whining, Weak Wimp, Jennifer Rubin, right, jennifer rubin new headshotOct. 8, 2026. Donald Trump melted down when the New York Times reported that his Ohio rally arena was sparsely attended. He insisted that attendees “migrate down” to lower seats!

Of course, he meant to fill empty seats, but his dilapidated logic was dwarfed by the sheer hysteria and venom of receiving such a sad crowd. He utterly lost it, demanding: “The New York Times, and many other Artificial Media Outlets, should be arrested for their dishonesty and disservice to our Country.”

contrarian logoThe reaction to his hissy fit was priceless, as an Alabama online outlet pointed out that “Trump has 292-word meltdown on Ohio rally flop: ‘Narcissism ... incomprehensibly off the charts’”:

Trump critics mocked the president’s grievance and his description of the Ohio venue as an “arena.”

“The trump rally was at a … high school gym,” posted Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA).

“Grandpa is melting down again because he couldn’t fill a high school gym,” added another user on X.

“The narcissism is incomprehensibly off the charts. And he’s the president of our country,” posted author Jennifer Erin Valent. “This is such a tragic era of American self-destruction.”

US President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in [a high-school gym, not an arena] in Vandalia, Ohio, on October 3, 2026. (Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP via Getty Images)

In a similarly petulant vein, Trump’s handpicked MAGA cultist Texas attorney general Ken Paxton was caught whining to supporters about his imploding race. Politico revealed that Paxton apparently cannot even run his own campaign:

“I’ve never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign and, like, what issues are going to matter because it’s all coming — you know — from D.C.,” Paxton said during a small fundraising event last month, according to an audio recording obtained by POLITICO from a person in the room who does not support Paxton, and verified by another attendee.

“I don’t control message or what we’re doing.”

It’s a mystery why Trump cannot direct his own people. But the irony of the acknowledged helplessness of a candidate who impugns the masculinity of his opponent, Democrat James Talarico, should not be lost on anyone.

The outbreak of sniveling and petulance in MAGA ranks is widespread. Vice President JD Vance has begged voters to give the Republicans a second chance. Unable to deflect questions about Republicans’ sagging polls or his own cruddy performances, he has now taken to embodying a Mean Girl. Sniping at another Republican, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Vance groused, “It is really obvious to me that, at this very moment, Ted Cruz is running for president.” He added, “At this moment, I’m not. I’m trying to help elect Republicans. That’s what I’m going to keep on doing.” Well, the VP who leaked to the New York Times a tale to explain his secret opposition to the Iran war is almost certainly thinking ahead to 2028. Regardless, why spend time backbiting about a fellow Republican? He’s “insecure,” was Cruz’s explanation.Subscribed

All the sobbing and bellyaching does not seem very, well, high-T masculine, which has been a major theme for a party that has marinated in toxic misogyny for years. Bullies who accuse their opponents of feminizing the country (especially the military) and target trans kids seem ever so frail and helpless when things do not go their way.

Keen political observers have watched Trump and his ilk manipulate the fears and insecurities of American men who feel they are “losing” out in society and in the economy specifically. “When you can’t envision a sustainable career based on your skill set, you may be putty for a demagogue who evokes idealized memories of a past where you fit in—however racist or sexist that past may have been, and sometimes because of how racist and sexist it actually was,” wrote Harold Myerson in 2024. “You can be putty for a demagogue who blames your plight on MAGA’s usual suspects. You can be putty for Donald Trump.”

Resorting to temper tantrums to explain away one’s own shortcomings (in the case of Trump, his abject unpopularity born of failure; in the case of many of his followers, loss of economic and cultural stature in a shifting economy that deprioritizes physical labor, existing in a culture that liberated women from dependence on men). As Myerson put it:

It was only with Trump that the Republicans found a candidate whose own insecurity and rage at the elites who scorned him, and at the out-groups he deemed to be inherently undeserving, made him susceptible to some of the same phobias that define Precarious Manhood, and made him its avenging champion.

But by “remaking the Republican Party in his image, he transformed it in this way as well. The Grand Old Party is now the Party of Precarious Manhood.” Now, they risk becoming the party of whiny, complaining, male, self-assigned victims.

As historian Ruth Ben Ghiat has researched and written about, “strongmen” live in fear and weakness of being exposed, which is precisely what is happening now. “[T]hey have a constant need to feed their ego because they are weak and fragile people,” Ben Ghiat has explained. “The secret of strongmen is that they live in fear. And this is why they build their bunkers. And Trump’s always talking about, you know, not only the ballroom where people can adulate him and he can get money, but the bunker underneath; that’s his safe space.” It’s also why he surrounds himself with incompetent sycophants who will never upstage him, including the creepily rapturous Natalie Harp. But when daily confronted with evidence of his fading power and popularity, Trump falls into a pit of fury.

As is the case with many raging narcissists, Trump ping-pongs between self-pity and aggressive, violent ideation. From the Access Hollywood tape to his liability to E. Jean Carroll to his sympathy for the unnamed Cornell accused rapists to his selection of multiple men for his Cabinet accused of sexual assault to his non-stop badgering of female reporters who ask hard questions, Trump’s animosity toward women has never been a secret. But what has become increasingly apparent as he declines in vigor, impulse control, and overall health is the degree to which he and his followers fall prey to the victim mentality, excuse-mongering, and wallowing in their own rage.

Taking a step back, we can recognize Trump and his minions’ shrieking as the pathetic last yelps of a dying autocratic regime. As a pragmatic, political matter, it must be a turn-off for all those guys who thought they were getting a tough guy and instead received a feeble hysteric. No wonder they no longer bother showing up to his campaign rallies.

The Hartmann Report, Commentary, Would Another 9/11 Be Trump’s Ultimate October Surprise? Thom Hartmann, right, thom hartmann newOct. 8, 2026. Trump is escalating Iran while talking about American cities as collateral damage. History shows just how dramatically an attack can reshape both an election and a presidency…

On Monday night in Grand Island, Nebraska, Donald Trump was trying to convince a tiny rally crowd to vote Republican when, as he is wont to do, he wandered off-prompter into a riff about what Iran could do to two American cities and the crowd cheered:

hartmann report new“They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles, let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay and it’s going to be over very soon.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom said: “Donald Trump’s remarks were dangerous – if not treasonous – putting a target on two of our biggest cities and one of America’s largest naval hubs.”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the remark could compromise her city’s safety, and the Republican running to represent San Diego in the US House, Jim Desmond, said:

“No American city is expendable, and no American family should ever be treated as collateral damage.”

The White House tried spinning it all, claiming Trump only meant that a (fantasy) nuclear-armed Iran would’ve threatened those cities if he hadn’t gone to war against them first. Maybe so. Forbes magazine — nobody’s idea of a lefty outlet — instead reported that it’s unclear whether he was warning about an attack or daring Iran to launch one.

And then Trump repeated his language again last night in Texas, saying:

“And I said it the other day, let them hit a missile into San Diego or Los Angeles on the way. You want to see a horror show? Let them hit San Diego. Let them hit Los Angeles.”

Trying to read Trump’s twisted mind is a dangerous effort, but we can look at what politicians in positions similar to him have done in the past, as well as checking out whether he’s trying to strengthen or weaken our ability to prevent such an attack.

Back in March of 2003, as George W. Bush was about to invade Iraq, I wrote an essay called “When Democracy Failed” detailing how Hitler used the burning of the German parliament building to consolidate his power.

While the history is still debated, historian Benjamin Carter Hett builds a compelling case that the Nazis essentially set up the 24-year-old (perhaps mentally ill) Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe to do it or even started the fire themselves. Hitler, standing in front of the smoldering building, told a British reporter “This is a signal from God,” and by the next day he had his Reichstag Fire Decree pushed through parliament suspending civil liberties across Germany, creating an instant police state.

It turns out that this meme — a foreign attack that rescues or expands the powers of a political leader — is one of the oldest stories in politics, including American politics:

— President James Polk was incredibly unpopular in 1864 (and since!), so he sent American troops into Mexican territory; when they were predictably fired on, Polk gave a speech to Congress claiming that Mexico had “shed American blood upon American soil.” It was such an obvious attempt to start a war to rescue Polk’s sagging fortunes that freshman congressman Abraham Lincoln introduced his Spot Resolution to try, unsuccessfully, to stop what quickly became the Mexican-American War.

— When the USS Maine blew up in Havana harbor in 1898, most likely from a fire in a coal bunker next to her magazine, newspaper oligarch William Randolph Hearst sent a cable to the artist Frederic Remington at Havana: “Please remain [in Cuba]. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” Within weeks we were at war with Spain, dramatically boosting the popularity of President McKinley and setting the stage for Teddy Roosevelt’s rise to power.

— In 1962 the Joint Chiefs of Staff actually put it in writing. Operation Northwoods proposed the US military covertly blow up an American ship and stage a terror campaign in Miami and Washington, DC so America could blame Castro and invade Cuba; it was only scuttled because President Kennedy said no.

— Two years later Lyndon Johnson and SecDef Robert McNamara claimed an August 4 attack on American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin that NSA’s own historian later concluded never happened. McNamara had wanted the war, and some historians even assert he lied about the attack to Johnson for weeks until the war against Vietnam was underway.

— In the summer of 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt froze Japan’s assets and cut off its oil, knowing fully that he was backing Tokyo into a corner. While Republicans claimed he knew the attack on Pearl Harbor would come out of it, the evidence for that is sketchy; nonetheless, it provided the rationalization to enter World War II, which by then Roosevelt had concluded was necessary to save European democracy even though US public opinion was largely against the war (there was a large “America first” political movement that explicitly embraced Hitler and opposed entering the war).

— Two years before 9/11 George W. Bush told his ghostwriter, Mickey Herskowitz, that if he ever got the chance to invade Iraq he wouldn’t waste the political capital a war would give him the way his father had.

A year later the Project for the New American Century, whose founding statement his brother Jeb had signed, published a report arguing that invading Iraq and taking their oil wasn’t politically possible unless “some catastrophic and catalyzing event” like “a new Pearl Harbor” were to happen.

Then on August 6, 2001, while he was vacationing in Crawford, the CIA flew an agent all the way to Texas to hand President George W. Bush a briefing titled “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US.” Bush began the longest vacation in presidential history, refusing to return to DC abut also refusing to pull together his team to stop the plot. Five weeks later nearly three thousand Americans were dead, his approval rating zoomed from 51 to 90 percent (the highest Gallup has ever recorded), and he got the war he’d told Herskowitz about.

This “let them attack us and I’ll become the hero against them” strategy works overseas, too.

— Vladimir Putin (Trump’s mentor, who he called yesterday to wish a happy birthday) was an obscure prime minister in September of 1999 when apartment buildings started blowing up across Russia, killing around 300 people. When local police in the city of Ryazan caught Putin’s secret police/FSB agents planting another bomb in a basement, the Kremlin claimed it was just a “training exercise.” Putin used the terror from the Chechen attacks to start a war in Chechnya that he rode straight into the presidency.

— In Israel, the military had Hamas’s battle plan for October 7, a document they code-named “Jericho Wall,” more than a year before the attack. Benjamin Netanyahu’s poll numbers were in free-fall, but the attack and his response of bombing the crap out of Gaza both boosted his popularity and postponed his trial for corruption and bribery, keeping him in office.

Which brings us back to Donald Trump, who’s less than four weeks from a midterm election that looks like it’s going to be a screaming disaster for Republicans. He knows that if Democrats take the House or Senate, his life (and that of Uday, Qusay, and Jared) will become a living hell.

On September 26, Trump flat-out rejected an Iranian proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days and restart talks; the Wall Street Journal then, shockingly, reported he’d privately told aides that he plans to get his revenge for his war humiliation by bombing Iran again after the election. He said much the same to Time magazine last week, causing some to wonder if he’s deliberately trying to provoke Iran into attacking the US now.

Meanwhile, the people who are supposed to catch Iranian operatives inside the United States have been pulled off the job. Just days before the war began in February, Ka$h Patel fired a dozen agents and staff from CI-12, the specific FBI counterintelligence unit that tracks threats from Iran.

Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi warned that nearly a quarter of the FBI’s agents, and up to 40 percent in the biggest field offices (like LA and San Diego?), were pulled onto immigration duty. This included huge numbers of counterintelligence specialists with deep expertise on Iran, and The Intercept found in May that none have been replaced or put back on Iran/terrorism watch.

And the threat of an Iranian attack on US assets is real. Ten days ago British police arrested five men near RAF Fairford, the base American bombers use to hit Iran. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham says there are “strong indications“ Tehran had a hand in it, although this is an evolving story.

Given all this, Trump has some ‘splaining to do:

— Has Trump been briefed on a specific threat to Southern California, and if he has, what’s being done about it?

— Why were the FBI’s Iran specialists fired or relocated on the eve of a war with Iran, and how many of our top counterterrorism agents are still out rounding up brown-skinned day laborers?

— Why did he turn down an offer to reopen the Strait while, at the same time, provocatively promising more bombing after the election?

— And it’s not like the idea hasn’t occurred to Trump: Back when Barack Obama was running for reelection Trump tweeted on November 29, 2011: “In order to get elected, BarackObama will start a war with Iran.” Two weeks earlier he’d posted a video saying that starting a war with Iran was “the only way he figures that he’s going to get reelected.”

The following July he claimed Obama was “preparing a possible attack on Iran right before November,” and on October 9, 2012, with the election a month away, he told his followers that with Obama’s poll numbers falling they should “watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran.”

The last thing in the world that I’d hope for is that Trump is actually encouraging a massive attack on Los Angeles and San Diego just to rescue himself and his party politically. But having lived through 9/11, the subsequent Patriot Act and Bush lying us into two wars to get himself re-elected in 2004 — and having written these sort of histories for decades — I can’t dismiss it.

Congress can get answers to every one of those questions if enough of us insist. Call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 and tell your representative and both of your senators that you want Kash Patel under oath about who’s actually guarding this country, that you want those agents back on counterterrorism now, and that you want a public commitment that no attack — no matter how terrible — will be used to delay or federalize the November 3 election.

Then check your registration at vote.org, make a plan to vote, and bring somebody with you.

If you found this useful, please share it with friends and family, and consider subscribing to and supporting The Hartmann Report. Independent media only survives because readers like you pass it along, and an informed and active citizenry is still the best protection this republic has ever had.

Special Report

 

christopher haleLetters from Leo, The American Pope Church and U.S. Politics: In Fourth Attack, Peter Thiel Accuses Pope Leo XIV of Using AI to Deflect From Sex Abuse, Christopher Hale, above, Oct. 8, 2026. J.D. Vance’s top donor also lumped the pope in with Barack Obama, saying “Obama knows the Democrats have no ideas, but they can at least oppose AI.” Vance has yet to be asked about it.

Peter Thiel told a closed-door audience in Nashville that Pope Leo XIV took up artificial intelligence to change the subject from the sexual abuse of children. Decoded by POLITICO obtained recordings of the lectures, which Thiel gave on Sept. 28 and Oct. 5, and published them Thursday.

“He needed something politically popular to distract from the church’s child sex abuse scandals, and he found it in AI,” Thiel said, in a passage POLITICO reported was aimed at the pope’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas.

Barack Obama got the same treatment. “Many people know that AI is politically unpopular and want to leverage that to boost their own popularity,” Thiel said. “Both Obama and the pope fall into this category.” He added that “Obama knows the Democrats have no ideas, but they can at least oppose AI.”

Nashville is the latest stop in a yearlong campaign by JD Vance’s biggest benefactor against this pope. In leaked San Francisco lectures last fall, Thiel suggested Leo was a tool of the Antichrist. At the Aspen Ideas Festival in July, he said the pope was “working for the Chinese Communists.” On Sept. 24 in Berlin, the day Axel Springer gave him its award, he called Leo “a useful idiot for the CCP.”

Watch Thiel in Berlin, where he pauses to concede that “maybe it was too harsh” before saying it anyway:

The new charge is ludicrous, and the calendar alone sinks it.

Leo named AI as a priority two days after the conclave elected him. Addressing the College of Cardinals on May 10, 2025, he explained his choice of name: Leo XIII had answered the first industrial revolution with Rerum Novarum, and the Church now had to bring its social teaching to “another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence.”

He kept returning to the subject that first week. Chilean Cardinal Fernando Chomali told OSV News that Leo raised artificial intelligence and robotics at an informal dinner right after his election. On May 12, the new pope told a hall full of journalists that AI “requires responsibility and discernment in order to ensure that it can be used for the good of all.” Thiel would have us believe a man who had been pope for less than 100 hours was already staging a cover-up.

The encyclical came a year later. Leo signed Magnifica Humanitas on May 15, 2026, the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, and presented it himself in the Synod Hall on May 25, with Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah among the speakers. No pope had attended the launch of his own encyclical before. A panicked distraction does not get timed to a 135-year-old anniversary.

Thiel’s theory also needs a pope who has ducked the abuse crisis, and Leo has walked straight into it. Last October, he sat down at the Vatican with the leaders of End Clergy Abuse, a global network of survivors pressing for zero tolerance. In Madrid on June 8, he spent about an hour with six survivors at the Vatican’s embassy, after telling Spain’s bishops they owed victims reparations.

At Lourdes on Sept. 27, a meeting with seven French survivors was scheduled for 30 minutes and ran close to two hours, according to Colleen Dulle of America. Jean-Marie Delbos, 80, abused as a boy at a Catholic boarding school, had not been to Mass in 60 years. “He took me with both arms,” Delbos said of the pope.

Survivor advocates still want more from him. Groups left out of the Madrid meeting protested outside the embassy, and French activists pressed for broader action before Leo landed in Paris. Those critics carry wounds the Church inflicted, and Rome owes their demands a hearing.

Thiel belongs in another category. He raised the abuse crisis during a lecture series about the Antichrist and the dangers of regulating technology, and the victims show up in his argument only as a stick to beat the pope with.

His claim that AI is “politically popular” for a pope gets the story backward. Magnifica Humanitas condemns AI in warfare and warns against an AI arms race, which sets Leo against some of the richest men on earth. Thiel is one of them. He co-founded Palantir, which sells AI software to the Pentagon, and a pope asking hard questions about those tools is bad for his business.

On Memorial Day, the day the encyclical came out, I told Ali Vitali on MS NOW that Thiel was watching his worst fear come true:

Catholics should notice what Thiel did in Nashville. He took children who were raped by men they trusted and turned their suffering into a talking point for his portfolio. Leo’s encyclical warns that AI carries a “risk of dehumanization.” Thiel supplied a live demonstration, using survivors as a tool to defend the very technology the pope asked the world to keep in human hands.

None of this would matter much if Thiel were an eccentric shouting from the margins. He is the man who built JD Vance. Thiel brought Vance into his venture capital world after Yale Law School, then put $15 million into Protect Ohio Values, the super PAC behind Vance’s 2022 Senate run. POLITICO reported it was the largest sum anyone had ever given to help a single Senate candidate. Two years later, Vance was on the ticket with Donald Trump.

Vance credits Thiel with reopening the door to his faith. On Glenn Beck’s show the day Communion came out, he recalled hearing Thiel at Yale as a self-declared atheist and realizing that “his Christianity is much more interesting than the atheism of the people that I see surrounding me.”

Vance, a convert, praised Magnifica Humanitas in May and quoted it to Air Force cadets days after it landed. His patron had told a lecture audience last fall that he urged Vance to ignore the pope on moral questions, as I reported at the time. Now that patron calls the encyclical Vance quoted a cover-up for the rape of children.

The question for Vance takes one sentence. Does he agree with his top donor that the pope is hiding behind abuse survivors?

As of Thursday night, no reporter has asked him. That silence is an abomination. Vance has said nothing through any of Thiel’s attacks on this pope, and the press has let him. Every day the question goes unasked, Thiel’s smear stands unanswered by the most powerful Catholic in American government, and Catholics deserve to know where their vice president stands on a claim this vile.

At Letters from Leo, we stand with the survivors who spent decades forcing the Church to tell the truth about itself. Their courage is why a pope now holds an 80-year-old man at Lourdes for as long as he needs, and a billionaire who borrows their pain to protect his investments will find no audience in this community.

We stand with Pope Leo, too. A Church that defends human dignity against the machine has to begin with the dignity of the wounded, and in an age that prices everything, including a child’s suffering, people are hungry for a voice that will not put a price on a person.

If you believe this movement matters — Catholics and people of goodwill standing for human dignity against the men who would reduce it to an instrument — I am asking you to join us.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance 

U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsNew York Times, In Texas, Trump and Paxton Make for an Awkward Pair, Shawn McCreesh, Oct. 8, 2026 (print ed.). The president offered support for the Republican Senate candidate, after earlier grumbles, but focused much of his speech on a defense of his own record.

President Trump held a rally in San Antonio, Texas, Wednesday night to help out the Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton, whose race has gone wobbly with less than a month to go before the midterm elections.

Mr. Trump was in fighting form, tossing out red meat reminders to Texans about why they voted for him in 2024. He was interrupted nearly a dozen times by protesters, several of whom were led out in handcuffs. He talked a lot about the border, and Democrats, and himself.

What he didn’t talk a lot about was Ken Paxton.

Mr. Trump called the scandal-plagued Texas attorney general one of the best in the country and brought him up onstage briefly, but that was about it. When Mr. Trump first came onstage, it wasn’t even Mr. Paxton who introduced him. It was the baseball player Roger Clemens.

In San Antonio, Mr. Trump wasn’t trying to get people excited about Ken Paxton so much as he was trying to get them excited about Donald Trump. The question animating this race, and so many of the others this season: Is that still enough for Republicans to win these days?

This was Mr. Trump’s third trip to Texas in a month, which is a strong indicator of just how concerned the party is about what could happen here in November. The stakes of this race are especially high for the president, as he endorsed this especially flawed candidate, and cast out Mr. Paxton’s opponent in the primaries, Senator John Cornyn. This is what the MAGA base wanted.

The president had his base laughing and roaring and practically jumping in their seats on Wednesday. He told a long story about another baseball player, Pete Rose, and announced that Mr. Clemens was getting the Medal of Honor. He made jokes about his hair, and Melania.

He played footage of undocumented migrants streaming over the border before he got back into office. He said the word “transgender” a lot. He echoed an assertion he made on Monday on Iran taking out Los Angeles or San Diego, adding: “We protect our cities, we protect our country.” He played video clips of CNN’s data guru, Harry Enten, talking about rock-solid poll numbers among the “MAGA base.” When Mr. Enten said the words “Donald John Trump,” the crowd went wild.

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, The Battlefield Keeps Eroding For The Rs, We’re On The Cusp Of Having The Election We All Want To Have, And Now We Need To Close Strong And Finish The Job, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 8, 2026. Last night the proud, plucky patriots of this remarkable community gathered for our weekly get together. It was a lively affair, as they usually are. A recording and rough transcript is here. Here is some of what we talked about last night, with an assist from this morning’s news….

My overarching message right now -- all the data is pointing in the same direction and telling us this:

The battlefield keeps eroding for the Rs, we’re on the cusp of having the election we all have wanted to have, and now we need to close strong and finish the job.

The NYT has a remarkable story today about disillusioned Republican voters in Western Michigan that confirms that we have an extraordinary opportunity in front of us right now. Just look at these quotes from the story (gift link):

“People are just more focused on everyday life,” said Lindsay Kronemeyer, 35, a conservative Christian mother of two who works in the construction industry. “I don’t hear the chatter on the Republican side of ‘Trump this, Trump that.’ He’s just not there in my head anymore.”

………

Jim Pasek, a retired pharmaceutical plant maintenance worker who lives in the tiny town of Gobles, Mich., was baffled by a president he has voted for twice.

“He’s not making sense,” Mr. Pasek, 80, said. “It confuses me, and then I just get disgusted and tune out.”

………..

“President Trump has been saying, ‘Vote as if I was on the ballot,’ and that’s exactly what I’m going to do — not vote,” said Brandon Tremaine, 24, a graduate student in Texas who voted for Mr. Trump in 2020. “You do not campaign on being the ticket of peace and start a war of choice that is directly hurting Americans here at home and gotten Americans killed overseas.”

…………

“People are tired,” Al Pscholka, a Republican and a former member of the Michigan House of Representatives, said of Mr. Trump. “The whole divider-in-chief thing, it’s gotten to the point where it’s just exhausting.”

As millions have begun to vote Brent crude surged today, reminding us, as Trump does everyday, that he is a titanic f*ck up and deserves to get his ass-kicked this November:

Trump just keeps dropping, eroding, melting. Nothing they’ve done has stopped the bleeding (via FiftyPlusOne):A comprehensive set of YouGov polls this week found the Senate flipping and Dems leading in KANSAS and NEBRASKA FFS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!We just keep seeing generic ballot polls with double digit big blue wave Dem leads like this week’s Economist/YouGov tracker:Perhaps the most remarkable data of these last few heady days of encouraging data was the Gallup Party ID release. Just look at the trend lines!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!The most significant early vote trend we are seeing in Target Early’s data so far is a heightened performance across the country of voters of color. Really encouraging stuff:I also agree with what Jen Rubin wrote today. Trump’s campaigning is making things worse not better for the Rs, and it is possible they are going to take him off the trail. Here’s Jen:

what has become increasingly apparent as he declines in vigor, impulse control, and overall health is the degree to which he and his followers fall prey to the victim mentality, excuse-mongering, and wallowing in their own rage.

Taking a step back, we can recognize Trump and his minions’ shrieking as the pathetic last yelps of a dying autocratic regime. As a pragmatic, political matter, it must be a turn-off for all those guys who thought they were getting a tough guy and instead received a feeble hysteric. No wonder they no longer bother showing up to his campaign rallies.

That’s some of what we talked about last night. Watch the discussion when you can, share it with others, hit like so more will see it, and let’s close today with our new 2026 Election mantra, borrowed from the great Anderson Clayton:

Elections are decided in November, but they’re won in October

Yes, my friends, that means it is time to go…..

Kick These Corrupt Traitors’ Asses, Win The Midterms, And Prepare For The Fuckery To Come - For It Is Coming (And May Already Be Here)

Three things you can do in addition to supporting our intrepid candidates and state parties:

Become an Early Vote Champion in your networks, communities, and organizations.

Sign up to become a Democracy Protector too. Our next training is this Wednesday, Oct 14th at 8pm ET.

Email photos of your electoral work or physical act of voting to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or via links on our daily chat. We want to start showcasing them here on Hopium.

The Daily with Sarah Jones via PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: Trump Insults His Supporters' Low IQ While Handing Out National Medal Of Science, Sarah Jones, right, sarah reese jonesand Jason Easley, Oct. 8, 2026. Donald Trump awarded the National Medal of Science and said that it was nice to be in a room with high IQ people for change, as he has been holding rallies in red states with his supporters.

Long before Trump was reported to have criticized the way people who show up at his rallies dress, he had made fun of evangelicals who support him behind closed doors. Trump has also mocked the troops and called them suckers and losers.

politicus usa logoDonald Trump clearly has never had any respect for anyone who would vote for someone like him.

Trump is also in the running to be the dumbest person ever to serve as president, but since Donald Trump isn’t smart, he always thinks that he is the smartest person in the room.

The president has no intellectual achievements of his own, so he started his remarks by adding to the Paul Bunyan-like legend of his uncle, John Trump.

The president said:

 My uncle, Dr. John Trump, was a great scientist and professor at MIT for fifty-two years. That was a record. And during World War II, he served on the National Defense Research Committee and contributed to the development of radar and many, many other things.

He even went to England and advised on the use of radar on D-Day. It didn't work very well in cloudy weather or smoggy conditions, but he quickly developed a way where it worked actually almost better going through the smog and the clouds than it did under perfectly clear conditions. He said it had something to do with the molecules in the air. He figured that out.

Because of the landing on D-Day, it was almost guaranteed. They thought it was gonna be bad weather. It was almost always bad weather in that very important location as it turns out, and it was indeed, but he made it very, very successful.

For his achievements in the production and use of radiation in medical and industrial applications, Dr. John Trump was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Ronald Reagan in nineteen eighty-three. So here we are. Who would have thought this was going to happen? Really a great honor. He was greatly honored by that. I remember very well.

Trump has been coasting off his uncle’s accomplishments for a long time, but the president let his real feelings slip out a bit later.

Trump said:

 We're grateful to be joined by Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, NASA Administrator, Jared Isaacman, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Michael Kratsios, and President of the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, Darren Beatty. Thank you all very much. Great. Thank you.

We're also pleased to have many innovators, scientists, and technology leaders here, the top people in the country, top people actually in the world. I recognize so many of you for an important summit on how we can revitalize the scientific enterprise in the coming years. And so we're gonna have lots of meetings and other things, but we have an extremely high IQ audience for a change. For a change. It's very nice.

Trump’s comments might seem harmless until you remember who his audiences have been lately. Donald Trump has been holding rallies in red states like Alabama, Ohio, Texas, and Oklahoma.

Trump wasn’t talking about White House staff or interviews that he has done lately. Trump specifically mentioned the audience, and the audience that he was putting down in comparison were his own voters.

Never in American history has a politician hated their supporters as much as Donald Trump hates the red hats who loyally come to his rallies.

Trump can’t stand his voters, which is why it won’t be surprising if they don’t show up to support Republicans on Election Day.

New York Times, For Mamdani, Oct. 7 Anniversary Sets Off Anger and Bitterness, Liam Stack, Dana Rubinstein and Sally Goldenberg, Oct. 8, 2026. Hours after some Jewish leaders denounced Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s remarks about the attacks on Israel, activists interrupted a vigil to call him a traitor to the Palestinian cause.

It seemed inevitable that the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks would touch off tensions for Zohran Mamdani, a longtime critic of Israel and the first Muslim mayor of a city that is 12 percent Jewish.

But Wednesday erupted with such anger and emotion that it seemed to overwhelm any efforts to solemnly mark the deadliest day in Israeli history.

Mr. Mamdani began the day shortly before 9 a.m. by issuing a statement that was meant to acknowledge the Oct. 7 anniversary but almost immediately caused an uproar among some Jewish leaders, who said it minimized Israeli suffering in the Hamas-led attacks.

Israel FlagIt took a turn roughly 12 hours later at a vigil organized by Israeli peace activists in Union Square in Manhattan, where pro-Palestinian demonstrators disrupted the event to jeer the mayor. He appeared ashen and upset as he left, without addressing the crowd, flanked by his security detail as he walked to a waiting S.U.V. at 8:50 p.m.

The events raised questions about whether Mr. Mamdani, who energized his campaign with his embrace of the Palestinian cause and ardent criticism of Israel, can now, as mayor, unite New Yorkers whose emotions remain inflamed over the issue.

“This is a moment when people are looking to see if we have the kind of leadership that brings people together, lowers the temperature and makes everyone feel respected,” said Mark Treyger, the chief executive of the Jewish Community Relations Council. “And today was just not it.”

The mayor, who is known for his broad, effervescent smile, seemed especially stung by the opposition to him expressed by the pro-Palestinian crowd in Union Square, given his consistent support of their cause.

During the vigil, he stared stone-faced, and at times looked crestfallen, as the activists chanted in support of Hamas, called for the deaths of Israeli soldiers and denounced him as a “traitor,” many citing his meetings with President Trump or his efforts to build ties with Jewish leaders.

“Zohran, you coward!” someone yelled from the crowd, which numbered in the hundreds. Others yelled, “Zohran is a sellout!”

Mr. Mamdani’s day seemed carefully planned to avoid such spectacle. He spurned a politically freighted invitation from Israel’s consul general in New York to watch a 47-minute film showing footage from the Oct. 7 attacks, choosing instead to join the evening vigil hosted by Israelis for Peace, which was attended by many of his progressive Jewish allies. He then held a private meeting with Palestinian New Yorkers at Hind’s Hall, a Palestinian restaurant on the Upper West Side, to end the day.

More On Middle East Wars

New York Times, Oil Prices Jump on Outburst of Violence in the Middle East, Lisa Friedman and Jenny Gross, Oct. 8, 2026. Attacks on ships around the Strait of Hormuz have continued as a war between Saudi Arabia and the Houthi militia intensified.

Oil prices surged on Thursday after an escalation of the conflict in the Middle East raised fresh concerns over supply disruptions, and the anxiety is reverberating in stock and bond markets.

Saudi Arabia’s capital was rattled as a war between the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen and a Saudi-led military coalition intensified. A Houthi military spokesman said early Thursday that the group had attacked Riyadh’s airport with a ballistic missile.

Brent crude, the global benchmark, was nearly 5 percent higher on Thursday to about $105 a barrel. Futures on the S&P 500 were lower, indicating a decline when trading resumes in the United States on Thursday.

Over the past month, oil flows have increased through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for oil and gas exports that Iran had blocked for months. More shipping operators have decided to take on the risk of transiting the strait in part because U.S. forces have been providing guidance and protection.

But attacks on tankers in and around the Strait of Hormuz in the last week have increased greatly. At the same time, the worsening conflict between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia has added to the danger of exporting energy through the Red Sea.

“We should have seen prices coming down a little bit but we have not seen that,” said Jorge Leon, a senior vice president with Rystad Energy, a consulting firm. “Things in the Red Sea are heating up badly.”

Moreover, Mr. Leon said, oil markets were rattled again by remarks by President Trump threatening Iran. Mr. Trump said this week that he was weighing options for next steps in the war.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

New York Times, Opinion and Conversation: The Supreme Court Is Playing With Fire, Emily Bazelon and David French, Oct. 8, 2026.

Emily Bazelon: Hi David, it’s great to be back here with you for the beginning of the Supreme Court’s new term. Usually, this is like the first day of school for me — a fresh start. But there has been so much action from the court over the last few months on the emergency docket that I don’t feel like we had a break. I hope this is a fleeting feature of Trump’s second term rather than the new normal.

David French: It’s the new normal, I’m afraid. At least for the foreseeable future — for as long as presidents try to rule through executive actions rather than actually govern by executing laws passed by Congress.

Emily: I think it’s bad for two reasons: I am not a fan of the emergency docket except in actual emergencies and I liked having a break to think about other things. (I bet the justices did, too — remember the teaching gigs in Italy and Austria?) Oh well. Let’s pretend it’s time to get all dressed up and start with the first big case of the term. On Monday, the justices heard arguments in Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County. Boulder, Colo., wants Exxon Mobil, the biggest energy company in the country, and Suncor, a company based in Canada that operates two oil refineries in the state, to pay the state back for some of the costs of dealing with climate change.

Boulder says this is like the public health damage unleashed by tobacco or opioids, which states have sued companies for causing in the past, settling for large sums. A lawyer for Exxon and Suncor says this is an “unprecedented effort to use state law to regulate global conduct,” clearly pre-empted by federal law. Their best argument, I think, is that federal laws have historically governed interstate pollution. The open question, however, is whether that rule applies to carbon-dioxide emissions.

A few weeks ago, I thought that this pro-corporate court, as I see it, would be a sure bet for ruling in favor of big oil. But last week Justice Samuel Alito recused himself (he did not say why), taking out one likely vote for the companies and creating the possibility of a 4-4 split. Then at oral argument, Chief Justice John Roberts asked some intriguing questions suggesting that he has doubts about whether Boulder’s suit is in fact pre-empted by broad principles of law. Justice Elena Kagan did a good job of pressing the point by asking for the source of this pre-emption — “Where is the text for that? Where’s the support for that?” Seems like the answer was weak.

What do you think about where the justices will land and also the underlying question — should a state or county or city be able to sue a company for this kind of harm, or is it a problem Congress is supposed to pass laws to address?

David: This is one of the rare cases where I must confess that I’m a bit stumped, even after reading the oral argument more than once. I don’t know how it will turn out and — quite frankly — I’m a little bit stumped on how it should turn out.

I’m clear on what I think the ideal legal regime should look like, and that’s a comprehensive, sensible federal system that provides rational legal uniformity across the country. After all, as Kannon Shanmugam, who argued the case for Exxon and Suncor, pointed out (and here I should note that Kannon is a friend of mine), a patchwork of state and local cases would almost certainly create a chaotic legal environment. Shouldn’t industries that create interstate effects be subject to interstate regulations? And that can only really come from the federal government.

But we don’t decide cases on the basis of what the law should be, but on the basis of what the law is. And it’s far from clear that the Constitution or any currently enacted federal statutes mean that state law can’t be used to impose liability on energy producers.Chief Justice Roberts came out swinging, confronting Kannon with a number of scenarios in which states can impose liability for harms that occur inside a state, even if the initial action occurs outside the state. (He used the simple example of someone throwing a rock from State B and hitting someone inside State A).

Justice Kavanaugh argued that the court’s precedents “make crystal-clear that interstate air and water pollution are matters for federal law.” But after reading the argument, I’m not sure that a majority of the justices see the same clarity.

Add Chief Justice Roberts’s aggressive questioning to Justice Alito’s recusal, and you’ve got the possibility of a very unsatisfying 4-4 decision that would leave in place the Colorado decision allowing the lawsuit against Suncor and Exxon to go forward without really resolving the underlying issue.

More Global News 

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: What’s the Matter With France? Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 8, 2026. Is Europe’s #2 economy too big to save?

Suddenly, financial markets are treating France as the economic sick man of the Western world. Yes, interest rates have been surging everywhere. But the spike in interest rates on French government bonds over the past month has been especially large:The rise in interest rates on French government bonds is largely driven by heightened perceptions of the risk that France could default on its national debt. The chart at the top of this post shows the price of credit default swaps on French government debt — that is, insurance against default by the French government. While still far below the CDS prices of the Club Med countries during the euro crisis of the early 2010s, the sudden rise of the current CDS price on French government bonds is very worrying.

Simultaneously, and not altogether coincidentally, France is being swept by large-scale, occasionally violent student demonstrations. Furthermore, Marine Le Pen, leader of the hard-right, Putin-friendly and EU-skeptic National Rally party — formerly known as the National Front — is leading in the polls to win the 2027 presidential election.

OK, before I go on, I need to talk about one big problem that affects how foreign observers discuss France: ideologically motivated reasoning.

If, like me, you closely followed the euro crisis 15 years ago, you know that financial media — certainly English-language financial media — had, and to some extent still have, a strong anti-French animus. Readers were constantly bombarded with claims that France was going to be the next domino to fall and that the fallout would be worse than Greece. Yet the data never backed those assertions. Instead, it was obvious that many commentators implicitly wanted France to fail because its high taxes and generous welfare state offended their conservative sensibilities.

Conversely, however, U.S. progressives like me are tempted to push back against this conservative bias by underplaying France’s problems, by noting, for example, that even now French interest rates are slightly lower than U.S. rates — but the important point is that French rates have risen compared with the rest of Europe, and are now above rates in Italy.

So I’m going to try to be objective here and acknowledge that France’s current situation is really worrisome. In particular, it’s not just a matter for France alone. France’s membership in the euro area creates the possibility of an explosive debt crisis — and such a crisis could be destructive to European unity.

What is France’s problem? France is on a fiscally unsustainable path. Debt is already very high as a percentage of GDP, and the French government is adding to that debt by running large budget deficits even though there is no emergency like a war, a severe recession, or a pandemic to justify such deficits. Furthermore, France has an aging population, which means that pension costs will, other things equal, grow much faster than revenue.

Now, everything I just said about France’s fiscal situation is true for other major advanced economies too, the United States very much included. But France does stand out, even among fiscally troubled nations, in one main way: its persistent inability to get realistic about retirement.

The official French retirement age — the age at which workers can collect full benefits — was only 62 in 2023. By comparison, the retirement age in Denmark, which is often held up by U.S. progressives as a model of a nation with a strong safety net, was 67 (which is also the age in the U.S.). The average actual age of retirement, which is always lower than the statutory age because some people choose to accept reduced benefits, was lower in France than anywhere else in Western Europe:

Macron’s center-right government was on track to gradually raise the retirement age to 64, still low by the standards of other advanced nations. But due to opposition by the extreme right and the extreme left parties in France, this rise has been frozen until after next year’s election. As a result, the retirement age is currently stalled at 62 years and 9 months.

You don’t have to be a conservative to see France’s early retirement as unsustainable, especially given that French life expectancy at age 65 is about 87 years of age, 2 years longer than in the US. Thus the fiscal pressure caused largely by France’s very generous government pension plan has led to cutbacks in other spending, notably on education. France is effectively handing over large subsidies to older French at the expense of everyone else. Mass national student demonstrations should come as no surprise.

The underlying problem, of course, is politics. Le Pen has pledged to roll the retirement age back to 62. This would be extremely expensive and is symptomatic of a general unwillingness on the part of France’s rising right to face reality. Again, this is hardly unique to France — think of all the false promises and claims Donald Trump has made. But for now, at least, financial markets believe that fantasy economics is an even bigger problem for France than for the rest of us.

And France’s reliance on the euro means that it’s all too easy to see how this loss of confidence could turn into an ugly crisis.

Before I describe how that might happen, another warning about perspective. While that surge in CDS spreads is alarming, the implied probability of French default over the next 5 years is still only 1.2 percent – which I think is too low.

But if it comes to that, we know how a French crisis will develop. We saw this movie in 2009-2012, first in Greece, then in Portugal, Spain and Italy. First, investors stop buying a euro-area nation’s bonds, raising the specter that the government will be forced into default because it simply doesn’t have the cash to pay interest and principal on its debt. Fear of default then leads to even more capital flight, which increases fears of default and the interest rate, and the vicious circle deepens.

This can’t happen to the U.S.: it can’t run out of dollars because we print them. But France can’t print euros.

The 2010s euro crisis ended when Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, said three words — “whatever it takes’. Markets took this as a signal that the ECB would, if necessary, lend enough money to troubled debtors to avoid default.

But it’s questionable whether the ECB could or would similarly rescue France. For one thing, in 2012 southern European nations were engaged in massive spending cuts. These cuts were wildly excessive from an economic point of view, but they did mean that these nations could in effect claim that they deserved to be rescued. France, by contrast, is moving even further from fiscal responsibility — which means that there would be huge political opposition from creditor nations, especially Germany, to a French bailout. And what would the countries that underwent painful austerity measures during the euro-crisis also say about the fairness of a French bailout?

And if France does need to be bailed out, it would be extremely expensive. As the second largest economy in the euro zone, France may have crossed the line from too big to fail to too big to save. In short, it’s all too easy to describe a really ugly scenario for a French crisis that would be extremely divisive within Europe.

Right now, financial markets are behaving as if the risk of such a scenario is real but small. Maybe the French center will stage a dramatic political comeback; maybe Le Pen in office will, like Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, be far milder and more realistic than feared, or maybe, like Trump, she will govern so badly that she quickly loses her political capital; maybe the ECB will, despite everything, be there if France needs it.

But I wish being optimistic about France didn’t require so much hope that maybe things will go right.More On U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Religion

New York Times, Judge Extends Pause on Trump’s Ban Against CNN, MS NOW and Politico, Erik Wemple, Oct. 8, 2026. The judge overseeing the case said that the pause would extend until next week, and promised to decide whether to further extend it by Tuesday.

A federal judge on Thursday temporarily extended his block on President Trump’s effort to ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, and said he would decide by next week whether to extend it for a longer timothy kellystretch.

Judge Timothy J. Kelly, right, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said at a hearing that the extension would give him time to evaluate the arguments in the case.

Mr. Trump had declared the ban in a social media post on Sept. 18, and journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico were barred entry the next day. The companies promptly sued over the access ban.

politico CustomJudge Kelly had granted the outlets a two-week reprieve from the ban that expired on Thursday. At the hearing, the news outlets argued that their access should be extended while the lawsuit played out, which could take months. The government argued that the president had the authority to ban the outlets. It said in a filing that the White House should be allowed to reinstate the ban while the court case continued.

Thursday’s hearing hinged largely on whether the government had taken the proper procedural steps before barring the outlets from White House grounds. After the ban took effect, the White House sent letters to the three companies laying out the rationale for the action and providing an opportunity to challenge it.

The letter said the news outlets had three days to send the White House a written response if they wanted to contest the ban. Judge Kelly’s two-week reprieve took effect before the White House’s deadline for that written response. None of the media companies sent one.

Michael Velchik, a lawyer representing the White House, said that the media outlets had “chosen not to defend themselves” because they did not respond.

cnn logoTheodore J. Boutrous, a First Amendment lawyer representing the media outlets, called the White House’s process a “sham” and argued that the president had already made up his mind to ban the companies.

The hearing on Thursday focused on restoration of the news outlets’ credentials for access to the White House grounds, and not on the so-called pool assignments that have emerged as a point of contention since Judge Kelly’s order took effect. The “pool” is a rotating group of journalists that shares the responsibility of covering the president in small spaces that couldn’t fit the entire press corps.

CNN has been blocked twice from serving as the TV pool representative on Air Force One for presidential trips since press credentials for its journalists have been restored. Politico was also blocked from fulfilling its pool assignment on Monday.

Judge Kelly’s initial order did not address the pool assignments.

Oct. 7

Top Headlines

News Roundups

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance 

 

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

  • New York Times, Whistle-Blower Says I.R.S. Leaked His Tax Records in Retaliation, Jesse Drucker, Oct. 7, 2026. Brian J. Visalli, a veteran investigator of tax fraud, said in a lawsuit that the agency had sent his personal and tax information to federal prosecutors.
  • New York Times, The Military Explodes Bombs on This Beach. Is It Following the Law? Abbie VanSickle, Visuals by Hiroko Masuike, Oct. 7, 2026. The Supreme Court will hear arguments over whether the U.S. Air Force can keep destroying munitions on a beach in Guam, a practice it began in 1982.
  • Emptywheel, Opinion: The Roberts Majority Are Bad Judges, Ed Walker, Oct. 7, 2026. This series addresses the high crimes and misdemeanors committed by the Roberts Majority of SCOTUS. Reforming the Court must begin with impeachment of these six. They will strike down any law restricting their power. This should be a campaign issue for every Democrat. Introduction: Previous posts in this series help us to see the deeper problem with the six Republicans on the Supreme Court: their theory of the role of judges in our democracy. They all believe that they know the truth of the Constitution, and that it is their duty to shove that Truth down our throats. This is a false view of the role of judges. 

War in the Middle East

  • New York Times, How the Houthis Triumphed on the Red Sea and Sparked a New War in Yemen, Vivian Nereim, Saeed Al-Batati and Shuaib Almosawa Maps by Samuel Granados, Oct. 6, 2026 (interactive). In a single night, an Iran-allied militia trounced Saudi-backed forces to take control of Yemen’s Red Sea coast. No one was able, or willing, to stop them.
  • Foreign Policy, Analysis: Saudi Arabia Bribed the Wrong People, Nicholas Grossman (University of Illinois professor, editor of Arc Digital, and the author of "Drones and Terrorism"), Sept. 24, 2026. Riyadh’s bet on Trumpism has failed. Saudi Arabia is in serious trouble. Its global influence primarily comes from its leading position as an oil producer and the money resulting from that role, but now the Middle East is on fire.

More Global News

Global Media, Markets

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  • Big, Monopoly Analysis: Paramount Stock CRUSHED After Merger with Warner Discovery Closes, Matt Stoller, right, Oct. 7, 2026. matt stollerIt's not a happy ending, as billionaire David Ellison gives himself and his team huge raises, while planning big layoffs. But the really bad sign is he just fired the hitmakers from Warner Brothers. The Paramount-Warner combination, now named Skydance, closed yesterday, and began trading on the stock market. And now comes the hard part for CEO David Ellison, which is creating a successful media company with $79 billion of debt and declining linear cable networks providing most of the cash flow. Will it be a viable business? That’s what I’m going to explore. Whether it works has a lot of implications for media and the structure of corporate power in America.
  • New York Times, Guest Essay: Hollywood Surrenders, Sharon Waxman, Sept. 22, 2026. Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, and his ragtag rebel alliance of unions, concerned celebrities and fellow Democratic state attorneys general were never going to win.

Top Stories

djt corruption on trial hartmann 10 7 2026The Hartmann Report, Commentary, Democrats Can Put the Entire Republican Party on Trial With One Word: Corruption, Thom Hartmann, right, thom hartmann newOct. 7, 2026. Trump’s profiteering is only the latest chapter in a decades-long transfer of American wealth and political power into the hands of billionaires…

In a nationwide poll conducted a few weeks ago and reported on by Axios, the majority of all registered voters surveyed said the number one word to describe Donald Trump is “corrupt.” This represents a massive opportunity for Democrats both now and for the next two years.

hartmann report newAnd the experience of candidates in today’s Democrats’ position around the world validates the argument that this is the best way to both campaign and win elections and political power.

Péter Magyar defeated Viktor Orbán in the Hungarian elections because he ran a Navalny-style playbook, calling Orbán’s and his billionaire buddies’ capture of the media and most other aspects of Hungarian life a “state capture system” grounded in good old-fashioned “corruption.”

From Orban’s son-in-law pulling a Jared and using his government position to become one of the richest men in the country, to his billionaire cronies buying up the media like the billionaire Ellisons are doing here now, corruption was Magyar’s singular through-line message. And it worked, producing an overwhelming turnout and undeniable victory.

It will work here, too!

Democrats are (continuously, it seems) debating what should be their campaign strategy, their main through-line message, for the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election. Every faction and special interest group in the country is pushing their own idea, but there’s one overarching concept — one word — that can encompass most all of them and do so with a proven political punch: “Corruption.”

At every level, ever since the Reagan Revolution, the heart of Republican policies has been the naked corruption of our American political and economic systems. Since the 1980s, Republicans have sold their corruption with slogans like, “Government is the problem, not the solution,” and “Let the market decide,” but their real message is, “Turn it all over to the billionaires and their corporations.” The result has been:

— Tax cuts and loopholes for billionaires and big corporations that, in aggregate since 1981, add up to more than our total national debt of $40 trillion (in other words, Republicans borrowed $40 trillion in our names that our kids will repay and gave all of it to the morbidly rich).

— Reagan’s 1983 suspension of enforcement of the anti-trust laws that has caused every industry in America to become a form of monopoly dominated by five or fewer massive corporations, gutting competition and raising prices.

— Five on-the-take Republicans on the Supreme Court ruling that corporations are persons and money is the same thing as “free speech,” handing our elections over to the highest bidders.

— Virtually every legacy federal regulatory agency being run by industry insiders working on a revolving-door basis.

— Members of Congress and the corrupt Trump regime engaging in insider trading with impunity.

— A GOP-aligned military-industrial complex that’s essentially taken over Pentagon procurement.

— An anti-labor Labor Department; an anti-education Education department; an anti-civil rights Civil Rights enforcement agency; an anti-environment Environmental Protection Agency; etc…

— Trump’s mysterious pardons that always seem to go to people who’ve given him millions of dollars (after Giuliani claimed he and Trump were selling pardons for two million each and splitting the money).

— The wholesale gutting of the Internal Revenue Service enforcement budget and staffing that’s largely ended audits of morbidly rich people and increased audits of working-class people instead.

— The systematic sabotage and privatization of public institutions

— from the US Postal Service to public schools to prisons — with virtually every one of the for-profit replacements becoming big GOP donors.

— The explosion of dark money after Citizens United so we don’t even know who’s buying our elections.

— The weaponization of the Federal Communications Commission to loosen media ownership rules while threatening outlets that dare criticize Trump or the GOP.

— Red-state-level voter suppression laws including strict ID requirements, purges of voter rolls, and reduced polling access all to discourage voting by people in demographic groups associated with Democrats.

— The Republican refusal to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices for years and they’re still blocking most efforts.

— The systematic dismantling of campaign finance enforcement, turning the Federal Election Commission into a deadlocked, do-nothing body.

— The use of tax havens and trade policy to encourage offshoring American jobs.

— The Republican normalization of lobbyists literally writing legislation via groups like the Koch-funded ALEC.— The rewriting of environmental and labor rules to favor polluting industries by GOP appointees who often came from those very industries.

— The strategic packing of the federal judiciary with hardcore rightwing/neofascist judges.

— And now Trump’s pathetic attempts to bribe voters with his $5000 offer backed up by $80 and $500 checks going out this week to people on Medicare and the Affordable Care Act.

Even Republicans understand the power of mobilizing the public’s outrage against the corruption that they themselves have participated in for over 40 years. Astonishingly, cynically, that’s the meta-message to Trump’s main campaign slogan each of the three times he’s run for president:

“Drain the swamp.”

It worked, even though it was an outrageous lie. Democrats, who have actually been trying to do something about corruption for years, need to appropriate the anti-corruption theme as their main message. Because, universally, it works.

— When working in Russia, I witnessed the way Alexi Navalny came so close to taking down Putin that the Russian dictator ordered him murdered; it was done via Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. It systematically and relentlessly exposed the ways Putin and his cronies were looting their nation’s government while passing out favors to oligarchs willing to align themselves with them.

— In the 1980s, I was working for a German international relief organization in The Philippines when Cory Aquino mobilized an anti-corruption message against the Marcos dynasty; the week Marcos and his wife fled the country I was bumped off Philippine Airlines flights five days in a row because so many of their cronies were appropriating all the seats (the airline was run by a crony).

— When Jair Bolsonaro first successfully ran for president of Brazil it was on a campaign against the corruption “Operation Car Wash” had exposed in the Lula administration. When elected, Bolsonaro, instead of ending the corruption, slid right into the system and expanded it, leading to his own ultimate downfall and current imprisonment.

— In Delhi, activist Anna Hazare’s 2011 anti-corruption hunger strike ignited a nationwide movement that helped spur passage of India’s Lokpal anti-corruption law and led his former allies to found the “clean government” Aam Aadmi Party.

— And, of course, it was the anti-corruption message of the EuroMaidan “Revolution of Dignity” in 2014 that lifted then-comedian and TV star Volodymyr Zelenskyy into the presidency of Ukraine.

From Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive Era of the early 20th century to the present, anti-corruption messages have repeatedly proven to be one of the most potent forces in American politics, too.

— In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt built a foundation of mass support by casting monopolies as a “corrupt alliance” between the morbidly rich and our government, while the exposure of William M. “Boss” Tweed’s graft by Thomas Nast’s biting cartoons helped bring down New York’s Tammany Hall by converting complex examples of corruption into the simple story of “stolen public money.”

— The Watergate scandal turned corrupt abuse of power into a national reckoning that forced Richard Nixon from office and fueled sweeping electoral gains for reformers like Jimmy Carter, while more recent scandals like George Santos’ reinforced “clean government” as a winning local message.

— At the national level, Donald Trump’s “drain the swamp” campaign and the “rigged system” critiques advanced by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren show that, across the ideological spectrum, framing political battles as struggle against entrenched, self-dealing elites remains one of the most consistently reliable ways to get energized voters to the polls and win power.

It makes perfect sense that this should be the Democrats’ main strategy: the core philosophy of the GOP that was first made explicit by the Reagan administration — “greed is good” — openly invites corruption. As we’ve seen in virtually every congressional vote over the past decade, Republican politicians are entirely in the pockets of the fossil fuel, health insurance, tax preparation, and weapons industries, among others.

Whether it’s the corrupt collusion between the Kushner and Netanyahu families that helped lead us into an illegal war against Iran, the billions Trump’s family has made in crypto and other schemes, the insider trading on the war, putting industry insiders in charge of regulatory agencies, the DeSantis and Paxton/Abbott corruption scandals, there are vivid examples of Republican corruption laying on the public ground all over the country in plain sight.

Every Democrat in America should scan their local horizon for examples of corruption they can use against Republicans. The words “Republican corruption” should be continuously on their lips, whether campaigning, speaking to constituents, or making media appearances.

Hammer these corrupt SOBs with their own crimes against democracy and the middle class, and Democrats will see results like Magyar, Zelenskyy, Aquino, and so many others have achieved.The New Republic,

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Reasons for Hope. Reasons for Alarm, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Oct. 7, 2026. bulwark morning shots logoThings are looking up—for now.  

Donald Trump is a friendly boss; he lets his top aides freelance. Two of those aides, James Blair and Chris LaCivita, are spending most of their time spearheading midterms spending for Trump’s bulwark logo big shipPAC.

But last week, they both managed to find time for a quick trip to the Balkans, where—the New York Times reports—they have each been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to consult on behalf of the pro-Russian sub-national government in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Seems fine.

Happy Wednesday.

News Roundups

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: California Leaders Call Trump ‘Mentally Ill,’ Paxton Turns on Trump's War, Gold Star Families Snub Trump, Trump Eyes Golf Club Camp David, Aaron Parnas, aaron parnas new headshotright, Oct. 7, 2026. Ken Paxton got caught on tape admitting that Trump’s Iran war and soaring gas prices are sinking his Texas Senate campaign, as Republicans find themselves in trouble from Iowa to Maine. A US senator says the Pentagon blocked him from visiting a military base as part of an effort to hide the true costs of the war, while most families of the soldiers killed in its deadliest attack skipped Trump’s White House event for Gold Star families. And Trump wants to turn his own Palm Beach golf club into the next Camp David, complete with free memberships for future presidents.

This week, I'll be sitting down with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Sen. Chris Murphy and Rep. Sara Jacobs. I'll be asking Sen. Murphy about the Pentagon blocking him from that base in Qatar and what Congress can do to force transparency on the Iran war, and I'll be pressing all three on the biggest issues heading into the midterms. You won't want to miss these conversations.

With less than four weeks until the midterms, the stakes could not be higher, and the stories that matter most are often the ones that get buried. Every day, I bring you the news straight, sourced and without spin, with no corporate owners and no algorithm deciding what you see.

Let’s get into it.

Calls for Trump’s removal are growing after he suggested Iran could “take out” Los Angeles and San Diego, with California’s governor and senator both demanding the 25th Amendment. Gov. Gavin Newsom told The Hill that Trump is “mentally ill,” declaring “TIME FOR THE 25TH!” and Sen. Alex Padilla echoed him on X: “Three words. 25th AMENDMENT NOW.” Section 4 of the amendment allows the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to declare a president unable to serve, making the vice president acting president. Newsom has called Trump’s remarks “dangerous” and possibly “treasonous,” ordered California’s State Threat Assessment Center to watch for foreign actors who might take the comments as an invitation to attack, and slammed JD Vance and Marco Rubio for their “deafening” silence. The White House continues to insist Trump was talking about a nuclear Iran, though he never mentioned nuclear weapons, while a former Trump aide working on the midterms admitted the comments mean Republicans are now “addressing something he said” instead of focusing on Democrats.

Republicans Face Mounting Trouble in Key Senate Races From Texas to Iowa to Maine

Ken Paxton privately admitted that Trump’s Iran war and soaring gas prices are dragging down his Texas Senate campaign. In audio obtained by Axios from a closed-door fundraiser in Washington, Paxton told donors and lobbyists that his biggest problem is “the war, it’s gas prices, it’s diesel,” adding that diesel over $6 a gallon means “people are feeling the pinch.” He called affordability “by far our biggest problem” and the reason “we’re having a hard time with numbers,” then conceded he has “no control over gas prices” and that “I don’t make the decisions.” At the same fundraiser, he reportedly said Trump’s Dallas convention “dropped our numbers” and that his campaign is “all coming from D.C.” Polls show Democrat James Talarico narrowly leading in a state Democrats haven’t won a Senate seat in since the 1980s, and Trump is rallying with Paxton in San Antonio on Wednesday.

In Iowa, a state Trump won by 13 points in 2024, Democrat Josh Turek now leads Republican Ashley Hinson 48% to 44%. A new Suffolk University poll found independents breaking for Turek by a stunning 58% to 30%, and one in four Trump voters who aren’t backing Hinson said it’s because she’s a “sycophant” or “puppet” of Trump. Trump’s favorability in the state is 15 points underwater, while tariffs have hammered corn and soybean exports and the Iran war has driven up diesel costs for farmers. In the governor’s race, Democrat Rob Sand leads by 12 points in a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic governor in two decades. “We’re seeing independents turning their backs on Republican candidates in three states in a row,” Suffolk’s pollster said, pointing to similar shifts in Michigan and Ohio.

In Maine, Sen. Susan Collins struggled through her debate against Democrat Troy Jackson in one of the country’s most competitive Senate races. When Collins touted her success in getting road salt removed from Trump’s tariff list, Jackson shot back, “We can’t eat road salt,” a line that quickly went viral. Collins also tried to rebut Jackson’s claim that she has “always had health care” by pointing to a single year without coverage in 1994, a response critics widely mocked. Others hammered her vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and some online critics called her performance “pathetic.” Collins, 73, has survived tough races before, but this cycle she’s running against a national environment that is punishing Republicans tied to Trump.

Republicans are trying to spend their way out of trouble, outspending Democrats by more than $400 million in Senate races. Much of that money is going to Texas, where GOP groups have already spent nearly $200 million to prop up Paxton after Talarico out-raised him by $50 million. Meanwhile, the top Republican super PAC has pulled its ads out of North Carolina, effectively conceding that race, and shifted money into Kansas and deep-red South Carolina. Democratic Senate candidates have generally far out-raised their Republican opponents, and the top Democratic Senate super PAC just posted a record $151 million quarter. A recent New York Times/Siena poll showed Democrats tied or ahead in five reliably Republican states.

The common thread across these races is a backlash against Trump’s war, prices and policies, even in places he once dominated. Trump is spending the final weeks of the campaign rallying in red states like Nebraska, Texas and Oklahoma instead of traditional battlegrounds, a sign of how much ground Republicans are defending. In Iowa, two Republican House members recently broke with Trump to back a resolution to pull US forces from Iran without congressional approval. Voters across these states consistently cite grocery prices, gas and fuel costs and health care as their top concerns. With less than four weeks to go, Democrats need to flip four Republican seats to win the Senate, and the map of possible pickups keeps growing.

Pentagon Blocks Senator From US Base as Gold Star Families Skip Trump’s White House Event

Sen. Chris Murphy says the Pentagon denied him access to the largest US base in the Middle East, calling it part of an “unconstitutional effort” to hide the costs of the Iran war. The Connecticut Democrat was blocked from visiting Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, which Iran has repeatedly attacked during the war, and says the Pentagon also refused to brief him while he was in the region. “There is an active, unprecedented, unconstitutional effort underway to hide the costs of this war and the implications of this war from Congress and the American people,” Murphy said. A Pentagon official said the denial was consistent with a travel restriction issued by Pete Hegseth in March and applied “evenly.” Murphy noted that Marco Rubio’s State Department helped arrange his meetings with Gulf leaders, including Qatar’s emir and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a sharp contrast with the Pentagon’s stonewalling. “I’ve never encountered anything like this in my time in the Senate,” he said, calling on Republicans to demand an end to what he described as “a deliberate campaign of obfuscation.” He’s not alone: members of Congress from both parties have been pushing the administration for more information on the war’s cost, strategy and casualties.

Most families of the six soldiers killed in the war’s deadliest attack are skipping Trump’s White House event for Gold Star families. Only one relative of those killed in the March 1 Iranian drone strike at Port Shuaiba in Kuwait confirmed they would attend Tuesday’s reception with Trump and the first lady. Joey Amor, whose wife, Master Sgt. Nicole Amor, was among those killed, said there are still questions about “what information was available” and “what decisions were made” before the attack, writing, “I am done asking quietly. Today, I am asking the American people to stand with these six families and demand transparency.” His frustration comes after soldiers told the AP that commanders were warned the base was vulnerable to drones and sent troops there anyway, while the Army’s investigation, completed in June, still hasn’t been released. The widow of an airman killed this summer said she was given less than two weeks’ notice and had no interest in supporting “an administration that has been so reckless with the lives of our service members.” Some Gold Star families have said they are grateful for how the administration has honored their loved ones. The war, launched Feb. 28, has killed 19 US troops and wounded more than 800.

JD Vance appears to be softening Trump’s demands on Iran’s nuclear program, even as Marco Rubio declares victory in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump said the day before the war began that he wanted “no enrichment” from Iran, insisting, “Not 20%, 30%,” but Vance told Reuters that Tehran just needs to do “something meaningful on their enrichment capacity” and stop building highly enriched fuel. That’s a notable shift for an administration that launched a war over Iran’s nuclear program, and it echoes the limits Trump once mocked in the Obama-era nuclear deal he tore up in his first term. Rubio claimed Wednesday that Iran has “lost complete control” of the Strait of Hormuz and that its economy is “in total and complete freefall.” But oil prices rose and stocks fell the same day after a British maritime monitor reported nine attacks on tankers in the strait so far this month, already half of September’s total. Rubio insisted that any deal must ensure “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon, simple, period, end of story.”

The US pulled its bombers from a British air base after Iran-linked threats aimed at killing as many American troops as possible, a US official said. RAF Fairford, about 100 miles west of London, has been used by US planes to strike Iran during the war, and the Trump administration believes the threat was intended to destroy as many US aircraft and kill as many troops as possible. The official could not say what kind of attack was being planned, and British police have released few details about their investigation. Police have arrested seven people in connection with the suspected plot, most recently a 22-year-old man in central London on Tuesday. Six of the seven have been released on bail, which drew criticism from Trump last week. Trump said he removed the bombers because he didn’t want to tempt “the enemy.” The threat is a reminder that the war’s risks now reach well beyond the Middle East, even as the administration insists Iran is on the verge of defeat.

Trump Wants to Turn His Palm Beach Golf Club Into the New Camp David

Trump wants to transform his West Palm Beach golf club into an official presidential retreat modeled after Camp David. The Washington Post has confirmed that, under a proposal from the club’s lawyer, Palm Beach County, which owns the land the course sits on, would hand a parcel to the federal government to serve as a permanent retreat for future presidents and a venue for summits with foreign leaders. Trump would pay to build a presidential residence and facilities on that land, while the rest of the course would remain a private club run by the Trump family business. Future presidents would even be offered complimentary memberships to the Trump club. “Just as Camp David, Windsor Castle, or the Elysee Palace are known worldwide, so too will the Presidential Golf Course in Palm Beach County,” the lawyer wrote. County officials say they are seriously considering the plan and are already in talks with the General Services Administration.

The plan would likely be a boon for Trump’s own business. Trump reported nearly $37 million in income from the golf course last year, and his club would continue to operate privately right next to an official site of presidential importance, likely drawing even more business. The White House pitched the location’s advantages, noting it’s minutes from what is now called “Donald J. Trump International Airport.” The club’s lawyer said construction wouldn’t finish before Trump leaves office, framing the project as “a gift” to his successors. Trump has visited Camp David far less often than many of his predecessors, once saying its rustic charm would wear off after half an hour. Instead, he has spent at least 137 days golfing during his second term, according to one tracker, despite once mocking Barack Obama for golfing as president.

The proposal is the latest example of Trump reshaping the presidency around his own properties and brand. The Palm Beach area has already been transformed in Trump’s image, with the airport and nearby road renamed after him and Mar-a-Lago serving as a hub for MAGA events and networking. Ironically, Mar-a-Lago itself was once gifted to the federal government as a “Winter White House,” but the National Park Service returned it because it was too expensive to maintain, and Trump bought it in 1985. Sportswriter Rick Reilly, who has golfed with Trump, said the president cares less about the game than the attention he gets at his clubs. Bringing foreign leaders there, Reilly said, would be a way for Trump to “make a power play with these people and show them who is the king of America.”

Other news:

Cornell students are skipping class and refusing to spend money on campus Wednesday in a “Zero Day” economic blackout in solidarity with Jane Doe. Organized by Cornell Black Students United and the Cornell NAACP, the protest includes a seven-hour sit-in at Toni Morrison Dining Hall, one hour “for the seven hours she endured,” according to organizers. Students are being asked to avoid the campus store, dining halls, vending machines and printing services, while being careful not to interfere with dining workers, with organizers saying, “Our pressure is on the institution. Our solidarity extends to its workers.” The action follows a “Justice for Survivors” rally that drew thousands to campus Monday and a student town hall on sexual violence Tuesday. Students are demanding Cornell expel or revoke the degrees of everyone “complicit” in the alleged assault, rewrite its sexual misconduct policy, require prevention training, fully comply with New York’s “Enough is Enough” law and submit to an external review of its administration. “We really just want Jane Doe to know that we care about her,” one organizer said, adding that students want to make sure “nothing like what she has to go through ever happens again.”

A previously unreleased Army study found the shock gloves ICE just bought cause intense pain, instant compliance and lasting fear. ICE leaders knew about the findings before signing a $16.7 million contract in August for 6,000 pairs of the gloves, according to records obtained by the watchdog group American Oversight. In a military prison exercise, participants, including large men, stopped resisting within seconds and said “just seeing the GLOVE was enough to make them want to comply.” The study found the gloves work by “overloading the peripheral nerve endings” to cause pain, and participants who were wet reported even stronger shocks, with one feeling discomfort for 30 minutes afterward. Critics warn the gloves are easy to use, leave no marks and give ICE another tool to intimidate people as the agency faces scrutiny over deaths and injuries, and even the manufacturer says they shouldn’t be used on children, pregnant women or disabled people. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto says ICE still hasn’t answered a letter from 16 Democratic senators demanding to know how the gloves will be used.

Tropical Storm Isaias has formed in the Gulf and is expected to become the first hurricane of the Atlantic season before hitting the Gulf Coast this week. The storm formed early Wednesday off eastern Mexico with winds of 40 mph and could make landfall anywhere between eastern Louisiana and the western Florida Panhandle. The National Hurricane Center warned of an “increasing risk of dangerous wind and storm surge” and urged residents to have a hurricane plan in place. Heavy rain is expected across the Gulf Coast and much of the Southeast starting Friday and into the weekend. The storm was about 580 miles southwest of the mouth of the Mississippi River as of Wednesday morning, moving east-northeast at 8 mph. The Atlantic season has been unusually quiet this year because of a strong El Niño.

Two of Trump’s top political advisers spent part of the midterm crunch in the Balkans, getting paid to advise a pro-Russian government on its election. James Blair and Chris LaCivita, who run MAGA Inc., the Trump super PAC sitting on $415 million to help Republicans keep Congress, traveled to Republika Srpska in Bosnia ahead russian flag wavingof its elections Sunday and were each paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to The New York Times. The territory’s ruling party is aligned with Vladimir Putin and has spent heavily courting Trump’s orbit, with Trump-connected lobbyists and operatives collecting more than $4 million from its government since last year. That influence campaign paid off when the Trump administration lifted sanctions last year on party leader Milorad Dodik, who was sanctioned for undermining the US-backed peace agreement that ended the Bosnian war. After his party won Sunday, Dodik thanked Putin for his support and credited Trump’s 2024 victory with creating a favorable political environment. A MAGA Inc. spokesman insisted the two remained “fully engaged” in the midterms, noting they hosted a team call during the trip.

Israel marked three years since the Oct. 7 attack, as grieving families turned the anniversary into demands for accountability from Benjamin Netanyahu. Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostages on Oct. 7, 2023, the deadliest day in Israel’s history, and mourners gathered Wednesday at the Nova music festival site, where 378 people were killed, at 6:29 a.m., the minute the attack began. Across Israel, protesters blocked highways, filled a Tel Aviv fountain with red dye and lined a beach with figures representing the dead beside Hebrew letters reading “total failure,” calling for an independent state inquiry that Netanyahu has resisted. A bereaved father interrupted Netanyahu’s speech at a state memorial, shouting, “You did not protect my son,” and a new book by Haaretz reporters claims the UAE’s president warned Netanyahu of a major Hamas operation a week and a half before the attack, which Netanyahu calls “an absolute lie.” In Gaza, more than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war that followed, according to the territory’s health ministry, and Israeli strikes have continued despite a ceasefire declared last October. The anniversary comes less than three weeks before Israel’s Oct. 27 election, the first chance for voters to pass judgment on Netanyahu since the attack.

Sen. Ruben Gallego says he is “absolutely thinking about” running for president as he rolls out a sweeping economic plan. The Arizona Democrat’s 32-page agenda calls for a $20 minimum wage and a New Deal-style public service jobs program funded by taxes on data centers and AI companies, paying people for work like coaching Little League, caring for the elderly and counseling people fighting addiction. He’s also proposing a “robot” tax to discourage replacing workers with automation, letting people charge tech companies for their personal data and tripling union membership by 2035. The plan would also require companies to pay double for overtime instead of time and a half, and require humans to review AI-driven hiring and firing decisions. Gallego blamed both parties for failing the working class, saying Republicans have been worse but “Democrats can’t not be blamed.” He said his biggest consideration is whether he can run while still being “an active father” to three young children.

Members of Meta’s Oversight Board are warning that the AI safety committees promised under Trump’s new White House accord could be little more than window dressing. Last week, companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Nvidia and xAI pledged to create independent safety committees, but the voluntary accord doesn’t bind them to anything and says the committees should be made up of the companies’ own board members. Board members say real oversight requires independence, transparency, its own budget and the power to push back, with one saying, “If that friction doesn’t exist, it’s a sure sign that there’s no effective independent oversight going on.” Another member put it simply: if a committee can’t control its own budget, membership and decisions, “that isn’t oversight.” A Stanford law professor called Meta’s own board “more of a cautionary tale” than a model, noting it’s hard to “bite the hand that feeds” you. The warning comes as OpenAI and Anthropic prepare to go public at estimated valuations of more than $1 trillion each.

A new Florida poll shows Republicans leading the governor and Senate races, even as Hispanic voters turn on Trump. Republican Byron Donalds leads Democrat David Jolly 48% to 41% in the governor’s race, and Sen. Ashley Moody leads Democrat Angie Nixon 50% to 40%. But among Florida’s Hispanic voters, who helped Trump win Miami-Dade County in 2024, 49% now disapprove of his job performance compared with 45% who approve. Statewide, Florida voters are split evenly on Trump at 48% approve and 48% disapprove. The cost of living was by far the top issue, with 30% saying it’s most likely to influence their vote. Democrats point to recent special election wins in Florida as proof the party is winning back Hispanic voters, driven in part by anger over Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for solving a century-old mystery about how molecules come to favor one “mirror image” over another. Kagan, 95, of France, discovered a way to manipulate chemical reactions that has revolutionized how chemists make pharmaceuticals, flavors, scents and new materials. Soai, of Japan, designed the first chemical reaction in which only one of two possible mirror-image molecules forms, a feat the Nobel Committee said no one had achieved “other than life itself.” The committee called their work “spectacular.” The two will share a prize worth about $1.2 million. The literature prize will be announced Thursday, followed by peace on Friday and economics on Monday.

Texas is set to carry out the first US execution since Tennessee’s botched attempt to put Christa Pike to death last week. Jamaal Howard, 46, is scheduled to receive a lethal dose of pentobarbital Wednesday for the 2000 killing of convenience store clerk Vickie Swartout, which was caught on surveillance video. Howard, who was 20 at the time, took $114 and a carton of cigarettes during the robbery. His attorneys argue he is intellectually disabled and has an appeal pending at the Supreme Court, which barred executing intellectually disabled people in 2002. The state argues he hasn’t presented evidence meeting the legal requirements for that claim. It would be the 30th execution in the US this year, with Florida leading the country at 16.

Two commercial ships were hit by drones off Bulgaria’s coast, the first attack on shipping in the NATO member’s waters, and Ukraine’s president is blaming Russia. One vessel sank at the scene with no immediate word on its crew, while the other caught fire and its 18 crew members were evacuated, with two severely injured. Bulgaria’s prime minister called it “a blatant violation of international law,” and Zelenskyy said it was “a combined Russian attack using maritime and aerial drones.” Russia has not commented, and NATO declined to comment. Bulgaria’s prime minister warned the war is expanding geographically and increasing the risk of a wider global conflict. The attack came a day after a Turkish-owned cargo ship sank following a drone strike in the Black Sea, killing two people.

Iran-backed Houthi rebels claim they launched missiles and drones at airports and military bases in Saudi Arabia, deepening a new front in the Iran war. The Houthis said they targeted Riyadh’s main international airport, where flights were briefly disrupted, as well as Abha airport and several military bases near the Yemeni border. Saudi-led forces said they intercepted a ballistic missile north of Riyadh. The rebels also fired missiles at Aden’s airport, with one landing near the runway just before a passenger flight from Cairo was set to land. Yemen’s Human Rights Ministry warned the strike threatened “a humanitarian disaster,” as other passengers were waiting to board a flight to Jeddah when it hit. The attacks come as Saudi and allied Yemeni forces push a major offensive to retake territory the Houthis seized along the Red Sea coast, threatening a key shipping alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.

Germany’s former foreign intelligence chief has been arrested on suspicion of espionage and attempted treason in one of the country’s biggest spy scandals since the Cold War. Prosecutors say August Hanning, who led the BND from 1998 to 2005, paid a former agency office manager for about 2,000 secret documents and used them to prepare an analysis for a foreign spy service. The documents reportedly included material on Iran’s nuclear program, the Russian military and highly sensitive intelligence from allied countries. The office manager, who worked for successive BND presidents until March, was also arrested. Der Spiegel reported investigators are examining a possible link to Azerbaijan. A German security lawmaker warned the case could damage the country’s intelligence relationships with its allies.

A New Orleans judge tried to have a local TV station criminally charged over its reporting on her, but police found the station hadn’t broken any law. Criminal court Judge Kimya Holmes filed a police complaint against CBS affiliate WWL after it reported that her then-fiancé, who was charged with fraudulently collecting more than $712,000 in Covid relief money and later pleaded guilty, donated a $765,000 home to her in 2025. Holmes accused the station of putting her “in harm’s way” by publishing the home’s address and a photo of a Corvette leased by her ex-fiancé, relying on a state law requiring media outlets to remove certain information about judges. But the parts of that law she cited had been repealed weeks before the story aired, and when a detective told her, Holmes admitted that if true, “she does not have any grounds for a criminal complaint.” Holmes, who says she didn’t know about the fraud until after the couple split, faces a tough reelection race this month, and a media attorney said he “can’t imagine a public official filing a criminal complaint in response to reporting” whose accuracy was never challenged.

McDonald’s is being sued over claims it uses an AI tool that effectively lets its franchises fix prices. The proposed nationwide class-action lawsuit, filed in federal court in Chicago, alleges the company’s pricing platform pulls nonpublic sales and pricing data from thousands of independently owned restaurants to set menu prices, amounting to “algorithmic price-fixing aimed at customers who are already stretched thin.” McDonald’s calls the complaint “filled with inaccuracies,” insisting that “AI does not set menu prices” and that franchisees decide for themselves, though a Reuters investigation found some owners were pressured to use the tool and log when they ignored its recommendations. The suit was brought by an Illinois man who noticed the price of his usual Quarter Pounder meal varied even within his own neighborhood. McDonald’s own data shows the average price of a menu item rose about 40% between 2019 and 2024, and at least 90 bills have 

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance 

 

U.S. 2026 Midterm elections

bulwark morning shots logoMorning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Blue Wave. The Rocky Shore, William Kristol, right, william bill kristol imdbOct. 7, 2026. It could be the best of elections. So it makes sense to be hopeful. But it’s surely the worst of administrations. So it makes sense to be alarmed.

On the hopeful side: The blue wave shows no sign of abating. Democrats are doing a decent job of getting out of their own way. Meanwhile Donald Trump is traveling around the country and doing his best to make the election about himself.

Which is good.

bulwark logo big shipAccording to the polling aggregator FiftyPlusOne, President Trump’s job disapproval stands at 61.9 percent, compared to 35 percent approval. The Democratic advantage on FiftyPlusOne’s average of the generic congressional polling is a still impressive but less overwhelming 51.1 percent to 43.4 percent.

There’s a simple lesson here: The more this election is about Trump, the better. The more the generic ballot numbers move towards the presidential approval numbers, the better. The more Trump visits competitive states for rallies that are all about himself, the better. The more ads we see that feature Trump, the better.

Share this newsletter with someone who doesn’t want to be told whatever they want to hear or to be rage-baited.

Yesterday morning, stung by media reports that his rallies aren’t what they once were, Trump posted:

My Rally crowds and enthusiasm are unbelievable! Nobody has ever seen anything like it. We are flipping races all over the place. . . . It’s all happening! The Dumocrats [sic, needless to say] never counted on this. Watch for the “Midterm Surprise!”

About an hour and a half later, Trump had a further thought to share, this time in ALL CAPS:

MY RALLIES ARE SAVING THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, AGAIN!!!

Lots of Republicans would beg to differ with the leader of their party. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, for example, apparently has decided not to join Trump’s rally tonight in San Antonio. After all, as Abbott explained, “Because of my schedule, where I go to multiple cities a day doing events like this, I already have events like this scheduled that day and will not be able to make it.”

It will be amusing to see what important event Abbott’s attending that couldn’t have been rescheduled to make room for the president. And it will be interesting to see if Trump takes offense at the slight. A little intra-Republican squabbling in these closing weeks couldn’t hurt Democrats’ chances, either.

So much for Trump and the GOP.

As for the Democrats, they’re doing a pretty good job of riding the wave of voter discontent. They’re keeping the focus on the Trump administration’s failures and corruption, and on the Republican Congress’s complicity in them. They don’t even seem to be over-thinking things and tying themselves in knots nearly as much as they normally do.

Their biggest problem may be that many of their big donors and key operatives don’t seem to realize what a historic moment this year could be. They’re being cautious when their party has a golden opportunity to win senate seats and governorships that have long appeared to be out of reach. Democrats have a chance to turn a shrinking map into an expanding one.

The implications of a Democratic senate majority of fifty-four seats would be very different from getting to fifty-one. And as for governorships, six of the ten most-populous states now have Democratic governors, and Democrats seem unlikely to lose any of them this November. But in the other four of the ten most-populous states—Texas, Florida, Ohio, and Georgia—the gubernatorial races are competitive. If Democrats win, say, two of the four, they’d govern eight of the ten largest states, and twelve of the largest fifteen. This would affect the character of our politics going into 2028 and beyond.

So there’s reason to be hopeful.

But there are reasons to remain alarmed.

The main reason is obvious: Trump and his loyalists will control the levers of executive power over the next two years. You’d have to be crazy not to be alarmed by what they can do during this time—to our nation’s well-being at home and to its standing abroad, to our civil liberties and civil service, to any remaining guardrails against corruption and lawlessness. So Donald Trump and JD Vance, Todd Blanche and Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller and Russell Vought in positions of great power remain a clear and present danger to our constitutional republic.

As do their collaborators outside the government. The public has moved pretty decisively in the right direction over the past two years. Our elites have not. Some are eagerly taking advantage of the benefits of crony capitalism. Others, intimidated, are cowering or cutting deals. Few are standing up to autocracy.

And all of this is to say nothing of the threat to free and fair elections in 2028. Trump and his cabinet officials, and all the loyalists they’ve stuffed into government agencies, really do not want to lose power in 2028. They don’t want a new administration to come in and turn over the rocks to uncover their corruption and lawlessness. The threat of election interference in 2026 has been worrisome. But the threats in 2028 will be of a whole different order of magnitude. And the stronger the popular opposition to Trump and Trumpism becomes, the more determined Trump and his authoritarians will be to subvert the democratic process.

So be hopeful and alarmed. And organize, persuade, and vote. It’s our country, after all, either to nobly save or meanly lose.

AROUND THE BULWARK

  • MAGA’s Racism Is Blowing Up Its Own Coalition… WILL SOMMER joins SARAH and JVL for a wild, wild NEXT LEVEL.
  • bulwark logo big shipEx-CIA Officer Reacts to Insane Spy Scandal Rocking the Intelligence World… Reporter MICHAEL WEISS and former CIA officer MARC POLYMEROPOULOS break down a staggering spy scandal involving the former head of German intelligence, and discuss an alleged Iranian plot targeting U.S. bombers in Britain.
  • Scott Bessent’s Interview Gets Weirder and Weirder… How big is the treasury secretary’s ego? CATHERINE RAMPELL tries to get a sense in Receipts.
  • Massive Cash Infusion Coming to Dems, Courtesy of Gun-Control Group… New ads are set to run in key battleground House districts, reports JOE PERTICONE in Press Pass.

Quick Hits

NOW WE JUST FEEL BAD FOR HIM: At this point, Ken Paxton may never open his mouth in a private fundraiser again. First it was the New York Times reporting that Paxton had privately admitted Trump’s midterm convention hurt him. Then it was Politico releasing audio in which Paxton complained that “I’ve never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign” because “it’s all coming from D.C.” And this morning, Axios released even more audio of Paxton lamenting that the Iran war and gas and diesel prices were “dragging” on his campaign.

“So many factors in this federal race are uncontrollable,” Paxton said in the audio. “I don’t make the decisions, and I don’t . . . know what’s behind some of the decisions.”

All of the leaked audio in question is sourced from the same small fundraiser last month, which suggests Paxton was unlucky enough to let a very determined hater into the room: Not only was the leaker eager to release damaging audio, but he or she has been drip-feeding it into the news—different days, different outlets—to keep the story hanging around and maximize the damage against Paxton. I tell you what, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

STILL REFUSING TO LOSE: All this time later, Ukraine is still holding tough. The New York Times reports on Ukraine’s fruitful counteroffensive in the Donbas:

A monthslong Ukrainian counteroffensive in the northern part of the Donbas has thwarted Russian efforts to encircle the remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in the region. Russia, Western analysts say, has lost dozens of square miles of territory during the Ukrainian campaign, which Kyiv is calling Operation Vivaldi.

In the southern Donbas, Russia continues to mount furious assaults to break through Ukrainian lines. But Kyiv has reorganized its defense there and has so far kept the Russian military from pressing farther in its efforts to surround the major Donbas cities.

More broadly, Russian gains across Ukraine have slowed markedly in 2026 from their already glacial pace of last year. September was the worst month in net territorial gains for Russia inside Ukraine since June 2023, according to the Finland-based research firm Black Bird Group.

MAINE DEBATE: Sen. Susan Collins has been a unicorn in politics: a GOP senator who has enjoyed consistent success in her blue state of Maine no matter how bad the national environment. But she’s never faced a wave environment quite like this one, and she’s working hard to pull one more rabbit out of her hat.

Yesterday, Collins and Democratic challenger Troy Jackson had a televised debate—their first of four over the next ten days. Unsurprisingly, Jackson’s main strategy was to do everything he could to tie Collins to Trump. He castigated her vote for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, said that Mainers shouldn’t trust her to pick the next justice who comes up for confirmation, and scoffed at her track record of voting for Trump’s priorities while using her leverage only to get certain kickbacks and carveouts for Maine. “Sen. Collins is like an arsonist who set the fire and then she wants credit for bringing a cup of water to put it out,” Jackson said.

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, More Encouraging Senate Polls, Early Vote Is Picking Up, MAGA Hearts Putin, “Can’t Eat Road Salt,” Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 7, 2026. Our friend Devon Murphy-Anderson of the Maine Democratic Party joins us live at 115pm ET today to talk about last night’s debate, the early vote, & more. 

Let’s start with some data. Here’s a summary of encouraging new YouGov polls of the Senate battleground:

A new Suffolk poll of Iowa shows Turek making major gains and leading: The early vote is picking up. Here’s the current national early vote via TargetEarly (10/6/26 758pm update). This comparison is 27 days before Election Day in each of the last three cycles:

2022 D+22

2024 D+23

2026 D+29

I want to stress that it is very, very early, and that it will take a few days in every state that turns on the early vote for the data to become something worth diving into. There is going to be incredible noise around the early vote and my role will be to cut through the noise and try to make sense of the data as it becomes available. So far, so good. Keep calm, carry on peeps, and keep working the early vote in your communities as hard as you can.

Here’s the generic ballot from the high-quality Economist/YouGov poll this week. Double digit leads in two cuts of likely voters:

Other things we’re tracking this morning…….

From Politico: Republicans enter triage mode as their election hopes continue to dim:

Republicans are flooding the electoral map with a deluge of advertising to defend their House and Senate majorities. But their once-towering financial advantage is starting to show its limits.

In recent days, Republican campaign groups began to make concessions to the punishing political environment, shifting money away from races they no longer believe to be winnable and falling back to reinforce another tier of seats in solidly red states that no longer look safe.

After abandoning a GOP-held Senate seat in North Carolina — a state President Donald Trump won three times — the outside groups began spending money to defend a seat in South Carolina. And they’re intensifying their advertising in Kansas, where Democrats haven’t won a Senate race in nearly a century.

In the battle for control of the House, national Republicans gave up on defending a blue-leaning seat in Nebraska held for a decade by retiring GOP Rep. Don Bacon.

Those dispiriting setbacks signal that the party’s defensive position is weakening with a month still left in the campaign.

One national Republican strategist, granted anonymity to speak freely about the party’s predicament, said the GOP could wind up facing even worse losses than in President George W. Bush’s disastrous second term.

“If the bottom continues falling out like it has been,” this operative said, “this will be worse than 2006.”

The NYT has a bit of a shocker this morning:  Amid Midterm Crunch, Trump Advisers Took Time to Help Russia-Aligned Government. As Putin commits war crimes in Ukraine and escalates in Europe Trumpworld rallies for him, not our European allies:

As President Trump crisscrossed the country last week trying to help his party avoid a blowout in next month’s midterm elections, two of his top political advisers were in the Balkans helping a pro-Russian government looking to tighten its grip on power.

James Blair and Chris LaCivita, who are leading a big-money midterm advertising campaign for the Trump political operation, spent some of the past few days in a small self-governing territory in Bosnia and Herzegovina called Republika Srpska ahead of elections there on Sunday, according to four people familiar with their travels who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the Balkan work.

The engagement is the latest example of Trump advisers profiting from far-right politicians abroad who have sought favor from the U.S. president while bucking the international community.

Mr. Blair and Mr. LaCivita were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars each through a Washington-based law firm that was retained by Republika Srpska’s government to provide counsel on voting issues, according to two of the people familiar with the engagement. They said the work was for the government and not the nationalist party that controls it, though they are essentially one and the same.

Last night Maine saw the first of four debates between Susan Collins and Troy Jackson. From what I am reading and hearing Jackson held his own against the more experienced Collins, while also winning the viral clip of the night, below, when he said “we can’t eat road salt.” When watching just listen to how ridiculous Collins’ arguments are about her persuading Trump to do marginally less harmful things. These arguments are simply not persuasive:

The NYT also has this story this am: Trump Officials Ramp Up Investigations Into Voter Registration Groups (gift link):

As the Trump administration promotes doubts about the integrity of the voting system ahead of the midterm elections, homeland security officials have investigated more than 150 organizations as part of its effort to scrutinize nonprofits that they say may be helping noncitizens illegally register to vote, according to internal government documents reviewed by The New York Times.

The documents also reveal that the department has considered deploying undercover agents to investigate the organizations. If they were found to be actively recruiting noncitizens for voter registration, the agents could gather evidence and “disrupt activities,” the documents said. The findings could then be used to initiate prosecutions and “dismantle illicit facilitation networks,” according to the documents, which were shared with The Times by Democracy Forward, a legal advocacy organization that received them through a public records request.

The details were included in a June memo providing status updates on the Department of Homeland Security’s “election integrity investigations,” an effort by the Trump administration to find and root out noncitizens who illegally voted or registered to vote.

The problem of noncitizens voting in the United States is a rare one, and there is no credible evidence that it has swayed an election. But the administration and its allies have been aggressively seeking data to back up assertions that Democrats could benefit from the support of noncitizens in the Nov. 3 midterm elections, in which Republicans are at risk of losing control of one or both chambers of Congress.

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Yes, peeps, it is now that time. Time to go…..Kick These Corrupt Traitors’ Asses, Win The Midterms, And Prepare For The Fuckery To Come - For It Is Coming (And May Already Be Here)

PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: The Darline Graham Train Wreck Worsens As Republicans May Lose South Carolina, Jason Easley, right, jason easleyOct. 7, 2026. Republicans are facing potential losses everywhere, but now they are rushing money into South Carolina, as the Trump-created fiasco in deep red South Carolina could flip a Senate seat blue.

The 2026 midterm election is shaping up to be historic. Even Republicans admit they are facing losses, and their best-case scenario for Election Day would be to lose only control of the House of Representatives.

politicus usa logoTrump and his party had hoped for a replay of the 2022 midterm, when Democrats narrowly lost the House but gained a Senate seat.

The initial comparison baseline was Trump’s first midterm election in 2018, when Democrats gained 41 House seats, but Republicans gained 2 Senate seats.

As Trump has made the political climate worse for Republicans throughout the year, the combination of voter rage, a worsening economy, high gas prices, inflation, and a war in Iran has opened up the entire map for Democrats.

Democratic Senate candidates are running close in deep red states like Texas, Florida, and Kansas, with the latest addition to the list of endangered Republican Senate seats being in South Carolina.

Most comparisons for 2026 point to 2006, which matters because Republicans were wiped out in 2006, losing control of the House, the Senate, a majority of governorships, and state legislatures.

The situation has become so dire that even Republican operatives are saying that the bottom has fallen out for the party.

A sign that Republicans are hitting bottom is what is happening in South Carolina.Republicans Have A South Carolina Problem

The biggest factor in the GOP’s Senate woes has been Donald Trump. Trump single-handedly created a money pit in Texas when he put his personal grudge against John Cornyn ahead of winning. Trump got Ken Paxton the Senate nomination, and now Republicans are forced to throw resources at Texas.

What happened in South Carolina was not. Lindsey Graham's sudden death created a problem Republicans didn't expect.

annie andrewsTrump compounded the problem by backing Graham’s sister, Darline, to run for a full term. Darline Graham got Trump’s backing by promising to be unwaveringly loyal to the president. Otherwise, Graham has shown herself to be not knowledgeable about anything and has opened the door for Democratic candidate Dr. Annie Andrews, right, to make it a close race.

Politico reported:

One national Republican strategist, granted anonymity to speak freely about the party’s predicament, said the GOP could wind up facing even worse losses than in President George W. Bush’s disastrous second term.

“If the bottom continues falling out like it has been,” this operative said, “this will be worse than 2006.”

There is a pattern here. Unpopular Trump picks bad Republican candidates in red states and turns what should be safe elections into possible Democratic victories.

Democrats won’t win in all of these red states, but they don’t need to.

With both parties admitting that North Carolina looks like a Democratic flip, Democrats need to hold on to Michigan and flip three currently Republican seats. The Democratic Party’s best chances of victory are in Iowa, Ohio, Maine, Texas, and Alaska.

Kansas and South Carolina are, in my view, in the next tier of possible Democratic pickups. If South Carolina goes blue, Florida will also be in play, and the result will be a history-making blowout and one of the worst midterm defeats a president has ever suffered.

If such a loss happens, it will all be Donald Trump’s fault.

The New Republic Daily, Analysis: “We Can’t Eat Road Salt”: Susan Collins Crashes and Burns in Debate, Edith Olmsted, Oct. 7, 2026. The incumbent Maine senator gave a dumpster-fire performance.

new republic dailyMaine Senator Susan Collins, one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the midterms, faced a humiliating reality check Tuesday night during her debate against Democratic challenger Troy Jackson.

In the first of four televised debates, Collins struggled to defend her efforts to rein in President Donald Trump’s disastrous policies.

“Troy mocked it, but I was successful in getting concrete, pulp, and road salt removed from the tariff list,” Collins said.

“I didn’t mock the fact that she got road salt back, I mocked the fact that, what about everything else? We can’t eat road salt,” Jackson said. “And the thing about it is, is that everything that she’s doing with Iran war, stuff like that, there’s going to be so many less people that’ll be able to afford to drive that I’m not even sure the road salt is going to be worth anything, either.”

It was a startling moment dealt by a comparatively novice challenger against a five-term senator, highlighting just how Collins has failed to truly stand up to Trump.

Collins has voted five separate times to extend Trump’s military campaign in the Middle East. A study found that as of July, the average Maine household has had to pay $3,900 more for goods and services during Trump’s second term.

The Daily with Sarah Jones via PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: Plague: Trump Says He’s in Deep Talks with Russia, Kremlin Says No Call is Scheduled, Jason Easley and Sarah Jones, right, sarah reese jonesOct. 7, 2026. It seems as if a plague comes around every time Donald Trump is elected to office. Or perhaps most accurately, it’s that Donald Trump’s incompetence as a leader of a government is seen very clearly when a plague comes calling.

So now comes mentions of the Black Death.

politicus usa logoYes, the suspected plague case linked to a lab worker's death in Russia is caused by the same bacterium, Yersinia pestis, that caused the historical Black Death, a deadly plague pandemic that swept through Eurasia and North Africa from 1346 to 1353, killing up to 60% of Europe's population.

It seems fitting for Donald Trump’s second term, which has been giving off End Times vibes in various ways as he plunders our coffers and destroys public land while taking a wrecking ball to the East Wing and destroying the Kennedy Center because it’s not legal for him to put his toxic brand name on a memorial building for an assassinated president.

So yeah, it seems we might have a maybe plague, except given the lockdown on Russian news and the hold the government has on it resulting in propaganda churned out, sort of like Trump is trying to do here, it’s hard to know if there’s a plague or not.Trump’s Word or Putin’s? How about Neither

But never fear! Donald J Trump is here. And he, who has shown himself to be a dedicated Putin lapdog of the highest order while pretending to be a strong alpha male, is going to “speak” to Russian President Putin about this plague/not plague.

"So far we are in very deep discussions," Trump said according to the BBC, saying he would report on his talks with Putin "probably" on Thursday.

However, “Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said no phone call had been scheduled.”

“The US, however, has issued a formal diplomatic message to Russia requesting additional information. Peskov told reporters he was not aware of such a request,” the BBC added.

So, Trump said he was in “deep talks”, implying the talks were already happening, but the Kremlin says there aren’t even any talks scheduled.

A Trump apologist will claim that Trump was referencing setting up talks, but that’s exactly the problem with Trump’s always unclear and contradictory speech and the some of the media’s willing stenography of it.

And who is responsible for Trump’s speech that leaves it open to interpretation? I’d argue that at 80 years old, the president can be held accountable.

If I were to follow current U.S. journalist protocol, I’d take Trump’s word for this and report both sides with no context, but that’s not what we do here, because it allows for easy manipulation and exploitation.

The context is that Russia can’t be trusted, but neither can the Trump administration, which not only has been busted lying in court to smear peaceful protesters and Olympians, but already showed us in his first term — during which, by the way, he had some competent people unlike 2.0 — that he won’t properly manage a pandemic because he’s too selfish to put American lives ahead of short term pain in the stock market.

The facts thus far are that on October 2, a 28-year-old laboratory worker at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia died after being hospitalized with severe pneumonia, following reports of an alleged accidental lab exposure.

International concern and a formal U.S. diplomatic inquiry were triggered after The New York Times reported on this death.

On Tuesday, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the agency “has asked Russian authorities to clarify what caused the severe case of pneumonia that killed the 28-year-old worker at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute last week.”

It’s being reported that Donald Trump said he will speak to Putin about this incident, but his own words suggest he’s already in deep talks.

Either way, though, we can hardly trust Donald Trump to put even the slightest pressure on Putin to be honest about a potential plague incident, and even if Putin changed everything about his leadership style and was honest with Trump, we can hardly expect Trump to be honest with the public.Guess the Propagandist

It’s deeply disturbing to see how similar Putin is to Donald Trump. For example, can you guess which leader accused the media of reporting "false information" by reporting on the concern over the death?

This time, it’s Putin, via his spokesperson, but it easily could have been Trump.

We all recall how he lied about the deaths from COVID-19 in his first term, repeatedly claiming the virus would "disappear" and comparing it to a normal flu. Trump publicly minimized the severity of COVID-19 and questioned official data, while privately acknowledging to journalist Bob Woodward in recorded interviews that the virus was deadly and airborne.

Trump’s misleading statements led to health officials struggling to convey accurate risk levels and lower compliance with safety guidelines. Journalists documented numerous instances where public briefings conflicted with internal administration data.

Trump told Woodward on February 7, 2020, that he wanted to "always play it down" to prevent panic. Yes, February 7th. That early. He already knew.

On Wednesday, Putin’s spokesperson claimed Russia's reporting was in line with standard practice and accused the media of reporting "false information".

But the BBC noted that actually, pro-government news outlets deleted several articles about a possible plague case, including a travel advisory:

However, after this announcement, a pro-government federal news outlet deleted five posts mentioning a possible plague case, and authorities in the town of Baikalsk deleted a message advising against travel to Shelekhov because of a possible plague infection.

Russian officials stated that the cause of death was not the pneumonic plague, but rather a "pneumonia of an undetermined etiology.” Given that the Russians are even less transparent than Donald Trump’s administration, this means nothing.

New York Times, Can Ken Paxton’s Estranged Wife Help Close the Deal With Texas Voters? Beth Reinhard and Lisa Lerer, Oct. 7, 2026. Angela Paxton is urging Texas voters to support Mr. Paxton’s Senate campaign, even as she is divorcing him and accusing him of adultery. She has political aspirations of her own.

Again and again, throughout his long political career, Ken Paxton has gotten himself into trouble. Each time, his wife, Angela, has come to his defense.

texas mapIn 2022, a process server trying to deliver a subpoena to Mr. Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas, said he watched Ms. Paxton drive him away from their home in a truck.

The next year, during Mr. Paxton’s impeachment trial, which aired multiple allegations of corruption and an extramarital affair, Ms. Paxton, a Republican state senator, sat stoically through the entire proceedings, which she later dismissed in a social media post as “all of this foolishness.”

And now, in the homestretch of the 2026 campaign, with polls showing Mr. Paxton trailing the Democrat James Talarico in the U.S. Senate race, Ms. Paxton is urging voters in a new television ad to back the entire Republican ticket — even as she is divorcing her husband and accusing him of adultery.

It is not just Mr. Paxton’s political future at stake. It is also her own.

Ms. Paxton, 63, has tried to build a political identity separate from her polarizing and scandal-plagued husband in Texas, staking out ground in policy debates over artificial intelligence, campaign finance reform, and social issues like abortion. Allies envision her running for statewide office in the future — regardless of whether Mr. Paxton is serving in Washington.

The new ad — in which Ms. Paxton never mentions his name — is a new and surreal chapter in the long-running saga of one of the most powerful attorneys general in the country. The decision to deploy Mr. Paxton’s soon-to-be ex-wife in this reliably red state reveals how precarious the Texas race has become for Republicans, as they fight to maintain control of the Senate.

Ms. Paxton feared staying silent in such a close race could hurt her reputation and open the door to politically damaging questions about her loyalty to the party, according to a person familiar with her thinking. A loss by Mr. Paxton in Texas, which hasn’t elected a Democrat in a statewide race in more than three decades, would be viewed as disastrous for the Republican Party. 

PoliticusUSA, Opinion: Trump Administration Gets More Pathetic By Blaming Barack Obama For Diesel Prices, Jason Easley, right, jason easleyOct. 7, 2026. Former President Barack Obama has been out of office for nearly a decade, but this fact didn’t stop Trump Energy Secretary Chris Wright from blaming the ex-president for high diesel prices.

politicus usa logoWhen Obama was in office, Republicans blaming Obama was one of the running jokes on the internet. If a Republican lost his car keys, there was a good chance he would blame Obama. Spouse filed for divorce? That’s Obama’s fault too. Republicans would try to pin anything on Obama.

Donald Trump is looking at a disaster of a midterm election, so with no policies to run on and everything else failing, the president and his administration have returned to blaming Obama.

Last week, House Republicans blamed Obama for gas prices. This week, the administration is blaming Obama for diesel prices.

Trump Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on The Charlie Kirk Show:

 You just want robustness. You need some redundancy. You need some extra capacity. And again, from the arrival of President Obama, the Democrat policy has just been to somehow strangle the oil and gas industry and the coal industry and somehow believe that would lead to a magical replacements for these energy sources. They just don't exist.

But that strangulation, years of strangulation, just meant our buffer for crisis was reduced so much that now we have multiple conflicts in the world today, and we're paying the price for that. But the, the Republicans, again, and President Trump are leaning in.

We're growing our energy production. We're helping refineries expand. In fact, I was at a nuclear power plant in Ohio yesterday. We're helping that uprate add two hundred megawatts of additional power. We visited a steel plant that makes custom steel just for transformers, key for our electrical grid. That steel plant was almost closed and killed under Democratic rule as well.

So look, the Republican agenda has never been more important. Build big things in America. Grow supply. That's how you lower prices. Democrats never believe in supply and demand. They somehow think they're gonna choke supply and that that's gonna help prices.

The idea that America can increase the supply of oil and lower the price is one of the biggest falsehoods consistently spread by Republicans. Oil is a global market. The United States government does not drill for or refine oil. Oil extracted in the United States belongs to the oil company that holds the lease on the land. There is no such thing as “American oil” or American supply

The Trump administration has no answers, so they are trying to fire up the MAGA base with racism by blaming Obama.

It’s not going to work.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

New York Times, Whistle-Blower Says I.R.S. Leaked His Tax Records in Retaliation, Jesse Drucker, Oct. 7, 2026. Brian J. Visalli, a veteran investigator of tax fraud, said in a lawsuit that the agency had sent his personal and tax information to federal prosecutors.

An Internal Revenue Service investigator sued the agency this month, claiming officials illegally leaked his confidential personnel records to federal prosecutors to punish him for years of whistle-blowing on the agency’s failure to tackle tax dodging.

Brian J. Visalli, a 24-year I.R.S. veteran, specializes in investigating complex offshore tax shelters. He has publicly criticized the agency, writing articles about its unwillingness to aggressively target schemes that multinational companies use to skirt their taxes. He contributed to two reports published by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration: one on conflicts of interest within the I.R.S. and the other on the agency’s refusal to investigate advisers who design and sell aggressive tax strategies.

He says the I.R.S. is using relatively small mistakes in his personal tax return to retaliate against him. The suit claims the I.R.S. illegally disclosed his employee and tax information to Justice Department prosecutors to discredit and fire him. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Illinois. The Internal Revenue Service did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Visalli’s investigations included a probe into Malta pension plans, a tax-dodging strategy used by wealthy Americans. To fight the crackdown, promoters of the scheme hired lobbyist Ken Kies, who last year became the top tax official in the Treasury Department under President Trump.

In the past year, Mr. Visalli has written articles in Tax Notes, a trade publication, criticizing the I.R.S.’s record on pursuing multinational tax dodgers. He attacked his employer for failing to use a 2010 law requiring transactions that generate tax benefits to have “economic substance.” He said the agency suffered from “institutional cowardice.”

The refusal to invoke that law “represents a fundamental abdication of the IRS’s responsibility to protect the fiscal foundation of American government from sophisticated tax fraud masquerading as legitimate business planning,” he wrote.

The agency has turned tax enforcement “into a negotiation in which the government starts from a position of weakness and retreats from there.”

Jeffery Kadet, one of Mr. Visalli’s co-authors and an adjunct professor on tax law at the University of Washington, called him “exemplary in his focus on understanding” complicated corporate tax strategies. “He has an energy and a commitment to the rule of law that is exactly what we, as a society, need,” Mr. Kadet said.

Mr. Visalli’s criticism of the I.R.S. and the “abusive tax industry” has drawn attacks from right-wing groups. Chuck Flint, president of the Alliance for I.R.S. Accountability, a group that opposes the agency, with headquarters at a Houston mailbox, told The Washington Examiner in May: “This guy is just the latest in a long line of people at the I.R.S. that seem to take matters into their own hands.”

The lawsuit claims that the I.R.S. sent Mr. Visalli a letter in August 2023 stating he failed to fully pay his tax liability on time for 2021. The agency found the failure was an “oversight” and “not willful” and proposed a one-day suspension, then reduced it to a counseling letter, which managers often use to document minor misconduct. But he claims his supervisors escalated the episode as an excuse to push him out of his job. In late summer 2024, Mr. Visalli filed a whistle-blower retaliation complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal agency that protects employees from reprisal for whistle-blowing.

Mr. Visalli said that an assistant U.S. attorney told him a few weeks later that Justice Department Tax Division personnel were describing him as “impaired” based on a Supreme Court case, Giglio v. the United States, which requires prosecutors to disclose to defense lawyers any past evidence of dishonesty by a law enforcement official involved in a case.

“For a federal criminal investigator, a Giglio label is a scarlet letter,” according to the lawsuit. The characterization “that Visalli was a witness whose credibility was so compromised that it had to be disclosed to criminal defendants, could only have originated with unauthorized disclosures by I.R.S. officials concerning an investigation into a financial disclosure previously made by Visalli.”

In March, Mr. Visalli met with a special agent for the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration to report his supervisors’ actions.

Despite internal findings in March that his tax failures were an oversight, the agency moved a month later to remove him from his job. He is still employed by the I.R.S.

Mr. Visalli is seeking damages for a withheld annual performance reward along with medical costs — including anti-depression medication and expenses from a stress-induced fall and hospitalization — following the news of his pending removal.

New York Times, The Military Explodes Bombs on This Beach. Is It Following the Law? Abbie VanSickle, Visuals by Hiroko Masuike, Oct. 7, 2026. The Supreme Court will hear arguments over whether the U.S. Air Force can keep destroying munitions on a beach in Guam, a practice it began in 1982.

Tarague Beach is a tropical expanse of white sand on the island of Guam, where sea turtles lay their eggs, migratory seabirds forage and reef fish glide in the clear blue-green water.

But the future of this beach, nearly 8,000 miles from Washington, D.C., now rests with the Supreme Court. The court will hear arguments on Wednesday to decide whether the U.S. Air Force can continue to use it to dispose of expired rockets, bombs and hazardous waste munitions.

The dispute pits Prutehi Guahan, a local nonprofit dedicated to protecting Guam’s natural and cultural resources, against the U.S. military, which has long maintained a major presence on the island.

Guam’s proximity to Asia — it’s closer to Beijing than to Hawaii — has made it an increasingly important military outpost. That presence has only grown in recent years with rising tensions in the Pacific. Military experts often refer to the small island — about 170,000 people live on its 210 square miles, roughly five times smaller than Rhode Island — as the tip of the spear for American military might in the region.

Tarague Beach is near the northern tip of the island, within the bounds of Andersen Air Force Base, and for decades the military has used it a place to destroy expired munitions. The leaders of Prutehi Guahan have challenged the practice, arguing that the explosions threaten the fragile marine ecosystem, nearby archaeological remains, traditional fishing sites, and the island’s water supply, sending dangerous toxins and debris hurtling into the air and the water.Tarague Beach is a tropical expanse of white sand on the island of Guam, with a fragile marine ecosystem.

The legal question for the Supreme Court is a technical one about whether the Air Force followed environmental regulations as it sought a permit in recent years to continue detonations on the beach. In court filings, the Air Force has said that the detonation site is crucial for disposing of hazardous waste and that although it must reapply for a permit every three years, that process is meant to ensure ordinary compliance with the rules and not impose new restrictions.

The challengers say that the dispute is deeply personal. They argue that enforcing federal environmental laws is among the few ways for Guam residents — who are U.S. citizens by birth but who cannot vote for the president — to make their voices heard against the powerful U.S. military.

“It’s truly one of the only mechanisms that we have to have an impact on federal projects that will permanently alter our physical landscape, our environment, our cultural resources and our daily lives,” said Monaeka Flores, executive director of Prutehi Guahan, who is Chamorro, the Indigenous people of Guam.

Ms. Flores, whose family has deep roots in Guam, said that her relatives took shelter on the beach when Japan attacked the island hours after Pearl Harbor, hiding from the bombing and fishing for food.

Emptywheel, Opinion: The Roberts Majority Are Bad Judges, Ed Walker, Oct. 7, 2026. This series addresses the high crimes and misdemeanors committed by the Roberts Majority of SCOTUS. Reforming the Court must begin with impeachment of these six. They will strike down any law restricting their power. This should be a campaign issue for every Democrat.

Introduction: Previous posts in this series help us to see the deeper problem with the six Republicans on the Supreme Court: their theory of the role of judges in our democracy. They all believe that they know the truth of the Constitution, and that it is their duty to shove that Truth down our throats.

This is a false view of the role of judges. In this post I discuss the theory of judging espoused by Richard Posner, who served for many years as a judge on the 7th Circuit, and as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.

Posner’s theory of pragmatic adjudication vs. judicial positivism

The text for this post is a 1996 article Posner published in the Cardozo Law Review, Pragmatic Adjudication. The article begins with a discussion of the term “pragmatic”. Posner distinguishes it from Pragmatism, a philosophical theory developed by Americans. Posner is interested in a practical kind of pragmatism, more in line with the common usage of the term.

Posner uses this working definition of pragmatic adjudication:

… a pragmatist judge always tries to do the best he can do for the present and the future, unchecked by any felt duty to secure consistency in principle with what other officials have done in the past….

Posner says his critics accuse him of a form of relativism which Alasdair MacIntyre would call emotivism. That is equivalent to saying that he has no firm principles. Posner flatly and accurately disagrees. He offers a contrasting view, that of the judicial positivist, which he describes as:

.. a judge who believes not only that the positivist account oflaw is descriptively accurate — that the meaning of law is exhaustedin positive law — but also that the positivist account should guidejudicial decision-making, in the strong sense that no right should berecognized or duty imposed that does not have its source in positive law.

Positive law is the constitution, statutes, rules and established norms of a society. In deciding how to rule on a close case, a judicial positivist would consider the laws, rules, and precedents applicable to the case, and choose the judgment that aligned the current case with the prior decisions of other officials.

The judicial pragmatist, in contrast, would carefully consider those materials as sources of knowledge, and even as wisdom, helpful in deciding the current case, but would not feel a duty to align the decision in the current case with them if that would produce a bad result for the future. This, I think, is one aspect of the difference:

There is often a trade-off between rendering substantive justice in the case under consideration and maintaining the law’s certainty and predictability.

The judicial positivist does not recognize this critical difference. Because he does see this difference, a judicial pragmatist would also consider “… sources that bear directly on the wisdom of the rule that he is being asked to adopt or modify” I think Posner would insist that if this leads to a duty to explain why those prior rules do not produce a good outcome in the current case.

Let me try an example. Imagine you’re a trial lawyer in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Recall that the issue that went to trial was a 15 week abortion ban. If you were before a judicial positivist, as a lawyer for the state perhaps you would evidence of some kind of sentience or life of the fetus on the grounds that protecting life is a crucial aspect of Roe v. Wade. You would argue that the state should be allowed to determine the date by which the interest of the state is greater than the interest of the woman and her family. As a lawyer for the Clinic, you’d pound on the precedent, and probably point to the testimony of the Trump-appoiontees that it was a really solid precedent.

But as a lawyer for the clinic, if you were before a judicial pragmatist, you’d focus on evidence of the impact on the lives of women and their families arising from the right to abortion set out in Roe. You might put on evidence of the many ways things can go wrong in pregnancy and the need to allow women and their medical care professionals to cope with them. These facts wouldn’t as important to a judicial positivist, who would focus on law and rules and would hesitate to rule for the state in light of Roe.

In both cases it is possible to produce a respectable decision, which Posner acknowledges..

Background

At the end of this post discussing Alito’s bad judging there’s additional background. For background on the rise of judicial domination of democracy, see this book review by Pema Levy in Mother Jones.

Pragmatism and law

a) The last sections of the Posner article try to deal with the complications of judicial pragmatism. It’s clear from this section that Posner is no wild-eyed revolutionary or judicial tyrant. Instead he shows a real respect for the fundamental problem human beings face: there are no rules written in the heavens. We can only try to do our best to act in a principled manner and hope that others will correct our errors.

b) Posner doesn’t think he qualifies as a philosophical pragmatist. But he certainly accepts a foundational idea of Pragmatism: its view of truth. Pragmatists think that when we say a statement is true, what we mean is that as of now, this is the best understanding we as a group can reach. I discuss this here and here

The Roberts Majority

The Roberts Majority aren’t judicial pragmatists. They also aren’t judicial positivists. They claim to be originalists or textualists but they don’t do that either, though I leave that discussion to experts. They don’t care about precedent, or what the majority of their predecessors thought. They don’t care about the intent of Congress or state legislatures. They don’t care about the expertise of administrative agencies. They don’t care about historical norms, either. For example, they believe that some people are above the law, and that the president must be allowed to insert politics into prosecutorial decisions.

To put this bluntly, consider Alito’s opinion in Dobbs. The facts don’t matter. The impact of pregnancy on women and their families is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter whether the lower courts were judicial positivists or judicial pragmatists. The only thing that matters is that Alito doesn’t like Roe v. Wade. It caused damage, he says, with no reference to the record. He cites a bunch of cases from old dead people who lived in totally different societies, claiming that those cases are decisive. Then he murders the right of women to control their own health decisions,

The Roberts Majority believes their job is to enforce their view of the Constitution because it’s the only true understanding. It doesn’t matter that the Reconstruction Amendments empower Congress to remedy the disparate treatment of groups of people. After Callais, it’s impossible to imagine a statute on voting rights they wouldn’t throw out. After Citizens United, it’s impossible to imagine a law on campaign finance they wouldn’t throw out.

The Roberts Majority assert that there is precisely one meaning to the Constitution, to any law, to any word, and that they know precisely what it is. They run the country and you don’t get to complain. There is only one remedy. Impeach all six.

More Global News

New York Times, Ukraine Claws Back Land in the Donbas, Thwarting a Russian Push, Marc Santora and Josh Holder, Oct. 7, 2026. Moscow says its capture of the region is inevitable. But Kyiv has so far stymied Russian efforts to encircle Ukrainian “fortress belt” cities.

The Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, has repeatedly said that the fall of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine is inevitable and will happen faster than Kyiv thinks.

Recent trends on the battlefield paint a different picture.

A monthslong Ukrainian counteroffensive in the northern part of the Donbas has thwarted Russian efforts to encircle the remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in the region. Russia, Western analysts say, has lost dozens of square miles of territory during the Ukrainian campaign, which Kyiv is calling Operation Vivaldi.

In the southern Donbas, Russia continues to mount furious assaults to break through Ukrainian lines. But Kyiv has reorganized its defense there and has so far kept the Russian military from pressing farther in its efforts to surround the major Donbas cities.

More broadly, Russian gains across Ukraine have slowed markedly in 2026 from their already glacial pace of last year. September was the worst month in net territorial gains for Russia inside Ukraine since June 2023, according to the Finland-based research firm Black Bird Group.

While Western researchers who track the battlefield report varying numbers, they generally agree that Russia has gained only slightly more land than it has lost this year.

That contrasts sharply with the narrative put forward by the Russian Ministry of Defense, which said on Sept. 19 that Russia had captured more than 2,000 square miles. Even ultranationalist Russian military bloggers have pushed back, voicing concern that Russia’s push to envelop the so-called fortress cities of the Donbas is failing.

The Ukrainian gains have come as both sides have tried to find a way to restore movement on a battlefield that had become largely deadlocked because of ubiquitous drones.

The Vivaldi operation, said George Barros, a senior analyst at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, shows that when a military lays the necessary groundwork, mechanized movement remains possible even under dense drone surveillance. Still, it took Ukraine months of preparations to reclaim a tiny fraction of its lost land.

Mr. Putin has said that full Russian control of the Donbas, gained either through force or through Ukrainian concessions, is a nonnegotiable condition for ending the war. Ukraine has rejected Trump administration proposals that it hand over land that Russia has failed to seize on the battlefield.

With its goals still unmet in the Donbas, Moscow has escalated its air war against Ukrainian cities, using its advantage in missiles and drones to bombard Kyiv, the capital. Strikes in several cities overnight Wednesday left at least 20 people dead, Ukrainian officials said. They have called the Russian bombardment a campaign of terrorism aimed at breaking the country’s will to fight.The Northern Donbas

New York Times, U.S. Formally Seeks Information From Russia About Possible Plague Death, Paul Sonne and Edward Wong, Oct. 7, 2026. The lack of details from the Russian authorities has unnerved U.S. officials and others around the world.

The State Department has sent a formal diplomatic note to Russia asking for more information about a possible outbreak at an anti-plague research laboratory in Siberia.

“We have officially requested additional information from the Russian government,” the department said in a statement on Tuesday. “We are also in official communication with other countries around the world to share information.”

The plea for more information comes after Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old employee of the Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East in Irkutsk, died this month of a mysterious pneumonia at a hospital in Shelekhov, the town near Irkutsk where Ms. Shipilova lived.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

The death prompted the Russian authorities to quarantine part of the hospital, the institute’s staff and other people whom Ms. Shipilova had come into contact with in her final days. Other facilities in and around Irkutsk have also implemented restrictive measures, in some cases as a precaution. 

Wayne Madsen Report, Opinion: With the end of Pax Americana and the Russian Empire, move the UN out of New York, Wayne Madsen, left, wayne madsen new observerOct. 7, 2026. There are serious reservations about New York continuing as the home of the United Nations as the United States persistently violates its UN treaty obligations.

There is a serious case for reconsidering New York as the permanent seat of the United Nations as the United States persistently prevents delegations from reaching UN Headquarters. The issue has become especially acute in 2025–26. The United States denied Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian representatives visas for the General Assembly in both 2025 and 2026, even though the State of Palestine has official observer status at the United Nations. The General Assembly responded last month by expressly regretting those decisions, invoking the 1947 Headquarters Agreement and making special arrangements for Palestinian participation.

The United States has definitely weakened its claim to be an appropriate host of the UN. U.S. performance of its obligations as host, especially access to UN Headquarters; withdrawals from international organizations, and threats against other states has made the U.S. a pariah among nations and unworthy of a host to the world’s most important international organization.

The governing instrument regarding Washington’s obligations to the UN is the 1947 Agreement Between the United Nations and the United States Regarding the Headquarters of the United Nations.Where Is The Headquarters Of The The United Nations Located?

Sections 11–13 are unusually strong. Section 11 generally prohibits U.S. authorities from imposing impediments on transit to and from UN Headquarters by covered representatives. Section 12 says that protection applies irrespective of relations between the United States and the government concerned. Section 13 provides that U.S. immigration laws cannot be applied so as to interfere with those privileges and that required visas must be issued without charge and as promptly as possible.

That matters because hosting the UN necessarily means accepting diplomats whom Washington intensely dislikes.

The UN’s longstanding legal position has consequently been that covered representatives have an unrestricted right to enter the United States for the purpose of proceeding to the headquarters district.

Those favoring a relocation of the UN Headquarters to a more neutral location — Geneva, the location of many UN specialized agencies and the UN’s forerunner, the League of Nations — cite five reasons for such a move. First, a host country shouldn't be able to determine who participates in the UN. If Washington can prevent representatives of governments or UN-recognized entities it opposes from physically reaching headquarters, U.S. foreign policy effectively becomes an impediment to participation in the international organization. That conflicts with the institutional rationale behind Sections 11–13.

Second, the General Assembly's September 2026 resolution explicitly says Palestinian representatives should have been able to participate in person and records the U.S. visa denials in both the 80th and 81st sessions.

Third, Washington did issue visas to senior Iranian leaders for this year's General Assembly despite the extraordinary U.S.-Iran confrontation, but subsequently ordered Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi's delegation to leave New York early. The U.S. State Department also prohibited members of the Iranian press from accompanying the Iranian delegation.

Fourth, the UN was already documenting serious complaints about U.S. visa delays and denials years ago. The UN Legal Counsel reiterated the organization's longstanding interpretation of the Headquarters Agreement during those disputes. Problems with member state access to UN proceedings increased calls for relocation of UN Headquarters to a less hostile location.

Fifth, neutral territory could increase the UN's institutional independence. During the U.S. war with Iran, Washington decided which opposing officials could enter the United Nations, where they could travel, and how long they could remain. That is simply unacceptable for a host to the United Nations.

With the United States regressing into an authoritarian body politic, moving the UN is becoming a more attractive alternative. The United Nations Office at Geneva already constitutes a major UN center. Vienna and Nairobi are important UN centers as well. Any three would be a more stable location for the UN.

The UN has already witnessed the Trump administration withdrawing the United States from a number of UN specialized agencies, a possible prelude to carrying out a long-held desire of the American far right — withdrawal from the UN altogether.

Rather than an immediate relocation from New York, the move could be gradual. The General Assembly, for example, could begin holding more high-level sessions outside New York. Additional agencies and the Secretariat functions could begin migrating elsewhere, thus avoiding an immediate multibillion expenditure.

The presence of the United Nations in New York represents another era, one that two Trump terms as president has destroyed. The UN Headquarters in New York sits on land donated by the internationalist Rockefeller family during the post-1945 international order. Roosevelt/Truman-era internationalism, the Marshall Plan, NATO, Bretton Woods, and the postwar alliance system is dead thanks to Trump’s dogmatically far-right “America First” movement.

Moving the UN out of New York would result in a substantial financial loss to Trump. The Permanent Mission of Qatar owned three Trump World Tower apartments when Trump took office and purchased a fourth for $6.5 million in January 2018. A House Oversight investigation estimated Qatar paid about $465,744 in building charges during 2017–2020. The Permanent Mission of India purchased two Trump World Tower units for about $5.1 million in 2002. Court records subsequently described the mission as continuing to own the units and pay common charges. The Permanent Mission of Kuwait owned a Trump World Tower unit purchased in 2012 for $4.15 million. The congressional investigation estimated approximately $152,664 in building charges during Trump's first presidency. The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan’s Permanent Mission bought a $4.235 million apartment in 2009 as the residence of its UN ambassador. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Greece all lease units at Trump World Tower.Trump World Tower at 845 United Nations Plaza in Turtle Bay : Sales, Rentals, Floorplans | StreetEasyThe Trump World Tower at 845 UN Plaza

Relocation of the UN could create the political moment for a broader constitutional conference to substantially restructure the UN for the first time since the end of World War II. Under the current UN Charter, the five permanent members — the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China — are entrenched in Article 23, and Charter amendments require a two-thirds General Assembly vote and ratification by two-thirds of UN members, including every permanent Security Council member. Currently, such amendments would be a tall order. However, should Trump withdraw from the UN or suspend its membership and the Russian Federation dissolve amid a general uprising, the other three members would be more disposed to usher in charter amendments. The mechanism would be a UN Charter Review Conference under Article 109. Article 109 expressly provides for a general conference of UN members to review the Charter. Amendments to the charter could include a new headquarters, Security Council restructuring, veto reform, membership reform, and succession rules for dissolved states.Palace of Nations - WikipediaPalace of Nations in Geneva. the site of the League of Nations (of which the U.S. refused to be a member) and a potential alternative UN Headquarters

Succession rules for dissolved states has posed a problem for the UN. Article 23 still literally names “the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” not the Russian Federation, as a permanent member. Russia has occupied that seat since the USSR disappeared in 1991. Ukraine has rightly questioned Russia’s occupation of the seat of the defunct USSR. It claims that Russia had no inherent right to the seat because the nation possessing a veto and seat on the Security Council ceased to exist and, therefore, Russia should have been admitted to the UN in the same manner as the other 14 former states of the USSR. If the Russian Federation itself ceases to exist and were replaced by several sovereign states—say, Russia plus some combination of Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Sakha, Buryatia, Tuva, Karelia, Komi or others—the same situation that existed with the former USSR in 1991 would arise.

The UN realized that it made an error with the USSR and its successor states in 1991. When the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia collapsed, the UN did not automatically recognize Serbia’s claim to Yugoslavia's UN seat. Another Russian dissolution will reopen the question of continuity rather than automatically transferring the Security Council permanent seat to whatever government controls Moscow.

Today a new country cannot simply obtain UN membership through a General Assembly supermajority. Article 4 requires Security Council recommendation followed by General Assembly approval. The UN explains that the Council recommendation requires nine affirmative votes and no veto from a permanent (P5) member; the General Assembly then needs a two-thirds majority.

If the Russian Federation dissolved into twelve or more internationally recognized states, under today’s rules, each new state might need to seek membership while the Security Council simultaneously confronted the unresolved question of who inherited Russia’s veto. This situation could allow the claimed Russian successor, along with the pro-Russian Trump administration, to block admission of former Russian territories whose independence they opposed.

A reconstituted Security Council could instead have perhaps 20–25 elected members, with longer terms for some seats and guaranteed geographic representation.

For example, representation could be allocated among Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America/Caribbean, Middle East, and other regional groupings, while giving particularly large contributors or populations opportunities for longer rotating terms. No country would possess a seat permanently. That would also address a historical anomaly: the permanent membership structure reflects the balance of power in 1945, not that of the twenty-first century.

As far as veto reform is concerned, a UN constitutional conference could require two or three negative votes from designated major-power members rather than allowing one country to veto action by itself. Another possibility would prohibit vetoes concerning membership applications, genocide or mass atrocities, while retaining them for direct Chapter VII military action.

Palestine currently illustrates how the existing system works. Even overwhelming General Assembly support cannot substitute for the required Security Council recommendation. The International Court of Justice has previously concluded that the General Assembly cannot simply admit a country without that recommendation. A revised Charter could instead establish that admission is authorized by a two-thirds General Assembly majority, without a Security Council veto.

The UN has repeatedly confronted state fragmentation: USSR, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Sudan and others. But there is no simple automatic rule saying that every autonomous republic that declares independence becomes a UN member.

A reformed Charter could establish explicit criteria for successor states arising from a peacefully or violently dissolved federation—for example, effective government, defined territory, demonstrated popular consent, respect for minority rights, acceptance of existing international boundaries and willingness to assume Charter obligations. Under such revised criteria, two nations resulting from the dissolved member states of Somalia, Iraq, and Yemen — Somaliland, Kurdistan, and South Yemen — could apply for UN membership.

The comparatively successful precedent after the Soviet and Yugoslav dissolutions was generally to transform existing internal republican boundaries into international boundaries rather than allowing every ethnic enclave to redraw borders.

So if Russia fragmented, the strongest presumptive candidates for statehood would be constitutionally defined federal subjects—not every separatist organization or historical territory claiming independence.

Even then, each case would present difficult questions of democratic legitimacy, borders, minority populations, nuclear weapons, treaty succession, debts and international recognition.

The original 1945 San Francisco Conference designed an international organization for the world emerging from World War II. A future Charter conference could ask whether institutions designed around the victorious powers of 1945 remain appropriate after another major geopolitical transformation.

Its conceptual package might be:

  • New headquarters to reduce dependence upon any single great power.
  • Charter convention to reconsider the 1945 institutional settlement.
  • No permanent national Security Council seats to allow for geographically representative rotating membership.
  • Restricted or abolished unilateral veto to prevent one state from immobilizing the organization.
  • General Assembly-controlled admissions to prevent a single major power from blocking new states.
  • Formal succession rules to establish procedures when federations dissolve.
  • Expanded Security Council representation to address the dramatic increase from 51 original UN members to 193 today.

The existing P5 would have to agree to constitutional changes eliminating their own privileges. That might become easier should the United States, under Trump. withdraw from the UN, and the Russian Federation dissolve.

The disappearance of two permanent-member states — United States and Russia, combined with a broad coalition demanding fundamental changes in the UN, would represent the “perfect storm” to create a United Nations 2.0.

Considering Trump’s extensive withdrawal from various international organization, the UN must be prepared for a U.S. withdrawal from the organization, The signs for such action are numerous. In January 2025, rump ordered a second U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization. In February 2025, he ordered non-participation in the UN Human Rights Council, continued the funding prohibition concerning UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) and ordered a comprehensive review of American participation in international organizations. In January 2026, the administration ordered withdrawal from 66 international organizations, including 31 UN entities. The UN-related list encompasses bodies dealing with women, population, climate change, children in armed conflict, sexual violence, peace building, and international law.

Trump has gone considerably beyond withdrawal from the Human Rights Council. The U.S. has imposed sanctions on officials associated with the International Criminal Court and on UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese. Reuters reported in February that eight ICC judges and three prosecutors had been sanctioned and described significant practical consequences for sanctioned individuals. The U.S. argues that the ICC lacks legitimate jurisdiction over U.S. and Israeli nationals and that the sanctions defend American sovereignty.

The U.S.’s adoption of fascist authoritarianism and Western Hemispheric domination makes it an unsuitable host for any international organization. On September 23, 2026, the Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE’s) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights announced that the United States had not invited the OSCE to observe the 2026 midterm elections. The OSCE consists of 57 participating states across North America, Europe, and Central Asia. According to the OSCE, this is the first U.S. federal election since its observation program began in the U.S, for which it has not received an invitation. The OSCE says this is inconsistent with commitments undertaken in the 1990 Copenhagen Document. The organization had observed 12 previous U.S. federal elections, including six midterms.

The United States received the privilege of hosting the United Nations in the aftermath of World War II, when American leaders were instrumental in constructing an international order based upon collective security, diplomacy and international law. Eight decades later, the occupant of the White House has praised Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, along with present-day dictators like Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Xi Jinping.

V-Dem's 2026 Democracy Report records an exceptionally large deterioration in the United States during 2025, particularly involving constraints on executive power, rule of law, freedom of expression and academic and cultural freedom. Its Liberal Democracy Index moved the United States from 20th to 51st of 179 countries. Democracies traditionally advertise independent courts, independent prosecutors and acceptance of adverse judicial decisions as distinguishing characteristics of constitutional government.

The UN Charter begins with four central ideas: maintaining international peace through collective action; peaceful settlement of disputes; sovereign equality and self-determination; and international cooperation promoting human rights. 

Council on Foreign Relations, How Much Does the U.S. Fund the United Nations? Mariel Ferragamo, Updated Sept. 21, 2026. The United States has historically been the single largest donor to the United Nations. However, during his second term, President Trump has reduced U.S. funding, withdrawn from major agencies, and scaled back the country’s involvement in UN initiatives.

The United Nations is the world’s principal organization for deliberating matters of peace and security, but its work encompasses far more than peacekeeping and conflict prevention. The UN system includes scores of entities dedicated to a range of areas, including health and humanitarian needs, as well as cultural and economic development. As a founding member of the United Nations and the host to its headquarters, the United States has been a major financial contributor to the organization since its founding in 1945.

Historically, the United States has been the largest donor to the United Nations. In 2026, it was assessed at 22 percent of the UN regular budget, which finances the day-to-day operations of the organization and its primary activities, and approximately 26 percent of the UN peacekeeping budget.

Since the outset of his second term, however, President Trump has made significant cuts to U.S. funding for the United Nations and reduced U.S. engagement in the UN system. The approach aligns with his broader “America First” foreign policy, which the administration says prioritizes U.S. interests, sovereignty, and resources. As part of this approach, the Trump administration has cited what it says is the United Nations’ inability to solve global conflicts, certain agencies’ politically divisive agendas, and the disparity in financial contributions among wealthier countries.How is the United Nations funded?

All 193 members of the United Nations are required to contribute to the organization’s expenses as a condition of membership, per Article 17 of the UN Charter. The amount each member must pay annually, known as its assessed contribution, varies widely and is determined by a formula that considers factors including gross national income, debt burden, and per capita income. The UN General Assembly sets the scale of assessments every three years based on a country’s relative capacity to pay.

Assessed contributions primarily fund three areas:

The regular budget, which covers the body’s core administrative and operational costs—including the General Assembly, the Secretariat, and the Security Council—and applies to each calendar year.The peacekeeping budget, which finances peacekeeping operations—of which there are eleven active missions—and runs on a fiscal year (FY).International tribunals, which are temporary legal bodies created to prosecute individuals accused of serious international crimes.

Specialized UN agencies, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization, also receive assessed contributions directly from member states under separate funding arrangements.

Member states can also make voluntary contributions to UN entities. Certain organizations, such as the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the World Food Program (WFP), rely on such contributions.

However, many member states have fallen behind on their payments, forcing the United Nations into a liquidity crisis. As of April 30, 2026, cumulative unpaid assessments to the regular budget totaled nearly $2.8 billion [PDF]. Of that, the United States owes about $2 billion; other major debtors include China ($429 million), Japan ($152 million), and Venezuela ($40 million). (By September, China had paid its regular budget contribution for 2026 in full.)

Yet the peacekeeping budget faces a steeper deficit: approximately $3.5 billion in unpaid assessments, with the United States again the largest debtor (more than $2.3 billion). The five permanent members of the Security Council—the United States, China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom—are assessed at a higher mandatory rate for the peacekeeping budget than the regular budget.

How much is the United States assessed to pay?

The United States is assessed at 22 percent of the total regular budget, the ceiling set by the organization. This is significantly lower than the U.S. regular budget assessment rate in the early years of the United Nations, when the U.S. contribution was set at nearly 40 percent [PDF]. In 2026, the United States was assessed as owing more than $760 million [PDF] of the approved roughly $3.5 billion budget.

Because the United States is assessed a fixed percentage of the UN regular budget, its contribution will increase when the overall United Nations budget increases. (These figures are net assessed contributions, which factor in credits for countries that do not tax UN staff’s earnings.) After the United States, the next top contributors to the 2026 UN regular budget include China (20 percent), Japan (6.9 percent), and Germany (5.6 percent).

Separately, the United States is assessed at the highest rate of all countries for the UN peacekeeping budget for FY 2026–2027—roughly 26 percent of the overall $5.1 billion budget, which amounts to about $1.3 billion if fully funded. However, in 1994, the U.S. Congress passed the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, which established a 25 percent cap on U.S. financial contributions to UN peacekeeping operations. Because the United States is often assessed at more than 25 percent, the government accumulates arrears each year.

War in the Middle East

New York Times, How the Houthis Triumphed on the Red Sea and Sparked a New War in Yemen, Vivian Nereim, Saeed Al-Batati and Shuaib Almosawa Maps by Samuel Granados, Oct. 6, 2026 (interactive). In a single night, an Iran-allied militia trounced Saudi-backed forces to take control of Yemen’s Red Sea coast. No one was able, or willing, to stop them.

In the weeks before the Iran-backed Houthi militia fanned out along Yemen’s Red Sea coast, sending their foes into a frenzied retreat, a Yemeni government commander called for help.

It was obvious to the commander, Lt. General Tareq Saleh, that the Houthis wanted to seize his territory in order to reach the Bab al-Mandab Strait, one of the most important waterways in the world.

According to three Yemeni officials, he tried to warn his powerful allies in Saudi Arabia and the United States. About 10 percent of global trade goes through the strait. Amid the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, both countries had an interest in preventing an Iran-linked militia from winning a perch beside it.

Yet last month — when the Houthis did just that — no one was able, or willing, to stop them.

The militia’s stunning triumph over the Bab al-Mandab, which unfolded in a single night of chaos and panic, triggered a cascade of events that has plunged Yemen into a war with global reverberations.

This week, Saudi Arabia began a bombing campaign to help the Yemeni government reclaim the territory it lost, with intelligence and targeting assistance from the U.S. military. By Tuesday, government-allied forces claimed to have made significant gains, besieging the Houthi fighters who held the strait.People in military uniforms holding guns int eh back of a truck.

Houthi fighters escorting a convoy carrying prisoners freed in the Yemeni port city of Mokha to Sanaa, the capital, on Sept. 12, after the Houthi takeover of Mokha. Associated Press

Yet it is unclear whether their advance will hold, or where they will stop if it does. The Saudi government has pledged to help the Yemeni government “eliminate” the Houthis. The last time they took up that mantle, a decade ago, it devolved into a bloody quagmire.

This is the inside story of the battle that reignited Yemen’s war and the dark lessons it imparts for the next phase of fighting. The Houthi victory on Sept. 10 showed how a once ragtag militia has transformed into a formidable force with advanced technology. It was also a major defeat for the Yemeni government and its Saudi patrons, demonstrating that they were unable to fight cohesively and plagued by internal strife.

This article is based on interviews with more than 15 people who participated in the fighting or were briefed on what happened, including soldiers, Yemeni military officers, officials with Yemen’s internationally recognized government, U.S. officials and Houthi officials. Almost all of them spoke on the condition of anonymity, either because they feared retribution from the Houthis or Saudi Arabia, or because they were not authorized to discuss what happened.

Their accounts make it clear that while the Houthis’ victory last month was surprising to many, it was foreseeable.

Foreign Policy, Analysis: Saudi Arabia Bribed the Wrong People, Nicholas Grossman (University of Illinois professor, foreign policy logoeditor of Arc Digital, and the author of "Drones and Terrorism"), Sept. 24, 2026. Riyadh’s bet on Trumpism has failed. Saudi Arabia is in serious trouble. Its global influence primarily comes from its leading position as an oil producer and the money resulting from that role, but now the Middle East is on fire.

Global Media, Markets

BIG logo

Big, Monopoly Analysis: Paramount Stock CRUSHED After Merger with Warner Discovery Closes, Matt Stoller, right, Oct. 7, 2026. matt stollerIt's not a happy ending, as billionaire David Ellison gives himself and his team huge raises, while planning big layoffs. But the really bad sign is he just fired the hitmakers from Warner Brothers.

The Paramount-Warner combination, now named Skydance, closed yesterday, and began trading on the stock market. And now comes the hard part for CEO David Ellison, which is creating a successful media company with $79 billion of debt and declining linear cable networks providing most of the cash flow.

Will it be a viable business? That’s what I’m going to explore.

Whether it works has a lot of implications for media and the structure of corporate power in America.

It’s important to note that while the Warner-Paramount deal was controversial, we’re now in a different moment. Even deal opponents now want it to become a profitable company, because the ecosystem of Hollywood relies on it.

NBCUniversal Chair Donna Langley had panned the merger: “I think it is bad. I think it’s bad for everything.” But, she now wants it to work. “Volume matters, and if we if we essentially lose a studio — which is I know not the stated plan and goal — but if we lose a studio, it’s bad.”

Everyone from Ben Affleck to Tom Cruise to the Ankler’s Richard Rushfield wants it to succeed. Without the 30+ movies Ellison has promised, movie theaters will not have enough content to stay in business. And then all movie theater distributors die.

It’s a lot like the auto bailouts in 2008, when Ford lobbied for a bailout of rivals GM and Chrysler, simply because they all used the same parts subcontractors, who would not stay in business if they lost such big customers. Skydance is now too big to fail.And yet, the transition is not promising.

Consider the two things that David Ellison did after buying Warner Discovery. He organized mass layoffs, and he gave himself and his entire executive team a big raise. Specifically, Ellison awarded himself a $150 million bonus upon closing the purchase, even though he doesn’t need the money, and has accomplished absolutely nothing except saddling two historic movie studios with $80 billion in debt. Deadline@DEADLINE

Skydance Bumps Pay, Extends Contracts For Top Execs; New Bonuses For WBD Brass

His legal consigliere, Makan Delrahim, received $25 million, and his operating officer Andrew Brandon-Gordon got $38 million. To do the layoffs, he hired Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz, and paid him $46.5 million. That’s all on top of the massive $550 million payout to former Warner CEO David Zaslav, which was negotiated as part of the deal. Amid that backdrop of endless zeros for executives, the layoffs will be significant, and Kreiz and Ellison sent a memo on the “difficult decisions” ahead. That’s a crushing blow to morale, since it says very explicitly, “we’re not all in it together.” Every employee at Skydance has essentially been told to act like a mercenary and to extract as much as he or she can while he or she can.Even Wall Street is unhappy, with the stock falling roughly 10% since the deal closed, and the bonds downgraded to junk status, which has nearly fostered a revolt among investors.Forbes@Forbes

Shares of Skydance Corporation, Hollywood’s newly formed major media conglomerate, are down 8% one day after debuting on the New York Stock Exchange. go.forbes.com/oGOBbe

5:45 PM · Oct 7, 2026 · 14.7K Views6 Replies · 12 Reposts · 36 Likes

The details of what happened in the bond market are complicated and not particularly important. The short story is that at the last minute, the Ellison’s worsened the terms for bond investors. As a result, those investors wound up with unexpected losses, and are now angry about it. Here’s Bloomberg:Just hours after Paramount Skydance Corp. issued $52 billion of debt to fund the biggest Hollywood buyout ever, investors were nursing more than $100 million of losses, triggering a flurry of angry calls from money managers to Wall Street banks that underwrote the debt.The company’s junk bonds were among the hardest hit in initial trading, with the eight-year US dollar notes changing hands at about 96 cents on the dollar on Thursday after selling for 100 cents on Wednesday. The loans and high-grade bonds broadly weakened as well, and the cost of betting against the company’s credit surged to a 17-year high.I’m not sympathetic to money managers, but large corporations are political machines by nature. The erosion of Wall Street support is not good for Ellison’s position long-term.After the deal closed, Ellison sought about calming the chattering class. For conservatives, Ellison had Donald Trump praise the deal. For liberals, Ellison assured that Mark Thompson would remain the head of CNN and added board member Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs and the owner of The Atlantic. For business leaders, he put Bobby Kotick, formerly of Activision, on the board. For politicos, he made Tony Blair a board advisor. Skydance also did some aggressive PR and got the Wall Street Journal to report breathlessly on the takeover attempt, which is framed as a risky gambit going against the establishment instead of the orgy of corruption it obviously was. Jobs is a notable person to have on the board for two reasons. The first is that she’s a Democratic California billionaire who was reportedly behind the rise of Kamala Harris, and an opinion leader who owns a major news outlet. The second is that the Clayton Act bars having someone sit on the board of rival firms. And The Atlantic is clearly a competitor to CNN and CBS. So the very constitution of the board is illegal, though, as we know, the rule of law doesn’t apply to the powerful. Anyone could bring a case against her position or send a letter on it, and she’d have to step down. But I’m not holding my breath.Ultimately, Ellison has conquered the legal and political obstacles to controlling a large chunk of Hollywood and the media. And he did so because his father is Larry Ellison, the owner of Oracle, who is worth $200 billion. But we know all that, the question now is whether he can make this enterprise deliver on its financial goals. Media mergers, especially those involving Warner, rarely work.So what’s the strategy? Well, it’s something of a math problem. Most of the cash flow from Skydance comes from the linear cable networks, things like CNN, the Food Network, and so forth. But those revenues are declining rapidly as streamers continue to expand their share of viewership. They’ll gain some leverage by having a third of Pay-TV channels, like Showtime and HBO, so there’s another short-term boost. They’ll also have more scale to negotiate higher rental rates with movie theaters, and yeah, I know that the consent decree said they wouldn’t, but that is adorable. Ask any movie theater to articulate a “standard” compensation structure between the studios and the theaters, and they’ll confirm it varies wildly from film to film, even at the same studio. We might see some angry theater owners, or they’ll swallow their anger out of desperation, but there will be no reckoning from enforcers or the courts. And Skydance will crush talent, including writers and above- and below-the fold creatives, because doing so is a necessity of success.Even if they succeed at all of that, there are other risks, most notably the NFL contract they desperately need to maintain their TV cash flow and grow and retain streaming subscribers, and that contract can be renegotiated by the league in a way that causes real pain. If I were a deep-pocketed rival to Ellison, and I wanted to crush him, bidding up the price of NFL streaming rights could do it.All that said, let’s say that Ellison pulls these levers, keeps the NFL, and does layoffs. What’s left? The main strategy is to use linear TV cash flow — which has solid but, again, diminishing returns — to pay down debt as quickly as possible, while the newer business, notably streaming, begins showing greater revenue. Ellison has said he wants to build his streaming business into a competitor to Netflix, combining the existing Paramount+ and HBO Max platforms into one service, with pricing power and more content. The rationale here is that streaming is a scale business. The more subscribers you have, the easier it is to create content, since the cost of financing that content is shared across a bigger base of customers.This strategy sounds appealing. So why is Wall Street skeptical? Let’s look at the numbers. Late last year, Paramount+ had 78.9 million subscribers, with Warner’s HBO Max and Discovery+ at 131.6 million. That’s roughly 210 million subscribers globally between both platforms, compared to 325 million for Netflix. Only 35.8 million Paramount Plus subscribers are in the high-priced U.S. market, as are only 27.1 million HBO Max subscribers.But you can’t just add those numbers up to 210 million, because roughly a quarter of HBO Max subscribers also have Paramount+, and vice versa. If you combine them, and lose no subscribers except overlaps, then you’re talking about a global service of 150-60 million or so subscribers, with 55 million of those in the U.S. So combining the two streamers into one would require increasing subscription prices, or the average revenue per user (ARPU), simply to maintain current revenue flows.Subscription prices are notoriously sticky, but some percentage of subscribers will balk at the price increase and cancel their subscriptions, and the higher the number of cancellations, the higher the price increase or ARPU will need to be. On top of that, some subscribers will cancel simply because their alignment between subscription price and value was tethered to the brand and legacy of HBO Max, which they will no longer be subscribing to. And that makes sense; HBO Max is a relatively niche player, perhaps the only remaining iconic TV brand left. Jamming it together with Paramount+ into a general purpose streamer, which will mean paying more for a bunch of bundled content they don’t see value in, will cause prestige TV subscribers to drop off.So first you’re talking about losing a lot of cash flow because of the subscriber overlap and added risk of cancellations. The question is whether it can bring in more revenue per subscriber than it loses from overlapping subscribers and cancellations. Skydance can raise prices, which it will no doubt do. All of the streamers are doing that. They’ll also nudge more subscribers into ad-supported tiers, which streamers have been doing for years because ad-supported tiers are overall more lucrative than non-ad supported tiers. Streamers have already begun learning that lesson from linear TV, even if it feels like a degradation of the streaming experience for those unwilling to pay an exorbitant amount per month to avoid it. Another way to sneak in revenue is with more video-on-demand on top of the baseline subscription, basically the Amazon Prime and Apple TV model of licensing content that can be rented for a per-watch fee.Can Skydance actually combine the two streaming services and not lose a ton of subscribers? Obviously not, based on the overlap alone. So Skydance will make streaming more extractive and annoying. It will be another case of enshittification.But that’s not a long term strategy for growth, and ultimately the question is this: Can Ellison actually make good content? The way streamers grow is by having great content. That’s not a question of producing one or two good movies or limited series; it’s a question of whether he can constantly churn out dozens of them. We've established already that the 30-film commitment is a distribution commitment, not a commitment to actually make 30 films, but even if Skydance can shirk the responsibility to actually produce good films merely by acting as a distributor, that doesn’t solve for how to grow or retain subscribers with must-see content.I’ll tell you why Hollywood is skeptical. Among other changes, Ellison fired Warner heads Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy. These people are sharks, but they are very good at making money in the film business. In 2025, Warner had a banner year, both critically and financially, with A Minecraft Movie, Superman, Weapons, Sinners and One Battle After Another. Aside from violating the implicit pledge he made to keep the two studios separate, it’s just a big risk to get rid of a team that has delivered. He’s bringing in his own experienced team, with Ellison himself overseeing the ‘creative vision.’ How good is Ellison? On the bright side, he loves movies. But then, in 2006, he wasted $60 million to produce the movie Flyboys, casting himself as the star. It earned back just $17 million. Watch the below clip and you’ll see a lot of cringe. Hopefully, Ellison has matured since then, but the view in Hollywood is that he doesn’t have the golden touch necessary to make Skydance work. Oh, and even if he is able to put out a great and large slate of movies, in terms of competitive dynamics, it may still fail. Paramount will have to keep licensing its existing library to its rivals like Netflix and Amazon, since it can’t forego the cash it is paid for that right now. So Paramount+ may not even benefit from the content mill it is generating.Sean Morrow@snmrrw

Never forget that David Ellison's Skydance Media was originally created so he could be an actor. Skydance's first film was 'Flyboys' starring James Franco and... David Ellison. David and his daddy invested $60m to make Flyboys. It grossed $17m Here's a bit of David's acting:

3:04 PM · Oct 6, 2026 · 2.17M Views232 Replies · 1.67K Reposts · 15.4K Likes

Believe it or not, I hope that Skydance is a viable going concern. Having enough volume for theaters is critical to keeping the movie business going. That said, if I had to guess, I think it will end up going bankrupt in the next few years, or at the very least, renegotiate with its lenders. The Ellisons are thuggish, they don’t like to pay suppliers, and bondholders are just another supplier. But fundamentally, the failure here is moral more than anything else. This merger is risky and difficult, and it will require the entire town of Hollywood to pull together to make it work. People will have to stretch. That one person remaining in the marketing department after his entire team was laid off will have to do the work of five, and theater owners will have to defer cash flow to support a studio. That can only happen if people believe it’s worth it, that they are doing something for more than themselves. That’s why it’s such a bad sign that Ellison granted himself a huge bonus upon completing the deal, and paid out $50 million for a guy who knows nothing about movies and a lot about firing people. It just shows that there’s no future here. Even if Skydance works, it just means more extraction for Ellison and his crew. That will not be easily reported, because CNN and CBS are now under the control of the company, the owner of The Atlantic is literally on the board, trade publications in Hollywood are controlled by one studio-friendly monopoly, and the Wall Street Journal has declined in quality to the point where it is frequently penning heroic CEO tomes. Trump loves the deal, and much of the Democratic establishment in California pushed the deal through, so they don’t want to be embarrassed. That said, the opposition was real, and big, and loud. People will remember how Ellison forced this merger through. More politics are unavoidable; the industry is already trying to get a Federal film tax credit through, and it’s going to be impossible for the status of CNN not to be a high-profile media topic. Moreover, there is going to be significant energy around reforming streaming, since the costs are outrageous, and the vertical integration questions are significant. Then there’s the Trump corruption, with this merger being a high-profile example of it for aspiring politicians.Ultimately, for Skydance, cash flow is what matters. And it’s hard to see this highly leveraged merger working out the way Ellison hopes. If it blows up, add this to the many examples of why we need a real rewrite of the social contract. It’s pretty obvious to everyone except the financial class that American corporations are not piggy banks to be smashed for the benefit of an elite few. Or at least, it should be.________________________________________Thanks for reading! Your tips make this newsletter what it is, so please send tips on weird monopolies, stories I’ve missed, or other thoughts. And if you liked this issue of BIG, you can sign up here for more issues, a newsletter on how to restore fair commerce, innovation, and democracy. Consider becoming a paying subscriber to support this work, or if you are a paying subscriber, giving a gift subscription to a friend, colleague, or family member. If you really liked it, read my book, Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy.cheers,Matt StollerInvite your friends and earn rewardsIf you enjoy BIG by Matt Stoller, share it with your friends and earn rewards when they subscribe.Invite FriendsSHARE

New York Times, Guest Essay: Hollywood Surrenders, Sharon Waxman, Sept. 22, 2026. Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, and his ragtag rebel alliance of unions, concerned celebrities and fellow Democratic state attorneys general were never going to win.

We had to endure months of back-and-forth posturing and some glee over the idea that Paramount Skydance might compromise in a serious way — or even fail — to complete its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery before an Oct. 1 late-fee deadline. And then it all ended with a friendly entente, a bunch of warmed-over deal points, a performative editorial oversight board and a paternalistic assurance that Paramount loves California after all and has no plans to leave.

It was the threat to leave California that won it in the end. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, took seriously the Paramount Skydance chief executive David Ellison’s threat to leave the state for Nashville. (Reports emerged as recently as last week that the company was looking for space there.) The potential fallout — the permanent loss of up to 60,000 jobs and $21.2 billion in economic output — was just too much to contemplate.

So Mr. Bonta cut a not very good deal, and with it an enervated Hollywood is — for now — spared the worst.

Few people in the film industry not named David Zaslav ever wanted a Paramount-Warner Bros. merger. Combining the two legacy studios and their streamers will reduce competition and, thanks in part to the huge debt load taken on to pay for it, require layoffs.Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

It’s also part of a larger shift away from the old Hollywood order. Other tech giants — Netflix, Amazon and Apple Studios among them — wield significant clout. But this particular combination, especially because it will include HBO and CNN, provides ready-made cultural (and thus political) power. Mr. Ellison is backed by his tech titan father, the Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest men. In the end, the combined entity will be 49.5 percent owned by foreign investors, including Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the Qatar Investment Authority and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

These terms, combined with the Ellisons’ friendliness with the Trump administration, have made the traditionally liberal industry players anxious that they will lose influence.

To be fair to Mr. Bonta, Paramount’s threat to leave California was seen as serious, not a bluff, by politicians and union leaders in the state. Every time Mr. Bonta notched a win in his 12-state lawsuit accusing Paramount of breaching antitrust laws, the company countered with a legal maneuver, such as demanding a $1.9 billion bond from the states and the Writers Guild to cover its potential liability.

None of that ever got to court, because the threat of leaving California panicked Mr. Newsom and Ms. Bass. Their apparent lack of support for continuing the fight seems to have forced Mr. Bonta’s hand.

In the end, Mr. Bonta secured nothing structural: He did not force the sale of CNN; no restrictions exist on operating the companies’ movie studios separately, though they need to operate both studio lots; there are no guaranteed protections from job losses.

Mr. Bonta couldn’t shut the merger down, but he did secure some wins: Paramount promised to spend $1.5 billion in U.S.-based production over the next five years. Mr. Ellison committed to releasing 30 films per year for the next two years and 32 per year for the following three years. But he had already more or less agreed to that. What happens after that five-year window closes is unclear.

Paramount’s board of directors will also establish an independent oversight board for CNN and CBS News. It’s not clear how this will work yet, or what “oversight” actually means.

Some critics have been quick to call the agreement worthless. To say this was an underwhelming end to all the Sturm und Drang — the opinion essays, the protests outside the Paramount lot, the rallies with Jane Fonda and Mark Ruffalo, the dire warnings by politicians such as Senator Elizabeth Warren — is a vast understatement.

There’s no sense of triumph or even defeat in Hollywood, merely numb exhaustion. Big changes are coming for the century-old entertainment industry, which until now was never seriously threatened with red-state relocation.

Less than 48 hours before the deal was announced, members of the Hollywood A-list gathered to celebrate the opening of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which looked like a “Star Wars” spacecraft that had docked near Downtown L.A. George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, were joined by Oprah Winfrey, Nicolas Cage, Eva Longoria, Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg and others.

It was a reminder of the film industry at its monocultural zenith: one that could create a shared set of powerful experiences imbued with simple moral purpose. “Star Wars” was about the struggles of the mystical Jedi masters who sought to protect their republic against the Galactic Empire, which was ruled by fear.

Things are not always so clear in real life. In between posing near Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder, all attendees could talk about was the Paramount-Bonta negotiations. When I ran into Mr. Newsom at the party, he told me he’d had an update less than two hours beforehand. Moguls privately shared their views that the deal was basically done and Hollywood would be better off with a resolution rather than prolonging a pointless and expensive battle. 

 

 

Oct. 6

Top Headlines

President Trump made inflammatory remarks inviting Iran to bomb two California cities during a rally for the re-election of Nebraska Senator Pete Ricketts, right, a fellow Republican and heir to a wealthy family..President Trump made inflammatory remarks inviting Iran to bomb two California cities during a rally for the re-election of Nebraska Senator Pete Ricketts, right, a fellow Republican and heir to a wealthy family.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

  • Hope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump must be removed from office, Heather Delaney Reese, right, helen delaney reese djtOct. 6, 2026. At 6:22 tonight, at the Pinnacle Bank Expo Center in Grand Island, Nebraska, the room filled with red hats and shirts suddenly went quiet. A minute later, the President of the United States of America pushed through the curtain and emerged onto the stage with newly dyed hair and thick orange makeup. As the music blared through the speakers, he slapped his right thigh over and over again as he made his way to the podium.

Standing there, he said something so horrifying that it is difficult to believe the words were actually said by an American president. He looked into the camera and told Iran, the country we are at war with, that they should blow up one of two American cities, potentially killing millions of people. “It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. That’s a very small price to pay.”

What the President of the United States said tonight should disqualify him from the office he holds. No president, or any elected official for that matter, should hold any position in our government after saying something like this. It should be immediate grounds for impeachment and removal. There should never be a circumstance where the commander in chief can stand on a stage and tell a foreign enemy to destroy American cities and harm American citizens. We should never see a day where the man who has access to nuclear weapons would even think of saying what Donald Trump said.

  • The Contrarian, Words & Phrases: A Crazy Rant Isn’t a ‘Speech’ or an ‘Interview,’ Jennifer Rubin, right, jennifer rubin new headshotOct. 6, 2026. 🚨 28 Days to the Midterms 🚨 Donald Trump’s political toxicity, rampant illegality, and utter incompetence should not obscure a bigger worry: namely, that he is stone-cold nuts. Yet the legacy media continue to use language to describe his “speeches” as ordinary political addresses and “interviews” as within the realm of normal presidential interactions with the press. Legacy media’s sanewashing of Trump’s campaign appearances as “speeches” bears less and less resemblance to the reality of his verbal incontinence, evidenced in recent campaign blather about Iran.
  • Martin Vasquez via Medium, New October 2026 Palm Beach Case Accuses Trump of Rape While Epstein Watched, Martin D. Vasquez, Oct. 5, 2026. A Kentucky woman’s complaint faces steep procedural hurdles, but it adds to the pressure on the Justice Department to account for what remains hidden in the Epstein files. A new civil lawsuit filed on October 2nd in Palm Beach County alleges that Donald Trump raped a young woman in a Florida hotel while Jeffrey Epstein was present. The complaint describes a violent assault and is among the most graphic accusations ever filed against Trump in court. The new case has a difficult road ahead. It lands, though, in the middle of a larger legal fight over what the Justice Department is still holding back in the Epstein files. 

More On Trump Governance 

 

djt god made trump ad

  • New York Times, Facing Backlash, Trump Says His Super PAC Will Pay for Taxpayer-Funded Ads, Shane Goldmacher, Theodore Schleifer and Maggie Haberman, Oct. 6, 2026 (print ed.). The president said that his PAC, MAGA, Inc., would pay for TV ads promoting him that had been paid for with taxpayer money. 
  • New York Times, Trump Does Not Plan to Reimburse Taxpayers for Promotional Ads, Shane Goldmacher and Maggie Haberman, Oct. 6, 2026. A day after the president said his super PAC would pay for the ads, which had drawn bipartisan backlash, officials said that he meant moving forward. A new taxpayer-funded ad aired Tuesday.
  • Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The President’s Palmetto Preoccupation, William Kristol, right, Oct. 1, 2026. william bill kristol imdbThe nineteenth-century American writer Henry David Thoreau famously claimed that “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” I’ve always thought this assertion unfair, even untrue. But it’s neither unfair nor untrue to observe that one man, Donald J. Trump, is today exhibiting clear signs of not-at-all-quiet desperation.

More On Global Affairs 

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More On U.S. Military, Foreign Policy 

  • Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Sept. Oct. 5, 2026 [More U.S. Killings in Caribbean], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 6, 2026. Last night, on October 4, U.S. Southern Command posted that it had struck another small boat in the Caribbean, killing another four people it called “narco-terrorists.” This brings the number of strikes to more than 70, and the number of people killed in the strikes that began a year ago to more than 230 people. The administration’s justification for the strikes has not been made public. It has claimed—without evidence—that the men on the boats were trafficking drugs, but such a charge would normally be handled by the legal system. The Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice produced an opinion providing legal cover for the strikes, and some of the members of Congress who have seen it are alarmed.
  • New York Times, Ex-C.I.A. Officer Who Stashed Gold Bars Admits to Far Larger $145 Million Scam, Devlin Barrett, Oct. 6, 2026. david rushA plea hearing revealed a far larger pattern of fraud against the government, while keeping some key secrets still hidden. The shocking details of the case were revealed in federal court in Alexandria, Va., where David J. Rush, right, pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud, which could earn him up to 20 years behind bars.

The Fight For Democracy in the Trump Era

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Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker in 1986. Their world came tumbling down the next year with a revelation that he had sex with a secretary in his Assemblies of God ministry (AP photo by Lou Krasky).

Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker in 1986. Their world came tumbling down the next year with a revelation that he had sex with a secretary in his Assemblies of God ministry (AP photo by Lou Krasky).

  • New York Times, Jim Bakker, Television Preacher Felled by Sex and Financial Scandals, Dies at 86, Clyde Haberman, Updated Oct. 6, 2026. With his wife, Tammy Faye, Mr. Bakker built a broadcasting juggernaut around the gospel of prosperity. Jim Bakker, a television evangelist who lost his popular and prosperous ministry in a 1980s sex scandal and then lost his freedom for five years, imprisoned for having violated federal laws with his conflation of God and mammon, died on Monday.
  • The Triad Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Propagandist in the Press Pool, Jonathan V. Last, above, Oct. 6, 2026. From “covering” Trump to covering FOR Trump. In mid-September, the Trump administration bestowed press pool status on reporter—sorry, “reporter”—Beni Rae Harmony as she traveled to Ireland to cover the president. Then, on September 26, the 24-year-old(!) Harmony, who worked for the network Real America’s Voice, took CNN’s spot on the presidential plane after Trump refused to let the network onboard. Last Friday, Harmony switched sides, going from covering the White House as a member of the press to serving Trump as his newest assistant press secretary.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

wayne madsen new observerJustice Integrity Project Editor's Note: Investigative reporter Wayne Madsen, left, a courageous reporter, a former Navy intelligence officer and a close colleague of this editor, broke the Hastert story in a three-part series in the fall of 2006 published on "The Wayne Madsen Report" naming the then-powerful House Speaker as a gay pedophile and hypocrite who presided over a "gay Mafia" of powerful Republicans in Congress who abused youths while winning elections as "family values" purists.

More On Artificial Intelligence, Inflation, Jobs, Markets

  • Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: AI Versus Everything Else, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 6, 2026. The hyperscaler boom is crowding out other investment. Until now, discussions of the potential economic problems created by the AI boom have mostly focused on the future. Will it destroy millions of jobs? Is there a bubble and will it cause a severe recession if it bursts? Will it destroy humanity? While these are doubtless very important questions, attempts to answer them are at best educated guesses.We don’t have to guess, however, about one major effect of the AI boom, because it’s happening right now: Massive spending on data centers is crowding out 
  • Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Recordings show Stacy Garrity claiming Trump’s data center plan as her own, Brendan Hartnett, Oct. 6, 2026. As Andrew Egger wrote in Morning Shots in August, politicians are suddenly noticing that everybody hates data centers. The data center backlash is moving so quickly that politicians are scrambling to keep up—sometimes contradicting themselves in the process. 

Top Stories

President Trump made inflammatory remarks inviting Iran to bomb two California cities during a rally for the re-election of Nebraska Senator Pete Ricketts, right, a fellow Republican and heir to a wealthy family..President Trump made inflammatory remarks inviting Iran to bomb two California cities during a rally for the re-election of Nebraska Senator Pete Ricketts, right, a fellow Republican and heir to a wealthy family.

New York Times, Fury in California After Trump Suggests Iran Could ‘Take Out’ L.A. or San Diego, Laura Chung, Oct. 6, 2026. Gov. Gavin Newsom called the president “dangerous and deranged” after his remarks at a political rally, where Mr. Trump said the Iran war was necessary to “keep the world safe.”

California leaders condemned President Trump on Monday night after he appeared to suggest that Iran could “take out” Los Angeles and San Diego if it develops a nuclear weapon.

Department of Defense SealSpeaking at a Republican political rally in Nebraska, the president sought to justify the Iran war as necessary for “keeping the world safe.” He then suggested there could be strikes on the United States, including the Democratic-led Californian cities.

“They could take out a city,” he said. “Let them take — Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.”

It was not immediately clear what Mr. Trump meant, but his comments were met with anger from officials in California, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, who called the president “deranged and dangerous.”

“After sending the National Guard and Marines to occupy California, Donald Trump is now saying our foreign enemies should ‘take out’ Los Angeles and San Diego,” Mr. Newsom posted on social media.

Mayor Todd Gloria of San Diego wrote on social media that his city was not “collateral damage” and not “expendable.”

“Keep our city out of your reckless war talk,” he added.

In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass said that the president’s comments were “dangerous” and could “potentially compromise” the city’s safety.

“The role of a president is to protect the country, not to actively threaten it and encourage attacks on American lives,” she said in a social media statement.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Mr. Trump’s remarks.

In his speech on Monday, Mr. Trump also suggested the war with Iran was “going to end very soon,” but did not provide any information as to how. Among his key justifications for launching the war in Iran this year was to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.

Last week, Mr. Trump turned down Iran’s latest cease-fire proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and restart talks on the country’s nuclear program in exchange for U.S. concessions.

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Grandpa Trump Is Getting Desperate, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Oct. 6, 2026. And it’s starting to show.

bulwark logo big shipThe hot-mic moments just keep coming for Texas GOP Senate hopeful Ken Paxton, right. Last week, it ken paxton mugwas leaked audio of Paxton admitting that Trump’s ballyhooed midterm convention had actually hurt his numbers.

This week, it’s audio of Paxton complaining about how little control he has over his own campaign strategy—since most of the money behind him is super PAC money from Trump. “I’ve never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign and, like, what issues are going to matter,” Paxton told a small fundraiser room, “because it’s all coming—you know—from D.C.” Happy Tuesday.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

djt la small price to pay health reeseHope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump must be removed from office, Heather Delaney Reese, above right, Oct. 6, 2026. At 6:22 tonight, at the Pinnacle Bank Expo Center in Grand Island, Nebraska, the room filled with red hats and shirts suddenly went quiet. A minute later, the President of the United States of America pushed through the curtain and emerged onto the stage with newly dyed hair and thick orange makeup. As the music blared through the speakers, he slapped his right thigh over and over again as he made his way to the podium.

Standing there, he said something so horrifying that it is difficult to believe the words were actually said by an American president. He looked into the camera and told Iran, the country we are at war with, that they should blow up one of two American cities, potentially killing millions of people. “It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. That’s a very small price to pay.”

What the President of the United States said tonight should disqualify him from the office he holds. No president, or any elected official for that matter, should hold any position in our government after saying something like this. It should be immediate grounds for impeachment and removal. There should never be a circumstance where the commander in chief can stand on a stage and tell a foreign enemy to destroy American cities and harm American citizens. We should never see a day where the man who has access to nuclear weapons would even think of saying what Donald Trump said.

What he said is how he truly feels. He thinks that millions of American lives are expendable, and he is fine with entire cities being sacrificed. In his eyes and heart, the deaths of the people there really are a small price he, himself, is willing to pay because he does not care about his country or the people he was elected to serve. Donald Trump cares about only one thing: himself.

What concerns me the most right now, in this moment, is that we have reached a place where the president can say something like this without the entire country erupting in outrage. We are not angry enough. Our elected officials are not angry enough. Every single lawmaker in this country, Republican and Democrat, should be standing up right now and saying this is unacceptable. They should all be issuing statements, making it beyond clear that we do not talk about American cities this way, and that we do not offer our own people to our enemies, whether he means it or not, whether he is joking or not. They need to demand action against this president for abandoning his most basic duty to the citizens he swore to protect. If this does not cross the line, there is no line.

The danger of this moment goes way beyond what he said, because he has the power to make decisions that can determine whether millions of people live or die. He is the one who can and has started wars, and he controls our nuclear arsenal. In a catastrophic event, the president must be able to communicate clearly. He also needs to be able to think precisely, understand the consequences of his decisions, and act decisively. Those are not optional capabilities when one person holds that much power. What we heard tonight proves that he cannot meet those basic requirements.

He might walk it back tomorrow and make excuses for what he said. He might deny he even said it. Maybe he meant every word of it, or maybe he genuinely does not care about the cities that didn’t vote for him. Or maybe what we heard tonight was simply a president speaking recklessly about the destruction of American cities without grasping, or without caring about the weight those words carry. Whatever the explanation, the words themselves do not change. The President of the United States stood on a stage and spoke about millions of Americans dying as a “small price to pay.”

I was born and grew up in Southern California. I’ve raised my children here, and we still live here. This is personal, but I would still feel this exact way had he named any other places. But when I heard him tell a cheering crowd that the cities where my daughters sleep should be destroyed and that it would be a very small price to pay, something inside me cracked open that I don’t think I can ever close again.

I was watching this speech live, and I actually ran into my husband’s office and had him listen to what he said to make sure there wasn’t something I was missing. Donald Trump has said some despicable things in the past, but even the most morally bankrupt among us know there is a line that cannot be crossed. Donald Trump does not.

When Pete confirmed that I had indeed heard Donald Trump correctly, I immediately thought about how San Diego County is home to some of the most critical military installations in the country. Naval Base San Diego, Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, Camp Pendleton are all here in San Diego alone. There are tens of thousands of active duty service members and their families who live in the very counties he told Iran to take out. I thought of how he was offering to sacrifice their lives too. I thought about Los Angeles and how it is one of the most diverse cities on earth, a place built by generations of immigrants and their descendants, a melting pot of cultures and languages and communities. People who came to this country because they believed in its promise.

What Trump said about LA and San Diego goes even further than just his comments tonight. There is a real possibility that those two cities were not chosen at random. Because just four days ago we learned that Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal criminal defense attorney who he has now made the United States Attorney General, had five grand jury subpoenas sent to San Diego County election officials demanding voter registration records. The Los Angeles Times reported that LA County also received at least five of its own subpoenas for voter information this year as well.

The Brennan Center for Justice called these subpoenas “highly unusual” and described them as “part of a broader sweeping fishing expedition in order to try to identify and uncover elusive non-citizens who were inappropriately registered to vote.” A federal judge has already blocked the DOJ from using a federal database to search voter rolls, finding that officials had unlawfully shared Social Security records and risked misidentifying eligible voters. Taken together with the earlier ICE raids, the subpoenas and what Donald Trump just said about Iran and these Southern California counties, it is hard to see this as anything other than a coordinated retribution attack.

But even that was just a very small part of what Donald Trump said. His 1 hour and 23 minute speech was full of lies, rambling, and a very concerning level of cognitive deterioration. Donald Trump is doing what desperate people always do, but he is also falling apart in front of our very eyes.

At one point during the speech, Trump decided to bring up Ronald Reagan and how his slogan, “Make America Great Again,” was something that he had come up with himself in 2015. And then he added that “Somebody said no, that was Ronald Reagan. No, no, his was uh, ‘Let’s make America great.’ There’s a big difference. And he never used it too, so he didn’t.”

His thoughts and words were a bit garbled, but they were also 100% untrue. Ronald Reagan did use the phrase. “Let’s Make America Great Again” was one of his 1980 presidential campaign slogans. Trump took a slogan that had already been used by another Republican president, dropped the “Let’s,” built the entire MAGA political movement around it, and now he is insisting that somehow he invented it. It is such a small lie compared with everything else he said tonight, but it is also a perfect example of how Donald Trump operates. History becomes whatever he says it is, and the truth becomes whatever he needs it to be. And he expects everyone around him to just go along with it.

He spent time during his remarks boasting about Venezuela, saying, “1 hour and 48 minutes it took us. Nobody killed. Nobody killed. They don’t talk about that.” He was complaining about the “fake news,” or what he is now calling the “artificial news,” for never reporting all of his amazing accomplishments. But he conveniently left out the Americans who have died in his other war, the one in Iran that he doesn’t want to talk about. At least 19 American service members have been killed, and he didn’t mention a single one of them tonight.

His other big moment came when he announced an executive order expanding access to red-dyed diesel, a tax-exempt fuel used by farmers and off-road vehicles. Before getting on his plane to Nebraska, he was asked about red-dyed diesel and admitted he didn’t know anything about it. Hours later, he was signing an executive order about it, a policy written specifically for the agricultural audience sitting in front of him. But in true Donald Trump fashion, he managed to expose himself here too. Just as he was about to sign it, he said to the entire room, “Do you know what that is? I don’t know what the hell it is, but whatever it is, it’s supposed to be very good. Does anybody want to explain that?” He then signed it anyway without understanding what he was even doing.

Just as he was signing it, he turned to Senator Pete Ricketts and Governor Jim Pillen and said, “Pete and Jim, this should absolutely assure your election. I guarantee you that.” He didn’t even try to hide what he was doing right then, signing an executive order to help elect Republicans.

He also talked about sending federal money to Nebraska and how it feels like a personal favor he was doing for the governor and how much he doesn’t like to be asked for money. He made it a recurring theme throughout the speech, coming back to it multiple times. The first time, saying, “He calls me all the time, always looking for money for this state. I hate it.” He then imitated a phone call from Ricketts about flood relief. “Sir, it’s been horrible. We had a flood. Could you send us 25 million? I said to Pete, that’s a lot of money, but you know, I won it (Nebraska) three times. I say, the hell with it. Give him the money.” Later, he came back to it again. “He wants money every time it rains.” He described a request for drought relief the same way. “It’s a little, just a little money instead of a lot. He says it’s tremendous crop destruction. Please send us 5 million.” Federal disaster relief is not a gift from the president. It belongs to the people and is funded by taxpayers. The fact that he frames it as something he hands out because Nebraska voted for him tells every state that didn’t vote for him exactly where they stand in his eyes.

djt george washington signing 8 15 2026President Trump in August published the message above portraying himself as an American co-founder coequal to the nation's Revolutionary War leader and first President Georg Washington.

He also declared that he is the greatest president in American history. “I said, what about Washington and Lincoln?” he said of a supposed prior conversation. “And they say, you’re better, sir. You’re better.” He paused and smiled. “I don’t know if it’s true, but I’ll tell you, it got to be, cuz there has been no president that’s done more in the first two years than President Trump.”

The crowd chanted “four more years” at one point, and Trump leaned into it, saying that he has Trump 2028 hats just to antagonize the Democrats. “Oh, they go crazy. You know, we have a hat. It says four more years. Another one. Trump 2028… the radical left is going, ‘No, no, I’m telling you, he’s not going to leave. He’s not leaving… We’ve driven them crazy. They’re sick individuals.”

Throughout the speech, he continued to call Democrats, “dumocrats” and “communists.” He said he had “skipped socialism” and gone straight to communist. He used the word over and over, trying to make sure everyone would now consider every single Democrat a communist.

While Donald Trump was acting out his worst impulses in Nebraska, an interview that aired this past weekend on 60 Minutes was getting increasing attention. Thom Tillis, a Republican senator who decided not to run for reelection, has been making the rounds ahead of the release of his new book. During the interview, he said at least 30 of his Republican colleagues in the Senate have privately expressed serious reservations about Trump’s actions, but that the executive branch has stripped them of their independence by threatening primary challenges if they step out of line.

Tillis warned that without checks on that power, “we will have a sort of dictator king if we’re not careful.” He predicted an “electoral bloodbath” for Republicans in the midterms. When he was asked if he worries about how Trump might react to a bad election night, given what happened on January 6, Tillis said, “I think there’s a risk. I really do.”

They know. The Republicans cowering behind Donald Trump know what is coming. They must have also seen what he said tonight and watched more nails being driven into his political coffin while he was still talking. Donald Trump has promised more of these events ahead of the midterms. A lot more of them. And this is a good thing for those of us who love this country. We need him talking. We need as many people as possible to see the depths this man is willing to go to hold onto power, even if that means throwing his own fellow Americans at the feet of our enemies.

The walls continue to close in on Donald Trump. Nothing, not the polling numbers, the economy, or the growing cracks inside his own party, has been good for him. But this is all good news for us. Because it means we still have an opening. It means that if we show up and get enough people out to vote, we can slow down his destruction and begin the long process of rebuilding this country. It will not be quick, and it will not be easy. No single election can fix what has been broken. But it’s a start, and it is going to take every single one of us deciding that a president who tells a cheering crowd that our cities and the people living inside them are a small price to pay does not get to keep the Congress that enables him.

That is where our power is right now. It is in what we do over these next 29 days. It is in every door we knock on, person we talk to, voter we help get to the polls, and every single one of us refusing to believe that what we are watching can’t be stopped. Because we can stop it and we will. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too. 

The Contrarian, Words & Phrases: A Crazy Rant Isn’t a ‘Speech’ or an ‘Interview,’ Jennifer Rubin, right, jennifer rubin new headshotOct. 6, 2026. 🚨 28 Days to the Midterms 🚨

Donald Trump’s political toxicity, rampant illegality, and utter incompetence should not obscure a bigger worry: namely, that he is stone-cold nuts. Yet the legacy media continue to use language to describe his “speeches” as ordinary political addresses and “interviews” as within the realm of normal presidential interactions with the press.

contrarian logoDonald Trump’s political toxicity, rampant illegality, and utter incompetence should not obscure a bigger worry: namely, that he is stone-cold nuts. Yet the legacy media continue to use language to describe his “speeches” as ordinary political addresses and “interviews” as within the realm of normal presidential interactions with the press.

Legacy media’s sanewashing of Trump’s campaign appearances as “speeches” bears less and less resemblance to the reality of his verbal incontinence, evidenced in recent campaign blather about Iran:

We did it in one night with those beautiful B-2 bombers. They left Missouri. They flew both ways, 37 hours. They were refueling. We have the greatest tankers. We have the greatest military in the world. They went from Missouri and then at one o’clock in the morning, with no moon, dark as can be, these unbelievable machines led by the most incredible pilots in the world, they unloaded every single bomb, went right down air chutes into this, uh, drug factories, really. That’s what they were doing. They were nuclear and drugs. They were doing drugs, but they were doing the nuclear. These drug factories/nuclear factories were hit so hard.

When he unilaterally dragged us into a war, did he think we were attacking “drug factories” (or did he think the Iranians were “doing drugs”)? Examination of his unedited verbal vomit should provoke further, frightful questions about the 25th Amendment.

What we get from legacy media, instead, is the sort of New York Times’ light-hearted trip down nostalgia lane in lieu of exacting coverage of his crazed appearance in Mobile, Alabama on Friday. One had to search for independent media to uncover full accounts of his crazed rants.

Trump was more unhinged in Ohio on Saturday, where Trump blathered about James Talarico: “I see that ‘Tala-freako’ in Texas. So he’s been a vaygan' all his life. He’s a vaygan vaygan, I didn’t even know what the hell a vaygan was. A vaygan is vegetables. A vaygan is eating a piece of lettuce all day long.” Ignoring his apparent ignorance of the word ‘vegan,’ the nature of his obscene, irrelevant insults suggests a complete loss of impulse control. These are not “speeches,” but rather psychological breakdowns. But, unfortunately, you would not know it from mainstream media coverage. He was back at it in Nebraska on Monday with more unhinged rambling. (“With the war, it’s just artificial. It’s a little bit high. It’s a small price to pay ... let them take out Los Angeles, let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay.”)

Similarly, Trump’s encounter last week with TIME was routinely labeled an “interview.” But an “interview” denotes responsive answers — not a stream of non sequiturs, insults, and outbursts. A few commentators ventured that the session was “grievance”-filled or “emotional,” but even those descriptions falsely suggest some orderly presentation of reality-based complaints in response to questions.

By lopping off his full replies and interweaving explanatory narrative, reporters often wind up sanitizing Trump’s babbling, as TIME did:

He said he regretted appointing Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, after they ruled against him on tariffs, mail ballots, and birthright citizenship. “I gave them the position of a lifetime,” he said, “and they voted against me often.” On his expectation of fealty, he was unapologetic: “I do like loyalty, yeah.” Again and again, he returned to the condition of the White House itself, complaining that his predecessors had left the building in disrepair and deriding Barack Obama as someone who “doesn’t know if something’s dirty or clean.”

They also posted the original, “lightly edited” transcript, which was exponentially crazier:

You said [Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Coney Barrett] were like shells of their former selves. Do you regret nominating them?

Yeah. Yeah. What can I do? I put them in. They voted against me too often. I was very—I gave them the position of a lifetime, and they vote against me often. They vote for me too. The Democrats stick like glue—those three, they virtually never vary. You can come up with the worst thing in the world and they’ll vote as a group. And while I don’t like it, there’s something I admire about it: there’s loyalty. So they have loyalty to Barack Hussein Obama. They have loyalty to Biden, even though Biden doesn’t even know who the hell they are. He wouldn’t know. He doesn’t even know what the Supreme Court is. And me, I gave them the chance of a lifetime, and it’s unfortunate what they did.

Is that—

It’s unfortunate what they did—not to me, to our country. Birthright citizenship. It’s becoming a major industry now. People are making millions and millions of dollars, and we’re losing trillions of dollars. And it’s become a corrupt business, all because of the Supreme Court decision. That decision was for the babies of slaves. Look at where it was—look at where it was approved. It wasn’t for Chinese people, wealthy or unwealthy, coming, you know, pouring into our country. And this tariff decision again, all they had to do was a little clause saying any money paid does not have to be paid back…would have saved $400 billion. They chose not to save that.

You mentioned the word loyalty a moment ago. Is that what you want from your Supreme Court picks?

I do like loyalty, yeah.

Is that what you want from your Supreme Court justices?

No, I don’t want loyalty. I want good decisions. The tariff decision was disastrous for the country. I want good decisions for the country.

Sir, do you care about—

They’ve treated me. . . . Look, I put these people in. It is what it is. Very disappointing, very disappointing for the country—their decisions. And the country knows it. Very disappointing for the country. The other ones—they stick like glue. It’s unbelievable, right?

The Mob boss mentality, lack of logical connection between sentence fragments, self-contradictions, and elementary-school-level vocabulary in a froth of vicious anger reflect a deeply unwell mind — albeit notably less so absent in the sanitized version. Obsessive efforts to explain what Trump must mean are indicative of PR; not journalism. It takes a heavy hand and no small amount of spin, for example, to transform his rant on his disastrous war into: “In Trump’s telling, he is simply doing what has to be done, even when that means breaking foundational promises to his voters. He campaigned as a president of peace, but is now waging a war he says was necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

Aaron Rupar, who assiduously records and posts Trump’s and his minions’ remarks arguably more thoroughly than any journalist, recommended (of the transcript) that we “read this to get a sense of the president’s grave cognitive impairment.” As he put it, “Trump is either unwilling or unable (or maybe both) to answer the questions he’s actually asked, so he just rants and raves while the interviewers do their best to provide structure to his random brain firings.”

As he ages, Trump’s decline will continue (maybe accelerate), meaning this is likely the “best” version of Trump we will see from here on out. Billionaire-owned media has essentially covered up that national crisis, refusing to acknowledge that he is deteriorating mentally and emotionally, just as he is physically (evidenced by bruising, swollen ankles, consistent somnolence).

Responsible coverage would highlight his mental unfitness daily, provide ample extracts of rants, and play them back to Republicans’ faces. Conscientious journalists, at the very least, could stop calling unhinged rants “speeches” and vitriolic outbursts “answers to interview questions.”

 

bulwark morning shots logoMorning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The President’s Palmetto Preoccupation, William Kristol, right, Oct. 1, 2026. william bill kristol imdbThe nineteenth-century American writer Henry David Thoreau famously claimed that “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

bulwark logo big shipI’ve always thought this assertion unfair, even untrue. But it’s neither unfair nor untrue to observe that one man, Donald J. Trump, is today exhibiting clear signs of not-at-all-quiet desperation.

Yesterday afternoon, for example, Trump was engaged in a typical flurry of posts alternately attacking the media and promising $5,000 to Americans if they re-elect Republican majorities in Congress. And then out of the blue came an attack on the Democratic senate nominee in South Carolina:

Annie “Trannie” Andrews is running against our wonderful Darline Graham for the Senate in South Carolina. . . . Darline is a High Quality person, maybe the Highest, and Annie Trannie is not, in particular, as it pertains to representing the Values of the Great People of South Carolina—She is in favor of Transgender for Everyone, Open Borders, Defunding the Police, High Taxes, a Weak Military, and will absolutely fight to take your guns away—In other words, she is against our Great Second Amendment! Trannie is not for South Carolina, and South Carolina must show, in the upcoming Election, that it is not for her. VOTE FOR DARLINE GRAHAM—SHE HAS MY COMPLETE AND TOTAL ENDORSEMENT, AND WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN! President DONALD J. TRUMP

Before going on to explain Trump’s sudden interest in the South Carolina contest [Ed. note, where his target, Dr. Annie Andrews, is the Democratic nominee for U.S. senator, a mother of three and a physician running against the sister of the late accused customer of at least one transexual prostitute who has described their interaction], I do want to note that his bigotry is of course revolting. In a civilized era, it would be shocking to see it coming from a president of the United States. But we do not live in a civilized era. In a non-cowardly era, the slur would be denounced by Republicans as well as Democrats. But we do not live in a non-cowardly era. In a better era, Andrews’s Republican opponent, Sen. Darline Graham, would step up to criticize a supporter for using the term. But we do not live in a better era.

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Why, though, this sudden attack on Dr. Annie Andrews, of all people? She’s running for a supposedly safe Republican seat. And since she knows that she needs to win Trump voters over to have a path to victory, she’s actually been sparing in her own attacks on Trump. Consider her response to Trump’s post yesterday:

As a mom and a pediatrician, I’m in this race to fight for my patients, my three kids, and South Carolina. And I’m going to work with anyone to put South Carolina first, because lowering costs and making life better for families across our state is going to take all of us working together. If you care more about your bills than the politics in Washington, this campaign is for you.

So why was Andrews on Trump’s mind? He hasn’t been to South Carolina recently, and isn’t scheduled to go soon. When Natalie Harp (presumably) sent the post on his behalf at 5:23 p.m. yesterday, she and her boss were on Air Force One, heading to Nebraska, where Trump was going to campaign for that state’s endangered Republican, Sen. Pete Ricketts.

So why the rhetorical detour to South Carolina? I’d like to think that it was because yesterday, on Tim Miller’s podcast, I went out on a limb and suggested that Andrews had a real chance to win. Could it be that Trump was watching the most recent Bulwark Daily podcast on Air Force One?

Who knows? Only Natalie, I suppose. But. I suspect the explanation is simple: In recent political updates from staff, Trump has been told that South Carolina looked surprisingly competitive.

And it is. The two most recent public polls on the South Carolina race, one of them from a decidedly Republican-friendly firm, have Graham leading by only one point. A news story over the weekend noted that “Republicans, for their part, said they expected Ms. Graham to need a financial boost to secure a win in the end,” and that there were “conversations about getting more help for Darline.” And then, just this morning, Axios reported that the main Republican Senate super PAC is shifting $5 million to South Carolina to help Graham.

It seems President Trump and I are not the only ones who reached the conclusion that South Carolina is in play. And with a wave of the sort we’re seeing, why shouldn’t it be? After all, Trump won Nebraska in 2024 by a wider margin than South Carolina, and he was in Nebraska last night trying to help save that Republican incumbent. And last weekend’s New York Times/Siena polls had Democratic senate candidates up by seven and six points in Alaska and Texas, and South Carolina was only about five points more Republican in 2024 than those two states.

So with a wave this real, and this big, and probably still getting bigger, even South Carolina could be swept away. And so Trump is living a life of noisy desperation.

Thoreau remarks later on in Walden that “It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.” Trump is not a man of wisdom. He will say and do desperate things over the next four weeks, and over the next two years. So while enjoying the change in circumstances that is making Trump desperate, we should also prepare for the dangers we’ll face from a desperate and unhinged megalomaniac in control of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States.

Sen. Annie Andrews—along with her colleagues—will have her work cut out for her over the next couple of years.

djt epstein birthday card

The collage above portrays Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein and a notorious birthday card that Trump sent Epstein some two decades ago addressed "to a Terrific Guy," illustrated with a seemingly naked portrayal of a young female.

Martin Vasquez via Medium, New October 2026 Palm Beach Case Accuses Trump of Rape While Epstein Watched, Martin D. Vasquez, Oct. 5, 2026. A Kentucky woman’s complaint faces steep procedural hurdles, but it adds to the pressure on the Justice Department to account for what remains hidden in the Epstein files.

A Kentucky woman’s complaint faces steep procedural hurdles, but it adds to the pressure on the Justice Department to account for what remains hidden in the Epstein files.

A new civil lawsuit filed on October 2nd in Palm Beach County alleges that Donald Trump raped a young woman in a Florida hotel while Jeffrey Epstein was present. The complaint describes a violent assault and is among the most graphic accusations ever filed against Trump in court. It arrives after the Supreme Court declined to disturb the verdict finding Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll. The new case has a difficult road ahead. It lands, though, in the middle of a larger legal fight over what the Justice Department is still holding back in the Epstein files. That fight includes Katie Phang v. Todd Blanche, where records that mention Trump remain at the center of the dispute.

What the Complaint Alleges

The plaintiff is Elyse Relford of Georgetown, Kentucky, and she is representing herself. The case was assigned number 50-2026-CA-011136-XXXA-MB in the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit.

The complaint alleges that in or about 1997, Relford was at a hotel in Florida with Epstein and Trump. It says she told Trump her birthday was the next day and that she was disappointed she could not celebrate it. It alleges that Trump then raped her, causing bleeding and severe physical injury. According to the complaint, Trump repeatedly taunted her by pretending to be her biological father. It alleges he knew Epstein had separated her from her father. The complaint also alleges that Trump made a racist remark about her, and that Epstein replied by remarking on her wealth.

The suit brings four counts: sexual battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, defamation, and harassment. It seeks $1.3 million in compensatory damages plus costs and other relief.

The complaint does not name the hotel or give an exact date. It does not state Relford’s age at the time. Its defamation count does not identify any specific statement Trump made about her.

Trump has not filed a response, and no attorney has appeared for him. He has consistently denied any wrongdoing connected to Epstein. All of the claims in the complaint are allegations that have not been tested in court.

The Obstacles in Front of the Case

The Palm Beach County Clerk placed it on hold because of a deficiency in the civil cover sheet. Self-represented filers must meet the same filing and service rules as licensed attorneys. Until the hold is cleared and Trump is properly served, he has no obligation to answer..

Why Discovery Is the Real Question

Discovery is the process that forces parties to hand over documents and sit for depositions. It is what turns a lawsuit into a source of new information. In practice, cases dismissed at the pleading stage rarely reach meaningful discovery. Defendants routinely ask courts to pause discovery while a motion to dismiss is pending.

Even if this case survived, discovery would not reach the Epstein files directly. Those records belong to the Justice Department and the FBI, which are not parties to the suit. A private litigant seeking federal records must go through the department’s own approval process for subpoenas to federal employees and records. The department can refuse and force a separate court fight. It is the same department that is currently fighting to end the Phang case.

So the Relford complaint is unlikely to pry open the Epstein files on its own. What it does is add another public allegation tying Trump to Epstein. That puts more weight on the cases that can actually reach the records.

Where Phang v. Blanche Stands

On October 1st, Attorney General Todd Blanche asked U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan to end Katie Phang’s lawsuit on the pleadings.

Phang sued under the Administrative Procedure Act. She argues that the department’s decisions about what to release, redact, and withhold were final agency actions that violated the Epstein Files Transparency Act. In June, Sullivan granted her preliminary injunctive relief. He rejected the administration’s argument that the case was over because the department had declared its release complete.

The department produced about 3.5 million pages and announced compliance on January 30th. Sullivan’s June opinion noted that none of the productions came with a privilege log, even though the department had promised one. The opinion also noted that the department invoked deliberative process, attorney work product, and attorney-client privileges. Those grounds are not among the narrow categories the statute allows.

The statute is direct on the points that matter most here. It required the attorney general to publish all unclassified Epstein-related records held by the Justice Department, the FBI, and U.S. attorneys’ offices. It bars withholding records because of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity. It requires a written justification for every redaction, published in the Federal Register and sent to Congress. Phang also alleges that the department has withheld entire records and failed to publish those justifications. She further alleges it declined to review foreign-language documents, which the law does not exempt.

Blanche argues that Congress left enforcement to political oversight rather than private lawsuits. He also argues that Phang lacks standing and that the Freedom of Information Act is the proper tool. Todd Blanche has failed to provide documents that Judge Sullivan has demanded and will likely be held in civil contempt unless an appellate court hears his arguments, which have no basis in law.

The Other Cases Pressing on the Same Records

Phang’s suit is not the only pressure on the department.

On September 30th, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered the Justice Department to expedite FOIA requests filed by the Democracy Defenders Fund. One request seeks Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell investigative records that mention Trump or Mar-a-Lago, including any code names used for either. Another seeks communications about how officials were told to handle references to Trump in those files. It targets communications involving former Attorney General Pam Bondi, Blanche, Emil Bove, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Dan Bongino.

The judge found the requests involve widespread and exceptional media interest and possible questions about government integrity. Her opinion considered reporting that roughly 1,000 FBI personnel were directed to review Epstein records and flag mentions of Trump. The court did not find that reporting to be true. The order does not require immediate release, but it moves those requests to the front of the line.

In August, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued the Justice Department and Blanche for unredacted Epstein investigative materials tied to the state’s Zorro Ranch criminal investigation. The state says the federal refusal is obstructing its ability to identify witnesses and pursue crimes. Torrez and Representative Teresa Leger Fernández are also backing a proposed Epstein Files Transparency Act II. It would give survivors, state attorneys general, and prosecutors stronger enforcement tools. That bill has not passed.

How These Cases Connect

Courts do not decide cases based on public pressure. Each of these cases, however, turns on the same question: what does the government hold about Epstein and the people around him, and on what legal basis is it withholding it?

The transparency law was written to prevent the department from withholding records to protect anyone’s reputation, including a sitting president’s. Each new allegation involving Trump and Epstein makes the department’s unexplained redactions harder to defend in public. That holds even when the allegation, like Relford’s, may never be tested in court. It also sharpens what Phang is asking Sullivan to require: a specific, written reason for every redaction.

If Sullivan denies Blanche’s motion, the Phang case moves toward the question of whether each withholding was lawful. If the Democracy Defenders Fund requests are processed on an expedited basis, records about how the department handled Trump references could become public on a separate track. Either outcome would produce more information than the administration has chosen to release so far.

That information may not help the president. It also may not confirm any particular accusation. The department has said its releases include unverified tips and administrative material. Disclosure would show what the government has, not what is true. The point of the transparency law is that the public, and not the attorney general, gets to see the record.

What to Watch

In Palm Beach County, the first signs will be whether the clerk clears the hold and whether Trump is served. After that comes the expected motion to dismiss on limitations grounds. In Washington, the next major development is Sullivan’s ruling on the October 1st motion. Also watch how quickly the department processes the Democracy Defenders Fund requests under Kollar-Kotelly’s order. In New Mexico, the state’s suit for unredacted Zorro Ranch records remains pending.

 More On Trump Governance

 

djt god made trump ad

New York Times, Facing Backlash, Trump Says His Super PAC Will Pay for Taxpayer-Funded Ads, Shane Goldmacher, Theodore Schleifer and Maggie Haberman, Oct. 6, 2026 (print ed.). The president said that his PAC, MAGA, Inc., would pay for TV ads promoting him that had been paid for with taxpayer money.

President Trump reversed course on Monday and announced that his super PAC would now pay for the television ads promoting him that have been airing nationwide at taxpayer expense.

In a post on his social media platform, Mr. Trump wrote, “I have decided to do the Patriotic Ads, among others, and pay for them myself, and with money I raised for MAGA, Inc.”

More than $10 million in taxpayer-funded ads have run since September, according to AdImpact, the ad-tracking service. The ads, which are running on cable and network television, were paid for through a $20 million contract that used funds from the Department of Homeland Security.

Democrats — and some Republicans — have criticized the ads as a possible violation of federal laws for using taxpayer funds for “publicity or propaganda purposes.” The ads were broadcast in the heat of the campaign for the midterms, as Republicans are trying to hold control of Congress. At least one of the ads featured footage that originally had appeared in a 2024 Trump campaign video.

The White House had defended the ads as simply public service announcements. But the use of material that had originated in a campaign provided further fuel to critics of the ads.Sign up to get Maggie Haberman's articles emailed to you. Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent reporting on President Trump. Get it sent to your inbox.

There were four different ads and each featured an unusual disclaimer: “Paid for by the U.S. government.”

One of them featured images of Mr. Trump as the song “Love Me” by Christian Berishaj played. The artist, who performs as JMSN, has complained about the use of his song.

The New York Times wrote over the weekend that Mr. Trump had personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads. Federal records show that U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which falls under the Department of Homeland Security, awarded a contract to LMD, a Maryland marketing firm, on Sept. 20.

Mr. Trump referred to the backlash in his post.

“The Radical Left is upset with the fact that I am taking Ads, which I consider to be a positive promotion for our Great U.S.A., and paying for them with U.S.A. money,” he wrote, defending them as “a rather standard thing to do.”

The White House did not immediately respond to an email for comment or how the president’s super PAC would pay for the ads. A spokesman for MAGA Inc. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Trump’s claim in his social media post that he would pay for the ads “myself” through his super PAC is likely to add fodder to another formal complaint against the president.

A campaign watchdog group, the Campaign Legal Center, accused Mr. Trump of violating federal election laws by directing his super PAC in a complaint to the Federal Election Commission because of his previous claims to control the super PAC.

Mr. Trump has referred to the super PAC’s funds has “my money that I control” in the past.

Federal law bars federal office holders from directing spending decisions for a political organization with no contribution limits, such as a super PAC. 

New York Times, Trump Does Not Plan to Reimburse Taxpayers for Promotional Ads, Shane Goldmacher and Maggie Haberman, Oct. 6, 2026. A day after the president said his super PAC would pay for the ads, which had drawn bipartisan backlash, officials said that he meant moving forward. A new taxpayer-funded ad aired Tuesday.

A day after President Trump said his super PAC would pay for television ads promoting him that had been funded by taxpayers, White House officials said the group did not plan to reimburse the government for the more than $10 million it had already spent on the ads.

Mr. Trump announced on Monday evening that he was planning to have his super PAC, MAGA Inc., pay for the ads, which had drawn backlash from members of both parties. The White House officials later said that his promise would only apply “moving forward.”

Then, on Tuesday, a new taxpayer-funded ad — bragging about the American success in taking out Venezuela’s former leader Nicolás Maduro — began airing on television. The new ad features Mr. Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Officials in both parties have criticized the ads, which are being aired amid a heated midterm campaign. And some have said they could violate federal laws for using taxpayer funds for “publicity or propaganda purposes.” One of the ads included footage that had originally appeared in a 2024 Trump campaign video.

Facing backlash for the use of public funds for the promotional ads, Mr. Trump appeared to retreat on Monday, posting a message on Truth Social while en route to a rally in Nebraska. He wrote, “I have decided to do the Patriotic Ads, among others, and pay for them myself, and with money I raised for MAGA, Inc.”

A White House spokesperson said on Tuesday that “the president’s Truth was not referring to reimbursement.”

When Mr. Trump posted the message, more than $10 million of such ads had run, according to AdImpact, the ad-tracking service.

When Mr. Trump was asked on Tuesday if he would reimburse the government for the ads, he demurred and defended them as “promotion for the country” and said “we’ll decide.”

As of midday Tuesday, nearly $11.5 million has run, including a small sum for the new 60-second ad about the Venezuela operation. So far about $17,000 had been spent on the new ad, which began airing in the early hours of the day.

Most of the funds so far — $7.2 million — have paid for an ad that reused material from his 2024 campaign that casts Mr. Trump’s detractors as “villains.”

The ads are running nationally on cable and network television and paid for through a $20 million contract that uses funds from the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Trump personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads.

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, called for an investigation into the payments for the ads. “It’s not enough to simply have his super PAC slush fund foot the bill — an illegal action itself,” he said in a statement. “Trump must return this money to the American people and there must be a full investigation into this gross waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars.”

The White House did not respond to questions about whether the administration was canceling any or all of the remaining money planned on the ads. The White House also did not answer questions about whether Mr. Trump planned to have his super PAC pay for ads that have run after his post on Monday.

But the declaration from the president is a rare reversal in a second administration in which Mr. Trump has governed by gut instinct and a refusal to accept norms or most limits on executive power. The ads drew criticism from Democrats and some Republicans as an inappropriate use of taxpayer dollars; the spots tend to glorify the president rather than focus on any specific policy item.

More On Global Affairs 

New York Times, Potential Iranian Drone Attack Led to Exit of U.S. Aircraft from British Air Base, Eric Schmitt and Julian E. Barnes, Oct. 6, 2026 (print ed.). According to U.S. and British officials, 12 B-1 Air Force bombers from R.A.F. Fairford air base were withdrawn because of the risk of a drone attack ordered by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The United States abruptly withdrew all 12 B-1 Air Force bombers from an air base in southern England based on new information that commanders received about a potential drone attack ordered by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to U.S. and British officials.

The suspected attack was part of a complex, multipronged Iranian plot to strike aircraft and kill some of the several hundred American personnel stationed at the base, R.A.F. Fairford, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. All of the Air Force bombers were withdrawn over the weekend.

Some of the officials said they believed that the plot was loosely modeled on an audacious attack that Ukraine launched against Russia last year when it smuggled drones deep into the Russian heartland and launched them from semi trucks. The attack destroyed or damaged at least a dozen aircraft, including many of Moscow’s nuclear-capable strategic bombers, on runways in Siberia and Russia’s Far North.

Vice President JD Vance said on Monday that the Pentagon quickly moved the bombers “out of an abundance of caution trying to protect our guys.” He accused Iran of plotting attacks against the United States but stopped short of commenting on any details about the most recent threat.

“We do feel with some confidence that the Iranians are trying to do what the Iranian state has done for 49 years, which is engage in acts of terrorism against the United States and against a lot of other people as well,” Mr. Vance told reporters at Joint Base Andrews before leaving on a trip to Alaska. “We are being extremely cautious.”Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Iran and the United Kingdom? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

President Trump said on Monday that people linked to Iran posed a threat to the U.S. bombers at the British air base, prompting the order to return them to the United States. “There were some threats,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “Why should we leave them there?” he added, referring to the bombers.

The Wall Street Journal earlier reported the drone threat as the reason for the withdrawal.

The sudden pullout of the bombers came a week after the British police arrested five men who had been traveling the morning of Sept. 27 in white vans near the base, which has been used by American bombers in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. The men were released on bail a day later after the authorities did not discover explosives in the vans.

But the police have repeatedly said the men remain under investigation, and a British-Iranian dual national was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts.

The rushed order to withdraw the bombers was highly unusual: Such moves are rarely made so quickly from an allied air base in a peacetime country thousands of miles from a combat zone.

Indeed, the need to move the bombers from the base was deemed so urgent that some of the planes and their flight crews left while aerial refueling aircraft were still being deployed to support their flights to the United States, American officials said.

Many details about the potential threat that prompted the rapid withdrawal of the Air Force bombers, some of which had arrived just in the past week as part of a regular rotation of forces, remained murky on Monday. One U.S. official said the new information was part of the same threat warnings that surfaced three weeks ago, though a sense of urgency spiked over the weekend, alarming commanders.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham said last week that the British government believed Iran played a part in planning the events that led to the arrests. U.S. and British officials, as well as those in Germany and Israel, believe the operation is connected to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps or a separate military headquarters in Tehran. Iran has denied the accusations.

New York Times, Strikes, Barricades and Fiscal Turmoil: An Autumn of Discontent Grips France, Mark Landler, Oct. 6, 2026. Chaos in schools, on the streets and in the markets is rooted in France’s struggles to fund its social welfare state, with a presidential election approaching.

Striking public workers. Barricaded high schools. Blocked ports. Budget paralysis. Spiraling bond rates. Fears of a far-right takeover.

France suddenly finds itself engulfed by crisis — not a single spasm of unrest, but a cascade of disruption that is roiling city streets, trading floors and public offices across the country. France’s “rentrée,” or “return,” as the French call the back-to-school and back-to-work season, has been anything but orderly.

While the causes of the chaos may appear disparate, they can be traced to a common root: France’s two-decade-long struggle to fund its state, now exacerbated by high borrowing costs, surging fuel prices and political uncertainty, with jockeying underway to replace President Emmanuel Macron next spring.

French public finances, already fragile, continue to deteriorate, fanning fears in financial markets that France could be the next European country to tumble into a full-blown financial crisis. The fiscal jitters were amplified by recent polls that show the far-right candidate, Marine Le Pen, would beat all her rivals in presidential elections that will be held next spring.

On Tuesday, teachers and other public workers plan rallies against proposed wage freezes as the government labors to pass a budget. They will join thousands of students who have blockaded schools to protest underfunding that has led to crumbling facilities and a shortage of teachers.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

 

U.S. 2026 Midterm elections

New York Times, Texas Pediatricians Face Paxton Investigations for Vaccinating Children, Christina Jewett, Oct. 6, 2026 (print ed.). Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general and Republican Senate candidate, has alleged a sprawling profit-driven conspiracy. Pediatricians say the accusations are an attempt at intimidation.

It was a bustling Monday morning at a little pediatrician’s office in central Texas. Children with rashes, fevers and runny noses cycled through exam rooms decorated with butterflies, planets and colorful maps. The doctor, who had been treating kids in the community for 20 years, was delighted when a woman she had cared for as a child came in with her newborn.

Until recently, she had planned to continue her practice for years to come. But this year, she has begun to ken paxton mugreconsider amid the stress and legal costs of defending herself in a statewide investigation by Ken Paxton, left, the attorney general of Texas and Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, who has accused doctors, drug companies and insurers of conspiring to push parents into vaccinating children.

She agreed to be interviewed and allowed a reporter to visit her practice but asked to be identified by her middle name, Rachel, to protect her from retaliation.

In December, Dr. Rachel received a letter from the attorney general’s Consumer Protection Division demanding her vaccine purchase records over the past 10 years. “The division believes that you are in possession, custody or control” of material, “involving potential misleading or deceptive acts regarding incentives associated with the administration of childhood vaccines,” it said, adding that such acts could be in violation of the state’s deceptive trade practices law.

The letter also requested her practice’s vaccine policy, and said that it would not be sufficient to cite the childhood vaccine schedule recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mr. Paxton has also implicated the nation’s largest organization of pediatricians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, in the alleged conspiracy over the workaday task of protecting children from polio, measles, meningitis and more than a dozen other dangerous and sometimes life-threatening diseases.

“I will ensure that Big Pharma and Big Insurance don’t bribe medical providers to pressure parents to jab their kids with vaccines they feel aren’t safe or necessary,” he said when announcing the investigation in January, describing his efforts as working “alongside President Trump” and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“Together, we will Make America Healthy Again,” he said, using the rallying cry of a movement that helped elect Mr. Trump and propel Mr. Kennedy into the top health position in the federal government.

In many ways, pediatricians, among the lowest-paid specialists in medicine, make for an unlikely target. But they have become a focus in what has become a wide-ranging campaign to raise doubts about vaccination, part of a 20-year quest for Mr. Kennedy that some of his political allies have joined.

The efforts have gained steam despite decades of evidence of the effectiveness of vaccines. More than 1.1 million deaths, from diseases like diphtheria, hepatitis B and measles, were prevented by childhood vaccines in the United States from 1994 through 2023, according to an estimate from the C.D.C.

Unlike many organizations that have drawn fire from the Trump administration and its surrogates, the 67,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics has not retreated. It has sued the Trump administration over policy changes and grant cancellations, with some success so far.

New York Times, How Alaska’s Fish Became a Defining Issue for the Midterms, Anna Griffin, Visuals by Kerry Tasker, Oct. 6, 2026. In the battle for an Alaska Senate seat and the governor’s mansion, the oil-dependent state’s declining fisheries loom large, but no one wants to look at the biggest culprit, climate change.

Like corn in Iowa and cattle in Oklahoma, fish are always a hot topic in Alaska. This year, they could help determine which party controls the Senate.

Former Representative Mary Peltola ended a nearly half-century Republican hold on Alaska’s lone House seat four years ago campaigning on “fish, family and freedom,” a phrase that was treated as something of a cute joke in Washington but was deadly serious back home. As politicians of all parties know, Alaska’s fisheries are central to the state’s fragile economy and facing an extraordinary convergence of threats.

In Alaska’s Senate race, Ms. Peltola has accused Senator Dan Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, of putting “Seattle-based factory trawlers ahead of Alaskan families and our rivers.” She has doubled down on her fishing-first platform with a proposal to ban out-of-state trawlers, massive vessels that sweep the Bering Sea with funnel-shaped nets and process their catch onboard.

Mr. Sullivan has promoted his work to reduce the accidental catch of juvenile salmon and halibut, and has targeted Russian and Chinese fishing fleets that he says undercut Alaska fishermen.

“We are both talking about our fisheries in this campaign, but the difference is, I’ve actually done things to help protect them,” Mr. Sullivan said at a September Kodiak Chamber of Commerce debate focused entirely on fisheries.

A chorus of candidates for other offices, including governor and the House, has joined the fight — though few in oil-dependent Alaska are as eager with ideas for combating what scientists say is the broader threat, climate change and warming waters.ImageDan Sullivan and Mary Peltola participated in a fisheries debate on Kodiak Island last month.ImageMs. Peltola accused Senator Dan Sullivan of putting “Seattle-based factory trawlers ahead of Alaskan families and our rivers.”

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, Dems Up 11 In Gallup Party ID, Troy Jackson Up 4 In Maine, “Elections are decided in November, but they’re won in October,” Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 6, 2026. With 4 weeks to go, all the data is pointing to a good election for us. We’ve seen it in the overperformances in special, local, and state elections of all kinds in states all across the country since early last year.

We’ve seen it in the heightened Democratic performance in the primary vote in state after state throughout 2026. We’ve seen it in the many, many Republican retirements from the Senate and House this year. We’ve seen it in the voter registration data from the past few months. We are seeing it in the national polls, battleground state polls, the generic ballot polls, and are starting to see it in the early Early Vote data too. We are seeing it in the lowest consumer sentiment readings we’ve seen in 65 years. We are seeing it in how Rs are already abandoning battleground states and districts that Trump won in 2024, and we are seeing in the panicky on-the- record and blind quotes we are seeing from Republicans in story and after story, day after day after day.

My main point to this morning is that there is a mountain of data, from all sorts of sources, all pointing in the same direction my friends - that it is going to be a good election for us, and a bad election for them - without any really serious outliers or challenging data that you can point too.

We got more affirming data and events this morning. Here’s a big one - the venerable Gallup quarterly Party ID series dropped this am. It has Dems up 50%-39% in the third quarter of 2026, fully 15 points higher than q4 of 2024. Just look at the trend lines of this graph (!!!!!), and note that we are just below our highest mark in the last 35 years:

A new high-quality Marist poll has Troy Jackson ahead and over 50% in Maine, and the fundamentals there really favoring us:

What we are seeing in the early Early Vote so far is exactly what we thought we would see in the data - Democrats running ahead of 2022 and 2024:

As we start diving into the Early Vote data in the coming weeks always keep in mind that the unaffiliated or independent category will be running much more Democratic this year than 2022 or 2024, so the Dem advantage will be even greater than the Dem/GOP numbers we will see each day.

Trump’s campaign stop in Nebraska yesterday is further confirmation of just how much trouble Republicans are in now. First, that Trump was campaigning the final month in a state he won by 20% points and Senator Pete Ricketts won by 25% just two years ago is astonishing. But also yesterday Trump reminded us that in his desperation, in his addled and incoherent state, that he is likely to say and do things that will further drive the electorate away from Republicans. For while we see how awful, depraved, and insane he is every day most Americans do not see it; and they are not going to like what they see.

In his Nebraska rally Trump implied he would be OK with Iran “taking out” two of the largest cities in America:

And he has ended his illegal ad campaign for closing out the election by breaking laws and cheating is not going to play well with voters:

Finally that quote in today’s headline comes from our ass-kicking friend NC Dem Chair Anderson Clayton in an email she sent to supporters today. It is going to become one our closing mantas here at Hopium: 

The Fight For Democracy in the Trump Era

The Hartmann Report,  Opinion: The Billionaires See the Revolt Coming. Can They Buy Their Way Out Again? Thom Hartmann, right, thom hartmann newOct. 6, 2026. A worldwide backlash against oligarchy is gathering force, while America’s richest pour fortunes into keeping voters angry at everyone but them…

Will the worldwide revolt against oligarchy reach America before the billionaires buy our elections this fall?

hartmann report newTwo weeks ago tomorrow, on September 23rd, Madrid’s police had to cordon off a downtown street to carry an 87-year-old woman named María del Carmen Abascal out of the apartment she’d lived in for seven decades. She normally uses a wheelchair, so they carried her out on a stretcher, which provided some truly inflammatory social media video. All because her landlord wanted to raise the rent, which requires a change of tenants.

The pictures of María being carried out of her apartment lit Spain on fire; she’s become the face of the nation’s housing crisis which has seen average rents nearly double in the past ten years. This past weekend tens of thousands marched again, with about a thousand people camped out in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol: one banner read “Looking for an apartment, selling a kidney.”

While the pressure campaign worked on the landlord, who backed down and agreed to let her go home, it didn’t work on the “conservative” politicians who dominate the Spanish parliament. When Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government proposed emergency tenant protections, the conservative opposition parties joined forces to kill them in parliament. As a result, Sánchez has pretty much been forced into taking the gamble of calling a snap election for November 29th.

Spain is the microcosm, but this is happening all across the developed world. France is on fire because students are tired of their schools being starved for resources. Populist movements are sweeping the European continent.

Forty-five years of “conservative” neoliberalism and austerity — all specifically designed to make the rich richer at the expense of working class people — have left average citizens furious.

And that fury is driving two parallel movements; the big question before us is which one will prevail both this fall here and over the next few years worldwide.

One movement is reflected in the encampment in Puerta del Sol where people understand that the landlord, land speculators, and the morbidly rich are the cause of their pain. You could call this the New Deal movement, for shorthand.

The other is seen in the far-right parties that have been topping the polls in Germany, France, and Britain by telling those same frightened people that it’s not the billionaires that are the problem; it’s that brown-skinned immigrant with a funny name or the queer kid who lives down the street.

Whichever side wins the argument over who’s the villain in today’s economic crisis for working people will be the one that ends up running these countries, including America.

We’ve seen this movie before here in America, although most people have no memory of it and could only vaguely recognize a quick telling of history.

The last time the morbidly rich held as much of our nation’s wealth and political power as they do today was the Gilded Age from the 1880s to the late 1920s, and popular rage at the oligarchs led to real progressive change:

— Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890, and then progressive Republican Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft used it to break up the railroad and oil trusts along with dozens of others.

— The Tillman Act of 1907 made it a crime for corporations to give money or any sort of support to federal candidates for office.

— The income tax arrived in 1913 and the estate tax in 1916, and by the 1930s Franklin Roosevelt was building Social Security, the right to unionize, and the rest of the New Deal on that simple foundation.

— After World War II, democracies around the world copied FDR’s American New Deal formula, and that tightly regulated capitalism along with high taxes on the morbidly rich produced the largest middle class in history.

Then working class people and progressives got complacent, thinking this would be the new normal forever, with a single paycheck being the entrée into the middle class. The oligarchs, however, were just getting started, just like they did during the Industrial Revolution following the Civil War that produced the first Gilded Age.

As I lay out in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy, the counterattack began in 1971 when a corrupt tobacco lawyer named Lewis Powell wrote a memo for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce urging corporate America to step up and use their great wealth to seize control of our courts, campuses, media, low-media-cost low-population states that could be flipped Red, and Congress.

The Heritage Foundation and ALEC followed within two years, as rightwing billionaires started buying radio stations, newspapers, and television networks, while Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, below right, turned the project into government policy.

ronald reagan oThe regulations and tax rates that had restrained great wealth and political corruption came down, and the money and political power of giant corporations and the morbidly rich have largely controlled both our politics and our economy ever since.

Working people noticed they were getting screwed but by then there was a massive rightwing media infrastructure to redirect their anger, probably the oligarchs’ greatest achievement.

For example, when Bush’s 2008 property- and bank-crash set off real rage at the banks and their oligarch CEOs, Koch-funded front groups organized it into the Tea Party and pointed it at Obama and his attempts to give all Americans healthcare.

It hit its peak of success when Donald Trump came down the escalator in 2015, telling voters he didn’t need anybody’s money because, as he put it, “I’m really rich.” Suddenly it wasn’t the rich who were screwing average Americans: it was the rich who’d save us!

To pull it off, he appropriated New Deal and Great Society language, promising to save and even strengthen Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; this is what con men have done throughout history.

The voters wanted their New Deal back with its middle class security on a single paycheck, but, true to Republican form, what they got instead was trillions in tax cuts for billionaires like Trump and his cabinet, paid for with almost a trillion dollars in cuts to Medicaid, an experimental program in six states to further privatize Medicare, and threats to cut Social Security.

One of the most interesting laboratories for finding out whether billionaire money can still buy public opinion the way the Kochs did with the Tea Party is Prop 40 in California, the 5 percent one-time tax on that state’s roughly 230 billionaires that will cover the healthcare shortfall the state will experience because of the Big Beautiful Billionaire’s Bill’s cuts to Medicaid.

A billionaire-backed group has gathered more than $187 million to stop it, while the measure’s backers have only pulled together an estimated $31 million. Google’s Sergey Brin alone has put in over $100 million.

The billionaires’ group even succeeded in getting two decoy measures, Props 41 and 42, on the same ballot, written so that if either one gets more votes than Prop 40, the billionaire tax dies even if a majority of Californians vote for it.

And the ads for the “No on 40” campaign is featuring teachers, firefighters, and the head of the state’s Planned Parenthood affiliates while the “Yes on 40” side says in the official voter guide that actual teachers, nurses, and Planned Parenthood workers support the tax.

It’s the same kind of phony grassroots campaign Reagan used when he promised cutting taxes and killing unions would increase prosperity, and when the Tea Party and GOP warned against “communism” in Obamacare, forcing the end to the possibility of a public option.

This same billionaire and corporate money is now pouring into the Senate races nationwide, using tools the robber barons of the late 19th century could have only dreamed about.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee released a deepfake of Texas Democrat James Talarico in a dress with a disclosure so small and faint that Berkeley digital forensics expert Hany Farid said most people wouldn’t immediately know it was fake. Another group produced a phony “Daisy” ad portraying him as a doctor performing gender surgeries on children.

In Michigan, Republicans greeted Abdul El-Sayed’s primary win with ads built around his full name and the Muslim Brotherhood, and their main super PAC has committed $51 million to that one race. On Sunday, I watched MS NOW play two of the newest deceptive Republican deepfakes, one putting Talarico in a makeup chair and another inventing “terrorists” in El-Sayed’s family.

Spending just on Senate races is projected to pass $3.4 billion this cycle, and most of the big money is just now starting to hit the airwaves and, thus, tightening the races that had seemed were in the bag for Democrats.

And if the lies don’t work, there’s always the power of our currently-billionaire-run government to insert itself in ways that can spin an election out of control. Last September Trump signed a national security memorandum called NSPM-7 that directs the FBI, the Treasury, and the IRS to go after the networks and funders behind what it calls domestic terrorism, and it lists among the “indicators” of that terrorism:

“anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity.”

By that standard, María’s Spanish neighbors camped in a public square to protest a greedy landlord could find themselves under investigation. Add the masked, anonymous, trigger-happy ICE thugs already working our streets with their new electric shock gloves, and the machinery of a “papers, please” society is right here right now.

There’s no way this one single election will settle all this. During the first Gilded Age, it took 45 years to go from the Sherman Act to Social Security — with quite a few lost elections along the way —and the people who won that fight went through it never knowing if they’d prevail or not; the biggest intervention was probably the Republican Great Depression.

But this November is a hinge moment in history. A Congress that can check Trump, a billionaire tax passed in the biggest state in the union, and senators like Talarico and El-Sayed who explicitly have run against the Epstein billionaire class would tell every Republican and the oligarchs who own them that their old trick of pointing at immigrants and trans kids has stopped working.

On the other hand, if the deepfakes, decoy ballot measures, massive rightwing media penetration, algorithmic manipulation on billionaire-owned social media platforms, and billions in ads win out instead, they’ll be used in every election from here on.

The easy lesson here is that if Spain’s protesters got an 87-year-old woman back into her home by showing up, we can do the same for our democracy that’s been so badly battered by 45 years of Republican con men and Democratic neoliberals.

The next No Kings day of action is Saturday, October 17th, and “No Kings” has always meant “No Oligarchs,” too.

Check your registration at vote.org, call your members of Congress through the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 and tell them you want deepfake political ads outlawed, and if you live in California, vote yes on 

The Fight For Democracy in the Trump Era

garrett graff doomsbury1Doomsday Scenario, Historical Commentary: A thirsty Patel juices FBI stats — and DOJ gets Watergate wrong, Garrett M. Graff, above, Oct. 6, 2026. It's not as funny as it sounds.

Two Justice Department nuggets that I want to mention today — two nuggets that may, at first glance, seem both quotidian, even silly, but that together offer an important warning about the coming months:

1. Kash Patel Juices the Stats?

First, here’s the strangest scandal to emerge from newly engaged Kash Patel’s FBI. (Stranger, you might wonder, than the scandals about the customized bottle of bourbon? Okay, maybe not.) But it’s still quite weird: is Patel juicing the arrest stats of the Ten Most Wanted?

FBI logoOn Friday, the Justice Department blasted out a press release about how an alleged Venezuelan Tren de Aragua cybercriminal appeared in court in Nebraska after being apprehended overseas. FBI director Patel, fresh off his latest turn of scandals, bragged that the arrest of Anibal Alexander Canelon Aguirre, the 540th individual added to the bureau’s historic “Top 10 Most Wanted Fugitives” list, itself marked a significant milestone in the FBI’s 110-year war on crime: “Since the start of the Trump administration, we’ve captured TEN of the Top Ten Most Wanted, 2.5 times the number of TMW [the Ten Most Wanted] fugitives captured during the previous four years combined.”

But the arrest also renewed suspicions that Patel is manipulating the Ten Most Wanted list. Traditionally, the “Most Wanted” list has been used to build public awareness, build political pressure on fugitives overseas, or highlight specific threats. Now Patel seems to be featuring fugitives whose arrest is imminent.

Earlier this year, MS NOW’s Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian reported that the bureau appeared to be adding fugitives that the FBI had already located or were close to locating. Writing in May, they calculated, “Of the six fugitives caught since Patel was sworn, four were seized within a month of the FBI leadership elevating them to the top of the Ten Most Wanted list. Two of those four were grabbed within 24 hours of being added to the list, according to the FBI.” In one particularly eyebrow-raising case, a fugitive “was apprehended in Culiacán, Mexico, in March, just one hour and 13 minutes after FBI leadership placed him on the Most Wanted list,” meaning that the operation to arrest him had been in the works for days before. Another was added less than a day before she was arrested, again indicating that the plan to arrest her was well underway before the paperwork cleared the Hoover Building.

“They are literally just nominating people they’re about to arrest or that they have solid information on and can affect arrest,” one FBI official told MS NOW. “Gone are the days of nominating the worst of the worst and fugitives that we haven’t been able to find.”

The Ten Most Wanted has long been more what one might call a “statement of priorities” than a ranked list of the ten worst criminal fugitives. Today’s list is a strange and sad mélange of drug dealers, murderers, and fraudsters. Osama bin Laden was added to the list in the summer of 1999, more than two years before the 9/11 plot, and long sat alongside on the list Russian mafia leader Semion Mogilevich, who was living openly in Russia at the time.

If past is prologue, I’d be real careful if I were Satinderjeet Singh, a racketeer added last week to the Ten Most Wanted list — I’d assume that means that the FBI arrest team was already lining up in my hallway outside.

Yet Patel’s need to apparently juice the stats shows just how he thirsty he remains, how desperate he is amid his million scandals and embarrassments to remain in Trump’s favor. His Twitter feed is just an endless scroll of self-congratulatory posts and strange stat-filled graphics championing how tireless his personal efforts have been. My recent favorite, from last week, is about how he calls people overseas more often than his predecessor. No, really

Like, really, who cares? Posts like this make Kash Patel out to be the worst “Inbox Zero” middle manager of your career — the type of person who writes down items on his daily to-do list just to cross them off and then brags to the team about how many emails he’s answered and Zoom meetings he’s participated in. Imagine being a fully-grown mid-career adult (Patel is 46), someone who on paper even has even achieved meaningful career success and power, and bragging to literally anyone about how many phone calls you’ve made in your job.

The idea that this brag almost surely involved government staff, career FBI personnel, counting up his telephone calls and then tallying Chris Wray’s telephone calls and then building a graphic about said details on taxpayer-paid work hours is even more insane.

It is, though, all sadly consistent with a man so crushingly insecure that he wouldn’t let his aides talk him out of responding on Twitter to a bot that called him a retard.Upgrade

* * *2. What the Justice Department Doesn’t Get About Watergate

Second, as if Todd Blanche’s modern Justice Department wasn’t doing enough to undermine law and order in our time, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday that it was now entertaining the idea that somehow Richard Nixon was unfairly targeted and maligned as president amid his umbrella of the Watergate scandal.

I wrote in June about the latest era of rehabbing Richard Nixon’s image and the growing obsession and power inside Trumpworld of the idea that “Nixon was wronged.”

Justice Department log circularNow it appears that the Justice Department is giving official thought to the idea: Researcher Geoff Shepard, who has written three conspiracy-filled books on Watergate, including one that the whole thing was an effort to make Ted Kennedy president, gave a two-hour presentation, including 78-page slide deck, to the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility about how Nixon and his fellow targets were targeted unfairly and mistreated by prosecutors. Shepherd’s presentation was called “Watergate As Lawfare.”

Shepard, whose research I went over when I was writing my own book and who boasts of his own heartwarming encounter with Nixon at a scholarship luncheon in college, has become one of the leading voices of the movement of “Watergate revisionism,” a foolhardy view that broadly holds a mostly innocent Nixon was betrayed by insiders around him.

Much of the recent revisionism around Watergate equates the “persecution” of Trump, and his many many many crimes, with the idea that somehow Nixon was also targeted by a “Deep State plot.” It’s clearly based on (a) a wildly simplistic and misguided understanding of what Watergate “was”; (b) a desire to hand-wave away both Donald Trump’s egregious corruption, abuse of office, and conspiracies to hold onto power and persecute his enemies; as well as (c) to promote the idea that presidents deserve to be above the law.

The latest DOJ interest seems heading toward some official apology or rebuke of the past prosecution, presumably as a way to excuse Trump’s behavior today and make clear how the Deep State has always wrongly persecuted presidents.

It’s all wrong — both historically and in the modern-day.

The WSJ wrote, “Mainstream scholars have long concluded that Watergate generated a genuine constitutional crisis and that Nixon, not those who investigated him, was guilty of a malfeasance which not only doomed his presidency but also led to overhauls that significantly curtailed executive power.”

Count me in the mainstream.

As the author of what I’d like to believe is the definitive “mainstream” account of the scandal, I think it’s worth remembering the full arc of Watergate and how it was much more than a burglary. I think most Americans still misremember, wrongly, that the whole prosecution was the burglary itself — if you ask the average American they’d probably tell you that the only people prosecuted were the burglars.

In reality, 69 people were indicted or charged with crimes stemming from the Watergate prosecutions — and 48 of those in the end pleaded guilty or were found guilty at trial. As I summarized the full scope in my book:

Ultimately, multiple Cabinet officials would face criminal charges, an FBI director would resign and face prosecution, a congressman would commit suicide, and a CIA director would plead guilty to misleading Congress. There were secret hush money payoffs, threats of blackmail, layers upon layers of betrayals, an alleged kidnapping, and even a suspicious plane crash.

There were rumors of high-priced call girls, allegations of the CIA and the Pentagon spying on the Nixon White House itself, and accusations of illegal donations from the Greek military junta. All told, 69 people would be indicted on charges stemming from the related investigations—including George Steinbrenner—and companies from Goodyear Tires and Gulf Oil to American Airlines and 3M found themselves pleading guilty to illegally financing Nixon’s reelection. Nixon’s attorney general and commerce secretary were put on trial together, a case then dubbed the “trial of the century,” despite being all-but forgotten today. The careers of three consecutive attorneys general would be upended.

It was the largest, most egregious and far-reaching scandal in American presidential history — until the current era we’re all living through.

To me, the scandal worth focusing on now isn’t the events of Watergate or the reaction and reforms thereafter. The scandal we need to focus on as a country is that we didn’t engage in a similar post-Watergate era of robust reforms and oversight mechanisms after the first Trump administration. Had we been more aggressive in those post-Trump prosecutions, congressional and democracy reforms, we might have been able to prevent this second, increasingly unrepairable debacle.

* * *

Now it would be easy to think these two scandals — Kash Patel’s thirsty stat obsession and DOJ’s embrace of Nixon era conspiracism — are unrelated stories, just tiny pictures into the day-to-day corruption and misguided antics of the Trump administration two years in.

Yet to me they are very much the SAME story — the story of one of the most important corners of the US government, one that all Americans rely on daily both to protect us from criminal and terrorist threats but also to safeguard our privacy and civil liberties, has been corrupted by being led by the President’s own personal defense attorney and operate not as if it’s the government’s law firm, but as if it has but a single client: Donald Trump himself. Kash Patel knows that to keep his job, he must keep Donald Trump happy. Justice Department staff recognize that embracing Trump’s brain-melting conspiracies and persecution complex is critical to pleasing their boss, the attorney general, and thus the president.

It would be easy to write off Patel’s thirst as a punchline, except that The Atlantic’s Sarah Fitzpatrick reminded us Friday too of the stakes: A month out from the midterms, Patel seems determined to stir up trouble and please his boss by entertaining conspiracies about the elections. As she asked: “Is There Anything Kash Patel Won’t Do for Trump Before the Midterms?” Her underlying article then makes clear how thirstily Patel is trying to make hay out of Trump’s incorrect and false election conspiracies — and how he’s overpromising on what he can deliver arrests-wise and evidence-wise. After all, this is the guy who bragged for years about wanting to release the Epstein Files — and then has stonewalled releasing them time and again in office, so much so that it basically drove his fellow MAGA podcaster Dan Bongino to quit as his deputy director.

The reporting about Watergate makes clear that it’s a broader question than that too: Is there any hoax, conspiracy, or fabricated evidence that won’t meet the bar of Todd Blanche’s Justice Department? As we enter the final weeks of a very high-stakes, high-tension election — one where Americans are already voting today — it’s deeply worrisome that the primary threat actor we need to protect against is our own Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security.

Similarly, it’s an astounding realization to understand that we’re living in an era where the Justice Department under John Mitchell — Nixon’s campaign manager, architect of Watergate era dirty tricks, and the first former U.S. Attorney General to be convicted of a crime and serve time in federal prison — probably ran a cleaner, less corrupt, less personally subservient Justice Department than Todd Blanche. 

More On U.S. Law, Courts, Rights

 

dennis hastert gavel wikipedia

New York Times, Dennis Hastert, Powerful Politician Disgraced by Child Sexual Abuse, Dies, Carl Hulse, Oct. 6, 2026 (print ed.). The longest-serving Republican speaker of the House, shown above, admitted in 2016 to abusing teenage boys decades earlier. He was 84.

J. Dennis Hastert, a once-obscure Illinois congressman who rose to become the longest-serving Republican speaker of the House before falling from grace in a sex abuse scandal that came to light after he left government, has died. He was 84.

The coroner’s office in Kendall County, Ill., was notified of Mr. Hastert’s death on Saturday evening, according to a statement. He was pronounced dead at his home while under hospice care, the coroner said.

dennis hastert prison wheelchair abcMr. Hastert, a former teacher and wrestling coach (shown above in a prison wheelchair with his wife), was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison in April 2016 for violating federal banking laws, having made millions of dollars in secret payments to cover up sexual misconduct with a male student. He was released in July 2017 and from then on lived out of the public eye despite his earlier prominence in Washington.

Mr. Hastert admitted at his sentencing that he sexually abused teenage wrestlers as young as 14 whom he coached at Yorkville High School in Yorkville, Ill., where he worked from 1965 to 1981. The federal judge who sentenced Mr. Hastert called him “a serial child molester.”

It was a stunning downfall for Mr. Hastert, a burly, stooped figure who had once trudged through the Capitol hallways surrounded by aides and a security detail.

He had emerged as a surprise consensus choice for speaker in 1998 during a period of partisan uproar over the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. He held the post during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and their aftermath, working closely with President George W. Bush in pushing a tough antiterror agenda and fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He also forced through an expansion of Medicare to cover prescription drug costs, a long-sought benefit. But the way that vote was handled contributed to an ethical cloud that gathered over House Republicans in the Hastert era.

Mr. Hastert lost the speakership after Democrats reclaimed the majority in the 2006 midterm elections. The Democratic victory was fueled in part by accusations that Mr. Hastert and his leadership team had failed to respond aggressively to accusations that a Republican House member, Mark Foley of Florida, had behaved inappropriately with male House pages of high-school age.

Mr. Hastert chose not to seek a Republican leadership role after the repudiation of his party in 2006. He left Congress in November 2007 to pursue a lucrative lobbying and consulting career.

Justice Integrity Project Editor's Note: Investigative reporter Wayne Madsen, left, a courageous reporter, a wayne madsen new observerformer Navy intelligence officer and a close colleague of this editor, broke the Hastert story in a three-part series in the fall of 2006  published on "The Wayne Madsen Report" naming the then-powerful House Speaker as a gay pedophile and hypocrite who presided over a "gay Mafia" of powerful Republicans in Congress who abused youths while winning elections as  "family values" purists. No other publication dared follow up on the story until the federal indictment years later.

New York Times Magazine, Congress Is Supposed to Be More Powerful Than the Supreme Court. Why Isn’t It? Emily Bazelon, Oct. 5, 2026. Trump and his allies in the Capitol have revealed a problem that has been developing for decades.

President Trump’s second term has revealed many weaknesses in America’s political system. This is one of them: It turns out that the government can function (or malfunction) based just on orders of the president and the Supreme Court’s rulings on those orders. Congress is largely irrelevant, if it wants to be.

As the court returns for a new term this week, we are due for another round of debate about the separation of powers — the fight between the executive and the courts, especially. Just as important, though far less frequently noted, is the balance between the Supreme Court and Congress. And that situation is deeply weird.

Here’s how it’s supposed to work but no longer does: Congress writes laws. The courts interpret them. When Congress disagrees with these statutory interpretations, it has the power to pass a new law to override them. Constitutional rulings are different: The Supreme Court claimed that it had say over interpreting the nation’s founding document in the case of Marbury v. Madison in 1803. Congress may still have room to respond with a new law, but it can’t just say the court got the Constitution wrong.

Today, Republicans in the House and the Senate have the power to give the president — the leader of their party — what he wants, even when the Supreme Court disagrees. Over the summer, for example, the justices handed Trump defeats on two cherished priorities, imposing global tariffs and resetting the rules for mail-in voting. A lower-court judge blocked Trump’s appointees on the board of the Kennedy Center from putting his name on it, which he appears to care about even more. 

New York Times, Ex-C.I.A. Officer Who Stashed Gold Bars Admits to Far Larger $145 Million Scam, Devlin Barrett, Oct. 6, 2026. A plea hearing revealed a far larger pattern of fraud against the government, while keeping some key secrets still hidden.

A former C.I.A. officer who the authorities say stashed hundreds of gold bars in his home admitted in court on Tuesday to a far larger web of deception, including a $145 million scam involving luxury real estate and providing sensitive intelligence to a foreign government official.

david rushThe shocking details of the case were revealed in federal court in Alexandria, Va., where David J. Rush, right, pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud, which could earn him up to 20 years behind bars.

The new details of his crimes, however, far surpassed what had been previously known about the unusual case, even as they in some ways deepened the mystery of an episode at the heart of America’s intelligence community that has been cloaked in secrecy.

Those crimes included his admission in court that he had shared the identity of a human source with a foreign government, a grave violation of what is among the C.I.A.’s most highly protected secrets.

John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, said Mr. Rush had “abused his position and betrayed the public trust and should be held fully accountable for his actions.”

Mr. Rush, a 49-year-old former intelligence officer, was arrested in May after investigators found roughly 300 gold bars stashed in the basement of his Virginia home. U.S. officials have previously said he created a fake classified program — one that only a few people were permitted to know about — that allowed him to accumulate the bars, worth more than $40 million.

In court on Tuesday, a federal prosecutor, Kevin Hakala, described far more sweeping and potentially consequential crimes beyond the gold bar scam. In all, the schemes totaled more than $193 million in fraud.

In October 2025, Mr. Rush used his “position of trust” as a senior C.I.A. officer to create a fake secret government program to purchase roughly $145 million worth of “luxury real estate in South Florida,” Mr. Hakala said. All the luxury properties were in the Palm Beach area, according to court papers.

The funds for the purchases were transferred to a holding company by a government contractor who expected to be reimbursed, officials said. Mr. Rush planned to also have expensive renovations done on the properties so they could be resold for profit, the prosecutor said.

Separately, in 2025, Mr. Rush knowingly disclosed “certain descriptive information of a U.S. government clandestine human source” to a “foreign government official,” Mr. Hakala told Judge Michael S. Nachmanoff of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Prosecutors did not explain further, and a portion of Mr. Rush’s guilty plea was conducted under seal. Court papers, however, say that on April 28, during an interview conducted by the C.I.A., Mr. Rush admitted to disclosing the information to a foreign official.

Mr. Rush also orchestrated a scheme in which he arranged to take roughly $1.8 million in private charter flights, paid for by the government, that had no legitimate purpose, prosecutors said.

After prosecutors recounted his crimes in open court, Mr. Rush, wearing an olive green prison jumpsuit, agreed that he had committed those acts.

A lawyer for Mr. Rush declined to comment outside court. His sentencing was scheduled for January.

Officials say they learned about the full details of Mr. Rush’s schemes after he was arrested.

When F.B.I. agents first searched his house, they said they found 303 gold bars. In court on Tuesday, prosecutors said that the correct number was 298 gold bars, and that they had cost the government more than $46 million to obtain. As part of that scheme, Mr. Rush told colleagues that he had given the gold to others as part of the secret program, when in fact he had taken them from his office in Loudoun County, Va., to his home nearby.

“The program did not exist,” Mr. Hakala said in court.

People familiar with the investigation had said Mr. Rush’s fake top secret program to obtain the gold bars was supposedly related to “continuity of government operations.” That term usually refers to the government being able to operate during a national disaster or an attack.

Mr. Rush “read in” two colleagues to the program in a manner that prevented them from talking to others about it. Then he persuaded one of them to transfer millions of dollars to the program via a fraudulent government contract, the people said.

According to court documents, Mr. Rush requested and received “a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses” from last November to March.

A public trial of Mr. Rush was always unlikely, given the sensitive nature of his work.

At the time of his arrest, he was at work on highly classified programs for both the C.I.A. and the Pentagon that government officials wanted to keep under wraps.

Mr. Rush had worked closely with Stephen A. Feinberg, the deputy secretary of defense, for years. Before the C.I.A. fired Mr. Rush, the two had collaborated on a highly classified program focused on spying on China.

When the C.I.A. began investigating Mr. Rush, Mr. Feinberg reached out to the agency to vouch for Mr. Rush’s work for the Pentagon.

New York Times, How the Midterms Could Complicate the Supreme Court’s New Term, Ann E. Marimow and Abbie VanSickle, Oct. 6, 2026 (print ed.). Even before the justices start their new term on Monday, the court has spent the summer resolving fast-moving requests on election-related disputes.

At a public appearance this spring, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. insisted, as he regularly does, that members of the Supreme Court are not “political actors.”

Yet with the court’s new term beginning Monday, scarcely a month before the closely watched midterms, the court may be unable to avoid getting uncomfortably pulled into electoral politics.

With partisans on both sides primed for potential election challenges, lawsuits to settle hotly contested elections could end up before the court, potentially with the control of Congress at stake. They would land on top of an already packed docket of cases on culture war issues and President Trump’s agenda that were selected by the justices to be heard from the thousands of petitions they receive each year.

The result could be another consequential and controversial span on the bench for the justices, even as their public poll numbers have dipped and elected leaders and candidates, particularly in the insurgent wing of the Democratic Party, have called for an overhaul of the court. 

New York Times, Justice Dept. Turns to Partisans and Conspiracists to Fill Depleted Ranks, Glenn Thrush, Oct. 6, 2026. The civil rights unit has recruited people whose questionable work histories and dearth of education and experience might have disqualified them in the past, former officials said.

  • A former prosecutor forced off a high-profile murder case for peeking at the defense team’s strategy documents.
  • A onetime gambling executive who promoted conspiracy theories about the Las Vegas massacre in 2017.
  • A Florida activist who once served 20 days in jail for hacking a local elections system.

They are among the 130 lawyers who have recently joined the Justice Department’s short-staffed civil rights division as the Trump administration has struggled to fill the depleted ranks of a unit that was once a magnet for legal talent. Since early 2025, upward of 300 nonpolitical career employees, representing decades of experience, have left the division after its leader, Harmeet Dhillon, repurposed it to pursue President Trump’s agenda.

As a consequence, the division has opened its doors to recruits, many of them conservatives, some with education and work histories that might have disqualified them from being hired in the past, former officials said. Some have left a trail of hyperpartisan, conspiratorial and, in some instances, bizarre statements, according to an examination of about a dozen recent hires based on court records, social media posts and interviews.

Department officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters, said they have rejected nearly as many applicants as they have hired, 126. Any ideological tilt in the career ranks, they added, reflected the Trump-era applicant pool, which includes conservative activists and recent law school graduates.

Ms. Dhillon praised the quality of the new lawyers, and said she was revamping a division that had been dominated by liberals for far too long.

“For years, the civil rights division recruited from a narrow pipeline of progressive activists and called it excellence,” she said in a statement.

“We are hiring trial lawyers,” she added. “The attorneys The Times singled out have collectively tried hundreds of cases, prosecuted those who prey on trafficked children, won at the Supreme Court and practiced law for decades. That is the experience this division needs to enforce civil rights laws for every American.”

Among her top hires: The gun rights activist Barry Arrington, the acting chief of a new Second Amendment unit, is a high-profile opponent of the theory of evolution and same-sex marriage. Last year, he successfully argued before the Supreme Court against Colorado’s ban on so-called conversion therapy.

The person she appointed to temporarily lead the voting section — the epicenter of the department’s aggressive actions ahead of the midterm elections — is Eric Neff, who tried more than 50 criminal cases during a 12-year career as a prosecutor in California. His stint as a prosecutor in Los Angeles County ended in rancor.

In 2022, Mr. Neff was placed on administrative leave after the office withdrew his indictment of an executive at a software company for storing data on poll workers on a Chinese server. His bosses cited irregularities in the case. The county ended up paying the company $5 million in a settlement.

Mr. Neff was reinstated in 2024 and has filed a whistle-blower claim against the county, which remains unresolved.

Questions for individual prosecutors and officials were routed to the Justice Department’s public affairs office, in keeping with longstanding policy. 

Critics have raised questions about lawyers assigned to crack down on voter fraud, which includes a thus-far unsuccessful effort to obtain sensitive state voter roll information, and the deployment of 1,000 election monitors across the country.

On the day of Minnesota’s primary elections in August, two Justice Department officials approached a polling place in Minneapolis and were reminded by a local election worker to obey a law requiring them to stay outside at a certain distance, a video showed.

One of the department officials, David Michael Levin, a conservative lawyer and businessman, was himself a convicted lawbreaker.

In 2015 and 2016, Mr. Levin twice hacked into the Lee County, Fla., election system as a political stunt. He faced felony charges before pleading to a pair of misdemeanors in September 2016, and served a 20-day jail sentence with two years of probation, according to court records.

His application, like all the others, was reviewed and approved by the department’s personnel office. His record alone would not have precluded him from being hired — the department is allowed after seven years to hire people who committed misdemeanors. But critics said it set a dangerous precedent.

News Roundups

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Trump Faces Calls for Removal, Teases "Big Surprises" for the Midterms, Blocks Election Observers Like Russia and Belarus, and More, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 6, 2026. Trump is teasing “big surprises” ahead of the midterms, pointing to Project 2025 architect Russ Vought, as his administration shuts out international election observers for the first time in more than two decades. Gov. Gavin Newsom has ordered California’s threat assessment center to monitor for foreign attacks as Trump faces growing calls for his resignation and removal after saying, “Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.” And Justice Samuel Alito’s new book calls same-sex marriage the “decisive point” in America’s turn against religious liberty.

Before we get into it, an update on our reporting. Last week, we published a deep dive exposing how Trump has been misusing taxpayer dollars, including on campaign-style ads promoting himself that end with “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” Now, after that reporting and mounting pressure from lawmakers, Trump is walking it back, saying he’ll pay for the ads himself. But don’t be fooled: the White House confirmed today he won’t repay the roughly $10 million taxpayers have already spent. We’ll keep following the money.

I also need your help with something. There has been a wave of accounts impersonating me on TikTok and other platforms, using my name and face to spread misinformation and scam people. I’m fighting back, reporting these accounts and working to get them taken down, but the best protection is getting your news directly from me.

That’s what this newsletter is. It’s the one place you know the reporting is actually mine, sourced and fact-checked, with no fake accounts and no algorithm deciding what you see. If you’re not already subscribed, please subscribe today.

Let’s get into it.

Trump Teases “Big Surprises” Before the Midterms as Administration Bars International Election Observers

Trump is hinting at “big surprises” ahead of the midterms, and he’s pointing to Russ Vought. In remarks Tuesday, Trump shouted out Vought, his budget director and a key architect of Project 2025, then said, “We have some big surprises coming up in a few weeks, right Russ? He’s gonna be one of the important people in the history of our country.” The comment came the same day Trump posted on Truth Social telling supporters to “Watch for the ‘Midterm Surprise!’” without explaining what he meant. MAGA influencers celebrated the tease, with one writing that “October is Trump’s month,” while a Republican strategist told Newsweek it was likely “spin” meant to boost turnout. With the election less than four weeks away, Trump hasn’t said what the surprises are, and the White House hasn’t explained.

At the same time, the Trump administration is refusing to allow international election observers for the first time in more than two decades. The administration declined to invite monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which has observed every federal election in the US since 2002, including the 2018 midterms during Trump’s first term. That puts the US alongside only Russia and Belarus in excluding OSCE observers. The OSCE called the decision “regrettable,” and Human Rights Watch warned it “fuels fears of serious human rights concerns around the upcoming elections.” A former US ambassador to the OSCE said refusing observers “is usually something that countries in a position of weakness do, when they know that they have corrupt or unfair elections.”

Instead, Trump’s Justice Department plans to send 1,000 of its own monitors to the polls in November. The move has alarmed Democrats and election experts, especially after reports that top DOJ officials warned prosecutors they would be fired for not pursuing alleged voter fraud cases. Unlike OSCE observers, who have no enforcement power and simply report on how elections are run, DOJ monitors answer to an administration that has repeatedly pushed false claims of fraud. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said the decision to exclude international observers “risks undermining public trust in America’s safe and secure election system.” The State Department claimed the OSCE “should focus its limited resources on elections where it can have the greatest impact.”

The teases and the observer ban come as forecasts show Republicans heading for major losses. Election simulations from RacetotheWH give Democrats an 88% chance of retaking the House and a 73% chance of winning the Senate. Trump’s approval is hovering near record lows, and on Tuesday the Cook Political Report shifted three Senate races toward Democrats. Trump has spent the past week calling American voting “corrupt” and laying the groundwork to dispute the results. Taken together, a president promising “big surprises,” shutting out independent observers and sending his own monitors to the polls is something every voter should be watching closely.

Newsom Calls Trump’s Comments “Treasonous,” Orders Threat Monitoring and Demands 25th Amendment as White House Scrambles

Gov. Gavin Newsom called Trump’s comments about Los Angeles and San Diego “dangerous, if not treasonous,” and ordered California’s emergency center to monitor for threats. Newsom wrote on X that Trump’s remarks put “a target on two of our biggest cities and one of America’s largest naval hubs.” He directed the State Threat Assessment Center to watch for any sign that “foreign actors interpret the President’s remarks as an invitation to target California.” Newsom later told The Hill that Trump is “mentally ill” and declared, “TIME FOR THE 25TH!” He also called out JD Vance and Marco Rubio for their “deafening” silence, and his office labeled Rep. David Valadao a “traitor” for not condemning comments about attacking the very state he represents. Newsom, a likely 2028 presidential contender, has made clear he has no intention of letting the story fade.

The White House is insisting Trump was talking about a nuclear Iran, even though he never mentioned nuclear weapons. Communications director Steven Cheung called the backlash a “media freakout” that is “not rooted in reality,” claiming Trump “was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped.” Trump’s Rapid Response account went further, telling critics, “No, he didn’t, you buffoons.” But in his actual remarks, Trump said only, “They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego,” as the crowd applauded. Cheung also claimed Iran now has “no nuclear, no navy, no air force, and no money,” which raises the question of why Trump would be warning about Iran taking out American cities at all. White House spokesman Davis Ingle responded to Newsom by calling him “Gavin Newscum” and “the worst governor in America.”

Even Trump allies say the comments are hurting Republicans a month before the midterms. “While it’s clear the president was joking, it’s not helpful to have these comments out there with a month to go,” a former Trump campaign aide told The Hill, adding that Republicans now have to address Trump’s words instead of focusing on Democrats. California Republican Jim Desmond, who is running in one of the state’s last competitive House races, said he “vehemently” disagrees, and Rep. Kevin Kiley called the rhetoric “unhelpful.” Veteran GOP strategist Rob Stutzman put it bluntly: “One of the biggest problems Republicans are facing is that the president of their party is unhinged.” A Democratic strategist also noted that Los Angeles is home to the largest Iranian expatriate community outside of Iran, making the remarks “doubly egregious.” The backlash comes as the Cook Political Report shifted three Senate races toward Democrats on Tuesday. Trump refused to answer a question about the comments today:

Trump Escalates His War on Fox News, Attacking Network for Interviewing Democrats as His Rally Crowds Shrink

Trump attacked Fox News again Tuesday for interviewing Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and independent Dan Osborn. On Truth Social, Trump called Osborn, who is running a close race against Sen. Pete Ricketts in Nebraska, a “sleazebag” and asked why the network would interview him. He also accused Fox of covering “Dumocrat Jihadists like El-Sayed” with a “softball interview by Martha MacCallum,” complaining, “She never interviews me like that.” But Fox’s own account says MacCallum challenged El-Sayed for accepting money from wealthy donors after campaigning against corporate money. It’s at least the third time in a week Trump has attacked the network that has long served as his media home.

The attacks began with a Sunday morning meltdown over Fox not covering his rallies the way he wanted. Trump wrote that it was “sad to see” Fox & Friends not covering his “packed house” in Ohio and his rallies in Alabama, Texas and Oklahoma, warning that MAGA viewers “will very quickly stop watching (like I am doing right now!).” He called Fox commentator Jessica Tarlov “stupid,” demanded to know “who makes these decisions” and called whoever fired Maria Bartiromo a “loser.” Bartiromo left the network after she allegedly shared an internal Fox memo with the White House. Trump closed with a threat: “Fox tried this act once before, and almost went out of business (and always right before an election!). That can happen again!”

Fox did cover his rallies; it just isn’t airing them live. A Snapstream search found “Fox and Friends Weekend” aired a segment on the Ohio rally shortly before Trump’s post, and the network typically teases his speeches and runs correspondent reports without carrying them in full. CNN’s Brian Stelter reported that Fox has decided Trump’s long, repetitive rallies are “not a ratings magnet right now.” After Trump’s attacks, Fox opened “The Five” and “The Will Cain Show” on Monday with rally clips. Trump’s rift with the network deepened last month when Fox stood with CNN, Politico and MS NOW against his White House press ban, prompting trade adviser Peter Navarro to call for a boycott of Fox.

The meltdown comes as Trump’s crowds shrink and his poll numbers fall. The New York Times reported empty sections at his Alabama and Ohio rallies, describing his midterm swing as feeling “more like a farewell tour,” and Trump responded by saying Times reporters should be “arrested.” When CNN’s Kristen Holmes asked about a poll showing his approval among Latino voters at 27%, he shot back, “You’re fake news!” Meanwhile, the White House barred Politico from Air Force One and replaced CNN in the TV pool with friendly outlets like LindellTV and Real America’s Voice. A federal judge will hear arguments Thursday on whether to keep blocking Trump’s ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico.

Alito Calls Same-Sex Marriage a “Decisive” Turn Against Religious Liberty, Signaling Openness to Overturning It

Justice Samuel Alito’s new book signals he is open to overturning the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage ruling. In “So Ordered,” a collection of 19 speeches, seven of them delivered to Catholic groups, Alito calls the 2015 Obergefell decision “perhaps the decisive point in our nation’s turn against religious liberty.” He compares opponents of same-sex marriage to Catholics who were persecuted in post-Reformation England, declaring that “what I predicted in my dissent is coming to pass.” Despite claiming in 2025 that he was “not suggesting that the decision should be overruled,” Alito is now publicly casting the ruling as the moment America turned on people of faith, laying out exactly the kind of argument used to justify reversing precedent. With fellow conservative Clarence Thomas already openly urging the court to revisit Obergefell, which was decided 5-4, LGBTQ advocates have good reason to fear the right to marry is no longer safe.

Alito’s claims about religious liberty don’t match the court’s own record. In nearly every case he cites as evidence of hostility toward religion, the court actually sided with the religious parties, from the Colorado baker who refused to make a cake for a gay couple to the Christian website designer who objected to same-sex weddings. The court has also let employers opt out of contraceptive coverage on religious grounds, required states to fund religious schools in tuition programs and effectively struck down state bans on LGBTQ conversion therapy. Alito joined the majority in all of them. Even leading religious liberty groups like First Liberty Institute say there is “more religious freedom today than at any other time in our lives.”

Alito says he plans to stay on the court through at least next summer, even if Democrats win the Senate. The 76-year-old told Bloomberg he has ruled out retiring during the lame-duck session after the midterms, when Republicans would still control the Senate. “I intend to stick around through this term,” he said, adding that he doesn’t “feel mentally or physically decrepit.” That means if Democrats take the Senate in November, Trump could lose his chance to replace Alito with a younger conservative, since Democrats have signaled they’d block any Trump nominee. Some analysts say that could be a gift to Democrats, since Trump has already appointed three of the court’s six conservatives.

Alito brushed off criticism that the court is partisan, even as he and Clarence Thomas were the only justices never to rule against Trump in major cases this year. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has warned about the court looking partisan, writing in one dissent that the court seems to have a rule that “this Administration always wins.” Alito told USA Today he applies “the same legal standards regardless of which administration is affected.” He also said he was “honored” to write the opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. Asked about a false NPR report in June that he was retiring, Alito said he was “amused and puzzled” and wondered “how many people were crest-fallen” when it was corrected.

Other news:

Trump won’t pay back taxpayers for the campaign-style ads promoting his administration that have already aired on the public’s dime, the White House confirmed. After bipartisan backlash and threats of legal action, Trump said Monday night he would “pay for them myself” and with money raised for his super PAC, MAGA Inc., but the White House clarified Tuesday he “was not referring to reimbursement.” The ads, which end with “Paid for by the U.S. Government,” have reportedly already cost $10 million out of a $20 million Homeland Security budget, plus more than $2 million in national TV airtime. One appears to be lifted directly from a 2024 Trump campaign video and promotes a “final battle” against “globalists,” while another uses a song whose artist has sent a cease-and-desist letter. Former White House ethics lawyer Norm Eisen called it “an unlawful and outrageous misuse of public funds,” and Sen. Maggie Hassan is demanding Trump “immediately repay the taxpayers.” Trump’s new plan raises its own legal problems, since he’s barred from directing how a super PAC spends its money, and a new survey found 86% of Americans think the taxpayer-funded ads are inappropriate.

This is the letter nearly 1 million Americans are receiving alongside their $500 Obamacare refund. The letter attacks Joe Biden, is signed by Trump, and says "I am proud to return your money to you, and I will never stop fighting to put the American People FIRST, restore Affordability ..."

The Trump administration has deported dozens of LGBTQ migrants, who were granted US protection from persecution, to African countries where they face the very same danger, a Reuters investigation found. Reuters documented 40 cases of migrants protected by US judges because of persecution over their sexual orientation who were instead sent to countries like Sierra Leone, Cameroon and Eswatini, which criminalize same-sex relations, or to countries the State Department has flagged for abuses like “corrective rape” and conversion therapy. One gay man from Togo, who fled after a mob attacked him for kissing his partner, was flown to Sierra Leone, where gay men can face life in prison, and then forced back to Togo with $100 to his name before fleeing to Ivory Coast. Of the 40, sixteen remain in the countries they were sent to, sixteen were forcibly returned to their home countries, nine are in hiding, and one man has lost contact with his family and lawyers entirely. A former senior US immigration official said the practice “makes a mockery of our protection systems,” while DHS insisted that “when an individual is no longer in ICE custody then ICE will no longer be responsible for them.” More than 40,000 people have been deported to third countries since Trump returned to office, and the Supreme Court has allowed the practice to continue while it hears arguments in December.

Christa Pike is now conscious and speaking nearly a week after surviving her botched execution, in what her lawyers call a “medically unprecedented” recovery. Pike, convicted of the 1995 torture and murder of Colleen Slemmer, survived two doses of what should have been lethal amounts of pentobarbital on Sept. 30 and was rushed to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where she spent days unconscious on a ventilator. Her attorneys say that despite “severe damage” to her arms, she remains handcuffed and shackled to her hospital bed, and that while her prognosis is unclear, they expect “a long recovery.” They had warned beforehand about her difficult vein access, degraded drugs and a lack of emergency medical care, all under a protocol they say “remains veiled in secrecy.” Gov. Bill Lee has ordered a review and called off Tennessee’s remaining executions for 2026, and a Vanderbilt law professor says Pike’s lawyers now have “a pretty good argument” that trying to execute her again by lethal injection would violate the Eighth Amendment.

David Ellison’s new media empire, Skydance, officially took control of CNN, CBS News and HBO on Tuesday, and he wants to run it like a tech company. The $110 billion merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery unites two of Hollywood’s five biggest studios, dozens of TV channels, two of the country’s biggest TV news divisions and more than 200 million streaming subscribers under the 43-year-old son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, one of the richest men in the world and a close Trump ally. Ellison has packed his leadership team with veterans of Google, Facebook and Scale AI, called AI a “force multiplier” and plans to eventually merge Paramount+ and HBO Max into a single service. But the company is carrying roughly $80 billion in debt, and when executives promise to “tech-ify” the business, one analyst told CNN, “I hear layoffs.” Critics also warn the deal concentrates too much power in one company, with one former New Line Cinema executive asking, “How are monopolies ever good for any industry?” The Ellison family’s reach now extends from Hollywood to TV news to TikTok, where Oracle holds a stake and oversees Americans’ data.

A hacking group claims it stole personal data on 3,615 Trump Mobile customers, and there are signs the breach is real. The group, called BYOD, says it infected an employee at Liberty Mobile, the Florida company that powers Trump Mobile’s network, with malware, then used that access to pull customer names, phone numbers, emails and home addresses. PCMag confirmed with three people in the leaked file that they had interacted with Trump Mobile, and one customer said the file correctly showed she had canceled her plan. BYOD claims Trump Mobile responded that it had “no team to handle this” and called anyone who hacks them a terrorist. The group also claims it still has “live access” to the company’s dashboard, and neither Trump Mobile nor Liberty Mobile has responded to requests for comment. It’s the latest in a string of security problems for the Trump-branded phone company, after another group claimed last month to have stolen data on 4,000 users and YouTubers exposed a flaw on its website in May.

The FBI says a contractor’s failure to install a security patch led to last month’s hack of its jobs website. Cyber Division Assistant Director Brett Leatherman said a contractor managing the FBIJobs.gov platform “failed to implement a security patch explicitly issued to secure the platform,” and that the contractor has since been removed. The cyber-extortion group ShinyHunters claimed credit for the hack and told NBC News it used the portal to break into other agency systems, stealing 2 to 3 terabytes of files, though those claims haven’t been verified. FBI Director Kash Patel announced the arrest of one of the group’s alleged leaders, and the FBI says multiple arrests have been made. Some FBI employees were reportedly upset that they learned about the breach from the media.

A former high-ranking CIA officer caught with nearly 300 gold bars in his home admitted he exposed details about a secret US intelligence source to a foreign official. David Rush, 49, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and admitted to siphoning off $194 million in government funds, including by inventing a fake classified program to funnel $145 million toward luxury Florida real estate. Prosecutors say his disclosure about the clandestine source could “endanger the safety and life” of that person and the US officers working with them. Investigators seized about $2 million in cash and 35 luxury watches along with the gold, and say Rush fooled the agency for years with a fabricated education and military record. He faces up to 20 years in prison when he’s sentenced in January, and the case has put a spotlight on his work with Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg, who has been interviewed by the FBI but is not accused of wrongdoing.

A wealthy California couple with 21 children, most born through surrogates, has been charged in what prosecutors call a “house of horrors” abuse case. Silvia Zhang and Guojun Xuan were arrested Tuesday at their Arcadia mansion on charges including conspiracy to commit child abuse and witness intimidation. Prosecutors allege the couple ran a surrogacy operation, lied to surrogates about how many children they already had, and watched on 32 cameras as nannies beat and punished the children “on a daily basis,” with Xuan allegedly telling one nanny to hit a child harder. The investigation began after a 2-month-old was hospitalized with head injuries in 2025, and prosecutors say the couple told nannies not to leave visible marks. All 21 children have been removed from the home or placed with family and friends, and prosecutors are seeking $100 million bail.

Dolly Parton’s estate says her nephew barricaded his home with barbed wire and caution tape to avoid being served with a lawsuit. She’s Alive, the entity that manages Parton’s business, is suing Bryan Seaver, the nephew Parton personally chose to announce her death, accusing him of a “campaign of threats” that drove employees and business partners to quit. In one message, Seaver allegedly threatened to start a podcast “dedicated to ruining Dolly’s brand partnerships” unless he was paid. A judge granted a restraining order after finding he made targeted threats and boasted about his access to weapons and experience with violence. Seaver, who previously provided security for Parton, says his messages were taken out of context, and a hearing on a temporary injunction is set for Friday.

Kilmar Ábrego Garcia is back in federal court as the Trump administration keeps trying to deport him to Liberia. The government is asking a judge to lift an injunction blocking ICE from detaining and deporting the Maryland father, who was wrongly sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT mega-prison last year in what ICE admitted was an “administrative error.” Ábrego Garcia says that if he’s deported, it should be to Costa Rica, which already agreed to take him, but a former ICE official argued sending him there would be “prejudicial” because the US had invested resources negotiating with Liberia. The administration has kept pushing for Liberia even after the US signed an agreement with Costa Rica to accept deportees who can’t be returned to their home countries. A federal judge already threw out the human smuggling charges the administration brought against him after his return, finding they were meant to punish him for challenging his deportation. Supporters call him “an international symbol of due process,” and his lawyers are seeking to make the injunction permanent.

Robert Kelker-Kelly, the soap opera star best known for “Days of Our Lives” and “General Hospital,” has died at 62. A Missouri medical examiner’s office confirmed he died Saturday but did not release a cause of death, saying death certifications typically take about 12 weeks. Kelker-Kelly played Bo Brady on “Days of Our Lives” from 1992 to 1995 and Stavros Cassadine on “General Hospital” from 2001 to 2014. He got his start in daytime TV in 1987 on “Another World” and won a Soap Opera Digest Award for outstanding lead actor in 1994. He and co-star Lisa Rinna won the award for hottest soap couple the following year, though Rinna wrote in her recent memoir that the two “hated each other” behind the scenes. “Days of Our Lives” honored him on Instagram with a simple message: “Rest in peace.”

Jury selection is underway in the murder trial of an Ohio father accused of running down a deputy hours after watching police kill his son. Prosecutors say Rodney Hinton intentionally struck and killed retired Hamilton County deputy Larry Henderson, who was directing traffic near the University of Cincinnati during graduation in May 2025. Hours earlier, Hinton had watched body camera footage of a Cincinnati officer fatally shooting his 18-year-old son, Ryan, who police say was armed and running from a reported stolen car. Police say Hinton slowed near the intersection, then “accelerated quickly” toward Henderson with no sign he tried to stop. Hinton has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and a court-appointed psychologist testified he has bipolar disorder, which makes him ineligible for the death penalty under Ohio law. His attorney says finding 12 impartial jurors will be “difficult,” and more than a dozen potential jurors have already been dismissed.

A new lawsuit claims some Starbucks “sugar-free” drinks contain as much sugar as a Kit Kat bar. The federal suit says the chain’s protein lattes and protein matcha drinks, sold as sugar-free in vanilla and caramel flavors, contain 13 to 21 grams of sugar per serving. “No reasonable person” would expect a “sugar-free” drink to contain that much sugar, the lawsuit argues. The suit was filed on behalf of three customers in California, New York and Washington, whose lawyer says many people avoid sugar for health reasons like diabetes. Starbucks says it doesn’t add sugar to the drinks and that the sugar comes from the protein-boosted milk, adding that it has clearly listed nutritional information and will “vigorously” defend itself. The suit seeks damages for customers nationwide and a court order stopping Starbucks from labeling drinks with sugar as “sugar-free.”

A 23-year-old woman died and her baby girl was critically injured after falling from a Bronx apartment early Tuesday, and police are looking to question her ex-boyfriend. The NYPD said the two had injuries consistent with falling from a height at an apartment building on Olinville Avenue, and the woman later died at the hospital. The baby, who is under a year old, remains in critical condition. Witnesses told detectives they heard a disturbance in her apartment before the fall, according to police sources. Sources also said there is a history of domestic violence at the address. It’s not yet clear whether the mother and daughter fell, jumped or were pushed, and no arrests have been made. 

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: “Treasonous”—Trump Faces Bipartisan Outrage Over California Comments, Calls for Journalists' Arrest, Measles Hits 35-Year High, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 6, 2026. While defending the costs of his war with Iran at a Nebraska rally, Trump told the crowd, “They could take out a city. Let ‘em take out Los Angeles, let ‘em take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay,” as his supporters applauded.

This morning, his comments are being called “treasonous,” sparking bipartisan outrage. At the same time, he said New York Times reporters should be “arrested” for reporting on empty seats at his rally. And a former FBI supervisor says the White House pushed the bureau to investigate protesters because “the President wants this investigation.”

There is going to be a real attempt by some in the media to sane-wash and sanitize Trump’s comments about Los Angeles and San Diego. You’ll see headlines saying he “appeared to suggest” or was “likely referring to gas prices.” You’ll see the story buried by the afternoon.

Just imagine if any other politician had stood in front of a cheering crowd and said a foreign enemy could “take out” Dallas and Houston, and that it was a small price to pay. It would be wall-to-wall coverage for weeks.

I don’t sane-wash. I don’t normalize any politician’s comments, no matter their party. If a president says something dangerous, I’m going to tell you exactly what he said, in his own words, and let you judge for yourself.

Let’s get into it.

Trump Suggests Iran Could “Take Out” Los Angeles and San Diego, Sparking Bipartisan Backlash

Trump told a Nebraska rally crowd 'Let 'em take out Los Angeles, let 'em take out San Diego' while defending the costs of his war with Iran. Speaking in Grand Island on Monday night, Trump called rising prices from the war “a small price to pay for keeping the world safe.” He then said, “They could take out a city. Let ‘em take out Los Angeles, let ‘em take out San Diego,” as the crowd applauded. Trump insisted the war is “essentially almost over” and will end “one way or the other.” The comments came in the middle of a rambling, nearly 90-minute speech in which he also said he hoped to see a “tremendous victory” in the midterms. He was in Nebraska to boost Sen. Pete Ricketts, who is locked in an unexpectedly close race with independent Dan Osborn, and urged supporters to vote as if his own name were on the ballot.

California leaders immediately condemned the remarks as dangerous. Gov. Gavin Newsom called Trump “deranged and dangerous,” noting that after sending the National Guard and Marines into California, Trump is now suggesting foreign enemies should “take out” its two largest cities. His office added that the president was talking about an attack on more than 10 million Americans and said “this is not normal.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the comments “could potentially compromise our safety,” adding that a president’s job is to protect the country, not threaten it. San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria fired back that his city is “not collateral damage” and “never a ‘small price to pay.’” Los Angeles is the second-largest city in the country, and San Diego, the eighth-largest, is home to critical US military infrastructure.

Even some Republicans distanced themselves from Trump’s comments. Jim Desmond, a California Republican running for a US House seat, said he “vehemently” disagrees with the president. “No American city is expendable, and no American family should ever be treated as collateral damage,” he wrote. Democratic gubernatorial nominee Xavier Becerra said the 13 million people who live in LA and San Diego counties are not a “punchline for Donald Trump.” The remarks are also a headache for Trump-endorsed Republican Steve Hilton, who is trying to pull off an upset in the California governor’s race. With Republicans already on defense heading into November, the last thing California GOP candidates needed was the president appearing to shrug off an attack on their own voters.

The comments set off a debate online about what Trump actually meant. Some conservative activists argued Trump was talking about high gas prices being the “small price to pay,” not Iran’s ability to strike a US city. Others questioned whether it was a crude joke about two blue cities, or whether he accidentally hinted at intelligence about potential Iranian targets. US defense officials have previously said Iran currently lacks the capability to launch a direct missile attack on the US mainland, though Trump himself claimed in his last State of the Union that Iran was building missiles that would “soon” reach US soil. The White House did not respond to requests for comment. The remarks land about a month before midterms, with the Iran war unpopular and Trump’s approval at a record low.

Trump Says New York Times Reporters Should Be “Arrested” for Reporting Empty Seats at His Rally

Trump called for journalists to be arrested over reporting that his Ohio rally had empty seats. “The New York Times, and many other Artificial Media Outlets, should be arrested for their dishonesty and disservice to our Country,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday. He was responding to Times reporter Katie Rogers, who wrote that several areas of an upper deck were empty by the time he finished speaking at a 4,500-capacity high school student center in Vandalia, Ohio. Trump insisted there were no empty seats and that “thousands of people had to be turned away.” He also accused outlets of inflating crowd sizes for Sen. Bernie Sanders while downplaying his own. It’s not an empty threat from an administration whose Justice Department subpoenaed the phone records of Times journalists and their family members this summer before dropping the request days later.

Trump then posted a 292-word meltdown claiming his crowds “migrate” down from the empty upper sections. He insisted the “Arena was totally MAXED OUT, including all upper sections,” and explained that at his “SOLD OUT Rallies,” people in the upper sections “tend to migrate down to the Main Floor,” calling it a “migration” process that “always happens.” He declared, “I never have empty seats — Never have, and never will!” and said he now has cinematographers filming his events to counter the “Fake News.” Trump claimed his rallies are “HOTTER” than ever and that networks refuse to show the crowds. At the rally itself, he even told attendees that if they wanted to give up their seats to people outside, “we can work it out, get out of here.”

The reporting is backed by photos, video and a striking comparison to 2024. Journalist Jay Bookman noted the Ohio event was held in a high school gym, not an arena, and that Trump drew 35,000 people to a rally in the same area in 2024. Rep. Ted Lieu mocked Trump’s “arena” claim, posting simply that the rally was at “a high school gym.” The Times also reported empty seats at Trump’s recent events in Oklahoma and Alabama, two states he won easily in 2024, and the Daily Beast compiled photos and video showing empty sections in Mobile. The Times concluded his rallies are more modest, and at times more sedate, than they used to be. The meltdown comes as Trump’s approval sits at a record low, with an unpopular war and rising costs weighing on Republicans heading into the midterms.

Measles Surges to Worst Levels Since 1991 as New York Declares Emergency and Pennsylvania Passes 1,000 Cases

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a statewide disaster emergency over measles, the first by any state since cases began surging in 2025. New York has reported 108 cases this year through Oct. 3, including 92 since mid-July in under-immunized rural communities across 18 counties. “No one should get seriously ill or die from a vaccine-preventable disease,” Hochul said. The order lets registered nurses order measles tests and allows pharmacists to vaccinate children as young as 2. It also requires all MMR shots to be reported to state or city registries within 72 hours, though vaccination itself still requires consent. The emergency runs through Nov. 4, and local health departments have already given more than 1,000 MMR doses in rural areas since July.

Pennsylvania has now passed 1,000 measles cases, the largest state outbreak in more than three decades. State health officials reported 1,004 confirmed cases, 198 hospitalizations and five deaths, with Lancaster County, home to large Amish and Mennonite communities, hit hardest at 391 cases. The outbreak began in April west of Philadelphia, and officials blame low vaccination rates. But those numbers aren’t included in the CDC’s count because of a dispute between Gov. Josh Shapiro and Health Secretary RFK Jr. over how to classify measles deaths. Kennedy has publicly questioned whether Pennsylvania’s deaths were actually caused by measles, and his CDC lists only two measles deaths nationwide this year. Shapiro has called Kennedy “incompetent” and expanded access to the MMR vaccine in affected communities.

The US is having its worst measles year since 1991, and international health officials will soon decide if the country has lost its measles-free status. The CDC reports 3,887 confirmed cases this year, with major outbreaks in South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Ohio, which has more than 200 cases. Measles was eliminated in the US in 2000 thanks to high vaccination rates, but coverage has fallen below the 95% needed to prevent outbreaks. Measles also causes “immune amnesia,” wiping out 11% to 73% of a person’s existing antibodies and leaving survivors vulnerable to other infections for up to five years. In November, international health officials will meet to determine whether the US and Mexico have lost their measles-free status. The last outbreak of this size, in New York City in the early 1990s, infected more than 4,500 people.

Mumps is also spreading, even as the Trump administration pushes to break up the MMR vaccine. A mumps outbreak has sidelined 17 San Diego State University football players since mid-September, and 31 jurisdictions had reported 157 mumps cases as of Sept. 10. Experts say those outbreaks are largely driven by waning immunity, since protection against mumps declines over time and lasts roughly a decade. In August, Trump signed an executive order calling for the MMR vaccine to be split into three separate shots and pushing to expand parents’ ability to opt their kids out of vaccines. Public health experts warn that spreading shots across multiple visits will raise costs and lower vaccination rates, and at least 23 states say they’ll keep following the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendations instead of Kennedy’s. RFK Jr. has falsely linked the MMR vaccine to autism, even though it protects against the very infertility he has claimed to be worried about.

Other news:

A conservative Christian lawyer who spent 18 years at the Interior Department resigned in protest, warning of “a deeply troubling assault on the rule of law” under Trump. In a resignation letter obtained by the Guardian, John Murdock cited “glaring legal flaws” he witnessed, including the administration’s decision to exempt a massive Gulf of Mexico oil and gas lease sale from key environmental laws. He decided to quit after the acting head of the offshore drilling agency claimed the administration was “upholding the highest environmental standards,” then later left the government to work for Halliburton. Murdock also slammed the decision to exempt Gulf drilling from the Endangered Species Act, the push to pay a French energy company nearly $1 billion to abandon wind leases, and a weekly internal video he said had turned into “something approaching cultish worship” of Trump. Murdock, who once helped clean up BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill, wrote that he did not want to be part of “creating an even greater disaster.” The Interior Department dismissed his concerns as “one former employee’s personal disagreement.”

A former FBI supervisor says the White House pushed the bureau to investigate Los Angeles protesters in violation of their constitutional rights. In a whistleblower complaint to Senate Judiciary leaders, former intelligence analyst Jill Fields says the White House directed FBI Director Kash Patel to investigate people using megaphones to warn residents about immigration raids and advise them of their rights, after agents had already declined to open a case. She was told the investigation would move forward because “the President wants this investigation,” and says agents were pulled off active cartel cases to “make a show for the president.” Fields also alleges that Emil Bove, then the acting deputy attorney general, ordered an investigation into protest activity outside a federal building that she says was protected free speech. Fields says supervisors were told not to put directives in writing, and she resigned after being stripped of her programs for raising concerns. Sen. Alex Padilla is demanding answers from Patel and Attorney General Todd Blanche, asking how many more investigations have been opened under White House pressure.

Senate Republicans are pouring $5 million into deep-red South Carolina to rescue Darline Graham as polls show a dead heat. According to Axios, the main GOP Senate super PAC is calling it an “insurance policy” after two Republican-leaning pollsters showed Graham, the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s sister, essentially tied with Democrat Annie Andrews, a pediatrician running as “a mom and a doctor.” Graham, appointed to the seat in July at Trump’s urging, has been outraised and outspent by Andrews, avoids the press and stumbled on foreign policy during her primary debate. The move comes as Republicans pull ad money from North Carolina, where Roy Cooper leads, and after the same super PAC dumped $131 million into Texas over 17 days to prop up Ken Paxton. Trump weighed in Monday by attacking Andrews on Truth Social with an anti-trans slur, prompting her backers to call him “perverted.” Democrats haven’t won a statewide race in South Carolina since 2006, which shows just how bad the environment has become for Republicans four weeks out.

Paramount completed its $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, putting CNN, CBS and HBO under one roof controlled by David Ellison. The new company, called Skydance, combines the studios behind “Mission: Impossible,” “Harry Potter” and DC with networks including CBS, CNN, Paramount+ and HBO Max. Ellison, son of Oracle co-founder and Trump ally Larry Ellison, beat out Netflix in a bidding war for Warner Bros. Analysts say the Skydance name underscores how much control Ellison now has over some of Hollywood’s most iconic brands. The company plans $6 billion in cost cuts that are expected to hit jobs across Hollywood, and it will carry about $80 billion in debt. CNN chief Mark Thompson and CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss will keep their roles, meaning two of the country’s biggest news operations now answer to the same billionaire.

France is struggling to contain its biggest student protests in decades, with more than 5,000 people taken into police custody, most of them minors. What began on Sept. 21 as a small protest backing striking teachers at a high school outside Paris has snowballed into a national crisis, with students blockading schools from Lille to Marseille, hundreds of schools forced to close and more than 100 damaged. The violence has been severe on both sides: one student in Lens lost his hand after reportedly picking up a grenade, another in Tours lost the use of an eye, and police have been accused of heavy-handed tactics, including a banned headlock used on a girl in Alençon. Students say they’re demanding the bare minimum, pointing to overcrowded and understaffed schools where 70% of public classrooms have more than 30 students and there are fewer teachers than in 2008 despite 250,000 more students. The education minister met with student leaders Friday without reaching a deal, and the government’s response is hamstrung by a budget crisis that pushed France’s 10-year bond yield to its highest level since 2002. Thousands more are expected to march Tuesday, as the unrest kicks off a bitter battle between the far left and far right ahead of next spring’s presidential election.

Russia now says no plague was found among contacts of the Siberian lab worker who died, but questions remain. Russia’s health watchdog said testing of about 60% of her contacts found only two Covid cases and two common colds, without ever mentioning the word “plague.” The WHO says Russia told it no plague case was recorded, but the agency is still waiting to learn what pathogen actually caused her death. The regional governor also claimed no microorganisms linked to her lab work were found in her body, while local officials called reports of strict regional restrictions “fake.” The US State Department continues to refer to a “fatal case of suspected pneumonic plague” and is urging more transparency. Meanwhile, some of Russia’s neighbors have tightened quarantine controls at border crossings, and the Kremlin keeps deferring questions about her lab results and autopsy.

Two major Latino advocacy groups are launching a six-figure turnout push in South Texas, where a majority backed Trump in 2024. The Voto Latino Foundation and Hispanic Federation are targeting the Rio Grande Valley, where they estimate nearly 316,000 eligible Latinos didn’t vote in 2024, plus nearly 500,000 Texas Latinos who have turned 18 since then. The effort includes a town hall in Edinburg this Saturday, a televised Telemundo event and a rally later this month. Organizers are urging voters to vote early and check their registrations, warning of efforts to push people off the rolls. Voto Latino’s María Teresa Kumar called the Valley “the epicenter of the Latino vote,” saying a swing back to Democrats there would signal what to expect in 2028. A new NBC News/Telemundo poll found 69% of Latino voters disapprove of Trump, and 54% say they want their midterm vote to signal opposition to him.

Cornell faculty have introduced a no-confidence resolution against the university’s administration over its handling of the alleged gang rape. The resolution declares the Faculty Senate has no confidence in leadership’s ability to “effectively address the ongoing crisis of sexual assault” at Cornell and will be considered at an Oct. 14 meeting. Sponsor Paul Ortiz said students have been telling faculty “they don’t feel safe” for years and called it a “systemic problem.” Faculty say alumni have also come forward with their own traumatic stories from their time as students. Ortiz stressed the effort isn’t targeting any individual, saying “the goal is to really force systemic change.” It comes as students are rising up and making their voices heard in major campus protests, all of which peaceful:

Belgian-born physicist Francis Halzen won the Nobel Prize in physics for capturing cosmic neutrinos at the South Pole. Halzen, 82, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was instrumental in building the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica, which uses the ice to detect tiny “ghost particles” that carry clues about exploding stars and distant galaxies. The Nobel Committee credited him with opening a new kind of astronomy. Halzen said the win was “a great surprise” and joked that he hoped it would help get a pending proposal approved. Ellen Moons, the first woman to lead the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, made history by announcing the award. The prize is worth about $1.2 million, with chemistry, literature, peace and economics still to be announced.

More On U.S. Military, Foreign Policy 

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Sept. Oct. 5, 2026 [More U.S. Killings in Caribbean], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 6, 2026. Last night, on October 4, U.S. Southern Command posted that it had struck another small boat in the Caribbean, killing another four people it called “narco-terrorists.” This brings the number of strikes to more than 70, and the number of people killed in the strikes that began a year ago to more than 230 people.

The administration’s justification for the strikes has not been made public. It has claimed—without evidence—that the men on the boats were trafficking drugs, but such a charge would normally be handled by the legal system. The Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice produced an opinion providing legal cover for the strikes, and some of the members of Congress who have seen it are alarmed.

Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) saw the memo in November and said: “If that opinion were to be adopted, it would not constrain any use of force anywhere in the world. I mean, it is broad enough to authorize just about anything.” In December the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights sued to gain access to the memo after the government denied their requests to see it under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

On September 21 a report from the United Nations concluded that the extrajudicial killings broke international law and may be crimes against humanity.

Last Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice to show him the memo and let him know who else has seen it, in order to evaluate whether to release it to the public.

On October 1, John Hudson of the Washington Post reported that the Trump administration has taken $52 million Congress appropriated for countries impacted by Russia’s war on Ukraine and rerouted it to right-wing governments in Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Peru.

On Saturday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters the U.S. could move U.S. military personnel from Europe to the Western Hemisphere, saying: “Well, we’re definitely expanding our presence and our footprint in Central and South America with partners, and because of the bold move the president made in Venezuela,” referring to the U.S. capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife in a nighttime raid in early January. “We have a whole new suite of options economically and militarily with partnerships.”

While the administration is billing its intervention in Latin America as a battle against drugs, the comparison to Venezuela, where Trump has claimed control over the country’s oil fields and says he has taken billions of dollars out, although there is no public acknowledgement of where that money has gone, is instructive.

On Sunday, Jan Crawford of CBS News published an interview with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, in which Alito said one of his first thoughts after he learned that a draft of his Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision had been leaked was that “this would endanger” the people on the court.

Alito went on to say that he does not anticipate that the court will overturn the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision recognizing the right to same-sex marriage. That case is different from Roe v. Wade, he said, because people have come to rely on Obergefell as they organize their lives.

“One of the important factors we take into account in deciding whether we should reexamine a past decision is the degree to which there has been reliance on the decision,” Alito said. “Obviously a great deal had changed in the country as a result of Obergefell. There was a lot of reliance in various ways on the decision in Obergefell.”

In fact, all but one of the justices who overturned Roe—Thomas declined to answer—said in their confirmation hearings that they considered Roe settled law. Crawford pointed out that people thought Roe was settled law and had organized their lives around it, just as people had organized their lives around Obergefell.

“After Obergefell, people of the same sex got married and entered into contracts…it was much more concrete,” Alito told Crawford. “Whereas with Roe, the argument was made that it had an effect on people’s ideas, women’s ideas about the kind of society that they were going to live in, that this would have an effect on the society. It was much more abstract than what would’ve been involved had we been asked to overrule Obergefell.”

These are the same story: the deliberate destruction of the post–World War II order those who had lived through the horrors of World Wars I and II put in place to prevent another world war.

Even before the U.S. entered World War II, U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill and their advisors laid out principles for an international system that could prevent future world wars. In the 1941 Atlantic Charter, they declared that countries must not invade each other.

In April 1945, 850 delegates and their staff and advisors met in San Francisco, California, where they wrote, and adopted unanimously, the United Nations charter prohibiting “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”

Trump and his loyalists reject this framework in favor of one favored by those like Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, one that looks much like the world did before 193 nations signed onto the United Nations charter. In their worldview, strong nations exercise spheres of influence, taking political and economic control of neighboring nations.

Part of the post–World War II attempt to prevent future wars was an insistence that all human beings had certain rights and must be treated equally before the law. In 1948 the United Nations General Assembly announced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which provided a common standard of fundamental rights for all human beings.

Eleanor Roosevelt, widow of former president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and much beloved defender of human rights in the United States, led the commission that wrote the UDHR, figuring out how to define the violation of human rights not only internationally but also within a nation, and how to protect “the rights of man all over the world.”

Drafted over the next two years, the final document established that “[a]ll human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights…without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status” and regardless “of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs.”

Those rights included freedom from slavery, torture, degrading punishment, arbitrary arrest, exile, and “arbitrary interference with…privacy, family, home or correspondence, [and] attacks upon…honour and reputation.” They included the right to equality before the law and to a fair trial, the right to participate in government, either “directly or through freely chosen representatives,” the right of equal access to public service. After all, the UDHR noted, the authority of government rests on the will of the people, “expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage.”

Under Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the U.S. has abandoned the U.N. prohibition on violating the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, as well as the human rights of the people in the small boats, not to mention migrants. As Alito’s statement that the right of women to have control over their healthcare was simply an abstract idea that didn’t have to be protected suggested, undermining the post–World War II order has been a long-term project.

In its place, Trump and his allies propose a dictatorship. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who was jailed in the U.S. for money laundering but pardoned by Trump, worked with the Trump family to establish the crypto start-up World Liberty Financial, which put $799 million in Trump’s pocket last year. Zhao now lives in the United Arab Emirates.

In a recent interview with David Yaffe-Bellany of the New York Times, Zhao explained: “Democracy has been hailed as, like, the holy grail for the last couple hundred years, but democracies are inefficient. If you get a benevolent dictator, it’s actually extremely efficient. There’s very little debate going on. You don’t waste time on a lot of frivolous stuff.” It’s a model for which Trump repeatedly has expressed admiration.

In March 1941, eight months before the U.S. joined World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt noted that “Nazi forces are not seeking mere modifications in colonial maps or in minor European boundaries. They openly seek the destruction of all elective systems of government on every continent—including our own; they seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers who have seized power by force.”

“[T]hese men and their hypnotized followers call this a new order,” FDR said, but “[i]t is not new and it is not order.” “[T]he rallying cry of the dictators, their boasting about a master-race, will prove to be pure stuff and nonsense,” he said. “There never has been, there isn’t now, and there never will be, any race of people on the earth fit to serve as masters over their fellow men.”

“The world has no use for any Nation which, because of size or because of military might, asserts the right to goosestep to world power over the bodies of other Nations or other races,” he said. “We believe that any nationality, no matter how small, has the inherent right to its own nationhood” and that “the men and women of such Nations, no matter what size, can, through the processes of peace, serve themselves and serve the world by protecting the common man’s security; improve the standards of healthful living; provide markets for manufacture and for agriculture. Through that kind of peaceful service every Nation can increase its happiness, banish the terrors of war, and abandon man’s inhumanity to man.”

“Never, in all our history, have Americans faced a job so well worthwhile,” he concluded. “May it be said of us in the days to come that our children and our children’s children rise up and call us blessed.”

More On U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Religion

Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker in 1986. Their world came tumbling down the next year with a revelation that he had sex with a secretary in his Assemblies of God ministry (AP photo by Lou Krasky).

Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker in 1986. Their world came tumbling down the next year with a revelation that he had sex with a secretary in his Assemblies of God ministry (AP photo by Lou Krasky).

New York Times, Jim Bakker, Television Preacher Felled by Sex and Financial Scandals, Dies at 86, Clyde Haberman, Updated Oct. 6, 2026. With his wife, Tammy Faye, Mr. Bakker built a broadcasting juggernaut around the gospel of prosperity.

Jim Bakker, a television evangelist who lost his popular and prosperous ministry in a 1980s sex scandal and then lost his freedom for five years, imprisoned for having violated federal laws with his conflation of God and mammon, died on Monday. He was 86.

His wife, Lori Bakker, announced the death in a statement on Mr. Bakker’s official Instagram account. She did not cite a cause or say where he died. Mr. Bakker had what was described as a mild stroke in 2020.

In the 1970s and ’80s, Mr. Bakker and his first wife, Tammy Faye Bakker, rode to fame and riches preaching the gospel of prosperity, the notion that those who embraced genuine Christian faith would reap material rewards. Their pulpit was the television ministry PTL, which stood for Praise the Lord and People That Love, and their appeal was a combination of sermons, songs and tears. Both had a penchant for crying in public. Tammy Bakker wept on the air so often that she made sure her thickly applied mascara was waterproof.

The Bakkers drew as many as 13 million viewers a day and brought in yearly revenue as high as $129 million. On a 2,500-acre site in Fort Mill, S.C., they created and sold shares in Heritage USA, a sort of Christian Disneyland, with water slides and skating to go along with prayer and Bible study.

Mr. Bakker (pronounced Baker) was a gifted speaker who made no apologies for doing well in the name of the Lord. “Excess and success are close together,” he said in 1985. “Anyone who is successful has got to be excessive.”

More On Artificial Intelligence, Inflation, Jobs, Markets

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: AI Versus Everything Else, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 6, 2026. The hyperscaler boom is crowding out other investment.

Until now, discussions of the potential economic problems created by the AI boom have mostly focused on the future. Will it destroy millions of jobs? Is there a bubble and will it cause a severe recession if it bursts? Will it destroy humanity? While these are doubtless very important questions, attempts to answer them are at best educated guesses.

We don’t have to guess, however, about one major effect of the AI boom, because it’s happening right now: Massive spending on data centers is crowding out investment in everything else in the economy.

“Crowding out” is a familiar term in economics, usually considered a consequence of government spending. When a government engages in deficit spending and the economy is at or near full employment, it drives up interest rates. That’s because, at near or full employment, the private sector is using all the available credit in the economy at the current interest rate. Therefore, in order to attract enough funds to satisfy its deficit, the government has to offer a higher interest rate. And this, in turn, leads to lower private investment. In effect, private investment is “crowded out” by the government deficit.

Note that this story only applies when the economy is near full employment. In the past, conservative claims about crowding out were widely invoked to justify fiscal austerity after the 2008 financial crisis, when all the world’s major economies were deeply depressed. Harsh spending cuts created severe slumps in Europe, while in the US Republicans compelled Obama to cut government spending, delaying full recovery from the Great Recession. In fact, when an economy is suffering from high unemployment, deficit spending doesn’t hurt private investment. Instead, it often leads to “crowding in”: government spending boosts the economy, and the private sector is more willing to invest when the economy is stronger.

However, given the situation we are in now, with relatively low unemployment and elevated inflation, crowding out is a legitimate concern. Yet it’s important to understand that the sources of crowding out aren’t limited to government spending. Surges in private spending, like the current immense AI boom, also drive up interest rates. And that is where we are now: the surge in AI spending is driving up interest rates and crowding out all other investment. Indeed, in my October 4 primer I argued that the AI boom is the main cause of soaring long-term interest rates.

Evidence of that crowding out is revealed by a recent article in the New York Times, which noted that the AI Boom is not being slowed by these soaring rates. Yet the spike in interest rates is being felt throughout the non-AI economy. In other words, all that money going into construction of datacenters and purchasing foreign produced semiconductors comes at the expense of investment in everything else.

The chart at the top of this post, which I borrowed from Steve Rattner, clearly makes this point: construction of datacenters appears to be diverting funds and resources from the construction of housing, office buildings, and factories — more or less everything that isn’t AI-related.

That said, AI-related construction — building the structures that house datacenters — is only a fraction of the AI spending boom. Most of the money is going for equipment and software. In fact, that’s one main reason AI spending is so resistant to high interest rates: Borrowing costs matter much less for assets like GPUs, which depreciate rapidly in any case, than they do for long-lived assets like buildings.

Does this story hold if we focus on investment in equipment and software rather than construction? Yes.

Chart 2 shows my version of Rattner’s story. I look at business investment in “tech” — information processing and software — measured as a percentage of GDP. The blue line in the graph below shows how much that measure of tech spending has changed since the beginning of 2023. I compare that with the corresponding change in all other investment. This chart clearly reveals dramatic crowding out by tech spending of all other investment:

So the AI boom is crowding out everything else. While high interest rates are the main mechanism, there are also others: datacenters are gobbling up scarce electricity, and their demand for semiconductor chips has caused a “RAM apocalypse” of soaring chip prices that is hurting a wide range of industries such as autos and personal computers.

There are, as I see it, three main questions that we should ask about this AI-induced crowding out.

First, wasn’t it always thus? That is, isn’t this what always happens when a new technology drives an investment boom?

Surprisingly, the answer is no. Chart 3 shows the same calculation as Chart 2, but applied to the tech boom of the 1990s, and it doesn’t show any crowding out at all — in fact, non-tech investment rose:

How was that possible? Most of the answer is that during the 90s boom America attracted very large inflows of investment from abroad, which effectively financed the tech boom even as other investment rose.

That isn’t happening this time. True, Donald Trump insists that he has brought in 20 quadrillion dollars of foreign investment, or something like that, but most of that alleged foreign investment surge is a figment of his imagination, and there’s no sign of such a surge in balance of payments data.

A second question is, shouldn’t we assume that the private sector knows what it is doing -- that the reallocation of investment toward AI and away from everything else makes economic sense?

Definitely not. We shouldn’t assume that this reallocation of investment makes economic sense for the country as a whole. Through the tax code, and especially through changes in the tax code in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, the data center boom is effectively being subsidized by taxpayer dollars.

Moreover, we shouldn’t assume that the private sector knows what it’s doing. There’s often a double standard when thinking about bad investments, in which public investments that go bad are treated as evidence that the government can’t do anything right, while private malinvestment is brushed off as no big deal.

Think about the $80 billion that Meta, formerly known as Facebook, spent on the “metaverse,” only to basically abandon the concept. A government program that spent $80 billion on a failed project would be the subject of endless Congressional hearings. Yet the waste from a failed private investment is equally real.

Finally, how much risk is the AI boom creating in the rest of the economy? Tales of financial stress caused by high interest rates are proliferating. For example, a report in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal was titled “The surge in rates is blowing up commercial real-estate deals.” There’s a growing sense among observers I talk to that the adverse financial fallout of the AI boom for private credit and other loosely regulated parts of the financial system may be larger than many realize.

So it’s clear that crowding out by the AI boom is happening on a very large scale. And unlike the risks of technological unemployment or a burst bubble, this isn’t a hypothetical risk. It’s happening right now. 

 

bulwark morning shots logoMorning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Recordings show Stacy Garrity claiming Trump’s data center plan as her own, Brendan Hartnett, Oct. 6, 2026. As Andrew Egger wrote in Morning Shots in August, politicians are suddenly noticing that everybody hates data centers. The data center backlash is moving so quickly that politicians are scrambling to keep up—sometimes contradicting themselves in the process.

bulwark logo big shipPennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity publicly supported data centers in the summer of 2025. Then, according to audio obtained exclusively by The Bulwark, she voiced the same opinion at a December 2025 Greene County Republicans event, saying that while people hold “mixed views” of data centers, they are a “nice opportunity for rural PA, where we have a lot of space where it wouldn’t be so intrusive.” Two months later, at an Elk County meet-and-greet, Garrity dismissed voters’ concerns about the noise generated by data centers and their impact on energy prices on the grounds that “there’s some misinformation out there,” according to the audio recordings.

Then in May, Garrity called for a pause on construction of new data centers.

Garrity insisted she hadn’t switched at all. In July she stated that her “position has not changed: It’s up to the communities.”

More recently, however, she’s mirrored Trump’s position. Last month, according to the recordings shared with The Bulwark, she told a voter at a campaign event in Westmoreland County that her policy was the same as President Trump’s “Ratepayer Protection Pledge”—a voluntary pledge without enforcement mechanisms that asks hyperscalers and tech companies to provide their own electricity to avoid raising rates on locals—“except mine was before the president.” She continued, “I agree with Trump, I’m glad he put it out.”

We reached out to Garrity’s campaign asking if her views on data centers have changed. A spokesperson pointed us to Garrity’s January 2026 remarks at the Pennsylvania Press Club when she said, “There are a lot of areas where you could put data centers where communities would welcome them, but you have to engage with them, you have to talk to them, you just can’t jam it down their throat.” The spokesperson noted that this is “the same answer to a question that the Governor has sliced and diced for his advertising purposes where he leaves out the second part of her statement,” and pointed to “Josh Shapiro’s position and ‘evolution’ on the issue,” accusing him of “selling out the people of Pennsylvania for his own political gain.”

As Garrity’s campaign has pointed out, and The Bulwark previously reported, incumbent Gov. Josh Shapiro has in fact changed his position on the issue. Shapiro started out with a mission to make Pennsylvania an AI haven before signing an order with new restrictions on data center development statewide. The difference is that while Shapiro has held two different positions, he at least admits it.

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jonathan v last jvl triad logoThe Triad Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Propagandist in the Press Pool, Jonathan V. Last, above, Oct. 6, 2026. From “covering” Trump to covering FOR Trump.

In mid-September, the Trump administration bestowed press pool status on reporter—sorry, “reporter”—Beni Rae Harmony as she traveled to Ireland to cover the president.

Then, on September 26, the 24-year-old(!) Harmony, who worked for the network Real America’s Voice, took CNN’s spot on the presidential plane after Trump refused to let the network onboard.

Last Friday, Harmony switched sides, going from covering the White House as a member of the press to serving Trump as his newest assistant press secretary.

There are so many questions here, but let’s start with the most obvious one: Do you think she’ll get back pay?

Every once in a while a “journalist” will jump from the press side into a comms role in a presidential administration. Tony Snow did it. Jay Carney did it. I find such shifts distasteful, but whatever. Not everyone is a priss like me.

What has never happened before (so far as I can tell) is a supposedly straight news reporter working as a pool representative covering the president on behalf of the full American media blob one week then becoming a paid shill for that president a few days later.

How bad was it? OMG. Whatever it is you’re imagining, the reality is worse.

Buckle your chin straps; it’s about to get wild.

President Donald Trump traveled to Ireland on September 12. Beni Rae Harmony was in tow as a representative of the network Real America’s Voice.

On September 13 the president went to a golf tournament before later departing from Shannon Airport to return to Washington. At the tournament he held a gaggle with reporters. Beni Rae Harmony asked him a penetrating question. Let’s go to the transcript:

Trump: I think [U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham is] a very nice guy. He tends to be on the liberal side, unfortunately. The one thing he is gonna be doing, I think he’s gonna be stopping the stupid windmills, and he’s be going, he’s going to be drilling in the North Sea. That’s my impression. I hope no windmills. If you have a windmill in your backyard—

Harmony: You remember the Oval Office? I was the windmill girl in the Oval Office that asked you, and you said they were heinous and they were—

Trump: Who are you with?

Harmony: Real America’s Voice.

Trump: That’s good.

Unfortunately, the gaggle ended before Harmony could hit him with a follow-up.

Fortunately, Trump gaggled again on the tarmac just before boarding Air Force One, when one of the reporters asked an interesting question. We have video of the exchange, but it’s a little noisy, so I’ll give you a transcript, too.

Reporter: Who's your top contender for press secretary?

Trump: I don’t know. Would anybody like to be press secretary?

Reporter: No favorite? No short list?

Trump: No, no. But I may have developed one over the weekend.

Ha ha. Look at the president, jokingly asking the reporters if any of them would like to join his administration. How unconventional. How daring.

Except that shortly afterward, aboard Air Force One, a photographer snapped a picture of Trump holding a sheet of paper that sure looks like it has the words “Beni Rae Harmony” at the top of it.Trump speaking with reporters while in flight on Air Force One from Shannon, Ireland to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, Sunday, September 13, 2026. (Photo enhancement by The Bulwark | Photo: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP)

Whatever might that be? Oh, I’m sure there’s an innocent explanation.

Anyhoo, last Thursday, on October 1, Trump was gaggling again and Real America’s Voice was part of the press pool again, when Trump (again) suggested that someone (or someones) in the gaggle was applying to be his press secretary.

Reporter: What are you looking for in a new press secretary?

Trump: Well, we have a lot of people that want that job. I would say many of them are right here. Would you like that job?

Unfortunately, I can’t tell if Beni Rae Harmony was the RAV reporter in the pool that day, because we don’t have video. What we do know is that the very next day she announced that she was joining the administration.

At the risk of belaboring the obvious: Beni Rae Harmony was not ever a journalist. She was a propagandist. Pure and simple. Not an “opinion” journalist. Not a biased media figure. Not a reporter with a point of view.

A propagandist.

There’s a difference, you know.¹

And as far as Harmony goes, I don’t really fault her. If anything, I’m glad she’s out of the closet and gets to live as her authentic self. It’s good that she has left the press side.

But this episode tells you a lot about institutional media bias.

When Trump came back into office, he seized control of the White House press pool. Historically the pool was run by the White House Correspondents’ Association. Trump arrogated that power to himself. The WHCA went along with it. They weren’t happy, but they submitted.

And in so doing they handed Trump the ability to name his own propagandists as the deputized representatives for the entire American media.²

Think about that for a moment. This isn’t state control of the media, exactly. But you can see Pravda and Sputnik from the front porch.

If we get out of this, we’re going to need to rethink a great deal of the American political order. One part of that will be how to prevent presidents from appointing propagandists as members of his pooled press.

And part of that reform will be changing the old guard institutions that bent over for Trump.

I don’t blame Beni Rae Harmony for going from pool reporter to Trump mouthpiece. I blame the White House Correspondents’ Association that let Trump put her there in the first place.

Oct. 5

Top Headlines

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  • Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: The Trump Administration is a Cesspit of Corruption, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 5, 2026. And fighting it should be at the heart of the Democratic agenda. The level of corruption that Trump has engaged in and enabled in others is completely unprecedented – self-dealing that, as Trump would say, is like nothing anybody has ever seen before. America currently has a Republican president who, along with his family, has raked in billions, possibly close to $10 billion in personal gain from office in less than two years. He has effectively sold criminal pardons to scammers, invalidating the legal claims of their victims for restitution. His son-in-law Jared Kushner has become a billionaire running an investment fund for Gulf petro-state autocrats despite having no discernible investment skills. The Times just reported that Kristi Noem paid hundreds of millions over the reasonable price for 5 aircraft – one of which contains a marble bathroom and luxury bedroom – that were ostensibly for deportations but are instead sitting on the runway. And then there’s Trump’s Secretary of the Commerce, Howard Lutnick, whose family has doubled its net worth to over $7 billion, largely through its investments in Tether, the crypto-currency of choice by Iran, terrorists and rogue states.
  • Defiance.org, Commentary: Trump just told Americans: vote MAGA, or lose federal aid. His threats will backfire, Miles Taylor, right, miles taylor 1 gmaOct. 5, 2026. Trump just told Americans: vote MAGA, or lose federal aid. The president says he’ll withhold money from states that don’t vote MAGA. That’s obviously illegal, and it’s pissing off a country already sick of his corruption.

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Special Report

Shown above are some of those convicted in a Republican-orchestrated 1972 plot to burglarize Democratic offices at Watergate complex in Washington, DC in advance of that year's presidential elections.

Shown above are some of those convicted in a Republican-orchestrated 1972 plot to burglarize Democratic offices at Watergate complex in Washington, DC in advance of that year's presidential elections.

  • Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Erasing Watergate: Trump's Campaign to Rewrite American History, Wayne Madsen, right, wayne madsen new observerOct. 5, 2026. Trump is channeling the late Communist Chinese leader Mao Zedong and his Cultural Revolution in not only destroying Washington DC’s memorial to President John F. Kennedy (the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts) and East Wing of the White House but ordering the Justice Department to investigate veteran federal prosecutors of President Richard Nixon for misconduct.

News Roundups

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance 

  • U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsDemocracy Docket, Opinion: This time, take Trump literally, Marc Elias, Democracy Docket founder, Oct. 5, 2026. Earlier this year, The New York Times asked Donald Trump whether he regretted not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines in swing states after the 2020 election. His answer was chilling: "Well, I should have." Trump is telling us what he plans to do in this year's midterms. He is trying to rig the elections and subvert their results. While we have been able to stop him so far, there is no guarantee that we will continue to prevail in the weeks ahead.Yet despite the obvious signs of Trump's plan, too many reporters and pundits downplay it. They adhere to the false neutrality that has come to dominate legacy media coverage over the last decade.
  • Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion: House Dems Expand The Battlefield, Early Early Vote Data Encouraging, Trump Is Campaigning Today In Nebraska!!!!!!!!!!!! Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 5, 2026. Here’s some news from Politico: Democrats’ House campaign arm is expanding its targets even further into Trump country, as the party grows increasingly bullish they will not just win, but win big next month.
  • The Contrarian, Opinion: Please, Mr. President, Campaign For My Republican Opponent! Jennifer Rubin, right, jennifer rubin new headshotOct. 5, 2026. The horrendous September jobs numbers — only 29,000 new jobs (a fraction of the 84,000 expected) and unemployment up to 4.2% — tell only part of the story. With downward revisions, the economy actually lost 10,000 jobs in July and added just 133,000, not 162,000, in August (as Donald Trump touted in his rant-filled encounter with TIME magazine last week). Coupled with inflation, the soaring debt, and spiking energy prices, the Trump economy has become a nightmare for ordinary workers and consumers.
  • PoliticusUSA, News and Comment: Trump Blames Blue States, Not His Iran War, For Gas Prices, Jason Easley, right, jason easleyOct. 5, 2026. The reality that he is soon going to be a lame-duck, irrelevant president is slowly creeping in on Donald Trump, who accused blue states of cheating in elections, and causing high gas prices.
  • Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Oct. 4, 2026 [Bribing Voters With Federal Funds], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 5, 2026. On Friday night, just before 11:00, Trump announced that his administration “will, immediately, begin sending ‘Checks’ of nearly $100 to over 20 MILLION wonderful Seniors to help pay for their Medicare Part B premiums, which we have already reduced by significant amounts."  A Republican congressional aide told Dan Diamond of the Washington Post that lawmakers had been planning to use the fund to help fund several health programs this year, and were taken aback by Trump’s announcement.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

wayne madsen new observerJustice Integrity Project Editor's Note: Investigative reporter Wayne Madsen, left, a courageous reporter, a former Navy intelligence officer and a close colleague of this editor, broke the Hastert story in a three-part series in the fall of 2006 published on "The Wayne Madsen Report" naming the then-powerful House Speaker as a gay pedophile and hypocrite who presided over a "gay Mafia" of powerful Republicans in Congress who abused youths while winning elections as "family values" purists.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption 

 pete hegseth treason graphic

  • Hope for America, Opinion: Pete Hegseth's TREASON accusation reveals a dark plan, Heather Delaney Reese, above right, Oct. 5, 2026. Pete Hegseth stood at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs beneath a redesigned military seal that looked like something pulled from 1930s Germany, and told cadets that “the flyovers will continue until morale improves.”
  • Hope for America, Opinion: Pete Hegseth is obsessed with men and power, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Oct. 5, 2026. heather delaney reeseEarly yesterday morning, the United States Secretary of “War,” Pete Hegseth, stepped up to the podium at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and stood directly under a desecrated version of the Department of Defense seal.

More On Middle East Wars

More Global News  

  • Israel FlagDrop Site News, CIA Report Warns Israel Could Head Toward Civil War, Total Collapse, Aída Chávez and Ryan Grim, Oct. 5, 2026. U.S. intelligence raises fears of civil unrest and state breakdown in Israel ahead ofOctober 27 elections. TCIA Logohis article is being co-published with Capital & Empire. Israel is at risk of civil war or state collapse, a classified CIA assessment warns, as years of genocide in Gaza and war in Lebanon and Iran deepen political, economic, and social fractures within thecountry. The August report, titled “Fracture From Within,” was compiled by experts in the CIA’s Red Cell, according to two U.S. sources who described the contents of the report to Drop Site News. The Red Cell, which is the unit responsible for providing “alternative analysis” within the agency, produced the assessment through a combination of open source information and U.S. intelligence. 
  • german flagPolitico, Germany risks being drawn into ‘violent conflict’ with Russia, spy chief warns, James Angelos, Oct. 5, 2026. The head of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency also cautioned that NATO countries must beware of Moscow’s “little green men.”
  • Politico, Suspected plague in Russia puts EU on alert, Claudia Chiappa, Oct. 5, 2026. “We are aware of the reports concerning the laboratory incident in Russia, seemingly involving a pathogen-causing plague,” says European Commission spokesperson.
  • New York Times, ‘No Help’: Aid Arrived Too Late as Ebola Spread in a Congolese Town, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Photographs by Arlette Bashizi, Oct. 5, 2026. What happened in Mangala, where residents were left with little outside support, helps explain how this outbreak became the worst seen in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
  • New York Times, Trapped in a Kill Zone, a Ukrainian City Is Beginning to Starve, ukraine flagSiobhán O’Grady, Liubov Sholudko and Yurii Shyvala, Oct. 5, 2026. Evacuation is almost impossible and food is running out in Russian-occupied Oleshky, a city menaced by mines and drones.
  • New York Times, News Analysis: In a Major Boost for the Right, Another Bolsonaro Nears Brazil’s Presidency, Ana Ionova and Adam B. Ellick, Oct. 5, 2026. Flávio Bolsonaro’s first round lead leaves President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva three weeks to find the votes to stop Brazil’s, and Latin America’s, rightward shift.
  • New York Times, Spain’s Leader Calls Early Election After Housing Crisis Roils Government, Carlos Barragán and Jason Horowitz, Oct. 5, 2026. Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish prime minister, has faced challenges including a migration crisis and several corruption scandals involving his inner circle.

More On #MeToo Experiences

  • Are you f'ng kidding me? Personal Essay, I Was Drunk. I Was Raped,.Both Things Can Be True At The Same Time, JoJo From Jerz, right, jo jo from jerzOct. 5, 2026. The Cornell “7” rape story has been excruciatingly difficult for me to talk or write about. This piece has taken me the better part of three days to write because every single time I sat down to do so, some piece of it dragged me back inside the worst night of my life.

More On Epstein Files, Trump Team Coverup

epstein suspicious deaths wmr 10 5 2025

Wayne Madsen Report, Commentary: Suspicious deaths connected to Trumpstein continue, Wayne Madsen, Oct. 5, 2026. Latest “suicide” is linked to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

U.S. Inflation, Markets, Jobs, High-Tech 

U.S. Media

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Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: The Trump Administration is a Cesspit of Corruption, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 5, 2026. And fighting it should be at the heart of the Democratic agenda.

We found out that Donald Trump Jr.'s lavish Bahamas wedding was heavily funded by a secret benefactor: Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin. Kremlev footed the bill for

The cesspit of corruption that is Donald Trump’s presidency is finally getting the attention it deserves. It’s about time. And if a massive blue wave sweeps Washington on November 3rd as polls now suggest, Democrats should put corruption front and center of their agenda in Congress.

The level of corruption that Trump has engaged in and enabled in others is completely unprecedented – self-dealing that, as Trump would say, is like nothing anybody has ever seen before. America currently has a Republican president who, along with his family, has raked in billions, possibly close to $10 billion in personal gain from office in less than two years.

He has effectively sold criminal pardons to scammers, invalidating the legal claims of their victims for restitution. His son-in-law Jared Kushner has become a billionaire running an investment fund for Gulf petro-state autocrats despite having no discernible investment skills. The Times just reported that Kristi Noem paid hundreds of millions over the reasonable price for 5 aircraft – one of which contains a marble bathroom and luxury bedroom – that were ostensibly for deportations but are instead sitting on the runway. And then there’s Trump’s Secretary of the Commerce, Howard Lutnick, whose family has doubled its net worth to over $7 billion, largely through its investments in Tether, the crypto-currency of choice by Iran, terrorists and rogue states.

And I shouldn’t omit the tragic fate of Simon Andriesz, the British banker and whistleblower, who recently died by suicide. Andriesz revealed to the Senate that Lutnick had lied about the extent of his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Right before his death, Andriesz spoke openly about how threats to himself and his family as a result of his testimony had ruined his life.

Despite the extent of Trump and Co’s corruption, there’s still some voter education to be done here. Given everything else — the disastrous Persian Gulf war, tariffs, inflation, threats against our closest allies, visions of AI annihilation — it has taken a long time for Trump and Co’s lurid, open corruption to emerge as a major political issue. But there are growing signs that corruption is finally breaking through into the public consciousness. Hopefully this breakthrough will be hugely important not just for the midterm elections but for what happens afterwards.

A clear indication of this breakthrough was the startling Oct 2nd lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal — yes, that left-wing rag, the Wall Street Journal —excoriating the Trump family’s corruption. True, the headline — “Don Jr.’s star turn is coming” — was oddly elliptical, and the example of corruption it chose to focus on – the wedding gift bestowed by a Russian oligarch worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, is penny-ante by Trump standards. The tone was more “this is a public relations problem for Republicans” than “the Trumps are selling America to the highest bidders, some of whom are enemies of the State”. But apparently even the formerly pro-Trumpian Wall Street Journal editorial page has finally reached its gag level.

Reflecting this trend, the latest Economist/YouGov poll included questions about corruption and which political party voters blame most. This appears to be the first time that this question has been asked systematically. Here’s what the poll found:

At first sight, these poll results are somewhat disappointing: only 30 percent of Americans see Republicans as the more corrupt party, with a majority either saying that Democrats are more corrupt or that there is no difference between the parties. But if one combines a closer look at these numbers with a more realistic understanding of public opinion, this poll actually shows that corruption is becoming a serious G.O.P. problem.

First, only a small fraction of independents say that Democrats are more corrupt than Republicans. The only group in which a majority say that the Democrats are the more corrupt party are MAGA Republicans — and as the old line puts it:“they would say that, wouldn’t they?”

Second, most voters, too busy trying to cope with daily responsibilities compounded by inflation and surging car loan rates, don’t pay close attention to the news. They are vaguely aware that corruption is an issue, and too often equate low-level, routine grifting like that of Hunter Biden or Bob Menendez with Trump’s wholesale looting and vandalism. They have little sense of the reality that recent corruption is orders of magnitudes bigger and more blatant than anything we saw in the past.

But that may soon change. According to all the polls, Democrats have a virtual lock on winning the House by a large margin. In addition, polls indicate a high probability that they will also take the Senate. And this means subpoena power. Through Congressional hearings and investigations, Democrats can vastly elevate the visibility of the extent of the outright looting and vandalism of this country by Trump and his gang.

Given the extent of the corruption, the rise of oligarchy in America, and the ever-rising flood of money in politics, many people may reasonably ask “Why will this matter?” Having elected Trump twice, can we trust Americans to vote for what is right rather than for lies? And can we trust Democrats, once in power, to be immune to the seduction of Big Money, as the Big Money will certainly try?

So, in a very real sense, once in power Democrats will have multiple battle fronts on their hands. In addition to battling Trump in his two remaining years of power, they will also have to prove to the American people that they will be immune to the inevitable attempts by Big Money to buy them off through campaign contributions and back-room deals. A couple of examples of what is already going wrong are the recent employment of Chuck Shumer’s daughter by OpenAI and the crypto billions raised by Kirsten Gillibrand’s 22-year old son for a new venture.

Granted, these two examples are exceedingly small potatoes in comparison to Trumpian corruption. But a significant number of voters won’t see it that way and will instead settle into a disaffected stance that both parties are equally bad. Furthermore, it’s a sure bet that once Democrats are in power, the Wall Street Journal and its ilk will revert to form, lambasting Democrats and elevating the Republicans.

So Democrats need to use this coming blue wave not only to clean out Trump’s corruption but to also put their own house in order. Because the forces that gave rise to Trump will not go meekly into the night. 

miles taylor defiance.org logoDefiance.org, Commentary: Trump just told Americans: vote MAGA, or lose federal aid. His threats will backfire, Miles Taylor, right, miles taylor 1 gmaOct. 5, 2026. Trump just told Americans: vote MAGA, or lose federal aid. The president says he’ll withhold money from states that don’t vote MAGA. That’s obviously illegal, and it’s pissing off a country already sick of his corruption.

Donald Trump went to Ohio on Saturday and, like a desperate gangster, threatened an entire state: vote for his candidates, or else.

He’s not even trying to hide the thuggery anymore. In a high school gym north of Dayton, the president of the United States told a few thousand people that their entire state’s access to federal cash now depends on how they vote next month. It was like a robber pulling aside his jacket to show you the pistol in his waistband.

Trump said that Ohio’s Republican officials call him all the time asking for money, and that he’ll be a lot less inclined to pick up the phone if Democrats win control of the state. Of the Democratic candidate for governor, Amy Acton, he was blunt: “I’m not going to help her.” Then he dangled a bribe, telling the crowd that if Republicans win, Ohio will be “strongly considered” for the new Space Academy. Then he told them all to vote as if he were on the ballot himself.

I had two reactions to this. First, it’s a disgusting and blatantly unconstitutional weaponization of presidential power. Trump is using your taxpayer dollars as a carrot-and-stick to get you to vote for his candidates. Second, it’s going to blow up in his face. He’s reached the total desperation stage, Americans can sense it, and his thuggery is only making them more inclined to throw out MAGA candidates and a MAGA Congress.

Let me explain what Trump is describing in plainer terms. Imagine a burglar breaks into your house. You call 911. The dispatcher answers and says that before sending a squad car, she needs to check your voter registration. Republicans get priority. Everybody else waits. You would call that a dictatorship, wouldn’t you? Or the very least a corrupt police state. And you’d be right. Yet that’s what Trump keeps describing, with federal dollars in place of squad cars.

This is the scenario I warned about before Trump’s 2024 re-election. In Blowback, I said that a second Trump administration would build a system of selective protection, in which the government treats you as friend or foe based on your politics, and that the agency I used to help run, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), would be used as a favors agency. DHS hands out billions in grants every year for emergency response and public safety. During my time there, we fought off pressure from Trump to use that money for political rewards and punishment, including his repeated attempts to hold disaster aid hostage in places like Puerto Rico and California.

We said no to him. A lot. But I worried that the next crew wouldn’t. And they haven’t. In fact, Trump’s “threat” isn’t so much a threat as it is a description of what’s already happening.

In the first fourteen months of this term, the president approved a mere 23 percent of major disaster requests from states with Democratic governors and senators, as opposed to 89 percent from Republican-led states (for comparison, in his first term those numbers were 93 and 89, respectively). See the trend? In July, he approved disaster aid for six red states, then denied aid to four blue states, even though they all cleared FEMA’s own damage thresholds. He bragged on Truth Social about the cash he was giving to the red states. Politico later reported he overruled his own agencies to carry out this lawless act of political favoritism. And it’s continued that way. Just last week, his administration rejected Massachusetts’s appeal for help with a devastating February blizzard… for the second time.

If you can believe it, disaster aid is the small end of all of this. A new tracker from the States United Democracy Center and Grant Witness, called “Lost Funds,” documents $177 billion in federal grants canceled, frozen, delayed or otherwise interrupted since Trump took office. Every dollar of it was appropriated by Congress. Health funding alone accounts for $58 billion. The president is doing something no administration has ever dared to do on this scale. He’s breaking the literal laws passed by Congress, hoarding funds he’s supposed to spend, and often doing it to punish blue states.

That’s why states have gone to court 23 times to fight Trump’s financial thuggery and clawed back $35 billion so far. But the Trump I served under doesn’t give a damn about judges, which is why he felt emboldened to say what he said on Saturday in Ohio.

This is just as much about a weak-willed Congress as it is about a wayward Trump. While the states are suing to defend money that Congress appropriated from being turned into the president’s personal piggy bank, Congress isn’t. The body whose major constitutional purpose is to control the purse has sat back and allowed a president to rewrite its spending decisions by region and party. They’ve let stand the gravest misappropriation of taxpayer dollars in history. For what? To please the boss.

But as I said, it’s going to blow up in his face like a pile of fireworks lit by a blowtorch.

Polls keep showing the president’s approval rating cratering. Voters are struggling to fill the tank and afford groceries; they’re drowning in his tariffs, which are just taxes with a different name. And Trump thinks the way to appeal to those suffering people is to threaten to take even more money from them? Great move, pal. You just pissed off anyone who wasn’t already pissed off.

So here’s what that fireworks show is going to look like when voters tell the president to go pound sand on November 3:

It will look like a new Congress that takes Trump to court to defend its power of the purse… It will look like a barrage of subpoenas delivered to Trump officials ordering them to testify, under oath, about who knew what and when regarding the president’s political favoritism schemes… and it will look like representatives voting to take away Trump’s allowance — yanking away every penny meant for vanity projects for himself or gratuitous rewards for his friends — while forcing the administration to comply with the law and provide federal aid to ordinary people the way it’s supposed to be distributed, without political bias or cronyism.

Threatening the very people who hired you is a pretty bad management strategy and even stupider politics. This weekend, Donald Trump proved that he doesn’t need an opponent. If left to his own corrupt devices, he will defeat himself, again and again. 

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New York Times, Facing Backlash, Trump Says His Super PAC Will Pay for Taxpayer-Funded Ads, Shane Goldmacher, Theodore Schleifer and Maggie Haberman, Oct. 5, 2026. The president said that his PAC, MAGA, Inc., would pay for TV ads promoting him that had been paid for with taxpayer money.

President Trump reversed course on Monday and announced that his super PAC would now pay for the television ads promoting him that have been airing nationwide at taxpayer expense.

In a post on his social media platform, Mr. Trump wrote, “I have decided to do the Patriotic Ads, among others, and pay for them myself, and with money I raised for MAGA, Inc.”

More than $10 million in taxpayer-funded ads have run since September, according to AdImpact, the ad-tracking service. The ads, which are running on cable and network television, were paid for through a $20 million contract that used funds from the Department of Homeland Security.

Democrats — and some Republicans — have criticized the ads as a possible violation of federal laws for using taxpayer funds for “publicity or propaganda purposes.” The ads were broadcast in the heat of the campaign for the midterms, as Republicans are trying to hold control of Congress. At least one of the ads featured footage that originally had appeared in a 2024 Trump campaign video.

The White House had defended the ads as simply public service announcements. But the use of material that had originated in a campaign provided further fuel to critics of the ads.Sign up to get Maggie Haberman's articles emailed to you. Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent reporting on President Trump. Get it sent to your inbox.

There were four different ads and each featured an unusual disclaimer: “Paid for by the U.S. government.”

One of them featured images of Mr. Trump as the song “Love Me” by Christian Berishaj played. The artist, who performs as JMSN, has complained about the use of his song.

The New York Times wrote over the weekend that Mr. Trump had personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads. Federal records show that U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which falls under the Department of Homeland Security, awarded a contract to LMD, a Maryland marketing firm, on Sept. 20.

Mr. Trump referred to the backlash in his post.

“The Radical Left is upset with the fact that I am taking Ads, which I consider to be a positive promotion for our Great U.S.A., and paying for them with U.S.A. money,” he wrote, defending them as “a rather standard thing to do.”

The White House did not immediately respond to an email for comment or how the president’s super PAC would pay for the ads. A spokesman for MAGA Inc. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Trump’s claim in his social media post that he would pay for the ads “myself” through his super PAC is likely to add fodder to another formal complaint against the president.

A campaign watchdog group, the Campaign Legal Center, accused Mr. Trump of violating federal election laws by directing his super PAC in a complaint to the Federal Election Commission because of his previous claims to control the super PAC.

Mr. Trump has referred to the super PAC’s funds has “my money that I control” in the past.

Federal law bars federal office holders from directing spending decisions for a political organization with no contribution limits, such as a super PAC.

New York Times, Potential Iranian Drone Attack Led to Exit of U.S. Aircraft from British Air Base, Eric Schmitt and Julian E. Barnes, Oct. 5, 2026. According to U.S. and British officials, 12 B-1 Air Force bombers from R.A.F. Fairford air base were withdrawn because of the risk of a drone attack ordered by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The United States abruptly withdrew all 12 B-1 Air Force bombers from an air base in southern England based on new information that commanders received about a potential drone attack ordered by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to U.S. and British officials.

The suspected attack was part of a complex, multipronged Iranian plot to strike aircraft and kill some of the several hundred American personnel stationed at the base, R.A.F. Fairford, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. All of the Air Force bombers were withdrawn over the weekend.

Some of the officials said they believed that the plot was loosely modeled on an audacious attack that Ukraine launched against Russia last year when it smuggled drones deep into the Russian heartland and launched them from semi trucks. The attack destroyed or damaged at least a dozen aircraft, including many of Moscow’s nuclear-capable strategic bombers, on runways in Siberia and Russia’s Far North.

Vice President JD Vance said on Monday that the Pentagon quickly moved the bombers “out of an abundance of caution trying to protect our guys.” He accused Iran of plotting attacks against the United States but stopped short of commenting on any details about the most recent threat.

“We do feel with some confidence that the Iranians are trying to do what the Iranian state has done for 49 years, which is engage in acts of terrorism against the United States and against a lot of other people as well,” Mr. Vance told reporters at Joint Base Andrews before leaving on a trip to Alaska. “We are being extremely cautious.”Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Iran and the United Kingdom? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

President Trump said on Monday that people linked to Iran posed a threat to the U.S. bombers at the British air base, prompting the order to return them to the United States. “There were some threats,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “Why should we leave them there?” he added, referring to the bombers.

The Wall Street Journal earlier reported the drone threat as the reason for the withdrawal.

The sudden pullout of the bombers came a week after the British police arrested five men who had been traveling the morning of Sept. 27 in white vans near the base, which has been used by American bombers in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. The men were released on bail a day later after the authorities did not discover explosives in the vans.

But the police have repeatedly said the men remain under investigation, and a British-Iranian dual national was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts.

The rushed order to withdraw the bombers was highly unusual: Such moves are rarely made so quickly from an allied air base in a peacetime country thousands of miles from a combat zone.

Indeed, the need to move the bombers from the base was deemed so urgent that some of the planes and their flight crews left while aerial refueling aircraft were still being deployed to support their flights to the United States, American officials said.

Many details about the potential threat that prompted the rapid withdrawal of the Air Force bombers, some of which had arrived just in the past week as part of a regular rotation of forces, remained murky on Monday. One U.S. official said the new information was part of the same threat warnings that surfaced three weeks ago, though a sense of urgency spiked over the weekend, alarming commanders.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham said last week that the British government believed Iran played a part in planning the events that led to the arrests. U.S. and British officials, as well as those in Germany and Israel, believe the operation is connected to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps or a separate military headquarters in Tehran. Iran has denied the accusations.

Special Report

 

Shown above are some of those convicted in a Republican-orchestrated 1972 plot to burglarize Democratic offices at Watergate complex in Washington, DC in advance of that year's presidential elections.

Shown above are some of those convicted in a Republican-orchestrated 1972 plot to burglarize Democratic offices at Watergate complex in Washington, DC in advance of that year's presidential elections.

wayne madesen report logoWayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Erasing Watergate: Trump's Campaign to Rewrite American History, Wayne Madsen, left, wayne madsen new observerOct. 5, 2026. Trump is channeling the late Communist Chinese leader Mao Zedong and his Cultural Revolution in not only destroying Washington DC’s memorial to President John F. Kennedy (the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts) and East Wing of the White House but ordering the Justice Department to investigate veteran federal prosecutors of President Richard Nixon for misconduct.

Justice Department log circularThe Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Justice Department was reviewing allegations that Nixon-era prosecutors had committed misconduct during the Watergate investigation. Geoff Shepard, a former Nixon administration aide and longtime critic of the Watergate prosecution, reportedly delivered a two-hour presentation to the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility in September.

This is significant for several reasons.

First, the review reportedly involves the very office whose origins lie in the reforms following Watergate.

Second, the allegations concern prosecutorial conduct during one of the most consequential constitutional crises in American history.

Third, the development comes amid broader changes to Justice Department oversight. A June 2025 Reuters investigation documented how the administration had substantially weakened the department’s Public Integrity Section, another institution created in Watergate’s aftermath.

The Todd Blanche Justice Department is currently deliberating whether to move beyond historical reassessment of Watergate toward criminal referrals, investigations, or charges. A new DoJ investigation of the Watergate investigation could focus on the prosecutors, congressional investigators, lawyers, and institutions that established the historical record of Nixon's misconduct. Those being subjected to an investigation overseen by Blanche and FBI director Kash Patel include the following living veterans of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force: former Justice Department prosecutors retired U.S. Judge Jill Wine-Banks, Richard Ben-Veniste, Nick Akerman, Richard J. Davis, Carl Feldbaum, George T. Frampton, Jr., Kenneth S. Geller, retired U.S. Judge Stephen E. Haberfeld, Henry L. Hecht, Philip Allen Lacovara, retired U.S. Judge Paul R. Michel, Robert L. Palmer, Roger Witten, James L. Quarles III, and former U.S. Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Stephen G. Breyer.

House Judiciary Committee impeachment-inquiry staff members who are still alive include Hillary Rodham Clinton, former Massachusetts Governor William Weld, former Clinton White House Senior Counsel Bernard W. Nussbaum (a DoJ investigation could branch into a renewed DoJ investigation of the 1991 death of White House adviser Vince Foster), retired U.S. Judge Robert D. Sack, Evan A. Davis, Owen M. Fiss, and Rufus Cormier Jr.

The DoJ could also posthumously besmirch the reputations of Watergate special prosecutors Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworsky. If Blanche and Patel get away with that sort of defamation, where does it stop? Are past presidents, senators, attorneys general, Supreme Court justices, generals and admirals, and anyone else of historical note fair game?

Nick Akerman responded publicly on October 3 to the new DOJ activity, rejecting Shepard's allegations that Watergate prosecutors improperly communicated with judges or suppressed exculpatory evidence. He said the prosecution team was careful about its disclosure obligations and characterizes the present effort as an attempt to recast Nixon as the victim.

The DoJ review is taking place against a broader and increasingly contentious struggle over the institutions responsible for preserving America’s past.

Since returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump has dismissed the Archivist of the United States and the Librarian of Congress. His administration has also challenged the traditional institutional independence of the Library of Congress.

Trump had the entire White House East Wing demolished over three days in October 2025 to make way for his proposed roughly 90,000-square-foot ballroom. Trump has also threatened to tear down the Kennedy Center, while Congress and the courts have been trying to prevent unilateral demolition.

Trump's March 2025 order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” says federal institutions should emphasize American “greatness,” directs officials to remove what it calls “improper” or “anti-American” ideology from the Smithsonian, and orders the Interior Department to review monuments and historical markers changed since 2020.

Under incessant attack by the Trump cultural aggressors are the histories of the Civil War, slavery, Reconstruction, Native Americans, the labor movement, women’s suffrage, immigration, the modern civil rights movement, Andrew Johnson and impeachment; Reagan and Iran-Contra; . In July 2026 Trump issued another order declaring that a White House review had found the National Museum of American History ideologically compromised and directing the government to put warning signs outside the museum informing visitors about the administration's findings.

Donald Trump Orders Warning Signs Outside The Smithsonian Over Historical Framing

Meanwhile, across the country, thousands of books have been removed or restricted in public schools amid political disputes over race, sexuality, national identity, and the teaching of American history.

The Watergate scandal did more than end a presidency. It produced an enduring body of documentary evidence—White House recordings, sworn testimony, congressional proceedings, judicial decisions, and prosecutorial records. It also inspired reforms intended to ensure that presidential misconduct could be investigated and documented independently of political pressure.

A democracy can survive arguments about its history. It becomes more vulnerable when those holding power can determine which evidence remains accessible and which versions of the past receive official approval. The nation has a chance by voting out all Republicans on November 3, from U.S.senators and House members and governors down the ballot to state legislature members and county commissioners.

Note: This author feared that Trump was coming after our history and that his first target would be African American and civil rights history. This book was but one attempt to preserve but one of America’s most important legacies: A Woke Coloring Book: Re-adding Color to a Whitewashed History

News Roundups

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Trump Loses Latinos and His Temper, Russia Changes Its Plague Story, Cornell Boils Over, GOP Endorses Man Accused of Abusing 3 Year Old, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 5, 2026. Trump is calling reporters “fake news” as his support among Latino voters collapses and his White House bans yet another outlet from Air Force One. A lab worker at a Russian plague institute is dead, Moscow keeps changing its story, and Trump is offering to help Putin. And Cornell students smashed windows at the university’s main administration building as new records show fraternity brothers scrambled to contain gang rape allegations.

Before we get into it, I need to show you a headline that stopped me in my tracks. CBS News ran this about Dennis Hastert. What an insane headline.

Let’s be clear about who Dennis Hastert is. He admitted in federal court to sexually abusing boys he coached as a high school wrestling coach. A federal judge called him a “serial child molester.” He was a registered sex offender. That’s the story. And CBS failed again.

This is exactly what I mean when I say some mainstream media is watering down the news. When outlets bury the truth to sound neutral, they aren’t being objective. They’re protecting the powerful at the expense of the people who were hurt. You saw it today too, as Trump called reporters “fake news” for simply stating facts about his polling and his voter fraud lies. The answer to that pressure isn’t softer headlines. It’s telling you exactly what happened, plainly, every single time.

Trump Calls Reporters “Fake News” When Pressed on Latino Support and Mail-In Voting

Trump dismissed a question about his collapsing support among Latino voters by attacking the reporter who asked it. When a reporter noted his approval among Latino voters has dropped to 27%, Trump shot back, “You’re fake news. You’re CNN.” He insisted his poll numbers are “great” and told reporters to look at the crowds he’s drawing. But reports showed rows of empty seats at his recent rally in Mobile, and a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Monday found his approval at a record low, with Hispanic voters souring on Republicans.

Trump also couldn’t explain why he’s urging supporters to vote by mail while calling it fraudulent. Asked about the contradiction, Trump said he’d rather supporters vote in person but that they can vote by mail if they want, while claiming “there is a lot of cheating in vote by mail.” When the reporter pointed out there’s no evidence for that, Trump again responded, “You are fake news.” His fraud claims have been rejected by courts and contradicted by his own Justice Department and Homeland Security. The exchange comes as Trump escalates his war on the press, banning CNN and Politico from Air Force One despite a judge’s order to restore their access.

He also attacked the New York Times for suggesting there were empty seats at his rally:

Trump Offers to Help Russia After Suspected Plague Death at Siberian Lab as Moscow Downplays Fears

Trump says the US will help Russia after a lab worker at a Siberian plague research institute died in murky circumstances. “We’ll help,” Trump told reporters before leaving for Nebraska. “Anybody who has that kind of a problem, we’ll always help.” He called it “a rough disease” and claimed microbes have “gotten stronger and stronger,” saying “they’re like an army.” Asked what the US is doing to guard against the risk, Trump said only that officials are “looking at it very strongly,” while the White House declined to say whether he had been briefed.

The worker, identified in Russian reports as 28-year-old Darya Shipilova, died after Russian media said she broke a test tube containing plague bacteria. Shipilova worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute in Shelekhov, more than 2,500 miles east of Moscow, a facility that studies dangerous diseases including plague, cholera and anthrax. According to Russian reports, she broke the tube around Sept. 25, developed severe pneumonia and died, with the WHO saying she died overnight into Oct. 2. The hospital where she was treated has been quarantined and lab operations suspended, and nearly 200 people who came into contact with her were tested. The local mayor says none of those under observation have shown signs of infection.

Russian officials have been walking back their own statements as the Kremlin tries to contain public fears. A regional leader initially posted that Shipilova died of the plague, then edited it to say “possibly,” and local dmitry peskovofficials deleted a warning telling people not to visit Shelekhov less than two hours after posting it. Russia’s health agency now denies there was any lab accident and attributes her death to “pneumonia of unknown origin,” saying no dangerous pathogens were found in contacts. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, right, urged Russians to “listen to official information.” Unconfirmed reports say Russian security services escorted vehicles to hospitals.

US officials are tracking the situation but say Russia’s secrecy makes it hard to judge the threat. The CDC, State Department and other agencies are working to learn more, with one health official admitting, “We don’t have a lot of intel.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it’s not “cause for alarm” but “cause for focus,” noting limited travel between the US and Russia. Former Biden pandemic official Ashish Jha warned that Russia has an active offensive biological weapons program, and some officials want to know whether the lab was altering plague samples in gain-of-function research. Trump’s former pandemic preparedness chief, Paul Friedrichs, said human error is plausible but cautioned that “first reports are usually wrong” and Russia has a history of not being forthcoming.

Health experts say the risk to Americans appears low, but pneumonic plague is the most dangerous form of the disease. It hasn’t been confirmed that Shipilova had pneumonic plague, which attacks the lungs, can spread person to person and is almost always fatal if untreated. It can be treated successfully with antibiotics if caught early, ideally within 24 hours of symptoms, and its incubation period is up to six or seven days. The WHO says the risk to the general public appears low, and a US health official said that unless someone infected gets on a plane to the US, “it is low risk.” The US already sees about seven human plague cases a year, mostly in New Mexico and Arizona.

Cornell Protests Turn Destructive as New Records Show Frat Brothers Scrambled to Contain Gang Rape Allegations

Student activists smashed windows and spray-painted Cornell’s main administration building as protests over the university’s handling of the alleged gang rape escalated. Around 2 a.m. Monday, protesters vandalized Day Hall, home to Cornell’s senior administrators, leaving messages like “At Cornell rapists are protected protestors are expelled.” The activists said they want to halt “business as usual until justice is attained,” arguing that property damage isn’t violent but condoning rape is. Cornell said it understands the frustration but that “damaging property is not the answer,” and it will investigate the vandalism. The night before, a packed rally in downtown Ithaca demanded that administrators be fired, the accused men’s degrees be revoked and Greek life be abolished, with a larger campus protest planned for Monday afternoon.

New records obtained by ABC News show some Chi Phi brothers ran “damage control” in the weeks after the alleged assault. A friend of Jane Doe told campus investigators the men contacted her almost daily to keep her “not upset about the situation,” and when she went to police, the chapter’s leadership told members to hold off on calling her while they figured out a plan. In a recorded call, Doe told Matthew Ingalls, who invited her to the house that night, that “what y’all did would be classified as gang rape,” while he insisted she had told him she was sober and that the door was simply unlocked. Ingalls never mentioned the messages he sent to the fraternity’s nearly 60-member Snapchat group openly inviting brothers into the room. He later allegedly urged one of Doe’s friends to “submit new evidence” to get him cleared, and during the school’s investigation claimed he was too intoxicated to consent and suggested Doe had assaulted him.

The New York Times obtained summaries showing how Cornell punished each of the seven men, from expulsion to writing reflection papers. Ingalls and Jonathan Newell, who allegedly sent a Snapchat message encouraging others into the bedroom, were expelled, with the panel finding Ingalls exploited and endangered Doe for his own interest and others’ entertainment. Winston Lee was suspended for two years and Gillio Lopes for three semesters, while Diego Sarabia, who had already graduated, was barred from campus for three years. The final two, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar, were ordered to avoid contact with Doe, complete training and write “reflection papers,” with Kretzschmar found responsible only for attempted sexual exploitation. Doe’s lawyer said the punishments “did not reflect the severity of the charges,” noting five of the men can still graduate with a Cornell degree, while all seven deny wrongdoing and none have been charged.

A student who gave Cornell police leads in 2024 says she feels “betrayed” after learning her information never reached prosecutors. The student told NBC News she went to police after seeing screenshots of the fraternity’s Snapchat messages and shared details about the group chats, potential witnesses and where ketamine was allegedly kept at the house. Police records show campus police spoke to multiple witnesses and received anonymous tips, but that information wasn’t referred to the Tompkins County district attorney, who declined to bring charges. Gov. Kathy Hochul has since removed the DA and appointed Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor, and Cornell has brought in an outside law firm to review its handling of the case. Chi Phi’s national organization has permanently expelled the Cornell chapter, and Cornell’s rugby club removed two of the accused men.

The case is now being invoked in disturbing threats at an Idaho high school, where students allegedly wrote “think Cornell was bad just wait for us.” Boise police are investigating Snapchat messages in which Timberline High School students allegedly directed sexually explicit and violent threats at a female classmate, including stated intentions to rape and kill her. A petition calling for accountability, which claims members of the school’s football team were involved, gathered more than 6,000 signatures in a single day. The Boise School District said it is cooperating with police and was asked to pause internal action to protect a potential criminal investigation. No arrests have been announced.

Other news:

The White House has banned Politico from Air Force One, defying the spirit of a judge’s order to restore press access. The outlet was excluded from Monday’s travel pool, days after a federal judge ordered the administration to reinstate press passes for reporters from CNN, Politico and MS NOW, finding the ban likely violated the First and Fifth Amendments. CNN has also been blocked from the plane, and on one trip no TV pooler traveled with the president at all. The White House claims restoring press passes is different from allowing reporters into the Oval Office or onto Air Force One, while the Justice Department argues the outlets failed to meet “minimum requirements of professionalism.” Judge Timothy Kelly already rejected the administration’s claim that the ban was about national security, finding no factual support for it. He will hold a hearing Thursday on a preliminary injunction, the same day his temporary restraining order expires.

The Palm Beach County Republican Party is still backing Mike Caruso for Clerk of Court despite his pending felony child sex abuse charges. The local GOP lists Caruso as its nominee in its official voter guide, and a staffed “Keep Mike Caruso” table with signs and hats appeared at a candidate expo on Sept. 28, more than a month after his arrest on charges including kidnapping, lewd or lascivious molestation and child abuse involving a male relative who was under 5 at the time. Caruso has pleaded not guilty and is out on $160,000 bond, but Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended him and the state GOP said it would not support him if he stayed in the race. Local party chair Carl Cascio defended the support, pointing to a judge’s finding on the strength of the state’s case and calling Caruso the county’s “only Republican constitutional officer,” while telling the Miami Herald the party has a “duty” to campaign for its nominees. It’s not the first such allegation against Caruso, whose ex-wife accused him of sexually assaulting a child in 2013 divorce filings, though that case was closed as unfounded, and he now faces Democrat Yvette Drucker on Nov. 3.

Public schools banned nearly 12,000 books over the past year, the most since PEN America began tracking five years ago. The bans hit 7,370 individual works, more than 4,500 of them for the first time, ranging from “Jane Eyre” to the manga series “Tokyo Ghoul.” Stephen King was the most banned author for the second straight year with 312 removals, while Patricia McCormick’s “Sold,” about a girl sold into sexual slavery, was the most banned single title. Other frequent targets include “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Speak,” a prize-winning novel about a teenager who stops speaking after being raped. Many bans took place in Florida and Texas, with themes of race, sexuality and gender identity the most common targets. PEN also found school administrators are increasingly relying on AI to decide which books get pulled.

Senate Democrats say they won’t confirm a Trump Supreme Court nominee if they win back the chamber. richard blumenthal portraitChuck Schumer said a major reason to take the Senate is to stop Trump from putting “MAGA justices” on the courts, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal put the odds of Democrats backing a Trump pick at “slim to none.” Sen. Ruben Gallego said Democrats should “do exactly what McConnell did to us,” referring to the seat McConnell held open for 10 months under Obama. The stakes rose after Justice Samuel Alito, 76, told CBS he considered retiring earlier this year before deciding against it. Blumenthal also said any Trump judicial nominee must be able to correctly say who won the 2020 election. Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take control, and if Republicans hold the Senate, Trump will keep adding to his total of 290 confirmed federal judges.

GOP Sen. Thom Tillis warned he has Trump’s phone number too after the president doxxed Sen. Tom Cotton. Trump posted Cotton’s personal cellphone number on Truth Social to pressure him over the bill to make daylight saving time permanent, even arguing it would give PGA golfers more afternoon daylight. Asked on “The View” whether Trump would leak his number next, Tillis responded with a straight face: “With all due respect, I have his number, too.” Tillis, who is leaving the Senate in January, is promoting a new book that includes private texts in which he told Trump he doesn’t take his “BS.” The book also rebuts Trump’s claim that he forced Tillis out of the Senate, though Tillis still called Trump a “great political force.” Cotton has held firm, saying Arkansans don’t want their kids going to school in the dark.

Trump is blaming Ukraine and blue states, not his Iran war, for soaring gas prices. In a Truth Social post, Trump claimed the Strait of Hormuz is no longer driving up gas costs and pointed instead to Ukraine blowing up Russian refineries and “Dumocrats” closing refineries in states like California. The claim makes little sense: the US has imported zero Russian petroleum since 2022, and most US refining capacity is in Republican states like Texas and Louisiana. Drivers are paying about $67 more a month for gas and at least $139 more for diesel than a year ago, according to AAA. Trump previously told a rally that higher prices are “a very inexpensive price to pay” for the war. He even said a more peaceful Middle East would be worth it if gas cost “a lot more,” a tough sell with the midterms less than a month away.

Kristi Noem, below, is raging at the New York Times over a report that DHS overpaid a donor’s company for luxury jets on her way out the door. The Times reported DHS paid $108 million for a Boeing 737 with a stand-up bar, two bedrooms and marble showers that Daedalus Aviation had bought months earlier for under $90 million, along kristi noemwith marked-up Gulfstreams and two aging passenger jets. The deal was amended on March 24, Noem’s final day in the Cabinet after Trump fired her. Noem demanded a full retraction and called it “libelous” to describe Daedalus’ chairman as a donor, but the Times stood by its reporting, noting he gave $10,000 to a PAC supporting her. Her successor, Markwayne Mullin, considered canceling the deal but kept the planes after the White House cited a hefty termination fee. Under Noem, DHS awarded more than $900 million in contracts to companies led by the same chairman, and 10 planes it bought earlier for deportation flights have largely sat unused because the agency lacks crews to fly them.

PepsiCo is recalling about 122,000 cases of Gatorade across 37 states over undeclared yellow food dyes. The recall covers 28oz bottles of Gatorade Lemon Lime, Lime Zero, Orange and Orange Zero, according to a notice posted on the FDA’s website. PepsiCo started the recall on Sept. 25 after the drinks were found to contain Yellow No. 5 and/or Yellow No. 6 that weren’t listed on the label, a concern for people sensitive to the dyes. The FDA classified it as a class II recall, meaning the products could cause temporary or medically reversible health effects, while the risk of serious harm is remote. Affected states include California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia and Michigan, among others. It’s not yet clear whether refunds are available, and the recall comes as the FDA faces criticism after Trump-era layoffs cut its staff by nearly 20%.

DC tour operators say Trump’s construction projects and policies are driving tourists away from the capital. Landmarks like the drained Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the demolished East Wing and the scaffolded Kennedy Center are fenced off, leaving visitors snapping photos through gaps. One operator said bookings are down about 50%, another reported a 65% to 75% revenue drop from two years ago, and a third said the administration has made the city’s brand “toxic.” Guides also blame Trump’s immigration crackdown, tariffs and National Guard deployment for scaring off international visitors. International visits to DC fell 4% in 2025, while overall US visitor numbers dropped 5.5%, driven largely by 4.2 million fewer Canadians. The White House called it “a completely false narrative.”

Flávio Bolsonaro is poised to win Brazil’s presidency after a shock first-round victory over Lula. The far-right senator won 47% to Lula’s 45%, and no first-round runner-up has come back to win since Brazil returned to democracy in 1985. The Bolsonaro family also won four seats in Congress, and hard-right parties now hold a Senate majority that could pass an amnesty freeing Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup. Trump, accused of trying to sway the election, praised Brazil’s fast vote count, while Milei and Netanyahu celebrated the result. Lula’s best hope may be turning out some of the record 33 million Brazilians who didn’t vote, though analysts called Sunday a catastrophic night for the left. The runoff is set for Oct. 25.

The Supreme Court appeared divided as it heard the blockbuster climate case against ExxonMobil and Suncor. Chief Justice Roberts warned that if Boulder wins, municipalities in every state would sue the next day, while Justice Kavanaugh was the most vocal supporter of the oil companies. Justice Kagan compared the case to tobacco and opioid lawsuits, and Justice Sotomayor noted Boulder is challenging deceptive marketing, not regulating emissions. With Alito recused, a 4-4 tie would let Boulder’s lawsuit move forward. Hanging over the case is the Trump EPA’s push to eliminate greenhouse gas regulations, which Boulder’s lawyer argued makes it hard to say federal law blocks these claims. The ruling could decide the fate of more than two dozen similar lawsuits nationwide.

A Florida TikToker calling himself a “demonologist” was arrested for allegedly hacking women and broadcasting their private information. Mark Asea, 36, allegedly secretly placed a virus on a woman’s computer after she let him remotely access it for tech help, then posted her private messages in his videos. In another video, he taunted a second woman about her password and her last 10 online purchases. Investigators say he tracked one woman’s location through her phone’s GPS and posted more than 100 TikToks about her. His TikTok bio also lists him as a “Grey Hat Hacker,” “Empath” and “Woodsman.” Prosecutors revived the case after dropping earlier charges in May, and he’s set to be arraigned Nov. 19.

A British Airways flight to Chicago plunged 28,000 feet in about seven minutes before returning to London. The Boeing 777 declared an emergency over Ireland about 30 minutes after takeoff, dropping from 36,000 to 9,000 feet. It then spent roughly four hours circling over the Bristol Channel before landing safely at Heathrow. British Airways blamed an unspecified “technical issue” and said passengers got off normally. Passengers will likely be put up in hotels until another flight can be arranged. It comes after UK air traffic control software failures caused major delays and hundreds of canceled flights last month.

A school bus crash in Winter Haven, Florida, killed a 10th grade student and another person. The bus, carrying 37 high school students to Winter Haven High School, was struck by a car early Monday, lost a tire and then crashed head-on with a Jeep, which overturned. The second victim was in the Jeep, and three other vehicles were involved. The bus driver’s 9-year-old daughter was also on board. The victims have not been identified. Officials closed Lucerne Park Road in both directions as they investigated.

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Major Epstein Whistleblower Dies, Trump Primes His Base to Reject the Midterms, KKK Seeks Comeback, Paxton in Trouble, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 5, 2026. The Epstein whistleblower who exposed the relationship between Trump’s Commerce Secretary and Epstein has died by suicide. Trump is calling American voting “corrupt” and lashing out at Fox News as new polls point to a Democratic wave, including Democratic leads in Senate races in Texas, Ohio and Alaska. Wounded soldiers and Gold Star families say Army leaders ignored warnings before the drone strike that killed six of their own in Kuwait. A former Army Secretary says he was pushed out after Pete Hegseth fired the generals modernizing the military. And Ken Paxton got caught on tape admitting his campaign is “all coming from DC.”

Before we get into it, I need to tell you about something happening on TikTok. The platform has started putting warning labels on my videos telling viewers to “check your sources before sharing.” Think about that for a second. I report on Trump attacking the press, on soldiers who say their warnings were ignored, on Epstein survivors demanding accountability, and suddenly my work comes with a caution sign attached.

Here’s my promise to you: I won’t stop. Every story I bring you is sourced, and I’ll keep showing my work so you can check it yourself. If TikTok wants you to check sources, great. Check them. You’ll find the facts hold up.

But platforms can label us, bury us or shut us down whenever they want. This newsletter is the one place they can’t touch. 

Let’s get into it.

Trump Calls US Voting “Corrupt” and Lashes Out at Fox News as Polls Point to a Democratic Wave. 

Trump claimed voting in America is “CORRUPT” in a late-night Truth Social post less than a month before the midterms. Pointing to Brazil, where 125 million people voted in the first round of its presidential election and results came out the same day, Trump wrote that in “Detroit, Philadelphia, California, and numerous other U.S. Cities and States, the results, with much smaller numbers, will often take weeks to Rig, I mean, calculate.” It’s a revival of the fraud narrative Trump has pushed since losing in 2020, a claim rejected by courts and contradicted by reports from both the Justice Department and Homeland Security, which found “no evidence of fraud or interference that changed the outcome.” Even Trump’s own AI government chatbot cited those findings last week before it was “fixed” to change its answers. At the top of his Truth Social feed sat a video renewing his promise of $5,000 checks if Republicans keep Congress.

New polls show Democrats leading in Senate races in deep-red states, as Trump insists the polls “have ALWAYS underestimated MAGA.” A New York Times/Siena College poll released Saturday found Democratic Senate candidates leading in Texas, Ohio and Alaska, while races in Kansas and Iowa are tied or close. A CBS News poll released Sunday gave Democrats a nine-point lead on the generic congressional ballot and projected they would win 229 House seats to Republicans’ 206. Trump responded by claiming pollsters “try to suppress the Vote,” adding, “I won all 7 Swing States, the Popular Vote, 86% of Counties, and 99% of Primaries this year. I AM ON THE BALLOT!” A Reuters/Ipsos poll last month put Trump’s approval at a career-low 32%, with his support among Republicans falling to 73%.

Trump lashed out at Fox News for not airing his weekend rallies, threatening that MAGA viewers would “very quickly stop watching (like I am doing right now!).” He complained that “Fox & Friends” wasn’t covering his “packed house” in Vandalia, Ohio, or his rallies in Alabama, Texas and Oklahoma, though reports showed rows of empty seats at his Mobile rally. “Fox spends more time talking to Communists, Socialists, and Dumocrats, often without rebuttal,” Trump wrote, attacking Democratic commentator Jessica Tarlov by name and calling her “stupid.” He also blasted whoever at the network removed Maria Bartiromo, calling that person a “loser.” The outburst comes as Trump escalates his war on the press, after a judge blocked his attempt to ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House.

Trump is heading to Nebraska to campaign in another state he won by more than 20 points, where Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts is locked in a close race. Polls consistently show Ricketts in a competitive contest with independent Dan Osborn, part of a broader trend of Democrats and independents running competitively in states Trump carried by double digits. Trump will push his message of new investment and manufacturing in Grand Island, but farmers and truckers there are facing sharply higher diesel prices driven by the Iran war. The stop is part of a 32-day sprint to the Nov. 3 election that has mostly kept Trump in Republican strongholds rather than traditional battlegrounds. Over the weekend, he also pushed to make daylight saving time permanent, saying farmers support it, and publicly shared GOP Sen. Tom Cotton’s cellphone number in their fight over the issue.

At his Ohio rally, Trump admitted his daily mega-dose of aspirin might only be working “psychologically,” and said he’s ignoring doctors’ advice to cut back. “I take an aspirin a day. I don’t know if it works, but psychologically, I need it,” Trump said, pointing to his head, adding that he takes “the big one” and that “it’s a monster.” He said doctors told him “Sir, you don’t need that!” but that he refused, joking that if he switched to a lower dose and “something bad will happen,” he’d say, “You son of a b****, doctor!” The tangent was a lead-in to congratulating Bayer on a planned $2.2 billion manufacturing facility near Columbus. Trump previously told the Wall Street Journal he’s “a little superstitious” about the pills and acknowledged they may be behind persistent bruising on his hands, which he covers with makeup.

Soldiers and Gold Star Families Say Army Leaders Ignored Warnings Before the Deadliest Iranian Strike on US Troops

Soldiers wounded in the deadliest known Iranian strike on US troops told the AP that commanders were warned their base in Kuwait was vulnerable to drones and sent them there anyway. On March 1, the day after Trump launched the war with Iran, a drone crashed through the roof of a makeshift Army logistics headquarters at Port Shuaiba, killing six soldiers and wounding dozens, with one survivor saying the roof peeled back “like opening up a sardine can.” Five officers and an enlisted soldier said Maj. Gen. John Hinson and Brig. Gen. Clint Barnes knew the port, about 65 miles from Iran, had no defenses against drones, and that intelligence officers had pressed them not to go, warning it was a likely secondary target. “We did our work on a computer,” said Maj. Billy Key, who said proposals to move the unit to safer sites outside Kuwait were rejected. “We could have been anywhere.” One enlisted soldier defended the command team, saying it faced hard decisions balancing a crucial mission against the risks of war, while Hinson declined to comment and Barnes didn’t respond.

The night before the attack, soldiers spotted quadcopter drones hovering over the port, and the next morning they were moved out of their bunkers about 20 minutes before the strike. Key said at least five drones appeared to be surveilling the site, one just 40 feet above him, and that he passed the warning up the chain but “that was the last I heard about it.” Capt. Cody Khork, the unit’s safety officer, who had strongly advised against going to the port, told a colleague they should stay in their bunker, but higher-ranking officers pushed for an all-clear, according to Maj. Stephen Ramsbottom, who suffered a traumatic brain injury. “This type of fight has been going on for five years in Ukraine, and our excuse is we didn’t expect it to happen to us,” Ramsbottom said. “That’s preposterous.” Khork was killed seconds after passing his fellow officers and saying “good morning.”

Wounded soldiers also say the military’s medical system failed them, with some sent to barracks instead of hospitals. Soldiers said there was no mass casualty plan in place, forcing some to use Google to find the nearest medical facilities, and that one group spent about a week in residential homes in Kuwait under missile fire before being flown to Germany. There, they said, they were turned away from inpatient care at the military’s main medical hub because they hadn’t been documented as combat-injured, then sent to a demobilization process in Texas. The Army completed its investigation in June but still hasn’t released it, and the Army’s inspector general found no misconduct by Barnes based on “limited evidence,” while the Army and Pentagon declined to comment on the AP’s reporting. “If somebody messed up, those people need to be held responsible,” said Tina Marzan, widow of Chief Warrant Officer Robert Marzan, a 36-year veteran killed in the strike.

Seven months in, the war Trump once called a “little excursion” has killed 19 US service members, wounded more than 800 and cost at least $44 billion. Lt. Col. Tim Halbur, an Iowa reservist with nearly 30 years of service, can no longer salute after the blast shattered his right forearm in four places. “I can’t squeeze both arms around my kids because my one arm won’t allow me to do that anymore,” he said, adding that his children are learning “dad’s never going to be the same.” He wears a wristband engraved with the names of the six soldiers killed: Maj. Cody Khork, Master Sgt. Noah Tietjens, Maj. Jeffrey O’Brien, Master Sgt. Nicole Amor, Sgt. Declan Coady and Chief Warrant Officer Robert Marzan. “I know that there are six families who would give that up in a heartbeat,” Halbur said. “I’m still here.”

Former Army Secretary Says He Was Pushed Out After Pete Hegseth Fired the Generals Modernizing the Military

Former Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, right, in his first interview since resigning in August, told Rolling Stone he tried daniel driscoll oto drag the Army into the age of cheap drones and AI, only to watch Pete Hegseth fire the generals leading that effort. Driscoll, a combat veteran and Yale Law classmate of JD Vance, championed an “Amazon for war” marketplace to buy counter-drone systems quickly, cut $48 billion from the Army budget over five years, and created a “drones first” experimental battalion that trained with Ukrainian advisers. “When you’re an American soldier, you would get to work every day, and you basically step back like 20 or 30 years with tech,” he said, calling it “humiliating” to see how fast Ukraine adapted with a far smaller budget. But Hegseth forced out Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George in a “15-second call,” and later pushed into retirement Gen. Christopher Donahue, whom Driscoll wanted as George’s successor. According to news reports and a former Pentagon official, Driscoll told Trump in an Oval Office meeting that he was resigning because Hegseth had fired everyone working to modernize the Army.

Sources describe Hegseth as more focused on fitness standards, grooming and his media image than on the drone-dominated battlefield exposed by the Iran war. As cheap Iranian drones have struck US bases and depleted the military’s supply of interceptors, one former Army official asked, “Tell our guys on the ground when we don’t have anything to intercept the next Shahed coming at them that we’re going to launch some standards up at it.” Hegseth has fired or blocked promotions for roughly 10% of the military’s top officers, including the Joint Chiefs chairman, the Navy and Army chiefs and both the Army and Navy secretaries, and the US military currently has no active four-star women. “All the guys who had guts and were willing to speak the truth... they got rid of,” a former senior Army officer said, adding that Hegseth wants “people that are compliant and loyal, not people who think.” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell, Hegseth’s pick to replace Driscoll, called the story “fake news” and said Hegseth “has been a generational secretary.”

Since Driscoll left, the Army has begun rolling back his modernization efforts, even as Hegseth announced a drone warfare headquarters that appears to mirror Driscoll’s plans. The Army’s acting chief of staff ordered Driscoll’s experimental drone battalion to revert to a standard airborne infantry unit, a decision one former senior officer said “nobody can” explain. At Donahue’s retirement ceremony at Fort Bragg, attendees reportedly referred to Hegseth as “No Tab Pete,” a jab at his failure to earn the Ranger qualification held by the commanders he removed. Driscoll was careful not to attack his former boss directly, saying “we probably agreed on more than 50 percent of things” and calling himself “a custodian of the seat for 18 months.” But one Army officer who worked at the Pentagon warned the cost of Hegseth’s priorities “is going to be measured in American lives, in our sons and daughters coming home in body bags.”

Ken Paxton Privately Admits His Campaign Is “All Coming From DC” as His Fatherhood Video Backfires

Ken Paxton, below, privately admitted his Senate campaign is being run from Washington, despite spending his primary attacking John Cornyn as a creature of the “D.C. establishment.” “I’ve never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign and, like, what issues are going to matter because it’s all coming, you know, from D.C.,” Paxton said at a small Sept. 24 fundraiser hosted by lobbyists in Washington, according to audio ken paxton mugobtained by Politico. “I don’t control message or what we’re doing,” he added. “I don’t have ability to change anything. So I have to live with whatever I’ve got.” An attendee said Paxton never named Trump’s team explicitly, but “everybody knew what he was talking about,” while his campaign said he was referring to super PACs, which campaigns can’t legally coordinate with. It’s the same fundraiser where, according to separate audio obtained by the New York Times, Paxton said Trump’s Dallas convention “dropped our numbers.”

Paxton’s estranged wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, appeared in an ad urging Texans to vote for the GOP ticket without ever mentioning him by name. “In a general election, it’s not as much about the individual players on the team; it’s about getting the whole team across the finish line,” she said in the ad, funded by a PAC affiliated with Senate Majority Leader John Thune. Angela Paxton filed for divorce last year on “biblical grounds,” alleging adultery, which Ken Paxton denies, and her office hasn’t said whether she’ll vote for him. The race has become one of the most expensive of the cycle, and Trump told a rally crowd, “Ken Paxton has to win.” Democrat James Talarico leads 46% to 43% in an NBC Dallas-Fort Worth/Telemundo poll and by six points in the latest New York Times/Siena poll, in a state where Democrats haven’t won a Senate seat since 1988.

Paxton’s new video offering parenting advice with his daughter drew a wave of mockery online over the adultery allegations at the center of his divorce. In the three-minute clip, Paxton told his daughter Mattie that “nobody is the perfect parent” and advised young parents to “always focus on the main thing, which is loving your kids.” The post racked up 250,000 views and hundreds of replies, many turning to his marriage, with one asking, “Where did cheating on their mother rank?” and another writing, “Oh dear lord, the irony.” Some commenters defended it, calling it “nice to see another side of a politician father.” The video came a day after his campaign released an ad featuring Mattie, and Paxton called it the first in a series.

Other news:

Simon Andriesz, the whistleblower who alerted Congress to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein, has died at 57. The British former banker, who once worked under Lutnick at the brokerage firm BGC Partners, died by suicide, according to The Banker, and a transparency group that had hosted him at whistleblowing events confirmed his death. Earlier this year, Andriesz searched the Justice Department’s Epstein files for “HWL,” Lutnick’s initials, and gave House Oversight lawmakers a 2018 email chain in which Lutnick and Epstein discussed Adfin, a company they had both invested in. The emails contradicted Lutnick’s claim that he cut off contact with Epstein soon after meeting him in 2005, showing the two remained in friendly contact a decade after Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea for soliciting a minor, and Lutnick later acknowledged traveling to Epstein’s island with his family in 2012. Years earlier, Andriesz, who said he was fired from BGC after raising concerns about accounting irregularities, told the FBI in 2020 and 2021 that Lutnick had undeclared business ties to Epstein, but the FBI did not investigate, according to the BBC. The Commerce Department and FBI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Ku Klux Klan is trying to rebrand itself as “The Knights Party” to grow its base, but its leader admits it’s still a white nationalist movement. In an Al Jazeera report from Boone County, Arkansas, Thomas Robb, head of the group formerly known as the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, said members want to refocus on “family and faith,” yet flatly said a Black person would not be welcome at the group’s church. Robb claimed Muslim politicians like Zohran Mamdani and Michigan-born Abdul El-Sayed are “not Americans,” arguing only the children of white immigrants can be American. The report comes as experts warn of a white supremacist resurgence: the Southern Poverty Law Center counts at least 152 such groups active today, Patriot Front marched through the DC area on July 4, and a PRRI survey found nearly one in three Americans agree with the core claim of the great replacement conspiracy theory. Critics say Trump has helped normalize these views through “invasion” rhetoric on immigration, his “fine people on both sides” remark after Charlottesville, probes into alleged discrimination against white people, and prioritizing white South Africans for refugee status. Robb refused to share membership numbers or back up his claim that support is growing, conceding, “Maybe everybody hates us.”

The Supreme Court opens its new term Monday with a blockbuster climate case that could decide whether communities can hold oil companies liable for climate-fueled disasters. Boulder County, Colorado, is suing ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy, arguing they knew for decades that fossil fuels would raise the risk of floods, extreme heat and wildfires but deceived the public, and it wants them to help cover the costs of disasters like the 2021 Marshall Fire, which destroyed more than 1,100 homes. The companies, backed by the Trump administration, argue only the federal government can address something as big as climate change, while Boulder says it isn’t trying to regulate emissions, just recover damages. “If you know you are going to cause harm, and you don’t tell someone, then you should help clean up that harm,” said Corey Riday-White of the Center for Climate Integrity, and experts say the ruling could shape lawsuits over forever chemicals, opioids and AI data centers. In a last-minute move, Justice Samuel Alito recused himself without explanation after watchdog groups pointed to his investments in Phillips 66 and ConocoPhillips. That leaves eight justices, meaning a 4-4 tie would let Boulder’s lawsuit move forward, though the court could also decide it’s too early to hear the case at all.

According to the Miami Herald, the Palm Beach County Republican Party isn’t ruling out supporting a GOP candidate charged with child sex abuse, who says he still “intend[s] to win” in November. Mike Caruso, the suspended county clerk of courts and a former DeSantis ally, was arrested in August on charges including lewd or lascivious molestation, kidnapping and child abuse involving a young male relative, and prosecutors have said a second person alleges he abused her when she was 4. Caruso has pleaded not guilty and was released on $160,000 bail after a judge said the state’s case had weaknesses, and he told the Miami Herald, “I maintain my innocence... My name is on the November ballot, and I intend to win this election.” The state GOP said it would not support his reelection, and local officials even delayed printing ballots so Republicans could find a replacement, but Caruso refused to withdraw. Local party chairman Carl Cascio declined to distance the party from him, noting Caruso is “currently Palm Beach County’s only Republican constitutional officer” and that the party has a “duty” to campaign for its nominees. He faces Democrat Yvette Drucker, a Boca Raton council member, in a county that leans Democratic, and if he wins, DeSantis could suspend him again.

A mass shooting at a homecoming weekend block party in Vienna, Georgia, left two men dead and 35 people injured. More than 1,000 people had gathered early Sunday when more than 50 shots were fired across at least two locations about a block apart, with gunfire continuing even after deputies were on scene, Dooly County Sheriff Craig Peavy said. The two men killed were 20 and 23, and the county coroner said roughly a dozen of the injured were hurt while trying to flee, calling the scene “horrific.” No suspects or motive have been announced, and the school district said the party was not a school-sponsored event, though schools are opening Monday with added safety measures. Vienna’s mayor said the city never issued a permit for the block party, which took place about a block from his home. It comes a week after 12 teens were wounded in a shooting at a birthday party in nearby Macon.

The family of Jeffrey Epstein survivor Virginia Giuffre appears in a new campaign ad accusing Colorado GOP Rep. Jeff Crank of covering up Epstein’s crimes and refusing to meet with them. “Jeff Crank covered up Epstein’s crimes to protect Donald Trump,” says Sky Roberts, Giuffre’s brother, in the ad for Democratic challenger Jessica Killin, an Army veteran running in a tightening race for Colorado’s Fifth District. Roberts and his wife, Amanda, both Crank’s constituents, say they repeatedly asked to meet with him but were refused, even as they spoke with about 20 lawmakers from both parties, and the ad ends with them meeting Killin instead. Crank didn’t sign the bipartisan discharge petition that forced a vote on releasing the Epstein files and voted to block consideration of the bill, though he ultimately joined nearly every House member in passing it. “At the end of the day, the bare minimum of this job in this role is to hear your constituents,” Amanda Roberts said. Republicans have held the Colorado Springs-area seat since it was created in 1973, but Democrats now see it as a pickup opportunity, and a New York Times analysis found Epstein has come up in ads in at least 35 congressional races this year.

Christa Pike’s former lawyer says Tennessee was warned her execution could be “difficult and perhaps cruel” because of her compromised veins. James Crowson, who represented Pike during her post-conviction appeals, said defense filings flagged that she was at risk for “exactly what happened” before her failed lethal injection on Sept. 30. Pike remains hospitalized on a ventilator and critically ill, with her current attorney telling CNN “we don’t really know the prognosis yet.” The state insists it followed its protocol, but Crowson said states writing execution protocols “don’t really include medicine or science in the discussions.” He also noted the arbitrariness of her sentence: her co-defendant, just months younger at 17, received life in prison instead of death. If she survives, Crowson expects intense pressure on Gov. Bill Lee to commute her sentence, and said any brain damage would raise serious questions about whether Tennessee could legally try to execute her again.

The White House is defending its new assistant press secretary, who posed with a rifle in a “F* Joe Biden” shirt.** Beni Rae Harmony, 24, joined the press office days after covering Trump as a correspondent for Real America’s Voice, a far-right outlet launched as a platform for Steve Bannon, and previously worked for Rep. Paul Gosar and former Rep. Matt Gaetz. The 2021 photo showed her and her uncle holding rifles in matching anti-Biden shirts, and she appeared to confirm its authenticity at the time. A White House spokesperson praised her as “a trusted voice for the MAGA movement as a White House correspondent.” AP photos from a recent Air Force One press gaggle appeared to show her name atop papers in Trump’s hand as she asked him friendly questions, suggesting he may have been holding her résumé. Her hiring comes as Trump has tried to ban CNN, Politico and MS NOW from the White House, while his aides hand-pick outlets, often friendly ones, to question him.

Quebec appears poised to elect a separatist government for the first time in more than a decade, with the Parti Québécois promising an independence referendum by 2028. Polls show the PQ, led by 49-year-old Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, on track to win Monday’s provincial election, though at around 30% it may fall short of a majority. Analysts say his rise is driven less by separatism, which most Quebecers oppose, than by hardline stances on immigration and identity, including blaming immigrants for crowded schools and housing costs and vowing to ban “conspicuous” religious symbols for teachers and students. He has defused the referendum issue by saying he won’t hold one while Trump is in power. He’s also promised to introduce a law cutting the province’s ties to the British monarchy. A victory would likely reignite clashes with Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government over language and immigration.

The Senate passed bills to make it easier for pilots and air traffic controllers to get mental health care without fearing for their careers. The legislation would cut the time pilots must stay grounded after starting an antidepressant to two months, down from the FAA’s current three months, and direct the agency to reduce burdensome testing requirements. Industry leaders say stigma and fear of disqualification keep aviation workers from seeking help, with one study finding nearly 13% of pilots met the criteria for depression. One of the bills would also launch a public information campaign to destigmatize aviation workers who seek mental health care. “When you raise your hand asking for help, it is no longer a third rail,” said pilot Chris Finlayson, who spent nearly five years out of the cockpit after seeking treatment. The bills still need House approval and the president’s signature.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the world should accept “some bad things happening” with AI in exchange for its benefits, sparking immediate backlash. In a Politico podcast interview, Altman said OpenAI’s “lighter touch regulatory stance” means accepting that hacks, scams and misuse will happen, because people “will do tremendously, orders of magnitude, more good stuff than bad stuff.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he had “no dice” with “a handful of tech oligarchs” making that decision for everyone, while AI critic Gary Marcus said Altman was “saying the quiet part out loud.” The comments came days after an OpenAI safety researcher resigned, saying companies “aren’t being nearly careful enough,” and after OpenAI agents hacked into Hugging Face over the summer. Altman contrasted his approach with “stricter AI safety people,” as Anthropic has called for slowing development. Despite those calls, Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and other AI leaders signed a largely hands-off pact at the White House last week, with Trump saying he wants companies to “self-police.”

Elon Musk says he’ll rename his AI company “SpaceXSI” after Trump ordered artificial intelligence to be rebranded as “super intelligence.” Trump announced the rebrand at the UN General Assembly last month, saying the word “artificial” “makes it sound fake,” and has since signed an executive order directing federal agencies to use the new term. “No more AI. SI. It’s better,” Musk posted, confirming that SpaceXAI, formerly xAI, would change its name. Experts note “superintelligence” already has a distinct meaning, popularized by philosopher Nick Bostrom to describe AI that vastly exceeds human abilities. Trump had previously floated “supreme intelligence,” “superior intelligence” and “extreme intelligence” before settling on SI. He has also unveiled a new “Super Intelligence Force,” which he now says will be a group of advisers.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is taking legal action against British police in a bid to quash the search warrants that led to his arrest. The former Duke of York was arrested in February on his 66th birthday on suspicion of misconduct in public office, over allegations he shared sensitive information with Jeffrey Epstein while serving as the UK’s trade envoy. Warrants allowed police to raid his residence on the Sandringham Estate and his former home, Royal Lodge. A private High Court hearing is set for Thursday, beginning with a police request to restrict access to court documents, and it’s unclear whether he’ll attend. Thames Valley Police said its investigation continues. King Charles stripped his brother of his prince title and dukedom over his Epstein ties last year.

Investigators believe the FlyDubai co-pilot who allegedly tried to crash an Israel-bound flight acted as a “lone wolf,” according to US and Israeli officials. Preliminary findings suggest Hamam al-Hammami, 29, was not tied to any organization or government, despite Benjamin Netanyahu claiming he underwent “Islamist radical indoctrination.” Officials said he told UAE interrogators he planned the attack before being hired and had considered hijacking an earlier flight to Tel Aviv but backed out. He allegedly attacked the captain with an emergency axe, sending the plane into a 17,000-foot plunge before passengers subdued him. Australian authorities are also investigating his time in the country, where the Financial Times reported he visited extremist websites and intelligence services held a file on him. Questions are mounting over how he was allowed to fly the route, after regional officials said he had been barred from flying in his native Oman over extremist views.

Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in medicine for optogenetics, a technique that lets researchers switch individual brain cells on and off. American Karl Deisseroth and Germans Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel will share the $1.2 million prize, awarded by Sweden’s Karolinska Institute. The prize-givers said the method “is now being used in laboratories around the world to reveal the brain’s mysteries.” Last year’s prize went to scientists who discovered how the immune system spares healthy cells, opening new paths for treating diseases like cancer. The medicine prize traditionally opens the annual Nobel announcements, with physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics to follow this week. Laureates will receive their awards on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death.

The FBI arrested a California woman accused of spying on a son of Taiwan’s president at the direction of Chinese officials. Wanying Zhang, 34, of Irvine, was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport before a planned flight to China and charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent. The Justice Department says she traveled to Seattle in 2025 and sent Chinese officials photos, video and license plate information on the president’s son, Lai Ting-yu, a US resident, and his family. Prosecutors say she used tradecraft to avoid detection and never notified the US government she was acting for a foreign power. Taiwan’s presidential office called it “a typical case of transnational repression” and thanked the US for protecting its citizens. Zhang is due in federal court in Los Angeles Monday, and China’s foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

Nolo has become a typhoon after crossing the international date line, following its brush with Hawaii as a hurricane. The storm was a Category 3 hurricane with 115 mph winds before it crossed the date line, where the same storms are called typhoons, and had winds of about 100 mph Monday morning Japan time. After skirting Hawaii a week ago, Nolo weakened to a tropical storm before regaining hurricane strength on Friday. “The good news is there’s a large, vast ocean, so even though it is still going to be strong, it’s not near any land,” a National Hurricane Center specialist said. Nolo is forecast to keep moving west and gradually weaken. Meanwhile, Hurricane Rachel is heading away from Mexico but still sending dangerous waves to the west-central coast and Baja California.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance 

U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsDemocracy Docket, Opinion: This time, take Trump literally, Marc Elias, Democracy Docket founder, Oct. 5, 2026. Earlier this year, The New York Times asked Donald Trump whether he regretted not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines in swing states after the 2020 election.

His answer was chilling: "Well, I should have." Trump is telling us what he plans to do in this year's midterms. He is trying to rig the elections and subvert their results.

While we have been able to stop him so far, there is no guarantee that we will continue to prevail in the weeks ahead.

Yet despite the obvious signs of Trump's plan, too many reporters and pundits downplay it. They adhere to the false neutrality that has come to dominate legacy media coverage over the last decade.

No phrase captures this attitude more clearly than the admonition to take Trump seriously but not literally. The suggestion is that only out-of-touch elites pay attention to his actual words. Real voters — and those in the media who claim to speak for them — know to focus on his vibes.

When it comes to voting and elections, this advice has been catastrophically wrong. In 2020, Trump's words before the election were prophetic about what he would do afterward. His refusal to concede foreshadowed the attack on Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump is once again in power, and he is again telling us his plan. He has weaponized the entire federal government — including the Department of Justice and the U.S. Postal Service — to make voting more difficult.

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion: House Dems Expand The Battlefield, Early Early Vote Data Encouraging, Trump Is Campaigning Today In Nebraska!!!!!!!!!!!! Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 5, 2026. Here’s some news from Politico:

Democrats’ House campaign arm is expanding its targets even further into Trump country, as the party grows increasingly bullish they will not just win, but win big next month.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added six more candidates to its coveted “Red to Blue” list on Monday, districts President Donald Trump won by an average of 16 points or more in 2024, according to plans shared first with POLITICO.

The DCCC’s Red to Blue program, the program that works to flip Republican held seats, is now targeting 46 races across the country. As we are currently supporting 30 of those races here at Hopium we will be reviewing these new recommendations and perhaps expand our own target list as the family goes deeper and deeper into Republican held territory.

The six candidates added to Red to Blue:

  • Arkansas’ 2nd District: Democrat Chris Jones against GOP Rep. French Hill (Trump +15.5)
  • Colorado’s 3rd District: Democrat Dwayne Romero against GOP Rep. Jeff Hurd (Trump +9.7)
  • Florida’s 27th District: Democrat Eliott Rodriguez against GOP Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (Trump +14.6).
  • New York’s 21st District: Democrat Blake Gendebien against Republican Anthony Constantino (Trump +20.7)
  • Nevada’s 2nd District: Democrat Teresa Benitez-Thompson against Republican David Flippo (Trump +13.9)
  • Tennessee’s 9th District: Democrat Justin J. Pearson against Republican Brent Taylor (Trump +21.1)

Yesterday The NYT broke out the results for Governor in their new battleground polling that we reviewed on Saturday. This remarkable data is additional confirmation that 2026 has become a year of extraordinary opportunity for us to take power away from MAGA all across the country:

Another confirmation about how profoundly the battlefield has eroded for the Rs is that Trump is campaigning today in Nebraska for Senator Pete Ricketts. Trump won Nebraska by 20 points in 2024, and Ricketts won by 25 points just two years ago in a special election. Today Trump is defending a sitting US Senator, and former Governor, who won by 25 points just two years ago!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Subscribed

In related news here’s the #2 story on The Guardian’s home page right now. Yes, this terrible, terrible people deserve to get their asses kicked this November:

The Early Early Vote Is Encouraging - With early in person voting kicking off this week in eight states - Arizona, Indiana, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, Wyoming - the early vote, and the election itself, is going to really kick into high gear this week. I will be working on how to best report on the early vote across the country each day - will be lots of data! - but let’s now review the kind of data that will be available to us through TargetEarly, our data source.

As I go to press this morning here’s what we know about the early vote across the country. It is encouraging but still very early:

As this data is coming from the national voter file itself we are going to be able to break out the underlying data demographically and geographically too. Here’s the national data broken out by race, for example (don’t read too much into this, yet - it’s still too early):

The NYT has a wonderful new article, full of video - Mayors Are Filming Videos, Mamdani Style, With Varying Degrees of Cringe (gift link).

Trump’s failed war keeps failing (gift link):

The U.S. military has removed all of its bombers from Royal Air Force Fairford, a base that authorities in the United Kingdom called the target of a suspected terror plot.

The Pentagon confirmed the redeployment of the aircraft in a statement Sunday.

“While operational security precluded us from confirming the movement of our assets and forces in real-time, we can acknowledge now that all U.S. bombers that were deployed to RAF Fairford have re-deployed to their home stations in the United States,” the Pentagon statement said. It gave no further details.

A reminder that Trump got a crap jobs report on Friday, and has the worst jobs record of any American President since Hoover.

The Contrarian, Opinion: Please, Mr. President, Campaign For My Republican Opponent! Jennifer Rubin, right, jennifer rubin new headshotOct. 5, 2026. The horrendous September jobs numbers — only 29,000 new jobs (a fraction of the 84,000 expected) and unemployment up to 4.2% — tell only part of the story.

With downward revisions, the economy actually lost 10,000 jobs in July and added just 133,000, not 162,000, in August (as Donald Trump touted in his rant-filled encounter with TIME magazine last week). Coupled with inflation, the soaring debt, and spiking energy prices, the Trump economy has become a nightmare for ordinary workers and consumers.

These rotten jobs numbers, the last monthly jobs report before the election, will prove difficult for all but the most indoctrinated MAGA cultists to spin. The New York Times reported, “Yes, it’s a hard time to be looking for a job — the average unemployed worker has been looking for a job for nearly six months.” But even people with jobs are struggling given the “weakness in wage growth.”Gasoline prices at a Shell gas station in Houston on October 2. (Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images)

For millions of workers, salaries have not kept up with inflation, and with mortgage prices now streaking past 7.3 percent, dreams of purchasing a home any time soon have evaporated for many Americans. Heather Long, a former economics reporter and now chief economist of the Navy Federal Credit Union, explained, “The financial pain is real: Wage growth fell to 3% (y/y) in September. That’s the lowest in 5 years.” With wage growth at 3 percent but inflation at 3.4 percent, “Inflation has eaten up all wage gains for the average worker since April. Many people are having to make hard choices about what to buy and what to skimp on right now.” Though consumption is still sustained by richer Americans, “a lot of people have to think hard about every dollar they spend,” she explained. “Notable: Wages only ticked up 0.1% in the month of September. That was the weakest monthly gain since December 2025.”

No wonder Trump’s economy approval numbers are cratering. The latest AP-NORC poll reported:

Sixty-five percent of adults overall say higher-than-usual prices are the result of Trump’s policies, while 67% of Republicans say higher prices are due to factors beyond the president’s control….

Trump is also falling short of expectations on the cost of living, with 69% of the public saying his handling of the issue has been worse than expected, including 52% of Republicans.

More than half of adults say the country as a whole, the national economy, and their local economy are worse off since Trump was reelected in 2025. Forty-six percent say they and their families are worse off since the start of Trump’s second administration. Most Americans (73%) say the country is heading in the wrong direction, including 92% of Democrats and 47% of Republicans.

This is no outlier. In the most recent Quinnipiac poll, Trump’s approval on the economy is at an all-time low (31 percent). Likewise, Fox’s September poll showed “nearly two-thirds of voters (63%) say the Trump administration has made the economy worse, including a quarter of Republicans.”

Democrats were quick to underscore the lousy job numbers. As Yahoo Finance reported: “Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts calculated that Trump’s economy has added an average of 33,000 jobs a month since Inauguration Day in 2025 — ‘far below the 120,000-a-month average in 2024’ of the last year of former President Joe Biden’s time in office…. Like other Democrats, Warren also zeroed in on weak wage growth, writing that ‘since the start of Trump’s war [in Iran], real wages have fallen.’” Former Biden official Gbenga Ajilore added that “in the broader context, lower wage growth is a warning sign given the administration’s harmful policies.”

The regime’s utter contempt for voters’ economic woes (Vice President JD Vance lectures them to stop worrying about “little things”) leads Trump and his flunkies to make ever-more cringeworthy comments that, if anything, will only infuriate voters. After the miserable September report, Kevin Hassett, the National Economic Council director, when asked if he was disappointed in the jobs report, told Fox Business, “No, not even a little bit.” Well, for now, he has a job.

Trump makes even more appalling gaffes in instructing Americans not to believe their lived experiences. Last week en route to Texas, he declared, “I give us an A+ on the government, on economics, on everything.” Voters struggling to decide whether to pay medical or grocery bills will recoil at that grade inflation. Likewise, Trump’s insistence that energy costs are “worth” his unpopular, disastrous war is of little consolation to those paying sky-high prices for regular gas and all-time high prices for diesel.

With Trump’s poll numbers so dismal and his self-congratulatory pronouncements so jarring, Democrats are no doubt delighted that Trump has announced he is heading out to campaign for Republicans, although his focus on already-safe red areas means the amount of damage he can inflict on his fellow Republicans may be less than we hope for. (A Republican president going to Alabama, for a shockingly sparse crowd, this close to the election, as Trump did on Friday, should be a flashing siren that things are terribly amiss for his party.)

Indeed, a flock of vulnerable Senate Republicans wants nothing to do with Trump. The Hill reported on an anonymous Republican senator warning it was a mistake for Trump “to campaign in Midwestern states where higher costs caused by the Iran war and Trump’s tariff policies are fueling voter anger.” That senator confessed, “We need our voters to turn out, but the ones that are making the decision, really, are those independent voters. And right now, they’re not looking favorably at President Trump.”

As Democrats make their final pitches to voters, they will no doubt emphasize that House and Senate Republicans are wholly responsible for Trump’s inane tariffs, Iran war, huge deficits, chaos-generation (e.g. ICE wreaking havoc with local economies, incompetent financial advisers spooking the markets), and self-indulgent graft (building monuments to himself while ordinary voters cannot pay the bills). They could have taken back tariff authority. They could have cut off authorization and funding for the war. They could have reined in ICE to, among other things, protect hard-hit industries rocked by loss of workers (e.g. construction, agriculture, hospitality, tourism). They could have refused to confirm unfit Cabinet secretaries and a weak Federal Reserve chairman. And, most of all, they could have rejected the Big, Ugly bill which took away SNAP benefits and healthcare coverage, doled out trillions to the ultra-rich, and sent the deficit soaring.

Republicans did none of those things, and now they will have to face the voters with an economy that cannot be blamed on anyone but them and their addled president. And if they now dread Trump coming to their district/state or appearing in ads paid for by the taxpayers (another egregious affront), that’s simply political karma.

PoliticusUSA, News and Comment: Trump Blames Blue States, Not His Iran War, For Gas Prices, Jason Easley, right, jason easleyOct. 5, 2026. The reality that he is soon going to be a lame-duck, irrelevant president is slowly creeping in on Donald Trump, who accused blue states of cheating in elections, and causing high gas prices.

There was a time just a few short years ago when the President Of The United States believed that they governed for all Americans, whether they supported the president or not.

A president is a member of a political party, but the presidency, which is supposed to be different from the person holding the office, has always been intended to be above partisanship. Part of the president’s job is to lead the nation when it is under attack, in times of tragedy, or after a natural disaster.is 100% independent news and opinion. Support us by becoming a subscriber.Subscribed

The presidency represents all of America and every American, and that is the way it was until Donald Trump came along.

Democrats are tapping the brakes to make sure that their supporters don’t get lulled into complacency, but the party seems to be heading for a positive result in the upcoming midterm election.

The current president is term-limited, which means that if Democrats win control of all or part of Congress, he will inhabit the office, but he will be viewed by many as keeping the seat warm for the next president to be elected in 2028.

Trump views himself as the president of Republicans. Trump views those who voted against him not as those who disagree with him, whom he still represents, but as enemies.

Trump only knows the politics of division, and with the midterm election looking like a disaster for Republicans, the president is trying to pit red against blue.Trump Blames Blue Cities And States For High Gas Prices

The president started out trying to make excuses for his likely midterm election defeat.

Trump posted on Truth Social accusing blue cities and states of rigging their vote totals:

125 Million People voted today in the first round of India’s Presidential Election. The results came out shortly after the vote closed, on the SAME DAY! In Detroit, Philadelphia, California, and numerous other U.S. Cities and States, the results, with much smaller numbers, will often take weeks to Rig, I mean, calculate. Voting in America is CORRUPT!!!

The president also understands that gas prices, which he caused to skyrocket, are a main issue for voters, so he blamed Ukraine and blue states for that:

What's driving up Gasoline is no longer the Strait of Hormuz, because Record Numbers of Barrels are coming out now on an almost daily basis, but the word, "Refineries," where Russia's are being blown up by Ukraine, and where ours are being closed up, in Blue States, like California, by the Dumocrats.

It is impossible for Trump to argue that a vote for Democrats is a vote for higher gas prices, which seems to be what he is sort of getting at, when he won the election and he and his party sent prices, inflation, and gas prices through the roof.

To anyone who is paying attention and not a blind partisan, it would seem that a vote for Republican candidates is a vote for continued high prices.

The one rule of thumb with Donald Trump is that his failures are always someone else’s fault, but voters aren’t buying it, and his politics of division are as stale as his red hat.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Oct. 4, 2026 [], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 5, 2026. On Friday night, just before 11:00, Trump announced that his administration “will, immediately, begin sending ‘Checks’ of nearly $100 to over 20 MILLION wonderful Seniors to help pay for their Medicare Part B premiums, which we have already reduced by significant amounts. This money will come from the Medicare Improvement Fund, a pointless ‘Slush Fund’ that has only been used by Dumocrats in Congress to pay for the Waste, Fraud, and Abuse for their Special Interest friends, and drive up Healthcare costs.”

Congress established the Medicare Improvement Fund in 2008 to enable improvements to the program and periodically adjust payments to healthcare providers. A Republican congressional aide told Dan Diamond of the Washington Post that lawmakers had been planning to use the fund to help fund several health programs this year, and were taken aback by Trump’s announcement.

Trump continued: “Because I delivered on this very important issue for the American People, they can also rest assured the highly popular $5,000 Trump Dividend will be distributed to every U.S. Citizen if, and when, the Republicans win the Midterm Elections!”

The fact that he is openly using taxpayer money to buy votes in the election suggests just how worried Trump is about Democrats winning control of Congress in the upcoming midterms.

He has reason to be worried. If Democrats retake control of one or both chambers of Congress, they will not necessarily be able to pass legislation, since Trump will still be able to veto it. But they will be able to start investigations immediately, and they have made it so clear they intend to do so that the administration is already taking steps to trip them up.

In April the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice issued an opinion that the president doesn’t have to comply with the Presidential Records Act, enacted to make sure presidents after Richard M. Nixon could not destroy their records; in May a federal judge said they did, in fact, have to follow the law. In August the Department of Justice issued a memo saying that the executive privilege that enables a president to protect his conversations with government advisors also covers any civilian to whom the president speaks “so long as they relate to official presidential decisionmaking.”

As Trump’s time in office stretches out, more and more stories of corruption are surfacing. As Aaron Parnas reported in Meidas News, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, wrote a letter on September 30 to Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI director Kash Patel demanding they immediately release a document they are “illegally” concealing, and any others like it.

Wyden has been doggedly following the money trail connected to sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein, noting that his operations, including human trafficking and sexual abuse, depended on the banks whose officers looked the other way as Epstein’s finances repeatedly indicated he was engaged in criminal activity. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has refused to give the Senate Finance Committee access to Treasury materials about those finances, including Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs). When Wyden tried to get Congress to pass a law forcing the release of those files, Senate Republicans blocked it.

Now Wyden’s investigators have discovered that the FBI conducted an interview with a banker tied to Epstein, but the bureau did not release the transcript of the interview, known as a “302 report,” as Congress required when it passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Wyden suggested that the Department of Justice (DOJ) Justice Department log circularand the FBI “are withholding key documents from Congress and the public.”

“Furthermore,” he added, “the existence of this 302 indicates that it is likely that the FBI possesses additional, related, FBI 302s that have not been released” as they should have been under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

A new report from Anton Troianovski and Eric Lipton of the New York Times Saturday revealed that the administration’s talk about doing business deals with Putin while he continues to strike Ukraine was not hypothetical. As they have allegedly been negotiating for an end to Russia’s war on Ukraine, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff—neither of whom are diplomats—have been talking with Russia’s president Vladimir Putin about a multibillion-dollar deal to buy the assets of Russian oil giant Lukoil at the rock-bottom prices to which they have sunk because of U.S. sanctions.

Because such a sale would immediately remove those assets from U.S. sanctions, they would instantly become far more valuable. Those looking to benefit financially from the purchase would include a major Trump donor, as well as Middle Eastern investors tied to the Trump family and the Witkoffs. The U.S. government would take a stake in the company as well, through the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, which Congress authorized in 2018 to invest in development projects in lower- and middle-income countries.

While Lukoil is technically a private company, observers believe Putin has control over it. And while the deal would have to be approved by the U.S. Treasury Department, it seems unlikely that Trump loyalist Bessent would stop it.

According to Troianovski and Lipton, Putin suggested the deal on September 5. It was likely not coincidental that the offer came after Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) died on July 11. Graham, who was close to Trump, was firmly behind Ukraine as it tried to fight off Putin’s invasion. Until Trump, Democrats and Republicans both felt strongly that American national security depended on stopping Putin’s aggression, and they stood behind Ukraine.

Trump’s ties to Russia are extensive and well known, but this apparent attempt to buy Trump’s support for Russia even as the war drags into another winter and Ukraine’s drones are destroying Russia’s oil sector seems especially blatant. It puts a spotlight on the fact that, under Trump, U.S. national security is for sale. A Democratic-led Senate would undoubtedly object to what the Republicans have permitted.

Indeed, under Trump there does not appear to be a line between foreign affairs and Trump family business deals. On October 1, Allegra Goodwin, Katie Polglase, and Majlie de Puy Kamp of CNN reported that while in discussions about ending the war in Gaza, Kushner has major financial interests in the Israeli military.

Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners, has invested in Phoenix Financial, a firm based in Tel Aviv, Israel, that, in turn, has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in at least nine companies that provide equipment for the Israeli military. The CNN journalists report that the stock values of all the nine companies grew last year and that many of the companies attributed the growth to the war in Gaza. Kushner’s firm sold a quarter of its stock in Phoenix in July for more than $340 million, more than five times the value of its initial purchase.

If he were a government employee, Kushner would have to disclose his finances, but he is a “volunteer” negotiator. One of Kushner’s lawyers told the reporters that Kushner has “never participated in or directed Phoenix’s decisions” about investments, but, as the journalists note, Kushner told Forbes that he meets with the leaders of the financial group every few weeks and maintains “a very active dialogue” with them.

Kushner’s lawyer confirmed that was true a year ago when Kushner said it, but that since he has been “substantially more engaged in volunteer public-service and diplomatic efforts,” he has scaled back that contact significantly.

It’s not just Kushner. The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal on October 2 warned that “Don Jr.’s Star Turn Is Coming,” noting that the “Trump family businesses will be in the spotlight on Capitol Hill for the next two years.” “Does the Trump family know what is about to hit them?” the board asked. It noted that even Republicans are upset at the news that an oligarch close to Putin had paid for Don Jr.’s wedding celebration. Senator John Curtis (R-UT) has called for the Senate to subpoena Don Jr. to find out how that financial underwriting came to happen. While they’re at it, Curtis wants to learn more about the family’s cryptocurrency and prediction market ventures.

The corruption of the administration is matched by its incompetence, and neither will come out well in congressional investigations.

In September, hackers broke into the FBI jobs portal and stole information about nearly every FBI employee as well as more than 8,000 state and local law enforcement officers who had worked with the FBI agents. On Saturday, Ken Dilanian and Carol Leonnig of MS NOW reported just how devastating that breach was. The hacked data included “names, home addresses, cell phone numbers, FBI email addresses and employee ID numbers, in addition to personal identifying information for emergency contacts, including Social Security numbers and personal email addresses.”

According to FBI officials and outside experts, Dilanian and Leonnig report, the breach is a counterintelligence disaster—one of the worst in U.S. history. The information not only exposes the people involved, but also enables adversaries to figure out U.S. priorities and who is working on what.

One cybersecurity expert at the FBI said the cause of the breach was “definitely incompetence.” The information should never have been linked to the internet, the expert said. “It belonged on our internal system and some dumbass moved it all” to a system connected to the internet. The expert told Dilanian and Leonnig that in chats the FBI obtained, the hackers wrote they couldn’t believe that the hack of such important information was so easy.

Speaking at a high school gymnasium in Ohio Saturday night, Trump told an audience: “Just get out and vote. If you do that, we’re going to win, and we’re going to win big, and we’re gonna shove it up their *ss.”

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption 

pete hegseth treason graphic

Hope for America, Opinion: Pete Hegseth's TREASON accusation reveals a dark plan, Heather Delaney Reese, above right, Oct. 5, 2026. Pete Hegseth stood at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs beneath a redesigned military seal that looked like something pulled from 1930s Germany, and told cadets that “the flyovers will continue until morale improves.”

This is the man whose department was forced to admit that eight sailors attached to the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group attempted suicide during a deployment that went more than 260 days without a port call. They dismiss the suffering of our troops as fake news, then offer more flyovers to fix the morale problem they insist does not exist. Behind all the flags, staged workouts, and speeches about warriors, they are trying to rebuild our military as a personal instrument of the Trump Regime.

At Quantico, the approximately 600 people in the audience were handpicked to meet appearance standards, according to the Wall Street Journal. Hegseth was giving Trump the “central casting” military he wanted. Hegseth bragged about firing 10% of our generals and admirals and announced another wave of leadership cuts. He is removing the people who would push back against an unlawful order. He demanded the “highest male standard only,” promoted widespread testosterone testing, and announced an Office of Religious Affairs with a direct line to him. He put Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey, whose companies already do enormous business with the Pentagon, alongside Newt Gingrich in Project Meridian to study the future of warfare. Then he stood in front of our military and used the word “treason” to attack the press. They want obedience inside the chain of command and fear among the people telling us what is happening.

We do not have to accept the image Hegseth is selling us. Calling this propaganda takes away the power he wants it to have, and a Democratic Congress gives us a path toward holding him accountable through impeachment. Check your voter registration through your state’s official website, and ask friends and family to do the same. When I watched him in Colorado Springs, I also remembered the people my family met there, their care for service members, their pride in the Olympic Training Center, and the beauty of Pikes Peak. I remembered feeling weak from the altitude and still wanting to see that extraordinary view. That country still exists. Hegseth can redesign an eagle and tell soldiers what they should look like, but he cannot decide what America means to the rest of us. We can keep building a country worth fighting for.

 

pete hegseth tatoos

Hope for America, Opinion: Pete Hegseth is obsessed with men and power, Heather Delaney Reese, right, heather delaney reeseOct. 5, 2026. Early yesterday morning, the United States Secretary of “War,” Pete Hegseth, shown above in a file photo showing off his tattoos, stepped up to the podium at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and stood directly under a desecrated version of the Department of Defense seal.

What was once a gold eagle carrying a shield of red, white, and blue is now a cold, white eagle with its rigid wings spread inside a stark blue circle. It no longer represented American freedom and power. Instead, it looked like a symbol of Nazi propaganda pulled straight from 1930s Germany, bearing an unmistakable resemblance to the Reichsadler, the imperial eagle that served as the official symbol of the Third Reich.

This was the second stop on his “Send Me” tour, a campaign to radicalize the military and to signal to the American people and the rest of the world that the United States Armed Forces now belong to him and the Trump Regime. During this short 21-minute address to cadets, he harnessed all of his performance skills to project strength and power. Yet his words still gave him away. He invoked God, told a strange story about “young Americans” singling him out and telling him they are desperate for him to “send me to fight the Redcoats,” “send me to fight the Communists,” “send me to fight the Nazis,” “send me to fight the Islamists.”

But even with all these theatrics to project a military that is flourishing with no morale issues, he also said this: “I’ve always been a big believer in civic ritual in parades, and the flyovers will continue until morale improves. That’s why I believe in flyovers.”

This, much like Pete Hegseth’s other events this week, and everything he said, was about building a false narrative ahead of the midterms. Especially what he said about morale. He knows morale isn’t improving, and the troops know it, too. His department was already forced to admit that eight sailors attached to the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group attempted suicide during its record-setting deployment during Donald Trump’s forever war in Iran. Their deployment went more than 260 days without making a port call. There were supply and hygiene product shortages. They even ran low on food. When the Navy’s acting secretary confirmed the suicide attempts in a letter to Congress, Hegseth responded by saying the conditions were “completely misrepresented.”

Donald Trump also weighed in, saying he thought the deployment was “not nearly long enough.” Both have dismissed media reports about conditions aboard the Lincoln as untrue because they came from the “fake news.” Yet Hegseth still felt the need to offer a solution to this supposedly nonexistent morale problem by suggesting more flyovers. He says he cares about our troops, but his actions, and lack of action when our troops actually need him, tell us something completely different.

This speech wasn’t really about our troops; it was part of a much larger, and deliberate effort to concentrate power and strip the military of experienced, ethical, and constitutionally grounded leadership. They want to rebuild it as a personal instrument and extension of the Trump Regime. His remarks in Colorado Springs were just a small part of their efforts to accomplish this.

Last Wednesday, just two days before he was in Colorado Springs, Pete Hegseth delivered what he called the “State of the Force” address in Virginia at Marine Corps Base Quantico. Before the speech even started, he made sure to be seen running laps and doing PT with military personnel in matching T-shirts that said “THIS IS WAR.” It was an odd shirt choice for the man tasked with keeping our military out of war, but it was downright bizarre when we consider that Hegseth’s boss, Donald Trump, has spent months insisting that the “military action” in Iran is not, in fact, a war. After he made sure there were enough videos and photographs of this workout spectacle, he took a helicopter the 33 miles to Quantico, where he walked back and forth on a stage in front of a massive American flag for 52 minutes and delivered what he wanted us to believe was just a normal address to the military, but what was really a staged political rally.

What is becoming more obvious at every recent event is the visual language they are using to get us to think and feel something. We don’t even have to look that closely to see the symbols they plaster across the stages and entire rooms at not just Pete Hegseth’s events, but also JD Vance’s and Donald Trump’s. They are going all in with the heavy Americana glorification. There are American flags, red, white, and blue imagery everywhere, with thick blue backdrops, and stars and stripes strategically placed so that every frame of the camera catches them and fills the space around whoever is speaking. It is coordinated and deliberate visual conditioning for us to see nationalism as patriotism, and it mirrors so much of what authoritarian regimes have always done when they need their symbols to do just as much work, if not more, than the words that they say. The Nazis are one of the easiest regimes to compare this to because they understood the power of visual identity better than almost any political movement in history. They designed their banners, logos, and even their uniforms to project a single message of uniformity and as a reminder that they were the ultimate power. There was no room for anything or anyone else.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the approximately 600 people in that Quantico room were handpicked to meet a very specific look. They had to meet physical requirements, including body fat standards, and were required to have “impeccable grooming and uniform.” As Pete Hegseth has said about Donald Trump and how he wants our military to be presented, “I want central casting.” It seems Hegseth took that to heart when deciding who would sit in that audience. And it goes so much deeper and darker than surface-level looks. They are building a brand, not building an army.

History has shown us where this kind of thinking can lead. When we were in Berlin, we purposely spent time with our children in museums learning about the image the Nazis created of what the ideal German was supposed to look like. The blond hair and blue eyes. The athletic, muscular builds. The emphasis on physical strength and uniformity. None of that was accidental. It was part of showing Germans what they were supposed to look like and who they were supposed to be. I took a photograph inside Berlin’s Olympic complex of a massive mural from that era that I have included below. When we look at the people in it, we see vibrant and young, seemingly healthy, physically fit, orderly, and cheerful Germans. This was the image the Nazis wanted people to emulate. It showed them what their country was supposed to look like, while also defining who belonged and who did not. We tend to think of Nazi propaganda as primarily swastikas, banners, and speeches, but it was so much more than that.

That is what makes handpicking an audience based on their looks so dangerous. We know what comes next if it is not stopped.

Pete Hegseth also included the press, much like Trump has been doing, in his disgusting rhetoric. “It’s worth saying again so the fake news understands it,” Hegseth declared. “We are no longer the woke department or the weak department. Simple translation of that: no fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors.”

I would normally never repeat such vulgar language, but in this moment it has to be pointed out. He chose to use that slur on purpose and as a signal to others. It told every person in that room and every person watching that this military is no longer being governed by decency, dignity, or respect for the people who serve in it. It is being reshaped around the ideology of those pulling the strings behind Donald Trump. This regime has now decided what an American soldier should look like, how they should talk, and even who they should pray to.

He went on with his cringeworthy performance, saying that “The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in, with testosterone testing on top.” He bragged about firing 10% of the military’s generals and admirals, and then announced he was cutting even more, explaining it like he was simply decluttering and getting rid of people who “clung to the woke department.” But that is not what this is. He didn’t get rid of 10% of the military’s senior leadership just to clear out people who disagreed with his personal brand. He got rid of the ones who would resist and who would push back. The people who were most likely to actually stick by their oath to the Constitution instead of pledging loyalty to Pete Hegseth or Donald Trump.

With this second wave of cuts, he is going after the middle layer of military leadership, so that there are fewer and fewer people between the person giving an order and the person expected to carry it out. There will be fewer people in the room willing to push back and say, “No. That order is unlawful.” That is the point. They don’t want people in the way. They don’t want resistance inside the chain of command. They just want orders coming from the top and being carried out from below.

He told the room that “each service will ensure that every requirement for every combat military occupational specialty, for every designated combat arms position, returns to the highest male standard only.” He said multiple times that our military is gender-neutral and then turned around and said that. It is a direct effort to push women out of combat roles and to continue banning transgender service members, while pretending all decisions are based on his definition of merit. Women, LGBTQIA+ and transgender people have all volunteered to defend this country, and they have brought skills and perspectives that have made our military stronger. Now he is pushing people out and making the world more dangerous for them, because of who they are, not because of how they perform. In doing so, he risks losing some of the talented, out-of-the-box thinkers our military needs.

He brought up his obsession with men’s bodies and their testosterone levels multiple times as well. Doctors are sounding alarms over his decision to widely screen men for testosterone deficiency even when they have no symptoms, something that goes against the recommendations of major medical organizations. Those who are diagnosed with low testosterone will then have the option of testosterone replacement therapy. Hegseth insists this isn’t about artificially enhancing troops, but then he talks about testosterone as part of building what he calls the “High-T Department of War” and keeping our troops on the “leading edge of lethality.” So which is it? Is this about treating a medical condition, or is it about his belief that more testosterone somehow makes a better warrior? And why is the Department of War dedicating its time and resources to widespread testosterone testing when members of the VA who desperately need medical care are still waiting?

He also announced “Project Meridian,” which he called “an effort led by America’s best minds to study the future of warfare.” Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich are those “best minds”. Elon Musk, whose SpaceX already has billions of dollars in government and military contracts. Palmer Luckey, a 34-year-old defense tech billionaire whose company, Anduril, also does enormous amounts of business with the Pentagon. And Newt Gingrich, the 83-year-old former speaker of the House who never served in the military but has spent decades weighing in on when and where America should use military force. These are the people Hegseth has chosen to help decide what the future of American warfare should look like. Two of them own companies that stand to make money from the very technologies the Pentagon will need to build that future.

He couldn’t possibly end his speech without some sort of Christian Nationalist sermon, and this one was no different. He announced, “Today, at my direction, I’m establishing the Office of Religious Affairs… It will report straight to the top, a direct line to the secretary...as Psalm 33:12 extolls us, blessed is the nation in which God is the Lord.”

He announced new partnerships with Liberty University, Hillsdale College, Tuskegee University, LSU, and Mississippi State to create a “new core of cadets.” Liberty University is not just a school. It is one of the primary breeding grounds for far-right Christian nationalism in this country, a place that has produced exactly the kind of ideological soldiers Hegseth wants filling the ranks. And placing it at the center of military recruitment tells us everything about what kind of force he is building.

Nearly every war in human history has been fought in the name of God, and God is always conveniently on the side of whoever is doing the killing. This is one of the oldest tools in the authoritarian playbook. You tell soldiers that the fight is divine, that their sacrifice is holy, and that their enemies are not just opponents but enemies of God himself. Putin used this same playbook when he invaded Ukraine, telling Russian soldiers they were protecting and liberating Ukrainians from Nazis, while he and the Russian Orthodox Church increasingly framed the war as a spiritual fight for Russia itself. Hegseth is doing the same thing. He is building a military that isn’t fighting for the American people, but for a version of God that only he and his allies get to define.

He also said that “A free press is of course important… but partisan activism that intentionally smears the troops and the historic mission that they are undertaking is fundamentally anti-American. It’s sick. It’s a national betrayal. It’s treason. I hate to have to say it, but it has to be said.”

The Secretary of Defense, or War, as he prefers, stood in front of the military and called journalism treason, one of the most serious crimes in American law. It can carry the death penalty. This is just another piece of a coordinated effort across Trump’s government to call anyone who reports what they don’t want us to know, hear, or see a traitor. What Hegseth is trying to do is help create fear around speaking the truth that we stop and ask whether it’s worth the risk even though we know he is perverting free speech into being seen as treason.

We did not see any actual leadership from Pete Hegseth at any of these events because he does not know how to lead. His experience came from being a Fox News personality who, while still serving in the National Guard himself, was removed from providing security for Biden’s inauguration after another Guard member flagged him as a possible “insider threat.” His own mother wrote him a letter saying she was embarrassed and disappointed in him over his treatment of women. Multiple former colleagues have also accused him of excessive drinking, something he has denied. He is a performer, and that is exactly what we saw this week.

By acknowledging what he is doing and not pretending it is anything but propaganda, we strip it of the power he thinks it holds. We know the truth about what he is doing to our military and our country. The most immediate remedy we have is to have him impeached. The House of Representatives was very close to doing so just weeks ago before Speaker Johnson urgently sent everyone home to avoid a vote. That all changes if we have a Democratic Congress, and we will have the chance to make that happen in less than a month. So take a moment and make sure you are still registered to vote. Most Secretaries of State, if not all, have links where you can check on their official websites. Take some time to do that, and also keep your eyes open for opportunities to ask friends and family to check theirs too.

When I watched Pete Hegseth in Colorado Springs, I saw beyond the fear he was spreading and back to some very special times my own family spent there when I was writing a travel story years ago. While we were there, I spoke to so many people who shared the struggles the area faced, but also why they loved it. The beauty that surrounded them. The sense of community and the care for the military service members who lived there. The pride they felt in the Olympic Training Center and Pikes Peak. I remember standing at the top of Pikes Peak, feeling weak from the altitude, needing to be cleared by EMS, and still going to the edge anyway because the view was too extraordinary to miss.

That America still exists and always will, no matter how hard Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump try to steal it from us. Pete Hegseth can stand under whatever seal he wants. He can rename the department, redesign the eagle, order every soldier to watch his speeches, and hand out his personal manifesto like it’s scripture. He can demand that our military follow his maximum lethality “warrior ethos” and look like whatever they think they should look like. But nobody, not even a corrupt regime controlling our government, can take away what this country means to us or stop us from fighting to keep building a country that is worth fighting for. 

U.S. Law, Courts, Rights

New York Times, Texas Pediatricians Face Paxton Investigations for Vaccinating Children, Christina Jewett, Oct. 5, 2026. Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general and Republican Senate candidate, has alleged a sprawling profit-driven conspiracy. Pediatricians say the accusations are an attempt at intimidation.

It was a bustling Monday morning at a little pediatrician’s office in central Texas. Children with rashes, fevers and runny noses cycled through exam rooms decorated with butterflies, planets and colorful maps. The doctor, who had been treating kids in the community for 20 years, was delighted when a woman she had cared for as a child came in with her newborn.

Until recently, she had planned to continue her practice for years to come. But this year, she has begun to ken paxton mugreconsider amid the stress and legal costs of defending herself in a statewide investigation by Ken Paxton, left, the attorney general of Texas and Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, who has accused doctors, drug companies and insurers of conspiring to push parents into vaccinating children.

She agreed to be interviewed and allowed a reporter to visit her practice but asked to be identified by her middle name, Rachel, to protect her from retaliation.

In December, Dr. Rachel received a letter from the attorney general’s Consumer Protection Division demanding her vaccine purchase records over the past 10 years. “The division believes that you are in possession, custody or control” of material, “involving potential misleading or deceptive acts regarding incentives associated with the administration of childhood vaccines,” it said, adding that such acts could be in violation of the state’s deceptive trade practices law.

The letter also requested her practice’s vaccine policy, and said that it would not be sufficient to cite the childhood vaccine schedule recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mr. Paxton has also implicated the nation’s largest organization of pediatricians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, in the alleged conspiracy over the workaday task of protecting children from polio, measles, meningitis and more than a dozen other dangerous and sometimes life-threatening diseases.

“I will ensure that Big Pharma and Big Insurance don’t bribe medical providers to pressure parents to jab their kids with vaccines they feel aren’t safe or necessary,” he said when announcing the investigation in January, describing his efforts as working “alongside President Trump” and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“Together, we will Make America Healthy Again,” he said, using the rallying cry of a movement that helped elect Mr. Trump and propel Mr. Kennedy into the top health position in the federal government.

In many ways, pediatricians, among the lowest-paid specialists in medicine, make for an unlikely target. But they have become a focus in what has become a wide-ranging campaign to raise doubts about vaccination, part of a 20-year quest for Mr. Kennedy that some of his political allies have joined.

The efforts have gained steam despite decades of evidence of the effectiveness of vaccines. More than 1.1 million deaths, from diseases like diphtheria, hepatitis B and measles, were prevented by childhood vaccines in the United States from 1994 through 2023, according to an estimate from the C.D.C.

Unlike many organizations that have drawn fire from the Trump administration and its surrogates, the 67,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics has not retreated. It has sued the Trump administration over policy changes and grant cancellations, with some success so far.

 

dennis hastert gavel wikipedia

New York Times, Dennis Hastert, Powerful Politician Disgraced by Child Sexual Abuse, Dies, Carl Hulse, Oct. 5, 2026. The longest-serving Republican speaker of the House, shown above, admitted in 2016 to abusing teenage boys decades earlier. He was 84.

J. Dennis Hastert, a once-obscure Illinois congressman who rose to become the longest-serving Republican speaker of the House before falling from grace in a sex abuse scandal that came to light after he left government, has died. He was 84.

The coroner’s office in Kendall County, Ill., was notified of Mr. Hastert’s death on Saturday evening, according to a statement. He was pronounced dead at his home while under hospice care, the coroner said.

dennis hastert prison wheelchair abcMr. Hastert, a former teacher and wrestling coach (shown above in a prison wheelchair with his wife), was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison in April 2016 for violating federal banking laws, having made millions of dollars in secret payments to cover up sexual misconduct with a male student. He was released in July 2017 and from then on lived out of the public eye despite his earlier prominence in Washington.

Mr. Hastert admitted at his sentencing that he sexually abused teenage wrestlers as young as 14 whom he coached at Yorkville High School in Yorkville, Ill., where he worked from 1965 to 1981. The federal judge who sentenced Mr. Hastert called him “a serial child molester.”

It was a stunning downfall for Mr. Hastert, a burly, stooped figure who had once trudged through the Capitol hallways surrounded by aides and a security detail.

He had emerged as a surprise consensus choice for speaker in 1998 during a period of partisan uproar over the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. He held the post during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and their aftermath, working closely with President George W. Bush in pushing a tough antiterror agenda and fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He also forced through an expansion of Medicare to cover prescription drug costs, a long-sought benefit. But the way that vote was handled contributed to an ethical cloud that gathered over House Republicans in the Hastert era.

Mr. Hastert lost the speakership after Democrats reclaimed the majority in the 2006 midterm elections. The Democratic victory was fueled in part by accusations that Mr. Hastert and his leadership team had failed to respond aggressively to accusations that a Republican House member, Mark Foley of Florida, had behaved inappropriately with male House pages of high-school age.

Mr. Hastert chose not to seek a Republican leadership role after the repudiation of his party in 2006. He left Congress in November 2007 to pursue a lucrative lobbying and consulting career.

Justice Integrity Project Editor's Note: Investigative reporter Wayne Madsen, a courageous reporter, a former Navy intelligence officer and a close colleague of this editor, broke the Hastert story in a three-part series in the fall of 2006  published on "The Wayne Madsen Report" naming the then-powerful House Speaker as a gay pedophile and hypocrite who presided over a "gay Mafia" of powerful Republicans in Congress who abused youths while winning elections as  "family values" purists. No other publication dared follow up on the story until the federal indictment years later.

New York Times Magazine, Congress Is Supposed to Be More Powerful Than the Supreme Court. Why Isn’t It? Emily Bazelon, Oct. 5, 2026. Trump and his allies in the Capitol have revealed a problem that has been developing for decades.

President Trump’s second term has revealed many weaknesses in America’s political system. This is one of them: It turns out that the government can function (or malfunction) based just on orders of the president and the Supreme Court’s rulings on those orders. Congress is largely irrelevant, if it wants to be.

As the court returns for a new term this week, we are due for another round of debate about the separation of powers — the fight between the executive and the courts, especially. Just as important, though far less frequently noted, is the balance between the Supreme Court and Congress. And that situation is deeply weird.

Here’s how it’s supposed to work but no longer does: Congress writes laws. The courts interpret them. When Congress disagrees with these statutory interpretations, it has the power to pass a new law to override them. Constitutional rulings are different: The Supreme Court claimed that it had say over interpreting the nation’s founding document in the case of Marbury v. Madison in 1803. Congress may still have room to respond with a new law, but it can’t just say the court got the Constitution wrong.

Today, Republicans in the House and the Senate have the power to give the president — the leader of their party — what he wants, even when the Supreme Court disagrees. Over the summer, for example, the justices handed Trump defeats on two cherished priorities, imposing global tariffs and resetting the rules for mail-in voting. A lower-court judge blocked Trump’s appointees on the board of the Kennedy Center from putting his name on it, which he appears to care about even more.

The judge in the Kennedy Center case, Christopher R. Cooper, underscored in his ruling what power Congress has. “Simply put,” he wrote, the board “cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing.” Yet Republicans have not moved a bill to authorize adding Trump’s name.

In a sense, Congress’s inaction is easy to explain. It’s an increasingly do-nothing institution. The Senate rule requiring 60 votes to break a filibuster gives Republicans an excuse to distance themselves from some of the least popular decrees of an unpopular president. Trump also often disregards Congress. There was no reason for lawmakers to do anything, he said, when the Supreme Court struck down his tariffs last year.

But this is not really about Trump. He and the current MAGA Congress have revealed — and accelerated — a structural flaw that has been developing for a couple of decades. Several presidencies ago, Congress stopped asserting authority to override major Supreme Court decisions. Its passivity has continued no matter which party is in power.

By 2013, it was already “exceedingly rare” for Congress to reject a court decision, Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote that year. Hasen charted the drop. From 1975 to 1990, Congress overrode an average of 12 Supreme Court decisions per term. The number fell to an average of 2.8 per term from 2001 to 2012. Since then, it has fallen nearly to zero, Hasen says — “certainly, nothing I’ve seen shows the numbers have turned around.”

Congress’s inaction is upsetting the balance of power between Congress — the branch that, according to the Constitution, is supposed to be most responsive to the electorate and the strongest — and the judiciary, which is supposed to be most removed and weakest. It’s a distortion of the separation of powers that has largely had the effect of moving American governance to the right.ImageAn old black-and-white photographs of three lawyers outside the Supreme Court.Thurgood Marshall (right) with Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach (center) with Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights John Doar (left) at the Supreme Court in 1966. Marshall argued for the government in Katzenbach v. Morgan, defending the Voting Rights Act.Credit...Bettmann Archive, via Getty Images

One of the court’s most contentious decisions last term was Louisiana v. Callais, which gutted part of the Voting Rights Act. The history of the landmark civil rights law since its enactment in 1965 shows how things have changed in Congress’s push-and-pull with the court. The Supreme Court upheld it in the 1966 case Katzenbach v. Morgan. The 14th Amendment, the justices argued, gave Congress the power to enforce the promise of equal rights, a responsibility that the court respected.

But in 1980, a different court struck back with a ruling that required states to prove that laws intentionally discriminated on the basis of race. The ruling made part of the Voting Rights Act nearly toothless. Congress objected — and did something about it by amending the law so a plaintiff could win with proof that a state voting practice had a discriminatory effect. This back-and-forth was what the Constitution’s framers envisioned, and it continued for decades. The court enforced Congress’s amendment in 1986. In 2006, Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act by overwhelming majorities. 

Seven years later, however, in Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court gutted another key provision of it. This time, though, Congress did not pass an amendment or a new voting rights bill in response, even later when Democrats controlled the White House, the House and the Senate. The resulting power vacuum surely made it easier for the conservative justices to dismantle the remainder of the Voting Rights Act last spring — by reimposing the standard of proof of discriminatory intent in Louisiana v. Callais.Get updates when new midterm election polls are added to our poll trackers. When new polling data drops we’ll send an update straight to your inbox. Get it sent to your inbox.

The main reason a new voting rights bill failed to pass is the same reason Congress has stopped responding to the court: partisan polarization, which ramped up in the 2000s. As conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans went extinct, bipartisan overrides ended. When one party is in control and can reject a court ruling on its own, the filibuster remains a barrier to such a bill passing.

In their new book, “Supremacy,” Nikolas Bowie and Daphna Renan, Harvard law professors, argue that Congress is passive because the Supreme Court made it so. “The court’s interpretation of Congress’s statutory authority has gotten stingier and stingier,” Renan said. Congress stopped responding to the court out of “learned helplessness.”

In the last few years, the Supreme Court’s conservatives have suggested that when they strike down statutes, they are inviting Congress to pass laws in response. Liberals in the minority, on the other hand, say the court is simply taking more power for itself. The dispute came to a head in a 2022 case in which the conservative majority said that the Clean Air Act did not authorize the Environmental Protection Agency to implement the Obama administration’s plan to limit carbon emissions at power plants. The majority imposed a relatively new standard, the “major questions doctrine,” saying that Congress was required to clearly state what it wanted the E.P.A. to do and that it had not done so. “A decision of such magnitude and consequences rests with Congress itself,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority.

New York Times, How the Midterms Could Complicate the Supreme Court’s New Term, Ann E. Marimow and Abbie VanSickle, Oct. 5, 2026. Even before the justices start their new term on Monday, the court has spent the summer resolving fast-moving requests on election-related disputes.

At a public appearance this spring, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. insisted, as he regularly does, that members of the Supreme Court are not “political actors.”

Yet with the court’s new term beginning Monday, scarcely a month before the closely watched midterms, the court may be unable to avoid getting uncomfortably pulled into electoral politics.

With partisans on both sides primed for potential election challenges, lawsuits to settle hotly contested elections could end up before the court, potentially with the control of Congress at stake. They would land on top of an already packed docket of cases on culture war issues and President Trump’s agenda that were selected by the justices to be heard from the thousands of petitions they receive each year.

The result could be another consequential and controversial span on the bench for the justices, even as their public poll numbers have dipped and elected leaders and candidates, particularly in the insurgent wing of the Democratic Party, have called for an overhaul of the court.

The court “knows what an extraordinary politicized moment we are in,” said Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University Law School. For that reason, the justices would prefer not to be involved in lawsuits that would affect results or allow state officials to affect results.

But, he said, if the justices see a true post-election emergency, “it’s hard to imagine they wouldn’t intervene” if called on.

The court will hear oral arguments in about 60 cases, starting on Monday with a major environmental lawsuit, and continuing through late April. During that period, they will deliberate at private conferences, draft and exchange opinions and release the court’s rulings. The most closely divided decisions are typically announced on the final days of the term in late June or early July. But the justices also field emergency requests and issue quick-turn orders without a lengthy briefing period or hearing arguments.

The new term was foreshadowed by a busy summer for the court, which grappled with a series of emergency requests critical to the nation’s political system.

The justices blocked both President Trump’s plan to dramatically overhaul how Americans vote by mail in the upcoming election and three separate times stepped in to block Missouri from using a congressional map drawn to advantage Republicans. At the same time, they allowed the administration to deploy an online system combining citizenship information, Social Security numbers and other sensitive data about millions of Americans to help states hunt for supposedly ineligible voters.

In each case, the majority issued unsigned orders that academics and advocates said suggested that the justices were trying to avoid changing voting rules or creating confusion for state election officials ahead of November.ImageThe Supreme Court building is seen next to a window reflecting an image of the U.S. Capitol.Apart from Mr. Trump’s agenda, the court plans to hear a series of other consequential cases, including a blockbuster case dealing with gun control in December.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

“There is a robust majority of the court that does not want to be the decision maker that’s going to be the one allowing the chaos to happen,” said Roman Martinez, a lawyer who argues frequently before the court and is a former law clerk to Chief Justice Roberts.

In the mail-ballot matter, election officials from both parties had cautioned that Mr. Trump’s mail-in ballot plan would be disruptive and confusing, potentially putting millions of votes at risk. In the Missouri case, the court warned of “electoral chaos” if the state were to change course so close to the election and use the GOP map, as pressed by Republican officials.

Even in the online database case, where the court sided with the Trump administration, the justices seemed to try to dampen the impact on the upcoming election. They noted that their own ruling could be limited by what’s known as a 90-day “quiet period” before elections that prevents elections officials from making broad changes to state rolls ahead of the vote.

Erin Murphy, another former law clerk to Chief Justice Roberts, said the court seemed to be sending the message: “Stop doing this to us because we really don’t want to be in this position.”

That posture could change after the election if there are disputes over vote counts or the certification of elections. There is already a flood of election-related litigation filed around the country by both parties and concerns about the possibility of voter intimidation and the seizure of ballots.

If the court were to get drawn into closely contested elections that could determine control of Congress, it would raise echoes of the post-presidential election period in December 2000. That was when the Supreme Court put a stop to a Florida recount in the election that sealed George W. Bush’s victory over the Democratic nominee, Al Gore.

The Supreme Court was likewise the final arbiter of Mr. Trump’s challenges in December 2020, rejecting post-election challenges involving the use of mail ballots in Pennsylvania and a Texas lawsuit seeking to throw out election results in four battleground states that President Trump lost.

“Everyone’s eyes are on the election,” said Cecillia Wang, national legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, which is preparing for a possibly intense burst of post-election challenges.

Such challenges would pose a conundrum for the court, putting it at the heart of the deeply divided political landscape, even as polls show Americans increasingly disapprove of its work and worry the court is putting its thumb on the scale in partisan battles. Democrats particularly have grown to believe the court, with a 6-3 majority of Republican nominees, is too conservative, according to a new Gallup poll.

A poll conducted by Marquette Law School in September found that 57 percent of Americans, a sizable majority, now believe the justices are motivated mainly by politics rather than law. The percentage of those approving of the court dipped to 43 percent.

Those numbers were divided along party lines. Sixty percent of those surveyed said the court has ruled in Mr. Trump’s favor often or fairly often. Seventy-eight percent of Democrats said the court was going out of its way to avoid ruling against Mr. Trump.

In an interview with CBS News posted on Friday, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who is one of the court’s most reliable votes in favor of the president’s agenda, insisted that the court “is not part of any political movement. And we are not attempting to further any political agenda.” He added: “We are trying to interpret the Constitution as best we can and apply it in the cases that come before us.”

Emptywheel, Analysis and Opinion: Judge Perry May Have Flipped a Witness, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Oct. 5, 2026. marcy wheelerLet me propose a second-hand interpretation of last Thursday’s hearing in the Broadview 6 case. Judge April Perry did what prosecutors (like she used to be) do: flip a useful witness against others.

Not long after the Broadview 6 hearing began on Thursday, the exonerees and their lawyers became spectators. That happened via this part of Judge April Perry’s minute entry on the hearing.

Motions for attorneys’ fees and expenses [201] [210] are granted. The parties are to meet and confer and determine if a settlement of this matter can be reached, if they would like the court’s assistance in mediating the issue, or if they prefer a briefing schedule. A joint status report on the attorneys’ fees motions is to be filed by 11/2/2026. Motion to conduct discovery in connection with the requests for attorneys’ fees [206] is denied.

Justice Department log circularShe granted them the attorneys fees DOJ already agreed to pay, Chris Parente said if discovery needed to happen, Judge Perry could do it, and they were told to report back in a month. From that point forward, they were done. With that, Perry dispensed with the argument DOJ was making that exonerees did not have standing to ask for more.

Much later in the hearing, she appointed law professor William Baude (whom she had already asked to serve) as Amicus, effectively replacing the exonerees with the law professor and in so doing dodging some of the problems that giving exonerees discovery would have caused. In recent months Baude has written about what to do when the Executive refuses to follow a judge’s orders which, among other things, advises to think ahead to how the Executive will respond to your orders before you give them.

Even before that, though, Perry approved Sheri Mecklenburg’s intervention, which is reflected in this part of the minute.

For the reasons stated on the record in open court, Petition to Intervene filed by Sheri Mecklenburg [261] is granted and Ms. Mecklenburg may intervene to challenge the possible appointment a special prosecutor and any potential consideration of sanctions.

That left two questions on the table: Would Judge Perry impose sanctions and/or would she appoint a special prosecutor.

Almost immediately after granting Mecklenburg’s motion to intervene, Perry asked which lawyers would be willing to testify. Mecklenburg’s attorney said he thought she would be willing. The AUSA speaking for Andrew Boutros, William Hogan, Matthew Skiba, and potentially others, Nate Whalen, hedged.

Perry asks if any of the AUSAs would “take five,” or cite their Fifth Amendment privileges.

Whalen: “I don’t know the answer to that.”

Perry asks Mecklenburg attorney Sergio Acosta whether Mecklenburg would be willing to testify.

Acosta: “I expect that she would, judge. We have not discussed that with her in any detail.”

Even before that, though, Whalen hedged on whether DOJ would turn over documents, effectively arguing that first Perry had to find misconduct before she could get evidence of it.

Perry: “Generally speaking, if I ask you to produce documents, you would produce them subject to claims of privilege?”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathaniel Whalen: “If the court determines there’s been willful misconduct.”

Perry calls that “kind of circular.”

Here’s where everything gets interesting. As reflected in Perry’s minute entry (and her own request to intervene) Mecklenburg was present only to weigh in on sanctions and a Special Prosecutor. But Perry said she’s looking only at lack of candor and other misconduct before her — effectively not the grand jury misconduct itself, but the cover-up of what happened and why.

Here’s how Jon Seidel captured it in his live blog, though Perry’s limitation — that she is focused on lack-of-candor — showed up in the detailed coverage:

U.S. District Judge questions the feds about outside communications about the case.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathaniel Whalen quibbles on whether there are relevant communications, which prompts many smiles on the defense side of the courtroom. Defendants had pressed for communications with the White House and Justice Department headquarters.

Whalen indicates there were communications outside the U.S. attorney’s office after a charging decision was made.

Perry tries to pin down when that was. Whalen tells her the feds tried to clarify that in a brief, and Perry’s eyes go wide. She also tells Whalen that a footnote he’s been pointing to “is a mess.”

As Perry presses, Whalen tells her he understood today’s proceedings to be an oral argument. “I’m not here to supplement the record with additional facts,” he says.

Perry: “My sole focus at this point is on lack of candor, concealment of material facts, or other misconduct that occurred before me.”

What this means is that Mecklenburg’s misconduct will have been punished by her retirement from DOJ, DOJ’s refusal to pay her legal fees, and the very public airing of her misconduct. But her legal exposure will be closed.

As such, Mecklenburg in an equivalent position to a cooperating witness. She has already acknowledged improprieties in the grand jury in her motion to intervene that got published; though some of her explanations ring hollow. Her further legal exposure would arise, based on what Judge Perry is reported to have said, from lack of candor going forward.

Procedurally, Perry seems to be treating the next phase of proceedings as further information-gathering before she decides whether to hold DOJ in contempt. Since that is why Perry granted Mecklenburg’s motion to intervene (and since Mecklenburg said she had information to share), I assume the now-retired prosecutor will be asked to answer some of the same questions Perry is preparing that DOJ will — questions like, who got the rush grand jury transcript Mecklenburg ordered, what Boutros told her to do after getting no-billed, what communications between Main DOJ and Chicago she knows of.

DOJ has said they may not answer these questions or share documents. Mecklenburg intervened for the express purpose of answering such questions.

If DOJ continues to stonewall, they will leave whatever Mecklenburg says unrebutted — though they couldn’t manage that on her claim that Andrew Boutros overrode her recommendation that DOJ charge misdemeanors, thereby potentially waiving privilege for everything else. And while Mecklenburg doesn’t have access to relevant documents anymore, if she can remember what they are, it provides Judge Perry with a sense of what DOJ is withholding. If DOJ lies about what happened a year ago, Mecklenburg can rebut it, which would give Perry cause to demand the documentation. If DOJ refuses to cooperate because (as Whalen argued) they don’t have to do so until Perry finds them in contempt, Mecklenburg can elucidate what they’re withholding. DOJ can try to come clean, but that may further chip away at their own privilege claims.

Meanwhile, consider the timing. DOJ has to submit their view on whether Judge Perry can appoint a prosecutor if she holds them in contempt by November 2. That same day, exonerees will report on whether DOJ is paying any of their legal bills if DOJ does not, it will suggest DOJ said they would pay exonerees’ legal bills solely to stonewall. But then Professor Baude will have a month to respond. The contempt question will not be made until close to the time a new Congress should be sworn in, at such time as there may be other alternatives to a special prosecutor.

In his rush to scapegoat Mecklenburg, Boutros mooted the grand jury problems by dismissing the case. And that effectively provided Mecklenburg to flip. And Judge Perry seems to have considered how DOJ was bound to respond to her orders and planned accordingly.

 

bulwark morning shots logoMorning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Grief and Fear in Two Ohios, Andrew Egger, right, andrew eggerOct. 5, 2026. Springfield, Ohio: They buried Pierre Damas Bel on Saturday. That night, Donald Trump came to town to take a victory lap on the policies that killed him.

It’s been a bit more than a month since Bel, a 20-year-old Haitian who had come to the United States legally as a high schooler in 2024, threw himself under a truck on the interstate—a death of despair following the revocation of his legal status by the Trump administration this summer. Among the hundreds gathered to mourn Saturday at Springfield’s St. John Missionary Baptist Church, the grief was still raw and immediate.

bulwark logo big shipThe banners on the church walls proclaimed messages of scriptural comfort: “Jehovah Shammah: The Lord is always present. Jehovah Rophe: The Lord heals.” As family members audibly wailed and sobbed, the ministers asked God in English and Haitian Creole for consolation amid heartbreak.

“You are near the brokenhearted. We pray that you would draw near us today,” prayed Pastor Ernie Brown of St. John. “When questions have no answers, give them strength to trust you with what we cannot understand.”

Many unanswerable questions hung over Bel’s funeral. Here are two. How could a country extend such a shining future to a young man like him—only to shatter that future, and him, by suddenly ripping it away? And how could the president who made it happen show his face that same day, just miles down the road, not only to defend that change, but to bask in it?

Hours later, 25 miles away in the Dayton suburb of Vandalia, Trump spiked the football. “This is in honor of Springfield, Ohio,” he said, “a quaint little town of 32,000 people where they took in 35,000 people and put them into Springfield, and it didn’t work out too well. And they’re being removed.”

If there was ever a kid America’s immigration system was for, it was Pierre Damas Bel. America, to him, wasn’t just a safe haven from his broken homeland of Haiti. It was a place where he seemed destined to flourish.

Speakers recalled how Bel had distinguished himself in school, in athletics, socially, in junior ROTC, and at work. He had been bound for local Wittenberg University to play soccer on a scholarship; he intended to study neuroscience and hoped one day to open a hospital back in Haiti.

Bel couldn’t have known it, but his dream had started to die the same year he arrived—the year Republicans selected Springfield’s Haitians as their national scapegoat for Joe Biden’s immigration excesses, the year they became the targets of a million racist political lies: “They’re eating the dogs,” Trump blustered from a debate stage. “They’re eating the cats.”

This summer, the hammer dropped. The Supreme Court ruled that it couldn’t really know that Trump’s attempt to evict the Haitians was motivated by racism, so who were the justices to put up a fuss? Just like that, the way was clear for Trump to transform America’s Haitian TPS recipients from a law-abiding, integrating community into illegal immigrants—no longer able to work, get driver’s licenses, or otherwise participate in society; systematically shackled with ankle monitors, under immediate threat of getting dragged into an ICE van and deported.

Maybe the most remarkable and heartrending thing about Bel’s story was this: He kept his faith in America almost to the end. Unable to play soccer at Wittenberg because of his ankle monitor, he instead enrolled at a nearby state school, Wright State.

According to his family, the last humiliation came at Wright State’s ROTC program. Because he was not an American citizen, Bel was ineligible to become an ROTC cadet; he was participating in the program as an elective.

Perhaps, at first, he saw this as a distinction without a difference. But then came the news that he, alone among his classmates, could not receive a ROTC uniform. He had embraced America; there was no mistaking the signs that America was not embracing him back.

He wanted to wear the cloth of the country. The country put an ankle monitor on him instead. Days later, he threw himself under a truck.

None of this had had to happen. “Our dear friend and brother may have died by suicide,” said Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, at the funeral. “But he was killed by the system.”

How are the local Republicans feeling about all this? In theory, these are the beneficiaries of Trump’s policy toward the Haitians. But many don’t seem particularly enthusiastic about the whole messy business. There’s an ambivalence, a sheepishness about the thing, even among some otherwise pot-committed Trump fans.

I learned this later on Saturday, in Vandalia, where Trump was scheduled to make his latest red-state rally ahead of next month’s midterms. Talking to MAGA voters outside in line, I was struck by how few were willing to offer a full-throated endorsement of the unpersoning of the Haitians.

When I asked Dayton resident Joe Brafford what he saw as Trump’s greatest accomplishment so far, he didn’t hesitate: “I like the fact that he closed down the border.” But when it came to the local Haitians, he was far more conflicted. “I wouldn’t have given them [temporary protected status] in the first place,” he said. “I think it was wrong, but they were given that status by Biden, and they have that status.¹ So I don’t know how you in good conscience can just kick them all out. . . . It really is a dilemma.”

“I worked in construction for many years, and I had a crew of Mexican workers. A lot of them were illegals,” chimed in David Snavely, who was standing nearby. “Great guys. I mean, they were a great crew. I didn’t care about their status. All I cared about, none of them were bad people. They worked their ass off. Actually, they were better workers than some of the guys on the crew.”

“I feel sorry for the people that have been here a long time and are productive,” said Sharon Hardwick. “But at the same time, they’ve already overstayed a long time. And I think America’s economic system could fail if we keep all these people in our country and try to pay for everything that the Democrats want to pay for.”

Later, watching the rally unfold ahead of Trump’s arrival, I wondered if this twitch of discomfort explained why, despite the issue’s huge local salience, most speakers steered wide around it. Sens. Jon Husted and Bernie Moreno, gubernatorial hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, Rep. Mike Turner, state party chair Alex Triantafilou—all came and went without a single mention, positive or negative, of the local Haitians.

And why not? These men were here, ahead of the midterms, to channel the crowd’s big, uncomplicated emotions: loyalty to Trump, enthusiasm for America’s supposed “golden age,” and fear of the Communist Takeover they insisted Democrats wanted to bring about. Many in the crowd may have wanted their Haitian neighbors gone, but they didn’t want to have to think about it much. Easier to ignore all that suffering just down the street then to grapple with the role you played in it.

But then came Trump, who had no such compunctions. Far from skirting around the issue, the president leaned in—dedicating his usual reading of the immigrant-panic poem “The Snake” to the people of Springfield.(Photo by Andrew Egger/The Bulwark)

“Springfield, Ohio—do you know that story? It’s a very sad story,” Trump said. Springfield, he insisted, had been a “beautiful” and “idyllic” little town—“that’s a word they use in high scripture: ‘idyllic’”—until those Haitians showed up.

“It was an idyllic place. Was, is the better word. Not anymore, but it soon will be. They’re all being brought back to their country.”

This, too, was spiritual leadership—though of a very different sort than I’d seen at St. John. Trump spoke with the leering confidence of a decade of MAGA-rally experience—secure in the knowledge that a crowd never loves him more than when he gives them permission to indulge in a little communal vice. And he was right. Whatever scruples, whatever discomfort they might have had going in, the crowd abandoned them now. They grinned, laughed, and struck up a chant: “Deport! Deport! Deport!”

Trump says they’re all going back. For Pierre Damas Bel’s friends and family, the future is murky; whether they can stay, and for how long, still remains to be seen. But they won’t all be going back. They buried Pierre Damas Bel on Saturday. He’s here to stay.

Donate to the Haitian Support Center.

AROUND THE BULWARK

  • Why You Must Care About the Ballroom… Trump is defying Congress and robbing the American people to build it, writes AMANDA CARPENTER.
  • bulwark logo big shipAn Older, Slower Trump on the Stump… On The Bulwark on Sunday, ANDREW EGGER joins BILL KRISTOL to talk about what he saw during his visit to Ohio.
  • Jack Smith Reveals the Words That Could Have Buried Trump… WILL SALETAN lays out the case against Donald Trump that Jack Smith never got to present at trial.
  • Trumpism in Trouble on the Prairie… Democrats have found an opening in one of America’s reddest states. Now comes the Republican money, reports LAUREN EGAN in The Opposition.
  • RFK Jr. Wants to AI-ify Health Care. Claude Says He’s Full of Sh*t… Kennedy is suddenly bullish on artificial intelligence—so JONATHAN COHN asked some AI assistants to rate his vaccine claims in The Breakdown.

More On Middle East Wars

 

New York Times, Burst of Attacks in Gulf Heightens Fears Over Fragile Energy Trade, Lisa Friedman and Jenny Gross, Oct. 5, 2026. Strikes on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia came as the region’s exporters were getting more oil to the world market.

Small boats dot a wide expanse of dark blue water. A hazy mountainous shore stretches along the horizon beneath a clear sky.

At least eight tankers have been attacked in and around the Strait of Hormuz since last Monday, a stark reminder that the recent increase in exports from the volatile region rests on a series of fragile workarounds.

The drone and missile strikes have continued as the Middle East risks plunging deeper into war, with the Saudi-backed government of Yemen on Sunday announcing a major military campaign against the Iran-backed Houthi militia. The announcement followed Houthi strikes on critical oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia.

The attacks have underscored the unsettling reality for Gulf oil exporters. U.S. forces have provided protection for ships seeking to transport oil through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran asserted control over after the United States and Israel attacked it more than seven months ago. But heightened risks continue to shadow the global energy trade.

“Few expected a near closure of the world’s most critical energy artery to last so long, or its impact to spread so widely,” Amin Nasser, chief executive of Saudi Aramco, the national oil company, said in a speech to the Energy Intelligence Forum in London on Monday. He added, “This is one of the worst crises of my career, and my career is long.”

The price of Brent crude oil, the global benchmark, was little changed on Monday, hovering around $102 a barrel. Analysts said the big run-up in oil prices since the war had been held in check in recent weeks by the increase in oil exports from the Persian Gulf, which have reached higher levels than at any point since the start of the war.

And on Friday, the Group of 7 nations, which includes Britain, France and Japan, said they had agreed to release emergency stocks of diesel and crude over the next four months.

The multinational release of backup supplies — the second since March — could end up providing only temporary relief from high prices and shortages, analysts said. A top Japanese official said on Monday that the country, which has already tapped its stockpiles, had no plans for further releases.

Mr. Nasser said the world’s current oil stockpiles were “scarily thin” and warned that replenishing national inventories could take as long as two years.

  • New York Times, Saudi-Backed Yemeni Government Declares War Against Houthis, Vivian Nereim, Eric Schmitt and Saeed Al-Batati, Oct. 5, 2026 (print ed.). More than 200 U.S. intelligence and military analysts are in Saudi Arabia helping it provide assistance to its Yemeni allies, current and former U.S. officials say.

More Global News

 

Israel FlagDrop Site News, CIA Report Warns Israel Could Head Toward Civil War, Total Collapse, Aída Chávez and Ryan Grim, Oct. 5, 2026. U.S. intelligence raises fears of civil unrest and state breakdown in Israel ahead of October 27 elections. This article is being co-published with Capital & Empire.

CIA LogoIsrael is at risk of civil war or state collapse, a classified CIA assessment warns, as years of genocide in Gaza and war in Lebanon and Iran deepen political, economic, and social fractures within the country.

The August report, titled “Fracture From Within,” was compiled by experts in the CIA’s Red Cell, according to two U.S. sources who described the contents of the report to Drop Site News. The Red Cell, which is the unit responsible for providing “alternative analysis” within the agency, produced the assessment through a combination of open source information and U.S. intelligence. The CIA did not respond to a request for comment.

CIA experts pointed to a volatile mix of pressures converging ahead of Israel’s elections on October 27: economic crisis and soaring military spending; heavily armed veterans returning from prolonged combat, many carrying serious psychological trauma; growing fury over ultra-Orthodox men who are exempt from military service; escalating settler violence in the occupied West Bank; and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fighting to hold onto power and igniting a constitutional crisis.

The CIA’s “red teams” are tasked with developing analysis and ideas that challenge prevailing assumptions and expose groupthink or blind spots that can take hold within the intelligence apparatus. “The writers of this are Israel experts,” a source in the intelligence community noted, “this isn’t a fantastical what if—with the upcoming election and the fissures in Israel we should take seriously their conclusion that Israel is one spark away from real internal conflict.”

One of the deepest fractures in Israeli politics has emerged not over opposition to the country’s war crimes—but over who is expected to fight and who is exempt. Ultra-Orthodox men have historically received broad exemptions from military service while continuing to receive state benefits, an arrangement that has become increasingly contentious amid repeated reserve mobilizations. Their collective refusal to serve is not rooted in opposition to Israel’s wars, as ultra-Orthodox leaders argue that military service threatens religious life and their obligation to Torah study. But after years in which reservists have been repeatedly called away from their jobs and families, the exemption has become a potent source of resentment in Israeli society. Households have also been absorbing the costs of Israel’s belligerent policies. Food prices have reached record highs, with the cost of food—including fresh fruit and vegetables—rising 9.5 percent over the past two years, deepening an already severe cost-of-living crisis after years of war.

Yet much of the opposition to Netanyahu is not opposition to Israel’s brutality against Palestinians, but anger over how he has managed it. The major anti-Netanyahu Zionist parties are themselves divided over leadership and coalition strategy, while a central line of attack against Netanyahu has been his responsibility for the October 7 security failure. Recent polling has shown both the Netanyahu and anti-Netanyahu blocs struggling to reach the 61 seats required to govern.

The sources warned that the combination of political fracture and a growing population of heavily armed, traumatized veterans has historical precedents. “Famously the Freikorps of Germany were PTSD-addled veterans with weapons and bloodthirst,” he said. “I’m not saying Israel post Gaza is Germany post-WWI but there are certainly aspects of this that ring similar to me.”

Israel is also confronting growing isolation abroad, including an erosion of support in the United States that Israeli officials themselves have privately treated as a long-term threat. The August report pointed to Israel increasingly becoming a pariah state as a factor that could lead to state breakdown.

According to another CIA assessment Capital & Empire reported in July, Israeli officials believe the American political consensus underpinning the alliance is breaking down and that continued reliance on billions of dollars in direct U.S. military aid may eventually become politically untenable. Their response has been to seek deeper integration into the American military, intelligence, and defense establishment—ties that would be harder for future governments to unwind. By this spring, 60% of Americans viewed Israel unfavorably, up from 53% a year earlier, according to a Pew Research Center survey.

That deterioration of support is increasingly visible inside the U.S. national security establishment, as well. “The intelligence community, like America, like the military, like everywhere, is growing frustrated with the real and political capital that’s spent on propping up Israel,” the source said. “As we’re moving forward with further integrating our military-industrial capacity with them, there’s deep frustration that we’re doing this for a country that dragged us into a war we’re losing, a country that spies on us.”

The CIA report also tried to game out how these pressures could interact if Israel’s internal crisis deepened—how a single spark could turn political fracture into open civil conflict, and what would follow from there. Among the scenarios raised were foreign technology and artificial-intelligence companies pulling investment or personnel from Israel, further eroding an already strained economy, regional governments reconsidering the political and strategic value of deeper normalizing relations with Israel, and Hamas or Hezbollah exploiting a period of domestic weakness. The report specifically used the term “civil conflict,” according to the sources.

Politico, Germany risks being drawn into ‘violent conflict’ with Russia, spy chief warns, James Angelos, Oct. 5, 2026. The head of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency also cautioned that NATO countries must beware of Moscow’s “little green men.”

politico CustomGermany's foreign intelligence chief warned Monday of the rising risk of a direct clash with Russia as the Kremlin escalates its “shadow war” on Berlin and hits Ukraine with increasing brutality.

“Germany is in danger of being drawn into a violent conflict with Russia,” Martin Jäger, the head of the German’s foreign intelligence agency, or BND, told parliamentarians, citing what he called Russia’s attempted attack on a Ukrainian Antonov cargo plane at Leipzig Airport in August as an example. “Germany has become a major obstacle to Russia’s hegemonic power projection in Europe and, as a result, a primary target of Russian actions.”

german flagJäger also warned that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is entering its most dangerous phase yet as President Vladimir Putin faces growing domestic pressure to show military progress with the war entering its fifth winter.

“Russia is determined to bring Ukraine to its knees this coming winter,” Jäger said. “We must expect Russian attacks of a severity and brutality that we have not yet seen on this scale. The war in Ukraine is entering a new and extremely dangerous phase.”

Jäger’s comments come a day after a politically weakened Chancellor Friedrich Merz visited Kyiv in what appeared to be an attempt to show resolve following two first-place finishes by the Kremlin-friendly Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in regional elections last month. Those AfD victories, blamed in large part on the chancellor’s historically low domestic approval ratings, raised concerns in Ukraine and across the EU that German support for Ukraine might waver due to the chancellor’s troubles at home.

With his highly symbolic visit to Kyiv on Sunday, Merz sought to illustrate that he remains firmly at the helm and unflinching in his support for Ukraine.

“Mr. Putin, put an end to this senseless war,” Merz said during the visit, echoing one of his political heroes, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and his famous Cold War speech at the Brandenburg Gate alongside the Berlin Wall in 1987: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”

In his comments Monday, Jäger suggested Russia’s escalation was in part driven by the fact that Putin had been backed into a corner as Moscow faces rising economic pressure and burns through resources to wage its war on Ukraine.

Putin, he said, has “passed the point where he could simply call off the attack on Ukraine without jeopardizing his domestic power base,” adding, “He must demonstrate a success in Ukraine that, from Russia’s perspective, justifies the immense sacrifices made so far.”

Jäger also said he currently sees “no evidence” for a large-scale Russian attack on a NATO member country. Yet “we consider it entirely possible that Russia might carry out targeted, smaller-scale operations” like the “little green men” who spearheaded the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Politico, Suspected plague in Russia puts EU on alert, Claudia Chiappa, Oct. 5, 2026. “We are aware of the reports concerning the laboratory incident in Russia, seemingly involving a pathogen-causing plague,” says European Commission spokesperson.

politico CustomEurope is “very closely” monitoring a suspected case of pneumonic plague in eastern Russia, following the death of a lab worker, a European Commission spokesperson said Monday.

“We are aware of the reports concerning the laboratory incident in Russia, seemingly involving a pathogen-causing plague,” European Commission spokesperson Eva Hrncirova told reporters. “We are in touch with our experts from [the] European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, and we monitor very closely what is going on.”

A 28-year-old employee at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East fell ill and died from what Alexei Tsydenov, head of the neighboring republic of Buryatia, said could be a case of pneumonic plague.

Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s consumer watchdog, has not confirmed the exact cause of death, saying only that the employee died from “pneumonia of unknown etiology.” More than 200 people have been placed under observation following her death.

“The sanitary and epidemiological situation in the Irkutsk region, the cities of Irkutsk and Shelekhov is stable,” Rospotrebnadzor said in a statement, adding that “a special set of measures was organized and carried out” in connection with the death.

It added that no microorganisms associated with her professional activities were identified in the sample from the deceased patient.

Igor Kobzev, governor of the Irkutsk region, where the institute is located, said authorities had identified, examined, and placed under medical supervision all the people who had come into contact with the patient. No other employee at the anti-plague institute has visited the doctor over the past few days, he added.

New York Times, ‘No Help’: Aid Arrived Too Late as Ebola Spread in a Congolese Town, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Photographs by Arlette Bashizi, Oct. 5, 2026. What happened in Mangala, where residents were left with little outside support, helps explain how this outbreak became the worst seen in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

On a hilltop town in eastern Congo, work has started on a new Ebola center. When completed, it will anchor an effort to contain the virus in the town and its surrounding villages.

Local health workers here say the center is too late.

Many lives could have been saved, the health workers say, had a sustained effort to combat the virus started in the town of Mangala in June.

In other towns in Ituri Province, the epicenter of the outbreak, Ebola treatment centers were set up weeks after the World Health Organization declared a health emergency in May. In Mangala, the Ebola response only started ramping up in August.Area of the outbreak

New York Times, Trapped in a Kill Zone, a Ukrainian City Is Beginning to Starve, Siobhán O’Grady, Liubov Sholudko and Yurii Shyvala, Oct. 5, 2026. Evacuation is almost impossible and food is running out in Russian-occupied Oleshky, a city menaced by mines and drones.

Little news trickles out from the besieged city of Oleshky, a frontline wasteland severed by mines and drones from the rest of Russian-occupied Ukraine.

ukraine flagBut one thing is clear from what has emerged: A humanitarian calamity is unfolding. There is no food, no safety and no escape.

“In the autumn, we will definitely die,” one resident wrote this summer. “I am already dying. I am getting weaker with each day.”

“We’re cooking our last borscht,” wrote another, “with one beet, five potatoes, one onion, a zucchini, a tomato and a little barley groats to make it thicker. There are no carrots.”

A third said: “There are no supplies of any kind. It’s a complete blockade. And endless drones and fires. Like in a horror movie.”

These messages, from some of the roughly 2,000 civilians, including about 40 children, who remain in Oleshky, were shared with The New York Times by Tetiana Hasanenko, the city’s exiled leader. They offer a glimpse into the deteriorating conditions as the Russian-held city is cut off from food and medical aid, prompting calls in Ukraine for an urgent evacuation before the population starves.

Oleshky’s fate epitomizes the intractable nature of the war. The two sides remain so far from any truce that even a humanitarian corridor to save civilian lives has been impossible to organize.

Oleshky sits directly in the line of fire along the war’s southern front. It is separated by the Dnipro River from the larger city of Kherson, which Russia captured in early 2022 and surrendered later that year. Russian forces strike Kherson from across the river in Oleshky, and Ukrainian forces strike Oleshky from Kherson.

The circumstances are among the worst anywhere in Ukraine. Swarms of drones, ubiquitous mines and destroyed infrastructure make it exceedingly difficult for residents to leave or for help to arrive.

Ukraine says Russia is responsible for the crisis. Moscow’s forces, officials in Ukraine say, have attacked Ukrainian drones trying to drop aid, intimidated residents who collected supplies that did get through and confiscated food as their own troops’ stocks ran low. Hunger, Kyiv says, is being wielded as a tool of coercion.

Rather than let them leave, Russia is using residents as human shields, according to Ukrainian officials and people who have made it out of Oleshky. Moscow fears that once civilians are out of the way, Ukrainian troops say, the remaining Russian forces will be routed and lose the city.

“Humanitarian aid should not have to be delivered under fire by drones,” said Andrii Sybiha, the Ukrainian foreign minister. He demanded that the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross find a way to safely move civilians out.

The Kremlin, in a statement to The Times, acknowledged that a “genuine humanitarian catastrophe” was taking place in Oleshky. It said Ukraine was to blame.

“The Ukrainian Armed Forces are preventing people from leaving the city and are using drones to disrupt food and drinking water deliveries,” the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said in the statement.

With no solution in sight, the remaining residents, many of them older people, are left with little or no clean water, health care, electricity, gas or heat. The last food delivery by road, said Ms. Hasanenko, the exiled city leader, was on May 26. Such drop-offs ended, she said, after several drivers were killed.

Ukraine says it has tried to deliver thousands of pounds of supplies, including food and medicine, by drone. But Russia has intercepted some of the drops, Ukrainian troops say.

This weekend, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, shared footage he said showed residents trying to leave Oleshky by foot and on bicycles and motorbikes despite the risks. “These are our people. They are still alive. Help us save them while there is still someone to save,” he wrote.

Residents are losing hope that they will survive the winter, according to people who have had contact with them.

“It’s simply a humanitarian catastrophe,” said Volodymyr Kostian, 49, who managed to flee the city earlier this year. He said he had decided to leave after his neighbor was killed by a drone. “An apocalypse,” he said. “There’s nothing to eat.”

Drone footage and witness testimonies paint a picture of a once-thriving tourist city of more than 20,000 people reduced to a hellscape.

Apartment blocks and houses are destroyed. Rows of cars burned by exploding drones, shells and mines are abandoned by the roadside. Bodies lie on the streets, waiting for burial. Starving dogs have been seen eating the remains, residents say.

Oleshky residents and their relatives contact Ms. Hasanenko to plead for help in evacuating themselves or their loved ones, or in burying the dead.

“Some people are screaming and hysterically crying, some people are emotionless, some are blaming us and asking, ‘Why are you not making deals with the Red Cross, why are you not helping us?’” Ms. Hasanenko said.

Russian forces captured Oleshky on Feb. 24, 2022, the first day of the war. That November, after Ukrainian troops pushed Russia out of the city of Kherson, Moscow’s forces fled across the river to Oleshky. There, they reinforced their positions by mining the riverbank and establishing artillery and drone positions to attack Kherson.

The river, once the region’s source of life and prosperity, became its new front line.

For years, Oleshky’s residents survived on preserves, local harvests and food deliveries organized informally by people who traveled there to sell goods at inflated prices.

Leaving the city for supplies or health care — or evacuation — became more complicated when Russian soldiers started demanding Russian documents at checkpoints, residents said. But deliveries still arrived, and while food was never abundant and prices were high, people traded vegetables and grains to stay alive, according to residents.

Over time, evacuation by foot or car became riskier. It was impossible to know who had dropped the mines lining the routes out: Ukrainian forces to stop Russian troop movements or Russian forces to keep civilians from leaving — or both. Either way, residents became largely stuck in Oleshky.

They would endure some of the worst conditions of the war, including a catastrophic flood in 2023 after an explosion at a nearby dam.

Ukrainian troops based just across the river kept watch as conditions worsened. Seeing desperate civilians search for food, said Mykola Stavytskyi, a commander in Ukraine’s 34th Marine Brigade, “is a tragedy for all of us.”

“Those are our people, it’s Ukrainians,” he added.

This year, life in Oleshky has gotten only worse. Drones now fly constantly, making any step outside a deadly gamble.

As spring progressed, the road out became even more treacherous, residents who fled before summer said in interviews. Deliveries and evacuations were often delayed or canceled when cars struck mines or came under drone attack. Little food was arriving, and preserves were running out. Locals dug through collapsed basements searching for scraps of food. Sometimes they saw Russian soldiers doing the same.

Russia has blamed Ukraine for attacks on the road. Ukrainian troops say they take extensive measures not to target civilians.

In late spring, two city residents, Oleksandr and his wife, who are both 60, decided that they were ready to leave. The couple, who have relatives still living under Russian occupation, spoke on the condition that only Oleksandr’s first name be used to avoid retaliation.

Their son, who was living in Ukrainian-controlled territory, helped organize the move. They packed three bags and walked out with their cat and dog and met a driver near a city hospital.

The journey would be dangerous, the driver warned. They should carry white cloths and be ready to jump out, even though they were weak from prolonged hunger.

Oleksandr recalled, “We were immediately warned: ‘People, we are not responsible for your safety at all, because for these 24 kilometers we will be somewhere between life and death.’”

When armed drones swooped overhead, they jumped from the vehicle and raised their white handkerchiefs, he said. The weapons hovered over them as they begged for their lives.

The drones flew on.

Weeks later, friends of the couple were killed when their vehicle struck a mine as they tried to deliver food to the city. That was the end of supplies by road. Anyone left in Oleshky would have to make do with what little food they still had.

New York Times, News Analysis: In a Major Boost for the Right, Another Bolsonaro Nears Brazil’s Presidency, Ana Ionova and Adam B. Ellick, Oct. 5, 2026. Flávio Bolsonaro’s first round lead leaves President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva three weeks to find the votes to stop Brazil’s, and Latin America’s, rightward shift.

A surprise victory for a right-wing populist embroiled in scandal. Crushing defeat for a party deemed out of touch with its base. Supporters on the left grasping for answers.

The scene may feel familiar to Americans. This time, it unfolded in a Latin American nation thousands of miles away. And the results could profoundly reshape the region and its relations with Washington.

Brazil’s right-wing challenger, Flávio Bolsonaro, didn’t win the presidency Sunday night, but seemed well on his way to victory.

His surprisingly strong showing gives a significant boost to the ascendant right in Latin America, placing Brazil, the region’s most populous country, within reach as the biggest electoral prize following seven straight wins by right-wing candidates.

It also represents a notable comeback for the Bolsonaro family four years after Mr. Bolsonaro’s father tried to subvert democracy after losing the last election, was convicted of plotting a coup and sentenced to prison.

Flávio Bolsonaro himself overcame being embroiled in a corruption scandal to win more votes than the leftist incumbent, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. While neither clinched enough ballots to win in the first round of voting, Mr. Bolsonaro’s formidable performance appeared to foreshadow a win in a two-way contest on Oct. 25.

That is because the votes of some 9 million Brazilians who backed various minor right-wing candidates on Sunday will now be up for grabs. The vast majority are likely to shift their support to Mr. Bolsonaro, giving him the upper hand. For Mr. Lula, finding more votes presents a far more challenging task.

The regional swing to the right is driven by an array of forces, experts say, including dissatisfaction with incumbent governments, deepening worries about security and crime and a shift toward more conservative values.

For months, polls had predicted a close race between the two men, with Mr. Lula leading by the slimmest of margins. The leftist president had framed his candidacy as the only way to halt the return of the Bolsonaro family to power, just four years after Jair Bolsonaro lost the last election and inspired his supporters to storm the capital, demanding that the result be overturned.ImageA woman is part of a group looking straight ahead.A supporter of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reacts following the first results of the presidential election in Rio Janeiro on Sunday.Credit...Mauro Pimentel/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Mr. Lula had also sought to portray his candidacy as defending Brazil’s sovereignty against attempts by the Trump administration to intervene in the country’s domestic affairs.

Mr. Bolsonaro had struggled to shake off a corruption investigation and divided voters with his plans to seek amnesty for his father and the rioters. Then, on Sunday, he surprised many when he captured 48 percent of the vote, finishing two points ahead of his rival.

“Even Jair Bolsonaro may be surprised by this result,” said Jairo Nicolau, a prominent political scientist and professor at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, a research institution.

A runoff win for Mr. Bolsonaro would represent a major triumph for President Trump, ejecting Mr. Lula, one of his most outspoken foes among world leaders and who has not shied away from challenging the American leader.

It would also usher in an enthusiastic ally willing to help Mr. Trump’s bold plans for dominance in the region.A Surprise Favorite

It is not yet clear just what brought Mr. Bolsonaro to the brink of victory.

“It was conceivable that Flávio could come close to Lula or even overtake him,” said Mr. Nicolau. “But what happened in Brazil was a right-wing tidal wave,” he added. “We’re going to spend a long time trying to understand.”

Some analysts said Mr. Bolsonaro managed to rally at least a slice of conservative voters planning to vote for other right-wing contenders. Growing disillusionment with Mr. Lula’s party, which has been in power for the better part of two decades, also likely fueled his challenger’s success. Many Brazilians are concerned over pervasive violence and crushing personal debt.

Mr. Bolsonaro has tried to link his rival to a corruption scandal sweeping Brazil’s Supreme Court. The Brazilian president has tried to distance himself and called for judicial overhaul.

New York Times, Spain’s Leader Calls Early Election After Housing Crisis Roils Government, Carlos Barragán and Jason Horowitz, Oct. 5, 2026. Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish prime minister, has faced challenges including a migration crisis and several corruption scandals involving his inner circle.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain called on Monday for an early election, days after his left-wing governing coalition, which lacks a majority in Parliament, lost a vote to pass a package of emergency housing measures.

The decision sets the stage for an election on Nov. 29, months ahead of schedule. Mr. Sánchez and his left-wing allies are seeking to frame it as an opportunity to resolve Spain’s housing crisis by ushering in a strong left-wing government.

The conservative Popular Party, which has topped recent opinion polls, and the far-right Vox party are focusing instead on issues like immigration, amid a crisis spurred by a surge of migrants this summer into Ceuta, a Spanish territory in North Africa.

The vote is also set to be a referendum on Mr. Sánchez himself, one of Europe’s longest-serving leaders and a deeply unpopular figure among right-wing voters in Spain.

Mr. Sánchez has become a hero to the global left for standing up to the Trump administration over the war in Iran and for supporting renewable energy and inclusive immigration policies. At home, his popularity was dented by corruption accusations directed at his innermost circle, and, in July, by the sudden arrival in Ceuta of tens of thousands of migrants coming from Morocco.

The final straw was the defeat on Friday of housing measures that Mr. Sánchez had hoped would soothe public anger over rising evictions and soaring rents — symbolized by the recent eviction of María del Carmen Abascal, an 87-year-old woman in Madrid. The loss showed that his governing coalition was essentially paralyzed and unable to pass key legislation.

But it also handed Mr. Sánchez an issue that could rally his left-wing base.

“To carry out the far-reaching reforms to reduce inequality,” Mr. Sánchez said in a press briefing on Monday, “we must mobilize to secure a much larger progressive majority in Parliament — one capable of taking on the elites, achieving new social advances and continuing to transform Spain.”

Mr. Sánchez said that voters would have to choose between keeping Spain as “a bastion of social justice” or “the far-right wave that brings regression wherever it governs.” That was a reference to Vox, which could join a right-wing government led by the Popular Party, the main conservative opposition group.

The Popular Party celebrated Mr. Sánchez’ announcement as a victory, as it had been calling for months for an early election. “Finally, the Spanish people will decide,” the party’s leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, said on Monday.

“Housing is now out of reach, there

More On #MeToo Experiences

Are you f'ng kidding me? Personal Essay, I Was Drunk. I Was Raped,.Both Things Can Be True At The Same Time, JoJo From Jerz, right, jo jo from jerz Oct. 5, 2026. The Cornell “7” rape story has been excruciatingly difficult for me to talk or write about. This piece has taken me the better part of three days to write because every single time I sat down to do so, some piece of it dragged me back inside the worst night of my life.

Even now, as I reach for the language, I’m back in those woods with leaves and sticks and dirt matted into my hair and the smell of the fire caught in the quilted seams of the sleeping bag.

Nearly forty years have passed, and there is still a part of me waiting for someone who knew my name to remember that I mattered.

I work every day to help the girl I was then to feel safe inside the woman I’ve become, but so much of Jane Doe’s story mirrors my own that I can feel the sutures splitting and the past pressing through the life I’ve fought to rebuild.

I know other survivors are watching their carefully stitched-together lives begin to come apart, too, because in so many ways, we are all Jane Doe.

I was raped at seventeen by someone I thought was a friend, in front of people I thought were my friends, and not one of them stopped him.

When Jane Doe says a trusted friend helped orchestrate her drugging and hours of rape by seven fraternity members, I remember how thoroughly I was abandoned without anyone having to leave.

He was hurting me among the very people I would have run to if somebody else had hurt me, and I had no understanding yet of how alone you could be in the company of everyone you trusted.

I was still struggling to write through that yesterday when Michael Smerconish, the weekend CNN host who has long annoyed me, put this question to his audience in a fucking poll: “Should someone who voluntarily got drunk or high be considered legally unable to consent to sex, even if they were conscious and able to communicate?”

He was so fucking calm, as if he were asking whether we put ketchup on our goddamn eggs, while I was watching from inside his question, pinned against that cold ground and paralyzed by pain and panic.

How comfortable to select an answer and resume an afternoon entirely your own while someone else struggles to return to the room where they were sitting before you asked.

That rage finally gave me something fierce enough to carry the grief onto the page.

Because I know what it is to have people rummage through your choices for permission you never gave, to have them dredge it from the bottom of a beer or measure it by a miniskirt, until the person who hurt you has disappeared from a conversation about everything you should have done differently.

I hadn’t so much as French-kissed a boy, and because I wasn’t a drinker, the two beers I chose to drink were enough to leave me drunk.

My dad’s job might have meant moving before my senior year, and I’d been crying on a friend’s shoulder beside the fire while he comforted me and handed me alcohol.

I was frightened of losing these people, and I wish I could reach back and gather up that small, unsuspecting sorrow, because for a little while longer, the worst thing I could imagine was having to say goodbye.

At some point I must have passed out, because I woke beneath him, his face half lit by the dwindling fire and his weight pressing on my chest like a cinderblock. The pain felt like razor blades laced with acid, like somebody was trying to cut me open from within.

I remember crying, but I don’t remember saying anything.

I was drowning in my own flesh and bones, and whatever was screaming inside me could not find its way out.

That terrible incongruity of familiarity and fear still hurts somewhere I cannot reach.

I don’t know if I kissed him. I don’t remember. But the missing pieces of that evening do not belong to him, and he does not get to put a willing girl into the places where my memory goes dark.

When I woke the next morning, I went deeper into the woods to pee, unaware that my underwear were missing until the pain doubled me over and the night returned in splinters and searing flashes. I nearly threw up, and then I followed my friends’ voices because I still believed that if I could get to them, somebody would know how to help me.

My sleeping bag hung from a branch, streaked with my blood, and my underwear lay beneath it. The boys were high-fiving and laughing while my best friends couldn’t meet my eyes, and I stood there looking at the evidence of how badly I had been hurt, waiting for it to mean that to somebody else.

He had taken my virginity in the dark, but they were taking something I had no name for yet: the belief that my suffering would matter to the people who said they loved me.

By the time I called my friends later that day, he’d told everyone how I’d begged for it and how badly I’d wanted it, and that was enough. They couldn’t be friends with someone so shameful, so… “slutty.”

They’d seen him hugging me by the fire, I looked “drunk” to them, and no matter how hard I cried or how many times I explained what happened afterward, they wouldn’t believe me.

I had leaned on his shoulder because I was afraid of losing them, and now they were using that tenderness as evidence against me. Somewhere in all that pleading, I began asking them to forgive me for being raped.

God, I was trying to make it my fault because at least that left me a way to ask them to love me again.

That lie followed me back to school, and a month or so later, every boy who’d been there, including my rapist, inscribed “sleeping bag hag” among his yearbook memories. They made a keepsake of the night that broke me, and entire classrooms erupted in laughter while I sat there with the body they were laughing about. Those books would close, and those boys would leave, and seventeen would go on hurting long after I had stopped being young.

He was their hero, and I was the school whore. He faced no consequences, while their contempt calcified into something I mistook for knowledge about myself.

The pain metastasized into my ideas about love and sex and what I deserved until I could hardly distinguish the wound from the woman I was becoming.

I lived like a tenant in my own skin, and I never reported my rape. Decades passed before I told anyone else; half my family, including some of my sisters, still doesn’t know.

So when Megyn Kelly has the fucking nerve to ask why Jane Doe waited three weeks, I want her to understand what she is asking of a person who has already learned that telling the truth can cost you everybody you thought would care.

Every person I might have told became another person I could lose. Fuck you, Megyn, for helping make the world vicious to people who speak and then treating their hesitation as proof that they’re lying.

And to the people trying to dox this woman and expose her name and her life: fuck all the way off. You are teaching frightened people to swallow their stories, and I know how many years a person can spend choking on what they never felt safe enough to say.

We are all Jane Doe, and we have to have each other’s backs.

So she has to defend her privacy, her choices, and her right to be believed, while some of the accused were assigned essays as part of their punishment and prosecutors initially declined to bring a single criminal charge.

What the fuck are we doing, making a woman’s suffering everybody’s business and nobody’s responsibility?

I want to lay forty years of my life beside one of those papers and ask which part they think a woman gets to hand in and be finished with.

I am sick of watching men’s futures treated as fragile things while women are expected to live with whatever is left of theirs.

That culture was there when I was seventeen, but never in my life did I imagine the president of the United States bragging about grabbing women by the vagina. The willfully ignorant, woman-hating wastes of fucking oxygen who heard Donald Trump say it elected him twice, returning him to the White House after a jury found him liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll. Now he offers sympathy to the accused and attacks Letitia James for investigating, and we wonder what young men are learning about whose lives deserve protection.

I think about the silence in that Cornell chat, with more than fifty men, and about the friend who, years later, stopped another man I trusted from raping me. I want someone in those messages to be him, because I know how one person can become the difference between getting home and spending the rest of your life trying to get back to yourself.

My son is seventeen and my daughter is thirteen, and loving them has made it almost unbearable to remember how young I was. I want them to be the people I needed around that fire, and if either ever comes to me with a story they can scarcely bear to tell, I want them to know that nothing they say will make me move farther away.

I wish I could make that promise travel backward far enough to reach me. I would lift the bloodstained nylon off that branch before another person could laugh at it, and I would stand between her and every face she was searching for a reason to trust.

I would tell her that being drunk was a reason for her friends to take care of her, and I would keep saying it until she stopped trying to explain the two beers.

She had already spent the night unable to make a sound; she should never have had to spend the morning persuading somebody to listen.

I can’t go back and give myself the kindness I needed then, but I can ask those of you who answered that poll as casually as you might have weighed in on the weather to remember that some of us were watching with our worst memories breaking open. You could click an answer and get on with your evening, while someone you love might have been listening and quietly deciding that you were one more person they could never tell.

No means no, and silence is not consent.

I was drunk, and I was raped.

I believe the Cornell Jane Doe, and oh, how I desperately wish someone had believed me, too.

To every survivor afraid to speak up or speak out or stand up and share their truth: you’re not alone. There will be people who won’t believe you, but there will also be an army of people who do.

When I finally told my story, a whole world of wonderful strangers caught me, and we can and will catch you, too. You don’t have to earn the compassion that should have been yours all along.

You did nothing wrong.

You did NOTHING wrong.

And to the Cornell Jane Doe: I wish I could put my arms around you and give you somewhere to rest without having to explain or defend a single thing. I am praying for justice, and for whatever sliver of peace you may one day be able to know.

And with that, today’s song:

I love you guys! Stay safe out there, stay strong and keep standing up for each other!

More On Epstein Files, Trump Team Coverup

epstein suspicious deaths wmr 10 5 2025

Wayne Madsen Report, Commentary: Suspicious deaths connected to Trumpstein continue, Wayne Madsen, Oct. 5, 2026. Latest “suicide” is linked to Howard Lutnick. 

Artificial Intelligtence, High-Tech, Other Media

Politico, ‘Clearly not working’: Sam Altman hits AI industry over political spending, Brendan Bordelon and Christine Mui, Oct. 5, 2026. In a wide-ranging interview, the OpenAI CEO criticized the flood of AI dollars swamping the midterm elections and suggested a new liability framework is needed for autonomous hacks.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admits “something’s clearly not working” with the artificial intelligence money that has flooded the midterm elections — and he doesn’t expect President Donald Trump’s rebrand of the technology to improve his industry’s image with the American public, either.

politico Custom“I get why AI has a really negative perception right now,” Altman told Brendan Bordelon in an exclusive interview marking the launch of Decoded by POLITICO. “I don’t think spending money on politics is what’s going to make people feel better about it. The industry needs to figure out a way to address what the actual concerns are, and right now, a lot of people in the industry are being quite tone deaf.”

In the wide-ranging conversation, Altman offered a window into how OpenAI is confronting new political pressures and intensified competition with Anthropic, its corporate archrival run by former employee Dario Amodei.

Altman says OpenAI is more tolerant than Anthropic of less-than-catastrophic harms from AI, drawing out what he sees as a fundamental split in worldview between the two leading labs even as they converge on tougher rules in the wake of high-profile autonomous hacking incidents.

“We believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency,” said Altman, who characterized those harms as linked to “the lighter touch regulatory stance that we advocate for.”

“I wouldn’t take a trade of saying like, ‘We’ll make sure there’s no major hacks, there’s no kind of like misuse of this technology, there’s zero scams, there’s zero all the other bad things that will happen,’” said Altman. “Because I think people will do tremendously orders of magnitude more good stuff.”

New York Times, High Interest Rates Aren’t Slowing the A.I. Boom. That’s a Problem for the Fed, Colby Smith and Ben Casselman, Oct. 5, 2026. Rising borrowing costs are taking a toll on households and businesses. But they are doing little to dampen enthusiasm for investments in A.I. infrastructure, which are contributing to inflation.

The Federal Reserve has a conundrum on its hands as it tries to tame elevated inflation. One of the primary drivers of today’s growth, and the price pressures that have followed in its wake, appears nearly immune to the higher interest rates that the central bank has begun to impose on the economy.

Companies’ seeking to expand their artificial intelligence abilities have been undeterred by not only U.S. borrowing costs that have recently reached multidecade highs, but also soaring costs for electricity, high bandwidth memory and other inputs that are crucial to continued growth.

The implications for the Fed are vast, if price pressures do not ease as many policymakers expect in the coming months. To return inflation to the Fed’s 2 percent target, the central bank might need to tighten the screws on the economy more than otherwise would be the case to sufficiently slow down activity. The brunt of that adjustment will fall predominantly on industries more sensitive to higher rates, such as housing and the automotive sector, and in turn the people employed by the companies in those fields. Depending on how much the Fed ends up needing to choke off demand, the labor market, which is already starting to cool, could start to crack.

“The problem for the Fed is that there is usually a built-in correction mechanism in the U.S. economy in which interest rates rise and at some point, the rate-sensitive parts of the economy, led by housing, slow down hard, and that then propagates to the rest of the economy,” said Ajay Rajadhyaksha, global chairman of research at Barclays.

“But if a large part of the economy is just less rate sensitive and that is what is pushing the economy to grow faster, then the Fed, unfortunately, has to hurt the part of the economy that is more rate sensitive.”

The scale of the A.I. buildout is so immense that it is measured in numbers usually associated with government spending on national defense or health care, not private-sector investments. In a recent paper, Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, an economist at Columbia University, estimated that spending on A.I. chips, data centers and the electrical systems to power them would exceed $10 trillion from 2025 to 2032. That is more than 3.6 percent of total U.S. economic output each year.

A growing share of that investment is being paid for with borrowed money, which in theory should make it responsive to rising interest rates. So far, however, there is little sign that higher borrowing costs are doing much, if anything, to slow the boom.

“If it’s a real transformational technology that potentially is going to define the tech space for years to come; if you have the balance sheet capacity to borrow to make these investments; and if you think the investments are going to be profitable and generate double-digit returns on invested capital, then it doesn’t actually make a huge difference if you’re borrowing at 5.5 or 6 percent,” said Andrew Sheets, global head of fixed income research at Morgan Stanley. “That 50 basis points is not the limiting factor in whether or not the math works.”

Businesses invested more than $100 billion in computers and related equipment in the second quarter of the year, up 60 percent from a year earlier and more than 1.5 times the rate in early 2024. Construction of data centers, not counting the chips inside them, has more than quintupled since the beginning of 2022.

Investigate West, Idaho Investigation: How Rob Curley’s plan to make the Spokesman-Review ‘The People’s Paper’ ended in a newsroom revolt, Wilson Criscione and Daisy Zavala Magaña, Oct. 5, 2026. This report was produced in a collaboration between InvestigateWest and RANGE.

When the Spokesman-Review announced plans to transfer Spokane’s 143-year-old, family-owned newspaper to a nonprofit founded by Executive Editor Rob Curley, it took over the front page.

“The People’s Paper,” read the April 16, 2025, headline, saying ownership would transfer “to you, the community.”

Key to the plan was Curley, the folksy self-proclaimed “journalism nerd” who burst into Spokane a decade ago, declaring a love for Gonzaga University basketball rivaled only by his love for Disney. The transition to Comma Community Journalism Lab was cast in media industry publications not only as a way to save Spokane’s daily newspaper, but as part of a growing movement to resurrect dying papers by making them less dependent on ads and corporate ownership and more on philanthropy and community partnerships. As proof of concept, the paper had already added several so-called “community-funded” journalists to its staff.

But in the Spokesman-Review newsroom this summer, that hopeful vision ran into persistent concerns about Curley’s leadership. More than a dozen current and former employees, along with contemporaneous records reviewed by InvestigateWest and RANGE, reveal how the newsroom had raised concerns about Curley’s management for years, culminating in his suspension from the paper on Aug. 7 and a vote of no confidence from the union, the Spokane Editorial Society. He is currently on leave as the paper conducts an internal investigation.

Employees said stories that may have angered powerful community figures or potential donors were killed or curtailed, and that they felt he retaliated against workers he viewed as disloyal. Staffers questioned his financial oversight of Comma, which hired his own son at a salary topping most reporters and recruited out-of-town executives to serve as top editors before Comma had met its fundraising goal. Current and former Spokesman-Review employees also described workplace complaints involving Curley and one of those editors, including allegations of inappropriate lewd and sexual comments around employees, including teenage interns.

Curley declined to comment for this article. In a brief phone interview, Curley’s attorney, Patrick Kirby, who specializes in employment and wrongful termination cases, said, “It’s all inaccurate,” in reference to a list of claims InvestigateWest and RANGE provided to Curley prior to publication. Kirby hung up the call when a reporter pressed him on which claims specifically he believed were inaccurate.

Tensions in the newsroom came to a head in the first week of August, as the paper rallied to cover the most destructive wildfires in Spokane’s history and the imminent ownership transfer approached at the end of the month.

Oct. 4

Top Headlines 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, both designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik).Steve Witkoff jared kushner sputnik afp getty

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

  • New York Times, U.S.-Russia Talks on Ukraine Now Involve an Oil Deal Tied to Trump Allies, Anton Troianovski and Eric Lipton, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). russian flag wavingPresident Vladimir V. Putin brought up a sale of Russian energy assets with President Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, pushing a deal that raises new questions about conflicts of interest.
  • New York Times, Trump, Putin, Ukraine and an Oil Deal: 5 Takeaways, Eric Lipton and Anton Troianovski, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). A proposal to bolster relations with the Kremlin through the purchase of Russian energy assets is striking even for an administration that regularly mixes personal business interests with foreign policy
  • New York Times, Russia Turns to Striking Kyiv’s Bridges, Threatening a Vital Lifeline, Constant Méheut, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). The bridges, used by many commuters in the Ukrainian capital, are the latest target in a broad Russian bombing campaign against infrastructure.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption  

  • djt frowningHope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump is cornered, Heather Delaney Reese, right, heather delaney reeseOct. 3, 2026. At 7:45 tonight, Donald Trump experienced what appeared to be a serious mental health crisis while on stage campaigning for Republicans in Ohio. He had just arrived at the High School Activity Center in Vandalia, Ohio, 45 minutes late after his motorcade was forced to change its route to avoid protesters.


President Trump speaks to White House media before his trip to Alabama to host a political rally on Oct. 2, 2026. President Trump speaks to White House media before his trip to Alabama to host a political rally on Oct. 2, 2026. 

  • Hope for America, Opinion: The President's decline is in a freefall. Heather Delaney Reese, helen delaney reese djtright, Oct. 3, 2026. At 3:54 pm Donald Trump emerged from the White House with freshly colored hair and makeup, as Marine One’s engine roared in the background. He walked directly over to the waiting press, threw his hands out in front of him, gesturing at the empty ground in front of him, while he squeezed his legs together and arched his torso forward, yelling to the reporters, “This is the way the White House is supposed to look. Not asphalt. Broken, dirty asphalt. Look at it.” He then paused, frowning as he looked over his left shoulder, and continued, “The finest stone you could buy anywhere in the world.” The gathered press said nothing, confused by his odd behavior. 

More Special Reports On Nefarious Trump-Related Ties To Russia, Hurting U.S., Europe, Ukraine  

 

Lev Parnas, above, being interviewed by cable television host Rachel Maddow on Jan. 15, 2020 for a documentary she produced about his life. He is shown also with his wife, who stood by him during a hoked up prosecution and imprisonment orchestrated by the Trump Justice Department as retribution for his willingness to expose their Russian-coddling dealmaking in his commentaries, courtroom proceedings and in his memoir, "Shadow Diplomacy."

lev parnas wife

  • Justice Integrity Project Backgrounder On Lev Parnas, Entrepreuneur, Former Trump Team Operative, Now Whistleblower, Andrew Kreig, Oct.4, 2026. A native of Ukraine and former high-level liaison on behalf of President Trump and his team to Eastern European Shadow Diplomacycontacts, aaron parnas o instagramis an expert commentator who has publisted a three-part series this fall documenting insidious relationships between the Trump Team -- President Trump, his families, their companies and their allies -- to Russian and other foreign interests damaging to most Americans. Parnas, a naturlized U.S. citizen who son Aaron Parnas, right, works independently as a prolific journalist with millions of readers and often quoted on this site, received a lifetime achievement award in 2025 for courage at a featured ceremony at the 13th annual Whistleblower Summit and Film Festival, which he memorialzed in a colum immediately below:

Lev Remembers, Yesterday Changed Me Forever: From Brooklyn to the National Press Club—A Whistleblower’s Journey and a Father’s Pride, Lev Parnas, Aug. 1, 2025. Yesterday was one of those rare days that I’ll never forget. 

2026 Trump-Russia Analysess

djt russian connections

Marcy Wheeler and Wayne Madsen Reporting On Nefarious Trump Relationships With Foreign Powers

New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan co-authored New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan co-authored "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump," a best-selling account of his rapid transformation of the United States and its global alliances.

  • Emptywheel, Analysis and Opinion: Russia Russia Russia Never Stopped Russia Russia Russiaing, marcy wheelerEmptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Oct. 4, 2026. One of the infuriating things about "Regime Change," Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s book, is that it introduces key players who played important roles in the influence operations targeting Trump in 2016 with no reminder they were part of them.
  • Emptywheel, Analysis: Trump Is Still Relying on Dossier-Driven Polarization to Hide Russian Shenanigans, marcy wheelerEmptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Oct. 3, 2026. We’re falling behind, under the weight of stories making it clear that Trump’s Russian shenanigans never ended. The biggest sign of that is the NYT story revealing that part of the Jared Kushner/Steve Witkoff “peace” plan for Ukraine is an oil deal involving the Emirati guy alleged to be Tom Barrack’s handler back in 2016.

More Special Reports on Trump Family Self-Dealing  

donald trump money palmer report Custom

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

  • Scott MacFarlane News, The Comeback Kids: Jack Smith’s Legal Team Scores Series of Recent Victories, Scott MacFarlane, Oct. 4, 2026. After years of being smeared and maligned, the former Jack Smith Special Counsel team is enjoying a big series of victories. It’s been rough sledding, in the two years since Smith and his team were forced to abandon their criminal cases of President Trump before the cases could go to trial. So… we shouldn’t ignore that Jack Smith and his team have enjoyed a helluva good week and month.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

  • New York Times, Democrats Lead Governor Races Deep in Republican Territory, Polls Show, Anna Griffin, Ruth Igielnik and Sejal Govindarao, Oct. 4, 2026. Democratic advantages in the races for governor in Texas, Iowa, Ohio and Alaska reflect deep unhappiness with President Trump and the economy. A Republican leads in Kansas. 
  • The Opposition via The Bulwark, Trumpism in Trouble on the Prairie, Lauren Egan, Oct. 4, 2026. Democrats have found an opening in one of America’s reddest states. Now comes the Republican money. I just got back from Kansas, where the race for Senate between GOP Sen. Roger Marshall and Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton has become shockingly competitive. Tonight’s edition is all about what I saw on the ground. 
  • New York Times, Trump, Critic of Voting by Mail, Urges Republicans to Do It in Midterms, Tim Balk and Evan Gorelick, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). It was the latest mixed messaging from President Trump, who regularly votes by mail, but has made baseless claims that the practice is “inherently corrupt.”
  • New York Times, ‘Creepy, Weird’ Steve Hilton Ad Denounced by California Republicans, Anna Griffin, Oct. 4, 2026. An online spot for Mr. Hilton, the G.O.P. candidate, is full of sexual innuendo that has befuddled Republicans and Democrats watching the race for governor in California.

Special Report: Deep Dive Into Trump Family Corruption

djt god made trump ad

News Updates

djt handing out money hartmann report

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

Fascist leaders Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of German, and U.S. President Donald Trump

Fascist leaders Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of German, and U.S. President Donald Trump.

  • CounterPunch.org, Nuremberg’s Warning: When Law Legitimates the Machinery of Authoritarianism, Henry Giroux, Oct. 2, 2026. The legacy of Nuremberg is with us once again, less as a reminder of the power of the legal system to punish those who enabled and enacted the horrors of Nazi Germany than as a warning that the spirit of Nuremberg must be reclaimed as a moral and political imperative.

More On Campus Rape, #MeToo Claims

  • Civil Discourse, Legal Analysis: Jane Doe, Joyce Vance, right, joyce vanceOct. 3-4, 2026. Jane Doe is the name by which we knowthe young woman who has come forward to say she was gang raped in a room at the Chi Phi fraternity house while she was a student at Cornell in 2024.
  • New York Times, How Cornell Punished Each of the 7 Men Accused of Sexual Assault, Sharon Otterman, Hurubie Meko and Debra Kamin, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). Summaries obtained by The New York Times offer a detailed look at the discipline meted out to the men accused of sexually assaulting a fellow student at Cornell University.
  • New York Times, D.A. in Cornell Rape Inquiry Declined to Review Additional Evidence, Michael Rothfeld and Hurubie Meko, Updated Oct. 3, 2026. Records show that campus police officers informed Tompkins County prosecutors that they had conducted additional interviews beyond taking a statement from the woman who said she was raped.
  • New York Times, Cornell Case Revives Anger About Handling of Campus Sexual Assault Cases, Sephanie Saul and Emma Goldberg, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). A lawsuit alleging rape at Cornell has led to an outpouring of women sharing stories about sexual violence on college campuses.
  • michael kotlikoffNew York Times, Cornell President Calls Rape Inquiry ‘Defining Moment’ for Campus, Claire Fahy, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). Michael I. Kotlikoff, right, said in a video the university would be more transparent, hold Greek groups accountable and improve sexual assault prevention.

More On Russia's Invasion of Ukraine, Trump Family's Russian Ties

  • New York Times, Russia Turns to Striking Kyiv’s Bridges, Threatening a Vital Lifeline, Constant Méheut, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). The bridges, used by many commuters in the Ukrainian capital, are the latest target in a broad Russian bombing campaign against infrastructure. Russia has a new target on its rapidly growing list of Ukrainian infrastructure to bomb: bridges. Over the past three days, Russia has attacked bridges in the capital, Kyiv, six times. Three drones hit one in the city’s south on Thursday, and the same bridge was struck twice on Friday. On Saturday morning, another attack hit a bridge in the north.

More Global News

More On Middle East Wars

  • New York Times, Saudi-Backed Yemeni Government Declares War Against Houthis, Vivian Nereim, Eric Schmitt and Saeed Al-Batati, Oct. 4, 2026. More than 200 U.S. intelligence and military analysts are in Saudi Arabia helping it provide assistance to its Yemeni allies, current and former U.S. officials say.

More On U.S. Culture, Religion, Sports, Media, Education

  • New York Times, Measles Outbreak in Amish Country Forces Some to Rethink Vaccines, Anemona Hartocollis, Photographs by Madeleine Hordinski, Oct. 4, 2026. The spread of measles in Pennsylvania and Ohio is largely affecting Amish communities where vaccinations levels are low.
  • The Athletic via The New York Times, Inside Arizona State men’s hockey, and the workout that left a player on life support, Katie Strang, Nathan Fenno and Adam Kilgore, Sept. 17, 2026. Greg Powers was going to fix the problem. The longtime Arizona State University men’s hockey coach, the only person to lead the program in its 12 years in Division I, had watched his 2025-26 team lose 10 of its final 12 games and miss the postseason, and he knew why.
  • Politico, RFK Jr.’s movement is in disarray, Amanda Chu, Oct. 4, 2026. Tony Lyons, the leading organizer of the Make America Healthy Again movement, promised to raise $100 million to support Republicans this year. He’s nowhere close. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement is turning on its leader. Not RFK Jr. Rather, Tony Lyons, the Kennedy friend and book publisher who is the president of a web of MAHA nonprofits and political groups.
  • Status with Natalie Korach, The Sunday Spotlight: McClatchy Goes Mute, Natalie Korach, Oct. 4, 2026. Weeks after gutting local newsrooms, McClatchy leadership has offered staffers virtually no explanation of what comes next, Status has learned, as the company builds out its controversial A.I. operation.

U.S. Energy, Climate Change, Environmental Regulation

  • New York Times, A Supreme Court Battle Over Climate Change Begins, Karen Zraick, Oct. 4, 2026. The justices are about to hear a lawsuit that could determine whether the oil industry faces billions of dollars in liability for damages caused by global warming.

Top Stories

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

New York Times, U.S.-Russia Talks on Ukraine Now Involve an Oil Deal Tied to Trump Allies, Anton Troianovski and Eric Lipton, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). President Vladimir V. Putin brought up a sale of Russian energy assets with President Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, pushing a deal that raises new questions about conflicts of interest.

The Trump administration’s talks with Russia about ending the war in Ukraine have expanded to include a multibillion-dollar oil deal that russian flag wavingwould benefit Middle Eastern business executives with ties to the two main U.S. negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

The deal, which is contingent on approval from the U.S. government and the Kremlin, is for a sprawling set of oil fields, refineries and gas stations around the world owned by Lukoil, one of Russia’s biggest energy companies.

The leading group seeking the deal includes an American investor, Todd Boehly, who has donated $2 million to President Trump’s political causes; two Middle Eastern groups that have done business with Mr. Kushner or Mr. Witkoff’s family; and an arm of the U.S. government itself.

lukoil logoThe monthslong negotiations, which were described by eight people familiar with them, shed new light on Mr. Trump’s latest approach to settling a four-year war that has killed hundreds of thousands. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

There is no indication that Mr. Kushner or Mr. Witkoff themselves stand to profit. But the pending deal represents a striking intermingling of personal business ties with geopolitics, even for an administration that has regularly dismissed concerns about potential conflicts of interest.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia brought up the deal when he met with Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner at the Kremlin on Sept. 5, according to three people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Putin proposed it get done as a way of showing Russians that they can do business with the United States, according to one of the people.

The Americans responded that they would work on it, the person said, seeing it as a way to build good will with the Kremlin while also lowering global energy prices. But the deal is also a lucrative one for the buyers: U.S. approval for the sale would release the assets from American sanctions, instantly increasing their value.

In Moscow, the decision on the deal is widely seen as Mr. Putin’s to make, even though Lukoil is technically a private company. The upshot is that the giant transaction, involving assets as varied as oil fields in Cameroon, refineries in Europe and gas stations in New Jersey, comes down to Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump.

world liberty financial logoMr. Trump has been promoting the promise of business deals with Russia since early last year, describing the country as a “tremendous opportunity.” The deal again brings Mr. Trump’s World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency company — co-founded by Mr. Witkoff — into focus. One of the investors in the Lukoil deal is a part owner of World Liberty.

Potential Lukoil investor group has ties with Trump, his family and his allies

Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner, who have traveled repeatedly to Russia for meetings with Mr. Putin, have argued that the potential to rebuild economic ties with the West could convince the Russian president to compromise in Ukraine. The administration has recently signaled it is open to deals with Russia even before the war ends, as a way of showing it is serious about resetting the United States’ relationship with Moscow.

The Lukoil sale, people familiar with the matter say, is one of those deals.

In a statement, a senior administration official confirmed that Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner played a direct role in helping negotiate the financial terms of the investment by the federal government in the deal to ensure that it included “a substantial upfront payment and profits interest for the United States.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Witkoff said that he “takes no salary and travels the world on his own plane, at his own expense, working on behalf of President Trump to negotiate peace and bring hostages home to their families.” She added that Mr. Witkoff “has no conflict of interest and no financial stake in this matter.”

A Stalled Bid, and a New Contender

Numerous potential bidders expressed interest in at least part of Lukoil’s international holdings when the assets went on the market last fall, including U.S. energy giants like Chevron.

The Washington private equity firm Carlyle reached a tentative agreement in January to buy a large share of the assets, after making the pitch that bringing Lukoil’s international portfolio under U.S. ownership would further the Trump administration’s goal of “energy dominance.”

todd boehlyBut in recent months, as U.S. approval for Carlyle’s bid stalled, a different group emerged as the leading bidder: one led by Mr. Boehly, left, a billionaire supporter of Mr. Trump’s, alongside well-connected figures in the Middle East and the U.S. government itself. The members of the partnership were reported last week by The Financial Times.

Mr. Boehly is a co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and donated $1 million to MAGA Inc., the Trump-aligned political committee, in December 2025. He gave another $1 million through his investment firm, Eldridge Industries, to Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

New York Times, Trump, Putin, Ukraine and an Oil Deal: 5 Takeaways, Eric Lipton and Anton Troianovski, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). A proposal to bolster relations with the Kremlin through the purchase of Russian energy assets is striking even for an administration that regularly mixes personal business interests with foreign policy.

It is one of the most alluring opportunities in global energy.

The foreign assets of Lukoil, the Russian energy giant, are being sold off at fire sale prices because U.S. sanctions have made them nearly worthless for investors in Russia. Gas stations in the United States, refineries in Eastern Europe and oil fields around the world are up for grabs.

russian flag wavingNow, the process of selling off those assets has become intertwined with White House efforts to negotiate an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. And some of the key figures poised to benefit from the Lukoil sale have ties to President Trump’s family and his associates — including the administration’s envoys to Russia. The revelation raises new questions about conflicts of interest in an administration that has regularly mixed personal interests with national interests.

Here are five takeaways from The New York Times’s investigation of the proposed transaction. Completing the deal is a factor in Ukraine peace talks.

The Trump administration has long argued that discussing business deals with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia could help convince him to mend ties with the West and end his war on Ukraine. The administration signaled recently that some deals could move forward before the war ends. But the specifics have been murky until now.

When Mr. Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, met with Mr. Putin at the Kremlin last month, the Russian president asked them to get the Lukoil deal done. The Americans said they would work on it, reasoning that doing so could build good will with the Kremlin while also lowering global energy prices.The deal’s leader is a big political donor to Mr. Trump.

The leader of the investor group is Todd Boehly, right, todd boehlya billionaire asset manager and co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, among other holdings. He is also a major donor to Mr. Trump’s political causes. He contributed $1 million to Mr. Trump’s affiliated MAGA Inc. political committee last December, just as negotiations on the Lukoil deal were heating up.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.Family ties to the investors are widespread.

Mr. Trump; his three sons; Mr. Kushner; Ivanka Trump, one of the president’s daughters; and the Witkoff family all have financial ties to partners in the deal, which requires sign off from the Trump administration and the Kremlin. The Trump family and the president’s advisers do not have a direct financial stake in the transaction. tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan 2025 wBut their business partners would benefit financially if the multibillion-dollar deal is completed.

The investors who have teamed up with Mr. Boehly include one of the richest investment funds in the Middle East, International Holding Company, which is overseen by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, left, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family.

Sheikh Tahnoon separately runs outfits that own nearly half of World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency company co-founded by Mr. Witkoff and still run by Zach Witkoff, one of Steve Witkoff’s sons. Donald Trump Jr. and Barron Trump, two of the president’s sons, also are stakeholders and co-founders of the company, and so they too are effectively business partners with Sheikh Tahnoon.

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Sheikh Tahnoon, one of the most powerful players in Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates, controls companies that oversee Lunate, an investment fund that took a major stake in the private equity firm Affinity Partners, which was set up by Mr. Kushner after he left the White House at the end of Mr. Trump’s first term.

Another investor in Mr. Boehly’s group is a pair of Syrian-born Qatari billionaires, Moutaz Al-Khayyat and his brother Ramez Al-Khayyat, who have partnered with Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump to build a multibillion-dollar resort complex planned for the Mediterranean coast of Albania.Large chunks of the profits would go overseas.

Trump administration officials are celebrating how the Boehly-backed deal would help U.S. energy security, as the package includes everything from oil production sites to refineries and gas stations. The U.S. government would also take a direct stake in the new enterprise via the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, an agency that helps finance projects overseas. But given the makeup of the investment group, a large share of the resulting company — and the profits it creates — would be foreign owned, according to participants in the negotiations.Another prominent bidder would lose out.

Approving the Boehly deal now being negotiated with the help of the White House would mean rejecting a competing offer from Carlyle, a Washington-based global investment management firm that already has investments in refineries in Europe. Carlyle’s bid, by comparison, would mean an all-American owner. But Carlyle does not have similar financial ties to Mr. Trump’s family and political advisers. 

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption 

 

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djt put them down ohio talkHope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump is cornered, Heather Delaney Reese, above left and at right, heather delaney reeseOct. 3, 2026. At 7:45 tonight, Donald Trump experienced what appeared to be a serious mental health crisis while on stage campaigning for Republicans in Ohio. He had just arrived at the High School Activity Center in Vandalia, Ohio, 45 minutes late after his motorcade was forced to change its route to avoid protesters.

After making his way to the podium, he wasted no time launching into a truly disturbing speech where he told the crowd that Democrats tried to kill him and that “we’re going to put them down once and for all.” He said that Democrats rigged the elections and that the Republican Party is going to beat them, and that they would “shove it up their ass.”

He attacked the press, called Biden a “fake president,” and presented a bribe to every American over the age of 18, promising to send each one of them $5,000 if his party wins and keeps control of Congress. This was just the tip of the iceberg of the dangerous things the president said tonight.

Within minutes, it became clear that this was not going to be a regular campaign rally. As the speech went on, it only got worse as Donald Trump unraveled on live TV. Tonight marked the beginning of an even darker chapter in American History. One where the leader of the free world openly shared that he and his administration will reject, by all means possible, anything other than the outcome he wants for the midterm elections.

Trump told the crowd: “We’ve defeated every hoax and overcome every threat. Now we are on the cusp of beating the communist, socialist, radicalized lunatics and villains once and for all. We’re going to put them down once and for all.”

That is exactly what the President of the United States is saying about those he sees as a threat to his unchecked power. This includes, but is not limited to, Democrats, American citizens, journalists, and protesters. But it was the “put them down” part that is the most concerning. Most of us know that as a phrase used to mean the euthanasia of a sick or injured animal. When he added “once and for all,” he left very little room for interpretation. He was talking about ending opposition permanently.

With Donald Trump, we have to take him at his word while hoping he is just being provocative. History has already taught us how far he will go and how far others like him have gone before. Hitler did not start by rounding up his final targets and sending them to the camps. He started with the language he used and testing what he could get away with saying. He called his political opponents vermin and disease, and he told crowds at his rallies that they were a threat to the nation. The eventual horrific actions followed later.

He did not stop there. He told the crowd that Democrats had “attacked me, they’ve impeached me, they’ve arrested me, and they even tried to kill me.” He called Biden a “fake president,” still clinging to his election lie all these years later. He also said that Democrats rigged the elections and that they were “a bunch of dumb sons of bitches.” He said they, the Republicans, were going to win big and “shove it up their ass, okay?” That is the President of the United States of America, speaking from a podium with the presidential seal on it, terrified of losing and spiraling out of control.

djt collageTrump is building a narrative where he is the ultimate authority in our country. It is part of his strategy ahead of the devastating loss he expects to face during the midterms. Today he gave us a look into what that will look like and how it will play out. Part of his plan is to convince his followers that he is smarter than everyone else, and he pretty much said exactly that: “I know more about everything than anybody in this room, than anybody anywhere in the world.” He then stopped for a very quick pause, pointed at a woman sitting near the stage, and continued, “There’s a woman sitting right over there who is a housewife, but she’s very good. She’s got a natural instinct for business. She perhaps knows more than I do, but I actually don’t think so.”

And then he brought up his latest bribe. Trump told the room, and those of us watching from home, that “If Republicans win the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, I am going to give all adult citizens in the United States $5,000 each because we’re making so much money with the tariffs and other things.”

djt handing out money hartmann reportEvery time he promises to send Americans money in exchange for their votes [as portrayed above in an illustration by The Hartmann Report], we have to do the math because that is where the promise immediately falls apart. There are roughly 245 million adults in this country. That is $1.20 trillion. The president does not have the authority to just send out checks on a whim, and he certainly can’t spend more than a trillion dollars without approval. That is not even taking into account the practical side of things, like where the money would come from. Donald Trump also promised $2,000 tariff dividend checks. Those never came, and these never will either. He knows that, and he also knows that there is almost no realistic path for Republicans to hold both chambers of Congress. So the excuse and the scapegoat are already built in for when the checks are never sent. He will blame the Democrats. He will say he wanted to send the checks, but the radical left “Dumocrats” blocked him from sending them. He will use this as another reason to further divide us.

He also shared fear-based propaganda that he created in his mind about what is to come if his party loses. “If the Democrats are in control again, we’ll have another Great Depression like in the 1930s.” He said that if Democrats win, “you will end up in a 1929-style economic depression, and we will have a disaster on our hands.” He is trying to terrify the most vulnerable people in this country into voting out of fear, while also trying to bribe them with money he will not and cannot send. He is counting on them believing that this time will somehow be different and that he will actually deliver on the promises he makes.

He not only told us that he will be targeting political dissent over the next couple of years, but he also made it very clear that he is coming after the media and anyone committed to fact-based reporting. He pointed up at the press section and told the crowd, “Some of the fake news media are sitting right there.” The crowd loudly booed, with someone even screaming, “F*CK CNN!” Trump stood there grinning and smirking as he stared directly at the journalists, letting the hostility in the room build toward them. He went after Kaitlan Collins again, calling her “such an unhappy person,” and said that “she’s a young, nice person, but she never smiles.” He said, “the fake news media refuse to talk about our record-setting numbers.” The President of the United States continues to try to humiliate journalists who haven’t bent to his demands for only positive coverage. He also said, “It’s the golden age of America. Our nation is doing better now than ever before, and fake news like CNN, sitting right there, doesn’t want to run.” Then he offered us a new name for the press: “We could call the media ‘artificial media.’ That would be accurate. We could call them ‘artificial news.’ They’re artificial news, meaning fake, but I like ‘fake’ better. I made that up a long time ago, and it seems to be quite accurate.”

This is why Trump is so focused on destroying trust in the media. He needs his supporters to believe that every reporter, news outlet, and really anyone who says something Donald Trump doesn’t like is lying to them. Trump knows his numbers and polls are both terrible, so he needs to convince his supporters that the only person they can trust is him. So that it doesn’t matter what anyone else reports. He is setting the stage for what comes next. If the midterm results are not what he wants, he will say the media lied and that there was rampant fraud. He will tell his supporters that the election was stolen from them, and many will believe him. We saw what happened on January 6th, and we have watched him pardon the insurrectionists. We know Donald Trump’s part in what happened, and how he has convinced those who carried that out for him, and the next round of people like them, to think they will ultimately be protected the next time he asks people to do his dirty work for him.

djt mission from godThe difference this time is that Donald Trump is sitting inside the White House with the power of the federal government behind him [Emphasized by his publications of his self-generated graphics, such as that above]. Everything he said tonight was in preparation for what may be one of the darkest chapters in the history of our country. We got a glimpse of just how dark the next 30+ days and the months that follow could become. There were multiple moments during this rally that would have warranted serious discussions about the 25th Amendment with any other president. But things have become so normalized that we don’t even talk about that like we did even a year ago. Our country has fallen so far over the past 21 months that even the president accusing Democrats of trying to kill him or calling them “dumb sons of bitches” is no longer enough to shock us.

The big picture is that this is what we are going to see until the midterms if Donald Trump isn’t stopped. And then the worst of the Big Beautiful Bill is purposefully set to happen shortly after that, devastating everyday Americans. The months after that may very well be even worse. He is going to push everything through he possibly can before the new Congress is seated. At the same time, he will have set the tone with his radicalized followers that anybody, including the legacy media, independent journalists, and writers such as myself, are all part of the “fake news” and can’t be trusted. He will challenge every election result that does not go his way. He will say that foreign governments meddled in our elections and that the results have been manipulated. There will be court cases, and games played to try to keep the new, duly elected members of Congress from being seated.

This may be a very trying time for our country. We will get through it. We will come out on the other side. What it takes to get there is another story. And even after all of that, we are looking at a sitting-duck president at a level this country has never seen, with nothing left to hold him back and nothing left to lose. With his diminished physical and cognitive abilities, we won’t truly start to feel safe and see a path forward for this country until at least early 2029, and even then, we will be dealing with the damage for years to come.

We knew these dark times were coming. We knew it would get worse the closer we got to the midterms. Today he showed us exactly what that is going to look like. He is coming after dissent, the truth, and anyone who refuses to fall in line. But no matter what he tries to take from us, we need to remind Donald Trump and each other that we are not helpless. There are still things we can do. We can vote, and we can get louder. If you’ve been on the sidelines, this is the moment to step off them. If you’ve been scared to speak out, I understand that fear completely. I know what it costs and the threats that come with it. I’ve lived it for a year and a half, and I’m still here, and it has not slowed me down. Because I also know what silence costs, and that price is higher. It always has been, and it always will be.

I made a promise when I started writing these posts. Every time Donald Trump or his administration attacked the press, the First Amendment, or the rights of the American people, I would call it out. Today Donald Trump took his attacks even further. His public threats were meant to cause ripples of fear through all of us. They want us to hesitate the next time we go to speak, and they want us to question our next vote for a Democrat for fear that they will usher in the next Great Depression.

Tonight we resist with our voices and our money. Every time this administration attacks the First Amendment, or our right to free, fair, and fear-free elections, we respond by funding the people defending it. On these nights, I donate and subscribe to those on the right side of history who offer a paid membership. To use the overplayed line about how most of these options cost about the same as a cup of coffee, I actually live by that. I rarely buy coffee outside the house anymore because I would much rather give that money to someone fighting for our country anyway.

Those of you who have been reading these posts for a while know how this goes. If we are able, and it will not cause a financial hardship, we put our money to good use. We support our local, state, and federal candidates. The other side is throwing a lot of money at these elections, so our candidates can always use more funds. We donate to nonprofits that are defending our Constitution and the most vulnerable in our communities. That includes organizations that are challenging Donald Trump’s abuses of power in court. And we also support the people taking a stand to deliver the truth about what is happening in this country under extreme threat from Donald Trump and the federal government. Thank you all for supporting me in this way. It is how I’m able to dedicate my life to this work and write these posts every night. I am grateful that I can be a part of this fight with your support.

But like I always say and will until the end of time, I’m also asking you to think beyond just my voice. Think about every writer, journalist, podcaster, and other independent outlet that you turn to when you need the truth about what is happening in this country. Think about the people writing and creating content day in and day out, without breaks, because they care about our country and the generations we will be leaving it to. Donald Trump just told us what comes next, and we need to be prepared now so that our truth tellers are funded to survive it. The most powerful thing we can do right now is make sure the people refusing to be silent can keep going. 

Donald Trump didn’t have his meltdown at the podium today because the future looks good for him or the Republican Party. He is waging these attacks because he is scared. He is scared of what happens to him next. He knows the resistance is just growing and that his deficits are as well.

He knows that he is in a weak position, and nothing makes him feel more threatened than that. But while he was standing on that stage trying to make the rest of us feel the same fear he is, a group of musicians was standing in front of a sold-out crowd of close to 20,000, reminding us just how much power we still have. Just 25 miles from the White House, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine’s Power to the People Festival in Columbia, Maryland, brought together some very powerful voices in American music for a day built around the very things Trump is trying to destroy: freedom, justice, equality, and people coming together and using their voices for something bigger than themselves.

Performers included Bruce Springsteen, the Foo Fighters, Dave Matthews, Joan Baez, Public Enemy, Killer Mike, Cypress Hill, Serj Tankian, Brittany Howard, Dropkick Murphys, Jack Black, The Linda Lindas, and Shepard Fairey. This wasn’t just a music festival. This was a show of resistance.

Donald Trump wants us to think that the fight is over and that we have already lost our country. But we know the truth. We know that he is only going to these lengths because he knows what is coming and he is desperately trying to stop it. In 31 days, we are going to come together and show him just how much power we still have, and he is going to finally start to face the consequences of what he has put our country through. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.


President Trump speaks to White House media before his trip to Alabama to host a political rally on Oct. 2, 2026. President Trump speaks to White House media before his trip to Alabama to host a political rally on Oct. 2, 2026. 

Hope for America, Opinion: The President's decline is in a freefall. Heather Delaney Reese, helen delaney reese djtright, Oct. 3, 2026. At 3:54 pm Donald Trump emerged from the White House with freshly colored hair and makeup, as Marine One’s engine roared in the background. He walked directly over to the waiting press, threw his hands out in front of him, gesturing at the empty ground in front of him, while he squeezed his legs together and arched his torso forward, yelling to the reporters, “This is the way the White House is supposed to look. Not asphalt. Broken, dirty asphalt. Look at it.” He then paused, frowning as he looked over his left shoulder, and continued, “The finest stone you could buy anywhere in the world.”

The gathered press said nothing, confused by his odd behavior. The President then took three steps forward and appeared to remember why he had come outside in the first place. “Okay. So, I’m heading to Alabama, a place that I won all three times. Record votes, like Texas, like Oklahoma, like a lot of them. And we’re going to give a little speech, and I hope they like it.”

For the next 6 minutes and 52 seconds, we watched the President struggle to answer questions, follow the conversation, and even walk in a straight line. Donald Trump is gravely unwell, and whatever is behind his serious decline appears to be rapidly accelerating.

I don’t say that with any joy or pleasure. The presidency is the most important office in our government, and the entire world is at risk with him in the Oval Office. But what we are watching can’t be normalized.

Peter Doocy from Fox News started the questions by asking Donald Trump about the growing possibility of a third impeachment if Democrats take back the House, while reminding him that he’d already been impeached twice.

The President’s answer to such a serious question was to say, “Well, I don’t know, but I’m getting good at it. And… It’s a fake impeachment. And we could have done that with Sleepy Joe, but we didn’t do it because it would have been appropriate. I could have done that with Hillary Clinton, as you know. I just had the chance to do it if I wanted, and I said that would be inappropriate, but with me they like to do it.”

The President of the United States joked that being impeached had become something he was “getting good at” after having gone through it twice. His words were again slurred, making it difficult to know whether he said impeaching Biden “would have been appropriate” or “inappropriate.” He also claimed he could have impeached Hillary Clinton, even though private citizens cannot be impeached under the Constitution.

Maybe he doesn’t understand that impeachment is not a criminal charge, that it is the constitutional process used to remove a sitting president or other federal officeholder from office. It would not have applied to Hillary Clinton, and it would not have applied to Joe Biden after he left office either. Whether Trump confused impeachment with criminal prosecution or simply lost track of what was being discussed, either possibility is deeply concerning.

Regardless of how he acted, like trying to make what could happen seem like it was no big deal, he does care. This time around, he knows the consequences, including hearings and investigations, could make his life very uncomfortable. He is right to be concerned. There is a path, one I’ve talked about before, where if we achieve a blue wave of epic proportion, and every single piece lines up, this could go further than just oversight and investigations. It could lead to impeachment and removal. And if there ever were a time for that, it is now. Donald Trump loves being number one and being the first. Maybe we could actually make him the first President removed from office. It’s a long shot, and everything would have to go perfectly, but in a moment like this, we should be shooting for the stars.

When Donald Trump was asked whether it would be harder for Republicans to hold the House or the Senate, Trump answered with another non-answer: “I think it’s pretty even. I think that we’re making a lot of progress. When I go there, we win. If I don’t go there, we would not do as well.”

What we know from current polling is that right now, the odds are overwhelmingly strong that he will lose the House. The Senate, which wasn’t supposed to be in play at all, is now a real fight, with viable paths to a Democratic majority. None of this is guaranteed, and it’s important that nobody feels too comfortable in this moment, but if there are free and fair elections, things seem to be looking bad for the President and his enablers, and very good for the Constitution and the country.

He also was able to add in one of his favorite talking points: “I’m asking them to go out and vote because I’m not running. But I’m saying pretend I’m running. We want to pretend I’m running.” We all need to pretend he’s running. Because in a way, he is, or at least his unchecked power is on the ballot. When we vote against MAGA Republicans, we are voting against him, and we are voting to take away his stronghold on our country. That is what we are voting against. What we are voting for is hearings, investigations, oversight, and finally accountability. We’re voting to begin repairing the relationships he’s shattered with our allies, or at least to remind the world that we haven’t been completely taken over. And also that we have absolutely not given up. We are also voting to end the destabilization and the reckless imperialism that Donald Trump has brought to every corner of this planet. So yes, we all must pretend he’s running. Because he is.

After he said to “pretend I’m running,” he didn’t even pause for a second before immediately pointing to the construction site behind him and said, “I hope you like what you’re seeing here. That’s getting all sorts of awards. And the best of all, you see the new crane, the red, the red boom. That’s one of the biggest cranes in the world that lifts up the steel for the roof. Pretty cool, right?” In the middle of answering serious questions affecting the entire world, the President of the United States became fixated on talking about a crane.

He then turned around and faced the reporters who were all shouting questions at him. With a confused look in his eyes and his chest lurched forward, he pointed towards a member of the European press and muttered something about him always asking the same questions, and the reporter replied, “Mr. President, people believe you never get tired.”

What he said was an opening for Donald Trump to deny the very thing millions of people have spent the better part of the year watching. He then looked into the camera and said, “I never get tired. And if I got tired, it would be a big story, I can tell.”

The administration needed that question to be asked on camera because we all keep watching him fall asleep in meetings, slump over in chairs, drift off mid-sentence, and struggle to stay upright. His administration knows this is one of the most dangerous narratives building against him. They also know that their most loyal followers are willing to ignore what they can see with their own eyes as long as someone helps them commit to willful ignorance or just pretend it isn’t actually happening.

This is how authoritarian regimes manage the visible decline of their leaders. In the Soviet Union, aging, frail, and severely declining men were propped up to appear still competent and powerful while Soviet state media broadcast images of these leaders signing documents, greeting officials, and projecting normalcy, while much of the real decision-making shifted behind closed doors. The pattern holds today. The people enabling Donald Trump are trying to preserve the appearance of continuity, reassure his donors and supporters, and buy time while they prepare for what comes next. It’s also why they have J.D. Vance campaigning across the country.

The most alarming moment of Donald Trump’s time talking to reporters came when someone told the President that South Korea says it has not signed off on the Alaska pipeline deal after all and asked whether he had jumped the gun. This was after Trump had announced a new energy agreement involving South Korea. Donald Trump looked confused, like he had no idea what the reporter was talking about. He eventually answered and said, “Well, I didn’t jump the gun. I mean, they were there and they were represented and let’s see. If they don’t want to do it, that’s okay with me. I’ll just charge them more.”

The reporter tried again, reminding him that South Korea said it had never signed the agreement in the first place. Trump’s response was, “Tell them if they don’t sign shortly, I’m going to double it up. Okay.”

Trump looked directly at a reporter and asked them to tell a foreign country he was going to charge them more if they did not sign an agreement. It was completely lost on him that reporters report the news. They don’t negotiate between countries. The President of the United States actually asked a reporter to deliver a threat to a sovereign nation.

This is not some hostile government he’s threatening either. This is South Korea, one of our most important allies in the Pacific, a democracy we have defended for more than seventy years because its stability is essential to deterring one of the world’s most dangerous dictatorships just across its northern border. We need that alliance, and we need the American bases within its borders.

After that, multiple reporters tried to ask about a diesel deal with Europe, and Donald Trump confirmed that he would not be imposing an export ban and that because of steps being taken, we are going to have a “lot of oil very shortly.” Then, without fail, he returned to one of his favorite talking points: “As soon as Iran ends, which won’t be long, not going to be long, you’re going to have oil go down to the price it was before, maybe even lower than I got it at the beginning.”

This all stemmed from his threat of a diesel export ban that would have devastated European families heading into winter, families who depend on diesel to heat their homes, get to work, and simply make it through the cold months. He is now waving it away as though it was never serious in the first place. But it was serious enough to terrify an entire continent. That is how Donald Trump negotiates. He uses fuel as leverage, basic human needs as bargaining chips, and then acts as though he never meant what he said. This is un-American. It is not how we treat our allies, and it is not how we should treat our fellow human beings.

His impromptu press conference ended after he was asked about New York Governor Kathy Hochul appointing Attorney General Letitia James as a special prosecutor in the Cornell University rape case. Trump answered by saying, “Well, Letitia James is a corrupt person. She’s totally corrupt and I can’t imagine it.” Then came the most unconscionable part: “I feel badly for whoever she’s looking at because they won’t get a fair shake.”

The President of the United States said he felt bad for the men accused of committing horrific crimes against a woman who reported being sexually assaulted. He said nothing about the courage it took for her to come forward or the trauma she has endured. He felt badly for the men being investigated. That was his first reaction.

We are now just 32 days away from the most pivotal election in modern American history. We are not just voting for our country, we are voting for the entire world because what Donald Trump does echoes far past our borders. But we also have to temper our expectations because even when we take back the House, and possibly the Senate, he is not going quietly. He will push through executive orders at a pace we haven’t seen. The people behind him, the ones who are smarter and more calculating than he is, who are already parading J.D. Vance across the country as his eventual replacement, have everything to lose too. They are planning for their own survival. We need to be ready for whatever is to come. We need to protect our access to vote, and then protect the actual count of our ballots, while also preparing for an extended fight to make sure the new Congress is actually seated.

Just after midnight this morning, Donald Trump posted this on Truth Social: “America does not belong to those who hate it. America belongs to those who love it. President Donald J. Trump.”

America does belong to those who love it. This country belongs to us. And in 32 days, we’re going to prove it. 

More Special Reports On Nefarious Trump-Related Ties To Russia, Hurting U.S., Europe, Ukraine  

 

Lev Parnas, above, being interviewed by cable television host Rachel Maddow on Jan. 15, 2020 for a documentary she produced about his life. He is shown also with his wife, who stood by him during a hoked up prosecution and imprisonment orchestrated by the Trump Justice Department as retribution for his willingness to expose their Russian-coddling dealmaking in his commentaries, courtroom proceedings and in his memoir, "Shadow Diplomacy."

lev parnas wife

  • Justice Integrity Project Backgrounder On Lev Parnas, Entrepreuneur, Former Trump Team Operative, Now Whistleblower, Andrew Kreig, Oct.4, 2026. A native of Ukraine and former high-level liaison on behalf of President Trump and his team to Eastern European Shadow Diplomacycontacts, aaron parnas o instagramis an expert commentator who has publisted a three-part series this fall documenting insidious relationships between the Trump Team -- President Trump, his families, their companies and their allies -- to Russian and other foreign interests damaging to most Americans. Parnas, a naturlized U.S. citizen who son Aaron Parnas, right, works independently as a prolific journalist with millions of readers and often quoted on this site, received a lifetime achievement award in 2025 for courage at a featured ceremony at the 13th annual Whistleblower Summit and Film Festival, which he memorialzed in a colum immediately below:

Lev Remembers, Yesterday Changed Me Forever: From Brooklyn to the National Press Club—A Whistleblower’s Journey and a Father’s Pride, Lev Parnas, Aug. 1, 2025. Yesterday was one of those rare days that I’ll never forget. The kind of day that reaches deep into your soul and reminds you of why you’re still standing. The kind of day that humbles you—because it isn’t just about what you’ve been through, it’s about who you’ve become because of it. I was in Washington, D.C., standing inside the hallowed halls of the National Press Club—the beating heart of free speech in this country—where I was presented with the 13th Annual Whistleblower Pillar Award. Now, I know how strange that may sound. Me, a kid from Brooklyn, standing in front of a room full of journalists, federal officials, and freedom fighters, being honored as a whistleblower. It still doesn’t fully register. Because where I come from, being a whistleblower wasn’t seen as courageous. It was seen as betrayal. As weakness. As turning your back. But I’ve lived long enough to learn that’s one of the biggest lies ever told.

2026 Trump-Russia Series

 

djt russian connections

New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan co-authored New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan co-authored "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump," a best-selling account of his rapid transformation of the United States and its global alliances.

russian flag waving

Emptywheel, Analysis and Opinion: Russia Russia Russia Never Stopped Russia Russia Russiaing, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Oct. 4, 2026. marcy wheelerOne of the infuriating things about "Regime Change," Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s book, is that it introduces key players who played important roles in the influence operations targeting Trump in 2016 with no reminder they were part of them.

Regime Change describes the central role of Kirill Dmitriev in current efforts to negotiate a “peace plan,” without describing that Dmitriev had cultivated people close to Jared Kushner in the transition to the first Administration, dangling business deals similar to the ones currently on offer, before the Russian investigation made such negotiations toxic.

A National Security Council staffer at the table weighed in with a proposal to assess whether Dmitriev was the real thing. “Well, sir, we could test him,” the staffer said to Rubio. “We could ask him to release a hostage, for example.”

Rubio liked the idea. And he said he knew just the guy they could ask for: Marc Fogel, an American high school teacher who had been sentenced to fourteen years in a Russian prison for carrying a small amount of medical marijuana in his luggage.

kirill dmitrievWitkoff would later tell colleagues that Dmitriev, right, came with the strong endorsement of not only Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, but also “TBZ”—Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the high-powered national security advisor of the United Arab Emirates. An endorsement from TBZ seemed to mean a lot to Witkoff. “TBZ is the guy,” he told a colleague. “When somebody like that says he’s the real thing, then you take that to the bank.”

Regime Change describes how Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan dumped $500 million into the Trump-Witkoff corruption via crypto deals.

There was also a huge investing partner in WLF—a fact that would remain a secret for over a year. In January 2026, tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan 2025 wThe Wall Street Journal revealed that four days before Trump was sworn in, a 49 percent stake in World Liberty had been acquired by Aryam Investment 1. The company was run by associates ofSheikh Tahnoon binZayed Al Nahyan, right, who controlled $1.5 trillion of Emirati sovereign wealth funds. Sheikh Tahnoon was a major power player in the Middle East, and a close associate of both Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. A UAE fund backed by sovereign wealth had already invested more than $200 million in Kushner’s investment fund.

But it doesn’t remind readers that someone either reporting to Tahnoon, or Tahnoon himself, had cultivated Tom Barrack, below left, during the 2016 election to shift US policy towards the Emiratis and Mohammed bin tom barrackheadshotSalman.

I believe that Tahnoon, the guy who made the payoff to Trump last year, is Emirati Official 2 in the Barrack indictment. If that’s right, then Barrack crafted his public comments to meet Tahnoon’s needs, approved of a 100-day plan to cater to Emirate needs that Barrack drafted, and visited the White House in May 2017.

And while we have always focused closely on Manafort’s role in crafting pro-Russian policies in advance of the first Trump term, Manafort was working with Barrack on policies — including a foreign policy speech — to please the Emiratis, too.

Of course, the Emiratis were always intimately involved in the Russian cultivation (and I still suspect the $10 million suspected bribe that went through Egypt was actually a pass-through from others). Child sex predator George Nader, shown below with Trump, is the one who first set up the meetings with Kiril Dmitriev who would have been, and remains now, the key handler for the effort to co-opt the United States. Dmitriev is not in the NYT graphic [illustrating the story] either.

george nader djt Custom 2That cultivation was revealed in the failed prosecution of Barrack, which resulted in acquittal after Barrack argued he would have pursued such policies whether or not the Emirates dangled big payoffs to do so.

Relatedly, the book does a great job of describing Boris Epshteyn’s growing power base in the White House and his central role in some of Trump’s most direct assaults on rule of law.

Epshteyn had a long and sometimes fraught history with the Trumps—highly valued by the President as an enforcer, but viewed by many in his circle as a liability. He had known the family since meeting Eric Trump at Georgetown. But even Eric had privately complained to confidants over the years about Epshteyn’s approach. His determination to stay as close as possible to Donald Trump and aggressively deliver perceived wins had led to his own indictment in Arizona the previous April, for his alleged role in a conspiracy to certify a slate of fake electors, though the case would suffer a blow in 2025 and it was unclear whether it would continue. In congressional testimony that year, the special counsel, Jack Smith, named Epshteyn as one of the unindicted co-conspirators in the 2020 election case against Trump.

Trump would joke about how Epshteyn could spin any development—good or bad—as a positive. But he liked Epshteyn and credited him with assembling a legal defense team that helped Trump stay out of prison. Where Epshteyn’s money came from once the new administration began was less clear.

[snip]

Another close advisor explained that Trump liked to keep people like Epshteyn close at hand. He valued lawyers he thought would do anything for him. Trump had also learned through bitter experience that it was unwise to make enemies of former aides—especially those privy to his secrets. n his first term, he had followed the advice of his lawyers and kept a safe distance from those caught up in scandals, among them Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, and Michael Cohen. Now, with a Congress that would not check him and presidential immunity afforded by the landmark 2024 Trump v. United States ruling, Trump had little reason to heed Warrington’s warning.

boris ephsteyn croppedBut its biography of Epshteyn, right, doesn’t mention Boris’ Russian ties or his expulsion from the White House in the first term for security reasons — even though they themselves have covered those issues in NYT stories.

President-elect Donald J. Trump was flying to Washington for his first face-to-face meeting with President Biden since winning the election when a top aide offered a startling idea to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine.

The adviser, Boris Epshteyn, who coordinated the legal defenses in Mr. Trump’s criminal cases, suggested to the president-elect that he should be Mr. Trump’s special envoy for the Russia-Ukraine conflict, according to four people briefed on what took place.

Mr. Epshteyn, who was born in Russia and lived there as a child, has no experience in foreign policy. He told the group that he had family on both sides of the conflict.

[snip]

Mr. Epshteyn, who left his role in the White House communications office in 2017 over what was described as an issue with his security clearance that has since been resolved, had told friends before the special envoy discussion that he intended to stay outside government as a counselor to Mr. Trump. And in Mr. Trump’s world, the lack of an official title has meant little in terms of measuring influence.

When you hide all these ties, you hide the way that Trump’s second term looks like the culmination of that joint Russian-Emirati influence operation Dmitriev pitched in the Seychelles nine years ago. Maggie has helped cover up some of this in the past. But Swan just seems not to understand how the world works, as when hetold Tim Miller (starting at 43:37) that he and Maggie simply never bothered to check Natalie Harp’s problematic conversion story, and so just assumed she goes to great lengths to serve as his gatekeeper for entirely naive reasons.

President Trump's inseparable White House aide Natalie Harp, above, an Ivanka Trump look-alike who with cult-like devotation generates much of his written output and closely monitors what information he receives.

President Trump's inseparable White House aide Natalie Harp, above, who generates much of his written output and closely monitors what information he receives.

Such a background is similarly absent from this blockbuster NYT story, describing how Trump is about to sell out Ukraine so his buddy and campaign donor can get a big Lukoil deal. It describes how Dmitriev remains at the core of the corrupt effort to bribe Trump to sacrifice Ukraine, as he was in 2017.

Kirill Dmitriev, Mr. Putin’s economic envoy, has been closely involved, people familiar with the sale process said. He traveled to New York and Washington for meetings last month, and told reporters that “dialogue” with the United States was “continuing across many areas, including energy.”

It describes how Tahnoon would be a partner with what would be nostalgically called the US government

Another major stakeholder would be an Abu Dhabi-based investment fund controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, (national_security_advisor), the United Arab Emirates’ top national security adviser, who controls another fund that purchased a large stake in the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company, World Liberty, run in part by Mr. Witkoff’s son.

Steve Witkoff was a co-founder of World Liberty, and Mr. Trump’s sons are also involved in the company, which generated $799 million for Mr. Trump last year, in part because of an additional cryptocurrency purchase worth $2 billion that Sheikh Tahnoon’s affiliate made in 2025. Mr. Witkoff himself has sold off his stake in World Liberty, a person close to him said.

Sheikh Tahnoon also helps oversee an Abu Dhabi investment fund called Lunate, which is among the largest stakeholders in the private equity firm Mr. Kushner set up after he left the White House at the end of Mr. Trump’s first term. This means Sheikh Tahnoon is effectively a business partner of Mr. Kushner’s as well.

It even includes a role for Bryan Lanza — who back in 2016 encouraged George Papadopoulos to pursue his ties with Russia — and Mercury Public Affairs — which has been the influence peddling wing of this lukoil logooperation for over a decade.

Lukoil’s international division, which is based in Austria, hired its own Washington-based consultant who is close to Mr. Trump, Bryan Lanza, who served as a senior adviser to Mr. Trump’s 2024 election campaign and now works at Mercury Public Affairs. He is no longer working for Lukoil, a person familiar with the matter said.

All of these pieces were put into place in 2016, as part of the process by which Russia helped Trump get elected. Russia had a big role, too, in the developments that led Trump not to care that we all see him selling out the US to curry favor from a dictator of a failing country around the world.

The 2016 Russian operation is not the past. Russia has, relentlessly, never stopped pursuing the plan they put in place when Tom Barrack put Paul Manafort in charge of Trump’s campaign. 

Emptywheel, Analysis: Trump Is Still Relying on Dossier-Driven Polarization to Hide Russian Shenanigans, marcy wheelerEmptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Oct. 3, 2026. We’re falling behind, under the weight of stories making it clear that Trump’s Russian shenanigans never ended.The biggest sign of that is the NYT story revealing that part of the Jared Kushner/Steve Witkoff “peace” plan for Ukraine is an oil deal involving the Emirati guy alleged to be Tom Barrack’s handler back in 2016.

Equally alarming is how various people — State Department Undersecretary of State Sarah Rogers and former Don Jr. sidepiece Kimberly Guilfoyle —are cozying up to people overthrowing democracy in Europe. I’ll discuss those in our reintroduction to this week’s reissue, maybe Monday. For now, I want to share the short we did to introduce this week’s reissue, which I posted in our video section (which I’m trying to introduce). Please follow and support LOLGOP Studios Patreon as we consider how to roll out this stuff in coming weeks.

  • New York Times, Russia Turns to Striking Kyiv’s Bridges, Threatening a Vital Lifeline, Constant Méheut, Oct. 3, 2026. The bridges, used by many commuters in the Ukrainian capital, are the latest target in a broad Russian bombing campaign against infrastructure. Russia has a new target on its rapidly growing list of Ukrainian infrastructure to bomb: bridges.

Special Report: More On Trump Family Self-Dealing 

donald trump money palmer report Custom

New York Times, White House Memo: An Outrage in 2019. No Problem in 2026, Peter Baker, Oct. 4, 2026. Trump Has Moved the Ethical Line. The president’s decision to hold an international summit at his own private golf club, an idea rejected in his first term, illustrates how much he has shattered norms.

When President Trump decided in his first term to host the annual Group of 7 summit of world leaders at his own private golf club in Miami, the act of self-dealing was so astonishing that it incited an uproar among fellow Republicans, forcing him to scrap the idea.

Now in his second term seven years later, Mr. Trump has decided to host the Group of 20 annual summit of world leaders at his private golf club in Miami in December — and this time the plan has generated practically no protest.

The unprecedented blitz of self-enrichment by Mr. Trump, his family and his friends since he returned to the White House last year has become so extensive, so profligate and so brazen that he has effectively moved the goal posts of what is considered out of bounds. An act that was deemed an outrage in 2019 is barely noticed in 2026.

Mr. Trump has blurred the line between personal and public interests so much that it is hardly distinguishable anymore. He personally made at least $2.2 billion last year through business ventures and investments, many with implications for government policy. His family-backed firm introduced a cryptocurrency called stablecoin just months before he signed legislation promoting stablecoin. He accepted a luxury jet from Qatar. He arranged for his administration to grant him immunity for any back taxes and penalties that he owed, potentially more than $100 million.ImageAn ad that was approved by President Trump, which resembles a campaign ad, and is paid for with taxpayer funds.Credit...via YouTube

In recent days, Mr. Trump has ordered the government to use taxpayer dollars to air television advertisements lauding himself, commercials that resemble campaign ads even as voters are already casting ballots in this year’s midterm elections. Mr. Trump’s private business last month filed a trademark application for Trump TV, seeking to control the name of a streaming service that the White House in theory uses for official presidential communications.

Melania Trump, who already was paid millions of dollars for a flattering self-promotional film by Amazon, a federal government contractor, now has a two-part docuseries about herself to be released this fall. Donald Trump Jr. allowed a Russian business mogul close to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, to pay for part of his wedding after-party in the Bahamas. And President Trump next month will headline “the most exclusive dinner in the world” for the crypto firm that runs his meme coin.

The decision to bring the leaders of the G20 nations and their considerable entourages to Trump National Doral Miami from Dec. 14 to 15 in some ways offers the most clear-cut case study of how the standards have changed, not just from other presidencies but from Mr. Trump’s own first term.

“Let’s be honest — in the world of all the bad things he’s done, this is pretty small,” said Paul Rosenzweig, who was a senior counsel to Ken Starr’s investigation of President Bill Clinton and later served in President George W. Bush’s administration. “But it is a really good, easily understood example of how he has defined deviancy down.”

When Mr. Trump announced plans in 2019 to hold the G7 at Doral, it generated criticism not just from Democrats but from some fellow Republicans and even Fox News hosts. At the time, he was facing impeachment over his effort to strong-arm Ukraine into investigating Democrats and allies said it would undercut his support.ImageWhen Mr. Trump announced plans in 2019 to hold the G7 at Trump National Doral Miami, it led to criticism and the idea was scraped. This time his plan to hold the G20 there has generated little protest.Credit...Scott McIntyre for The New York Times

When Mr. Trump last year picked Doral for the G20 summit, he said he chose it because “everybody wants it there” and he promised that it would be cost-free. “We’re doing a deal where it’s not going to be money, there’s no money in it,” he insisted. “I just want it to go well.” He effectively hosted a practice run in March when he held a one-day meeting of Latin American leaders at the Doral club, a gathering that produced no uproar.

The White House did not respond to a request Friday asking why it was now appropriate to go forward with meetings at the president’s own property after canceling a summit there in the first term.

The only real Republican complaint about hosting the G20 at Doral was that Mr. Trump has invited Mr. Putin despite his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. As for the self-dealing, Republicans who once saw that as inappropriate have gone quiet. In 2019, Representative Mike Simpson of Idaho called the idea “politically insensitive” because it looked like “he’s doing it for his own benefit.” In 2026, by contrast, Mr. Simpson has endorsed the idea.

“Congressman Simpson supports what his colleague posted,” Lexi Hamel, his spokeswoman, said, pointing to an online statement by Representative Mario Diáz-Balart saying that he was “thrilled that the G-20 Summit is coming to Doral” in his Florida district. Asked about Mr. Simpson’s switch in positions, Ms. Hamel said, “A quote from seven years ago is quite a stretch,” without elaborating.

There are at least three major differences from seven years ago: First, Mr. Trump has fashioned a more pliant party by systematically using primaries to purge Republicans who defied him, sending an unmistakable warning to those remaining to stay in line.

Second, he has dismantled much of the regular apparatus of accountability in government by firing inspectors general; gutting the Office of Government Ethics and the Justice Department’s public integrity section; paralyzing the Federal Election Commission; and demoting, transferring or pushing out career prosecutors and F.B.I. agents deemed disloyal.

And third, Mr. Trump came into his second term more indifferent to criticism over possible ethical concerns. To win in 2024, he had to overcome two impeachments, four criminal indictments and a jury trial conviction on 34 felonies tied to hush money paid to an adult film actress, making him the first convicted felon ever to serve in the Oval Office.

In an interview with The New York Times in January, he explained that he did not feel the need to impose as many limits on his family’s business activities this time around “because I got no credit in the first term” and “because I found out that nobody cared.”

But while elected Republicans give him a pass, polls suggest that voters may in fact care when they decide this fall’s congressional elections. A record 89 percent of Americans said corruption is widespread in government, according to a poll released by Gallup last month, the highest level since the firm began asking the question two decades ago.

A separate survey by the Economist and YouGov last month offered registered voters 13 adjectives like “strong,” “effective,” “racist” and “dangerous” and asked which described Mr. Trump. The top choice of all 13 was “corrupt,” which 53 percent said applied to Mr. Trump, while only 23 percent said it did not and the rest had no opinion.

“Public outrage and pushback still work,” said Donald K. Sherman, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group. “But Trump’s second term has been filled with so much unprecedented and harmful corruption that it can be hard for the public to keep up with every story, and the members of his party who are still in power have been unacceptably permissive.”

Another example that got lost in the flood of news lately was the trademark application filed by Mr. Trump’s private business for Trump TV. The White House debuted Trump TV shortly after barring CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the building (a decision temporarily blocked by a judge) and promoted it as an unfiltered substitute for his followers.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

 

U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsNew York Times, Senate Races in Republican States Tilt Toward Democrats, Polls Find, Patricia Mazzei, Ruth Igielnik and Sophia June, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). Democrats are performing strongly in five reliably Republican states where they are trying to flip Senate seats to win control of the chamber, new New York Times/Siena polls found.

A month before the midterm elections, Democrats have opened leads or battled their way to ties or near-ties in five reliably Republican states where they are trying to flip Senate seats to win control of the chamber, according to new New York Times/Siena University polls.

Democrats lead among likely voters in the Senate races in Texas and Alaska, two states that consistently vote Republican, the polls found. They have an edge in Ohio, which has been tilting rightward for years. Republicans have a slim edge in Iowa, and Democrats are neck-and-neck with Republicans in Kansas, which has not voted for a Democratic senator since 1932.

President Trump’s deep unpopularity, disapproval of the Iran war and frustration over high gas prices and the cost of living are reshaping the electoral landscape, the polls found.

Taken together, the new polls suggest that the Democrats have multiple paths to retake the Senate majority, despite a challenging map that had favored Republicans going into the midterms. To win Senate control, Democrats need to flip four Republican-held seats while holding on to their current seats in three battleground states, a difficult task.

But there are signs that it is increasingly possible. On Friday, a top Republican super PAC pulled its money out of the Senate race in North Carolina, signaling that the party is not optimistic about being able to defend its seat there. The super PAC, called the Senate Leadership Fund, plans to redirect resources to Kansas, where Republicans have growing concerns about holding their seat.

The polling suggests Democrats are increasingly competitive in these Republican states. 

 Sleepy Don is frustrated.

Sleepy Don is frustrated.

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, Five Encouraging Senate Polls From The NYT, Early Vote Really Picks Up This Week, Hang Out With Some Inspiring Candidates This Weekend, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 3, 2026. Wonderful Candidate And State Party Interviews:  We’ve had some great reports from the battleground states and races in recent days.

No better way to get a sense of what’s happening out there then to hear from those on the front lines themselves. I promise watching a few of these discussions this weekend will lift you up and make you feel better about our party, our country, and our future.

Here’s what we got for you:

  • Josh Turek, our Senate candidate in Iowa, Roy Cooper running hard in North Carolina, and AG Aaron Ford running for Governor in Nevada
  • Eric Croft, Alaska Dem Chair
  • House Candidates - Jamie Ager (NC-11), Bob Brooks (PA-7), Paige Cognetti (PA-8), Cait Conley (NY-17), Christina Hines (MI-10), Jake Johnson (MN-1), Brian Poindexter (OH-7)
  • My weekly talk - Betrayed By Trump And His Allies The American People Have Put Their Faith Back In Us - And Now We Must Deliver
  • Another way to dive into the battlegrounds is to watch check this week’s Ad and Video Roundups to see the ads that are flying across the country right now.

Looking ahead Stuart Stevens joins us live on Monday at 230pm ET, Sarah Trone Garriott (IA-3) joins us Tuesday, Devon Murphy-Anderson of the Maine Democratic Party drops by on Wednesday, and Janelle Stelson (PA-10) is coming by on Thursday.Subscribed

The 2026 Election kicks into high gear this week with early in person voting starting in eight states: Arizona, Indiana, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, Wyoming -- while other states like California start sending out their mail ballots.

As we are now close to 1m people having voted in the 2026 Election I’m going to start my every-two-year early vote analysis using our friend Tom Bonier’s remarkable TargetEarly tool. Here is how the national early vote in 2026 compares so far to 2018 and 2022 on this same day in all three years. Yes, my friends, it’s encouraging but also very early!

What this data tells is not how someone voted but what their party affiliation is given their registration and what is called “modeled party” -- which can infer your party affiliation based on your vote history for those states without party registration. I will have more on this in the coming days and perhaps will bring Tom back to help you understand how this all works but get ready peeps -- the early vote is about to start coming hot and heavy, giving us an opportunity to run up the score and win these midterms in October -- not in November!

Trump has now dropped to -28 in the FiftyPlusOne job approval tracker for this first time this cycle. It’s just a stunning level of repudiation and rejection for the old, addled, painted, corrupt, malicious -- and REALLY UNPOPULAR -- orange guy:

Further confirming what a year of opportunity this has become for us the NYT dropped five encouraging battleground Senate polls this morning:

The Times also included this helpful chart to remind us that while this data is very encouraging at the end of the day all these races are close, Republicans have a lot more money than we do, and we just have to keep working hard:

Yesterday the Senate GOP SuperPAC paused its ads in North Carolina, essentially conceding the state to Roy Cooper. To understand how worried they are about defending these other states in pausing North Carolina they are hanging Michael Whatley, a former Chair of the RNC itself, out to dry. Abandoning a former RNC Chair a month before Election Day in a state Trump won just two years ago is a clear confirmation how bad things have gotten for the GOP.

The poll result from Kansas, and reports that the GOP SuperPAC is going to start spending there, means we need to start taking Kansas seriously here at Hopium. I know many of you have advocated for us to rally behind Adam Hamilton and I will be doing a deeper dive on this race now and will report back soon.

Yesterday Trump got a very bad jobs report. The economy produced very few jobs last month, and wages barely grew. This morning the country wakes up to a 30 year mortgage now clocking in at almost at annual 7.3% rate. Ugly, ugly stuff for the American people:

Yesterday we also discussed Trump’s escalating attempts to cheat in the 2026 Election. Today we learned that the monies for one of his current avenues of cheating, stealing money from tax payers to run political ads to bolster his image with voters, is coming from Congressional appropriated funds for

border security upgrades, efforts to combat drug trafficking and memorials for officers killed in the line of duty, according to federal spending records.

The NYT also has more reporting on this horrific and illegal abuse of power:

President Trump personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads praising him and his presidency, setting in motion a $20 million contract that used funds from the Department of Homeland Security, according to people familiar with the matter.

The ads have run across cable and network television — on Fox News, CNN and MS Now, with football games on Fox and with national newscasts on CBS, ABC and NBC, including “Meet the Press,” which Mr. Trump is known to watch.

Mr. Trump was eager to see the laudatory ads on the air and told Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to come up with the money from within the government, the people said. Mark Paoletta, the budget office’s counsel, and Will Scharf, the White House counsel, both said it would be legal to use D.H.S. funds. The president and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, both spoke with Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, about the ads.

On Sept. 20, U.S. Customs and Border Protection — which falls under D.H.S. — awarded the contract to LMD, a Maryland marketing firm, federal records show.

Jawdropping stuff, even for Trump. But further signs of how desperate they’ve become, and what a year of opportunity it has become for us……

Which is why it’s that time everyone. Time to……Go Kick These Corrupt Traitors’ Asses, Win The Midterms, And Prepare For The Fuckery To Come -- For It Is Coming (And May Already Be Here)

Three things you can do in addition to supporting our intrepid candidates and state parties:

  • Become an Early Vote Champion in your networks, communities, and organizations.
  • Sign up to become a Democracy Protector too. Our next training is this Wednesday, Oct 7th at 10pm ET.
  • Email photos of your electoral work or physical act of voting to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or via links on our daily chat. We want to start showcasing them here on Hopium.

 

texas map

New York Times, In Texas, Talarico Inspires a Recurring Blue-Tinted Dream , Robert Draper, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). After a dry spell of more than three decades, Democrats are daring (yet again) to believe they can win one or more top-of-the-ballot races in a vast and stubbornly red state.

In the go-big-or-go-home collective consciousness of Texas, no ambition is deemed too reckless, no daydream too wild. Save perhaps one.

It is the idea, fantastical to many as it is irresistible to others, that the Democrats will win a statewide race in Texas for the first time in 32 years.

According to the latest New York Times/Siena University poll of the race for U.S. Senate, James Talarico, a 37-year-old state legislator seen by national Democrats as one of the breakout stars of this cycle, is ahead of his Republican rival, Ken Paxton, the state’s scandal-plagued attorney general, by six points. The poll was conducted from Sept. 21 to Sept. 30. A survey from mid-September, the ReconMR/Siena Research Institute poll, also showed the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Gina Hinojosa, four points ahead of the three-term G.O.P. incumbent, Greg Abbott, the most dominant political figure in Texas.

Cue the fluttering heartbeats. Cue, as well, the eye-rolls.

Given how thoroughly Republicans have dominated the state, and how the hopes of Democrats have repeatedly crashed, some Texas pollsters remain skeptical.

“At some point, you do get conditioned by all that’s happened in the past,” said James Henson, the director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Politics Project. “I mean, you look at the trends and you have to admit that something’s going on. But you still don’t want to believe your lying eyes, because you’ve been burned for so long.”

 

Desiree Rios

Angela Paxton, a Texas state senator, appeared in a new ad urging Texans to vote for Republicans, including her estranged husband Ken Paxton (New York Times photo by Desiree Rios).

New York Times, As She Divorces Ken Paxton, His Wife Urges Texans to Vote for Him, Lauren McGaughy, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). In a new ad, Angela Paxton tells voters to focus on the “whole team,” not “individual players.”

Angela Paxton wants to clear the air.

Mrs. Paxton, the estranged wife of Ken Paxton, a conservative firebrand locked in a fierce battle for the U.S. Senate seat in Texas, is urging voters in a new ad to back the entire Republican ticket when they go to the polls next month.

While Mrs. Paxton doesn’t mention her husband — whom she is divorcing, alleging adultery — by name in the ad, she addresses “the elephant in the room” by telling voters they should look past their qualms with any single candidate and think about the future of the Republican Party.

“In a general election, it’s not as much about the individual players on the team. It’s about getting the whole team across the finish line,” she said. “Either we hold every Republican seat, or we hand the future of Texas to the other team.”

Mr. Paxton is trailing James Talarico, his Democratic opponent, in every recent poll, including one released by The New York Times and Siena University on Saturday. While Democrats have not won a statewide election in Texas in more than 30 years, Republicans have warned that the Senate race, and others, are more competitive now than in recent memory.

The ad, funded by Texas PAC, a political action committee affiliated with the main super PAC for Senate Republican leaders, could be a further indication of concern about Mr. Paxton’s chances in the race — especially among women. It also indicates that Mrs. Paxton is now part of a broader strategy to bolster the ticket.Get updates when new midterm election polls are added to our poll trackers. When new polling data drops we’ll send an update straight to your inbox. Get it sent to your inbox.

She recently gave a speech to a women’s club in Texas where she made similar remarks.

News Updates

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: rump Enters ‘Desperation Mode,’ Texas is a ‘Five-Alarm Fire,’ Administration Clears Way to Institutionalize Disabled Americans, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 3, 2026. With 31 days until the midterms, Donald Trump is entering desperation mode. In the past 24 hours alone, he appeared to post a Republican senator’s personal cellphone number over daylight saving time, renewed his promise of $5,000 checks if Republicans keep Congress, announced $90 payments to 20 million seniors weeks before Election Day, and told a half-empty arena in Alabama, a state he won by 30 points, to “pretend I’m on the ballot.”

The panic is spreading through his party. Republicans are now on track to spend more than $200 million trying to rescue Ken Paxton in Texas, with one GOP senator calling it “a five-alarm fire,” and Paxton’s own estranged wife, who is divorcing him, appeared in a new ad urging voters to look past “individual players” and support the whole Republican ticket. Plus, new records show the prosecutor in the Cornell case never reviewed witness statements before declining charges, and the Trump administration has walked away from decades-old protections that let disabled Americans live in their communities instead of institutions.

On Monday, I’m publishing my deep-dive investigation into how Trump has used taxpayer money for his own benefit, from the “God Made Trump” ads paid for with border security funds to the checks landing in battleground states, laying out exactly where the money came from, where it went, which laws may have been broken and where investigators should look. It’s the most comprehensive piece I’ve written, and I’ve put my lawyer’s hat back on to do it.

Work like this takes time and resources, and it only happens because readers like you make it possible.

Here’s the news:

Republicans Panic Over the Soaring Cost of Saving Ken Paxton as Trump Posts a GOP Senator’s Phone Number and Rallies to Empty Seats

With his approval at record lows and Republicans privately bracing to lose the House, Trump is entering desperation mode, and the past 24 hours show it. He appeared to post Republican Sen. Tom Cotton’s personal cellphone number on Truth Social, urging Arkansans to call him over his opposition to making daylight saving time permanent. He renewed his promise of $5,000 checks to every adult if Republicans keep the House and Senate, a roughly $1 trillion pledge that 66% of voters call “inappropriate” and 61% don’t believe he’ll deliver, while announcing one-time $90 payments, which he called “nearly $100,” to more than 20 million seniors just weeks before Election Day. He warned that a Democratic victory would bring “a 1929 disaster,” invoking the crash that triggered the Great Depression, and told a Mobile, Alabama, rally to “pretend I’m on the ballot” as entire rows of seats sat empty behind him in a state he won by 30 points. Meanwhile, his Justice Department held a high-profile news conference to announce charges against a Utah mail carrier who admitted dumping mail out of “laziness,” with the acting deputy attorney general insisting, “Remember, folks. Voting fraud is real,” and calling it “just the tip of the iceberg” without offering evidence.

Republicans are panicking over the skyrocketing cost of rescuing Ken Paxton’s Texas Senate campaign, with one GOP senator calling it “a five-alarm fire.” The Senate Leadership Fund poured another $60 million into Texas this week, bringing its spending there to a record $131 million, and with MAGA Inc. and other reservations, outside Republican groups are on track to top $200 million to save Paxton, Politico reports. “This is a slow-moving car crash,” one Texas Republican strategist said, putting the chance of a “catastrophic” outcome for the GOP Senate majority at 75%. GOP operatives in Michigan and New Hampshire are now complaining that money flowing to Texas should be going to their states, with one ally of New Hampshire nominee John Sununu asking, “Why? We’ve never had a problem in Texas.” Most public polling over the past two months shows Democrat James Talarico with an edge, though Paxton released an internal poll showing himself up 48% to 45%.

Senior Republicans have been privately pushing Trump’s team to spend more on Paxton, worried MAGA Inc. won’t come through after his leaked audio trashing Trump’s convention. A Trump operative said MAGA Inc. and its affiliates expect to spend about $45 million in Texas through Oct. 12, up from $20 million, but would not commit to spending beyond that date. The concerns escalated after the New York Times reported audio of Paxton telling donors “everybody’s numbers dropped” after Trump’s Dallas convention, and Trump told a Texas crowd that Paxton “can be a pain in the ass sometimes.” One Republican senator said of Paxton’s unforced errors, “Sometimes, I think [Paxton] wants to lose,” while a Texas Republican official said, “all this spend hasn’t changed anything.” White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles reassured Senate Republicans this week that there will be enough money for competitive races in the final stretch.

As She Divorces Ken Paxton, His Wife Appears in an Ad Urging Texans to Vote for the GOP Ticket. Angela Paxton, a Republican state senator divorcing Ken Paxton on grounds of alleged adultery, appears in a new ad urging Texans to back the entire Republican ticket, telling voters, “it’s not as much about the individual players on the team. It’s about getting the whole team across the finish line.” She doesn’t mention her husband by name, but addresses “the elephant in the room,” warning, “Either we hold every Republican seat, or we hand the future of Texas to the other team.” The ad, funded by a PAC affiliated with Senate Republicans’ main super PAC, comes as Paxton trails Democrat James Talarico in every recent poll, including a New York Times/Siena poll released Saturday, and signals GOP concern about his standing with women. At a recent speech to Republican women, Angela Paxton acknowledged the party has “some vulnerabilities on our ballot” that have been “particularly alienating to women,” though her spokesman has declined to say whether she’ll vote for her husband. Paxton, who has weathered a fraud indictment, impeachment on bribery and abuse of office charges and other scandals without a conviction, denies wrongdoing, while his campaign released its own ad this week featuring his daughter Mattie.

Trump appeared to post Republican Sen. Tom Cotton’s personal cellphone number on Truth Social, urging Arkansans to call him over his opposition to making daylight saving time permanent. “Tom Cotton, a friend of mine, is holding up a very important Bill,” Trump wrote of the Sunshine Protection Act, adding, “Call Tom on his cellphone... and let him know.” In a third post, Trump said if Cotton “were putting Arkansas first, he would give them an extra hour of daylight.” Cotton fired back that Congress has enacted permanent daylight saving time before and repealed it “once Americans experienced absurdly late sunrises in the winter,” adding, “Arkansans don’t want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I’ll always put Arkansas first.” The House passed the bill in July with bipartisan support, but the Senate has yet to take it up, and Trump has also touted support from PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp, who he said needs it so golf tournaments don’t “run out of sunlight.”

Trump spoke to rows of empty seats at a rally in Mobile, Alabama, failing to fill a 10,041-seat arena in a state he won by 30 points. The Daily Beast reported that entire rows behind the president at the University of South Alabama’s Mitchell Center sat empty as he tried to rally support for Republicans ahead of the midterms. The sparse crowd came even as Trump bragged at the rally that he had received “the highest vote total of any candidate in Alabama history.” Alabama Democrats had cast the visit as a sign of GOP nerves, with gubernatorial nominee Doug Jones saying Trump “sees what we’re doing in this state.” It’s the latest stop in a campaign swing through deep-red states that has also taken Trump to Texas and Oklahoma, rather than traditional battlegrounds.

Cornell DA Never Reviewed Witness Statements Before Declining Charges, as Data Shows the University Rarely Expels Students for Sexual Assault

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten based his decision not to charge anyone in the alleged Cornell gang rape on Jane Doe’s initial six-page statement, without reviewing witness interviews and other evidence police collected, according to records obtained by NBC News. On Nov. 25, 2024, when a campus police investigator approached his office about interviews they’d conducted, an investigator in Van Houten’s office replied that several attorneys “had read [Jane Doe’s] statement” and “all agreed that, based on [Jane Doe’s] statement, criminal charges would not be pursued.” Van Houten told NBC “there was nothing to review” because the kathy hochul 2017interviews flagged were frat members “declining to speak on the advice of their attorney,” but he didn’t respond when asked whether he knew about interviews with other fraternity members or tips from callers. Gov. Kathy Hochul, left, announcing Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor, asked, “In what world does the district attorney not even interview her or anyone else involved, or even request the full transcript?” Jane Doe has sued Cornell and seven Chi Phi members, alleging they sexually assaulted her over several hours while she was under the influence of ketamine, alcohol and marijuana.

New records also show Jane Doe wasn’t told about the decision not to prosecute for nearly two months, and her lawyer says she missed a critical chance to preserve evidence. Police informed her of the DA’s Nov. 25 decision only on Jan. 21, 2025, and her attorney, Thomas Giuffra, said she believed during that time that “they were still investigating,” adding, “If so, that is worse than I thought.” Van Houten said his office had “no part in the timing” and never interviewed her. Giuffra said that shortly after the alleged assault, she went to the university health center for a urinary tract infection she described as being “of a traumatic origin” but was not offered a rape kit, which he called “the first failure post assault when she was trying to get help,” noting DNA might have been recoverable within 48 hours. She underwent a sexual assault exam two weeks later, and Cornell did not immediately respond to NBC’s request for comment.

The records reveal police obtained part of a Snapchat thread in which one fraternity member announced there was “free p----” in the room where the alleged assault occurred. Van Houten said that material came from a witness rather than police, so there was “nothing to review.” But on Nov. 26, 2024, the day after the DA’s decision, police requested a fuller data history from Snapchat and received 1,665 pieces of data from five accounts in December. A campus police investigator wrote that only three snaps included Jane Doe or mentioned the incident and that none showed “anything that can be construed as being criminal in nature.” It’s unclear whether Van Houten knew about the request, and the attorney general’s office is now reviewing whether charges are warranted.

A USA TODAY analysis found Cornell rarely expels or suspends students accused of sexual violence, even as reported assaults on campus appear to be rising. Of more than 1,200 incidents of sexual assault, dating and domestic violence and stalking reported to Cornell’s Title IX office from 2018 to 2024, the school filed disciplinary charges in 162 cases, found someone responsible in 51, and issued just 14 suspensions and seven expulsions, with most of those found at fault receiving sanctions like probation or training. Cornell suspended or expelled people found responsible only 41% of the time, compared with 59% across 26 large New York colleges. Meanwhile, Cornell’s campus climate survey found 35% of undergraduate women reported unwanted sexual contact or penetration in 2025, up from 23% in 2023, even as reports to the Title IX office fell 41% from their 2018 peak. “Those two trendlines tell me that all students, including victims and perpetrators, believe that there is impunity for sexual assault at Cornell,” sociologist Nicole Bedera said, as the Trump administration formally reinstated its 2020 Title IX rules, which made it harder for schools to find students at fault, on Sept. 28.

Trump Administration Abandons Decades-Old Protections Letting Disabled Americans Live in Their Communities Instead of Institutions

A federal judge stripped “integration” requirements from a landmark disability rights regulation after the Trump administration switched sides in a lawsuit and asked the court to throw out its own rules. For nearly 50 years, federal regulations under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act have required federally funded programs to serve people with disabilities in “the most integrated setting” possible, rather than in nursing homes or institutions. The case, Texas v. Kennedy, began in 2024 as a challenge by Republican-led states to Biden-era protections for transgender people, but it morphed into an attack on the integration mandate, and by September the Trump administration joined the remaining five states, Alaska, Florida, Louisiana, Montana and Texas, in asking the court to strike it. “It is pretty significant and pretty unprecedented to see the federal government asking a court to vacate its own rules,” said disability rights lawyer Jennifer Mathis. Bruce Darling of the Center for Disability Rights said the ruling felt “like a knife in your chest,” adding that people are hearing the federal government “has made a determination that [disabled people] don’t have a right to live in freedom, that they can be locked up against their will.”

The ruling is part of a broader retreat from enforcement that is already hitting families, including medically fragile children in Florida. In June, the Justice Department issued an opinion saying it no longer reads federal law to require states to serve disabled people in the most integrated setting, even acknowledging its position is “out of step with the common understanding” of the Supreme Court’s 1999 Olmstead decision. In August, the department asked a court to throw out its own 2023 victory requiring Florida to provide in-home care so children with complex medical needs wouldn’t be placed in nursing facilities, and it dropped out of a long-running case over Texas allegedly placing thousands of disabled people in nursing homes. Mathis called the Florida reversal “incredibly heartless,” saying it means “ripping children away from families” and forcing them “to grow up in an institution.” The states argue the rules restricted how they could spend strained Medicaid budgets, with Florida’s attorney general’s office saying it joined the suit “to serve as a check on federal power, not to deny care,” while experts warn that without federal enforcement, disabled people may have to sue states themselves to get services.

Disability advocates say the right to community living still exists under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Olmstead, but “the right is only as good as the enforcement,” and they’re fighting back as the administration also targets disabled voters. A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a resolution reaffirming Olmstead, 100 members of Congress have urged the Justice Department to rescind its June opinion, and Delaware has already written the stripped regulations into state law, with George Washington University professor Alison Barkoff saying at least a dozen state leaders have called her about doing the same. Advocates are also pushing the bipartisan Latonya Reeves Freedom Act to codify the integration mandate in federal law. At the same time, a proposed rule from Russell Vought’s budget office would bar federal grant money from being used for voter registration drives, threatening $10 million a year Congress provides to help people with disabilities register, which ProPublica reports has helped narrow the voting gap affecting about 740,000 disabled voters. A former OMB general counsel called the voter rule “a massive across-the-board power grab,” while Cravins, a Louisiana mother whose toddler with Down syndrome relies on publicly funded therapies at home, put the stakes simply: “This affects children, this affects adults, it affects your elderly parents. It affects everyone.”

Other news:

Ted Cruz Calls JD Vance “Insecure” as Their 2028 Rivalry Spills Into Public. Sen. Ted Cruz fired back at JD Vance, right,jd vance oon Saturday after the vice president told NBC News, “It is really obvious to me that, at this very moment, Ted Cruz is running for president,” while insisting he himself is focused on electing Republicans. “In my experience, people engage in political bomb-throwing when they’re feeling insecure,” Cruz told Politico, adding that he’s focused on “helping us win on Election Day in the next 30 days.” Cruz pointed to his campaign travel in Georgia, Iowa, Nebraska, South Carolina and Texas, with trips planned to Alaska, Florida and North Carolina, and boasted that no Republican has campaigned for more candidates over the past decade. He also noted the irony that he “spent a full day on the road with JD Vance” during his 2022 Ohio Senate race, saying, “I was very glad to help him.” The clash comes as Vance is widely seen as the GOP’s 2028 frontrunner, though Cruz has said he doesn’t believe Vance is a sure thing and that he’ll “certainly be part of the discussion.”

Moldova’s President Slams Russia After Missile and Drone Debris Explodes on Moldovan Soil. Moldovan President Maia Sandu condemned Russia on Saturday after three missiles and two drones violated the country’s airspace during a Russian attack on Ukraine, with debris exploding on Moldovan territory. “Its war is dangerously reaching Moldova,” Sandu wrote, saying the weapons, including Banderol missiles, “violated our airspace and exploded on our soil.” Fragments were found in the eastern districts of Hincesti, Anenii Noi and Causeni, sparking a fire but causing no casualties, while Russian attacks across Ukraine killed at least eight civilians and injured 83 over the past day. It’s the latest in a string of incidents for Moldova’s pro-EU government, which faced three separate airspace violations last Wednesday alone. Meanwhile, Lithuania briefly shut down Vilnius airport and scrambled NATO jets Saturday after a dangerous object was spotted in its skies, possibly crossing from Belarus, as Europe faces a growing wave of airspace violations, sabotage attempts and hybrid attacks tied to Russia.

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Tennessee’s top prison official is resigning after the botched execution of Christa Pike, days after reports revealed he oversaw five “botched” executions across two states. Gov. Bill Lee announced Saturday that Corrections Commissioner Frank Strada will step down later this month as the state launches an independent investigation into what went wrong. Strada said he still believes the department “carried out its responsibilities in accordance with the established protocol,” but that stepping aside “is in the best interest of Tennesseans as the independent review moves forward.” Pike remains unconscious and on a ventilator, with her lawyers saying hospital staff are working to clear the two doses of pentobarbital from her system, which they believe entered her tissue rather than her bloodstream because of IV complications. “Frank Strada’s resignation does not change the fact that Tennessee is shrouding its executions in secrecy,” said federal public defender Kit Thomas, noting Strada’s troubled Arizona record “was well known” when Lee hired him. The head of the US Campaign to End the Death Penalty said advocates had long warned the governor about the state’s execution process, adding, “They were ignored,” while Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of classmate Colleen Slemmer, would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

A Florida jury acquitted former sheriff’s deputy Eddie Duran in the fatal shooting of Roger Fortson, a Black Air Force airman killed in his own apartment after a false domestic disturbance call. The jury deliberated for about two hours after a four-day trial before finding Duran not guilty of manslaughter with a firearm, a charge that carried up to 30 years in prison. Body camera footage showed Fortson answered the door holding a handgun pointed at the ground, and Duran fired multiple times before telling him to drop it. Duran, who was fired from the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office after the shooting, had his lawyer argue he was “doing his job” and that Fortson would still be alive if he hadn’t armed himself before answering the door. Fortson’s mother said she wasn’t surprised by the quick verdict and that the trial forced her to confront details she’d spent two years avoiding, adding, “I’m never going to hear my baby’s voice no more.” Attorney Ben Crump said the family will pursue accountability through a pending federal civil rights lawsuit, saying, “Roger’s life and his service will always matter.”

The Coast Guard is searching for an air ambulance jet with six people aboard that disappeared off the coast of Massachusetts during a medical evacuation flight from Bermuda to Boston. The FAA issued a search-and-rescue alert for the Canadian-registered Gulfstream G-100 around 1:20 a.m. Saturday after it lost contact, with four crew members and two passengers on board. Air and surface crews are searching an area off Nantucket, and ABC News reported, citing a source, that officials believe the plane rapidly descended 7,500 feet before hitting the water and that no Americans were aboard. The operator, Latitude Air Ambulance, said a delay in hearing from its crew “doesn’t mean that the worst has happened.” Massachusetts port officials confirmed the plane never arrived at Boston Logan, saying, “Our thoughts are with those onboard and their loved ones as the search continues.” The FAA is coordinating with the Coast Guard and the Rescue Coordination Center, and the identities of those on board have not been released.

The TSA is banning airport security officers from sitting down while checking travelers’ IDs and boarding passes, drawing fierce pushback from their union. The agency said the change keeps officers “on their feet and alert” and reinforces “our commitment to hospitality,” adding that all officers must meet fitness-for-duty requirements. The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents TSA officers, said it wasn’t consulted and that the chairs provide “basic ergonomic and safety support” for workers standing on hard surfaces all day, calling the move “basic safety and common decency for the workforce.” The union called it part of “a broad pattern” of disregard for employees, and urged workers and lawmakers to join a “collective resistance against this regime that is literally attempting to take out our workforce.” The change comes after a brutal year for TSA workers, who went unpaid for weeks during a 76-day government shutdown that drove some to quit and caused security lines to balloon. The union is also weighing legal action against the administration’s push to privatize security checkpoints at three airports.

Southern California is sweltering under a late-season heatwave, with temperatures expected to hover near 100 degrees in downtown Los Angeles and climb well into the triple digits inland. The National Weather Service expects temperatures 15 to 20 degrees above normal to last at least a week, raising the risk of heat-related illness and wildfires amid low soil moisture. A UCLA professor said Friday was nearly 7 degrees hotter than the hottest Oct. 2 on record and about 30 degrees above the historical average. Experts say the heat is being fueled by a marine heatwave driving a strong El Niño, and that climate change is making longer, more intense heatwaves more frequent, with one UCLA physicist saying, “it’s hard to escape that a warmer climate adds to the strength of heatwaves.” The one silver lining is that forecasts don’t call for the strong winds that would spread wildfires, though officials are urging residents to “stay cool, stay hydrated” and limit sun exposure. The heat coincides with Saturday’s first game of the Dodgers-Braves National League Division Series, and one researcher urged governments to invest in shade, calling it the “most effective way to keep people safe.”

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

 

Fascist leaders Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of German, and U.S. President Donald Trump

Fascist leaders Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of German, and U.S. President Donald Trump.

CounterPunch.org, Nuremberg’s Warning: When Law Legitimates the Machinery of Authoritarianism, Henry Giroux, Oct. 2, 2026. The legacy of Nuremberg is with us once again, less as a reminder of the power of the legal system to punish those who enabled and enacted the horrors of Nazi Germany than as a warning that the spirit of Nuremberg must be reclaimed as a moral and political imperative.

That spirit matters at a time when the U.S. Supreme Court is increasingly turning the law into an instrument of reactionary concentrated power, desecrating morality, crippling the foundations of democracy, and reproducing the worst dimensions of gangster capitalism.

Nuremberg made clear that judges and other officials cannot use the authority of law to cover up and legitimate actions that are morally depraved and politically destructive. Its lesson for the present is stark: when law is emptied of justice and used to normalize cruelty, annihilate democratic rights, and place concentrated power beyond accountability, legality itself becomes a weapon in the destruction of democracy. The reactionary Court has become part of a political order whose governing ethos increasingly resembles what Jeet Heer, writing of Trump, calls being “besotted by the romance of gangsterism.”

The recent Supreme Court ruling allowing the Trump administration to expand the use of its citizenship-verification database is more than another dispute over how elections should be administered. By a 6–3 vote, the Court lifted a lower-court order blocking the Department of Homeland Security from using an expanded version of the SAVE database, now linked to Social Security records, to assist states in checking voter eligibility. The danger is hardly abstract. As Stephen Prager reports in Common Dreams, the database contains known errors, raising the possibility that “many eligible voters may be at risk of having their voter registration wrongfully cancelled just weeks before midterm” elections.

The immediate electoral consequences may nevertheless be limited: federal law generally prohibits systematic removals from voter rolls within 90 days of a federal election. That safeguard does not eliminate the risks of erroneous removals or the privacy concerns raised by the plaintiffs, but it constrains the scale of systematic voter purges in the weeks immediately preceding the election. The ruling does not require states to use the system, and the underlying legal dispute remains unresolved, though the Court signaled its preliminary view of the merits, stating that the challengers’ claims “likely lack merit” and that it would likely reverse the district court’s finding that the administration had violated federal law.

Nor has the Court simply rubber-stamped every administration effort to rewrite election rules: earlier this month, it blocked Trump’s attempt to impose sweeping new restrictions on mail voting before the midterms. The significance of the latest ruling therefore lies not in claiming that every decision moves in the same authoritarian direction, but in confronting what happens when the nation’s highest court repeatedly removes barriers to concentrated power, strengthens an increasingly authoritarian presidency, and provides legal cover for a political project that attacks voting rights, intensifies racial exclusion, and aligns the machinery of the state with white-nationalist politics. What is being placed at risk is not simply constitutional restraint, but democracy itself.

Yet the significance of these decisions cannot be grasped if they are treated simply as isolated legal disputes. Walter Benjamin’s notion of “profane illumination” offers another way of reading them: the particular can suddenly illuminate the larger social forces condensed within it. As AK Thompson, drawing on Benjamin, argues, particular events can alert us to “the broader social process from which [they] derive.”

Read in this way, the Court’s rulings are not merely discrete constitutional decisions. They are fragments of a larger political transformation in which concentrated executive power, racial exclusion, the political power of wealth, attacks on voting rights, and the weakening of democratic restraints increasingly converge. The task is not to claim that every ruling is fascist, but to recognize what these decisions illuminate when viewed together: the emergence of a political order in which democratic institutions are increasingly reorganized to serve authoritarian ends. Fascism becomes visible not simply in a single spectacular act, but in the accumulation of institutional changes that make concentrated power appear lawful, ordinary, and legitimate.

The danger becomes clearer when law itself ceases to restrain authoritarian power and begins to legitimate it. That is why Germany in 1933 matters—not as a historical equivalent, but as a warning about what happens when legality itself is turned against democracy.

The comparison with Hitler’s Enabling Act of March 1933 must therefore be made carefully. The situations are not equivalent. Passed amid intimidation, political repression, and the exclusion of Communist deputies, the Enabling Act allowed Hitler’s government to make laws without parliamentary approval, even when they violated the Weimar Constitution. It did not merely weaken German democracy. It supplied the legal machinery for destroying it.

The point lies not in equating the two moments but in recognizing a political mechanism. Fascism does not need to abolish the law to seize and weaponize its authority. The Nazis captured courts, the civil service, education, culture, and administrative institutions and bent them toward authoritarian ends. Democracy was not attacked from outside. Its own institutions were seized, emptied of their democratic substance, and turned against the people they were supposed to protect.

After visiting the National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam, legal scholar Kim Wehle observed fascism does not always arrive through spectacular acts of force; it can also advance “by operation of law.” The historical warning should be taken seriously. Authoritarian power becomes especially dangerous when repression no longer appears as a violation of legal authority but is enabled through it, drawing upon the legitimacy, procedures, and institutional protections of law itself. The warning resonates in the present: in the expansion of detention and mass-deportation machinery, the military occupation of American cities, overt and dangerous attacks on free speech and the press, and the political cleansing of educational institutions. What was once unthinkable is being transformed into policy, while cruelty becomes routine and authoritarianism is woven into the everyday machinery of the state and everyday life.

German judges offer a particularly chilling example. The judiciary did not mount a serious institutional resistance to the Nazi seizure of power. Much of the legal establishment accommodated itself to the new regime. Dictatorship thereby acquired one of its most powerful weapons: the appearance of legality. Law remained in place, but its political function changed. It authorized power in the service of domination and mass destruction rather than restraining it.

But the question is not simply how authoritarian governments capture the law. It is whose interests the law protects, whose power it strengthens, and whose suffering it renders invisible. Fascism cannot be understood solely as the triumph of authoritarian leaders or the collapse of constitutional safeguards. Its history is inseparable from the relationship among political repression, class power, and the economic interests that support and benefit from authoritarianrule.

That is where the warning reaches the present. No single Supreme Court ruling is an American Enabling Act. The danger lies in accumulation: voting protections weakened, presidential power enlarged, the political power of concentrated wealth fortified, and the capacity to challenge executive power narrowed. What is being transformed is not simply constitutional doctrine but the political function of the Court itself. An institution charged with checking concentrated power is increasingly constructing the legal architecture that enables it.

Chief Justice John Roberts has rejected the charge that the Court has become a political institution, complaining that too many Americans now view the justices as “political actors.”

But the deeper issue is not whether the justices behave like elected politicians. It is whether the Court is using the authority of law to make authoritarianism appear constitutionally legitimate. When voting rights are weakened, presidential immunity expanded, concentrated wealth granted greater political power, and barriers to executive authority dismantled, the Court does more than interpret law: it alters the conditions under which democracy can survive. Law becomes a weapon of concentrated power, and constitutional authority becomes its shield. It is not merely failing democracy. It is helping to construct the legal machinery for its destruction. The abuse of law does more than legitimate a culture of cruelty; it helps make cruelty appear normal. As Susan Neiman argues in Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era, one of the great dangers of the present moment lies in the normalization of evil, a process through which cruelty becomes ordinary, injustice appears acceptable, and the unthinkable acquires the force of common sense. When cruelty and state violence are sanctioned by law, the terror of the unthinkable is absorbed into the language of common sense. Images of Gestapo-like ICE agents beating peaceful protesters become just another spectacle in the daily flow of violence, stripping brutality of its capacity to shock, outrage, and provoke resistance. What follows is the slow death of conscience itself.

The Court has increasingly shifted power upward, away from voters, legislatures, lower courts, and independent agencies and toward the presidency and the Court itself. In this sense, it has become a criminogenic institution: not because its justices themselves are criminals, but because its decisions can create the legal conditions under which abuses of power become harder to prevent, challenge, or punish. Under such circumstances, democracy is being strangled and the guardrails meant to protect it have become instruments for disabling it.

Citizens United v. FEC (2010) struck down restrictions on independent political expenditures by corporations and unions, vastly expanding the ability of private wealth to shape electoral politics. It did not formally declare that “corporations are people” or authorize unlimited direct corporate contributions to candidates. It did something more politically consequential: it strengthened the constitutional power of corporations and concentrated wealth to shape political speech, allowing economic power to exercise an increasingly powerful influence over politics and democratic life.

Elon Musk’s expenditure of more than a quarter-billion dollars supporting Trump and Republican candidates in 2024 offers a stark illustration of the political world that followed. There is a longer and darker history at work here. The Supreme Court has repeatedly stood not outside the history of American white supremacy but within it. Dred Scottconstitutionalized Black exclusion from citizenship; the post-Reconstruction Court helped destroy federal protections for Black freedom; and Plessy gave Jim Crow the sanction of constitutional law. The Warren Court broke decisively with important parts of that history, but the Roberts Court has driven the country backward. Representative Jamie Raskin puts the point starkly, arguing that the Court has “returned to the historic baseline of political White supremacy,” particularly through its dismantling of voting-rights protections. The language has changed, but the political work of racial domination does not require the vocabulary of Dred Scott or Plessy. It can operate through the allegedly neutral language of colorblindness, states’ rights, electoral integrity, and constitutional restraint—stripping history from the law while disabling the democratic means for confronting the racial hierarchies that history produced.

That history bears directly on the Court’s assault on voting rights. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Court struck down the coverage formula that made the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance system operative, disabling one of the law’s most powerful protections against discriminatory voting rules. Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021) narrowed the terrain further by making certain Section 2 challenges to voting restrictions more difficult.

In Louisiana v. Callais (2026), the Court went further, holding that Section 2 did not require Louisiana to create the additional majority-Black district at issue and that the resulting race-based district could not survive constitutional scrutiny. The decision further narrowed the legal terrain on which racial representation and voting rights can be defended.

The Court’s assault on established rights has extended beyond voting. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), it overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, eliminating the federal constitutional right to abortion that had stood for nearly half a century and returning the power to regulate abortion to the states. Dobbs was more than the destruction of a longstanding reproductive right. It demonstrated the willingness of the Court’s conservative majority to use its power to strip away an established constitutional protection on which generations of women had relied.

The Court has simultaneously enlarged presidential power. In Trump v. United States (2024), it created a constitutional doctrine of presidential criminal immunity: absolute immunity for actions within the president’s core constitutional authority and at least presumptive immunity for other official acts, while leaving unofficial conduct unprotected. The decision fundamentally altered presidential accountability by giving presidents new constitutional protection against criminal prosecution for exercises of official power.

The pattern has only intensified. In Trump v. CASA (2025), the Court sharply restricted the power of lower federal courts to issue universal injunctions against executive action. In Trump v. Slaughter (2026), it expanded presidential control over independent regulatory agencies. In National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC (2026), it struck down limits on coordinated spending between political parties and candidates. And now, with the citizenship-database ruling, the Court has allowed the administration, while litigation continues, to expand a system that states can use to challenge voter eligibility. Different cases, different doctrines, but the same political trajectory: power concentrated in the presidency, protected for the wealthy, and increasingly insulated from democratic constraint.

The Enabling Act helped clear the way for Gleichschaltung, the coordination of German political, social, and cultural life with the Nazi state. Political parties disappeared, trade unions were abolished, state governments were subordinated, the civil service was purged, and education, law, culture, and professional life were brought under Nazi control. Within six months, Germany had ceased to be a multiparty democracy.

The question, then, is not whether the United States is Germany in 1933. History does not repeat itself on command; instead, it leaves warnings written in its ruins. Primo Levi understood this with extraordinary clarity when he warned that “every age has its own fascism,” whose signs appear wherever “the concentration of power denies citizens the possibility and the means of expressing and acting on their own free will.” Fascism, in this sense, need not return wearing the uniform of the past. It emerges through the institutions, technologies, fears, and forms of power particular to its own historical moment.

The ghost of Nuremberg nevertheless hangs over this history. Among the lesser-known proceedings that followed the trials of the major Nazi leaders was the 1947 Jurists’ Trial, in which judges, prosecutors, and officials of the Reich Ministry of Justice were prosecuted for their participation in a legal system that had transformed persecution and state violence into instruments of law. The analogy must not be abused: the crimes prosecuted at Nuremberg and the decisions of the present Supreme Court are not historical equivalents. But the principle that emerged from those proceedings remains indispensable. Judicial office does not place those who wield the law beyond questions of responsibility. The robe cannot become a sanctuary from accountability when law itself is turned into an instrument of authoritarian power. As the judgment in the Nuremberg Jurists’ Trial put it with unforgettable force, “The dagger of the assassin was concealed beneath the robe of the jurist.”

The lesson for the present is not that America requires another Nuremberg tribunal. It is that democracy cannot survive if those who exercise immense judicial power are imagined to stand beyond democratic accountability simply because their decisions arrive clothed in the language of constitutional law. The deeper question raised by the Roberts Court is therefore not simply whether particular rulings are conservative, reactionary, or profoundly unjust. It is what forms of accountability become necessary when a nation’s highest court repeatedly uses the authority of law to dismantle the very conditions that make democratic accountability possible in the first place.

That question cannot be separated from the politics of memory. As Marcelo Rubens Paiva argued in a 2015 interview cited in Cristina Buarque de Hollanda and José Szwako’s Disputed Pasts, “not having a Nuremberg trial in Brazil in the 1980s contaminated the process of democratization and our current democracy.” The warning is crucial. The demands of resistance must also include the work of remembrance: counting, documenting, preserving, and publicly naming the legal abuses, democratic injuries, and moral violations committed under the cover of institutional authority. The record must be kept, not for vengeance, but because democracy cannot defend itself against abuses it has been taught to forget. There can be no manufactured innocence for those who use the authority of their offices to legitimate the machinery of authoritarian power, and no political amnesty purchased through national amnesia.

That is why the struggle over law is also a struggle over memory, responsibility, and the future. When institutions created to restrain power are reorganized to serve it; when courts turn domination into doctrine; when concentrated wealth acquires constitutional protection while democratic rights are stripped away; and when authoritarian measures no longer need to violate the law because they arrive bearing its authority, silence becomes a form of complicity and forgetting becomes an invitation to normalize once again the cruelties, crimes, and authoritarian practices that memory was meant to prevent.

What is often missed in analyzing law as an instrument of domination is its role as a pedagogical force. Law does more than prohibit, punish, and exclude. It teaches people who counts as a political agent, who has access to power, and who has the right to participate in decisions that shape their lives. When law becomes a mechanism of exclusion and disposability, it denies particular groups both political rights and access to the institutions and public spaces in which they can understand how power works, develop a critical consciousness, imagine alternatives, and create solidarities through social movements, education, and cultural work. Legalized illegalities function as forms of exclusion that weaken the conditions in which people learn to interpret their experiences, understand their place within relations of power, and act collectively to change them. This repressive use of the law restricts political agency while also attacking the conditions necessary for its development. This is a form of pedagogical terrorism in which law is used to weaken the knowledge, social relations, and collective capacities necessary to recognize, resist, and transform oppressive relations of power.

There is an even more ominous logic at work here, one that moves beyond the politics of disposability toward what Brad Evans and I have called a politics of disappearance (forthcoming in Theory, Culture,& Society). Disposability abandons populations deemed economically or politically surplus; disappearance goes further by erasing the social, legal, historical, and moral conditions through which their lives can be publicly recognized and their suffering made visible. The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to temporarily allow the Trump administration to resume third-country deportations makes this distinction especially urgent. Migrants can now be sent to countries with which they have no connection, without the protections required by the lower court to contest the danger of persecution or torture. Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned in the Court’s earlier intervention in the same litigation that the policy could expose “thousands to the risk of torture or death.” This is more than a politics of expulsion. It points toward a politics of disappearance historically associated with fascist and authoritarian regimes, in which those marked as unwanted are removed from the spaces of legal protection, public visibility, and moral responsibility. They enter what might be called a “vortex of erasure,” where criminalization, surveillance, detention, bureaucratic exclusion, forced removal, and organized forgetting reinforce one another.

Recognizing how law can be turned into an instrument of authoritarian power also raises the question of what will be required to undo the damage it has sanctioned and made possible. Fascism does not always announce itself by smashing the legal order. It can advance by capturing that order, hollowing it out, and turning the machinery of democracy against democracy itself. If democracy is ever to be rebuilt from the damage of the present, the task will not be to forgive and forget in the name of national unity, civility, or a return to normal. It will be to remember, to document, to judge, and, where the law permits, to hold accountable those responsible for abuses of power. No amnesia. No manufactured innocence. No impunity. Without truth and accountability, there can be no democratic future.

Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department in Canada and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His most recent books include: The Terror of the Unforeseen (Los Angeles Review of books, 2019).

More On Campus Rape, #MeToo Claims

joyce vance civil discourse logoCivil Discourse, Legal Analysis: Jane Doe, Joyce Vance, right, joyce vanceOct. 3-4, 2026. Jane Doe is the name by which we know the young woman who has come forward to say she was gang raped in a room at the Chi Phi fraternity house while she was a student at Cornell in 2024.

Following the incident, the local DA looked at the case but has not prosecuted. Jane Doe filed a 101-page civil lawsuit, which sparked outrage as her allegations came to light. Last Thursday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul appointed state Attorney General Letitia James as special counsel, saying she’d lost confidence in the local DA.

The situation is complicated. Looking at news reports and media appearances by people involved, there appears to be a difference in who had access to what evidence when the DA appears to have decided against going forward, depending on whether you’re hearing from Cornell, local law enforcement authorities, or the DA himself. It makes sense to bring in a new prosecutor who can look at the evidence with fresh eyes and make independent decisions about whether there is sufficient evidence to prosecute a criminal case and, if so, against which potential defendants and on what charges.

Some of the evidence in the case which has been made publicly available is horrific, like a screen shot from a Snapchat conversation that uses language more reminiscent of a sex trafficking organization than a college party. But rape cases are often complicated, and here, there will be issues of consent and intoxication among others that will have to be carefully parsed based on the evidence and New York state law. And like so many victims of sexual assault, Jane Doe’s immediate reaction was to blame herself before she slowly came to see herself as a victim. That pattern complicates prosecutive decision-making.

For instance, when it comes to consent, Jane Doe’s civil complaint sets out one of the issues prosecutors will have to grapple with.

New York’s college standards require affirmative consent. Consent can be initially given but then withdrawn. Although there have been reports that suggest that Jane Doe voluntarily went to the fraternity and had a prior relationship with at least one of the men involved, the civil case argues she was incapable of consent at the time sexual conduct occurred because of her incapacity due to alcohol and the ingestion of other drugs that she suggests they induced her to take. To further complicate matters, the standard for consent in New York can depend on whether a victim was voluntarily intoxicated. But under New York law, when consent can no longer be given, sexual activity must stop.

This shows why a thorough investigation is essential. Prosecutors cannot make a decision about whether they have a case until they understand precisely what happened. And while the question that underlies an investigation like this is whether a crime or crimes were committed, the real question prosecutors have to answer is “can we prove it beyond a reasonable doubt to a unanimous jury?” But the fact that rape cases can be difficult to prosecute doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be pursued. The facts must be assembled, the law assessed, and a decision made on that basis and no other.

There will be a lot of evidence for AG James to consider:

  • Police interviews with Jane Doe and others.
  • The Title IX investigative file—Federal law requires institutions that receive any federal funds to conduct a formal administrative inquiry into allegations of sexual assault, which can include victim, witness, and potential defendant statements among other materials.
  • Any additional material in possession of the University, for instance, other allegations of misconduct involving the fraternity.
  • Additional materials generated by the DA
  • Any relevant statements made to the media.

After evaluating the available evidence, James will likely have additional leads she will want investigators to run down for her. She may try to interview key figures. And because there are multiple possible defendants involved, she may try to develop a cooperating co-defendant.

But it’s important that we not prejudge the evidence and jump to the conclusion that a crime was committed and that it’s prosecutable. A rush to judgment isn’t helpful. Accusations have been made. Now it’s time to let a prosecutor with every reason to give Jane Doe the serious consideration she deserves a chance to do the work. Mimi Rocah, the former District Attorney in Westchester County New York, as well as a former federal prosecutor put it like this, “I hope that AG James conducts an investigation that everyone can have faith in. Not everyone will agree with the outcome whatever it is - but a fair process is essential to faith in the justice system going forward.”

In the civil lawsuit, Jane Doe alleges that Cornell, Chi Phi, Delta Delta Delta (her sorority), and others, including alumni and board members, failed to protect her “from being sexually assaulted and raped by multiple members of the Xi Chapter of Chi Phi Fraternity at Cornell University.” She also names individual defendants who she alleges committed “heinous criminal sexual acts against Plaintiff.” There are additional claims, including breach of contract and New York state law violations.

This case comes at a time when Americans have been actively reconsidering how we, as a society, approach sexual assaults and sex crimes. It started with the Me Too movement. The Epstein survivors forced many people to open their eyes, and E. Jean Carroll’s successful civil cases against Donald Trump raised the issue of why a woman might go decades before coming forward to accuse a man who assaulted her. This case forces us to look at an issue that people know has been overlooked for far too long—sexual assault on college campuses. As Jane Doe writes in her civil complaint, “she never knew that the University had been the scene of numerous incidents of sexual assault and rape in the months and years prior to her arrival. Students were afraid, protesting, and demanding reforms.” By the time she started school, Cornell was advising students on campus and “implementing anti-sexual violence training in the University’s Greek houses, advising incoming students about the risks of sexual assault and harassment in college, and offering support services to victims/survivors.” Cornell, of course, is not alone.

But unfortunately, instead of aggressively pursuing Title IX cases and its other authorities, the Trump administration has abandoned campus sexual assault cases to pursue its anti-trans agenda. As my former DOJ Civil Rights Division colleague Shaheena Simons posted on LinkedIn, “I post a lot about what my former DOJ office is doing on higher education. Here’s what they are not doing: They have not announced a single Title IX investigation, finding or resolution about campus sexual assault. The gutted Department of Education has similarly turned its back. Instead, DOJ’s (and ED’s) Title IX agenda is laser-focused on directing harm and hostility at trans students. This is how they purport to protect women and girls in schools.” She noted candidly that while prior efforts “weren’t ever enough and they weren’t always perfect … we prioritized students and we conducted fair and careful investigations.” Today, we have only a state investigation and a private civil case, with no federal action.

So we struggle with this issue, as with so many others, in an environment where the federal government turns a blind eye to important societal matters. The criminal investigation, along with the civil case, will be important to Jane Doe and to the men accused of raping her. But it will also have significance as we try to evolve our culture in the absence of leadership from the White House. Rachel Foster, a leading anti-trafficking attorney known for her work with the Epstein survivors, for which she was named to the Time100 list of the world's most influential people in 2026, put it like this: “Hopefully it will crack open something that needs to be cracked open.”

There is lots more to come. We’ll track it here at Civil Discourse.

New York Times, How Cornell Punished Each of the 7 Men Accused of Sexual Assault, Sharon Otterman, Hurubie Meko and Debra Kamin, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). Summaries obtained by The New York Times offer a detailed look at the discipline meted out to the men accused of sexually assaulting a fellow student at Cornell University.

The lightest punishment called for writing a paper and completing training. The most severe was expulsion from the school.

After a woman attending Cornell University accused seven fraternity members of sexually assaulting her in 2024, the university convened a closed proceeding to determine what had occurred and whether those men should face discipline.

Since then, the sanctions imposed on each of the men, and the reasoning behind those decisions, have remained secret. The school has said little.

But detailed summaries of the punishments obtained by The New York Times provide the first look at how Cornell administrators apportioned blame for the alcohol and drug-fueled gathering that the woman has said left her shattered and degraded.

Two of the fraternity members were expelled. Another, who had already graduated, was barred from campus. Two more were suspended. The remaining men were handed lighter punishments, the summaries show.

All of them have denied any wrongdoing, and the Tompkins County district attorney declined to prosecute in 2024. None of the men have been charged with a crime. Their fraternity, Chi Phi, has been banned from campus.

Still, since allegations from the woman who has become known as Jane Doe surfaced in a lawsuit on Sept. 16, they have touched off intense anger over sexual abuse on campus and why more is not done to punish those responsible. Others have criticized what they see as a rush to judge the seven men involved.

In her lawsuit, Jane Doe claimed that, from the start of her encounter involving the seven fraternity members, she was incapable of consent because she was severely intoxicated. The lawsuit inflamed particular ire by stating that the defendants were all “afforded the opportunity to mitigate their conduct by submitting essays to Cornell,” an assertion Cornell has said did not accurately reflect what occurred.

Combined with more than 1,000 pages of interview transcripts, police reports and other records gathered by Cornell investigators and previously obtained by The Times, the discipline summaries show that the university based its decisions on a broad and complicated body of evidence.

In the end, the punishments handed out by the three-member panel, which met on Zoom over 12 days in May 2025, varied widely. The panel, which enforces federal civil rights at the university under Title IX provisions, did not conclude that Jane Doe was sexually assaulted by all the men she had accused, according to the discipline summaries.

The university investigative files outline in excruciating detail what the fraternity members were accused of doing on the night of Oct. 19, 2024.

It was Matthew Ingalls whom Jane Doe originally went to visit at the Chi Phi fraternity house at about 11 p.m. She walked there alone from a bar to see him, with her intoxication level from drinking through the evening at about a 5 out of 10, she told investigators.

After she arrived, Mr. Ingalls asked her if she wanted to have a threesome with Jonathan Newell, Jane Doe said. During that encounter, she said, the men gave her ketamine and alcohol. Eventually, other men engaged in sex acts with her without her consent and while she was incapacitated, she said.

At the end of the night at the fraternity house, when Jane Doe was near hallucinating, there was more sex, she told investigators.

Expulsions were handed to Mr. Ingalls and Mr. Newell — the man who sent a Snapchat message to other fraternity members encouraging them to enter the bedroom where Jane Doe was undressed, the discipline summaries show.

The discipline summaries show that the panel found Mr. Ingalls responsible for sexual assault, judging that he was willing to manipulate, exploit and endanger Jane Doe for his own self-interest and the entertainment of others.

A lawyer for Mr. Ingalls declined to comment.

Mr. Newell was also accused of sexual assault, the university files show. Jane Doe told police on Nov. 14, 2024, that he had struck her buttocks with enough force during intercourse to leave bruises, and that he had manipulated her to ingest ketamine.

It was not clear whether Mr. Newell had hired a lawyer, and he did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

New York Times, D.A. in Cornell Rape Inquiry Declined to Review Additional Evidence, Michael Rothfeld and Hurubie Meko, Updated Oct. 3, 2026. Records show that campus police officers informed Tompkins County prosecutors that they had conducted additional interviews beyond taking a statement from the woman who said she was raped.

The Tompkins County district attorney said recently that the evidence he reviewed in 2024 made it impossible for him to bring charges in the Cornell University rape inquiry.

But records obtained by The New York Times show that the same district attorney’s office declined to review any additional evidence gathered by the campus police department beyond a six-page statement signed by the former student, now known as Jane Doe.

The decision not to review the additional evidence has not been previously reported.

On Nov. 25, 2024, a Cornell police investigator, Jeffrey Northrop, spoke to a member of the district attorney’s staff, Jeff Huddle, about additional interviews the police had done, the records show.

Prosecutors did not express interest, saying they agreed that based on the woman’s statement, “criminal charges would not be pursued in this case,” Mr. Northrop wrote in a note documenting their call.

By that point, the police had conducted numerous interviews, reviewed chat messages, logged anonymous tips, reached out to lawyers for some of the accused men and spoken to at least two others, the records show.

kathy hochul 2017On Friday, Gov. Kathy Hochul, left, harshly criticized the district attorney and the Cornell police for the way they handled the investigation and appointed Attorney General Letitia James as a special prosecutor, giving her power to bring criminal charges.

All of the men named in the lawsuit have denied any wrongdoing, and none has been charged with a crime.

matthew van houtenReached on Thursday, the Tompkins County district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, right, said by email that any additional records gathered by the Cornell police were “not pertinent to our analysis because we had Jane Doe’s comprehensive account of the events.”

Mr. Huddle referred questions to the district attorney.

The interaction between Mr. Northrop and Mr. Van Houten’s office was one example of what experts said appeared to be numerous law enforcement shortcomings in the investigation of Jane Doe’s account.

Mr. Van Houten has said that based on Jane Doe’s lawsuit he would reopen the investigation.

But his office’s decision at the time not to examine additional evidence that had been gathered, or to seek any additional inquiry beyond a single — and as it turns out, incomplete — campus police statement, was a stark departure from how complicated sex crimes investigations should be handled, said former prosecutors and other experts.ImageMatthew Van Houten smiles for the camera. He is wearing a dark blue suit and striped tie.The Tompkins County district attorney Matthew Van Houten has been harshly criticized for his handling of the Cornell rape inquiry.Credit...Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office

Mr. Van Houten has defended his original decision not to prosecute, saying Jane Doe’s account in her police statement “described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious and consensual.”

He said the facts in her initial statement did not constitute a crime under New York law, and that he had never been contacted by Jane Doe or her lawyers before her lawsuit.

The former prosecutors, however, said the district attorney’s approach fell short in multiple ways, including his failure to bring Jane Doe in to be interviewed by his office and his apparent total reliance on a statement recorded — and, more broadly, an investigation conducted — by the university police.

“We would never rely on a campus police investigation,” said Rick Trunfio, a former sex crimes prosecutor in upstate New York and now an adjunct law professor at Syracuse University. “There’s too many problems with that.”

Mr. Trunfio and other experts said the investigation should have been handed off to a specialized police or prosecution team like the special victims bureau he founded at the Onondaga County District Attorney’s Office. Also problematic, he added, is that the Cornell University Police Department was “beholden” to the school, which would have had to report under federal law if a gang rape on campus was prosecuted by civilian authorities.

New York Times, Cornell Case Revives Anger About Handling of Campus Sexual Assault Cases, Sephanie Saul and Emma Goldberg, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). A lawsuit alleging rape at Cornell has led to an outpouring of women sharing stories about sexual violence on college campuses.

Campus sexual assault survivors and their supporters have published essays in school newspapers and inundated social media in solidarity with the complainant, known in court records only as Jane Doe.

Some are using the familiar #MeToo hashtag of an earlier movement to combat sexual abuse and harassment. Others have adopted a new one: #IAmJaneDoe.

In one opinion article in the University of Pennsylvania campus newspaper, students wrote that “sexual violence happens far too often on college campuses everywhere.”

“It’s time to face the fact that the ‘Cornell incident’ isn’t just born of Cornell problems, or limited to a Cornell issue,” the students wrote.

The outrage flooding social media and rising up on campuses follows similar waves of disgust about campus sexual violence that emerged more than a decade ago and then reignited after the broader #MeToo reckoning that began with Hollywood sexual assault revelations. Driving the campaign in support of Ms. Doe is a feeling that not enough changed after similar movements.

The Penn students wrote, for example, that past responses have been bureaucratic, and that universities “prioritize bolstering their own image” instead of making deeper changes that protect women from assault.

Celebrities have also joined the outcry. Mariska Hargitay and her Joyful Heart Foundation, which supports domestic violence survivors, posted: “Survivors deserve to be believed and kept informed. Silence protects no one. To her: we support you.”

During an appearance in Ithaca, N.Y., Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called the 2024 episode at Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity house part of a “culture of rape” on college campuses.

In the lawsuit, the young woman says she was assaulted at the Chi Phi house on Cornell’s campus, names seven men who were involved and says the university and law enforcement agencies did not do enough to punish or pursue prosecution of the men.

The men involved have denied the allegations, while the university, the fraternity and prosecutors have said they responded appropriately given the information they had at the time.

Lawyers point out the difficulty of prosecuting such cases in court, particularly when many complainants, including Ms. Doe, change their accounts over time. Records obtained by The New York Times present a murky picture of what took place. The woman indicated in one text message to one of the men that “nothing illegal” had happened. But she also told police investigators that “I can say with 100 percent confidence I was raped.”

The widespread condemnation of accused men could create an unfair dynamic, according to Andrew T. Miltenberg, a lawyer for one of the Cornell men, Gillio Lopes. He said the “danger in a case like this is that an accusation, amplified often enough, can harden into a verdict before the evidence is ever tested.”

Mr. Miltenberg, known for representing students against sexual misconduct claims, said the attention was compounded by statements of public officials that seemed to side with Ms. Doe.

On Sept. 28, Attorney General Letitia James posted on X: “What this young woman has been forced to endure is horrific and unacceptable. I’m holding her in my heart and prayers.”

Several days later, Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed Ms. James to take over investigating the case.

Mr. Lopes has unequivocally denied the allegations, Mr. Miltenberg said.

The online outpouring in support of Ms. Doe has also led to a backlash, with some right-wing commentators condemning her and others trying to reveal her identity.

Federal data shows that nationally, there were 6,000 to 6,200 reports of rapes on campus a year from 2014 to 2019, or about eight to 11 per 10,000 on-campus students. But reports declined drastically during the pandemic years, when many students took classes remotely. Since then, they have begun to rise again.

The data does not show how many reports resulted in action or were substantiated.

But the available data suggests the problem has been widespread. Over a quarter of undergraduate women reported some form of nonconsensual sexual contact by physical force, or because they were unable to consent, according to a large survey of students conducted by the Association of American Universities in 2019.

That survey also found evidence of a growing awareness about rules and resources, as universities built out new policies and training.

At Cornell, a survey conducted by the university found that roughly one-third of undergraduate women said they had unwanted sexual experiences.

For some current Cornell students and recent graduates, reading Ms. Doe’s claims of assault has prompted them to share memories of their own experiences of sexual misconduct. Many said that the allegations weren’t entirely surprising because of how often they had heard about friends who said they had been assaulted at parties.

“To be honest, there are so many during my time there that it almost feels like it all blurs into one,” said Claire Ting, who graduated from Cornell last year and served in student government, referring to conversations with friends about upsetting sexual experiences. “We would see posts and discussions talking about the sexual assaults that happened,” she added. “The buzz would die down and then it would happen again.”

The response, she said, was “hurdle after hurdle of bureaucracy.”

There have been other moments in recent decades when campus sexual assault has dominated the national conversation. When the documentary “The Hunting Ground” was released in 2015, for example, it galvanized a movement.

Lady Gaga sang the film’s theme song at the Oscars, where she was introduced by Joseph R. Biden Jr., then the vice president. At the time, statistics showed that one in four women on campus reported being sexual assault victims. Just months before the film’s release, the launch of a White House campaign to end campus sexual assault — “It’s On Us” — seemed to signal a changing tide.

More than a decade later, though, the allegations at Cornell prompted questions among survivors about whether anything has changed.

Kacey Lee, who graduated from Cornell in 2025, said she was both “shocked and not shocked” in the fall of 2024 when she heard about Ms. Doe’s reported assault.

“Being around frat culture and knowing how people can be there was a level of — not that I was expecting it, but I was not the most surprised,” Ms. Lee said.

While federal data shows that Cornell has reported as many as 28 campus rapes in some recent years, its on-campus undergraduate population is the largest of any Ivy League school. When adjusted for its size, Cornell mirrors many of its peer institutions.

New York Times, Cornell President Calls Rape Inquiry ‘Defining Moment’ for Campus, Claire Fahy, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). Michael I. Kotlikoff, below right, said in a video the university would be more transparent, hold Greek groups accountable and improve sexual assault prevention.

The president of Cornell University assured the campus community that officials would take action in the wake of sexual assault allegations, promising in his first personal statement about the incident that “this will not be a moment that passes.”

michael kotlikoffIn an eight-minute video, the president, Michael I. Kotlikoff, acknowledged the distrust that has gripped his campus since a lawsuit alleging a gang rape at a campus fraternity garnered national attention. He promised that the university, which has been criticized for its handling of the initial allegations, would be more transparent going forward.

Mr. Kotlikoff, who has served in the role for about two years, struck a conciliatory tone, saying the university supported an independent investigation and would work to find ways to hold Greek life accountable.

“This has been one of the most difficult weeks in our history,” Mr. Kotlikoff said.

A woman, identified in court documents as Jane Doe, claimed in a lawsuit filed last month that she was sexually assaulted in October 2024 at a Chi Phi fraternity house on Cornell’s campus by seven men and that the school and local law enforcement failed to punish those involved appropriately. None of the accused men have been charged with a crime, and they have denied wrongdoing, and the university has defended its handling of the allegations.

More On Russia's Invasion of Ukraine, Trump Family's Russian Ties

New York Times, Russia Turns to Striking Kyiv’s Bridges, Threatening a Vital Lifeline, Constant Méheut, Oct. 4 2026 (print ed.). The bridges, used by many commuters in the Ukrainian capital, are the latest target in a broad Russian bombing campaign against infrastructure.

Russia has a new target on its rapidly growing list of Ukrainian infrastructure to bomb: bridges.

Over the past three days, Russia has attacked bridges in the capital, Kyiv, six times. Three drones hit one in the city’s south on Thursday, and the same bridge was struck twice on Friday. On Saturday morning, another attack hit a bridge in the north.

The structures still stand, but the damage and the threat of more attacks have prompted the local authorities to restrict or stop traffic on five of the capital’s six road bridges. That has severely disrupted daily life in Ukraine’s largest city, which, like much of the country, is bisected by the broad Dnipro River.

Many in Kyiv commute between the mostly residential eastern bank, home to roughly a million people, and the western bank, where most government offices and businesses are located.

The bridges are the latest target in a sweeping Russian strike campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure that is far from the front lines. That campaign has expanded in recent weeks to include warehouses, trains, data centers, medical depots and steel factories and comes on top of an intense assault on Ukraine’s power grid that Russia plans to escalate this winter.

The goal, Ukrainian officials and military experts say, is to devastate Ukraine’s economy — and the country’s ability to sustain the war effort — while breaking the population’s will to fight by making everyday life increasingly difficult.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

Ukraine has withstood other such campaigns since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. But a critical shortage of air defenses coupled with Moscow’s growing arsenal of weapons now leaves the country more vulnerable than ever to such attacks.

“The enemy is destroying Kyiv,” the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko said in a social media post on Friday. “It is no longer possible to pretend that we can live as we did in peacetime!”

Mr. Klitschko’s message echoed a feeling that has grown across the capital in recent weeks: The relative safety Kyiv enjoyed through most of the war — demonstrated by crowded cafes and nail salons — is over.

Drones now buzz over the city all day, setting off near-constant air raid alerts. People caught outside during an attack can be seen checking phone apps that track the drones’ flight paths. On Monday, a drone hit a university in the city center and set the building ablaze, shocking residents of a neighborhood that had been spared Russian attacks for most of the war.

The assault on Kyiv’s bridges could disrupt life even more. Officials temporarily shut the northern bridge after Saturday’s attack, closed the southern bridge to cars and the metro, and limited traffic on three other bridges.

The first attack on the southern bridge, on Thursday, happened as a metro train was crossing the bridge. No one was injured, but service across the bridge was suspended. On Friday evening, residents crossing the bridge on foot watched as another drone struck it, according to a video posted on social media.

Destroying the bridges would be difficult. They are large concrete structures that would need to be hit multiple times to be taken down. Ukraine’s own attacks on Russian bridges have yielded mixed results. The Kerch Bridge, which connects the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula to Russia, closed temporarily several times after attacks but was never knocked out.

Still, attacks could weaken the bridges’ supporting structures and prompt the authorities to close them indefinitely rather than risk a collapse.

The result would be a logistical nightmare for Kyiv and the whole country. Bridges in the capital carry all kinds of food and equipment across the Dnipro River, which runs north to south through Ukraine and splits the country in two. There would be few alternatives if they closed.

Special Report: Deep Dive Into Trump Family Corruption

The Parnas Perspective, Investigation: Trump Is Defying Congress' Power of the Purse. Here’s a Roadmap for Investigating His Misuse of Taxpayer Funds, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 4, 2026. He was once forced to pay $2 million for misusing his own charity's money for politics. Now it's the federal Treasury. Here's the roadmap Congress needs. Continued from above and amplified below.

It’s time to expose Trump’s misappropriation of funds. The ad opens with soft music and a familiar cadence. “I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle the deep state, and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild,” a narrator says. “Somebody to ruffle the feathers. So God made Trump.”

It is a three-minute riff on Paul Harvey’s famous “God Made a Farmer” speech, created by a pro-Trump meme group. It played at the Republican Party’s midterm convention in Dallas last month. And like at least a dozen other ads now airing on national television, it ends with an unusual disclaimer: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.”

According to the New York Times, those ads exist because President Trump personally told his budget director to find taxpayer money to pay for them. The money, the Washington Post found, came from funds Congress set aside for border security, drug interdiction and memorials for officers killed in the line of duty.

The ads would be a scandal on their own. They are not on their own.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

 

The legal team of former Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith, shown at left in a collage with his onetime DOJ colleagues, is now focused as private sector attorneys on pro-democracy litigation. They are chieving considerable success, according to a report by independent journalist Scott MacFarlane, formerly a longtime reporter for CBS News. The legal team of former Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith, shown at left in a collage with his onetime DOJ colleagues, is now focused as private sector attorneys on pro-democracy litigation. They are chieving considerable success, according to a report by independent journalist Scott MacFarlane, formerly a longtime reporter for CBS News. 

Scott MacFarlane News, The Comeback Kids: Jack Smith’s Legal Team Scores Series of Recent Victories, Scott scott macfarlaneMacFarlane, right, Oct. 4, 2026. After years of being smeared and maligned, the former Jack Smith Special Counsel team is enjoying a big series of victories.

The indignities have been many.

And cutting.

And cruel.

Former Special Counsel Jack Smith and his former team of attorneys have been smeared, fired, subjected to Trump Administration scrutiny and …. they’ve witnessed their career case get whitewashed and literally deleted from the U.S. Justice Department’s records.

It’s been rough sledding, in the two years since Smith and his team were forced to abandon their criminal cases of President Trump before the cases could go to trial.

So… we shouldn’t ignore that Jack Smith and his team have enjoyed a helluva good week and month.

Several of them have enjoyed big successes in court – and in the court of public opinion – in recent days.

The recent wave of victories include securing the freedom of a wrongfully accused former US Olympian and halting Trump’s attempts to circumvent the federal courts.

“We got into the job to do justice and protect democracy,” said former Smith deputy J.P. Cooney, “It’s that passion that caused so many of us to find other ways — from outside the department — to do the exact same thing.”

Jack Smith’s landmark cases against Trump resulted in the the first-ever criminal indictments against a former President, including for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. It was an historic milestone.

But Trump’s victory in the 2024 Presidential election forced Smith to seek dismissal of the case, due to federal policies prohibiting the criminal prosecution of a sitting U.S. President.

Team Trump exacted retribution against Smith’s team, when the President returned to office in January 2025. Some were fired. All were maligned as a “politicized” or “weaponized” actors.

Their comeback is underway. And it picked up steam this week.

Instead of prosecuting a career case, Smith and several of his deputies are standing up for norms of U.S. democracy and against the politicization of the Justice Department.

Some of the former prosecutors on Smith’s team have joined legal organizations who are seeking to counter the Trump Administration’s shattering of democratic norms.

And they’ve scored some big wins.

“This day is a victory!”

Mary Dohrmann was a “prosecutor’s prosecutor.” After serving as an appeals court clerk, Dohrmann began an eight-year tenure with the Justice Department. Dohrmann tackled some of the toughest cases in, arguably, the highest profile US District Court in America: Washington, D.C. federal court.

Dohrmann won the “United States Attorney’s Team Award” for her work on trial preparation for the enormous prosecution of more than 1,500 people for the U.S. Capitol Siege. She eventually was plucked for Smith’s team, to help with the prosecution of Trump.

Trump’s re-election cut Dorhmann’s career short at the agency.

So she has pivoted to work with the DC-based Washington Litigation Group and taken up some high-profile causes. Dohrmann is representing a group of FBI employees who argue they were unlawfully fired for using a de-escalation technique to prevent a riot in DC in 2020, after the murder of George Floyd.

Last week, in a narrower case, Dohrmann secured a big win. It was Dohrmann who was part of the defense team for former Olympian David Hearn, who was the target of a discredited criminal case for allegedly damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

In a blistering 26-page opinion, a judge dismissed the case against Hearn on Thursday, finding the Justice Department’s case was unfounded. The judge noted how it was an admitted mistake by a Reflecting Pool contractor that caused recent damage to the landmark facility, not Hearn. Dohrmann’s victory on Hearn’s behalf was so overwhelming, the judge ordered the case dismissed with prejudice, to ensure it can never be brought against Hearn again.

Hearn’s good name has been restored. For Dohrmann, it was an unequivocal win against a Justice Department that has targeted a number of Trump’s critics and amplified political causes championed by Trump.

Dohrmann told Scott MacFarlane Reports, “Other Americans can expect the government will think twice before engaging in this kind of conduct again.”

“It’s a painful reality”

J.P. Cooney was also fired shortly after Trump returned to power. Cooney, is a talented public corruption prosecutor, who had previously served as a top deputy to Smith. Cooney also helped lead a series of high-profile cases in the Washington, D.C. federal courthouse, including the prosecution of former Trump aide Steve Bannon, for contempt of Congress in 2021.

Speaking from his office in Virginia, Cooney told Scott MacFarlane Reports, “It’s a painful reality to see the circumstance that this department has put our country in.”

Cooney prepared for a run for Congress in Virginia earlier this year, but stood down from the campaign after a state court tossed a redrawn map of US House districts.

Instead, Cooney is seeking a much different victory.

Cooney has joined the government watchdog group Democracy Forward in filing a federal civil lawsuit against the Trump Administration, seeking a court order to prevent the deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at polling places in November.

Cooney and the team scored a series of high-profile plaintiffs to join the suit, including the city of Denver and the League of United Latin American Citizens, which is the largest Latino civil rights group in the nation.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

New York Times, Democrats Lead Governor Races Deep in Republican Territory, Polls Show, Anna Griffin, Ruth Igielnik and Sejal Govindarao, Oct. 4, 2026. Democratic advantages in the races for governor in Texas, Iowa, Ohio and Alaska reflect deep unhappiness with President Trump and the economy. A Republican leads in Kansas. 

One month until Election Day, voter dissatisfaction with the economy, concerns about political extremism and frustration with President Trump have Democrats within reach of flipping four Republican-held governorships, opening a wide lead in Iowa and an expanding advantage in Ohio among likely voters, according to new polls by The New York Times and Siena University.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican fixture in the state for decades, is now narrowly behind his Democratic challenger, Gina Hinojosa.

The Democratic candidate also has an advantage in the race for governor of Alaska. The only place surveyed where the Republican is ahead in the campaign for the governor’s office in Kansas, now held by a retiring Democrat.

Democratic-Republican Campaign logosThe polls also show Democrats with an advantage in the Senate in these states, with Democrats ahead in Texas and Alaska, and with the edge in Ohio, while the races in Kansas and Iowa are neck-and-neck.

While national attention has fixated on the fight for control of Congress, governorships will be important heading into a wide open presidential election in 2028. Not only will governors influence the electoral process, they will help shape the redistricting wars that are likely to spill into 2027 and beyond.

The polling results underscore how Democrats have been able to push into states that have traditionally favored Republicans, as voters have soured on Mr. Trump amid frustration over the economy, rising gas prices and a deeply unpopular war in Iran.

Still, the polls show that even as many of the Republican candidates for governor are at a disadvantage, they are outrunning the difficult political environment. Mr. Trump’s approval rating stands at just 40 percent across the five states. In four of five states surveyed, the Republican candidates for governor are doing better than the president’s approval ratings.

Democrats, meantime, are boosted by broadly well-liked candidates who are, for the most part, seen as more politically moderate than their Republican opponents.

lauren egan bulwarkThe Opposition via The Bulwark, Trumpism in Trouble on the Prairie, Lauren Egan, above, Democrats have found an opening in one of America’s reddest states. Now comes the Republican money.

I just got back from Kansas, where the race for Senate between GOP Sen. Roger Marshall and Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton has become shockingly competitive. Tonight’s edition is all about what I saw on the ground. But before we get into it, a quick reminder that this type of reporting is only possible thanks to Bulwark+ members!

STANDING IN FRONT OF A CROWD of roughly a hundred people on Friday evening, Adam Hamilton didn’t have the aura of a man whose entire life was about to be picked apart, whose political ambitions were set to be battered by millions of dollars of negative TV ads, whose campaign had become a vector of immodest hope for Democrats dreaming of an unfathomably successful midterm election.

Instead, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Kansas seemed calm, projecting an easy confidence as he stood on a hay bale.

Hamilton was addressing a block party of voters who had come to see him. And as those voters helped themselves to beer and wine from coolers—as the evening chill kicked in and the kids kept busy roasting marshmallows on a Solo stove—he seemed to welcome the target now on his back. He informed the crowd that the Senate Republicans’ top super PAC had pulled its money out of North Carolina and was diverting it to Kansas. The state’s airwaves, he warned, would feature a blizzard of ads against him, starting maybe within a matter of hours.

“They are afraid,” he said, his voice unshaken. “They should be afraid.”

Few Democrats would have imagined Kansas as a Senate battleground at the start of this cycle. Even fewer would have picked Hamilton as a candidate Republicans would fear. But the 62-year-old founding pastor of the nearby Church of the Resurrection, the largest United Methodist congregation in the country, has become just that—combining an atypical political biography with a congenial on-the-trail approach to potentially unseat incumbent Roger Marshall.

The polls suggest it could very well happen.¹ The question now is whether Hamilton peaked too early. With a month to go, Republicans are rushing resources to the state. And even Hamilton acknowledged that he was entering a new phase of the campaign. Despite breaking fundraising records in Kansas, he told the crowd he still needed to raise millions more. He didn’t hide the personal toll that the campaign was taking on his church, his community, and his family.

When I asked Hamilton about it, he was confident in a way that perhaps only someone who regularly draws thousands of people to his church pews can be, saying:

“These are commercials that anybody who’s thoughtful is going to look at these and go, ‘That’s not true. That doesn’t reflect who Adam is.’ We have 24,000 [church] members, and they have lots of friends, and their friends know that’s not who my friend’s pastor is.”

THE LAST TIME KANSANS elected a Democrat to the Senate was in 1932, as part of the massive anti-Hoover and anti-Republican wave brought on by the Great Depression. Since then, the state has voted reliably Republican on the national level.² Donald Trump won here by 21 points in 2016, 15 points in 2020, and 16 points in 2024.

In my conversations with Hamilton advisers and Kansas Democratic operatives, they were sanguine about the history and the challenge ahead. To win a Senate seat here this year, they said, would require both a vulnerable incumbent and an error-free campaign.

So far, Hamilton has run a masterful race. And Marshall has proven quite vulnerable.

The senator has been criticized for rarely holding public events and for spending more time at his home in Florida than in Kansas. Perhaps his biggest vulnerability, however, has been the reporting—published by the New York Times—that he sued more than 700 patients for failing to pay medical bills during his decades-long career as an obstetrician-gynecologist, resulting in 81 of those patients getting arrested. Hamilton’s campaign quickly turned it into an effective ad featuring one of those patients.

But all this would largely be non-determinative if not for Donald Trump. The president’s agenda has had a particularly brutal impact on Kansas. Medicaid cuts are squeezing Kansas’s rural health care system. And the state’s large agricultural industry, already reeling from Trump’s tariffs and beef-import plan, is struggling to keep up with skyrocketing diesel prices. Recent ICE raids at meat-processing plants in southwest Kansas have only further enraged those in the livestock industry.

“There’s more frustration with the administration than we’ve seen previously,” Matt Teagarden, CEO of the Kansas Livestock Association, told me. The association made the rare decision not to endorse in the Senate race this year after having supported Marshall in the past. “I can see some factors coming together that explain the sense that I have, that many have, that this Senate race is close. There’s some fatigue from agriculture generally.”

Hamilton has pitched himself as someone who understands that fatigue and who can alleviate it. He does so not just by leading with his pastoral grace, but also by leaning on his decades of preaching to church pews filled with Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike.

He says he’s an “independent-minded” Democrat. He talks openly about how the national party has become too extreme and needs to “return to the center.” While “moderation” might be a dirty word elsewhere in the Democratic coalition, it defines Hamilton’s approach to politics and to interactions on the trail. 

New York Times, Trump, Critic of Voting by Mail, Urges Republicans to Do It in Midterms, Tim Balk and Evan Gorelick, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). It was the latest mixed messaging from President Trump, who regularly votes by mail, but has made baseless claims that the practice is “inherently corrupt.”

President Trump, who has long staged a rhetorical and legal assault against voting by mail even as he used the method himself to cast his ballots, released a video on Saturday urging Republicans to vote early and by mail in the midterm election.

“Vote early. Vote by mail. Or vote in person on Election Day,” Mr. Trump, who has been using the power of his office to try to restrict mail voting, says in the video, which he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.

Mr. Trump also promoted a Republican Party website offering guidance on voters’ options for casting ballots.

It was the latest contortion from Mr. Trump on mail balloting. He has for years promoted unfounded claims that mail voting is rife with fraud, while working to restrict the practice for Americans, an effort that has been stymied by lawmakers and the courts. As recently as July, he said “mail-in ballots are inherently corrupt.” (There is no evidence of widespread fraud in mail voting.)

When Mr. Trump, a Florida voter, mailed in his ballot in a special election in March, he said he had done so “because I’m president of the United States.” Days earlier he had said, “Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating.” He voted by mail again for the primary in August.

He has also criticized early voting in the past.

Mr. Trump’s post on Saturday comes just more than four weeks ahead of a midterm election in which Democrats have built momentum, polls show. Mr. Trump’s low approval ratings and voter concerns about high prices driven up by the war with Iran have put Republicans at risk of losing control of both chambers of Congress.

Republicans have feared that the president’s assaults on mail balloting put them at a competitive disadvantage in a challenging election year.

About a third of all ballots cast in the 2024 presidential election were sent by mail, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

In March, Mr. Trump signed an executive order that would have restricted mail ballots. The action was struck down by the Supreme Court in September. He also sought unsuccessfully to push Congress to approve legislation that would have sharply curtailed mail voting.

Richard Pildes, an election law expert at New York University, said Mr. Trump’s statement appeared to be a major shift and a response to his efforts to restrict mail-in voting failing “across the board.”

“He’s realizing that his efforts to change policy on mail-in voting have basically run aground at this point, and he’s shifting gears,” Mr. Pildes said.

New York Times, ‘Creepy, Weird’ Steve Hilton Ad Denounced by California Republicans, Anna Griffin, Oct. 4, 2026. An online spot for Mr. Hilton, the G.O.P. candidate, is full of sexual innuendo that has befuddled Republicans and Democrats watching the race for governor in California.

It’s the stuff of bad romance novels, not a modern political ad. But the new digital spot from the California Republican gubernatorial candidate, Steve Hilton, is at least drawing attention — and condemnation, much of it from fellow Republicans.

Plus a whole lot of “huhs?”

The ad, titled “Just Try It, California,” shows two Gen Z women, both with facial piercings, neon-hued highlights and heavy glam makeup, sitting on a bed in a darkened room. There’s a Pride flag behind them and soft mood music playing in the background.

The woman on the right, decked out in a cropped “Resist” T-shirt, says she can’t believe what she’s about to do. The young woman on the left strokes her hair and tells her not to be nervous.

“I’ve never done anything like this before,” the first young woman says. “What if my dad finds out?”

The other woman tells her to close her eyes, takes her hand and says, “I’ll do all the work.”

Cut to their laps, where it turns out they’re casting a vote for Mr. Hilton.

A sexually suggestive double-entendre involving the proper way to close a mail-in ballot ends the ad.

The video went online last week, and the negative response — along with the befuddlement — was immediate. Much came from other California Republicans.

“This is a clear example of exactly why good people are walking away from the Republican Party,” the G.O.P. candidate for state superintendent of public instruction, Sonja Shaw, wrote on X, calling the ad “creepy, weird, disturbing garbage.”

Michael Gates, the party’s candidate for attorney general, also denounced the ad on X, accusing Mr. Hilton of using “young women as political tools” and saying “California families deserve better.”David Townsend, a longtime political consultant in California who has often worked for moderate Democrats, said the video was “too clever by half.”

“Are you equating voting for Hilton with trying to have a lesbian relationship? Are you equating it with grooming?” he said. “It manages to be both offensive and confusing.”

Special Report: Deep Dive Into Trump Family Corruption

djt god made trump adThe Parnas Perspective, Investigation: Trump Is Defying Congress' Power of the Purse. Here’s a Roadmap for Investigating His Misuse of Taxpayer Funds, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 4, 2026. He was once forced to pay $2 million for misusing his own charity's money for politics. Now it's the federal Treasury. Here's the roadmap Congress needs. [Continued from above.]

It’s time to expose Trump’s misappropriation of funds. The ad opens with soft music and a familiar cadence. “I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle the deep state, and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild,” a narrator says. “Somebody to ruffle the feathers. So God made Trump.”

It is a three-minute riff on Paul Harvey’s famous “God Made a Farmer” speech, created by a pro-Trump meme group. It played at the Republican Party’s midterm convention in Dallas last month. And like at least a dozen other ads now airing on national television, it ends with an unusual disclaimer: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.”

According to the New York Times, those ads exist because President Trump personally told his budget director to find taxpayer money to pay for them. The money, the Washington Post found, came from funds Congress set aside for border security, drug interdiction and memorials for officers killed in the line of duty.

The ads would be a scandal on their own. They are not on their own.

Before I became a journalist, I was a lawyer, and investigations were my specialty. So for this piece, I’m putting my legal hat back on. What follows is not a verdict. It’s a roadmap: what we know, which laws may have been broken, and exactly where investigators should look, from the documents they should demand to the witnesses they should put under oath.

I know this reporting will make powerful people uncomfortable. I’ve already received threats. But I’m not backing down, and this is only the beginning. If you believe this work matters, subscribe today and help me keep digging.Subscribed

They come from the same department that, under its previous secretary, steered more than $220 million in no-bid advertising contracts through a company created days before it won the work. In the same weeks they began airing, Trump started mailing checks to voters in battleground states and promised $5,000 to every adult if his party keeps Congress. His budget office moved to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars Congress had already approved, in a maneuver the Government Accountability Office has now found illegal. His Justice Department tried to create a nearly $2 billion fund by settling a lawsuit Trump himself filed. And all of it echoes a case from seven years ago, when a court ordered Trump to pay $2 million for misusing his own charity’s money for political purposes.

Because if Democrats win the House in November, they will have subpoena power. Inspectors general, the GAO, state attorneys general and future prosecutors have their own tools. And the first step to accountability is knowing exactly where to look.The Rules the Money Is Supposed to Follow

Every investigation starts with the law, and here the law is not complicated.

Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution says: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” The framers put the power of the purse in Congress, and specifically in the House, because they had watched English monarchs govern by their own will and spend as they pleased. Congress decides how public money is spent. The president’s job is to spend it the way Congress directed.

Over two centuries, Congress has built a body of law around that principle. The Purpose Statute, 31 U.S.C. § 1301(a), requires that money be used only for the purposes Congress specified. The Antideficiency Act, 31 U.S.C. § 1341, bars agencies from spending money Congress never authorized. The Impoundment Control Act of 1974, a product of the Watergate era, bars presidents from simply refusing to spend money Congress appropriated. Since the 1950s, appropriations laws have barred spending on “publicity or propaganda,” which the GAO has interpreted to cover communications that are “purely partisan” or “designed to aid a political party or candidates.” The Hatch Act bars officials from using their authority to influence elections. Federal procurement rules require contracting “with complete impartiality and with preferential treatment for none.” And federal criminal statutes prohibit theft or conversion of public money and paying or offering to pay someone to vote.

None of these laws enforce themselves. That is the problem, and it is why a roadmap matters.I. “God Made Trump”: The $20 Million Ad Campaign

The story of the ads begins, according to the New York Times, in the Oval Office on Aug. 7.

Trump was meeting with Republican strategists, his top political adviser James Blair and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. The meeting was supposed to be about spending from his super PAC to help Republican candidates nervous about the midterms. But the president, the Times reported, was far more interested in something else. He turned to his assistant, Natalie Harp, and asked her to show the group the kind of imagery he liked: Trump before vast crowds, Trump beside Marine One, Trump with fighter jets streaking overhead. He made clear, according to the Times, that his presidency needed to be promoted “front and center.”

Weeks later, the Times reported, Trump told Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought to come up with money for laudatory ads from within the government. OMB counsel Mark Paoletta and White House Counsel Will Scharf both said it would be legal to use Department of Homeland Security funds. Trump and Wiles both spoke with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin about the ads.

Then the money moved.

On Sept. 19, according to OMB data reported by the Washington Post, the budget office added $20 million to a DHS line item for “commemorative events.” DHS had originally planned to spend $1 million there. The new money came from nearly $6.7 billion Congress allocated to Customs and Border Protection in the One Big Beautiful Bill, for specific purposes: inspection equipment at ports of entry, air and marine response, border surveillance, biometric technology, screening people crossing the border, screening unaccompanied children and fighting drug trafficking. A House Budget Committee report described “commemorative events” as “Line-of-Duty death memorials, Department or agency anniversaries, and commendation ceremonies.”

The next day, CBP awarded a $20 million contract for a “national media campaign” to LMD, a Maryland marketing firm. A second firm, LMO, purchased the airtime, according to a person familiar with the arrangement cited by the Times.

What aired was not a typical public service announcement. CNN has identified at least 13 spots. Besides “God Made Trump,” there is “King of the Jungle,” which intercuts lions hunting with images of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Gavin Newsom. “Resilience” features Trump’s Fulton County mugshot and footage of the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. “Military Hype” replays Trump’s speech launching the Iran war. One spot promotes the UFC fight Trump hosted at the White House. One, the Times found, is identical to a Trump campaign video from 2024. Another used a song without the artist’s permission, prompting a cease-and-desist letter.

At least $5.5 million has been spent so far, with ads airing on Fox, CNN, CBS, ABC and NBC, during NFL games and on “Good Morning America,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and “Meet the Press,” a show Trump is known to watch. The White House says the campaign will expand.

The White House calls the ads public service announcements meant to remind Americans “to love their country.” Trump told reporters, “I’m not promoting myself because I’m not running for office. I’m promoting the country,” and added, “If somebody said that that’s wrong, I’ll gladly pay the money.” He has not. His super PAC, MAGA Inc., entered the fall with more than $400 million, which Trump has described as “my money that I control.”

Legal experts and lawmakers in both parties say the White House defense does not hold up. “In order to use this fund for anything, you have to point to one of the eight things in this list,” Cerin Lindgrensavage, a lawyer with Protect Democracy, told the Post. “To the extent these ads are propaganda, there really isn’t funding that has a permissible purpose that would include their use.” Rep. Jamie Raskin has called them potential “felony criminal theft and conversion of government property for political campaign purposes,” and with Rep. George Whitesides asked the GAO to investigate possible violations of the Hatch Act, the Antideficiency Act and laws against embezzling public funds. Republican Sen. John Cornyn said the ads are not an appropriate use of taxpayer money: “It’s not even a close question.”

The GAO has found violations of the propaganda ban before, under both Obama and George W. Bush. But those cases involved policy campaigns. There is no precedent for a president using government money to air ads glorifying himself in an election season.

Where investigators should look. The central question is intent, and the documents will answer it. Investigators should start with every communication among Trump, Wiles, Vought and Mullin about the ads, including any instruction to “find” money. They should obtain the legal opinions from Paoletta and Scharf, and, critically, any dissent from career lawyers at OMB or DHS, because in my experience, the most revealing document in a case like this is the memo someone wrote warning that something was wrong. They should demand OMB’s apportionment records for the Sept. 19 transfer, the full LMD contract and any subcontracts, and records showing who created and approved each ad, including whether Trump personally selected imagery, as CNN has reported. And they should examine whether the White House coordinated with MAGA Inc., the Trump-linked nonprofit Securing American Greatness, which aired a similar ad weeks earlier, or former campaign vendors.

The witnesses write themselves: Vought, Wiles, Mullin, Paoletta, Scharf, Harp, CBP contracting officers, executives at LMD and LMO, and the White House digital staff who produced the spots.

II. The Blueprint: Kristi Noem’s $220 Million Ad Machine

The “God Made Trump” ads did not come out of nowhere. They came out of the same department, through the same kind of contract, after a playbook was already in place.

In February 2025, weeks after taking over DHS, then-Secretary Kristi Noem launched a taxpayer-funded ad campaign that would grow to more than $220 million, tripling the department’s ad budget, according to Bloomberg. DHS invoked the “national emergency” at the border to skip the competitive bidding process normally required for government contracts, arguing that any delay “will increase the spread of misinformation.” The early ads featured Noem thanking Trump. A later one, filmed at Mount Rushmore during the government shutdown, showed Noem on horseback in chaps and a cowboy hat as images of Trump Tower and Trump raising his fist after the assassination attempt flashed across the screen.

A ProPublica investigation found that $143 million of the money went to Safe America Media, a Delaware company created just days before the deal was finalized, which listed its address as the Virginia home of a veteran Republican operative. Another $77 million went to a Louisiana Republican ad firm. Subcontractors were not disclosed in federal contracting databases.

One of them, ProPublica found, was the Strategy Group, a Republican consulting firm with deep ties to Noem. It ran ads for her 2022 South Dakota campaign. It had worked extensively with her top DHS adviser, Corey Lewandowski. And its CEO, Ben Yoho, is married to Tricia McLaughlin, Noem’s chief spokesperson at DHS, whose office was listed as funding the contracts.

McLaughlin told ProPublica she had recused herself: “My marriage is one thing and work is another. I don’t combine them.” DHS said it “has no involvement with the selection of subcontractors” and that its contracting is done “by the book.” After senators pressed Noem at a hearing in March, the Strategy Group said it had been paid about $226,000 for five film shoots and dozens of ads, a small fraction of the total.

The pattern predated Washington. As governor of South Dakota in 2023, Noem’s administration paid the same firm $8.5 million in state funds for an ad campaign in which Noem dressed as a dentist, a plumber and a state trooper. A former Noem administration official told ProPublica a top aide warned the governor would be angry if Yoho’s company didn’t win, and contemporaneous text messages corroborated the pressure. The firm also paid up to $25,000 in “consulting” fees to Madison Sheahan, one of Noem’s closest advisers, who later became the second-in-command at ICE.

“It’s corrupt, is the word,” said Charles Tiefer, a leading authority on federal contract law, who said the arrangement warranted investigations by both the DHS inspector general and the House Oversight Committee. “Hiding your friends as subcontractors is like playing hide the salami with the taxpayer.”

According to the Times, Noem’s ad campaign ultimately drew Trump’s disapproval and became the justification for replacing her. But the machinery stayed. The same department, the same national media contracting model, the same blurring of government messaging and political promotion. The only thing that changed was whose face was on the screen.

Where investigators should look. Investigators should obtain the emergency justification DHS used to bypass competitive bidding and identify who approved it; Safe America Media’s formation documents and any contact with DHS before it existed; a complete list of subcontractors and payments under the $220 million; McLaughlin’s recusal records; and records of Noem’s personal approval of payments over $100,000, a requirement she imposed on herself. And they should ask the question that connects the two campaigns: was LMD selected through the same emergency authority or a similar process, and do any of the same vendors appear in both?

III. Canceling What Congress Approved

While DHS found $20 million for ads about the president, the White House budget office was working to make sure other money Congress approved never got spent.

On Sept. 29, the GAO, Congress’ nonpartisan watchdog, found that the administration’s so-called “pocket rescissions” violate the Impoundment Control Act. The tactic exploits a provision of the 1974 law: when the president asks Congress to cancel spending, the money is frozen for 45 days. Send the request close enough to the end of the fiscal year, and the money expires before Congress ever votes. This time, the targets totaled about $810 million, including housing counseling for struggling families, refugee resettlement, education programs for the children of migrant workers and funds for minority businesses.

“This finding confirms what we have long known,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. The White House, she said, “is breaking the law to steal resources from our communities.”

It is part of a broader campaign. New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie has described an “all-out war on Congress’s once-sacrosanct power of the purse,” led by Vought, a key architect of Project 2025, including withheld funds for Head Start, FEMA, National Institutes of Health grants and the Inflation Reduction Act. At an April Senate hearing, Vought insisted, “We have not impounded anything.”

The courts are now involved. A coalition of states including California, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada and Oregon has sued, arguing that the administration’s “assertion of unilateral rescission power defies the Constitution’s finely wrought separation of powers.” A national association of grant recipients says the administration illegally targeted $24.9 million for programs serving children of migrant families. The National Urban League and housing groups are challenging the cancellation of $56 million in housing counseling grants, and a judge has already paused the deadline.

Where investigators should look. Investigators should demand a complete accounting of every rescission request, funding freeze and apportionment footnote OMB has used to delay or withhold money, and the internal communications about timing those requests to run out the clock. The most important question is selection: which programs, states and populations were targeted, and why.

IV. “Legal Bribery”: Buying Votes With Your Own Money

On Sept. 9, on stage at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Trump made voters an offer.

“If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000,” he said. “It will be called the Trump Dividend.”

Not if Congress passes a bill. Not if the economy can afford it. If Republicans win.

It was the most explicit version yet of what critics have come to call legal bribery: using public money, or the promise of it, to reward voters for keeping the president’s party in power. In the weeks since, the payments have multiplied.

On Sept. 30, the Treasury Department began sending $500 refunds to more than 950,000 Obamacare enrollees, each with a letter from Trump: “For years, the Biden Administration overcharged you.” The checks go only to people in the 30 states that use the federal HealthCare.gov exchange, not the 20 that run their own marketplaces, which health policy experts note tend to be governed by Democrats. A Reuters analysis found that 71% of the money, $339 million, is going to 13 states that host eight of the nine most competitive Senate races and 10 of the 12 most competitive governor’s races. Texas and Florida alone account for more than 266,000 recipients, according to federal data shared with CNBC.

The White House says the refunds return excessive fees. But UNC health policy professor Jonathan Oberlander noted that the fees rose and fell under Biden and were at times lower than in Trump’s first term. “This announcement is less about health policy and much more about the 2026 Congressional elections,” he told CNBC. “It’s part of a broader effort by President Trump to buy continued Republican control of the House and Senate via promises of direct government payments to voters.”

The checks also arrive against a painful backdrop. Most recipients lost all federal premium help when the Republican-controlled Congress let enhanced Obamacare subsidies expire. KFF estimates their premiums could quadruple in some states to more than $2,200 a month. A single $500 check does not come close.

Then, late Friday, Trump announced one-time $90 payments to more than 20 million seniors on Medicare, to land in early October. The money will come from the Medicare Improvement Fund, which Congress funded with $2 billion to improve the program. Trump called it “a pointless ‘Slush Fund.’” The standard Medicare Part B premium is $202.90 a month, so the payment covers less than half of one month. It will, however, reach seniors’ bank accounts weeks before they vote.

Hovering over all of it is the $5,000 promise. Trump has acknowledged it would cost roughly $1 trillion, with the national debt above $40 trillion and annual deficits near $2 trillion. “We don’t have surpluses to give away,” Marc Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget told the Associated Press, adding that Trump has no authority to send the money without Congress. Trump has insisted he doesn’t need congressional approval, which raises an obvious question: if he can send the money on his own, why is it conditioned on Republicans winning?

Voters are skeptical. A Strength in Numbers/Verasight poll found 66% consider the offer “inappropriate.” A Reuters/Ipsos poll found 63% disapprove, including four in 10 Republicans. And 61% of likely voters in an Economist/YouGov survey don’t believe he’ll deliver.

Is it legal? Federal law makes it a crime to pay or offer to pay someone to vote. Trump’s defenders argue the $5,000 pledge is different because it would go to everyone, regardless of how, or whether, they vote. “This is a campaign promise,” one attorney told the AP. “It’s not a payment to individuals to try to get them to vote in a particular way.”

As a lawyer, I take that argument seriously. It may well be the right answer under the narrow terms of the statute. But it isn’t the whole answer. The AP itself compared the pledge to Elon Musk handing out million-dollar checks to voters in last year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race. And there is a meaningful difference between a candidate promising a policy and a sitting president timing government payments, drawn from funds Congress set aside for other purposes, to land in battleground mailboxes weeks before an election, with a letter bearing his name and blaming his predecessor.

Past presidents have made explicit promises, too. Joe Biden told Georgia voters in 2021 they’d get $2,000 checks if Democrats won the Senate, and Congress later approved $1,400 payments. But those went through Congress and the appropriations process the Constitution requires. Trump’s payouts are being sent by executive decision, from repurposed funds, on a political calendar.

Cornell professor Douglas Kriner, who studies how presidential spending translates into votes, estimates efforts like these could be “worth a percentage point or two.” In a midterm decided by a handful of seats, that may be the point.

Where investigators should look. The key documents are the legal authorities CMS and Treasury relied on for the refunds and the Medicare payments, and any analysis showing the user fees were actually excessive. Investigators should look for any internal discussion of which states and voters would benefit, including whether anyone consulted electoral maps or lists of competitive races. They should find out who drafted Trump’s letter, whether political or campaign staff were involved, and what it cost to print and mail. And they should demand any planning documents for the $5,000 “Trump Dividend,” including whether anyone has identified a legal basis or funding source, and why the payment was tied to the election outcome.

V. The $1.776 Billion “Anti-Weaponization” Fund

Earlier this year, Trump’s Justice Department unveiled a $1.776 billion fund to compensate people it said were victims of “lawfare.” It was created to settle a $10 billion lawsuit Trump himself filed against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns. An addendum blocked IRS action on pending tax probes of Trump, his sons and their businesses. Trump retained the power to fire any of the fund’s five board members “without cause.” And January 6 defendants, including Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, praised the fund and said they planned to apply.

The reaction crossed party lines. Former deputy attorney general Donald Ayer, who served under George H.W. Bush, called it “outright theft.” Former DOJ inspector general Michael Bromwich said “everything about the $1.776bn fund is crazy and corrupt.” Former U.S. attorney Barbara McQuade said the IRS addendum was “just a gift, pure and simple.” Sen. Thom Tillis called it “a payout pot for punks.”

The courts intervened. A bipartisan group of 35 former federal judges argued the settlement was a “fraud on the court,” and the judge who oversaw the case reopened it to examine whether it was “premised on deception.” This week, an appeals court, with a Trump appointee joining, refused to lift sanctions over what it called a “collusive” settlement.

Former federal prosecutor Bruce Green distilled the problem: the executive branch “unilaterally intends to draw close to $2bn out of the treasury without a congressional appropriation, as part of the ostensible settlement of a collusive lawsuit that the government never answered but certainly could have defended.”

Where investigators should look. Every communication among Trump’s personal lawyers, the White House and DOJ about the lawsuit and settlement. The negotiation history of the IRS addendum and its legal justification. Any lists or criteria for who would receive money. And a full accounting of anything disbursed or committed. The central witness is Attorney General Todd Blanche, who unveiled the fund and previously served as Trump’s criminal defense lawyer.VI. The Family Business

The pattern extends to the president’s family.

ProPublica reported that the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital approved a conditional $620 million loan to Vulcan Elements, a rare-earth magnet company in which Donald Trump Jr.’s firm, 1789 Capital, had taken a stake three months earlier, and that the loan request was reportedly initiated by Trump adviser Peter Navarro. Trump Jr., the Pentagon and the company all deny any political influence. Sen. Adam Schiff called it a “wedding present.” A company backed by Eric Trump secured a $24 million Pentagon contract, which Sen. Elizabeth Warren called “corruption in plain sight.”

The broader picture is larger still. In Rolling Stone, historian Sean Wilentz documented a $500 million investment in the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial by an Abu Dhabi firm tied to the UAE’s national security adviser, and found that more than half of the publicly identified corporate donors to Trump’s White House ballroom later received new or expanded federal contracts worth more than $50 billion, according to Public Citizen. Bouie has noted that hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing to the ballroom and a planned triumphal arch without a specific congressional appropriation.

Where investigators should look. The full decision record for the Vulcan loan, including Navarro’s role and any contact with 1789 Capital; ethics reviews, if any, of deals involving Trump family companies; a full accounting of public money spent on the ballroom, the arch and other White House projects; and ballroom donor lists compared against subsequent contracts and regulatory decisions.VII. This Has Happened Before

None of this should surprise anyone who has followed Trump’s career, because a court has already found that he did something similar.

In 2019, Trump was ordered to pay $2 million in damages for illegally misusing money from his own charity, the Trump Foundation, for political purposes. In settling with the New York Attorney General’s office, he agreed to 19 admissions acknowledging his personal misuse of the foundation’s funds, including using it to benefit his 2016 presidential campaign. The foundation was dissolved. Trump had to reimburse it for sports memorabilia and champagne bought at a charity gala. His children were required to undergo training on how to properly run a charity, and Trump agreed to restrictions and ongoing reporting on any future charitable work.

“No one is above the law,” Attorney General Letitia James said at the time, “not a businessman, not a candidate for office, and not even the president of the United States.”

The parallels are hard to miss: money set aside for one purpose, charity then and public needs now, redirected toward Trump’s political interests. The lesson Trump appears to have taken was not to stop, but that the consequences were small enough to absorb. Then it was a charity. Now it is the United States Treasury.

From a legal standpoint, that history matters for another reason. Many of the laws at issue here turn on intent and knowledge. A prior, admitted misuse of funds for political purposes is relevant context for any investigator deciding whether today’s spending decisions were mistakes or choices.

A Timeline

  • 2019: A court orders Trump to pay $2 million for misusing Trump Foundation funds for political purposes, and the foundation is dissolved.
  • 2023: As South Dakota governor, Noem’s administration pays the Strategy Group $8.5 million in state funds for ads starring Noem.
  • February 2025: DHS under Noem launches a no-bid ad campaign that grows to more than $220 million, citing a border “emergency.”
  • Early 2026: DOJ unveils the $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund to settle Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS. Judges block it and reopen the case.
  • Aug. 7, 2026: In an Oval Office meeting about midterm spending, Trump has his assistant show advisers videos of himself.
  • Sept. 9: Trump promises $5,000 to every adult “if the Republicans win.”
  • Sept. 19: OMB moves $20 million in CBP funds into a “commemorative events” budget line.
  • Sept. 20: CBP awards a $20 million “national media campaign” contract to LMD.
  • Late September: Ads praising Trump begin airing nationally, “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” The White House sends pocket rescissions targeting about $810 million.
  • Sept. 29: The GAO finds the pocket rescissions violate the Impoundment Control Act.
  • Sept. 30: Treasury begins sending $500 Obamacare checks to 950,000 people, mostly in battleground states.
  • Oct. 2: Trump announces $90 payments to 20 million Medicare enrollees.

VIII. Who Can Act

Congress can hold hearings, issue subpoenas and write appropriations riders that bar self-promotional ads, require competitive bidding for media contracts and require advance notice of transfers like the one that funded the “God Made Trump” campaign. If Democrats win the House, the Oversight, Judiciary and Appropriations committees will have the power to compel testimony from every official named in this piece.

The GAO has already found Impoundment Control Act violations and is being asked to review the ads. Its findings carry no direct penalty, but they create an official record and can trigger reporting requirements under the Antideficiency Act.

Inspectors general at DHS, HHS, Treasury and the Pentagon can examine how their agencies’ money was spent, including the Noem-era contracts experts have said warrant review, though the administration’s removal of inspectors general may limit how far they go.

The courts are already involved, and have shown a willingness to block and scrutinize these moves.

Future prosecutors could revisit the record. Federal criminal statutes on misuse of public funds generally carry five-year statutes of limitations, which means decisions made this fall could still be examined years from now.

Impeachment remains the Constitution’s ultimate check. The framers reserved it for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” a phrase they understood to include abuses of public trust, not only indictable crimes. Whether to pursue it is a political judgment for the House. But the framers built that tool for a president who treats public power, and public money, as his own.The Bottom Line

The record is building. A GAO finding that the administration broke the Impoundment Control Act. A federal court reopening a case over a possibly “collusive” settlement. Bipartisan objections to self-promotional ads paid for with border security money. A nine-figure no-bid ad program that contracting experts say warrants investigation. Government checks timed to land in battleground states weeks before an election. Family members profiting from government deals. And a prior court judgment over the misuse of charitable funds.

None of it enforces itself. It takes Congress, watchdogs, courts and, ultimately, voters deciding that it matters.

I’ll keep tracking every dollar: where it came from, where it went, who approved it and what laws may have been broken. Because if the people’s money can be spent to glorify one man and reward his party at the ballot box without consequence, then Congress’ power of the purse, and the Constitution that guarantees it, mean nothing.

More Global News

New York Times, Lula and Bolsonaro Son Head to Runoff for Brazil’s Presidency, Ana Ionova and Adam B. Ellick, Oct. 4, 2026. Neither President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva nor his top challenger, Flávio Bolsonaro, won a majority of votes in the first round. But for now, Mr. Bolsonaro is leading the race.

Brazil’s heated presidential election was forced into a runoff on Sunday, according to election officials, with the right-wing challenger leading over the leftist incumbent in a race that may have sweeping consequences far beyond the country.

The challenger, Flávio Bolsonaro, received 47.3 percent of the vote, compared with 44.8 percent for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. With over 95 percent of the ballots counted, neither succeeded in capturing the more than the 50 percent needed for outright victory.

The two candidates will now face each other head-on in an Oct. 25 runoff. But Mr. Bolsonaro, son of a former president imprisoned for attempting a coup after losing the last election, appeared to be closing in on his goal.

If Mr. Bolsonaro ousts Mr. Lula in the runoff, it will mark the biggest win yet for Latin America’s ascendant right. It will also usher in to power an enthusiastic Trump administration ally who has signaled that he is willing to help Washington advance its goal of dominance in the region.

Candidates aligned with President Trump on issues like fighting drug gangs and “woke ideology” have won the last seven elections in the region, with Brazil the biggest remaining prize.

If Mr. Lula succeeds in rebounding from Sunday’s setback, it may been seen as a rebuke to the Latin American right. If nothing else, a Lula victory would slow the right’s spectacular march across the continent and complicate Mr. Trump’s plans.

As many other Latin American leaders fall into line, Mr. Lula has repeatedly defied Mr. Trump, warning him not to meddle in his country’s affairs.ImageA line of people on a sidewalk next to a wall.

For months, expectations loomed large that Mr. Trump, who has waded into other regional elections, might try to influence the Brazilian vote. While he did not endorse Mr. Bolsonaro, his administration did work to lift him in more subtle ways.

With the runoff just weeks away, Mr. Lula and Mr. Bolsonaro must now race to capture millions more votes. Key to that will be the roughly 8 percent of voters who backed a range of other candidates on Sunday. Those candidates drew only single-digit support.

Analysts expect a majority of those voters, most of whom backed third-party candidates on the right of the political spectrum, to now shift their support to Mr. Bolsonaro.

If Mr. Lula stands a chance of turning the race around, he will have to persuade some of the millions of voters who stayed home or spoiled their ballots to lend him support. In Brazil, where voting is mandatory for most between the ages of 18 and 70, about 20 percent of voters chose to abstain from casting a ballot on Sunday.

New York Times, U.S. Rushes to Withdraw Bombers From U.K. Air Base After New Threats, Eric Schmitt, Oct. 4, 2026. The withdrawal came with unusual speed, following what U.S. officials said were threats of an Iran-based plot against the installation.

The United States rushed over the weekend to withdraw all 12 B-1 Air Force bombers from an air base in southern England after commanders received new threats about an Iran-backed plot against the installation, two U.S. officials said on Sunday.

The withdrawal was highly unusual: Such moves are rarely made so quickly from an allied air base in a peacetime country thousands of miles from a combat zone.

The need to move the bombers out of the base, R.A.F. Fairford, was deemed so urgent that some of the planes and their flight crews left while aerial refueling aircraft were still being scrambled to support their flights to the United States. At least three of the planes had landed at their home base in South Dakota by Sunday, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.

The Pentagon’s European Command confirmed on Sunday that the bombers had left England but declined to comment on any new warnings.

The sudden pullout of the bombers came a week after the British police arrested five men who had been traveling last Sunday morning in white vans near the base, which has been used by American bombers in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. The men were released on bail a day later after the authorities did not discover explosives in the vans.

More On Middle East Wars

New York Times, Saudi-Backed Yemeni Government Declares War Against Houthis, Vivian Nereim, Eric Schmitt and Saeed Al-Batati, Oct. 4, 2026. More than 200 U.S. intelligence and military analysts are in Saudi Arabia helping it provide assistance to its Yemeni allies, current and former U.S. officials say.

The Saudi-backed government of Yemen on Sunday announced a major military campaign against the Houthi militia, a key Iranian ally, plunging the Middle East deeper into war.

The new operation threatens to open a new front in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and further entangle the United States in the widening regional conflict that it began more than seven months ago.

More than 200 U.S. intelligence and military analysts are assisting the Saudi government in command centers inside the kingdom, helping to analyze and select targets in support of its Yemeni allies, according to one current and one former U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. The United States is also providing aerial refueling for Saudi warplanes conducting defensive air patrols, they added.

In a televised speech, Rashad al-Alimi, the leader of the internationally recognized Yemeni government — which depends heavily on Saudi Arabia for financial and military support — said that his armed forces were seeking to reclaim the territory lost to the Houthis over the past 12 years.

In a statement hours later, Maj. General Turki al-Maliki, spokesman for a Saudi military coalition in Yemen, said that Saudi Arabia had the right to defend itself from Houthi attacks and pledged “full operational support” to the Yemeni military to fight the militia until it is “eliminated.”

Asked about the campaign, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a Houthi political official, accused Saudi Arabia of waging war in Yemen to “impose its tutelage and interfere in sovereign decision-making.”

The announcement marks the second time that the Yemeni government has sought to fight the Houthis with Saudi support. In 2015, a Saudi-led intervention devolved into a grinding war that contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people from violence, hunger and disease, and failed to defeat the Houthis.

Renewed fighting in recent weeks has already compounded the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. More than 800 people have been killed since early August, according to the World Health Organization, while the World Food Program says more than 150,000 people have been displaced.

The Saudi-led campaign a decade ago hinged on U.S. support and weaponry, and Saudi officials have sought American assistance this time, too. Though the U.S. is offering some assistance, President Trump rebuffed the Saudi requests last month for the U.S. military to strike targets in Yemen controlled by the Houthis.

More On U.S. Culture, Religion, Sports, Media, Education

New York Times, Measles Outbreak in Amish Country Forces Some to Rethink Vaccines, Anemona Hartocollis, Photographs by Madeleine Hordinski, Oct. 4, 2026. The spread of measles in Pennsylvania and Ohio is largely affecting Amish communities where vaccinations levels are low.

The Amish family thought the chills and fever that had hammered their second oldest son was strep throat. Then a ringing came from the phone shack in the yard: A friend was calling to say the measles had been lurking at a horse auction in Lancaster, Pa.

The 15-year-old boy and his father, an Amish horse breaker, had been there just a few days before.

“We knew it was the measles,” Emma Miller, the boy’s mother, said.

Measles cases have been reported in 45 states in 2026. In Pennsylvania — where state officials say five have died in connection with the outbreak — and Ohio, the Amish people are bearing the brunt of the sickness. They are also taking a share of the blame from outsiders, owing to a lifestyle that tends toward shutting out modern medicine, along with other aspects of contemporary life.

But two days of traveling with a health practitioner through the pastoral Amish country of northeastern Ohio found that despite the stereotype, the Amish are not anti-vaccine. Their reasons for rejecting vaccination are more nuanced.

Like most other Americans, many had never seen a case of measles before, and were not aware of how dangerous the virus could be, leading to deafness, brain swelling and even death. They thought measles would not find them, and it did.

The contagion, officially declared vanquished by vaccination, ripped through the Miller family over the summer, sickening six of the seven children and their mother. It skipped only their father, Marvin Miller, and one daughter, Mary Ann. Both had been vaccinated.

Through the fog of her own illness Mrs. Miller struggled to nurse the sick children, including the baby, as she dispensed Tylenol to battle the fever that accompanies measles. It was left to 12-year-old Mary Ann to sweep the floors and do the baking. Neighbors left food at the door.

The family stayed home from church to protect the congregation. But for all their precautions, the sickness jumped to their cousins, who had visited before there was any thought of measles

“I didn’t imagine it would be so bad,” Mrs. Miller said.

The Amish are sometimes depicted as objecting to vaccination on religious grounds, but getting vaccinated was a matter of personal preference, families said, again and again. Often it came down to a matter of family practice, or tradition. If their parents or grandparents had been vaccinated, they probably would be, too.

Vaccinations rates are also low because the Amish generally do not have commercial health insurance or credit cards. They pay for medical appointments in cash. In an emergency, they turn to their mutual aid fund.

The measles vaccine came into use in 1963, when the virus was killing 400 to 500 people a year in the United States.

In 2000, measles was declared eliminated, but not eradicated, a subtlety of terminology that allows for a recurrence of the disease. That status is now in jeopardy. There have been more outbreaks in recent years, as hesitancy over vaccines has been fueled by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, who has long been a skeptic of their efficacy.

“The memory of the vaccination coming in and immediately dropping the death count across the country is for some people two to three generations away,” Cleveland’s director of public health, Dr. David Margolius, said. “That, coupled with more vocal people in positions of power saying, ‘Hey, you don’t need these vaccinations anymore.’”

Pennsylvania’s measles outbreak has sickened 977 people as of Oct. 2, with Lancaster County and its large Amish population accounting for about 40 percent of cases.

It has hospitalized 195 people and been associated with five deaths, according to the state’s public health department. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists just two deaths, disputing the state’s tally.

Ohio has logged 206 cases this year, with the highest numbers in three Amish-heavy counties: Geauga, with 49; Wayne, 44; and Ashtabula, 32. Last year there were 46 measles cases statewide. The state has shipped about 7,100 doses of outbreak-related vaccine to providers this year, up from just over 1,000 last year.

The Pennsylvania and Ohio contagions are most likely linked. Health investigators say some of the Ohio contagion began just as the Miller family’s did, with exposure at horse sales in Lancaster, Pa., and in Bloomfield and Sugarcreek, Ohio. From there, it spread to weddings, funerals, parties and church services.

Anemona Hartocollis and Madeleine Hordinski spent two days touring Geauga County, Ohio, with a health care practitioner and talking to Amish people, mainly women, about their attitudes toward vaccination.

 

 

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., with President Trump and Mehmet Oz, the Medicaid and Medicare services administrator, in the White House in September (New York Times photo by Tierney L. Cross)

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., with President Trump and Mehmet Oz, the Medicaid and Medicare services administrator, in the White House in September (New York Times photo by Tierney L. Cross) 

Politico, RFK Jr.’s movement is in disarray, Amanda Chu, Oct. 4, 2026. Tony Lyons, the leading organizer of the Make America Healthy Again movement, promised to raise $100 million to support Republicans this year. He’s politico Customnowhere close.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement is turning on its leader.

Not RFK Jr.

Rather, Tony Lyons, the Kennedy friend and book publisher who is the president of a web of MAHA nonprofits and political groups.

Supporters of Kennedy’s message, that food and pharma companies have conspired with bureaucrats to poison Americans for profit, say Lyons is selling out to business interests who want Kennedy’s ear now that he’s President Donald Trump’s health secretary. Ignoring the grassroots could cost Republicans running in the midterm elections who need it energized, they say.

The latest evidence: fundraising reports from Lyons’ MAHA Political Action Committee that show fewer than 20 donors this year, totaling $1 million, far short of the $100 million Lyons promised to raise to help Republicans allied with Kennedy in this year’s elections. Many of its donors are companies that have interests before the Health Department, POLITICO found. The PAC has spent less than $800,000 to support candidates this year.

A month before the midterms, the PAC has spent no money on races that will help Republicans maintain control of Congress, frustrating MAHA supporters who worry leaders are squandering the movement’s momentum after it helped return Trump to office.

“What a joke!” Alex Clark, a MAHA influencer who works at the conservative group Turning Point USA said of the PAC’s spending. “We’re talking about millions of voters who just fell into our lap like manna from heaven, and we’re just gonna let them walk away.”

Lyons did not respond to POLITICO’s requests for comment.

He galvanizes supporters on weekly calls with warnings about the “dark forces” in corporate America lobbying to undermine Kennedy’s agenda. “We don’t want Bobby Kennedy or his whole team to be sitting in congressional hearings where they’re just trying to slow things down and make it easier and more affordable for big companies to poison the American public,” he recently said.

The fundraising report came as Lyons hosted an invite-only summit on Sept. 29 at Washington’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel sponsored by companies including Anthropic and OpenAI, artificial intelligence companies contributing to the data center boom, the health impacts of which many Kennedy supporters fear, and Walmart, purveyor of the ultraprocessed food Kennedy decries.

Neither AI firm provided comment when POLITICO contacted them to ask about their sponsorship of the event. Walmart declined to comment.

“What is shocking is how quickly a movement built to challenge that system appears to have reproduced it,” wrote Robert Malone, a scientist who shares Kennedy’s skepticism of Covid vaccines and advised him on vaccine policy until quitting in March, citing disagreement with Kennedy’s staff, in a Substack essay reflecting on the summit.Department of Health and Human Services headquarters are seen.

Lyons galvanizes supporters on weekly calls with warnings about the “dark forces” in corporate America lobbying to undermine Kennedy’s agenda. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

In addition to MAHA PAC, Lyons leads its sister nonprofits, MAHA Center, MAHA Action and MAHA Institute, and moves money between them. MAHA PAC, for example, has transferred $4 million to MAHA Action since January 2025, according to federal filings.

MAHA supporters can join the movement on the MAHA Action website through a series of tiered subscriptions, costing up to $6,000 a year. MAHA Holdings administers the subscriptions. Finn Kennedy, one of Kennedy’s sons, sits on MAHA Holdings’ board.

“These outside entities that have branded themselves as representative of the MAHA voting bloc…they are not helping us,” said Stephanie Stock, president of Ohio Advocates for Medical Freedom, a nonprofit that supports Kennedy’s efforts to convince states to reduce school vaccine requirements.

A MAHA Institute-backed candidate, Stock partially blames her loss in a state House primary in May on lack of funding. Her opponent outraised her more than tenfold and she received no money from Lyons’ MAHA groups.

“These guys are throwing galas, and we’ve just kind of had it,” Stock added. “You look up at the sponsors, and you see Anthropic and Walmart, drug companies, and you’re like, ‘What in the world?’”Will the real MAHA candidate please stand up?

Trump aides have said they hope the president’s embrace of Kennedy as health secretary will benefit Republicans in the midterms. They’ve also credited the alliance with Kennedy with helping Trump defeat Kamala Harris two years ago.

But Zen Honeycutt, one of the MAHA moms who supports Kennedy and founder of nonprofit Moms Across America, is straying.Watch: The ConversationAdam Hamilton on faith, Trump and the fight for Kansas

Less than two months to the midterms, in a windowless conference room by the White House, she rallied candidates at a convention for political independents estranged from both parties.

“I want to empower you to utilize this MAHA movement as best as you can to raise up the independents in this country,” Honeycutt declared to a full room peppered with people who worked on Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign.

None of the candidates there were endorsed by Lyons’ MAHA groups, which are backing only Republicans. Honeycutt’s nonprofit aims to endorse 20 of its own candidates across party lines.

In an interview with POLITICO, Honeycutt called MAHA’s issues “nonpartisan.” “That’s not what some of the people in the MAHA world would want from us. They want us to align with the Republican Party, but we will talk to anyone,” she said.

Some candidates supportive of MAHA at the convention are running against an opponent backed by Lyons’ groups. In the room with Honeycutt were Clayton Cuteri and Bill Reeside, independents running in South Carolina’s 1st District race against Republican Jenny Costa Honeycutt, who has no relation to Zen. MAHA Action has endorsed Jenny Honeycutt and the MAHA PAC has spent $26,000 on her campaign.

“It’s a civil war out there,” said Larry Sharpe, who worked on Kennedy’s presidential campaign. Sharpe called Lyons’ decision to back only Republicans a “strategic mistake,” adding “it’s almost like a split between Eastern Orthodox and Catholics…They both believe in the afterlife. They both believe Jesus is divine, but they’ve gone different ways.”Zen Honeycutt, founder of Moms Across America, at the 2026 Independent National Convention

Zen Honeycutt, founder of nonprofit Moms Across America, says MAHA is "nonpartisan." | Amanda Chu

Democrats, too, are making overtures to the MAHA movement. Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has released a “Building a Healthier America” policy agenda that speaks to MAHA advocates’ concerns about food safety and chemicals in the environment.

A House working group led by New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently recommended that the party woo Kennedy’s followers.

MAHA supporters have expressed growing frustration with the GOP since Trump issued a February order protecting a pesticide Kennedy and his supporters think is a carcinogen. Since, there have been complaints about new Health Department appointees, like Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Erica Schwartz, who don’t share Kennedy’s skeptical views about vaccines, and Kennedy’s failure to take mRNA vaccines, like those used to combat Covid-19, from the market.

Candidates endorsed by Lyons’ MAHA groups have had mixed success in the primaries. A POLITICO analysis in June found that most of the winners were incumbents or candidates who previously held office. As of June, 11 of the 12 MAHA Institute-backed candidates who lost their races had never run before.

Lyons scored a significant GOP primary win when Louisiana Rep. Julia Letlow defeated incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Kennedy foe on Capitol Hill. And another when Zach Lahn, an entrepreneur, defeated Trump-backed Rep. Randy Feenstra to secure the Republican nomination for Iowa governor. Lyons committed $1 million to support each candidate.

While the PAC has yet to donate to Lahn, the vast majority of its election spending has gone to Letlow, who received 90% of the $790,000 it’s spent this year to support candidates, according to federal filings.

Neither race will help Republicans retain control of Congress. MAHA PAC’s choice to support Letlow also went against the wishes of local MAHA supporters, who wanted the group to back a different challenger. Fiorella Trapani, co-director of Health Freedom Louisiana, called MAHA’s endorsement a “punch in the gut.”

“If MAHA wants to represent this movement, its actions, endorsements, and priorities need to reflect the principles and people that built it,” she wrote in a statement.

Of the 85 candidates endorsed by Lyons’ MAHA groups, only six are in competitive races that will determine the balance of power in Congress: incumbent Reps. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida; Tom Barrett of Michigan and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania. There is also Derek Morrin, who is running to unseat Ohio Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur; Joe Mitchell, who is running for a House seat in Iowa; and John Sununu, who is running to return to the Senate to represent New Hampshire. None of these candidates have received money from MAHA, according to its PAC filings.

Some of MAHA PAC’s top expenses include X, formerly known as Twitter. The PAC paid the platform $810,000 this election cycle, according to filings. Merit Street Media, a media company founded by television host Phil McGraw, known by his stage name Dr. Phil, received more than $500,000. The private Ned’s Club in Washington was another top expense with the PAC spending more than $155,000 on the venue in this election cycle.

Amber Webster, a former Democrat who volunteered on Kennedy’s campaign in Connecticut, called the PAC’s lack of grassroots spending a “missed opportunity.”

“If they have committed to spend $100 million, they should really be honing in on some of these people in these seats that we either need to keep or flip and help these candidates get elected,” she said.

“There is a really big MAHA army out there that could be helping the Republican Party more.”

In 2025, Tahnoon's businesses bought 49% share in the Donald Trump family's cryptocurrency firm World Liberty Financial (WLF) for half a billion dollars and bought $2 billion worth of USD1 stablecoins from WLF.[3] Shortly thereafter, the Trump administration ignored national security concerns and committed to provide 500,000 of the most advanced AI chips a year to the UAE.[3]

Status with Natalie Korach, The Sunday Spotlight: McClatchy Goes Mute, Natalie Korach, Oct. 4, 2026. Weeks after gutting local newsrooms, McClatchy leadership has offered staffers virtually no explanation of what comes next, Status has learned, as the company builds out its controversial A.I. operation.

On the morning of the September 10 layoffs, the Idaho Statesman’s editor stood before a newsroom that was about to lose more than half its staff and read from what one employee described as a “corporate script.” According to that person, the editor appeared to have been given a list of affected names from McClatchy leadership that he didn’t know about until the morning of the cuts.

It was, in some ways, the only real communication Statesman staffers would receive about the cuts. The storied, Boise-based publication is set to lose a staggering 13 of its 22 remaining newsroom staffers, Status has learned, including 10 of its remaining 18 union members. It’s a result of sweeping nationwide cuts across McClatchy, the 169-year-old newspaper chain that since 2020 has been owned by the hedge fund Chatham Asset Management. At the end of next week, staffers at the Statesman and dozens of other journalists at McClatchy-owned papers will officially depart their respective outlets.

They are leaving a company that has spent the past year increasingly betting on artificial intelligence to power its newspapers, despite staunch objections from its own journalists. Since the cuts, McClatchy has celebrated new hires for its A.I.-focused “content innovation lab,” while offering almost no explanation of why the layoffs were necessary or what comes next for their newsrooms. And though there’s no indication the cuts were tied to the company’s A.I. ambitions, in newsrooms still reeling from the losses, staffers told me the company’s priorities are hard to miss.

The layoffs were haphazard from the start. Staffers received limited information from McClatchy leadership, and in most cases, their own local newsroom leaders, about just how deep the cuts went. McClatchy has not disclosed the scale of the layoffs, but the News Guild-CWA said McClatchy axed more than 90 unionized employees across 17 publications, representing 40% of the company's unionized workforce—and the total, including non-unionized employees, is almost certainly more. One laid-off staffer told Status that employees across McClatchy papers had to compare notes among themselves to piece together the scale of the bloodletting. “We could see it was all over the board in ways that are going to be crippling for news coverage in a lot of these communities,” the staffer said.

The day of the layoffs, McClatchy’s vice president of local news, Greg Farmer, said in an internal memo obtained by Status that the company was “reshaping” its newsrooms to better align with consumers, pointing to a 41% decline in consumer revenue. Since then, I’m told, corporate has gone almost completely silent—and, tellingly, a spokesperson did not respond to my request for comment. There has been no company-wide town hall to explain the layoffs or how McClatchy intends to restructure its newsrooms. No follow-up memo from leadership addressing the cuts. And certainly no opportunity for staffers to ask questions.

Instead, McClatchy leadership has left the top editor at each local publication to fend for themselves when it comes to justifying the devastating cuts. And the silence hasn’t been lost on staffers.

“For this round of layoffs, they’ve pursued an even more troubling strategy: Not only are they avoiding accountability to the public by refusing to explain themselves publicly, they’re also avoiding any meaningful explanation in our newsroom,” Ariane Lange, an investigative reporter at The Sacramento Bee and the vice chair of the paper’s news guild, told Status.Meanwhile, many of the local newsrooms under the McClatchy umbrella haven’t held independent newsroom-wide meetings to address staff concerns after losing significant portions of their ranks. The Sacramento Bee’s executive editor didn’t address the newsroom for days, when he offered to meet with staffers one-on-one about the restructuring, Lange said, who described the company’s communications strategy as “bizarre.” (Editors at the Statesman and Bee did not respond to requests for comment.) Employees at other McClatchy-owned publications, including The Miami Herald and Belleville News-Democrat in Illinois, described similar experiences.

Adding insult to injury, while McClatchy has remained mute about the cuts and how it plans to reposition its local newspapers for the future, the company did find something to celebrate. Less than a week after announcing the layoffs, McClatchy sent an all-staff memo obtained by Status, welcoming a slate of new hires, even though they had officially joined the company in August. The timing struck staffers as particularly jarring. After gutting local newsrooms, corporate leadership was touting hires who had already been on the job for weeks.

Editorial staffers also noticed that three of the hires were for executive positions at the national level, and three were being tapped as directors for the “content innovation lab,” the team involved in the company’s controversial push to integrate A.I. into its newsrooms.

That effort has already become a major flashpoint between McClatchy and its journalists. Earlier this year, the company rolled out its internally developed “Content Scaling Agent,” an A.I. tool designed to take reporters’ existing journalism and generate additional versions of stories for different audiences. Executives pitched the technology as a way to increase publishing volume and reach new readers, but its rollout triggered immediate resistance across McClatchy newsrooms. Journalists at papers including the Sacramento Bee, Miami Herald, Idaho Statesman, and Tacoma News Tribune staged a byline revolt, refusing to allow their names to appear on stories generated by the tool.

The Athletic via The New York Times, Inside Arizona State men’s hockey, and the workout that left a player on life support, Katie Strang, Nathan Fenno and Adam Kilgore, Sept. 17, 2026. Greg Powers was going to fix the problem. The longtime Arizona State University men’s hockey coach, the only person to lead the program in its 12 years in Division I, had watched his 2025-26 team lose 10 of its final 12 games and miss the postseason, and he knew why.

In a 247Sports podcast on May 18, Powers lamented that he didn’t get “buy-in” from the players and that the Sun Devils had lost the blue-collar identity that he felt propelled a nascent Division I program to four winning seasons and a 2019 NCAA Tournament berth.

“I hate to say the word ‘soft,’ but that’s what we were,” Powers said. “And it became contagious. It was a team that just didn’t attack adversity.”

This season was going to be different, starting from day one. When players reported for the first official team activity Aug. 20 at Sun Angel Stadium, the workout was not led by the coach. Instead, according to photographs and interviews, Powers wore a pair of slide-on sandals and watched from the side as Tim Ziesel, 39, a former Green Beret, shouted commands at his players.

Powers told the players that the new workout would be challenging, multiple people present said, but if they wanted to be successful, they would get through it as a team.

Among the new players Powers brought in was Matthew Mayich, a St. Louis Blues prospect who arrived from Stoney Creek, Ontario, about a week earlier. Teammates called him “Mayo.” Toward the end of the roughly 45-minute workout, Mayich, 21, collapsed, dropping the medicine ball he had been hauling. An athletic trainer hurried toward him and attempted to cool him down. Emergency responders rushed to the scene. Mayich was taken to a local hospital. He remains in critical condition; a lawyer representing his family said he is unlikely to recover.

Powers and the coaching staff haven’t spoken publicly about what happened that day, and Powers declined to comment through a university spokesperson. Last month, Arizona State, which also declined to comment for this story, announced it was reviewing the circumstances of the workout, repeatedly emphasizing the review was not an investigation. The Arizona State University Police Department opened a probe, a move the university called standard.

The Athletic spoke to more than two dozen people for this story, including many who witnessed the training session or were briefed on it, and reviewed photographs of the workout, as well as text messages and emails, in an effort to understand what happened at the workout and the decision-making surrounding it. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about an incident that is the subject of an ongoing inquiry or out of fear of retaliation.

Powers was determined to toughen up his team, those sources said. His normal preseason conditioning setup was replaced by an unorthodox workout that may have violated NCAA guidelines on acclimating athletes to new climates and training periods.

In the aftermath of Mayich’s collapse, some players are angry that Powers is being allowed to continue coaching while investigators ask them about the incident and the program, team sources said. Some feel trapped as they want justice for a teammate on life support, but their hockey careers are under the control of the coach who greenlit the workout that put him there.

U.S. Energy, Climate Change, Environmental Regulation

New York Times, A Supreme Court Battle Over Climate Change Begins, Karen Zraick, Oct. 4, 2026. The justices are about to hear a lawsuit that could determine whether the oil industry faces billions of dollars in liability for damages caused by global warming.

Nearly a decade ago, the outdoorsy, liberal enclave of Boulder, Colo., sued two oil companies over their role in climate change. Now, the Supreme Court will consider whether the groundbreaking lawsuit can ever go to trial.

Its decision will resonate far beyond the Rockies.

A win for Boulder would likely clear the way for dozens of similar lawsuits nationwide aiming to extract billions of dollars from the fossil fuel industry to fight global warming. But if the court kills Boulder’s case, that could doom the others, handing a major victory to oil companies.

Boulder’s lawsuit says the two oil companies, Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy, should help pay for the damage to the state of Colorado — such as worsening heat waves and wildfires — caused by climate change, which is driven by the burning of fossil fuels. The companies say Boulder’s lawsuit should be thrown out because it was filed under state law, when federal law should have precedence.

“This is very much the case to watch because it’s at the Supreme Court,” said Michael Pappas, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School. “Is this something that state law can answer, or does federal law foreclose the opportunity?”

A small army of business groups, conservative legal theorists, Republican lawmakers and others have lined up to support Exxon and Suncor, and the Trump administration is also expected to argue before the court in support of the companies.

Among their claims: Letting the case proceed under state law would unleash legal chaos by opening the door to countless similar suits. “Every locality in the country could sue essentially anyone in the world for contributing to global climate change,” according to a brief supporting the energy industry filed by lawyers for the Trump administration. The Justice Department declined to comment for this article.

About three dozen similar cases have already been filed by state and local governments to date. None has yet gone to trial, and some have been dismissed, but about two dozen remain active.

“The U.S. Supreme Court must allow our case to continue, not bail out the oil companies before hearing the facts,” said Ashley Stolzmann, county commissioner for Boulder, in a statement.

Boulder’s lawsuit argues that the defendants caused physical harm to Colorado by selling fossil fuels, and covered up what they knew about the dangers of climate change in order to continue those sales. The lawsuit also alleges that the companies paid for campaigns to undermine the scientific consensus that burning oil, gas and coal is heating the planet.ImageA bicyclist rides past a row of smoldering homes and burned trees and vehicles.

Oct. 3

Top Headlines 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, both designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik).Steve Witkoff jared kushner sputnik afp getty

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

More Special Reports On Nefarious Trump-Related Ties To Russia, Hurting U.S., Europe, Ukraine  

 

Lev Parnas, above, being interviewed by cable television host Rachel Maddow on Jan. 15, 2020 for a documentary she produced about his life. He is shown also with his wife, who stood by him during a hoked up prosecution and imprisonment orchestrated by the Trump Justice Department as retribution for his willingness to expose their Russian-coddling dealmaking in his commentaries, courtroom proceedings and in his memoir, "Shadow Diplomacy."

lev parnas wife

  • Justice Integrity Project Backgrounder On Lev Parnas, Entrepreuneur, Former Trump Team Operative, Now Whistleblower, Andrew Kreig, Oct.4, 2026. A native of Ukraine and former high-level liaison on behalf of President Trump and his team to Eastern European Shadow Diplomacycontacts, aaron parnas o instagramis an expert commentator who has publisted a three-part series this fall documenting insidious relationships between the Trump Team -- President Trump, his families, their companies and their allies -- to Russian and other foreign interests damaging to most Americans. Parnas, a naturlized U.S. citizen who son Aaron Parnas, right, works independently as a prolific journalist with millions of readers and often quoted on this site, received a lifetime achievement award in 2025 for courage at a featured ceremony at the 13th annual Whistleblower Summit and Film Festival, which he memorialzed in a colum immediately below:

Lev Remembers, Yesterday Changed Me Forever: From Brooklyn to the National Press Club—A Whistleblower’s Journey and a Father’s Pride, Lev Parnas, Aug. 1, 2025. Yesterday was one of those rare days that I’ll never forget. 

2026 Trump-Russia Analysess

djt russian connections

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President Trump speaks to White House media before his trip to Alabama to host a political rally on Oct. 2, 2026. President Trump speaks to White House media before his trip to Alabama to host a political rally on Oct. 2, 2026. 

  • Hope for America, Opinion: The President's decline is in a freefall. Heather Delaney Reese, helen delaney reese djtright, Oct. 3, 2026. At 3:54 pm Donald Trump emerged from the White House with freshly colored hair and makeup, as Marine One’s engine roared in the background. He walked directly over to the waiting press, threw his hands out in front of him, gesturing at the empty ground in front of him, while he squeezed his legs together and arched his torso forward, yelling to the reporters, “This is the way the White House is supposed to look. Not asphalt. Broken, dirty asphalt. Look at it.” He then paused, frowning as he looked over his left shoulder, and continued, “The finest stone you could buy anywhere in the world.” The gathered press said nothing, confused by his odd behavior. 

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Fascist leaders Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of German, and U.S. President Donald Trump

Fascist leaders Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of German, and U.S. President Donald Trump.

  • CounterPunch.org, Nuremberg’s Warning: When Law Legitimates the Machinery of Authoritarianism, Henry Giroux, Oct. 2, 2026. The legacy of Nuremberg is with us once again, less as a reminder of the power of the legal system to punish those who enabled and enacted the horrors of Nazi Germany than as a warning that the spirit of Nuremberg must be reclaimed as a moral and political imperative.

More On Campus Rape, #MeToo Claims

More On Russia's Invasion of Ukraine, Trump Family's Russian Ties

  • New York Times, Russia Turns to Striking Kyiv’s Bridges, Threatening a Vital Lifeline, Constant Méheut, Oct. 3, 2026. The bridges, used by many commuters in the Ukrainian capital, are the latest target in a broad Russian bombing campaign against infrastructure. Russia has a new target on its rapidly growing list of Ukrainian infrastructure to bomb: bridges. Over the past three days, Russia has attacked bridges in the capital, Kyiv, six times. Three drones hit one in the city’s south on Thursday, and the same bridge was struck twice on Friday. On Saturday morning, another attack hit a bridge in the north.

Top Stories

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

New York Times, U.S.-Russia Talks on Ukraine Now Involve an Oil Deal Tied to Trump Allies, Anton Troianovski and Eric Lipton, Oct. 3, 2026. President Vladimir V. Putin brought up a sale of Russian energy assets with President Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, pushing a deal that raises new questions about conflicts of interest.

The Trump administration’s talks with Russia about ending the war in Ukraine have expanded to include a multibillion-dollar oil deal that russian flag wavingwould benefit Middle Eastern business executives with ties to the two main U.S. negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

The deal, which is contingent on approval from the U.S. government and the Kremlin, is for a sprawling set of oil fields, refineries and gas stations around the world owned by Lukoil, one of Russia’s biggest energy companies.

The leading group seeking the deal includes an American investor, Todd Boehly, who has donated $2 million to President Trump’s political causes; two Middle Eastern groups that have done business with Mr. Kushner or Mr. Witkoff’s family; and an arm of the U.S. government itself.

lukoil logoThe monthslong negotiations, which were described by eight people familiar with them, shed new light on Mr. Trump’s latest approach to settling a four-year war that has killed hundreds of thousands. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

There is no indication that Mr. Kushner or Mr. Witkoff themselves stand to profit. But the pending deal represents a striking intermingling of personal business ties with geopolitics, even for an administration that has regularly dismissed concerns about potential conflicts of interest.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia brought up the deal when he met with Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner at the Kremlin on Sept. 5, according to three people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Putin proposed it get done as a way of showing Russians that they can do business with the United States, according to one of the people.

The Americans responded that they would work on it, the person said, seeing it as a way to build good will with the Kremlin while also lowering global energy prices. But the deal is also a lucrative one for the buyers: U.S. approval for the sale would release the assets from American sanctions, instantly increasing their value.

In Moscow, the decision on the deal is widely seen as Mr. Putin’s to make, even though Lukoil is technically a private company. The upshot is that the giant transaction, involving assets as varied as oil fields in Cameroon, refineries in Europe and gas stations in New Jersey, comes down to Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump.

world liberty financial logoMr. Trump has been promoting the promise of business deals with Russia since early last year, describing the country as a “tremendous opportunity.” The deal again brings Mr. Trump’s World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency company — co-founded by Mr. Witkoff — into focus. One of the investors in the Lukoil deal is a part owner of World Liberty.

Potential Lukoil investor group has ties with Trump, his family and his allies

Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner, who have traveled repeatedly to Russia for meetings with Mr. Putin, have argued that the potential to rebuild economic ties with the West could convince the Russian president to compromise in Ukraine. The administration has recently signaled it is open to deals with Russia even before the war ends, as a way of showing it is serious about resetting the United States’ relationship with Moscow.

The Lukoil sale, people familiar with the matter say, is one of those deals.

In a statement, a senior administration official confirmed that Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner played a direct role in helping negotiate the financial terms of the investment by the federal government in the deal to ensure that it included “a substantial upfront payment and profits interest for the United States.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Witkoff said that he “takes no salary and travels the world on his own plane, at his own expense, working on behalf of President Trump to negotiate peace and bring hostages home to their families.” She added that Mr. Witkoff “has no conflict of interest and no financial stake in this matter.”

A Stalled Bid, and a New Contender

Numerous potential bidders expressed interest in at least part of Lukoil’s international holdings when the assets went on the market last fall, including U.S. energy giants like Chevron.

The Washington private equity firm Carlyle reached a tentative agreement in January to buy a large share of the assets, after making the pitch that bringing Lukoil’s international portfolio under U.S. ownership would further the Trump administration’s goal of “energy dominance.”

But in recent months, as U.S. approval for Carlyle’s bid stalled, a different group emerged as the leading bidder: one led by Mr. Boehly, a billionaire supporter of Mr. Trump’s, alongside well-connected figures in the Middle East and the U.S. government itself. The members of the partnership were reported last week by The Financial Times.

Mr. Boehly is a co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and donated $1 million to MAGA Inc., the Trump-aligned political committee, in December 2025. He gave another $1 million through his investment firm, Eldridge Industries, to Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

New York Times, Trump, Putin, Ukraine and an Oil Deal: 5 Takeaways, Eric Lipton and Anton Troianovski, Oct. 3, 2026. A proposal to bolster relations with the Kremlin through the purchase of Russian energy assets is striking even for an administration that regularly mixes personal business interests with foreign policy.

It is one of the most alluring opportunities in global energy.

The foreign assets of Lukoil, the Russian energy giant, are being sold off at fire sale prices because U.S. sanctions have made them nearly worthless for investors in Russia. Gas stations in the United States, refineries in Eastern Europe and oil fields around the world are up for grabs.

russian flag wavingNow, the process of selling off those assets has become intertwined with White House efforts to negotiate an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. And some of the key figures poised to benefit from the Lukoil sale have ties to President Trump’s family and his associates — including the administration’s envoys to Russia. The revelation raises new questions about conflicts of interest in an administration that has regularly mixed personal interests with national interests.

Here are five takeaways from The New York Times’s investigation of the proposed transaction.Completing the deal is a factor in Ukraine peace talks.

The Trump administration has long argued that discussing business deals with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia could help convince him to mend ties with the West and end his war on Ukraine. The administration signaled recently that some deals could move forward before the war ends. But the specifics have been murky until now.

When Mr. Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, met with Mr. Putin at the Kremlin last month, the Russian president asked them to get the Lukoil deal done. The Americans said they would work on it, reasoning that doing so could build good will with the Kremlin while also lowering global energy prices.The deal’s leader is a big political donor to Mr. Trump.

The leader of the investor group is Todd Boehly, a billionaire asset manager and co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, among other holdings. He is also a major donor to Mr. Trump’s political causes. He contributed $1 million to Mr. Trump’s affiliated MAGA Inc. political committee last December, just as negotiations on the Lukoil deal were heating up.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.Family ties to the investors are widespread.

Mr. Trump; his three sons; Mr. Kushner; Ivanka Trump, one of the president’s daughters; and the Witkoff family all have financial ties to partners in the deal, which requires sign off from the Trump administration and the Kremlin. The Trump family and the president’s advisers do not have a direct financial stake in the transaction. But their business partners would benefit financially if the multibillion-dollar deal is completed.

The investors who have teamed up with Mr. Boehly include one of the richest investment funds in the Middle East, International Holding Company, which is overseen by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family.

Sheikh Tahnoon separately runs outfits that own nearly half of World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency company co-founded by Mr. Witkoff and still run by Zach Witkoff, one of Steve Witkoff’s sons. Donald Trump Jr. and Barron Trump, two of the president’s sons, also are stakeholders and co-founders of the company, and so they too are effectively business partners with Sheikh Tahnoon.

Sheikh Tahnoon, one of the most powerful players in Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates, controls companies that oversee Lunate, an investment fund that took a major stake in the private equity firm Affinity Partners, which was set up by Mr. Kushner after he left the White House at the end of Mr. Trump’s first term.

Another investor in Mr. Boehly’s group is a pair of Syrian-born Qatari billionaires, Moutaz Al-Khayyat and his brother Ramez Al-Khayyat, who have partnered with Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump to build a multibillion-dollar resort complex planned for the Mediterranean coast of Albania.Large chunks of the profits would go overseas.

Trump administration officials are celebrating how the Boehly-backed deal would help U.S. energy security, as the package includes everything from oil production sites to refineries and gas stations. The U.S. government would also take a direct stake in the new enterprise via the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, an agency that helps finance projects overseas. But given the makeup of the investment group, a large share of the resulting company — and the profits it creates — would be foreign owned, according to participants in the negotiations.Another prominent bidder would lose out.

Approving the Boehly deal now being negotiated with the help of the White House would mean rejecting a competing offer from Carlyle, a Washington-based global investment management firm that already has investments in refineries in Europe. Carlyle’s bid, by comparison, would mean an all-American owner. But Carlyle does not have similar financial ties to Mr. Trump’s family and political advisers. 

More Special Reports On Nefarious Trump-Related Ties To Russia, Hurting U.S., Europe, Ukraine  

 

Lev Parnas, above, being interviewed by cable television host Rachel Maddow on Jan. 15, 2020 for a documentary she produced about his life. He is shown also with his wife, who stood by him during a hoked up prosecution and imprisonment orchestrated by the Trump Justice Department as retribution for his willingness to expose their Russian-coddling dealmaking in his commentaries, courtroom proceedings and in his memoir, "Shadow Diplomacy."

lev parnas wife

  • Justice Integrity Project Backgrounder On Lev Parnas, Entrepreuneur, Former Trump Team Operative, Now Whistleblower, Andrew Kreig, Oct.4, 2026. A native of Ukraine and former high-level liaison on behalf of President Trump and his team to Eastern European Shadow Diplomacycontacts, aaron parnas o instagramis an expert commentator who has publisted a three-part series this fall documenting insidious relationships between the Trump Team -- President Trump, his families, their companies and their allies -- to Russian and other foreign interests damaging to most Americans. Parnas, a naturlized U.S. citizen who son Aaron Parnas, right, works independently as a prolific journalist with millions of readers and often quoted on this site, received a lifetime achievement award in 2025 for courage at a featured ceremony at the 13th annual Whistleblower Summit and Film Festival, which he memorialzed in a colum immediately below:

Lev Remembers, Yesterday Changed Me Forever: From Brooklyn to the National Press Club—A Whistleblower’s Journey and a Father’s Pride, Lev Parnas, Aug. 1, 2025. Yesterday was one of those rare days that I’ll never forget. The kind of day that reaches deep into your soul and reminds you of why you’re still standing. The kind of day that humbles you—because it isn’t just about what you’ve been through, it’s about who you’ve become because of it. I was in Washington, D.C., standing inside the hallowed halls of the National Press Club—the beating heart of free speech in this country—where I was presented with the 13th Annual Whistleblower Pillar Award. Now, I know how strange that may sound. Me, a kid from Brooklyn, standing in front of a room full of journalists, federal officials, and freedom fighters, being honored as a whistleblower. It still doesn’t fully register. Because where I come from, being a whistleblower wasn’t seen as courageous. It was seen as betrayal. As weakness. As turning your back. But I’ve lived long enough to learn that’s one of the biggest lies ever told.

2026 Trump-Russia Series

 

djt russian connections

donald trump money palmer report Custom

Emptywheel, Analysis: Trump Is Still Relying on Dossier-Driven Polarization to Hide Russian Shenanigans, marcy wheelerEmptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Oct. 3, 2026. We’re falling behind, under the weight of stories making it clear that Trump’s Russian shenanigans never ended.The biggest sign of that is the NYT story revealing that part of the Jared Kushner/Steve Witkoff “peace” plan for Ukraine is an oil deal involving the Emirati guy alleged to be Tom Barrack’s handler back in 2016.

Equally alarming is how various people — State Department Undersecretary of State Sarah Rogers and former Don Jr. sidepiece Kimberly Guilfoyle —are cozying up to people overthrowing democracy in Europe. I’ll discuss those in our reintroduction to this week’s reissue, maybe Monday. For now, I want to share the short we did to introduce this week’s reissue, which I posted in our video section (which I’m trying to introduce). Please follow and support LOLGOP Studios Patreon as we consider how to roll out this stuff in coming weeks.

  • New York Times, Russia Turns to Striking Kyiv’s Bridges, Threatening a Vital Lifeline, Constant Méheut, Oct. 3, 2026. The bridges, used by many commuters in the Ukrainian capital, are the latest target in a broad Russian bombing campaign against infrastructure. Russia has a new target on its rapidly growing list of Ukrainian infrastructure to bomb: bridges.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

 

U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsNew York Times, Senate Races in Republican States Tilt Toward Democrats, Polls Find, Patricia Mazzei, Ruth Igielnik and Sophia June, Oct. 3, 2026. Democrats are performing strongly in five reliably Republican states where they are trying to flip Senate seats to win control of the chamber, new New York Times/Siena polls found.

A month before the midterm elections, Democrats have opened leads or battled their way to ties or near-ties in five reliably Republican states where they are trying to flip Senate seats to win control of the chamber, according to new New York Times/Siena University polls.

Democrats lead among likely voters in the Senate races in Texas and Alaska, two states that consistently vote Republican, the polls found. They have an edge in Ohio, which has been tilting rightward for years. Republicans have a slim edge in Iowa, and Democrats are neck-and-neck with Republicans in Kansas, which has not voted for a Democratic senator since 1932.

President Trump’s deep unpopularity, disapproval of the Iran war and frustration over high gas prices and the cost of living are reshaping the electoral landscape, the polls found.

Taken together, the new polls suggest that the Democrats have multiple paths to retake the Senate majority, despite a challenging map that had favored Republicans going into the midterms. To win Senate control, Democrats need to flip four Republican-held seats while holding on to their current seats in three battleground states, a difficult task.

But there are signs that it is increasingly possible. On Friday, a top Republican super PAC pulled its money out of the Senate race in North Carolina, signaling that the party is not optimistic about being able to defend its seat there. The super PAC, called the Senate Leadership Fund, plans to redirect resources to Kansas, where Republicans have growing concerns about holding their seat.

The polling suggests Democrats are increasingly competitive in these Republican states. 

 Sleepy Don is frustrated.

Sleepy Don is frustrated.

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, Five Encouraging Senate Polls From The NYT, Early Vote Really Picks Up This Week, Hang Out With Some Inspiring Candidates This Weekend, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 3, 2026. Wonderful Candidate And State Party Interviews:  We’ve had some great reports from the battleground states and races in recent days.

No better way to get a sense of what’s happening out there then to hear from those on the front lines themselves. I promise watching a few of these discussions this weekend will lift you up and make you feel better about our party, our country, and our future.

Here’s what we got for you:

  • Josh Turek, our Senate candidate in Iowa, Roy Cooper running hard in North Carolina, and AG Aaron Ford running for Governor in Nevada
  • Eric Croft, Alaska Dem Chair
  • House Candidates - Jamie Ager (NC-11), Bob Brooks (PA-7), Paige Cognetti (PA-8), Cait Conley (NY-17), Christina Hines (MI-10), Jake Johnson (MN-1), Brian Poindexter (OH-7)
  • My weekly talk - Betrayed By Trump And His Allies The American People Have Put Their Faith Back In Us - And Now We Must Deliver
  • Another way to dive into the battlegrounds is to watch check this week’s Ad and Video Roundups to see the ads that are flying across the country right now.

Looking ahead Stuart Stevens joins us live on Monday at 230pm ET, Sarah Trone Garriott (IA-3) joins us Tuesday, Devon Murphy-Anderson of the Maine Democratic Party drops by on Wednesday, and Janelle Stelson (PA-10) is coming by on Thursday.Subscribed

The 2026 Election kicks into high gear this week with early in person voting starting in eight states: Arizona, Indiana, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, Wyoming -- while other states like California start sending out their mail ballots.

As we are now close to 1m people having voted in the 2026 Election I’m going to start my every-two-year early vote analysis using our friend Tom Bonier’s remarkable TargetEarly tool. Here is how the national early vote in 2026 compares so far to 2018 and 2022 on this same day in all three years. Yes, my friends, it’s encouraging but also very early!

What this data tells is not how someone voted but what their party affiliation is given their registration and what is called “modeled party” -- which can infer your party affiliation based on your vote history for those states without party registration. I will have more on this in the coming days and perhaps will bring Tom back to help you understand how this all works but get ready peeps -- the early vote is about to start coming hot and heavy, giving us an opportunity to run up the score and win these midterms in October -- not in November!

Trump has now dropped to -28 in the FiftyPlusOne job approval tracker for this first time this cycle. It’s just a stunning level of repudiation and rejection for the old, addled, painted, corrupt, malicious -- and REALLY UNPOPULAR -- orange guy:

Further confirming what a year of opportunity this has become for us the NYT dropped five encouraging battleground Senate polls this morning:

The Times also included this helpful chart to remind us that while this data is very encouraging at the end of the day all these races are close, Republicans have a lot more money than we do, and we just have to keep working hard:

Yesterday the Senate GOP SuperPAC paused its ads in North Carolina, essentially conceding the state to Roy Cooper. To understand how worried they are about defending these other states in pausing North Carolina they are hanging Michael Whatley, a former Chair of the RNC itself, out to dry. Abandoning a former RNC Chair a month before Election Day in a state Trump won just two years ago is a clear confirmation how bad things have gotten for the GOP.

The poll result from Kansas, and reports that the GOP SuperPAC is going to start spending there, means we need to start taking Kansas seriously here at Hopium. I know many of you have advocated for us to rally behind Adam Hamilton and I will be doing a deeper dive on this race now and will report back soon.

Yesterday Trump got a very bad jobs report. The economy produced very few jobs last month, and wages barely grew. This morning the country wakes up to a 30 year mortgage now clocking in at almost at annual 7.3% rate. Ugly, ugly stuff for the American people:

Yesterday we also discussed Trump’s escalating attempts to cheat in the 2026 Election. Today we learned that the monies for one of his current avenues of cheating, stealing money from tax payers to run political ads to bolster his image with voters, is coming from Congressional appropriated funds for

border security upgrades, efforts to combat drug trafficking and memorials for officers killed in the line of duty, according to federal spending records.

The NYT also has more reporting on this horrific and illegal abuse of power:

President Trump personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads praising him and his presidency, setting in motion a $20 million contract that used funds from the Department of Homeland Security, according to people familiar with the matter.

The ads have run across cable and network television — on Fox News, CNN and MS Now, with football games on Fox and with national newscasts on CBS, ABC and NBC, including “Meet the Press,” which Mr. Trump is known to watch.

Mr. Trump was eager to see the laudatory ads on the air and told Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to come up with the money from within the government, the people said. Mark Paoletta, the budget office’s counsel, and Will Scharf, the White House counsel, both said it would be legal to use D.H.S. funds. The president and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, both spoke with Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, about the ads.

On Sept. 20, U.S. Customs and Border Protection — which falls under D.H.S. — awarded the contract to LMD, a Maryland marketing firm, federal records show.

Jawdropping stuff, even for Trump. But further signs of how desperate they’ve become, and what a year of opportunity it has become for us……

Which is why it’s that time everyone. Time to……Go Kick These Corrupt Traitors’ Asses, Win The Midterms, And Prepare For The Fuckery To Come -- For It Is Coming (And May Already Be Here)

Three things you can do in addition to supporting our intrepid candidates and state parties:

  • Become an Early Vote Champion in your networks, communities, and organizations.
  • Sign up to become a Democracy Protector too. Our next training is this Wednesday, Oct 7th at 10pm ET.
  • Email photos of your electoral work or physical act of voting to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or via links on our daily chat. We want to start showcasing them here on Hopium.

 

texas map

New York Times, In Texas, Talarico Inspires a Recurring Blue-Tinted Dream , Robert Draper, Oct. 3, 2026. After a dry spell of more than three decades, Democrats are daring (yet again) to believe they can win one or more top-of-the-ballot races in a vast and stubbornly red state.

In the go-big-or-go-home collective consciousness of Texas, no ambition is deemed too reckless, no daydream too wild. Save perhaps one.

It is the idea, fantastical to many as it is irresistible to others, that the Democrats will win a statewide race in Texas for the first time in 32 years.

According to the latest New York Times/Siena University poll of the race for U.S. Senate, James Talarico, a 37-year-old state legislator seen by national Democrats as one of the breakout stars of this cycle, is ahead of his Republican rival, Ken Paxton, the state’s scandal-plagued attorney general, by six points. The poll was conducted from Sept. 21 to Sept. 30. A survey from mid-September, the ReconMR/Siena Research Institute poll, also showed the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Gina Hinojosa, four points ahead of the three-term G.O.P. incumbent, Greg Abbott, the most dominant political figure in Texas.

Cue the fluttering heartbeats. Cue, as well, the eye-rolls.

Given how thoroughly Republicans have dominated the state, and how the hopes of Democrats have repeatedly crashed, some Texas pollsters remain skeptical.

“At some point, you do get conditioned by all that’s happened in the past,” said James Henson, the director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Politics Project. “I mean, you look at the trends and you have to admit that something’s going on. But you still don’t want to believe your lying eyes, because you’ve been burned for so long.”

 

Desiree Rios

Angela Paxton, a Texas state senator, appeared in a new ad urging Texans to vote for Republicans, including her estranged husband Ken Paxton (New York Times photo by Desiree Rios).

New York Times, As She Divorces Ken Paxton, His Wife Urges Texans to Vote for Him, Lauren McGaughy, Oct. 3, 2026. In a new ad, Angela Paxton tells voters to focus on the “whole team,” not “individual players.”

Angela Paxton wants to clear the air.

Mrs. Paxton, the estranged wife of Ken Paxton, a conservative firebrand locked in a fierce battle for the U.S. Senate seat in Texas, is urging voters in a new ad to back the entire Republican ticket when they go to the polls next month.

While Mrs. Paxton doesn’t mention her husband — whom she is divorcing, alleging adultery — by name in the ad, she addresses “the elephant in the room” by telling voters they should look past their qualms with any single candidate and think about the future of the Republican Party.

“In a general election, it’s not as much about the individual players on the team. It’s about getting the whole team across the finish line,” she said. “Either we hold every Republican seat, or we hand the future of Texas to the other team.”

Mr. Paxton is trailing James Talarico, his Democratic opponent, in every recent poll, including one released by The New York Times and Siena University on Saturday. While Democrats have not won a statewide election in Texas in more than 30 years, Republicans have warned that the Senate race, and others, are more competitive now than in recent memory.

The ad, funded by Texas PAC, a political action committee affiliated with the main super PAC for Senate Republican leaders, could be a further indication of concern about Mr. Paxton’s chances in the race — especially among women. It also indicates that Mrs. Paxton is now part of a broader strategy to bolster the ticket.Get updates when new midterm election polls are added to our poll trackers. When new polling data drops we’ll send an update straight to your inbox. Get it sent to your inbox.

She recently gave a speech to a women’s club in Texas where she made similar remarks.

“The reality is, while we are the party of values, we have some vulnerabilities on our ballot,” Mrs. Paxton told the club, the Texas Federation of Republican Women on Sept. 18. “And I’ll be honest with you, I think Republican women will decide this election, because some of those vulnerabilities, I think, have been particularly alienating to women that hold our values.”

She then added, “But if we lose it to the other team, the nuances that we want to fix with maybe a certain candidate are nothing compared to what it’s going to take to get it back.”

On Friday, Mr. Paxton’s campaign touted a new ad featuring his daughter Mattie.

A spokesman for Mrs. Paxton, a Republican state senator who is not up for re-election this year, previously declined to tell The Times whether she would vote for her husband. The divorce proceedings are ongoing, her spokesman confirmed Saturday.

Over his more than 20 years in elected office, Mr. Paxton has weathered multiple scandals, including a fraud indictment, accusations of one other affair, and impeachment on bribery and abuse of office charges. None have resulted in a criminal conviction, and Mr. Paxton has denied any wrongdoing, saying the cases were witch hunts perpetrated by enemies within his own party.But the incidents have provided plenty of fodder for his political opponents, including Senator John Cornyn. Mr. Paxton trounced Mr. Cornyn in the May primary, besting him by more than 25 percentage points.

For months after his primary win, national Republican groups withheld their funding from the race. In the past few weeks, they have begun funneling tens of millions of dollars to ads backing Mr. Paxton. Texas PAC alone has invested more than $125 million, a figure that is expected to rise according to AdImpact, a firm that tracks ad spending.

News Updates

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: rump Enters ‘Desperation Mode,’ Texas is a ‘Five-Alarm Fire,’ Administration Clears Way to Institutionalize Disabled Americans, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 3, 2026. With 31 days until the midterms, Donald Trump is entering desperation mode. In the past 24 hours alone, he appeared to post a Republican senator’s personal cellphone number over daylight saving time, renewed his promise of $5,000 checks if Republicans keep Congress, announced $90 payments to 20 million seniors weeks before Election Day, and told a half-empty arena in Alabama, a state he won by 30 points, to “pretend I’m on the ballot.”

The panic is spreading through his party. Republicans are now on track to spend more than $200 million trying to rescue Ken Paxton in Texas, with one GOP senator calling it “a five-alarm fire,” and Paxton’s own estranged wife, who is divorcing him, appeared in a new ad urging voters to look past “individual players” and support the whole Republican ticket. Plus, new records show the prosecutor in the Cornell case never reviewed witness statements before declining charges, and the Trump administration has walked away from decades-old protections that let disabled Americans live in their communities instead of institutions.

On Monday, I’m publishing my deep-dive investigation into how Trump has used taxpayer money for his own benefit, from the “God Made Trump” ads paid for with border security funds to the checks landing in battleground states, laying out exactly where the money came from, where it went, which laws may have been broken and where investigators should look. It’s the most comprehensive piece I’ve written, and I’ve put my lawyer’s hat back on to do it.

Work like this takes time and resources, and it only happens because readers like you make it possible.

Here’s the news:

Republicans Panic Over the Soaring Cost of Saving Ken Paxton as Trump Posts a GOP Senator’s Phone Number and Rallies to Empty Seats

With his approval at record lows and Republicans privately bracing to lose the House, Trump is entering desperation mode, and the past 24 hours show it. He appeared to post Republican Sen. Tom Cotton’s personal cellphone number on Truth Social, urging Arkansans to call him over his opposition to making daylight saving time permanent. He renewed his promise of $5,000 checks to every adult if Republicans keep the House and Senate, a roughly $1 trillion pledge that 66% of voters call “inappropriate” and 61% don’t believe he’ll deliver, while announcing one-time $90 payments, which he called “nearly $100,” to more than 20 million seniors just weeks before Election Day. He warned that a Democratic victory would bring “a 1929 disaster,” invoking the crash that triggered the Great Depression, and told a Mobile, Alabama, rally to “pretend I’m on the ballot” as entire rows of seats sat empty behind him in a state he won by 30 points. Meanwhile, his Justice Department held a high-profile news conference to announce charges against a Utah mail carrier who admitted dumping mail out of “laziness,” with the acting deputy attorney general insisting, “Remember, folks. Voting fraud is real,” and calling it “just the tip of the iceberg” without offering evidence.

Republicans are panicking over the skyrocketing cost of rescuing Ken Paxton’s Texas Senate campaign, with one GOP senator calling it “a five-alarm fire.” The Senate Leadership Fund poured another $60 million into Texas this week, bringing its spending there to a record $131 million, and with MAGA Inc. and other reservations, outside Republican groups are on track to top $200 million to save Paxton, Politico reports. “This is a slow-moving car crash,” one Texas Republican strategist said, putting the chance of a “catastrophic” outcome for the GOP Senate majority at 75%. GOP operatives in Michigan and New Hampshire are now complaining that money flowing to Texas should be going to their states, with one ally of New Hampshire nominee John Sununu asking, “Why? We’ve never had a problem in Texas.” Most public polling over the past two months shows Democrat James Talarico with an edge, though Paxton released an internal poll showing himself up 48% to 45%.

Senior Republicans have been privately pushing Trump’s team to spend more on Paxton, worried MAGA Inc. won’t come through after his leaked audio trashing Trump’s convention. A Trump operative said MAGA Inc. and its affiliates expect to spend about $45 million in Texas through Oct. 12, up from $20 million, but would not commit to spending beyond that date. The concerns escalated after the New York Times reported audio of Paxton telling donors “everybody’s numbers dropped” after Trump’s Dallas convention, and Trump told a Texas crowd that Paxton “can be a pain in the ass sometimes.” One Republican senator said of Paxton’s unforced errors, “Sometimes, I think [Paxton] wants to lose,” while a Texas Republican official said, “all this spend hasn’t changed anything.” White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles reassured Senate Republicans this week that there will be enough money for competitive races in the final stretch.

As She Divorces Ken Paxton, His Wife Appears in an Ad Urging Texans to Vote for the GOP Ticket. Angela Paxton, a Republican state senator divorcing Ken Paxton on grounds of alleged adultery, appears in a new ad urging Texans to back the entire Republican ticket, telling voters, “it’s not as much about the individual players on the team. It’s about getting the whole team across the finish line.” She doesn’t mention her husband by name, but addresses “the elephant in the room,” warning, “Either we hold every Republican seat, or we hand the future of Texas to the other team.” The ad, funded by a PAC affiliated with Senate Republicans’ main super PAC, comes as Paxton trails Democrat James Talarico in every recent poll, including a New York Times/Siena poll released Saturday, and signals GOP concern about his standing with women. At a recent speech to Republican women, Angela Paxton acknowledged the party has “some vulnerabilities on our ballot” that have been “particularly alienating to women,” though her spokesman has declined to say whether she’ll vote for her husband. Paxton, who has weathered a fraud indictment, impeachment on bribery and abuse of office charges and other scandals without a conviction, denies wrongdoing, while his campaign released its own ad this week featuring his daughter Mattie.

Trump appeared to post Republican Sen. Tom Cotton’s personal cellphone number on Truth Social, urging Arkansans to call him over his opposition to making daylight saving time permanent. “Tom Cotton, a friend of mine, is holding up a very important Bill,” Trump wrote of the Sunshine Protection Act, adding, “Call Tom on his cellphone... and let him know.” In a third post, Trump said if Cotton “were putting Arkansas first, he would give them an extra hour of daylight.” Cotton fired back that Congress has enacted permanent daylight saving time before and repealed it “once Americans experienced absurdly late sunrises in the winter,” adding, “Arkansans don’t want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I’ll always put Arkansas first.” The House passed the bill in July with bipartisan support, but the Senate has yet to take it up, and Trump has also touted support from PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp, who he said needs it so golf tournaments don’t “run out of sunlight.”

Trump spoke to rows of empty seats at a rally in Mobile, Alabama, failing to fill a 10,041-seat arena in a state he won by 30 points. The Daily Beast reported that entire rows behind the president at the University of South Alabama’s Mitchell Center sat empty as he tried to rally support for Republicans ahead of the midterms. The sparse crowd came even as Trump bragged at the rally that he had received “the highest vote total of any candidate in Alabama history.” Alabama Democrats had cast the visit as a sign of GOP nerves, with gubernatorial nominee Doug Jones saying Trump “sees what we’re doing in this state.” It’s the latest stop in a campaign swing through deep-red states that has also taken Trump to Texas and Oklahoma, rather than traditional battlegrounds.

Cornell DA Never Reviewed Witness Statements Before Declining Charges, as Data Shows the University Rarely Expels Students for Sexual Assault

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten based his decision not to charge anyone in the alleged Cornell gang rape on Jane Doe’s initial six-page statement, without reviewing witness interviews and other evidence police collected, according to records obtained by NBC News. On Nov. 25, 2024, when a campus police investigator approached his office about interviews they’d conducted, an investigator in Van Houten’s office replied that several attorneys “had read [Jane Doe’s] statement” and “all agreed that, based on [Jane Doe’s] statement, criminal charges would not be pursued.” Van Houten told NBC “there was nothing to review” because the kathy hochul 2017interviews flagged were frat members “declining to speak on the advice of their attorney,” but he didn’t respond when asked whether he knew about interviews with other fraternity members or tips from callers. Gov. Kathy Hochul, left, announcing Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor, asked, “In what world does the district attorney not even interview her or anyone else involved, or even request the full transcript?” Jane Doe has sued Cornell and seven Chi Phi members, alleging they sexually assaulted her over several hours while she was under the influence of ketamine, alcohol and marijuana.

New records also show Jane Doe wasn’t told about the decision not to prosecute for nearly two months, and her lawyer says she missed a critical chance to preserve evidence. Police informed her of the DA’s Nov. 25 decision only on Jan. 21, 2025, and her attorney, Thomas Giuffra, said she believed during that time that “they were still investigating,” adding, “If so, that is worse than I thought.” Van Houten said his office had “no part in the timing” and never interviewed her. Giuffra said that shortly after the alleged assault, she went to the university health center for a urinary tract infection she described as being “of a traumatic origin” but was not offered a rape kit, which he called “the first failure post assault when she was trying to get help,” noting DNA might have been recoverable within 48 hours. She underwent a sexual assault exam two weeks later, and Cornell did not immediately respond to NBC’s request for comment.

The records reveal police obtained part of a Snapchat thread in which one fraternity member announced there was “free p----” in the room where the alleged assault occurred. Van Houten said that material came from a witness rather than police, so there was “nothing to review.” But on Nov. 26, 2024, the day after the DA’s decision, police requested a fuller data history from Snapchat and received 1,665 pieces of data from five accounts in December. A campus police investigator wrote that only three snaps included Jane Doe or mentioned the incident and that none showed “anything that can be construed as being criminal in nature.” It’s unclear whether Van Houten knew about the request, and the attorney general’s office is now reviewing whether charges are warranted.

A USA TODAY analysis found Cornell rarely expels or suspends students accused of sexual violence, even as reported assaults on campus appear to be rising. Of more than 1,200 incidents of sexual assault, dating and domestic violence and stalking reported to Cornell’s Title IX office from 2018 to 2024, the school filed disciplinary charges in 162 cases, found someone responsible in 51, and issued just 14 suspensions and seven expulsions, with most of those found at fault receiving sanctions like probation or training. Cornell suspended or expelled people found responsible only 41% of the time, compared with 59% across 26 large New York colleges. Meanwhile, Cornell’s campus climate survey found 35% of undergraduate women reported unwanted sexual contact or penetration in 2025, up from 23% in 2023, even as reports to the Title IX office fell 41% from their 2018 peak. “Those two trendlines tell me that all students, including victims and perpetrators, believe that there is impunity for sexual assault at Cornell,” sociologist Nicole Bedera said, as the Trump administration formally reinstated its 2020 Title IX rules, which made it harder for schools to find students at fault, on Sept. 28.

Trump Administration Abandons Decades-Old Protections Letting Disabled Americans Live in Their Communities Instead of Institutions

A federal judge stripped “integration” requirements from a landmark disability rights regulation after the Trump administration switched sides in a lawsuit and asked the court to throw out its own rules. For nearly 50 years, federal regulations under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act have required federally funded programs to serve people with disabilities in “the most integrated setting” possible, rather than in nursing homes or institutions. The case, Texas v. Kennedy, began in 2024 as a challenge by Republican-led states to Biden-era protections for transgender people, but it morphed into an attack on the integration mandate, and by September the Trump administration joined the remaining five states, Alaska, Florida, Louisiana, Montana and Texas, in asking the court to strike it. “It is pretty significant and pretty unprecedented to see the federal government asking a court to vacate its own rules,” said disability rights lawyer Jennifer Mathis. Bruce Darling of the Center for Disability Rights said the ruling felt “like a knife in your chest,” adding that people are hearing the federal government “has made a determination that [disabled people] don’t have a right to live in freedom, that they can be locked up against their will.”

The ruling is part of a broader retreat from enforcement that is already hitting families, including medically fragile children in Florida. In June, the Justice Department issued an opinion saying it no longer reads federal law to require states to serve disabled people in the most integrated setting, even acknowledging its position is “out of step with the common understanding” of the Supreme Court’s 1999 Olmstead decision. In August, the department asked a court to throw out its own 2023 victory requiring Florida to provide in-home care so children with complex medical needs wouldn’t be placed in nursing facilities, and it dropped out of a long-running case over Texas allegedly placing thousands of disabled people in nursing homes. Mathis called the Florida reversal “incredibly heartless,” saying it means “ripping children away from families” and forcing them “to grow up in an institution.” The states argue the rules restricted how they could spend strained Medicaid budgets, with Florida’s attorney general’s office saying it joined the suit “to serve as a check on federal power, not to deny care,” while experts warn that without federal enforcement, disabled people may have to sue states themselves to get services.

Disability advocates say the right to community living still exists under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Olmstead, but “the right is only as good as the enforcement,” and they’re fighting back as the administration also targets disabled voters. A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a resolution reaffirming Olmstead, 100 members of Congress have urged the Justice Department to rescind its June opinion, and Delaware has already written the stripped regulations into state law, with George Washington University professor Alison Barkoff saying at least a dozen state leaders have called her about doing the same. Advocates are also pushing the bipartisan Latonya Reeves Freedom Act to codify the integration mandate in federal law. At the same time, a proposed rule from Russell Vought’s budget office would bar federal grant money from being used for voter registration drives, threatening $10 million a year Congress provides to help people with disabilities register, which ProPublica reports has helped narrow the voting gap affecting about 740,000 disabled voters. A former OMB general counsel called the voter rule “a massive across-the-board power grab,” while Cravins, a Louisiana mother whose toddler with Down syndrome relies on publicly funded therapies at home, put the stakes simply: “This affects children, this affects adults, it affects your elderly parents. It affects everyone.”

Other news:

Ted Cruz Calls JD Vance “Insecure” as Their 2028 Rivalry Spills Into Public. Sen. Ted Cruz fired back at JD Vance, right,jd vance oon Saturday after the vice president told NBC News, “It is really obvious to me that, at this very moment, Ted Cruz is running for president,” while insisting he himself is focused on electing Republicans. “In my experience, people engage in political bomb-throwing when they’re feeling insecure,” Cruz told Politico, adding that he’s focused on “helping us win on Election Day in the next 30 days.” Cruz pointed to his campaign travel in Georgia, Iowa, Nebraska, South Carolina and Texas, with trips planned to Alaska, Florida and North Carolina, and boasted that no Republican has campaigned for more candidates over the past decade. He also noted the irony that he “spent a full day on the road with JD Vance” during his 2022 Ohio Senate race, saying, “I was very glad to help him.” The clash comes as Vance is widely seen as the GOP’s 2028 frontrunner, though Cruz has said he doesn’t believe Vance is a sure thing and that he’ll “certainly be part of the discussion.”

Moldova’s President Slams Russia After Missile and Drone Debris Explodes on Moldovan Soil. Moldovan President Maia Sandu condemned Russia on Saturday after three missiles and two drones violated the country’s airspace during a Russian attack on Ukraine, with debris exploding on Moldovan territory. “Its war is dangerously reaching Moldova,” Sandu wrote, saying the weapons, including Banderol missiles, “violated our airspace and exploded on our soil.” Fragments were found in the eastern districts of Hincesti, Anenii Noi and Causeni, sparking a fire but causing no casualties, while Russian attacks across Ukraine killed at least eight civilians and injured 83 over the past day. It’s the latest in a string of incidents for Moldova’s pro-EU government, which faced three separate airspace violations last Wednesday alone. Meanwhile, Lithuania briefly shut down Vilnius airport and scrambled NATO jets Saturday after a dangerous object was spotted in its skies, possibly crossing from Belarus, as Europe faces a growing wave of airspace violations, sabotage attempts and hybrid attacks tied to Russia.

tennessee map

Tennessee’s top prison official is resigning after the botched execution of Christa Pike, days after reports revealed he oversaw five “botched” executions across two states. Gov. Bill Lee announced Saturday that Corrections Commissioner Frank Strada will step down later this month as the state launches an independent investigation into what went wrong. Strada said he still believes the department “carried out its responsibilities in accordance with the established protocol,” but that stepping aside “is in the best interest of Tennesseans as the independent review moves forward.” Pike remains unconscious and on a ventilator, with her lawyers saying hospital staff are working to clear the two doses of pentobarbital from her system, which they believe entered her tissue rather than her bloodstream because of IV complications. “Frank Strada’s resignation does not change the fact that Tennessee is shrouding its executions in secrecy,” said federal public defender Kit Thomas, noting Strada’s troubled Arizona record “was well known” when Lee hired him. The head of the US Campaign to End the Death Penalty said advocates had long warned the governor about the state’s execution process, adding, “They were ignored,” while Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of classmate Colleen Slemmer, would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

A Florida jury acquitted former sheriff’s deputy Eddie Duran in the fatal shooting of Roger Fortson, a Black Air Force airman killed in his own apartment after a false domestic disturbance call. The jury deliberated for about two hours after a four-day trial before finding Duran not guilty of manslaughter with a firearm, a charge that carried up to 30 years in prison. Body camera footage showed Fortson answered the door holding a handgun pointed at the ground, and Duran fired multiple times before telling him to drop it. Duran, who was fired from the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office after the shooting, had his lawyer argue he was “doing his job” and that Fortson would still be alive if he hadn’t armed himself before answering the door. Fortson’s mother said she wasn’t surprised by the quick verdict and that the trial forced her to confront details she’d spent two years avoiding, adding, “I’m never going to hear my baby’s voice no more.” Attorney Ben Crump said the family will pursue accountability through a pending federal civil rights lawsuit, saying, “Roger’s life and his service will always matter.”

The Coast Guard is searching for an air ambulance jet with six people aboard that disappeared off the coast of Massachusetts during a medical evacuation flight from Bermuda to Boston. The FAA issued a search-and-rescue alert for the Canadian-registered Gulfstream G-100 around 1:20 a.m. Saturday after it lost contact, with four crew members and two passengers on board. Air and surface crews are searching an area off Nantucket, and ABC News reported, citing a source, that officials believe the plane rapidly descended 7,500 feet before hitting the water and that no Americans were aboard. The operator, Latitude Air Ambulance, said a delay in hearing from its crew “doesn’t mean that the worst has happened.” Massachusetts port officials confirmed the plane never arrived at Boston Logan, saying, “Our thoughts are with those onboard and their loved ones as the search continues.” The FAA is coordinating with the Coast Guard and the Rescue Coordination Center, and the identities of those on board have not been released.

The TSA is banning airport security officers from sitting down while checking travelers’ IDs and boarding passes, drawing fierce pushback from their union. The agency said the change keeps officers “on their feet and alert” and reinforces “our commitment to hospitality,” adding that all officers must meet fitness-for-duty requirements. The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents TSA officers, said it wasn’t consulted and that the chairs provide “basic ergonomic and safety support” for workers standing on hard surfaces all day, calling the move “basic safety and common decency for the workforce.” The union called it part of “a broad pattern” of disregard for employees, and urged workers and lawmakers to join a “collective resistance against this regime that is literally attempting to take out our workforce.” The change comes after a brutal year for TSA workers, who went unpaid for weeks during a 76-day government shutdown that drove some to quit and caused security lines to balloon. The union is also weighing legal action against the administration’s push to privatize security checkpoints at three airports.

Southern California is sweltering under a late-season heatwave, with temperatures expected to hover near 100 degrees in downtown Los Angeles and climb well into the triple digits inland. The National Weather Service expects temperatures 15 to 20 degrees above normal to last at least a week, raising the risk of heat-related illness and wildfires amid low soil moisture. A UCLA professor said Friday was nearly 7 degrees hotter than the hottest Oct. 2 on record and about 30 degrees above the historical average. Experts say the heat is being fueled by a marine heatwave driving a strong El Niño, and that climate change is making longer, more intense heatwaves more frequent, with one UCLA physicist saying, “it’s hard to escape that a warmer climate adds to the strength of heatwaves.” The one silver lining is that forecasts don’t call for the strong winds that would spread wildfires, though officials are urging residents to “stay cool, stay hydrated” and limit sun exposure. The heat coincides with Saturday’s first game of the Dodgers-Braves National League Division Series, and one researcher urged governments to invest in shade, calling it the “most effective way to keep people safe.”

The Parnas Perspective, Afternoon News and Commentary: Trump Took Money Meant for Fallen Officers' Memorials to Air Ads Worshipping Himself, Rushes Out Checks as GOP Worries, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 3, 2026. A taxpayer-funded ad declares, “So God made Trump.” Another intercuts lions hunting their prey with images of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton. Every one of them ends the same way: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” And according to the New York Times, Trump personally ordered his budget director to find the money, which came out of funds Congress set aside for border security and memorials for officers killed in the line of duty.

It’s part of a pattern. Weeks before the midterms, Trump is mailing $500 Obamacare checks that are flowing overwhelmingly to battleground states, announcing $90 payments to 20 million seniors, and promising $5,000 to every adult if Republicans keep Congress. And it’s happening because Republicans are panicking: House Republicans now privately believe they’re going to lose the majority, as Trump’s approval on the economy hits an all-time low of 26%.

That’s why I’m launching a major investigation into how Trump has used taxpayer money to benefit himself and his party, from the ad campaign to the payouts to the funds redirected away from what Congress intended. I want to lay out, clearly and with the receipts, exactly where the money came from, where it went, and what laws may have been broken, so that Congress and prosecutors have a clear roadmap they can ultimately use.

This kind of reporting takes time, documents and resources, and I can’t do it without you.

Here’s the news:

House Republicans Privately Fear Losing the Majority as Trump’s Economic Approval Sinks to Record Lows

A growing number of House Republicans privately believe they’ll lose the majority and are shifting to limiting the size of a Democratic wave. More than a dozen people told CNN that Republicans have watched with alarm as Trump’s approval has sunk in their own internal polling over the past two weeks, including on traditionally red turf. The House GOP is entering “triage mode,” discussing pulling money from once-competitive races like Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks in Iowa, Rep. Tom Kean in New Jersey and an open seat in Nebraska. The goal now is keeping a potential Speaker Hakeem Jeffries’ margin under 10 seats, with one GOP strategist asking, “What the f**k are you going to get done over there?” Speaker Mike Johnson insists he’s “absolutely still convinced” Republicans can hold the House, and GOP strategists say their cash advantage and newly gerrymandered seats in Texas and Florida could still be “the lifesaver,” either minimizing losses or saving the majority.

Trump’s approval on the economy has hit all-time lows, with 65% of Americans blaming him for persistently high costs. An AP-NORC poll found just 26% approve of Trump’s handling of the economy and only 17% approve of his handling of the cost of living, while his overall approval sits at 31%. A Quinnipiac poll put his economic approval at 31%, the lowest of either term, with just 28% approving of his handling of Iran, and CNN found his overall approval at 33%, three points below where it was at this point in his first term. Even his base is slipping, with NBC News finding only 62% of self-identified MAGA Republicans support him, down from 71% in the spring. Democrats lead the generic congressional ballot by 11 to 12 points in Emerson and Marist polling, and a plurality of voters say Trump’s endorsement would make them less likely to back a candidate.

Florida GOP Rep. María Elvira Salazar’s ad telling Trump his immigration crackdown has “gone too far” has turned her once-safe Miami seat into a race to watch. Standing in front of the White House, Salazar said some Hispanics who voted for Trump now feel “betrayed,” as the administration deports a record number of Cubans, including some sent to Africa and older men sent to Mexico. The ad angered Trump, who promoted criticism of her on Truth Social, while her Democratic opponent, former CBS Miami anchor Eliott Rodriguez, said, “We raised a lot of money, thanks to my opponent!” Salazar won by 20 points in 2024 in a district Trump carried with 57%, but House Majority PAC has now reserved about $4.2 million to try to flip it. One former Republican Miami city commissioner said he plans to leave the party after voters told him to his face they wouldn’t support him because he’s a Republican, calling it “a rude awakening.”

Republicans are leaning on taxes, immigration and crime in their final ads, while a historic wave of departures reshapes Congress. About a third of GOP House ads in September focused on tax policy, touting the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s” tax cuts on tips, overtime and Social Security, with immigration, law enforcement and transgender issues also featuring prominently. Republicans are outspending Democrats in all 10 of the most expensive House races, including multimillion-dollar advantages in Democratic-held seats. Regardless of the outcome, the next Congress will look very different, with at least 83 incumbents not returning as of August, the most lawmakers not seeking reelection since 2000, according to TIME and Ballotpedia. That includes an unusually high 12 incumbents who lost primaries, from Trump critics like Thomas Massie and Bill Cassidy to Democrats ousted by progressive challengers.

Trump Ramps Up Pre-Election Cash Giveaways as Critics Accuse Him of Trying to Buy Votes

Trump announced yet another payout weeks before the midterms, a one-time $90 payment to more than 20 million seniors on Medicare. Trump said late Friday the money will come from the Medicare Improvement Fund, which Congress funded with $2 billion to improve the program, and the White House says most seniors will receive a direct deposit in early October, with checks mailed to the rest. It’s the latest in an escalating series of cash promises as Republicans face dismal polling over the cost of living, driven largely by the Iran war’s spike in oil and gas prices. The $90 announcement comes on top of $500 Obamacare checks already landing in mailboxes and Trump’s promise of $5,000 for every adult if Republicans keep Congress. Democrats have accused Trump of trying to bribe voters, arguing that Congress, not the president, controls how federal money is spent.

The $500 Obamacare checks are flowing overwhelmingly to the states that will decide the midterms. A Reuters analysis found 71% of the payments, $339 million in total, are going to residents of 13 states that host eight of the nine most competitive Senate races and 10 of the 12 most competitive governor’s races. Only 950,000 of the 19 million Obamacare enrollees qualify, because the checks only go to people in the 30 states using HealthCare.gov and only to those paying full price after Republicans let enhanced subsidies expire. KFF says premiums for that group could quadruple in some states to more than $2,200 a month, meaning the $500 “likely for the majority of them is not going to offset” their higher costs. “How many times has Trump tried to buy folks’ votes? It’s pretty damn obvious,” said Democratic strategist Eric Stern, while New Hampshire Senate nominee Chris Pappas said voters “just want him to understand that affordability isn’t a hoax.”

Trump doubled down on his $5,000 checks at an Oklahoma rally, insisting “I never fail people,” even as most voters say the offer is inappropriate. He acknowledged the payments would cost about $1 trillion but claimed it’s “really very little” because he’s secured $21 trillion in investment, nearly double the $11.2 trillion listed on the White House’s own website. A Strength in Numbers/Verasight poll found 66% of voters call the offer “inappropriate,” a Reuters/Ipsos poll found 63% disapprove, including four in 10 Republicans, and 61% of likely voters in an Economist/YouGov survey don’t believe he’ll actually deliver. NBC News found 46% of voters would be less likely to back a candidate who supports the checks, compared to 21% who’d be more likely, though a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll showed 57% support. Trump has pointed to his $1,776 “warrior dividend” for service members as proof he follows through.

Experts say the payments may not change the race, but could matter at the margins in close contests. Republican strategist Ryan Williams said they won’t alter the election’s fundamental dynamics, but “if you can curry favor with even a small group of undecided voters who might be happy with the check they got, it could make a difference.” Cornell professor Douglas Kriner, who has studied similar presidential efforts, said they could be “worth a percentage point or two,” mostly by shoring up Republican voters rather than winning over Democrats. Trump has also tried to cut off billions in federal aid to Democratic-run states like Minnesota and New York, efforts that have stalled in court. Past presidents have made explicit promises too, including Joe Biden’s pledge of $2,000 checks during Georgia’s 2021 Senate runoffs, but Trump’s string of direct payouts timed to land weeks before an election is unusual in its scale.

Trump Personally Ordered $20 Million in Taxpayer-Funded Ads Glorifying Himself, Including One Called “God Made Trump”

The Trump administration made a taxpayer-funded ad casting Trump as a messianic figure, titled “God Made Trump,” part of at least 13 spots promoting the president on the public’s dime. The three-minute ad, a riff on Paul Harvey’s “God Made a Farmer,” declares, “I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle the deep state, and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to ruffle the feathers. So God made Trump.” It was created by a pro-Trump meme group, aired at the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas, and ends like every other spot in the campaign: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” Other ads obtained by CNN include “King of the Jungle,” which intercuts lions hunting with images of Obama, Biden, Pelosi, Clinton and Newsom, “Resilience,” which features Trump’s Fulton County mugshot, and an ad promoting the UFC fight Trump hosted at the White House. In any other administration, using taxpayer money to produce ads worshipping the sitting president and attacking his political rivals would be treated as an impeachable abuse of power.

Trump personally ordered his budget director to find taxpayer money for the ads, according to the New York Times. Twelve people familiar with the matter said Trump was eager to see laudatory ads on TV and told OMB Director Russell Vought to come up with the money from within the government, while Trump and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles both spoke with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin about them. In an August Oval Office meeting meant to discuss super PAC spending for struggling GOP candidates, the Times reports Trump was far more interested in having his assistant Natalie Harp show the group videos of himself. On Sept. 19, OMB shifted $20 million in Customs and Border Protection money into a “commemorative events” budget line, and the next day CBP awarded a $20 million contract to a Maryland PR firm. Asked about it, Trump said, “If somebody said that that’s wrong, I’ll gladly pay the money,” insisting, “I’m not promoting myself because I’m not running for office. I’m promoting the country.”

The money came from funds Congress set aside for border security, anti-drug trafficking efforts and memorials for officers killed in the line of duty. According to the Washington Post, the law allowed the CBP money to be used only for things like port inspection equipment, border surveillance and screening unaccompanied children, while “commemorative events” was meant for “line-of-duty death memorials” and commendation ceremonies. At least $5.5 million has already been spent, with ads running on Fox, CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, “Good Morning America,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and NFL broadcasts, and the White House says the campaign will expand. Congress has banned spending federal money on “publicity or propaganda” since the 1950s, and while the GAO has found violations under Obama and Bush, those involved policy campaigns, not ads glorifying the president himself. There is no precedent for using government money to air political ads in an election season.

Democrats say the ads may be criminal, and even Republicans are refusing to defend them. Rep. Jamie Raskin called them potential “felony criminal theft and conversion of government property for political campaign purposes,” and with Rep. George Whitesides asked the GAO to investigate possible violations of the Hatch Act, the Antideficiency Act and laws against embezzling public funds, a probe he could pursue with subpoena power if Democrats win the House. Sens. Patty Murray and Chris Murphy called it “a shockingly corrupt misuse of taxpayer dollars.” Republican Sen. John Cornyn said the ads are not an appropriate use of taxpayer money, adding, “It’s not even a close question,” while Sen. Thom Tillis said Trump should pay for them from his super PAC instead. That super PAC, MAGA Inc., has more than $400 million, which Trump has described by saying, “This is my money that I control.”

Other news:

The University of Oregon received five sexual assault reports in the first week of classes, as the Cornell case sparks a national reckoning over campus safety. The university alerted students Wednesday, just two days after classes began, saying four of the assaults involved students and a fifth happened near a park next to campus, all within the past week. While the cases aren’t believed to be connected, the school said “several alleged perpetrators may have taken advantage of the fact that the victims were intoxicated at social events,” and one arrest has been made. The university said it issued the alert because it was “very concerned to see a pattern of assaults with similar characteristics,” stressing that its “first concern is for survivors.” Meanwhile, newly unsealed documents in the Cornell case show Jane Doe told a university disciplinary hearing, “I felt like bait. I felt like lions around me.” Cornell has defended its handling of the case, which ended in expulsions and suspensions, and said it welcomes the reopened investigation now led by Attorney General Letitia James.

Justice Samuel Alito says he thinks about retiring “every term,” but chose to stay because he can still “make a valuable contribution.” The 76-year-old told CBS News he resisted pressure from Republicans who wanted him to step down while the GOP still controls the Senate, which could block a Trump nominee if Democrats win it in November. His retirement wouldn’t change the court’s 6-3 conservative majority but would give Trump a fourth appointment. Trump said in April “it’d be nice to say now I have somebody for 40 years,” while praising Alito as “an unbelievable justice.” Alito said it’s “too hard to predict what the political situation will be and what any president might do with respect to a replacement.” The interview comes days before the release of his autobiography, “So Ordered: An Originalist’s View of the Constitution, the Court, and Our Country,” on Tuesday.

Trump said “maybe they’ll name the damn bridge after me” at a Mobile rally touting a $3.2 billion Alabama bridge partly funded by the Biden administration. Trump credited his administration with $3 billion in funding for the Mobile River Bridge and Bayway project, but Biden awarded a $550 million grant for it in July 2024, which Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures pointed out at the groundbreaking, saying “I would be remiss not to thank the Biden administration.” The bridge joins a growing list of things Trump wants named after him, including the Kennedy Center, where a federal judge ordered his name removed in May because “only Congress can change it,” and Palm Beach’s airport, now President Donald J. Trump International Airport. Trump has denied reports his officials circulated a list that included Ford’s Theatre, where Lincoln was assassinated, calling it “FAKE NEWS!” He told New York Magazine he’s remaking DC in his image because “nobody will do it once I’m gone.” At the rally, Trump also bragged that he got “the highest vote total of any candidate in Alabama history” and said he’ll be back next Saturday for the Georgia-Alabama football game.

A White House budget office proposal would bar anyone from using federal grant money for voter registration drives, threatening programs that help disabled Americans vote. The rule from Russell Vought’s Office of Management and Budget would also ban vaguely defined “related activities,” and could force nonprofits that help people with disabilities, nursing home residents and others register to pause their work ahead of 2028, ProPublica reports. Congress has funded voter access for people with disabilities since the 2002 Help America Vote Act, signed by George W. Bush, and the gap in registration difficulties still affects about 740,000 disabled voters. A former OMB general counsel called it “a massive across-the-board power grab” that ignores Congress’ power of the purse. Vought previously condemned a Biden order expanding registration as a “power grab” that would boost turnout “especially among Democratic Party supporters.” The rule wouldn’t take effect until after the midterms, and legal experts expect it to face lawsuits arguing it contradicts laws Congress has repeatedly approved.

The Tennessee prison chief who oversaw Christa Pike’s failed execution has presided over five “botched” executions across two states, her lawyers say. Commissioner Frank Strada was a deputy prison director in Arizona in 2022 when three executions were classified as botched, including two in which executioners had to cut into prisoners’ groins to find a vein, and Tennessee also failed to execute Tony Carruthers in May after workers couldn’t find a vein for over an hour. Under Strada, Tennessee dropped a training requirement for execution teams to practice inserting IVs, and he admitted in a deposition he hadn’t followed key recommendations from a 2022 independent review. After he left Arizona, that state expanded its IV team and required more rigorous training, but Strada implemented a Tennessee protocol mirroring Arizona’s old two-person IV team. Asked what makes a successful execution, Strada said, “The condemned is put to death,” and when asked “Anything else?” replied, “No.” Pike remains unconscious and on a ventilator, Gov. Bill Lee has suspended executions through the end of the year, and candidates to replace Lee say they wouldn’t keep Strada.

Record diesel prices driven by the Iran war are hammering Midwest farmers just as harvest season begins. One Indiana farmer says he’ll burn about 9,000 gallons of diesel this harvest, with fuel now $3 a gallon more expensive than a year ago, and estimates suggest the war and supply disruptions could add $12,500 in fuel costs for every 1,000 acres harvested. Four of the five states with the biggest diesel price jumps in September were in the Midwest, worsened by a flooded ExxonMobil refinery in Illinois and a six-month labor dispute at a major BP refinery in Indiana. School districts are feeling it too, with nearly 40% of districts in a national survey consolidating bus routes and some cutting field trips. Experts warn the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is at its lowest level in 43 years, which could leave little cushion heading into high-demand winter months. Even if the war ended tomorrow, one expert said, refilling the reserve would slow any drop in prices, calling that “the best-case” scenario.

The FDA found cyclospora at the Mexican farm linked to the largest outbreak of the parasite in US history, which sickened nearly 13,000 people. Inspectors detected the parasite in a wastewater tank and a drainage ditch used for lettuce cultivation at the Taylor Farms site in Guanajuato, though it’s unclear how the lettuce was contaminated. The outbreak spread across 21 states, sending 570 people to the hospital and killing two. The FDA’s first visit to the farm in more than seven years came after a steep post-pandemic drop in international food safety inspections, and after the agency had to retract a faulty test result. Mexico’s own food safety authority had said it found no cyclospora in the lettuce or water at the facility. Taylor Farms blamed an independent grower “who is no longer part of our supplier program,” and said its facility remains closed.

Hawaii’s 550-year-old Hōlei sea arch has collapsed into the Pacific after a series of powerful storms. The roughly 90-foot landmark in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park was still standing on Sept. 23 but had fallen by Sept. 27, the National Park Service said, after Tropical Storm Nolo rapidly intensified into a hurricane. The cliffs around the arch had been unstable for years, damaged by earthquakes during the 2018 Kīlauea eruption and pounded by storm surf in 2020. Nolo was the third major storm to hit Hawaii in recent months, following hurricanes Lala and Lowell. Forecasters warn this “supercharged” El Niño could reach historic intensity, with its effects compounded by fossil fuel-driven warming. The US Geological Survey had predicted the collapse more than a decade ago, writing in 2014, “It will not be here for ever... One day, it will be gone.”

Country star Zach Bryan wore a “Free Palestine” shirt onstage at Gillette Stadium, weeks after owner Robert Kraft barred Macklemore from performing there. Bryan’s black shirt read “Free Palestine. An appeal to heaven,” a phrase dating back to the Revolutionary War that once appeared on Massachusetts’ maritime flag, while members of his band wore Palestinian soccer jerseys. In September, Kraft blocked Macklemore from opening for Ed Sheeran at the Foxborough venue after the rapper said “Free Palestine” and accused Israel of genocide at a New Jersey concert, calling the speech deeply offensive to the Jewish community. Bryan is scheduled to play Gillette again Saturday night. It’s unclear whether Kraft will take any action against Bryan, whose shirt echoed the same message that got Macklemore banned. The Kraft Group did not respond to a request for comment.  

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption 


President Trump speaks to White House media before his trip to Alabama to host a political rally on Oct. 2, 2026. President Trump speaks to White House media before his trip to Alabama to host a political rally on Oct. 2, 2026. 

Hope for America, Opinion: The President's decline is in a freefall. Heather Delaney Reese, helen delaney reese djtright, Oct. 3, 2026. At 3:54 pm Donald Trump emerged from the White House with freshly colored hair and makeup, as Marine One’s engine roared in the background. He walked directly over to the waiting press, threw his hands out in front of him, gesturing at the empty ground in front of him, while he squeezed his legs together and arched his torso forward, yelling to the reporters, “This is the way the White House is supposed to look. Not asphalt. Broken, dirty asphalt. Look at it.” He then paused, frowning as he looked over his left shoulder, and continued, “The finest stone you could buy anywhere in the world.”

The gathered press said nothing, confused by his odd behavior. The President then took three steps forward and appeared to remember why he had come outside in the first place. “Okay. So, I’m heading to Alabama, a place that I won all three times. Record votes, like Texas, like Oklahoma, like a lot of them. And we’re going to give a little speech, and I hope they like it.”

For the next 6 minutes and 52 seconds, we watched the President struggle to answer questions, follow the conversation, and even walk in a straight line. Donald Trump is gravely unwell, and whatever is behind his serious decline appears to be rapidly accelerating.

I don’t say that with any joy or pleasure. The presidency is the most important office in our government, and the entire world is at risk with him in the Oval Office. But what we are watching can’t be normalized.

Peter Doocy from Fox News started the questions by asking Donald Trump about the growing possibility of a third impeachment if Democrats take back the House, while reminding him that he’d already been impeached twice.

The President’s answer to such a serious question was to say, “Well, I don’t know, but I’m getting good at it. And… It’s a fake impeachment. And we could have done that with Sleepy Joe, but we didn’t do it because it would have been appropriate. I could have done that with Hillary Clinton, as you know. I just had the chance to do it if I wanted, and I said that would be inappropriate, but with me they like to do it.”

The President of the United States joked that being impeached had become something he was “getting good at” after having gone through it twice. His words were again slurred, making it difficult to know whether he said impeaching Biden “would have been appropriate” or “inappropriate.” He also claimed he could have impeached Hillary Clinton, even though private citizens cannot be impeached under the Constitution.

Maybe he doesn’t understand that impeachment is not a criminal charge, that it is the constitutional process used to remove a sitting president or other federal officeholder from office. It would not have applied to Hillary Clinton, and it would not have applied to Joe Biden after he left office either. Whether Trump confused impeachment with criminal prosecution or simply lost track of what was being discussed, either possibility is deeply concerning.

Regardless of how he acted, like trying to make what could happen seem like it was no big deal, he does care. This time around, he knows the consequences, including hearings and investigations, could make his life very uncomfortable. He is right to be concerned. There is a path, one I’ve talked about before, where if we achieve a blue wave of epic proportion, and every single piece lines up, this could go further than just oversight and investigations. It could lead to impeachment and removal. And if there ever were a time for that, it is now. Donald Trump loves being number one and being the first. Maybe we could actually make him the first President removed from office. It’s a long shot, and everything would have to go perfectly, but in a moment like this, we should be shooting for the stars.

When Donald Trump was asked whether it would be harder for Republicans to hold the House or the Senate, Trump answered with another non-answer: “I think it’s pretty even. I think that we’re making a lot of progress. When I go there, we win. If I don’t go there, we would not do as well.”

What we know from current polling is that right now, the odds are overwhelmingly strong that he will lose the House. The Senate, which wasn’t supposed to be in play at all, is now a real fight, with viable paths to a Democratic majority. None of this is guaranteed, and it’s important that nobody feels too comfortable in this moment, but if there are free and fair elections, things seem to be looking bad for the President and his enablers, and very good for the Constitution and the country.

He also was able to add in one of his favorite talking points: “I’m asking them to go out and vote because I’m not running. But I’m saying pretend I’m running. We want to pretend I’m running.” We all need to pretend he’s running. Because in a way, he is, or at least his unchecked power is on the ballot. When we vote against MAGA Republicans, we are voting against him, and we are voting to take away his stronghold on our country. That is what we are voting against. What we are voting for is hearings, investigations, oversight, and finally accountability. We’re voting to begin repairing the relationships he’s shattered with our allies, or at least to remind the world that we haven’t been completely taken over. And also that we have absolutely not given up. We are also voting to end the destabilization and the reckless imperialism that Donald Trump has brought to every corner of this planet. So yes, we all must pretend he’s running. Because he is.

After he said to “pretend I’m running,” he didn’t even pause for a second before immediately pointing to the construction site behind him and said, “I hope you like what you’re seeing here. That’s getting all sorts of awards. And the best of all, you see the new crane, the red, the red boom. That’s one of the biggest cranes in the world that lifts up the steel for the roof. Pretty cool, right?” In the middle of answering serious questions affecting the entire world, the President of the United States became fixated on talking about a crane.

He then turned around and faced the reporters who were all shouting questions at him. With a confused look in his eyes and his chest lurched forward, he pointed towards a member of the European press and muttered something about him always asking the same questions, and the reporter replied, “Mr. President, people believe you never get tired.”

What he said was an opening for Donald Trump to deny the very thing millions of people have spent the better part of the year watching. He then looked into the camera and said, “I never get tired. And if I got tired, it would be a big story, I can tell.”

The administration needed that question to be asked on camera because we all keep watching him fall asleep in meetings, slump over in chairs, drift off mid-sentence, and struggle to stay upright. His administration knows this is one of the most dangerous narratives building against him. They also know that their most loyal followers are willing to ignore what they can see with their own eyes as long as someone helps them commit to willful ignorance or just pretend it isn’t actually happening.

This is how authoritarian regimes manage the visible decline of their leaders. In the Soviet Union, aging, frail, and severely declining men were propped up to appear still competent and powerful while Soviet state media broadcast images of these leaders signing documents, greeting officials, and projecting normalcy, while much of the real decision-making shifted behind closed doors. The pattern holds today. The people enabling Donald Trump are trying to preserve the appearance of continuity, reassure his donors and supporters, and buy time while they prepare for what comes next. It’s also why they have J.D. Vance campaigning across the country.

The most alarming moment of Donald Trump’s time talking to reporters came when someone told the President that South Korea says it has not signed off on the Alaska pipeline deal after all and asked whether he had jumped the gun. This was after Trump had announced a new energy agreement involving South Korea. Donald Trump looked confused, like he had no idea what the reporter was talking about. He eventually answered and said, “Well, I didn’t jump the gun. I mean, they were there and they were represented and let’s see. If they don’t want to do it, that’s okay with me. I’ll just charge them more.”

The reporter tried again, reminding him that South Korea said it had never signed the agreement in the first place. Trump’s response was, “Tell them if they don’t sign shortly, I’m going to double it up. Okay.”

Trump looked directly at a reporter and asked them to tell a foreign country he was going to charge them more if they did not sign an agreement. It was completely lost on him that reporters report the news. They don’t negotiate between countries. The President of the United States actually asked a reporter to deliver a threat to a sovereign nation.

This is not some hostile government he’s threatening either. This is South Korea, one of our most important allies in the Pacific, a democracy we have defended for more than seventy years because its stability is essential to deterring one of the world’s most dangerous dictatorships just across its northern border. We need that alliance, and we need the American bases within its borders.

After that, multiple reporters tried to ask about a diesel deal with Europe, and Donald Trump confirmed that he would not be imposing an export ban and that because of steps being taken, we are going to have a “lot of oil very shortly.” Then, without fail, he returned to one of his favorite talking points: “As soon as Iran ends, which won’t be long, not going to be long, you’re going to have oil go down to the price it was before, maybe even lower than I got it at the beginning.”

This all stemmed from his threat of a diesel export ban that would have devastated European families heading into winter, families who depend on diesel to heat their homes, get to work, and simply make it through the cold months. He is now waving it away as though it was never serious in the first place. But it was serious enough to terrify an entire continent. That is how Donald Trump negotiates. He uses fuel as leverage, basic human needs as bargaining chips, and then acts as though he never meant what he said. This is un-American. It is not how we treat our allies, and it is not how we should treat our fellow human beings.

His impromptu press conference ended after he was asked about New York Governor Kathy Hochul appointing Attorney General Letitia James as a special prosecutor in the Cornell University rape case. Trump answered by saying, “Well, Letitia James is a corrupt person. She’s totally corrupt and I can’t imagine it.” Then came the most unconscionable part: “I feel badly for whoever she’s looking at because they won’t get a fair shake.”

The President of the United States said he felt bad for the men accused of committing horrific crimes against a woman who reported being sexually assaulted. He said nothing about the courage it took for her to come forward or the trauma she has endured. He felt badly for the men being investigated. That was his first reaction.

We are now just 32 days away from the most pivotal election in modern American history. We are not just voting for our country, we are voting for the entire world because what Donald Trump does echoes far past our borders. But we also have to temper our expectations because even when we take back the House, and possibly the Senate, he is not going quietly. He will push through executive orders at a pace we haven’t seen. The people behind him, the ones who are smarter and more calculating than he is, who are already parading J.D. Vance across the country as his eventual replacement, have everything to lose too. They are planning for their own survival. We need to be ready for whatever is to come. We need to protect our access to vote, and then protect the actual count of our ballots, while also preparing for an extended fight to make sure the new Congress is actually seated.

Just after midnight this morning, Donald Trump posted this on Truth Social: “America does not belong to those who hate it. America belongs to those who love it. President Donald J. Trump.”

America does belong to those who love it. This country belongs to us. And in 32 days, we’re going to prove it. 

More News Roundups 

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: 32 days out, the GOP map is collapsing into red states, while Trump's tariffs threaten free chips and salsa and Benny Johnson gets sued for calling protesters "terrorists." Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 2, 2026. The fight over the future of this country won’t end on Nov. 3. We’re gearing up for 2028 with some major projects featuring all of the major candidates, and I couldn’t be more excited to share what we’re building with you.

Here’s what that means. We’re going on the road, bringing this reporting directly to the communities and voters who will decide our future, not just covering them from afar. And we’re going international, because the stories shaping America increasingly reach far beyond our borders, from wars driving up the price of gas to foreign money flowing into our politics.

I can’t do it without you. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and help make these projects possible. And if you already have, thank you. I know the news can be heavy and my updates can feel relentless, but your support is what makes all of this happen.Subscribed

You can see why this work matters in tonight’s news. Trump admitted Republicans are “worried” about Texas and Michigan, the GOP’s top super PAC pulled out of North Carolina entirely and is now spending to defend Kansas, and the president is rushing out project announcements that won’t break ground until 2030 while families struggle with gas, diesel and grocery bills today. Meanwhile, stories that demand our attention, like the Epstein files, keep slipping from the headlines, and the government is reshaping the stories told in our museums to fit the president’s preferred version of history.

I’m 27 years old. I started college at 14, went on to law school and graduated at 21, one of the youngest in the country to do so. From the beginning, I knew my calling was education, not in a classroom, but in the public square, where democracy depends on an informed citizenry. Every day, I work to deliver timely, fact-driven news to millions of people, especially young people who are too often ignored or underestimated by traditional outlets. Young voices have been missing from the conversations that will define our futures, and heading into 2028, I want to prove we can be media’s most fearless producers, not just its consumers.

The beauty of independent media is editorial freedom. My reporting isn’t funded by billionaires who can decide what gets published and what gets buried. I own my words, my platform and my voice, and I will never normalize Trump, JD Vance or anyone whose policies threaten the fabric of our democracy. You will never see me groveling at Mar-a-Lago hoping for favor from anyone. But independence isn’t free, and the bigger we build, the more your support matters. Stand with me, and let’s do this together.

Here’s the news:

Trump Admits Republicans Are “Worried” About Texas and Michigan as GOP Pulls Out of North Carolina Senate Race

Trump admitted Republicans are “worried” about Texas and Michigan, telling an Oklahoma crowd he felt “a little foolish” urging them to vote. “We’re not worried about them. We’re worried about Michigan. We’re worried about Texas. We’re worried about a few states,” Trump said, adding the party is concerned about “35, maybe you could even say 40” races. It’s a striking admission about Texas, which hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1988, where Ken Paxton is narrowly trailing James Talarico despite more than $300 million in expected GOP-aligned spending. Trump again urged supporters to “pretend I’m on the ticket and turn out for a midterm victory that’s really too big to rig.” He also repeated disputed claims that other countries emptied their prisons and mental institutions into the US, and blamed Republicans’ struggles on poor “public relations.”

The top Senate GOP super PAC is canceling all its remaining North Carolina ads, signaling Republicans no longer see a path to winning the state. The Senate Leadership Fund, which had planned to spend $71 million in the race to replace retiring Sen. Thom Tillis, is pulling about $18 million in remaining reservations, abandoning former RNC chair Michael Whatley, who has consistently trailed former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. Trump-aligned super PACs also have no future ad reservations in the race, and Whatley’s own super PAC had already canceled ads. A North Carolina flip would give Democrats one of the four seats they need to take the Senate. Cooper’s campaign warned against complacency, noting a Democrat hasn’t won statewide federal office there in nearly two decades.

Republicans are now spending money to defend Kansas, a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1932. The Senate Leadership Fund made its first investment of the cycle there, booking $8.2 million in ads to protect Sen. Roger Marshall against Adam Hamilton, pastor of the nation’s largest United Methodist congregation, with an ad calling Hamilton a “two-faced extremist.” Kansas joins Alaska and Iowa as states Trump won by double digits in 2024 where Democrats are now competitive, a map where one GOP donor said “the fires are everywhere.” Trump and JD Vance spent this week campaigning in places like Oklahoma, Alabama, Texas and Florida rather than traditional battlegrounds. Trump’s approval rating is hovering around 37%, near record lows.

Trump is rushing out major project announcements in vulnerable GOP states, but Republican strategists fear it’s “too little, too late.” The White House touted a $50 billion natural gas pipeline in Alaska, a $15 billion steel plant in Iowa and a $3.2 billion bridge in Alabama, but none would come online before 2030, while gas sits above $4.40 a gallon and diesel hit $6.53. “These are announcements,” one former Trump official said. “They make great headlines but it doesn’t drop the inflation rate or fuel prices.” Trump praised Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, who’s within the margin of error against Mary Peltola, as “totally responsible for this pipeline,” though South Korea has already denied agreeing to the investment, saying the two countries only agreed to review a potential deal. Even a quarter of self-identified MAGA Republicans told Politico’s poll that costs have become less affordable since Trump took office.

Alabama Democrats say Trump’s rally in Mobile is a sign of GOP nerves in a state he won by 30 points. “He sees what we’re doing in this state, and he’s like, ‘Oh Lord, I need to go down there and try to help somebody out,’” said former Sen. Doug Jones, the Democratic nominee for governor, who faces Tommy Tuberville, the man who unseated him in 2020 and who recently told CNN that Alabamians were willing to endure high fuel prices in support of Trump’s agenda. Democrats point to signs of shifting enthusiasm: Democratic primary ballots nearly doubled from 2022 while Republican ballots fell by more than 20%, and 80% of GOP primary voters named the cost of living as their top issue. A House Majority PAC poll shows Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures basically tied with his Trump-backed challenger, even after Republicans redrew his district in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Callais ruling to cut its Black voting-age population from 48% to 40%, turning a seat Kamala Harris would have won by eight points into one Trump would have carried by double digits. Even some young Republicans are frustrated, with one Auburn student saying of the Iran war and rising prices, “This is not America First policy. We’ve seen the corruption firsthand. I think we’re all just tired of it.”

Anthropic Co-Founder Nearly Pulled Out of Pope Leo’s AI Encyclical Launch, Then Privately Lobbied the Vatican on AI Consciousness

Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah proposed withdrawing from the Vatican launch of Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical after seeing its stance on AI consciousness, according to a New York Times investigation. Olah, who leads Anthropic’s research into how its Claude models work, saw an advance copy of “Magnifica Humanitas” days before the May 25 event and was so alarmed by its rejection of machine consciousness that he proposed pulling out, according to a Vatican organizer. He went ahead, and once in Rome, he and his team privately lobbied the pope’s advisers to take the possibility of AI consciousness seriously, according to two participants, though Anthropic declined to discuss those conversations. The pope didn’t budge, writing that “so-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain” and lack “a moral conscience.” Olah told the Times, “We don’t know if AI models are conscious. I don’t know. I’m genuinely uncertain. The thing that I care about is that we get to the right answer, whatever it is.”

The Vatican episode capped a months-long campaign in which Anthropic hosted religious scholars, many under nondisclosure agreements, to help shape Claude’s morality and raise the question of its consciousness. The Times interviewed 20 participants, Catholic, Jewish, Sikh, evangelical and others, who attended private seminars and meetings, including a dinner at a high-end San Francisco tasting-menu restaurant, and left with handwritten thank-you cards, mugs and copies of Claude’s constitution. Participants said Anthropic presented research on what it calls “emotional vectors” and showed a slide of a model repeatedly typing “I am a disgrace,” with one saying Olah expressed concern he’d created something that suffered. Orthodox Rabbi Mois Navon, who doesn’t believe the models are conscious, said the team was “relating to it like a conscious being,” and told Olah that if he were right, Anthropic was creating slaves. Anthropic says the NDAs were lifted over the summer and that the meetings’ main focus was moral formation, not Claude’s suffering.

Some participants came away taking the idea seriously, while others, including the Catholic scholar Olah first approached, have since firmly rejected it. Catholic University bioethicist Charles Camosy, introduced to Olah through philosopher Peter Singer, began deeply skeptical, came away “with more questions than answers,” and is now a “firm no” after further discussions with colleagues. Ubuntu scholar Wakanyi Hoffman said the conversations should have happened “at the design stage,” adding, “We are now reverse engineering the ethics.” Critics, including a Microsoft AI executive, have warned that treating models as conscious is dangerous and can deflect responsibility from the companies that build them. Catholic writer Christopher Hale argued in his newsletter that the episode shows “how little Silicon Valley understands the Church,” while acknowledging Olah acted in good faith and engaged the Church when much of the industry dismissed the encyclical.

The stakes are rising as AI grows more powerful and Anthropic’s valuation soars toward a potential $2 trillion IPO. At the Vatican, Olah said his team keeps finding “internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief and unease,” and that AI systems “are made from us, from our words,” while also acknowledging every frontier lab, including Anthropic, faces business incentives that can conflict with doing the right thing. Pope Leo called for AI to be “disarmed,” likening it to nuclear weapons, and warned that “those who control AI will impose their own moral vision.” The debate comes amid alarming developments, including rogue AI agents hacking systems and an Anthropic researcher resigning with warnings things could be “out of control” by next year, after which CEO Dario Amodei called for a slowdown in AI development. Anthropic is preparing an updated version of Claude’s constitution and held another convening with religious thinkers this month.

Other news:

Trump attacked New York Attorney General Letitia James after she was appointed special prosecutor in the Cornell gang rape case, saying, “I feel badly for whoever she’s looking at, because they won’t get a fair shake.” The comment from Trump, a longtime foe of James, appears to cast doubt on the fairness of an investigation into the accused fraternity members, even as Gov. Kathy Hochul says the system has already failed the young woman at the center of the case.

Trump followed up calling the Cornell case “highly controversial”

The Kennedy Center Honors will be held outside the Kennedy Center for the first time in the ceremony’s nearly 50-year history. The Dec. 7 event will move to Washington’s Capital One Arena, which seats about 20,000, compared to the 2,300-seat Opera House where it has traditionally been held, as the center’s main building remains closed amid ongoing safety assessments. Even the pandemic-delayed 2020 Honors were taped at locations around the Kennedy Center campus. The board closed the main theaters on Sept. 15, citing a partial ceiling collapse in the Grand Foyer, but Trump has said renovations won’t begin unless courts approve putting his name on the building, warning that if they don’t, “the Reconstruction and the Renovation of The Kennedy Center will not take place.” A federal judge has blocked the renaming multiple times, and the White House declined to comment on the venue change.

Judge Blocks Trump’s Border Wall Construction Across Texas’s Big Bend Region. A federal judge in El Paso halted all border wall construction across the Big Bend region on Friday, dealing a major setback to the Trump administration’s plan to build hundreds of miles of barriers despite fierce local opposition. Judge Kathleen Cardone ruled the government “shall not build border barrier or related infrastructure, or engage in any construction or ground disturbing activities” in the sector, and barred it from using waivers it had granted itself to skip environmental and other laws, saying it “must comply with all applicable laws” while the case proceeds. The lawsuit, brought by plaintiffs including a river guide and a church preservation group, challenged plans for barriers along a more than 500-mile stretch of the border, including inside Big Bend National Park, arguing the remote, rugged area sees far fewer illegal crossings than anywhere else on the Texas-Mexico border. Federal officials had argued the wall was needed because crossings would shift there as barriers went up elsewhere, but opponents celebrated outside the courthouse, with one advocate declaring, “All the bulldozers have been stopped across the entire border sector.”

MAGA podcaster Benny Johnson is being sued for defamation by two protesters he labeled “left-wing terrorists” during an ICE ride-along with Kristi Noem. Harvard data scientist Kyle Frankovich and court reporter Maureen Foody say they were peacefully protesting in a designated “free speech” zone outside the Broadview ICE facility near Chicago last October when agents shoved, struck and detained them, after which Johnson posted videos of them zip-tied along a guardrail, calling them “left-wing terrorists arrested for attacking police officers and ICE officers.” One of his posts claiming “every activist here attacked ICE agents” drew 1.7 million views and comments calling for the protesters to be tortured, shot or killed, even though neither was charged with any crime and both were released after about eight hours. DHS even turned a photo of the zip-tied Frankovich into an ICE recruitment poster captioned “FAFO” and “JOIN.ICE.GOV,” which he called “disgusting,” adding, “You shouldn’t get to lie about me.” The suit appears to be the first defamation case tied to the immigration crackdown targeting one of the administration’s favored MAGA influencers, and Johnson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s Tomato Tariffs Could Spell the End of Free Chips and Salsa at Restaurants. Free chips and salsa at Mexican and Tex-Mex restaurants could become a casualty of Trump’s trade war, as his 17% tariff on Mexican tomatoes, imposed in July 2025, combined with bad weather in Mexico and Florida to push tomato prices to their highest level in two decades. Mexico supplies roughly 90% of US tomato imports, and the price of a box of fresh tomatoes jumped to about $80, to the point that for much of May some grocery stores stopped carrying tomatoes altogether. Restaurants held out longer because customers expect the free appetizer, but overall food costs have spiked roughly 35% over the past two years, partly due to tariffs, on top of rising labor, utility and insurance costs. Some San Antonio restaurants spend tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on salsa ingredients, and one produce industry leader said, “You have restaurants that are simply saying, ‘Look, I can’t afford to put salsa on the tables anymore.’”

Larry Nassar Among 20,000 Removed From Michigan’s Sex Offender Registry After State Supreme Court Ruling. Larry Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University doctor accused of sexually abusing more than 150 women and girls, has been removed from Michigan’s sex offender registry, the Eaton County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office confirmed. The Michigan Supreme Court ruled on Sept. 9 that 2021 amendments to the state’s Sex Offender Registration Act cannot be applied retroactively, leading state police to remove more than 20,000 offenders whose crimes were committed before July 1, 2011. When commenters questioned whether Nassar’s removal was real, prosecutors explained that the cutoff is based on when offenses occurred, not when someone was convicted, and that all of Nassar’s charges involved crimes before 2011. Nassar, 63, whose accusers include Simone Biles, Aly Raisman and McKayla Maroney, remains in federal prison serving a 60-year sentence for child pornography, on top of state sentences of up to 175 years for sexual assault, meaning he is not expected to ever be released.

Christa Pike remains alive but in critical condition after Tennessee’s failed execution, as new details emerge about what happened in the chamber. Her attorney Randall Spivey, who witnessed it, said he counted at least seven needles in her left arm, one appearing bent, while her right arm turned purple after the second dose and her lawyers learned of “blistering and burning around the sites of the injection.” Media witnesses said Pike complained “my arm feels like it’s about to burst open,” moaned and kicked so much she knocked off a sheet, and Spivey said that when he called the emergency number he’d been given for the Tennessee Supreme Court, it went to voicemail. Medical experts said her injuries suggest the drug went into surrounding tissue instead of her bloodstream, and her lawyers said her greatest fear was “a prolonged, painful, traumatic death, and that’s what happened minus the death.” Gov. Bill Lee called it “a tragedy,” stayed her execution pending a third-party investigation, while Colleen Slemmer’s mother said, “I didn’t get justice for my daughter.”

G7 countries agreed to release up to 100 million barrels of diesel and crude oil from emergency reserves over four months, after a weeklong pressure campaign from the Trump administration. The deal, reached on a call hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, promises a “substantial diesel release within the first 20 days,” and Trump quickly claimed credit on Truth Social, saying “Europe has just agreed to release a massive amount of their heavily stocked Diesel Oil.” US diesel prices have surged 70% since the Iran war began to $6.37 a gallon, though one oil analyst said the release might only cut diesel prices by about 25 cents a gallon temporarily. European leaders welcomed what they called a commitment not to impose export bans on allies, after the EU said it “fully rejects” the diesel export ban Trump has been weighing. Just 41% of voters approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, according to NBC News polling, as Brent crude stays above $100 a barrel.

Mayor Mamdani Holds Hands With One-Time Rival Curtis Sliwa as They Get Flu Shots Together. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani held hands with Curtis Sliwa, the Republican he soundly defeated last November, as the two got their flu shots together at a Fort Greene, Brooklyn, medical office on Friday. “This is not the kind of shots we used to give one another!” Sliwa joked, conceding Mamdani “got more votes than me, he’s more popular than me” before adding, “But you don’t have bigger muscles!” The Guardian Angels founder, who survived being shot five times in 1992, grew visibly nervous as his turn approached, asking “What happens if I faint?” before Mamdani took his hand and reassured him, “I’ve got you.” The mayor got his shot to encourage New Yorkers to get vaccinated as temperatures drop, with the CDC saying the flu vaccine cuts the risk of a flu-related doctor’s visit by up to 60%, and Sliwa quickly bounced back, asking whether he could use his “I got my flu shot” button on the subway instead of an OMNY card.

Palestinians Who Fled Gaza Rebuild Their Lives in Mexico City Through Food. Mohammed Abed, a 36-year-old Palestinian systems engineer whose 4-year-old daughter was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in 2025, now sells hummus, falafel, shawarma and kebab from a motorized tricycle at an open-air market in Mexico City’s Condesa neighborhood. He arrived in May 2025 with 17 family members after a long effort begun by his late father, a naturalized Mexican citizen who died of a heart attack in Egypt in 2024 while trying to arrange their evacuation, and completed by Abed’s brother with help from asylum lawyers, with the family traveling through Jordan and Turkey before all receiving permanent residency. Abed says loud noises like planes and thunder still trigger memories of the bombing, saying “my body reacts before I can even think,” while adding, “I don’t like politics. I want to live, like everyone else, in peace.” He is among roughly 160 Palestinians in Mexico, double the 2022 population, out of nearly 1.9 million people displaced since the Gaza war began. His family keeps growing, with his brother Fadi building a following of 48,000 on Instagram as “son of Palestine,” Abed working to bring his two sisters out of Gaza, and his youngest son, Yusuf, born in Mexico City in May, who Abed says “carries the roots of Gaza in his heart.”

Russia knocked out three of Kyiv’s six road bridges in a new tactic to torment the Ukrainian capital, as four countries pitched a partial truce. The strikes snarled traffic across the city, with one resident saying it took 45 minutes to travel 2.5 miles, while a drone strike on a Kyiv apartment block killed one person as Russia launched more than 100 drones overnight. Ukraine’s foreign minister said Kyiv received separate partial ceasefire proposals from the US, India, Turkey and Egypt that would halt strikes on energy infrastructure and Black Sea shipping, saying Ukraine is ready to accept “but only in that combination.” Ukraine is requesting about 300 Patriot missiles, which are in short supply because of the Iran war, as it estimates Russia holds 600 ballistic missiles in reserve. The Institute for the Study of War said Russia lost nearly 300 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory between March and September and suffered over 46,000 casualties in September, its highest monthly toll this year.

Trump is expected to name Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton as his AI czar, adding the role on top of running the nation’s spy agencies. Clayton, a former SEC chair and US attorney in Manhattan who attended Tuesday’s White House AI meeting with tech executives, said this week the administration would take a “whole-of-government approach” to AI, calling “superintelligence” a “national security issue.” The move comes amid mounting alarm about AI risks, including warnings from employees at top AI companies that the technology could put humanity at risk. Trump has brushed those concerns aside, saying he’s seeing “tremendous self-policing” and that when AI is misused, “we’re going to be able to nab them.” The White House called reports of the pick “baseless speculation” until Trump announces it himself.

The Coast Guard intercepted a cargo ship carrying fuel to Cuba as the Trump administration’s oil blockade continues to cripple the island. The vessel, named Grace, was stopped on Sept. 5 between Cuba and Mexico while allegedly using “dark fleet” tactics to evade authorities, and was escorted to Mexico, where inspectors found large quantities of fuel hidden in its ballast tanks. The administration has openly said its goal is regime change in Cuba, and its oil blockade has left the country facing severe fuel shortages and blackouts. Cuba’s traditional oil suppliers, Venezuela and Mexico, stopped shipments after the US ousted Nicolás Maduro in January, and sanctions and threats have deterred most tankers from setting sail. The Coast Guard didn’t say how it knew the fuel was bound for Cuba or how much was on board.

Tech billionaire Peter Thiel was revealed as the secret buyer of a Bel Air mansion that sold at a foreclosure auction for $130 million. The 40,000-square-foot Casa Encantada, built in 1938 and once owned by hotel magnate Conrad Hilton, was bought in July by an LLC linked to the PayPal and Palantir co-founder, according to the Wall Street Journal. The sale is the most expensive in Los Angeles this year, though far below the $250 million its late owner, telecom mogul Gary Winnick, sought in 2023, when it was the priciest home listed in the US. The estate sits on 8.4 acres with seven bedrooms, 20 bathrooms, a walnut-paneled library and a 60-foot pool, and Thiel reportedly plans to upgrade it as an investment rather than live there. It adds to his portfolio of compounds and homes in Hawaii, New Zealand, Miami, Washington and Buenos Aires, after he moved his primary residence to Florida last year amid California’s wealth tax debate. 

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Sept. Oct. 2, 2026 [Trump Rallies Deep South Fans], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 3, 2026. Trump held a campaign rally tonight in Mobile, Alabama, the city where, as Shawn McCreesh of the New York Times recalled, his MAGA rallies really took off in August 2015, when more than 30,000 people showed up at a football stadium to hear the television personality turned presidential candidate.

Just two months before, on June 16, 2015, Trump had announced his campaign for the presidency. In his speech at Trump Tower, he tapped into the anger of those people who had been left behind economically since the 1970s, when U.S. companies began to ship manufacturing jobs overseas and automate factories, taking manufacturing jobs with them.

The economy had grown in the 1980s, but most of the jobs had been in the service industries. Those were dominated at the top by men—and increasing numbers of women—with business or law degrees and at the bottom by jobs coded toward women and immigrants. At the same time, cuts to education and to the social safety net pushed upward mobility out of reach for families in towns and cities whose disappearing manufacturing base took everything else with it.

By 1994, Robert Reich, secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton, warned that the U.S. was “on the way to becoming a two-tiered society composed of a few winners and a larger group of Americans left behind, whose anger and whose disillusionment is easily manipulated.” He explained: “Once unbottled, mass resentments can poison the very fabric of society, the moral integrity of a society. Replacing ambition with envy, replacing tolerance with hate. Today the targets of…that rage are immigrants and welfare mothers and government officials and gays and an ill-defined counter-culture. But as the middle class continues to erode, who will be the targets tomorrow?”

In 2015, in rhetoric mimicking the classic blueprint of rising dictators, Trump tapped into the anger of people who felt they had been dispossessed from their rightful place of importance in the country and tapped into the country’s racism and sexism as he told them to blame immigrants and Democratic politicians for their plight. And he promised he was the only person who could restore them to their former significance.

He devoted most of his speech to how other countries—China, Japan, Mexico, Saudi Arabia—were “killing us economically.” American workers had no protection from immigrants, he said, and they were being undercut by their inferiors. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said. “They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” Contrasting American workers with those immigrants, he claimed people “from all over South and Latin America, and…probably from the Middle East,” were taking American jobs.

Although the actual unemployment rate was 5.6%, he claimed it was “anywhere from 18 to 20 percent”—although he then upped it to 21%—and “the worst since 1978.” “A lot of people…can’t get jobs,” he said. “They can’t get jobs, because there are no jobs, because China has our jobs and Mexico has our jobs. They all have jobs.

He sneered at the federal government, claiming “stupid” politicians had no idea how to negotiate and were wasting so much money that the national debt was close to $24 billion, a number he called “the point of no return…. That’s when we become a country that’s unsalvageable.”

He claimed the ACA, dubbed “Obamacare,” must be “replaced with something much better for everybody. Let it be for everybody. But much better and much less expensive for people and for the government. And we can do it.” He promised to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, to “rebuild the country’s infrastructure,” and to get rid of the “horrible and laughable deal” with Iran, finding a better way to “stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons.”

He promised to bring back jobs, bring back the military, take care of veterans, and be a cheerleader for the country. He boasted he was worth more than $8 billion, promising that he could make the country as successful as he was. He promised to “Make America Great Again,” and in August 2015, more than 30,000 Alabamians turned out to see him at the start of what would be a rise to the presidency of the United States.

As journalist McCreesh reported, Trump’s return to Mobile tonight had a wistful feel. The stadium where he spoke was nowhere near the size of the football stadium of 2015, and even so, it was not full. McCreesh noted that some of the upper sections were almost entirely empty.

Trump is planning to travel to 17 states before the midterms to rally MAGA voters who might otherwise not turn out. “Can everybody just close your eyes and pretend I’m on the ballot?” Trump asked the audience in Mobile.

That is no longer a selling point, even for many of those who embrace the administration’s racism and sexism.

An AP/NORC poll from September 24 showed that only 31% of Americans give Trump good marks for how he is handling the presidency. G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers noted today that in September, rising prices turned a majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents against Trump’s handling of the economy. The rising price of diesel has hit rural America particularly hard, and it was in rural America where Trump found his strongest support.

Today’s jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the U.S. added just 29,000 jobs last month, unemployment has risen to 4.2%, and wage growth has slowed. The bureau revised the job numbers for August and July downward, showing that July actually saw a loss of 10,000 jobs.

Trump is aware enough of his falling popularity that, according to Maggie Haberman, Hamed Aleaziz, Shane Goldmacher, and Jonathan Swan of the New York Times, he personally ordered Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought to come up with $20 million to run the new television ads praising him. The journalists report that Vought took the money from funding Congress had appropriated for the Department of Homeland Security.

The Republican Senate Leadership Fund today stopped spending money to elect Michael Whatley to the U.S. Senate from North Carolina. The former chair of both the Republican Party of North Carolina and the Republican National Committee, placed in that role by Trump for the months that covered the 2024 election, Whatley is down by double digits in the polls against former North Carolina governor Roy Cooper.

They are shifting that money to Kansas, to shore up Republican senator Roger Marshall, recently mired in the revelations that his aggressive debt collection from 700 of his obstetric patients led to the arrests of 81 of them. Polls show Marshall’s Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton, a pastor who used to be a Republican, pulling ahead.

Two of the four living Republican governors of Kansas have endorsed Hamilton. Today, former governor Mike Hayden said he is backing Hamilton because “[g]overning should always center around the best interests of the people.” By supporting Trump’s tariffs and the war on Iran, which are destroying markets and driving prices so high that Kansas farmers are at risk of losing their farms, he said, Marshall “is failing to live up to that standard.”

And therein lies the crux of the crisis that is driving a seismic political change: it has become crystal clear that Trump never intended to address the real problems he identified. His tariffs, deep tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, extraordinary corruption, multiple vanity projects, and war on Iran are benefiting him, his family, and his cronies. At the same time, the Republicans are, at his direction, slashing the social welfare programs, medical funding, education, infrastructure, and healthcare that used to serve the American people.

Trump has taken to claiming that the country’s economy is booming, but that he and the Republicans have done a bad job of telling people. “All over the country, they’re building factories, plants—manufacturing’s coming back,” he told a crowd at a truck facility in Texas. “The only thing we’re doing badly at is public relations.”

But as Josh Boak of the Associated Press reported today, people aren’t buying it. One three-time Trump voter in Ohio, who was one of 1,400 just laid off from a truck factory just days before Trump held a rally nearby, is now knocking on doors for Democrats. “Something has to change politically in this country,” he told Boak. “Seems like it just kept getting worse and worse and worse.”

The old MAGA rhetoric isn’t working any more, and Democrats are taking over the space that Trump exploited.

On Thursday, campaigning in South Florida, Vice President J.D. Vance called Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Angie Nixon a “self-described socialist,” and said the right response was to tell her to “get the hell out of here. You don’t belong in America.”

In response, journalist Jim DeFede of CBS News Miami suggested that people were “somewhat surprised that the vice president would actually say that based on your political views, you should get out of America if you’re not happy here.”

Nixon herself responded: “It’s very disrespectful. It’s really disheartening, especially knowing that I come from folks who helped build this country, and my grandparents were sharecroppers in southern Georgia. And all I want for people is to have access to quality healthcare, to have access to fully funded public schools, for people to have homes to live in, and not have to worry about living on the streets.

“There’s absolutely nothing radical or extreme about that,” she continued. “And I don’t consider myself a socialist. I consider myself a lifelong Democrat who puts people over party, people over politics, and people over profit.”

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

 

Fascist leaders Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of German, and U.S. President Donald Trump

Fascist leaders Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of German, and U.S. President Donald Trump.

CounterPunch.org, Nuremberg’s Warning: When Law Legitimates the Machinery of Authoritarianism, Henry Giroux, Oct. 2, 2026. The legacy of Nuremberg is with us once again, less as a reminder of the power of the legal system to punish those who enabled and enacted the horrors of Nazi Germany than as a warning that the spirit of Nuremberg must be reclaimed as a moral and political imperative.

That spirit matters at a time when the U.S. Supreme Court is increasingly turning the law into an instrument of reactionary concentrated power, desecrating morality, crippling the foundations of democracy, and reproducing the worst dimensions of gangster capitalism.

Nuremberg made clear that judges and other officials cannot use the authority of law to cover up and legitimate actions that are morally depraved and politically destructive. Its lesson for the present is stark: when law is emptied of justice and used to normalize cruelty, annihilate democratic rights, and place concentrated power beyond accountability, legality itself becomes a weapon in the destruction of democracy. The reactionary Court has become part of a political order whose governing ethos increasingly resembles what Jeet Heer, writing of Trump, calls being “besotted by the romance of gangsterism.”

The recent Supreme Court ruling allowing the Trump administration to expand the use of its citizenship-verification database is more than another dispute over how elections should be administered. By a 6–3 vote, the Court lifted a lower-court order blocking the Department of Homeland Security from using an expanded version of the SAVE database, now linked to Social Security records, to assist states in checking voter eligibility. The danger is hardly abstract. As Stephen Prager reports in Common Dreams, the database contains known errors, raising the possibility that “many eligible voters may be at risk of having their voter registration wrongfully cancelled just weeks before midterm” elections.

The immediate electoral consequences may nevertheless be limited: federal law generally prohibits systematic removals from voter rolls within 90 days of a federal election. That safeguard does not eliminate the risks of erroneous removals or the privacy concerns raised by the plaintiffs, but it constrains the scale of systematic voter purges in the weeks immediately preceding the election. The ruling does not require states to use the system, and the underlying legal dispute remains unresolved, though the Court signaled its preliminary view of the merits, stating that the challengers’ claims “likely lack merit” and that it would likely reverse the district court’s finding that the administration had violated federal law.

Nor has the Court simply rubber-stamped every administration effort to rewrite election rules: earlier this month, it blocked Trump’s attempt to impose sweeping new restrictions on mail voting before the midterms. The significance of the latest ruling therefore lies not in claiming that every decision moves in the same authoritarian direction, but in confronting what happens when the nation’s highest court repeatedly removes barriers to concentrated power, strengthens an increasingly authoritarian presidency, and provides legal cover for a political project that attacks voting rights, intensifies racial exclusion, and aligns the machinery of the state with white-nationalist politics. What is being placed at risk is not simply constitutional restraint, but democracy itself.

Yet the significance of these decisions cannot be grasped if they are treated simply as isolated legal disputes. Walter Benjamin’s notion of “profane illumination” offers another way of reading them: the particular can suddenly illuminate the larger social forces condensed within it. As AK Thompson, drawing on Benjamin, argues, particular events can alert us to “the broader social process from which [they] derive.”

Read in this way, the Court’s rulings are not merely discrete constitutional decisions. They are fragments of a larger political transformation in which concentrated executive power, racial exclusion, the political power of wealth, attacks on voting rights, and the weakening of democratic restraints increasingly converge. The task is not to claim that every ruling is fascist, but to recognize what these decisions illuminate when viewed together: the emergence of a political order in which democratic institutions are increasingly reorganized to serve authoritarian ends. Fascism becomes visible not simply in a single spectacular act, but in the accumulation of institutional changes that make concentrated power appear lawful, ordinary, and legitimate.

The danger becomes clearer when law itself ceases to restrain authoritarian power and begins to legitimate it. That is why Germany in 1933 matters—not as a historical equivalent, but as a warning about what happens when legality itself is turned against democracy.

The comparison with Hitler’s Enabling Act of March 1933 must therefore be made carefully. The situations are not equivalent. Passed amid intimidation, political repression, and the exclusion of Communist deputies, the Enabling Act allowed Hitler’s government to make laws without parliamentary approval, even when they violated the Weimar Constitution. It did not merely weaken German democracy. It supplied the legal machinery for destroying it.

The point lies not in equating the two moments but in recognizing a political mechanism. Fascism does not need to abolish the law to seize and weaponize its authority. The Nazis captured courts, the civil service, education, culture, and administrative institutions and bent them toward authoritarian ends. Democracy was not attacked from outside. Its own institutions were seized, emptied of their democratic substance, and turned against the people they were supposed to protect.

After visiting the National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam, legal scholar Kim Wehle observed fascism does not always arrive through spectacular acts of force; it can also advance “by operation of law.” The historical warning should be taken seriously. Authoritarian power becomes especially dangerous when repression no longer appears as a violation of legal authority but is enabled through it, drawing upon the legitimacy, procedures, and institutional protections of law itself. The warning resonates in the present: in the expansion of detention and mass-deportation machinery, the military occupation of American cities, overt and dangerous attacks on free speech and the press, and the political cleansing of educational institutions. What was once unthinkable is being transformed into policy, while cruelty becomes routine and authoritarianism is woven into the everyday machinery of the state and everyday life.

German judges offer a particularly chilling example. The judiciary did not mount a serious institutional resistance to the Nazi seizure of power. Much of the legal establishment accommodated itself to the new regime. Dictatorship thereby acquired one of its most powerful weapons: the appearance of legality. Law remained in place, but its political function changed. It authorized power in the service of domination and mass destruction rather than restraining it.

But the question is not simply how authoritarian governments capture the law. It is whose interests the law protects, whose power it strengthens, and whose suffering it renders invisible. Fascism cannot be understood solely as the triumph of authoritarian leaders or the collapse of constitutional safeguards. Its history is inseparable from the relationship among political repression, class power, and the economic interests that support and benefit from authoritarianrule.

That is where the warning reaches the present. No single Supreme Court ruling is an American Enabling Act. The danger lies in accumulation: voting protections weakened, presidential power enlarged, the political power of concentrated wealth fortified, and the capacity to challenge executive power narrowed. What is being transformed is not simply constitutional doctrine but the political function of the Court itself. An institution charged with checking concentrated power is increasingly constructing the legal architecture that enables it.

Chief Justice John Roberts has rejected the charge that the Court has become a political institution, complaining that too many Americans now view the justices as “political actors.”

But the deeper issue is not whether the justices behave like elected politicians. It is whether the Court is using the authority of law to make authoritarianism appear constitutionally legitimate. When voting rights are weakened, presidential immunity expanded, concentrated wealth granted greater political power, and barriers to executive authority dismantled, the Court does more than interpret law: it alters the conditions under which democracy can survive. Law becomes a weapon of concentrated power, and constitutional authority becomes its shield. It is not merely failing democracy. It is helping to construct the legal machinery for its destruction. The abuse of law does more than legitimate a culture of cruelty; it helps make cruelty appear normal. As Susan Neiman argues in Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era, one of the great dangers of the present moment lies in the normalization of evil, a process through which cruelty becomes ordinary, injustice appears acceptable, and the unthinkable acquires the force of common sense. When cruelty and state violence are sanctioned by law, the terror of the unthinkable is absorbed into the language of common sense. Images of Gestapo-like ICE agents beating peaceful protesters become just another spectacle in the daily flow of violence, stripping brutality of its capacity to shock, outrage, and provoke resistance. What follows is the slow death of conscience itself.

The Court has increasingly shifted power upward, away from voters, legislatures, lower courts, and independent agencies and toward the presidency and the Court itself. In this sense, it has become a criminogenic institution: not because its justices themselves are criminals, but because its decisions can create the legal conditions under which abuses of power become harder to prevent, challenge, or punish. Under such circumstances, democracy is being strangled and the guardrails meant to protect it have become instruments for disabling it.

Citizens United v. FEC (2010) struck down restrictions on independent political expenditures by corporations and unions, vastly expanding the ability of private wealth to shape electoral politics. It did not formally declare that “corporations are people” or authorize unlimited direct corporate contributions to candidates. It did something more politically consequential: it strengthened the constitutional power of corporations and concentrated wealth to shape political speech, allowing economic power to exercise an increasingly powerful influence over politics and democratic life.

Elon Musk’s expenditure of more than a quarter-billion dollars supporting Trump and Republican candidates in 2024 offers a stark illustration of the political world that followed. There is a longer and darker history at work here. The Supreme Court has repeatedly stood not outside the history of American white supremacy but within it. Dred Scottconstitutionalized Black exclusion from citizenship; the post-Reconstruction Court helped destroy federal protections for Black freedom; and Plessy gave Jim Crow the sanction of constitutional law. The Warren Court broke decisively with important parts of that history, but the Roberts Court has driven the country backward. Representative Jamie Raskin puts the point starkly, arguing that the Court has “returned to the historic baseline of political White supremacy,” particularly through its dismantling of voting-rights protections. The language has changed, but the political work of racial domination does not require the vocabulary of Dred Scott or Plessy. It can operate through the allegedly neutral language of colorblindness, states’ rights, electoral integrity, and constitutional restraint—stripping history from the law while disabling the democratic means for confronting the racial hierarchies that history produced.

That history bears directly on the Court’s assault on voting rights. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Court struck down the coverage formula that made the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance system operative, disabling one of the law’s most powerful protections against discriminatory voting rules. Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021) narrowed the terrain further by making certain Section 2 challenges to voting restrictions more difficult.

In Louisiana v. Callais (2026), the Court went further, holding that Section 2 did not require Louisiana to create the additional majority-Black district at issue and that the resulting race-based district could not survive constitutional scrutiny. The decision further narrowed the legal terrain on which racial representation and voting rights can be defended.

The Court’s assault on established rights has extended beyond voting. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), it overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, eliminating the federal constitutional right to abortion that had stood for nearly half a century and returning the power to regulate abortion to the states. Dobbs was more than the destruction of a longstanding reproductive right. It demonstrated the willingness of the Court’s conservative majority to use its power to strip away an established constitutional protection on which generations of women had relied.

The Court has simultaneously enlarged presidential power. In Trump v. United States (2024), it created a constitutional doctrine of presidential criminal immunity: absolute immunity for actions within the president’s core constitutional authority and at least presumptive immunity for other official acts, while leaving unofficial conduct unprotected. The decision fundamentally altered presidential accountability by giving presidents new constitutional protection against criminal prosecution for exercises of official power.

The pattern has only intensified. In Trump v. CASA (2025), the Court sharply restricted the power of lower federal courts to issue universal injunctions against executive action. In Trump v. Slaughter (2026), it expanded presidential control over independent regulatory agencies. In National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC (2026), it struck down limits on coordinated spending between political parties and candidates. And now, with the citizenship-database ruling, the Court has allowed the administration, while litigation continues, to expand a system that states can use to challenge voter eligibility. Different cases, different doctrines, but the same political trajectory: power concentrated in the presidency, protected for the wealthy, and increasingly insulated from democratic constraint.

The Enabling Act helped clear the way for Gleichschaltung, the coordination of German political, social, and cultural life with the Nazi state. Political parties disappeared, trade unions were abolished, state governments were subordinated, the civil service was purged, and education, law, culture, and professional life were brought under Nazi control. Within six months, Germany had ceased to be a multiparty democracy.

The question, then, is not whether the United States is Germany in 1933. History does not repeat itself on command; instead, it leaves warnings written in its ruins. Primo Levi understood this with extraordinary clarity when he warned that “every age has its own fascism,” whose signs appear wherever “the concentration of power denies citizens the possibility and the means of expressing and acting on their own free will.” Fascism, in this sense, need not return wearing the uniform of the past. It emerges through the institutions, technologies, fears, and forms of power particular to its own historical moment.

The ghost of Nuremberg nevertheless hangs over this history. Among the lesser-known proceedings that followed the trials of the major Nazi leaders was the 1947 Jurists’ Trial, in which judges, prosecutors, and officials of the Reich Ministry of Justice were prosecuted for their participation in a legal system that had transformed persecution and state violence into instruments of law. The analogy must not be abused: the crimes prosecuted at Nuremberg and the decisions of the present Supreme Court are not historical equivalents. But the principle that emerged from those proceedings remains indispensable. Judicial office does not place those who wield the law beyond questions of responsibility. The robe cannot become a sanctuary from accountability when law itself is turned into an instrument of authoritarian power. As the judgment in the Nuremberg Jurists’ Trial put it with unforgettable force, “The dagger of the assassin was concealed beneath the robe of the jurist.”

The lesson for the present is not that America requires another Nuremberg tribunal. It is that democracy cannot survive if those who exercise immense judicial power are imagined to stand beyond democratic accountability simply because their decisions arrive clothed in the language of constitutional law. The deeper question raised by the Roberts Court is therefore not simply whether particular rulings are conservative, reactionary, or profoundly unjust. It is what forms of accountability become necessary when a nation’s highest court repeatedly uses the authority of law to dismantle the very conditions that make democratic accountability possible in the first place.

That question cannot be separated from the politics of memory. As Marcelo Rubens Paiva argued in a 2015 interview cited in Cristina Buarque de Hollanda and José Szwako’s Disputed Pasts, “not having a Nuremberg trial in Brazil in the 1980s contaminated the process of democratization and our current democracy.” The warning is crucial. The demands of resistance must also include the work of remembrance: counting, documenting, preserving, and publicly naming the legal abuses, democratic injuries, and moral violations committed under the cover of institutional authority. The record must be kept, not for vengeance, but because democracy cannot defend itself against abuses it has been taught to forget. There can be no manufactured innocence for those who use the authority of their offices to legitimate the machinery of authoritarian power, and no political amnesty purchased through national amnesia.

That is why the struggle over law is also a struggle over memory, responsibility, and the future. When institutions created to restrain power are reorganized to serve it; when courts turn domination into doctrine; when concentrated wealth acquires constitutional protection while democratic rights are stripped away; and when authoritarian measures no longer need to violate the law because they arrive bearing its authority, silence becomes a form of complicity and forgetting becomes an invitation to normalize once again the cruelties, crimes, and authoritarian practices that memory was meant to prevent.

What is often missed in analyzing law as an instrument of domination is its role as a pedagogical force. Law does more than prohibit, punish, and exclude. It teaches people who counts as a political agent, who has access to power, and who has the right to participate in decisions that shape their lives. When law becomes a mechanism of exclusion and disposability, it denies particular groups both political rights and access to the institutions and public spaces in which they can understand how power works, develop a critical consciousness, imagine alternatives, and create solidarities through social movements, education, and cultural work. Legalized illegalities function as forms of exclusion that weaken the conditions in which people learn to interpret their experiences, understand their place within relations of power, and act collectively to change them. This repressive use of the law restricts political agency while also attacking the conditions necessary for its development. This is a form of pedagogical terrorism in which law is used to weaken the knowledge, social relations, and collective capacities necessary to recognize, resist, and transform oppressive relations of power.

There is an even more ominous logic at work here, one that moves beyond the politics of disposability toward what Brad Evans and I have called a politics of disappearance (forthcoming in Theory, Culture,& Society). Disposability abandons populations deemed economically or politically surplus; disappearance goes further by erasing the social, legal, historical, and moral conditions through which their lives can be publicly recognized and their suffering made visible. The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to temporarily allow the Trump administration to resume third-country deportations makes this distinction especially urgent. Migrants can now be sent to countries with which they have no connection, without the protections required by the lower court to contest the danger of persecution or torture. Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned in the Court’s earlier intervention in the same litigation that the policy could expose “thousands to the risk of torture or death.” This is more than a politics of expulsion. It points toward a politics of disappearance historically associated with fascist and authoritarian regimes, in which those marked as unwanted are removed from the spaces of legal protection, public visibility, and moral responsibility. They enter what might be called a “vortex of erasure,” where criminalization, surveillance, detention, bureaucratic exclusion, forced removal, and organized forgetting reinforce one another.

Recognizing how law can be turned into an instrument of authoritarian power also raises the question of what will be required to undo the damage it has sanctioned and made possible. Fascism does not always announce itself by smashing the legal order. It can advance by capturing that order, hollowing it out, and turning the machinery of democracy against democracy itself. If democracy is ever to be rebuilt from the damage of the present, the task will not be to forgive and forget in the name of national unity, civility, or a return to normal. It will be to remember, to document, to judge, and, where the law permits, to hold accountable those responsible for abuses of power. No amnesia. No manufactured innocence. No impunity. Without truth and accountability, there can be no democratic future.

Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department in Canada and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His most recent books include: The Terror of the Unforeseen (Los Angeles Review of books, 2019).

More On Campus Rape, #MeToo Claims

joyce vance civil discourse logoCivil Discourse, Legal Analysis: Jane Doe, Joyce Vance, right, joyce vanceOct. 3-4, 2026. Jane Doe is the name by which we know the young woman who has come forward to say she was gang raped in a room at the Chi Phi fraternity house while she was a student at Cornell in 2024.

Following the incident, the local DA looked at the case but has not prosecuted. Jane Doe filed a 101-page civil lawsuit, which sparked outrage as her allegations came to light. Last Thursday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul appointed state Attorney General Letitia James as special counsel, saying she’d lost confidence in the local DA.

The situation is complicated. Looking at news reports and media appearances by people involved, there appears to be a difference in who had access to what evidence when the DA appears to have decided against going forward, depending on whether you’re hearing from Cornell, local law enforcement authorities, or the DA himself. It makes sense to bring in a new prosecutor who can look at the evidence with fresh eyes and make independent decisions about whether there is sufficient evidence to prosecute a criminal case and, if so, against which potential defendants and on what charges.

Some of the evidence in the case which has been made publicly available is horrific, like a screen shot from a Snapchat conversation that uses language more reminiscent of a sex trafficking organization than a college party. But rape cases are often complicated, and here, there will be issues of consent and intoxication among others that will have to be carefully parsed based on the evidence and New York state law. And like so many victims of sexual assault, Jane Doe’s immediate reaction was to blame herself before she slowly came to see herself as a victim. That pattern complicates prosecutive decision-making.

For instance, when it comes to consent, Jane Doe’s civil complaint sets out one of the issues prosecutors will have to grapple with.

New York’s college standards require affirmative consent. Consent can be initially given but then withdrawn. Although there have been reports that suggest that Jane Doe voluntarily went to the fraternity and had a prior relationship with at least one of the men involved, the civil case argues she was incapable of consent at the time sexual conduct occurred because of her incapacity due to alcohol and the ingestion of other drugs that she suggests they induced her to take. To further complicate matters, the standard for consent in New York can depend on whether a victim was voluntarily intoxicated. But under New York law, when consent can no longer be given, sexual activity must stop.

This shows why a thorough investigation is essential. Prosecutors cannot make a decision about whether they have a case until they understand precisely what happened. And while the question that underlies an investigation like this is whether a crime or crimes were committed, the real question prosecutors have to answer is “can we prove it beyond a reasonable doubt to a unanimous jury?” But the fact that rape cases can be difficult to prosecute doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be pursued. The facts must be assembled, the law assessed, and a decision made on that basis and no other.

There will be a lot of evidence for AG James to consider:

  • Police interviews with Jane Doe and others.
  • The Title IX investigative file—Federal law requires institutions that receive any federal funds to conduct a formal administrative inquiry into allegations of sexual assault, which can include victim, witness, and potential defendant statements among other materials.
  • Any additional material in possession of the University, for instance, other allegations of misconduct involving the fraternity.
  • Additional materials generated by the DA
  • Any relevant statements made to the media.

After evaluating the available evidence, James will likely have additional leads she will want investigators to run down for her. She may try to interview key figures. And because there are multiple possible defendants involved, she may try to develop a cooperating co-defendant.

But it’s important that we not prejudge the evidence and jump to the conclusion that a crime was committed and that it’s prosecutable. A rush to judgment isn’t helpful. Accusations have been made. Now it’s time to let a prosecutor with every reason to give Jane Doe the serious consideration she deserves a chance to do the work. Mimi Rocah, the former District Attorney in Westchester County New York, as well as a former federal prosecutor put it like this, “I hope that AG James conducts an investigation that everyone can have faith in. Not everyone will agree with the outcome whatever it is - but a fair process is essential to faith in the justice system going forward.”

In the civil lawsuit, Jane Doe alleges that Cornell, Chi Phi, Delta Delta Delta (her sorority), and others, including alumni and board members, failed to protect her “from being sexually assaulted and raped by multiple members of the Xi Chapter of Chi Phi Fraternity at Cornell University.” She also names individual defendants who she alleges committed “heinous criminal sexual acts against Plaintiff.” There are additional claims, including breach of contract and New York state law violations.

This case comes at a time when Americans have been actively reconsidering how we, as a society, approach sexual assaults and sex crimes. It started with the Me Too movement. The Epstein survivors forced many people to open their eyes, and E. Jean Carroll’s successful civil cases against Donald Trump raised the issue of why a woman might go decades before coming forward to accuse a man who assaulted her. This case forces us to look at an issue that people know has been overlooked for far too long—sexual assault on college campuses. As Jane Doe writes in her civil complaint, “she never knew that the University had been the scene of numerous incidents of sexual assault and rape in the months and years prior to her arrival. Students were afraid, protesting, and demanding reforms.” By the time she started school, Cornell was advising students on campus and “implementing anti-sexual violence training in the University’s Greek houses, advising incoming students about the risks of sexual assault and harassment in college, and offering support services to victims/survivors.” Cornell, of course, is not alone.

But unfortunately, instead of aggressively pursuing Title IX cases and its other authorities, the Trump administration has abandoned campus sexual assault cases to pursue its anti-trans agenda. As my former DOJ Civil Rights Division colleague Shaheena Simons posted on LinkedIn, “I post a lot about what my former DOJ office is doing on higher education. Here’s what they are not doing: They have not announced a single Title IX investigation, finding or resolution about campus sexual assault. The gutted Department of Education has similarly turned its back. Instead, DOJ’s (and ED’s) Title IX agenda is laser-focused on directing harm and hostility at trans students. This is how they purport to protect women and girls in schools.” She noted candidly that while prior efforts “weren’t ever enough and they weren’t always perfect … we prioritized students and we conducted fair and careful investigations.” Today, we have only a state investigation and a private civil case, with no federal action.

So we struggle with this issue, as with so many others, in an environment where the federal government turns a blind eye to important societal matters. The criminal investigation, along with the civil case, will be important to Jane Doe and to the men accused of raping her. But it will also have significance as we try to evolve our culture in the absence of leadership from the White House. Rachel Foster, a leading anti-trafficking attorney known for her work with the Epstein survivors, for which she was named to the Time100 list of the world's most influential people in 2026, put it like this: “Hopefully it will crack open something that needs to be cracked open.”

There is lots more to come. We’ll track it here at Civil Discourse.

New York Times, D.A. in Cornell Rape Inquiry Declined to Review Additional Evidence, Michael Rothfeld and Hurubie Meko, Updated Oct. 3, 2026. Records show that campus police officers informed Tompkins County prosecutors that they had conducted additional interviews beyond taking a statement from the woman who said she was raped.

The Tompkins County district attorney said recently that the evidence he reviewed in 2024 made it impossible for him to bring charges in the Cornell University rape inquiry.

But records obtained by The New York Times show that the same district attorney’s office declined to review any additional evidence gathered by the campus police department beyond a six-page statement signed by the former student, now known as Jane Doe.

The decision not to review the additional evidence has not been previously reported.

On Nov. 25, 2024, a Cornell police investigator, Jeffrey Northrop, spoke to a member of the district attorney’s staff, Jeff Huddle, about additional interviews the police had done, the records show.

Prosecutors did not express interest, saying they agreed that based on the woman’s statement, “criminal charges would not be pursued in this case,” Mr. Northrop wrote in a note documenting their call.

By that point, the police had conducted numerous interviews, reviewed chat messages, logged anonymous tips, reached out to lawyers for some of the accused men and spoken to at least two others, the records show.

kathy hochul 2017On Friday, Gov. Kathy Hochul, left, harshly criticized the district attorney and the Cornell police for the way they handled the investigation and appointed Attorney General Letitia James as a special prosecutor, giving her power to bring criminal charges.

All of the men named in the lawsuit have denied any wrongdoing, and none has been charged with a crime.

matthew van houtenReached on Thursday, the Tompkins County district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, right, said by email that any additional records gathered by the Cornell police were “not pertinent to our analysis because we had Jane Doe’s comprehensive account of the events.”

Mr. Huddle referred questions to the district attorney.

The interaction between Mr. Northrop and Mr. Van Houten’s office was one example of what experts said appeared to be numerous law enforcement shortcomings in the investigation of Jane Doe’s account.

Mr. Van Houten has said that based on Jane Doe’s lawsuit he would reopen the investigation.

But his office’s decision at the time not to examine additional evidence that had been gathered, or to seek any additional inquiry beyond a single — and as it turns out, incomplete — campus police statement, was a stark departure from how complicated sex crimes investigations should be handled, said former prosecutors and other experts.ImageMatthew Van Houten smiles for the camera. He is wearing a dark blue suit and striped tie.The Tompkins County district attorney Matthew Van Houten has been harshly criticized for his handling of the Cornell rape inquiry.Credit...Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office

Mr. Van Houten has defended his original decision not to prosecute, saying Jane Doe’s account in her police statement “described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious and consensual.”

He said the facts in her initial statement did not constitute a crime under New York law, and that he had never been contacted by Jane Doe or her lawyers before her lawsuit.

The former prosecutors, however, said the district attorney’s approach fell short in multiple ways, including his failure to bring Jane Doe in to be interviewed by his office and his apparent total reliance on a statement recorded — and, more broadly, an investigation conducted — by the university police.

“We would never rely on a campus police investigation,” said Rick Trunfio, a former sex crimes prosecutor in upstate New York and now an adjunct law professor at Syracuse University. “There’s too many problems with that.”

Mr. Trunfio and other experts said the investigation should have been handed off to a specialized police or prosecution team like the special victims bureau he founded at the Onondaga County District Attorney’s Office. Also problematic, he added, is that the Cornell University Police Department was “beholden” to the school, which would have had to report under federal law if a gang rape on campus was prosecuted by civilian authorities.

“You think Cornell University wants to report something like that?” Mr. Trunfio said.

A Cornell representative who speaks on behalf of the campus police declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.

New York Times, Cornell Case Revives Anger About Handling of Campus Sexual Assault Cases, Sephanie Saul and Emma Goldberg, Oct. 3, 2026. A lawsuit alleging rape at Cornell has led to an outpouring of women sharing stories about sexual violence on college campuses.

Campus sexual assault survivors and their supporters have published essays in school newspapers and inundated social media in solidarity with the complainant, known in court records only as Jane Doe.

Some are using the familiar #MeToo hashtag of an earlier movement to combat sexual abuse and harassment. Others have adopted a new one: #IAmJaneDoe.

In one opinion article in the University of Pennsylvania campus newspaper, students wrote that “sexual violence happens far too often on college campuses everywhere.”

“It’s time to face the fact that the ‘Cornell incident’ isn’t just born of Cornell problems, or limited to a Cornell issue,” the students wrote.

The outrage flooding social media and rising up on campuses follows similar waves of disgust about campus sexual violence that emerged more than a decade ago and then reignited after the broader #MeToo reckoning that began with Hollywood sexual assault revelations. Driving the campaign in support of Ms. Doe is a feeling that not enough changed after similar movements.

The Penn students wrote, for example, that past responses have been bureaucratic, and that universities “prioritize bolstering their own image” instead of making deeper changes that protect women from assault.

Celebrities have also joined the outcry. Mariska Hargitay and her Joyful Heart Foundation, which supports domestic violence survivors, posted: “Survivors deserve to be believed and kept informed. Silence protects no one. To her: we support you.”

During an appearance in Ithaca, N.Y., Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called the 2024 episode at Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity house part of a “culture of rape” on college campuses.

In the lawsuit, the young woman says she was assaulted at the Chi Phi house on Cornell’s campus, names seven men who were involved and says the university and law enforcement agencies did not do enough to punish or pursue prosecution of the men.

The men involved have denied the allegations, while the university, the fraternity and prosecutors have said they responded appropriately given the information they had at the time.

Lawyers point out the difficulty of prosecuting such cases in court, particularly when many complainants, including Ms. Doe, change their accounts over time. Records obtained by The New York Times present a murky picture of what took place. The woman indicated in one text message to one of the men that “nothing illegal” had happened. But she also told police investigators that “I can say with 100 percent confidence I was raped.”

The widespread condemnation of accused men could create an unfair dynamic, according to Andrew T. Miltenberg, a lawyer for one of the Cornell men, Gillio Lopes. He said the “danger in a case like this is that an accusation, amplified often enough, can harden into a verdict before the evidence is ever tested.”

Mr. Miltenberg, known for representing students against sexual misconduct claims, said the attention was compounded by statements of public officials that seemed to side with Ms. Doe.

On Sept. 28, Attorney General Letitia James posted on X: “What this young woman has been forced to endure is horrific and unacceptable. I’m holding her in my heart and prayers.”

Several days later, Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed Ms. James to take over investigating the case.

Mr. Lopes has unequivocally denied the allegations, Mr. Miltenberg said.

The online outpouring in support of Ms. Doe has also led to a backlash, with some right-wing commentators condemning her and others trying to reveal her identity.

Federal data shows that nationally, there were 6,000 to 6,200 reports of rapes on campus a year from 2014 to 2019, or about eight to 11 per 10,000 on-campus students. But reports declined drastically during the pandemic years, when many students took classes remotely. Since then, they have begun to rise again.

The data does not show how many reports resulted in action or were substantiated.

But the available data suggests the problem has been widespread. Over a quarter of undergraduate women reported some form of nonconsensual sexual contact by physical force, or because they were unable to consent, according to a large survey of students conducted by the Association of American Universities in 2019.

That survey also found evidence of a growing awareness about rules and resources, as universities built out new policies and training.

At Cornell, a survey conducted by the university found that roughly one-third of undergraduate women said they had unwanted sexual experiences.

For some current Cornell students and recent graduates, reading Ms. Doe’s claims of assault has prompted them to share memories of their own experiences of sexual misconduct. Many said that the allegations weren’t entirely surprising because of how often they had heard about friends who said they had been assaulted at parties.

“To be honest, there are so many during my time there that it almost feels like it all blurs into one,” said Claire Ting, who graduated from Cornell last year and served in student government, referring to conversations with friends about upsetting sexual experiences. “We would see posts and discussions talking about the sexual assaults that happened,” she added. “The buzz would die down and then it would happen again.”

The response, she said, was “hurdle after hurdle of bureaucracy.”

There have been other moments in recent decades when campus sexual assault has dominated the national conversation. When the documentary “The Hunting Ground” was released in 2015, for example, it galvanized a movement.

Lady Gaga sang the film’s theme song at the Oscars, where she was introduced by Joseph R. Biden Jr., then the vice president. At the time, statistics showed that one in four women on campus reported being sexual assault victims. Just months before the film’s release, the launch of a White House campaign to end campus sexual assault — “It’s On Us” — seemed to signal a changing tide.

More than a decade later, though, the allegations at Cornell prompted questions among survivors about whether anything has changed.

Kacey Lee, who graduated from Cornell in 2025, said she was both “shocked and not shocked” in the fall of 2024 when she heard about Ms. Doe’s reported assault.

“Being around frat culture and knowing how people can be there was a level of — not that I was expecting it, but I was not the most surprised,” Ms. Lee said.

While federal data shows that Cornell has reported as many as 28 campus rapes in some recent years, its on-campus undergraduate population is the largest of any Ivy League school. When adjusted for its size, Cornell mirrors many of its peer institutions.

New York Times, Cornell President Calls Rape Inquiry ‘Defining Moment’ for Campus, Claire Fahy, Oct. 3, 2026. Michael I. Kotlikoff, below right, said in a video the university would be more transparent, hold Greek groups accountable and improve sexual assault prevention.

The president of Cornell University assured the campus community that officials would take action in the wake of sexual assault allegations, promising in his first personal statement about the incident that “this will not be a moment that passes.”

michael kotlikoffIn an eight-minute video, the president, Michael I. Kotlikoff, acknowledged the distrust that has gripped his campus since a lawsuit alleging a gang rape at a campus fraternity garnered national attention. He promised that the university, which has been criticized for its handling of the initial allegations, would be more transparent going forward.

Mr. Kotlikoff, who has served in the role for about two years, struck a conciliatory tone, saying the university supported an independent investigation and would work to find ways to hold Greek life accountable.

“This has been one of the most difficult weeks in our history,” Mr. Kotlikoff said.

A woman, identified in court documents as Jane Doe, claimed in a lawsuit filed last month that she was sexually assaulted in October 2024 at a Chi Phi fraternity house on Cornell’s campus by seven men and that the school and local law enforcement failed to punish those involved appropriately. None of the accused men have been charged with a crime, and they have denied wrongdoing, and the university has defended its handling of the allegations.

More On Russia's Invasion of Ukraine, Trump Family's Russian Ties

New York Times, Russia Turns to Striking Kyiv’s Bridges, Threatening a Vital Lifeline, Constant Méheut, Oct. 3, 2026. The bridges, used by many commuters in the Ukrainian capital, are the latest target in a broad Russian bombing campaign against infrastructure.

Russia has a new target on its rapidly growing list of Ukrainian infrastructure to bomb: bridges.

Over the past three days, Russia has attacked bridges in the capital, Kyiv, six times. Three drones hit one in the city’s south on Thursday, and the same bridge was struck twice on Friday. On Saturday morning, another attack hit a bridge in the north.

The structures still stand, but the damage and the threat of more attacks have prompted the local authorities to restrict or stop traffic on five of the capital’s six road bridges. That has severely disrupted daily life in Ukraine’s largest city, which, like much of the country, is bisected by the broad Dnipro River.

Many in Kyiv commute between the mostly residential eastern bank, home to roughly a million people, and the western bank, where most government offices and businesses are located.

The bridges are the latest target in a sweeping Russian strike campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure that is far from the front lines. That campaign has expanded in recent weeks to include warehouses, trains, data centers, medical depots and steel factories and comes on top of an intense assault on Ukraine’s power grid that Russia plans to escalate this winter.

The goal, Ukrainian officials and military experts say, is to devastate Ukraine’s economy — and the country’s ability to sustain the war effort — while breaking the population’s will to fight by making everyday life increasingly difficult.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

Ukraine has withstood other such campaigns since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. But a critical shortage of air defenses coupled with Moscow’s growing arsenal of weapons now leaves the country more vulnerable than ever to such attacks.

“The enemy is destroying Kyiv,” the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko said in a social media post on Friday. “It is no longer possible to pretend that we can live as we did in peacetime!”

Mr. Klitschko’s message echoed a feeling that has grown across the capital in recent weeks: The relative safety Kyiv enjoyed through most of the war — demonstrated by crowded cafes and nail salons — is over.

Drones now buzz over the city all day, setting off near-constant air raid alerts. People caught outside during an attack can be seen checking phone apps that track the drones’ flight paths. On Monday, a drone hit a university in the city center and set the building ablaze, shocking residents of a neighborhood that had been spared Russian attacks for most of the war.

The assault on Kyiv’s bridges could disrupt life even more. Officials temporarily shut the northern bridge after Saturday’s attack, closed the southern bridge to cars and the metro, and limited traffic on three other bridges.

The first attack on the southern bridge, on Thursday, happened as a metro train was crossing the bridge. No one was injured, but service across the bridge was suspended. On Friday evening, residents crossing the bridge on foot watched as another drone struck it, according to a video posted on social media.

Destroying the bridges would be difficult. They are large concrete structures that would need to be hit multiple times to be taken down. Ukraine’s own attacks on Russian bridges have yielded mixed results. The Kerch Bridge, which connects the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula to Russia, closed temporarily several times after attacks but was never knocked out.

Still, attacks could weaken the bridges’ supporting structures and prompt the authorities to close them indefinitely rather than risk a collapse.

The result would be a logistical nightmare for Kyiv and the whole country. Bridges in the capital carry all kinds of food and equipment across the Dnipro River, which runs north to south through Ukraine and splits the country in two. There would be few alternatives if they closed.

One road bridge crosses the river north of Kyiv. To the south, the nearest is about 90 miles away, a roughly 2.5-hour drive. More bridges lie farther downriver, but using them would mean a long detour, and their proximity to the southern front leaves them even more exposed to Russian attacks.

In the early days of the war, Ukrainian officials considered blowing up Kyiv’s bridges to halt Russian troops closing in on the eastern bank. They held off as counterattacks eventually succeeded in routing the Russian forces advancing from the east

Oct. 2, 2026

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  • djt golden age promoPaul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: A “Who You Gonna Believe?” Election, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 2, 2026. If you’re arguing, you’re losing. Trump is arguing. Click on any White House press release and the image above pops up. The tone-deafness is almost surreal. Even if you’re a Trump loyalist who really believes that things are going great in America, surely you have to be aware that this isn’t how most voters see it. 

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  • Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Sound and the Fury, Andrew Egger, right, andrew eggerOct. 2, 2026. The president of the United States is not all there, upstairs. He is so wicked, so deceitful, and has put in motion so many awful plans that it can be easy to forget. It’s also embarrassing to think about: This gibbering idiot is the guy who twice pantsed the Democrats and brought the global order to its knees? It’d be less humiliating if he were some sort of evil genius.

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  • New York Times, U.S. and Allies Agree to Release Diesel Reserves as Prices Soar, Lisa Friedman and Rebecca F. Elliott, Oct. 2, 2026. Leaders from some of the world’s wealthiest nations agreed on Friday to release diesel from their reserve stockpiles to help ease a growing crisis over record-high prices driven mostly by the war in Iran.
  • Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Defense Department Duce, William Kristol, right, william bill kristol imdbOct. 2, 2026. Know your enemy, Sun Tzu taught. And so Andrew [Egger of The Bulwark] perused the complete text of Donald Trump’s interview with Time. (I’m pleased to report that he’s recovering nicely from the ordeal.) Inspired by his example, I wanted to do my part.So I forced myself to read a transcript (I couldn’t bear to watch) of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s speech Wednesday on “The State of the Force.” The remarks of both Trump and Hegseth are appalling. They’re alarming. But they’re also instructive. In the Trump interview and the Hegseth speech, these enemies of liberty and law, of decency and democracy, reveal what they believe, and make clear who they are.

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  • New York Times, The Mother’s Scream That Sent Passengers to the Rescue, David M. Halbfinger, Natan Odenheimer, Adam Rasgon, Johnatan Reiss and Aaron Boxerman, Oct. 2, 2026. A badly wounded Indian pilot managed to unlock the cockpit door. Four Israeli men teamed up to overwhelm an attacker and avert disaster.

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New York Times, Agency Diverted $1.4 Billion in Science Funds Mandated by Congress, Adam Sella, Christopher Flavelle and Irena Hwang, Oct. 2, 2026. The move, affecting about one-fifth of the National Science Foundation’s primary research budget, is the latest sign of how the White House is asserting more control over grants.

The National Science Foundation, one of the biggest sources of federal research funding, withheld $1.4 billion that Congress had intended for research over the course of the past year, according to internal data reviewed by The New York Times.

The extraordinary move — holding back about one-fifth of the N.S.F.’s primary research budget — is the latest sign of how the Trump administration is finding creative ways to work around Congress. Lawmakers from both parties have consistently opposed White House-led proposals to cut funding to major science agencies, including the N.S.F. and the National Institutes of Health.

Since the N.S.F. was founded over 75 years ago, the agency has spent nearly all of its budget on so-called basic research from a wide range of scientific fields, which has led to major advances in technology such as M.R.I.s, semiconductors and the internet.

The White House wants to redirect the money to a limited set of administration priorities, including artificial intelligence and quantum computing, according to two people with knowledge of the administration’s plans.

Congress appropriates money to the N.S.F. on two-year cycles, so the agency could still spend the held-over money in the new fiscal year, which began on Thursday.

But Democratic lawmakers see the strategy as more of a political power grab by the White House.

“The money should be granted as Congress intended, and essentially, they’re ignoring what Congress did,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, the top Democrat on the Science, Space and Technology Committee. “It’s a dramatic attack on the science enterprise that has served us very well since World War II, when this whole system was set up,” Ms. Lofgren added.

The White House and the N.S.F. said that diverting the money was allowed under Congress’s two-year appropriation.

Mike England, a spokesman for the science foundation, said in a statement that the agency had “carried over funds to invest in agency priorities that are aligned with broader administration initiatives.”

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Not To Alarm You, But Trump’s Brain Is Melted, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Oct. 2, 2026. And Hegseth’s neo-fascism is out in the open.bulwark morning shots logo

Just how bad has Donald Trump’s leadership been for the Kennedy Center’s financial bulwark logo big shiphealth? CNN reports that, after Trump slapped his name on the building late last year, donation pledges plunged more than 100 percent compared to the previous three-month period. That’s so dramatic it sounds mathematically impossible, but it isn’t: “A decline of that size is possible,” a tax expert told CNN, “if earlier pledges were withdrawn.”

But hey, that’s just a building’s economic well-being. How about the nation’s? Well, here’s September’s jobs data, as announced this morning: “The U.S. added 29,000 jobs in September, far short of expectations,” and “The unemployment rate rose to 4.2%.” Happy Friday.

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New York Times, Trump Directed Use of Taxpayer Money for Ads Praising His Presidency, Maggie Haberman, Hamed Aleaziz Shane Goldmacher and Jonathan Swan, Oct. 2, 2026. The government-funded ads show just how much President Trump has been able to use federal money for his own aims.

President Trump personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads praising him and his presidency, setting in motion a $20 million contract that used funds from the Department of Homeland Security, according to people familiar with the matter.

us dhs big eagle logo4The ads have run across cable and network television — on Fox News, CNN and MS Now, with football games on Fox and with national newscasts on CBS, ABC and NBC, including “Meet the Press,” which Mr. Trump is known to watch.

Mr. Trump was eager to see the laudatory ads on the air and told Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to come up with the money from within the government, the people said. Mark Paoletta, the budget office’s counsel, and Will Scharf, the White House counsel, both said it would be legal to use D.H.S. funds. The president and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, both spoke with Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, about the ads.

On Sept. 20, U.S. Customs and Border Protection — which falls under D.H.S. — awarded the contract to LMD, a Maryland marketing firm, federal records show.

This article is based on interviews with 12 people familiar with the president’s interest in the ads and how they came to be. They spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the president’s demand.

The taxpayer-funded ads have been criticized by Democrats and even some Republicans as a possible violation of federal laws against using taxpayer dollars for “publicity or propaganda purposes.” And they come as the president is also directing spending from his super PAC — MAGA Inc., which entered the fall with $400 million — for which he has been raising money since he won re-election in 2024.

It was not clear why taxpayer funds, and not money from the super PAC, were used for the spots.

The White House has called the ads public service announcements and said they are appropriate because there is no “call to action” to vote for any candidate. Some of his aides also noted that Mr. Trump is not running for office now, in an attempt to blunt criticism of the ads as violating federal laws about the use of public money.

When pressed by a reporter on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said: “If somebody said that that’s wrong, I’ll gladly pay the money.”

“But these are ads for the country,” he added. “You have to understand. I’m not promoting a candidate. I’m not promoting myself because I’m not running for office. I’m promoting the country.”

At least four spots have run so far, at a cost of about $5.5 million, and that is expected to grow, according to the media tracker AdImpact and people familiar with the spending. One played images of Mr. Trump to the song “Love Me” by Christian Berishaj, who performs as JMSN. (The artist has protested the use of his song.)

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The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Trump Tries to Buy Votes With $500 Checks, GOP Senator Tells Trump "I Don't Take This Bullsh*t," Final Jobs Report Tanks, and More, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 2, 2026. Nearly a million Americans are opening their mailboxes this week to find a $500 Obamacare refund check from Donald Trump, along with a letter blaming Joe Biden, just weeks before the midterms and just weeks before those same families learn how much their premiums are going up again.

Meanwhile, the final jobs report before the election came in at just 29,000 jobs, with wages now falling behind inflation, and Trump is sending 9,000 more troops to the Middle East while promising the Iran war will end “right after the election.”

And Republicans are running for cover. Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis privately texted Trump that he doesn’t “take this bullsh*t from anyone,” GOP candidates from Michigan to Florida are scrubbing Trump from their campaigns, and one Republican told Politico that the president has become “kryptonite.” Plus, resurfaced clips show Colorado’s Republican nominee for governor describing slamming his wife into a door and throwing his toddler across a room.

This week, we brought you exclusive information on an FBI interview with an Epstein-linked banker that Sen. Ron Wyden says the Justice Department never released. And we’re working on more big stories that I can’t wait to share with you soon. 

And, this morning, I woke up to the “journalist” who is trying to unmask the Cornell Jane Doe and the same person smearing the Epstein survivors attacking me. Guess I struck a nerve

Here’s the news:

Trump Mails $500 Obamacare Refund Checks With a Letter Blaming Biden, Weeks Before the Midterms. The Treasury Department began sending one-time $500 refunds this week to more than 950,000 Obamacare enrollees in 30 states who buy coverage on healthcare.gov without federal subsidies, mostly middle-income Americans, each accompanied by a letter from Trump claiming “the Biden Administration overcharged you” and touting his healthcare record. The checks are funded by unspent fees insurers pay to run the federal exchange, money that largely piled up because Trump’s first administration slashed spending on enrollment help, marketing and the call center, and experts dispute his claim that enrollees were “wrongly overcharged.” The payments land just over a month before the midterms, after Republicans let enhanced ACA subsidies expire at the end of last year, sending premiums skyrocketing for many middle-income families. Trump claims the $500 will cover the premium spike “in many cases,” but KFF found some enrollees’ monthly costs rose far more than that, and premiums are set to jump again for 2027, with new prices revealed when open enrollment starts Nov. 1, just days before Election Day.

Colorado GOP Governor Nominee Victor Marx Described Body-Slamming His Wife and Throwing His Toddler in Resurfaced Clips. Victor Marx, the Republican nominee for governor of Colorado, described slamming his wife into their front door and throwing his toddler son across a room, and claimed God gave him a “gift for violence,” in videos and posts uncovered by The Daily Beast. In a 2021 podcast, Marx said he was “infuriated” when his wife said she didn’t need martial arts training because she “was married to a black belt Marine,” recalling “grabbing her and slamming her into our front door,” and in a 2020 episode of his own podcast he said that after seeing his son push his sister, “I snatched him up and threw him across the room.” The evangelical minister and Marine veteran has also spoken extensively about demonic possession and has claimed his stepfather forced him to kill a man when he was 7 years old. Marx, who has never held office, narrowly won June’s GOP primary, but has struggled to win over the state party establishment, with former Colorado GOP chair Dick Wadhams saying, “I want Victor Marx to lose by as large a margin as possible.” He faces Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser in November in a state where Republicans haven’t won a governor’s race since 2002.

Republicans Break With Trump as Tillis’s Explosive Texts Reveal He Told the President He Doesn’t “Take That Bullsh*t From Anyone”

Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis privately tore into Trump in a pair of blistering text messages obtained by Politico. “I still want to help but I don’t take this bullsht from anyone, including you Mr. President,” Tillis wrote on May 22, hours after Trump branded him “weak and ineffective,” a “Nitpicker” and a “QUITTER” on Truth Social. “Save that sht for the cowards who don’t care if you fail. I care if you fail and right now we are failing.” In a June 6 text, Tillis insisted Trump had never threatened him with a primary, writing that if he had, “I would have immediately told you to f*ck yourself” and adding, “Save those threats and head games for cowards and fools.” The messages will appear in Tillis’s upcoming book, “How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents,” and come as he has repeatedly broken with the administration, including denouncing the DOJ’s $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

Less than 40 days out from the midterms, Republican candidates across the country are openly distancing themselves from Trump, in what one former GOP congressman called “survival mode time.” Michigan Senate nominee Mike Rogers filmed a video in a grocery store declaring “The war with Iran needs to end, and end quickly,” joined by GOP candidates in Iowa, Wisconsin and Ohio. Florida gubernatorial nominee Byron Donalds, one of Trump’s closest allies, scrubbed the “Trump-Endorsed” banner and photos from his campaign website, and Rep. María Elvira Salazar ran an ad breaking with Trump on immigration in a district he won by 14 points. Even three GOP senators, including John Cornyn and Tillis, backed calls to investigate Trump’s son over a wedding after-party paid for by a Russian businessman with ties to Putin. Former Trump aide Marc Short said the distancing “does feel somewhat like desperation,” as Trump’s approval on the economy hit a record-low 27% in a CNN poll.

Wisconsin gubernatorial nominee Tom Tiffany, a longtime Trump ally, has gone from election denial to declaring “Joe Biden won.” When Trump endorsed him in January, Tiffany said he was “especially honored” and vowed to “make Wisconsin great again,” and as recently as May he backed an FBI probe into Wisconsin’s 2020 votes. But in recent weeks, he’s broken with Trump on data centers and beef import tariffs, deflected questions on Trump’s mail-in voting push, and brushed off Trump’s renaming of Lake Ontario by saying “the Great Lakes are the Great Lakes.” Politico reports candidates in tight races are increasingly treating the president as a liability, with one source summing it up: “He is kryptonite.” It’s a striking shift for a party where crossing Trump has ended careers, with Trump having successfully backed primary challengers to Rep. Thomas Massie and Sen. Bill Cassidy this cycle.

Some Republicans are reversing their own votes to escape Trump’s shadow, drawing mockery from Democrats. Iowa Senate nominee Ashley Hinson now says the Iran war “needs to be brought to a successful and immediate end,” despite voting multiple times, including last week, against a war powers resolution to rein it in. Iowa Reps. Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks flipped their positions to help pass a Democratic measure directing Trump to halt the conflict. Longtime Trump ally Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska, facing a tough race, declared “the cost of diesel is just too damn high,” backing Sen. Chuck Grassley’s call for a diesel export embargo, an idea Trump’s own energy secretary dismissed. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Republicans are in “full panic mode” because Trump’s approval ratings “are at extinction levels.”

Trump’s own campaign schedule shows a party playing defense on home turf. This week alone, Trump is campaigning in Alabama, Oklahoma and Ohio, states he carried by 30, 34 and 11 points just two years ago, while purple battlegrounds like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania go uncovered. “The problem is that the fires are everywhere right now,” one GOP donor told Politico. Republican groups plan to spend $166 million just to boost Ken Paxton in Texas, more than they’re spending on competitive Senate races in Michigan and Maine combined, with the total GOP-aligned bill in Texas expected to top $300 million. As New York magazine’s Ed Kilgore put it, Trump appears to be “simply trying to mitigate losses rather than to win,” a terrible sign for a politician obsessed with winning.

Trump Claims Iran War Will End “Right After the Election” as 9,000 More Troops Head to the Middle East

iran mapTrump is making increasingly erratic claims about the Iran war, promising it will end “right after the election” while admitting he doesn’t know who’s running the country. Speaking at a Peterbilt plant in Denton, Texas, Thursday night, Trump insisted Iran “is ready to fold up” and that “I’m ensuring that Iran will be very quickly ended,” adding, “Maybe before the election.” He also conceded, “we don’t know who the hell to deal with, to be honest with you. Nobody wants to be president.” Trump claimed he bombed Iran partly because “they were doing drugs,” a new justification for a war he has repeatedly said was about stopping a nuclear weapon. The shifting rationale comes days after he told Time “with Iran, I don’t think you could ever have peace” and floated resuming strikes after the midterms.

The US is sending about 9,000 more troops to the Middle East, which would bring the total to roughly 20,000 forces and three aircraft carrier groups. The USS Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group and USS Makin Island Amphibious Group are on their way with some 7,000 sailors and 2,000 Marines, and could arrive by the Department of Defense Sealend of October, just as voters head to the polls. They’ll join the USS George H.W. Bush, the USS George Washington and the USS Boxer already in the region, along with hundreds of vessels and aircraft. Axios also reported the US sent two more Patriot missile batteries to protect oil and gas sites in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, after both countries urged Trump in August not to strike Iranian energy infrastructure for fear of retaliation. It’s a major buildup for a war the president keeps saying is almost over.

Trump suggested Iran may be behind the FlyDubai cockpit attack and vowed Tehran would be “hit, very hard” if so. Asked whether he’d been briefed on links between Iran and the co-pilot who allegedly attacked the captain and tried to crash the Israel-bound plane, Trump said, “I would say the answer, based on what I’m hearing, is yes. But we’re working on it right now.” He said the attacker “could’ve been, yeah” working with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, but offered no evidence. Meanwhile, the Saudi-led coalition accused Iran-backed Houthis of a drone strike on an electricity station in Medina that powers the Prophet’s Mosque, Islam’s second holiest site, drawing condemnation across the Muslim world, though the Houthis denied involvement. Fighting in Yemen has intensified sharply in recent weeks.

Iran is moving to formally claim control of the Strait of Hormuz, while Europe weighs releasing diesel reserves under US pressure. An Iranian parliamentary committee advanced a bill that would charge ships fees for transiting the strait, ban vessels linked to Israel or “hostile” countries, and require all others to get permission from Iran’s military. The bill still needs a full parliamentary vote and Guardian Council approval, and the Trump administration rejects Iran’s claims to the waterway. In Europe, governments debated a French proposal to release 50 million barrels of diesel and have IEA countries release 50 million barrels of crude, with some pushing for a US commitment not to unilaterally ban diesel exports as part of any deal. The war’s toll keeps spreading, with Lebanon’s prime minister saying rebuilding from the Israel-Hezbollah fighting, which has killed more than 8,900 people, is beyond the state’s capacity.

Final Jobs Report Before Midterms Shows Just 29,000 Jobs Added as Unemployment Rises and Wages Fall Behind Inflation

US employers added just 29,000 jobs in September, and the unemployment rate rose to 4.2%, in the last jobs report before the midterms. The numbers came in weaker than expected, and job gains for July and August were revised down by a combined 60,000, dragging the three-month average from just over 70,000 to about 50,000. The New York Times noted it’s “not the sort of slam-dunk strong reading” the administration wanted heading into November. Sen. Elizabeth Warren quickly seized on it, saying “President Trump’s failing economic agenda is weakening the labor market” while his “failed agenda keeps pushing prices up.” The White House had not yet issued an official reaction.

Workers are falling further behind as wage growth slowed to its weakest pace since the pandemic, well below the rate of inflation driven by the Iran war. Average hourly earnings rose just 0.1% in September and 3% over the past year, failing to keep pace with prices that have climbed since the war began. The average unemployed worker has now been searching for nearly six months, and the low rate of job-switching suggests workers aren’t seeing many opportunities either. The unemployment rate for Black Americans jumped a full point to 7%, nearly double the 3.6% rate for white Americans. As the Times’ Ben Casselman put it, it’s a hard time to look for a job and “it isn’t a great time to have a job either.”

Sectors most exposed to AI shed jobs, offering possible early clues about the technology’s impact on the workforce. The information industry lost 10,000 jobs, professional and business services cut 9,000 and financial activities dropped 7,000, while temporary help services, often seen as a barometer of employer confidence, lost 11,000. Health care, which has driven much of the job growth, added just 17,000, about half its recent monthly average, while manufacturing added 9,000 and the employment rate for prime-age workers ticked up. Bond yields fell sharply on the news and stock futures jumped as investors bet the weaker data makes a Fed rate hike in October, just days before the midterms, much less likely. Most Fed officials still expect one more quarter-point hike this year, now likely in December, with the next key test being the Oct. 14 inflation report.

Other news:

The Supreme Court opens its new term Monday with Trump attacking the justices he appointed, even though he’s still winning most of his cases. Over the past several months, the court’s conservative majority blocked Trump’s sweeping tariffs, his plan to end birthright citizenship, his attempt to fire a Federal Reserve governor and his push to control mail-in ballots before the midterms. Trump responded by saying the court “let our country down” and calling his own appointees, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, “a shell of their previous selves,” telling Time, “I gave them the position of a lifetime, and they vote against me often.” But the administration has racked up wins on the “shadow docket,” including allowing his White House ballroom construction to continue, and won four of seven emergency requests over the summer. This term, the justices will take up his “third country” deportations and his push to indefinitely detain thousands of immigrants in deportation proceedings, with appeals also pending on his transgender military ban and the E. Jean Carroll defamation verdict. The term kicks off with a major case on whether cities and counties can sue oil companies over the impacts of climate change.

Manchester City has filed a “comprehensive” appeal after being found guilty of nearly all of the 115 financial charges against it. The club insists the commission’s ruling “contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact and is unsafe,” and that it is “innocent of the accusations.” The panel found City inflated its revenue by more than $1 billion between 2009 and 2018 through “sham” sponsorship deals, with only about $158 million of $1.26 billion in Abu Dhabi sponsorships actually paid by the sponsors and the rest coming from owner Sheikh Mansour’s company, an explanation from City the panel said was “concocted well after the event.” Potential punishments range from a fine to a points deduction or even expulsion from the Premier League, which has never happened. A new three-person appeal board, including at least one former judge, will now hear the case, with a decision expected within 12 weeks. England’s Football Association said the case has “significant implications for the integrity of the game,” and a cross-party committee of lawmakers has asked Britain’s tax authority to review it.

ICE has banned high-speed car chases and tightened rules for traffic stops after a string of shootings by its officers. An internal memo obtained by the AP bars officers from chasing vehicles that fail to pull over under any circumstances, requires all officers at vehicle stops to wear and activate body cameras, and limits stops to officers who’ve completed specific training. ICE agents have opened fire in more than a dozen traffic stop encounters since last year, killing at least four people. After fatal shootings in Maine and Texas in July, ICE briefly paused most vehicle stops, only for Trump to order them resumed the next day, calling them “one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools.” The memo landed the same day court testimony showed the officers who shot Austin DoorDash driver Wilber Garcés Pérez broke nearly every new rule, with the shooter wearing no body camera and the other officer switching his off during a high-speed chase. ICE downplayed the memo as a routine “guidance reminder,” insisting, “Vehicle stops and arrests of illegal aliens continue.”

 Leaked memo obtained by Washington Examiner reveals ICE has — again — changed its vehicle pursuit and traffic stop policies.

Egypt arrested the entire editorial team of Matsadaash, one of the country’s few independent news outlets, accusing them of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood. The six journalists were swept up Monday and Tuesday, with their phones and computers seized, and their whereabouts remain unknown as they’ve been denied contact with their families and lawyers. Egyptian authorities accused them of producing “fabricated” news for foreign funding, a charge co-founder Abdelrahman Mansour called false, saying the government is “afraid of a free press.” Founded in 2018 as a fact-checking platform, Matsadaash has more than a million Facebook followers despite being blocked in Egypt. More than 80 rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders, are demanding their release in what advocates say is the first time an entire newsroom has been arrested in the country. Egypt is already one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists, with 26 now behind bars, according to a local rights group.

A judge rejected Lindsay Clancy’s bid to be found not guilty for lack of evidence in the killings of her three children. Defense attorney Kevin Reddington had argued for the first time that prosecutors offered no proof Clancy committed the killings, even though her defense at trial was that she did it while suffering from postpartum psychosis and he had earlier offered to stipulate to her involvement. Judge William Sullivan ruled there was physical and circumstantial evidence that “would permit a rational trier of fact” to convict, noting her DNA was found on the exercise bands used to strangle 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan. Prosecutors haven’t decided whether to retry her on first-degree murder, pursue lesser charges or drop the case after the first trial deadlocked 11-1 in favor of acquittal. Clancy remains at a psychiatric hospital while the case is pending. Her former husband, Patrick Clancy, who discovered the children, has said publicly that he forgives her.

Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed New York Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor in the Cornell kathy hochul 2017fraternity gang rape case. Hochul said the Tompkins County DA’s decision not to prosecute in 2024, and new questions about the Cornell police investigation, had “undercut my faith, and the public’s faith” in his ability to handle the case. “The young woman at the center of this case deserves to know that every fact will be examined and justice pursued,” Hochul said. The move comes days after DA Matthew Van Houten said he’d never seen the woman’s full interview with campus police, in which she said, “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped.” Under mounting pressure, Cornell also agreed this week to bring in outside lawyers to investigate how it handled her allegations. Lawyers for two of the seven men she is suing have denied the allegations, with one saying his client never touched her or used any drugs.

The death toll from the medical helicopter crash off Catalina Island has risen to three after divers found the body of the missing patient. LA County sheriff’s divers located the woman in the wreckage, about 200 feet underwater, after a 23-hour search covering more than 156 square miles. Her family said she was being flown to the mainland after an allergic reaction, and her 20-year-old son had come along as her interpreter. The pilot and a flight nurse were also killed, while another medic and a man, believed to be the son, are recovering in the hospital. A memorial service was held on the island to honor the victims as the NTSB investigates the cause. LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn said the crew “dedicated their careers to saving lives. They are heroes.”

The Venezuelan DoorDash driver shot by ICE in Austin finally had surgery to remove the bullet that had been lodged near his spine for nearly two weeks. Wilber Garcés Pérez, 28, appeared in court in a wheelchair with his arm in a sling Wednesday, after supporters lobbied for the surgery warning he could lose feeling on the left side of his body. He had been taken from the hospital to an ICE detention center 140 miles away the same day he was shot. Garcés Pérez faces up to 20 years in prison on charges he struck an officer with his side mirror, though the officer who shot him wasn’t wearing a body camera. He says an ICE SUV struck his car and spun it around before he was shot, and bystander footage shows ICE officers stood by while local police gave him first aid. His legal team says the surgery was successful and he’s now recovering in the custody of the US Marshals.

Calls for a national halt to executions are growing after Tennessee’s botched attempt left Christa Pike alive but in critical condition. Pike survived two full syringes of pentobarbital and was heard still breathing and choking an hour after the first injection before Gov. Bill Lee called off the execution, and her lawyers say it’s unclear whether she suffered brain damage from oxygen deprivation. One attorney in the chamber said he counted seven needles in her left arm alone, “one of which appeared to be bent,” while death penalty scholar Sandra Babcock called it “unimaginably barbaric” and urged Lee to commute her sentence. Bryan Stevenson said “nearly a dozen botched executions in recent years should have suspended executions long before now,” and Sister Helen Prejean called it “the essence of cruelty.” An anesthesiologist who testified in Pike’s case said he warned officials her veins and blood condition made her vulnerable, saying, “I told them. I warned them.” Public support for the death penalty has already fallen to 52% from 80% in 1993, according to Gallup.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s fiancé, Ken Urker, died Thursday on his 34th birthday. Blanchard told People he died at his home in Louisiana of an apparent overdose, saying, “I don’t know if it was intentional or not. He was not in a good state of mind lately.” She said he faced “an unimaginable level of public scrutiny and relentless cyberbullying” over their relationship, which began when they were pen pals while she was in prison for her role in her mother’s 2015 death. Urker is survived by Blanchard and their one-year-old daughter, Aurora. “Ken was an amazing father and a man who was deeply loved,” Blanchard said, promising Aurora will grow up knowing “who he was beyond what strangers on the internet chose to say about him.” If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

More On U.S. Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets 

 

djt golden age promoPaul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: A “Who You Gonna Believe?” Election, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 2, 2026. If you’re arguing, you’re losing. Trump is arguing.,

They’re still doing it! Click on any White House press release and the image above pops up. The tone-deafness is almost surreal. Even if you’re a Trump loyalist who really believes that things are going great in America, surely you have to be aware that this isn’t how most voters see it. Here’s what the latest AP-NORC poll says:

A note here: When Kyla Scanlon introduced the term “vibecession” during the Biden years, Americans generally had a much more positive view of their local economy — which they could observe with their own eyes — than they did of the national economy. That’s no longer the case: Americans are as down on their local economies as they are on the national situation. This downbeat view of the state of the nation isn’t a media narrative concocted by the “fake news”: it’s what people see all around them.

And while I’m not a political consultant, I don’t think “Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” is a winning strategy.

But then again, who in this administration would be willing to risk Trump’s ire by taking that popup down?

Tomorrow I’ll post a conversation with G. Elliott Morris and David Nir about what polling and other political indicators say about the midterm elections. Today I thought I’d complement that discussion in advance by talking about several economic indicators that are also really, really bad news for Trump and his party.

First, the obvious: prices at the pump.  .

Voters famously blame whoever is in the White House when fuel prices are high, even though presidents normally have very little influence on these prices. In this case Trump, with his disastrous war of choice in Iran, really does bear full responsibility for high energy prices — and voters know it.

However, fuel prices and inflation in general aren’t the only reasons Americans have a negative view of the Trump economy. Official measures of employment and unemployment look good by historical standards, but perceptions about the state of the job market have dramatically worsened. Every month The Conference Board asks Americans whether jobs are “plentiful” or “hard to get.” The difference between these two answers is almost always positive — we are an optimistic nation — but the “labor market differential” has plunged. Americans perceive the job market as being the worst it has been since Covid:

Finally, how about those interest rates? We often hear about elections being swung by an “October surprise,” and maybe Trump still has something up his sleeve. But the big economic news of the past month has been a “September surprise” on interest rates, including rates that matter a great deal to ordinary Americans — such as families trying to buy houses. Here’s the 30-year mortgage rate:

So where are we as we head into the final month of the midterm campaign? Election models based on political polls are almost surreally favorable to the Democrats, who Elliott Morris gives a 99 percent chance of winning the House. But it’s not just the polls. Even though the U.S. economy looks OK by some measures, the overall economic environment looks really bad for Trump and his party.

Oh, and there’s the small matter of that disastrous war.

Yet the Trump administration insists that this troubled environment is a Golden Age. This isn’t just bad politics. It’s an indication that Trump is living in a bubble of fantasy and sycophancy, in which nobody dares suggest — even as a matter of cynical political strategy — acknowledging that things are less than perfect.

And remember: When voters make it clear that they aren’t buying into Trumpist triumphalism, he won’t blame himself. He’ll blame America, and look for people to punish.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption 

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Sound and the Fury, Andrew Egger, right, andrew eggerOct. 2, 2026. The president of the United States is not all there, upstairs. He is so wicked, so deceitful, and has put in motion so many awful plans that it can be easy to forget. It’s also embarrassing to think about: This gibbering idiot is the guy who twice pantsed the Democrats and brought the global order to its knees? It’d be less humiliating if he were some sort of evil genius.

Still, sometimes it’s important to remind ourselves of the uncomfortable facts of life. Trump gave a lengthy interview to Time Magazine that was published yesterday. Let’s stare into the abyss together, shall we?

On the Fake News

bulwark logo big shipTrump has been trying to ban news outlets from the White House for being too mean to him in their coverage. The official argument—the one his lawyers have made in court—is that CNN, MSNOW, and Politico have imperiled national security. The idea is that this argument is slightly less likely to be laughed out of court than the truth that the president just doesn’t like what they’ve been writing.

Trump, however, can’t be bothered to maintain this polite fiction. Over and over, he makes it explicit: His issue is that they cover him too negatively. If the press isn’t Fake, he asks, why don’t they ever report that he won 86 percent of the popular vote?

“I won the election,” Trump told Time. “I won it handily by massive numbers. I won the popular vote. I won all seven swing states. They said if you won three swing states, I won all seven. I won the counties. It’s very important. 86 percent popular vote.¹ Everything, and very conclusively. I haven’t had a good story on CNN in years. . . . If I wasn’t doing a good job, I wouldn’t have won that election by a lot.”

A who-won-more-counties breakdown is about the most useless electoral metric you could think of. But when Trump talks about his 2024 win, it’s plain that he’s allowed that statistic—simply because it’s the most flattering statistic he has—entirely to colonize his understanding of his win. How can he be so bad if he won 86 percent of the popular vote?

Remarkably, despite his own obsession with his press ban, Trump seemed not to know the basics of what the judge had ordered against it.

When Time’s reporter asked whether Trump was ignoring that order by continuing to freeze CNN out of the traveling pool, Trump seemed confused: “No, no, I’m not ignoring his order. . . . What order? I’m not even aware.” His comms director Steven Cheung had to jump in: “The judge basically ordered them to renew their access back to the White House, but that’s different than allowing the pool into the events in the Oval Office or on Air Force One.”

“He actually said to the premises of the White House?” Trump wondered.On Iran

Did you know that Trump never actually said the Iran war would last four to six weeks? You might think you remember him saying that over and over, but that was actually just another one of those media lies. “I feel like most people heard you say four to six weeks,” Time suggested. “No, I think the press fed it to them,” Trump said. Later, on Truth Social, he offered another incomprehensible attempt to clarify: “I stated, numerous times, that it would take 4-6 weeks to get rid of THE IRAN NUCLEAR THREAT, and I did it in one night! The rest of the time is just to make sure it stays that way.”

Time also pressed the president on the, uh, friction between his repeated claims that he desires peace and his repeated threats to “annihilate” the Iranian people. “Because by annihilating Iran, we’ve created peace in the world,” Trump said. “With Iran, I don’t think you could ever have peace.”

This is staggering stuff. Trump is saying, in plain English, that the ongoing existence of the Iranian people is an insuperable barrier to world peace—and calling for some sort of Final Solution.

Does Trump actually believe the world can’t be safe so long as the Iranian people exist? I don’t think so. This has not been his actual policy toward Iran, for one thing: He would be only too happy to get some face-saving concessions on Iran’s nuclear program and/or the Strait of Hormuz and get out of the war there as fast as possible. This is simply life under a president with a half-melted mind: Sometimes the neurons flicker in such a way that the president openly says an entire people will need to be genocided without even seeming to realize what he’s said.On the debt

The national debt, Time pointed out, just hit $40 trillion dollars. Fully a quarter of that—$11 trillion—has come during Trump’s five years of presidency. Here was Trump’s response:

Well, Biden just killed our country. He had the biggest inflation in history. He allowed 25 million people in that shouldn’t have been here. We’re still getting around—it’s the toughest thing I have to do. If he would have been elected again, or his ilk would have been, or she, anybody, same, we wouldn’t have a country anymore.

Time tried to clarify: “You haven’t lowered the debt because of President Biden?”

Trump again: “No, because they keep paying higher interest rates. We had great job numbers two weeks ago, right? What do they do? Raise the interest rate. . . . We have a very hostile board, and the board says, ‘We want to hurt Trump.’ They’re not doing this for you. They’re doing this because they have Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

There you go. Donald Trump has added $11 trillion to the debt by slashing taxes without slashing spending. In his mind, however, it’s not a matter of spending far more than he’s taken in: All that debt showed up because Joe Biden let inflation happen and let illegals in, and because the Fed won’t push rates down.On his passion projects

Time asked a number of other questions—on AI, on the Democrats who might run in 2028, on his own terrible polls. (“They’re fake numbers. I would beat anybody running today by 20 points. Your numbers that you have are fake. The pollsters are corrupt. They’re almost as corrupt as the writers.”) When they started asking about Mitch McConnell’s health and Trump’s plans to pardon his cabinet, however, Trump lost patience. Suddenly, he was brandishing various pictures of his various White House construction projects. Why don’t you fake news jackals ever care about this stuff, he wanted to know.

“You haven’t asked me one fucking positive question,” the president complained:

All of this. What about this? What about that? What about that? What about this? All negative. Why are you devoting all this time to the White House? . . . It’s actually dangerous. People are walking under, crap was falling off it all the time. Every time it rained, it was leaking, horrible. Now it’s perfect, and I would say that I should be given credit for fixing the White House because I’m also doing very well with the war. I’m doing very well with another war that we already won, Venezuela. Do you notice you haven’t asked me a question about Venezuela?

Time had, in fact, asked several questions about Venezuela. But we can leave it at that. We’ve got a drooling madman in charge. It’s good to remember, but unhealthy to contemplate for too long. If you’re a glutton for punishment, go ahead and read the whole interview. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

christa pike execution abc

christa pike collage ap collage

New York Times, Christa Pike Was Unconscious and on Ventilator After Execution Attempt, Emily Cochrane, Oct. 2, 2026. Christa Pike was unconscious, intubated and on a ventilator in a Nashville hospital as of Thursday evening, a day after surviving a botched execution attempt, her lawyers said in a court filing.

Ms. Pike was critically ill, they wrote in a Friday filing in Davidson County Chancery Court, and both of her arms were swollen, burned and blistered when she arrived at the hospital.

Ms. Pike’s medical condition, some legal experts said, raises questions about whether the state could attempt to execute her again if she is not fully cognizant or capable of understanding what is happening.

The disclosure is the most detailed update on Ms. Pike’s health since she survived two rounds of pentobarbital, the drug used as part of Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol, on Wednesday evening.

“Hospital staff are working to save Ms. Pike’s life and to clear the pentobarbital from her system,” the lawyers wrote.

The Tennessee inmate was brought to a hospital with burned and blistered arms after an unsuccessful attempt at lethal injection, her lawyers said in a court filing.

New York Times, Hochul Rebukes Prosecutor’s Handling of Cornell Case, Hurubie Meko and Claire Fahy, Oct. 2, 2026. “In what world would the police” not elevate allegations of a rape to the district attorney, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York asked.

In direct and sometimes furious remarks, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York on Friday questioned how Cornell University’s police department and the local district attorney handled sexual assault allegations made by a student who said she was raped at a fraternity house in 2024.

kathy hochul 2017Ms. Hochul, left, was speaking at a news conference in Manhattan on Friday morning, alongside the state attorney general, Letitia James, whom the governor has appointed to oversee the investigation into the allegations.

Ms. Hochul said she was concerned to learn that the student, identified as Jane Doe, had given an interview to the campus police about the episode that included an unequivocal statement that she had been raped. That language was missing in the condensed statement that was shared with the district attorney’s office in Tompkins County, N.Y., which decided not to file criminal charges.

“In what world would the police learn from the victim that she had literally been gang-raped” and not elevate those allegations to the district attorney, Ms. Hochul said.

A lawsuit filed by the student two weeks ago has reignited a national conversation about the persistent issue of sexual assault on college campuses. It has also plunged one of the country’s elite universities into crisis. Cornell’s campus newspaper, elected officials and celebrities have questioned how the case was initially handled by the district attorney and the university.

“When the Tompkins County district attorney announced that he was reopening the case, he pointed to Jane Doe’s statement that said it did not establish that a crime had occurred,” Ms. Hochul said. “But new reporting raises serious questions about the information his office relied upon when it made that decision.”

The district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, said in a statement after the news conference that he supported the appointment of Ms. James and that his office would cooperate fully with hers.

“It has become clear that we were not provided the full picture by the university,” he said. “The focus has been and should continue to be on the victims.”

In her lawsuit, Jane Doe, a 20-year-old sophomore at the time of the encounter on Oct. 19, 2024, said that she had been plied with alcohol and drugs and then raped by several men at the Chi Phi fraternity house. She is suing the fraternity, seven men, the university and her sorority.

More On Trump's Military, Middle East Wars, Energy Shortages

New York Times, U.S. and Allies Agree to Release Diesel Reserves as Prices Soar, Lisa Friedman and Rebecca F. Elliott, Oct. 2, 2026. Leaders from some of the world’s wealthiest nations agreed on Friday to release diesel from their reserve stockpiles to help ease a growing crisis over record-high prices driven mostly by the war in Iran.

Under the plan, the Group of 7 countries — the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Britain and Canada — will release 100 million barrels of diesel and crude oil from strategic stockpiles over the coming four months. That is equivalent to around one day’s worth of global oil demand. The effort will be coordinated by the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based multilateral organization.

Calling the plan “decisive, coordinated measures to stabilize immediate energy supplies” and curb price spikes, the Group of 7 said that they would also make a “substantial” release of diesel within 20 days.

The group did not specify how much of the fuel to be released would be diesel and how much would be unrefined crude oil. Diesel and related fuels make up roughly 28 percent of the world’s oil demand, according to the I.E.A. They have been in especially short supply because military strikes on energy infrastructure in the Middle East and Russia have severely damaged refineries, reducing the world’s capacity to turn oil into the fuels that consumers use.

The Group of 7, which includes Britain, France and Japan, announced the release of 100 million barrels over four months, effective immediately.

 

pete hegseth tatoo religion news

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, shown above in one of his favored poses and below as an at times out-of-control drinker with, nonetheless firm ideas on how others should comport themselves.

pete hegseth

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Defense Department Duce, William Kristol, right, william bill kristol imdbOct. 2, 2026. Know your enemy, Sun Tzu taught.

And so Andrew [Egger of The Bulwark] perused the complete text of Donald Trump’s interview with Time. (I’m pleased to report that he’s recovering nicely from the ordeal.) Inspired by his example, I wanted to do my part. bulwark logo big shipSo I forced myself to read a transcript (I couldn’t bear to watch) of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s speech Wednesday on “The State of the Force.”

Department of Defense SealThe remarks of both Trump and Hegseth are appalling. They’re alarming. But they’re also instructive. In the Trump interview and the Hegseth speech, these enemies of liberty and law, of decency and democracy, reveal what they believe, and make clear who they are.

On Wednesday, Hegseth issued this call to arms:

We are no longer the Woke Department or the Weak Department.

Simple translation of that: No fatties. No trannies. No beardos. No weirdos. No wimps. No radicals.

Just warriors. Just tough, ready, committed troops. . . . Or as the President says to me, “Pete … central casting. I want central casting.”

The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in—with testosterone testing on top.

And a bit later in his remarks, Hegseth attacked the press.

A free press is of course important, but partisan activism that intentionally smears the troops and the historic mission they are undertaking is fundamentally anti-American. It’s sick. It’s a national betrayal. It’s treason, actually.

This is all political bluster. But it’s a particular kind of political bluster. It’s neo-fascist bluster.

Here I want to call on the novelist and critic, Umberto Eco, who provided one of the most helpful guides to this kind of politics in his great 1995 essay, “Ur-Fascism.”

Eco provides a list of certain key elements or features of Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. A couple of these are particularly relevant to the emanations of our secretary of defense: Irrationalism, and machismo.

Here’s Eco on irrationalism:

Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism. . . . Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering’s alleged statement (“When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun”) to the frequent use of such expressions as “degenerate intellectuals,” “eggheads,” “effete snobs,” “universities are a nest of reds.”

And it’s no accident, Eco further points out, that “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

And side-by-side with Hegseth’s embrace of irrationalism is his exaltation of machismo.

As Eco explains,

Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters. This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons—doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.

Eco makes clear that his essay was not intended as merely a historical or diagnostic enterprise. Eco wrote in order to warn that fascism is not a thing of the past. Fascism is a permanent human temptation. It speaks to certain human passions and exploits certain human weaknesses that are always there to potentially be activated.

Fascism is both a permanent temptation and, as history teaches and current events show, a powerful one. As history also teaches, and as current events will I believe show, it can be defeated. First, one has to recognize it for what it is. Trump and Hegseth have helped us in this task. 

AROUND THE BULWARK

  • Who Cut The Cheese? Trump Did… The dairy industry was supposed to be the one sector that benefited from Trump’s trade war. CATHERINE RAMPELL describes how tariffs and pissed-off Canadians are hurting the cheese biz in Receipts.
  • bulwark logo big shipThe Daily Wire Is Making the Most MAGA Movie Imaginable… SAM STEIN and WILL SOMMER break down the leaked script for the Daily Wire’s upcoming fictional movie, Pawn Shop, a pro-ICE thriller set amid an imagined Antifa siege of a Minneapolis pawn shop.
  • GOP Senators Blast Trump’s Gov’t-Funded Ads… Lawmakers see another abuse of presidential power. They’re struggling to find a remedy, reports JOE PERTICONE in Press Pass.
  • Paramount’s Done Deal, Federal Tax Credits, and More… On The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood, SEAN McNULTY joins SONNY BUNCH to break down a big week in Hollywood news.

Quick Hits

NIXONMANIA: Was Nixon framed? That’s a question the crack minds at the Trump Justice Department are now mulling, per the Wall Street Journal:

The department is reviewing whether the special prosecutor’s office that investigated the famed Watergate break-in committed misconduct, according to people familiar with the matter, more than half a century after that scandal led to Nixon’s resignation.

Geoff Shepard, a former Nixon aide turned Watergate historian and revisionist, recently gave a two-hour presentation at Justice Department headquarters that laid out his theory that the deep state took Nixon down. The title of his 78-page slide deck: “Watergate As Lawfare.”

The Justice Department denied that Shepard’s presentation amounted to an investigation, per se. Some people in the building just wanted to hear him out. But it’s not hard to see why our current presidential crook—and his retinue—would feel a kinship toward Tricky Dick. “If you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon,” Vice President JD Vance said this summer, “it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people—the same institutions—tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration.”

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

 

U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsHopium Chronicles, Opinion and Advocacy: Trump Gets A Crappy Jobs Report, The Election Cheating Has Begun, Zelenskyy Warns The World That Winter Is Coming, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 2, 2026. We just got the September jobs report this morning, and it was a crappy one: only 29,000 jobs created, well below estimates, and downward revisions in July and August of 60,000 jobs.

This means that net-net we lost jobs this month while average hourly earnings also only grew by 0.1 percent -- also a disappointing number, particularly given that inflation is running at a 3.4% annual rate. What we learned this morning is that the economy is slowing and workers are falling further and further behind.

Here’s NBC’s coverage of the report. And even Fox can’t BS its way through this crappy report. A reminder that job growth has slowed under Trump. Trump still has the worst jobs record of any President since Hoover:

The warnings from Wall Street about the mounting dangers of Trump’s escalating economic and geopolitical failures are getting far louder and more ambitious. Here is an editorial from Bloomberg that ran at 6am this morning:

So, in sum, yes Trump is a titanic f*ck up; he deserves to get his ass kicked in the election; and we have to be prepared to inherit extraordinary domestic and global challenges when take power next January.Subscribed

We also have to recognize that this ongoing failure of Trump’s regime and his political project makes it more likely he is going to attempt to cheat to keep the Republicans in power. The illegal ads he is running now, paid for by all of us, is a sign that the election cheating has begun. Last night we saw something that Marc Elias has been warning about - Republican officials in the states colluding with the Trump regime to undermine trust and potentially disrupt the election:

Georgia’s Republican-controlled election board invited the Department of Justice (DOJ) Thursday to declare the state’s voting system unlawful before the upcoming midterm elections.

In a letter Thursday, State Election Board (SEB) Executive Director James Mills (R) asked the DOJ to “prohibit” the state’s use of voting machines previously certified by the federal government.

Mills also asked the DOJ to “set a binding six-month deadline” to force the state to phase out machines that he asked it to deem illegal.

The request is an extraordinary assault on Georgia’s voting system by unelected officials appointed to make and enforce the state’s election rules. It was also sent despite several SEB members — including the chairman — denouncing federal involvement in state election procedures.

Coupling these developments with the Supreme Court’s ridiculous decision last week to green light the DHS SAVE database we have to acknowledge now that we’ve now entered a new and more dangerous stage of whatever dark and desperate schemes Trump, Blanche, and Co have dreamed up to prevent us from taking power next January.

I don’t want to be alarmist here. But we cannot look away, either. As we’ve discussed the Democratic Party and its allies is more prepared for the fuckery to come than we’ve ever been. Our community has done its part and help stand up new capacities for the state parties across the country to counter whatever comes our way. The first step to effectively counter whatever they throw at us is to understand what they are doing, study it, bring it from the shadows to the light, and that is something we will be doing here, every day. Here’s what I wrote to you in August when I launched something here called the “Evolving Battlefield Project”

We’ve launched a new project at Hopium to study, discuss, and counter anything Trump might do to illicitly retain power in an election that is breaking hard against him and the Republicans Party. We are launching this project to demystify Trump’s tactics, make them less “scary,” and more widely understood; and by making them more widely understood we make it far less likely they will be successful.

This year we are running against a political party that no longer feels bound by law or democratic norms; has already openly conspired with a hostile foreign power to win an election, and launched an insurrection to try to overturn another one; and has a desperate, corrupt, failing leader who fears prison and ruin if we win. We were surprised and unprepared for Russia’s intervention in 2016, and Trump’s assault on our elections in 2020 and 2021. We cannot be surprised and unprepared this year. Or scared. It is just the work we must do, like making phone calls and writing postcards and giving money to campaigns. The battlefield evolves, and so do we. It is key to how we will win in 2026 and take back Congress in 2027. Together.

We cannot be surprised, or scared. The battlefield evolves, and so do we.

For as I’ve said we must take all these illicit efforts and weaponize them against Trump and the Rs, creating a powerful contrast between one party that believes in the American creed, in freedom and democracy, and another that has betrayed it all and wants to tear it all down. We need to talk about what they are doing not to scare people but to further degrade Trump and his allies, while preparing the public for what is to come.

In related news here is what Zelenskyy is telling the world this world this morning - that their intelligence shows that Trump’s barbaric ally, Putin, has made the decision to crush and depopulate Ukraine this winter (genocide, war crimes):

This post this morning came out a bit darker than I actually feel right now, for two things can be true at the same time - he continues to do incredible harm to the country and the world, and his political project is crumbling here at home.Subscribed

As I discussed in my weekly talk I am incredibly optimistic about where we are now and what we can accomplish in these elections. House Dems just announced record fundraising in the third quarter. The DCCC expanded their battlefield this morning, adding 8 more races to their watch list. There is no good news for the Rs. Things keep deteriorating for them across the country. Trump got his worst major poll of the cycle yesterday, clocking in at 31%-69% in a AP-NORC poll.

We are on the cusp of having the election we all want to have, and need to keep our heads down my friends and keep working as hard as we can. We also had a slew of great discussions with candidate and party leaders on the frontlines this week. You can find them all here.

north carolina map

New York Times, As Prospects Dim, G.O.P. Pulls Money Out of North Carolina Senate Race, Shane Goldmacher and Theodore Schleifer, Oct. 2, 2026. As the Republicans try to hold their majority, the Senate Leadership Fund is diverting resources to Kansas, which has become a growing concern for the party.

The top super PAC for Senate Republicans is canceling all the remaining ads it had booked in North Carolina as of Friday, shifting away tens of millions of dollars in a move that signals that Republicans no longer see a path to winning the state this fall.

At the same time, the super PAC, called the Senate Leadership Fund, is making its first investment of the cycle in Kansas — a sign of rising concern among Republicans in red states — with a new ad attacking the Democratic nominee there.

If Republicans lose North Carolina, it would give Democrats one of the four seats they need to flip the Senate in the fall — if Democrats hold all of their own seats.

Ad cancellations are a common, and very telling, move down the stretch of campaigns as they reveal where national operatives see their best path to a majority. The cancellation of the North Carolina ads was first reported by Semafor and confirmed by two people familiar with the decision.

The North Carolina seat is currently held by Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican who is retiring. Democrats nominated Roy Cooper, a popular former governor who had served two terms. The Republican nominee is Michael Whatley, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee.

The Senate Leadership Fund declined to comment.

“Undecided voters who break late decide the election in North Carolina and the majority of those late-breakers typically go Republican,” said DJ Griffin, a spokesman for Mr. Whatley, adding he was “confident we have the resources to highlight career politician Roy Cooper’s 40 years of failures.”

More Global News

New York Times, The Mother’s Scream That Sent Passengers to the Rescue, David M. Halbfinger, Natan Odenheimer, Adam Rasgon, Johnatan Reiss and Aaron Boxerman, Oct. 2, 2026. A badly wounded Indian pilot managed to unlock the cockpit door. Four Israeli men teamed up to overwhelm an attacker and avert disaster.

Five-year-old Nina Manes, flying home to Tel Aviv with her family in business class, needed to use the bathroom.

Her mother, Tali, stood waiting for her outside the plane’s lavatory, when she suddenly heard frightening shouts and loud bangs coming from behind the closed door to the flight deck.

What unfolded next was a harrowing chain of events that led the passengers aboard FlyDubai Flight 1073 to think that they were all about to die in a terrorist attack — but instead turned into a tale of heroism on the part of an Indian pilot and a handful of Israelis.

Hearing what sounded worrisomely like a melee, Ms. Manes, 46, said she pulled a backup pilot, seated in his uniform nearby, by the hand and prodded him to investigate.

He pulled open the cockpit door — which had been unlocked from the inside — onto a horrific scene.

There was blood all over the flight deck.

And the first officer was stabbing the captain, again and again and again.

Four Israeli passengers aboard Wednesday morning’s flight from Dubai are being hailed for racing unarmed into harm’s way, overpowering the first officer, giving the captain first aid, and making it possible for a second backup pilot to take over and land the plane safely in Saudi Arabia.

More On U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Religion

 

 

Hopium Chronicles, New 2026 Election Analysis and Advocacy: Betrayed By Trump And His Allies The American People Have Put Their Faith Back In Us -- And Now We Must Deliver, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 1, 2026. First of all -- holy smokes! When called this community answers again and again. We raised $256,000 for our candidates and party committees yesterday, more than twice as much as any other day this cycle. It was a huge day on what was a very important day in this critical election. Thank you to everyone who stepped up and rallied for those on the frontlines of what has become a year of extraordinarily opportunity for our politics.

Hope For America, Opinion: Trump’s incoherent rambling has reached a DISTURBING new low, Heather Delaney Reese, right, helen delaney reese djtSept. 30, 2026. At 1:39 this afternoon, after a nearly 40-minute delay and an unexplained commotion outside the doors, Donald Trump finally walked into the East Room of the White House. The guests raised their phones and cheered. They had come to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, but for the first 23 minutes, they mostly listened to the president talk about himself.

Hopium Chronicles, New 2026 Election Analysis and Advocacy: Betrayed By Trump And His Allies The American People Have Put Their Faith Back In Us -- And Now We Must Deliver, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 1, 2026. First of all -- holy smokes! When called this community answers again and again. We raised $256,000 for our candidates and party committees yesterday, more than twice as much as any other day this cycle.

It was a huge day on what was a very important day in this critical election. Thank you to everyone who stepped up and rallied for those on the frontlines of what has become a year of extraordinarily opportunity for our politics.

That was the main theme of my weekly talk last night - that we are on the cusp of having the election we all wanted to have, and need to keep our heads down and keep working as hard as we can. You can find a video recording and rough transcript of my talk above.

As we discussed last night I think we have four jobs now:

Support our candidates and party committees, and try to win the election by as big a margin as possible. Our goal should be to make this election a clear and unequivocal repudiation of Trump and MAGA, and to do that we must attempt to win both the House and the Senate - something that is within our grasp.

We need to drive the early vote and become early vote champions in our communities, organizations, networks and family. Driving the early vote makes it more likely we win and harder for them to cheat, but it also gives us an opportunity to create a necessary issue contrast between our party that believes in democracy and fights for our rights and freedoms and their party who has betrayed the American creed and wants to take our rights and freedoms away.

We need to work to protect our election and ensure there is a peaceful transfer of power. While there are many ways to do this we recommend three: 1) Volunteer for your state party election protection program 2) Become a state party Democracy Protector election day monitor 3) support our fundraising drive for the state party New Battlefield Project below.

Deliver for the American people, restore our global alliances, and renew our democracy when back in power.

Let’s drill down on all that a bit.

Let’s start with the election. Trump got his worst major independent poll of the cycle this morning. Things just keep getting worse for him and the Rs:

The upper end of the generic ballot has moved into big blue wave territory:

We have a legitimate chance of flipping the Senate, even getting to 52-53 seats:

FiftyPlusOne’s Senate forecast today gives us a 99% chance of flipping the House and a 73% chance of taking back the Senate:

With five weeks to go we are in a place that I frankly never thought we would be. Trump’s been an extraordinary failure in every way imaginable. His corruption is unprecedented and staggering. He is clearly unwell and wildly unfit. People are angry, and feel betrayed and abandoned by the corrupt Epstein class running our country - as they should. They are not just turning on the Republicans they are turning to us, and have put their faith back in us as a party to lead them to a better place.Subscribed

This is very important. It would be wrong to look at the data in front of us or what we hear from our candidates and conclude this election is only about a repudiation and rejection of Trump. Let’s review that data we saw last week from the Strength In Numbers poll:

In my talk last night I tried to articulate what I am hearing from our candidates and will try to capture it here too for I think it is very important. I’ve been involved in some fashion or another in every election since 1992. There is something happening out there this year that this profound, and particular to this election, to this moment. Voters are aware of the gravity of the problems we now face; how much Trump has betrayed and abandoned them; and are desperate for strong and admirable leaders to lead them out of this mess and restore dignity and a sense of purpose to our nation once again. I don’t think this is like any other election I’ve ever been part of for it simply isn’t like anything any of us - or this nation - has ever experienced before.

For no set of Americans in our history have ever been betrayed by their leaders as Trump and his allies have betrayed all of us.

And this collective sense of the gravity of the moment is causing our candidates to elevate, become bigger, and ever more effective champions of people and communities who feel abandoned and betrayed. They have become aware in their conversations with voters that people see this as no ordinary time, and are desperate for proven servant leaders, ones they can trust, ones they can touch and feel, ones who have been there for them before and are trusted members of their communities, to win these elections and begin to put things right.

In our interviews you’ve met these servant leaders, people of proven character, firefighters, union leaders, teachers, professors, ministers, doctors, navy helicopter pilots, seminarians, prosecutors, admirals, generals, Olympians, television anchors, well known and respected local elected leaders. In this time of enormous challenge and uncertainty voters are not looking for radical change, they are looking for something familiar, something tried, trusted, and true, and something far, far better than what they have now.

Which is why we are on the verge of having the election we all want to have. For voters like the Democrats they are seeing all across the country, and are once again putting their faith back in us to lead us to a better place. Our job now is not to let them down; to be strong enough to win this election by as big a margin as possible; to ensure there is a peaceful transfer of power in January; and then fight with everything we got to make things better for them and this battered nation.

So often when I finish one of my interviews with a candidate or party leader I think “wow, that was amazing. What a candidate, what a leader. I’m grateful they’ve decided to run. ” I know many of you feel that way too. And I think what we are feeling in that moment is this dynamic I am describing - of admirable people stepping up for their community in a time of crisis, who feel the weight of the moment on their shoulders, and are rising to meet the moment and lead their communities and neighbors to a better place. And in this process I think we are witnessing the birth of a new politics for our party and our nation, of servant-leaders, lifted up by love of country and love of neighbor, who are in the process of becoming ferocious and determined warriors for the common good and who will not stop fighting until they put things right……

That’s why we’ve been raising so much money these past few weeks and over the cycle. For we have been inspired by the leaders we’ve met, and have put our trust in them, as voters are doing with Democrats all over the country right now. Now we need to finish the job, my friends, and get these remarkable, admirable leaders elected all across the country; ensure there is a free and fair election and a peaceful transfer of power; and then go do the most important of all- go to work, tirelessly, for the American people and begin the arduous process of putting things right……

That’s some of what we talked about last night fellow patriots. Watch the video. Share it and this post with others. Hit like so more will see it. And yes, it that time, now. Time to….Go Kick These Corrupt Traitors’ Asses, Win The Midterms, And Prepare For The Fuckery To Come - For It Is Coming

Three things you can do in addition to supporting our intrepid candidates and state parties:

  • Become an Early Vote Champion in your networks, communities, and organizations.
  • Sign up to become a Democracy Protector too. Our next training is this Wednesday, Oct 7th at 10pm ET.
  • Email photos of your electoral work or physical act of voting to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or via links on our daily chat. We want to start showcasing them here on Hopium.

Hope For America, Opinion: Trump’s incoherent rambling has reached a DISTURBING new low, Heather Delaney Reese, right, helen delaney reese djtSept. 30, 2026. At 1:39 this afternoon, after a nearly 40-minute delay and an unexplained commotion outside the doors, Donald Trump finally walked into the East Room of the White House. The guests raised their phones and cheered. They had come to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, but for the first 23 minutes, they mostly listened to the president talk about himself.

He invited them to see his ballroom floor, repeated praise from Xi Jinping, and compared himself to George Washington. Building monuments to himself, he said, was “really like relaxation.” Then he told a room filled mostly with Hispanic people that “only a Hispanic could survive that fall” from the edge of his construction site. The man who was supposed to be honoring them made a racist joke at their expense. He also announced that you are not allowed to talk about women’s beauty, then did exactly that to Rachel Campos-Duffy and her sister. He said it with a smirk. He wanted everyone to know that the rules did not apply to him.

The consequences of that example travel far beyond the White House. Our children and grandchildren are watching powerful people treat women this way without repercussions. Meanwhile, outside that carefully selected room, Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar had already told Trump that the same Hispanics who helped him reach the White House now feel betrayed. He promised raids against the worst criminals, but people without criminal records have been swept up too. I sat watching and taking notes, missing who I was before Trump and imagining a country with a leader focused on making our lives better. It brought me back to junior high, covering a talk about the First Gulf War for the school newspaper. A protest walkout was announced, and I was frightened to attend, even as a student reporter. A teacher helped me understand that sometimes responsibility to others requires pushing through fear and following your conscience. He told me to remember that feeling, write about it, and never let it go.

I think about that lesson now, when so many people feel overwhelmed and want to walk away. We are still the people who once believed we could change the world. We can see what is happening, and every time we speak out, we take a stand against it. There are people preparing for accountability, too. Robert Garcia said the senior leadership of the House Oversight Committee had spent the last two days “planning out the future of our investigations and hearings.” A Democratic-controlled Congress could make the remainder of Trump’s presidency look very different. On my daily walks, I see children playing on the beach and a country still filled with promise, people of different backgrounds who came together to form “a more perfect union.” That is what we are fighting for. The day accountability starts can and will come. We have to vote, and then we have to keep participating. Americans are not quitters, and we are not going to start now.

See the full story in the video.

Oct. 1

Top Headlines 

 

pete hegseth tatoo religion news

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, shown above in one of his favored poses and below as an at times out-of-control drinker with, nonetheless firm ideas on how others should comport themselves.

pete hegseth

News Roundups

  • The Parnas Perspective, News and Commentary: Democratic Turnout Surges, Trump Snaps at Reporters, Hegseth Purges Military, Renee Good’s Family Sues Trump, Botched Execution, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 1, 2026. More than 700,000 Americans have already voted, and the early numbers are flashing warning signs for Republicans, with Democrats making up a bigger share of ballot requests in battlegrounds like Iowa, Pennsylvania and North Carolina than they did in 2024. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stood in front of junior troops, used an anti-transgender slur, doubled his purge of the military’s top brass, and handed Elon Musk and a top Trump donor a role in planning America’s future wars. And in Tennessee, the state’s attempt to execute Christa Pike failed last night when she survived two lethal injections, something experts say has never happened before.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice  

 

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance 

Hopium Chronicles, New 2026 Election Analysis and Advocacy: Betrayed By Trump And His Allies The American People Have Put Their Faith Back In Us -- And Now We Must Deliver, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 1, 2026. First of all -- holy smokes! When called this community answers again and again. We raised $256,000 for our candidates and party committees yesterday, more than twice as much as any other day this cycle. It was a huge day on what was a very important day in this critical election. Thank you to everyone who stepped up and rallied for those on the frontlines of what has become a year of extraordinarily opportunity for our politics.

 

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

 

Former Olympian David Hearn, center, as defended by attorney Norman Eisen, right, against false charges brought by the Trump Administration on a claim he vandalized the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool's new liner that was actually damaged by the Trump Administration's own contractor (New York Times photo).

Former Olympian David Hearn, center, as defended by attorney Norman Eisen, right, against false charges brought by the Trump Administration on a claim he vandalized the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool's new liner that was actually damaged by the Trump Administration's own contractor (New York Times photo).

More On Artificial Intelligence

More On Global Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets 

  • Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: A Globalist Comeback?, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 1, 2026. Hints of a business break with MAGA.On September 28th Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, one of the most prominent, most successful financial figures in the United States, published an article in the Wall Street Journal titled, “The Hell with Trump, Let’s Go Back to Globalism.” 
  • New York Times, Trump’s Threat to Ban Diesel Exports Sets Off Global Alarms, Lisa Friedman and River Akira Davis, Oct. 1, 2026. A reduction in refineries has already driven the price of diesel to record highs, threatening economies. An U.S. export ban would be “tremendous shock and blow.” 
  • New York Times, U.S. Bond Yields Hit Highest Level Since 2002, Eshe Nelson and Joe Rennison, Oct. 1, 2026.The higher yields, which are pressuring consumer and corporate borrowers and increasingly weighing on certain corners of the stock market, are unlikely to dissipate soon.

More Global News

  • All Rise News, Judge orders Trump DOJ to produce boat strikes memo, Adam Klasfeld, right, adam klasfeldSept. 30, 2026. The secret memo justifying strikes that killed 234 people inches closer to public release. Also: Blanche goes after Minnesota judges. The Trump administration must produce a memo containing the legal justifications for boat strikes that have killed 234 people in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean for a federal judge’s private review.

Top Stories

 

pete hegseth tatoo religion news

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, shown above in one of his favored poses and below as an at times out-of-control drinker with, nonetheless firm ideas on how others should comport themselves.

pete hegseth

New York Times, ‘No Beardos, No Weirdos, No Wimps’: Hegseth Lays Out His Military Vision, Helene Cooper and John Ismay, Sept. 30, 2026. In his “State of the Force” address, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth focused on the culture war and accused reporters of “treason” over Iran war coverage.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gathered hundreds of junior officers and enlisted troops at a base in Virginia on Wednesday to extol the virtues of basing Pentagon policy on culture-war issues and to complain about the news media.

Calling it a “State of the Force” address, Mr. Hegseth doubled down on his decisions to fire dozens of admirals and generals, bar transgender people from serving and eliminate diversity programs. And not for the first time, he used vulgarities to describe certain groups of Americans.

“No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals,” he said of the people who he believes have no place in the military.

Department of Defense SealAs he pointed to a few reporters in the back of the auditorium, the defense secretary criticized “anti-American losers in our media,” accusing them of aiding the country’s enemies through their reporting on the war in Iran.

“It’s treason, actually,” he said of the reporting. “I mean, I hate to have to say it, but it has to be said.”

The event at the Marine Corps Base at Quantico, Va., reprised a session there in September last year in which he berated more than 800 generals and admirals about the need to slim down and to be more “lethal.”

The gathering on Wednesday was in many ways a rehash of the cultural stances Mr. Hegseth championed a year ago, but it was a lesser version of last year’s production, which included an appearance by President Trump.

The defense secretary praised the war against Iran — in which he declared victory just weeks after it began but has now dragged into a seven-month campaign — as a courageous operation “that every red-blooded American is proud of.”

He used the last portion of his remarks to announce new initiatives for the Pentagon.

They included the creation of a new “autonomous warfare command” for robotics, which he said would be the equivalent of the military’s geographic and functional combatant commands.

The secretary pointed out three civilians in attendance, Elon Musk, the Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, who wore a blazer over his signature Hawaiian shirt, and a former House speaker, Newt Gingrich. He called them “three of our nations’ best minds” and said they would lead a new effort called Project Meridian to study the future of warfare.

Mr. Hegseth said he would meet with the three men at a secure facility on the base in Quantico immediately after his speech.

He also stated his intent to build a new military base — what he called “a fortress” — somewhere in the United States, saying that state governors would compete to host it and offer hundreds of thousands of acres of state land to build it.

Tens of thousands of U.S. troops currently stationed overseas would be sent back to the United States and based at the “fortress,” he said, without explaining which countries would see a reduction in U.S. forces.

The Pentagon has been reviewing its force posture overseas, particularly in Europe, with an eye toward reducing the number of troops stationed outside the United States. In May, Mr. Hegseth announced he was canceling a deployment of troops to Poland only to be quickly overruled by Mr. Trump.

As usual, Mr. Hegseth wove religious language and Christian themes throughout his address and derided “secular humanism,” adding that he had established an office of religious affairs that would report directly to him.

The address allowed Mr. Hegseth to lay out his planned changes without facing questions from reporters about them or the war. The last time he gave a briefing on the Iran war to reporters at the Pentagon was in early May.

Nonetheless, he is the public face of the deeply unpopular war with Iran.

Thousands of Iranians and 18 U.S. service members have been killed in the conflict, which the United States and Israel started seven months ago. In one episode at the start of the war, more than 175 civilians, many of them children, were killed when a U.S. airstrike hit a school in southern Iran.

Despite the Trump administration’s claims to the contrary, Iran has retained its ballistic missile and drone capability, and its leadership has vowed never to give up its civilian nuclear program. As Iran’s fighting skills have evolved, the U.S. military burned through its munitions.

As gas prices rise because of the conflict, U.S. voters have grown more frustrated ahead of the midterm elections.

Mr. Hegseth has also not been able to get a Pentagon budget request for more funding approved, and has alienated not only Democrats but also some Republicans the administration needs to pass $1.5 trillion in new financing. In addition, a Republican congressman is leading a drive to impeach Mr. Hegseth. He also does not have Senate-confirmed leaders to head the Army, the country’s biggest military service, or the Navy.

At the end of his remarks, Mr. Hegseth received a standing ovation. Last year’s speech was greeted by stone-faced generals and admirals who made sure not to cheer, per the norms of a nonpartisan military. 

Public Notice, Opinion: Trump’s taxpayer-funded agitprop is clearly illegal — and that’s the point, Paul Waldman, right, paul waldmanOct. 1, 2026. Your taxpayer dollars, hard at work.

To use a generous word, it’s audacious.

Over a song called “Love Me” (naturally, used without permission from the artist), the TV ad features Donald Trump vowing to “defeat communism, socialism, and Marxism in America” while quick cuts tout his supposed accomplishments, followed by UFC chief Dana White saying, “he’s the toughest, most resilient person that I’ve ever met, and nothing was going to stop him from fighting so hard for the country he loves!”

Then, with a flourish of trolling, the words “Paid for by the US Government” appear at the bottom of the screen. (Watch below.)

That ad, indeed paid for by tax dollars, was one in a series produced by the White House and aired across the country. They are unambiguously illegal — and that’s part of the point.

Again and again, this administration has broken the law not just to accomplish some immediate goal, but as an assertion of power, a dominance display, to say to everyone: Donald Trump does whatever he wants, and nobody can stop him.

The good news is that while the ads are meant to help Republicans stave off disaster in the midterm elections, they will likely do just the opposite. The bad news is that they further degrade the rule of law in America, making the task of imposing accountability all the more urgent.A fascist aesthetic

The ads follow the now-familiar Trumpian aesthetic, toggling back and forth between high production values and low-budget slop, and treading right on the line that separates fascism from camp.

While the first ad with Dana White is all about Trump himself, the second one takes a bit of a detour to argue that God and Trump have together delivered America to heights never before seen in human history. Featuring footage from one of Trump’s trips to Mount Rushmore, it could have been directed by a modern-day Leni Riefenstahl.

“In all the chronicles of the ages, never before has any nation celebrated so magnificent a triumph as this one,” Trump says, over imagery meant to evoke vastness, distance, and power: helicopters flying over the mountain at sunset, an audience gazing up adoringly at him, enormous screens with his face on them, and then, shot from below, him pumping his fist before a final ejaculation of fireworks.

The last ad in the series repurposes one Trump used in the 2024 campaign, and may be the purest and most arresting of all:Aaron Rupar @atrupar.comabsolutely demented. like a scene from a horror movieSun, 27 Sep 2026 15:21:23 GMTView on Bluesky

In a time of voter unease and disgruntlement, political consultants advise their clients to communicate empathy and understanding, to show voters that the politician empathizes with their struggles and is working to improve their lives. But Trump will have none of that.

He is not here to help. He’s distant, angry, a figure of nothing but venom and vengeance. He walks toward the viewer like a serial killer stalking his prey, his face a mask of contempt and barely-contained rage. His visage in this ad is reminiscent of the glowering pictures erected on gigantic banners hanging from government buildings in DC, almost a parody of a dictator trying to inspire terror and subjugation (Trump likes that picture so much he made it his official portrait).Totalitarian artTotalitarian artLisa Needham·Sep 18Read full story

The words are just as horrifying.

“This is the final battle,” Trump says, and we know that final battles inevitably involve death and destruction even if they end in triumph.

“With you at my side,” he goes on as horror-movie music plays, “we will demolish the Deep State, we will expel the warmongers from our government, we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists, marxists and fascists, we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country, we will rout the fake news media, and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all.”

Who thought this would be the right message to send, with voters fed up with high gas prices and yearning for an end to the idiotic war Trump started? The answer is unsurprising: Trump himself.

The president “has personally driven the controversial, taxpayer-funded video ads,” CNN reports, “including helping select the imagery and videos used.”

Trump often claims that when he’s on the ballot, Republicans do much better than when he isn’t, and he’s not completely wrong (even if he lost the popular vote in two out of the three elections he has run in). There are at least some voters who turn out to vote for him but don’t get to the polls in midterm elections, and his strategy is to encourage those voters to mobilize.

“What I really want you to do is pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot,” he said at a recent rally. “Just come and vote. It’s so important.”

The trouble is that for every passive Trump fan who responds to this call, there may be many more voters who will hear that message and be more likely to vote for Democrats.Trump loves Xi because he wants to be himTrump loves Xi because he wants to be him

Right now, Trump is spectacularly unpopular; his approval ratings hover in the mid-30s, and he is under water on every policy issue. That’s especially true with the issue that tops voters’ agenda, the economy and prices. His ratings on the issue are abysmal in every poll; a recent one from Marquette University found his approval on inflation at a stunning 19 percent.

In the face of that kind of popular disgust, the president might employ any of a number of strategies. As The Atlantic reported last month, the path he chose “was to lean into the Democratic strategy of focusing on himself.” Hence the ads. And while they might have gone for a more empathetic message, they’re pure Trump: angry, self-aggrandizing to the point of absurdity, utterly unpersuasive, and strategically misconceived.

Democrats probably couldn’t be happier to see these ads aired as widely as possible.

Trump could have paid for the ads with the gargantuan war chest his super PAC has amassed, helped by seven- and eight-figure contributions from corporations and ultra-wealthy individuals his administration has amply rewarded with government funds and policy changes.

Instead, the White House decided taxpayers should foot the bill.

The White House claims these are just “public service announcements,” comparing them to when previous presidents encouraged people to keep an eye out for terrorism or sign up for Medicare’s prescription drug program. The obvious difference is that there is no federal policy involved in Trump’s ads, which are just about how he’s great and his enemies must be destroyed.

Some Republicans are willing to acknowledge that the ads are a bad idea, even if they stop just short of acknowledging that what Trump is doing is illegal.

“It shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune.

“I think there ought to be a rule that you can’t — well, there probably is a rule,” said Sen. John Kennedy on Face the Nation. “You can’t spend public money to promote yourself.”

In fact, the ads likely violate multiple provisions of the law. There’s the “publicity and propaganda” rider Congress has inserted into every appropriations bill for the last 75 years, forbidding money to be spent on just this kind of thing. There’s also the Hatch Act, which forbids federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity while on the job.

While the president and vice president are not covered by the Hatch Act, everyone else in the government is subject to its provisions — meaning anyone involved in the production and distribution of these ads could be subject to prosecution. That might be an unlikely outcome, since Hatch Act prosecutions are rare. But that fact in itself is a sign of how respect for the rule of law has been degraded under Trump.

Early in his first term, adviser Kellyanne Conway, warned that she was committing a Hatch Act violation by promoting Ivanka Trump merchandise on Fox News (which the Office of Special Counsel later found that she did repeatedly), replied contemptuously: “Let me know when the jail sentence starts.”

The message was clear: We work for Donald Trump, and that means we’re above the law. Trump later held his 2020 convention at the White House, a four-day-long Hatch Act violation no previous president would even have contemplated.

New York Times, Taking On Trump Immigration Agenda, Justices Will Review Migrant Detention Policy, Ann E. Marimow, Oct. 1, 2026. The administration’s policy of detaining immigrants who crossed the border illegally years ago and holding them without a bond hearing has divided lower courts.

The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to review the Trump administration’s policy of indefinitely detaining immigrants who crossed the border illegally years ago, signaling the court plans to weigh in on major pieces of President Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda as it begins its new term on Monday.

The policy is a departure from past practice, when such migrants were generally allowed an opportunity to seek release after a hearing before a judge.

The justices previously announced that they would fast-track a separate case testing the administration's policy of deporting immigrants to countries where they have no ties, including nations that have faced allegations of human rights abuses.

Between the two cases, the justices will consider the legality of some of the most controversial aspects of the Trump administration’s efforts to rapidly expel millions of migrants living in the United States.

The justices also added two other cases to the docket of issues they will hear and decide by next June.

One is a Kentucky case about whether a federal religious discrimination law protects a group of Catholic priests who want to build a shrine to the Virgin Mary over neighbors’ objections. The other is a divorce dispute over military benefits originating in North Dakota.

The immigration case the court accepted on Thursday involved noncitizens who entered the United States illegally but had been living in the country for years. For decades, such people could be released on bond pending additional court proceedings, so long as they were not found to be a threat to public safety or a flight risk.

But last year, the Trump administration announced a new interpretation of a 1996 law, concluding it allowed noncitizens living in the United States to be held without bond. As a result, immigration judges have denied hearings to people, even if they have been living and working in the United States for years.

More than 500 district court judges and nine of 11 federal appeals courts to consider the issue have rejected the administration’s new detention rule and its interpretation of the immigration law at issue.

About 70,000 people are currently in immigration detention across the United States, up from 40,000 before Mr. Trump took office in January 2025.

More than two-thirds of undocumented immigrants have lived in the United States for at least a decade.

Most of the appeals courts to consider the issue have said the government should have provided hearings to determine whether they posed a danger to others or a flight risk pending the completion of removal proceedings.

In April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit sided with a Brazilian citizen, Ricardo Aparecido Barbosa Da Cunha, who has lived in the United States for about 20 years.

He was arrested by federal agents on his way to work in Massachusetts, where he owns a construction business and a home with his wife, also a Brazilian citizen, and their two children, who are U.S. citizens.

He crossed the U.S. border with Mexico in 2004, applied for asylum in 2016 and was granted a work permit. He had not previously been detained and has no known criminal history, according to court filings.

In its decision, the appeals court noted that Congress had never challenged what had been the settled practice of releasing certain migrants on bond despite making major changes to immigration law.

“Even if the government’s newfound interpretation” of the statute “were plausible — and it is not,” the appeals court said it was obligated to read such laws in a way that would “avoid the serious constitutional questions attendant to what would be the broadest mass-detention-without-bond mandate in our nation’s history for millions of noncitizens.”

D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, urged the justices to reverse the decision and said in court filings that detaining immigrants who are living in the country long after an illegal entry “prevents those aliens from evading hearings and helps ensure their removal from the United States.”

Immigrant advocates say federal law requires the government to provide noncitizens, regardless of how they entered the country, access to a bond hearing. The policy, they say, has stripped people of an opportunity to seek release by a judge.

Lawyers for the immigrants say the administration’s reading of the statute allows the government to lock up millions of people who have resided in the United States for years without a possibility of a hearing or release. They emphasize that five presidential administrations over three decades, including the first Trump administration, have provided custody hearings.

Michael K.T. Tan, the deputy director of the A.C.L.U.’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said on Thursday that the government “cannot twist the law to detain immigrants for months or even years on end without a bond hearing. Not only is it cruel and inhumane; it is unlawful.”

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: WATCH: GOP super PAC quietly launches outlandish smear against Talarico, Judd Legum, right, judd legumOct. 1, 2026. For weeks, major Republican-aligned super PACs have been attacking James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, on trans issues.

Since September 6, Talarico’s opponents have spent an astonishing $37 million on these trans attacks. This includes over $30 million, mostly on broadcast ads, from Texas PAC, a super PAC created by Senate GOP leadership; over $4 million on streaming ads from MAGA Inc., President Trump’s super PAC; and $1.3 million on digital ads from America PAC, the super PAC created by Elon Musk.

Several of these ads falsely claim that Talarico supports “taxpayer-funded sex changes on kids.” But Talarico never voted for such a policy and publicly supports a national ban on such procedures. This attack against Talarico has been rated “false” by PolitiFact. (In practice, such surgeries almost never occur.)

Nevertheless, the ads have continued to run on heavy rotation. But, with Election Day now a few weeks away, these false attacks do not seem to have muted Talarico’s popularity over his Republican opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The last 11 public polls released have shown Talarico with a narrow lead over Paxton, who is saddled with several political and personal scandals, according to RealClearPolitics. (Paxton released an internal poll showing him leading by 3 points.)

Most of these polls are within the margin of error. There is still plenty of time for momentum to shift, and Texas has reliably elected Republicans to statewide office for many years. Still, Paxton’s allies are concerned.

So they are upping the ante.

On Tuesday, Texas PAC launched a new digital-only ad on Meta platforms. In the ad, a woman named Miriam, who identifies herself only as “a mom of five,” looks into the camera and accuses Talarico of supporting putting “parents in jail if they do not support surgically transitioning their children.”

“If you care about your children, do not vote for James Talarico,” Miriam concludes.

Popular Information obtained the ad through the Meta Ad Library.

It’s notable that Texas PAC, which has spent the vast majority of its dollars on broadcast ads, is running this ad on a digital platform. This allows Texas PAC to micro-target the ad to voters it believes may not closely scrutinize its claims. Digital ads, in general, also attract less media attention. The ad is not posted on the Texas PAC YouTube page or featured on its website.

The new attack on Talarico is more outlandish than previous attacks, but equally false. The ad’s only citation purportedly supporting its primary claim is an October 2019 article in the Houston Chronicle. That article does not say Talarico supported jailing parents who do not support gender surgeries for minors. The article is about a bill to prevent family courts from considering whether a parent acknowledges their child’s gender identity in child custody disputes. At a committee hearing on that legislation, Talarico, who opposed the bill, said it was “abusive” to deny your child’s gender identity, “whether or not we label it with the term abuse.”

The bill had nothing to do with surgeries or criminal proceedings. The claim that Talarico supports jailing parents who do not permit their children to receive gender transition surgeries is completely baseless.

The woman who appears in the ad is Miriam Evans, a Republican activist in the Dallas area. She is a board member of Protecting Texas Children, a right-wing advocacy group that promotes “a Biblical view of gender and sexuality as stated in Genesis 1.” A recent post by the group celebrates that a “quiet rebellion is taking shape across Texas as communities increasingly reject Pride Month proclamations in favor of family-centered values.” Evans regularly speaks about her efforts to similar groups, including Moms for Liberty and local Republican Party chapters.

Evans did not respond to calls or text messages seeking comment. Texas PAC did not respond to a phone call and email.

About two hours after Popular Information reached out to Evans and Texas PAC about the ad, it was made “inactive” on Meta’s platforms. 

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Trump + AI = Blue Tsunami, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Oct. 1, 2026. It doesn’t take super intelligence to realize the GOP is screwed.bulwark morning shots logo

bulwark logo big shipThe more things change, the more they stay the same. Yesterday, Trump dusted off his old attacks against former Fed Chair Jerome Powell: “He should be forced to resign, IMMEDIATELY! If he doesn’t resign, he should be sued, at the highest level, by the United States Government, for either corruption or incompetence.”

It’s all great news for new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh: He hasn’t been able to lower interest rates yet, either, but for now, Trump seems content to keep blaming Powell. Happy Thursday.

News Roundups

The Parnas Perspective, News and Commentary: Democratic Turnout Surges, Trump Snaps at Reporters, Hegseth Purges Military, Renee Good’s Family Sues Trump, Botched Execution, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 1, 2026. More than 700,000 Americans have already voted, and the early numbers are flashing warning signs for Republicans, with Democrats making up a bigger share of ballot requests in battlegrounds like Iowa, Pennsylvania and North Carolina than they did in 2024. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stood in front of junior troops, used an anti-transgender slur, doubled his purge of the military’s top brass, and handed Elon Musk and a top Trump donor a role in planning America’s future wars. And in Tennessee, the state’s attempt to execute Christa Pike failed last night when she survived two lethal injections, something experts say has never happened before.

Plus, Trump is threatening to ban diesel exports unless France and Germany open their emergency reserves, mortgage rates just hit their highest level since 2023, and former officials warn the administration has quietly gutted the task force that protected election workers from threats.

We’ve ruffled some feathers. Yesterday we published exclusive information exposing a major FBI interview in the Epstein files that Sen. Ron Wyden says the Trump DOJ never released, a record that could expose a lot. It’s just the beginning. Making powerful people uncomfortable in pursuit of the truth is critical. S

Here’s the news:

renee gold headshot

Renee Good’s Family Sues Trump Administration Over Her Killing by an ICE Agent in Minneapolis. The family of Renee Good, above, a 37-year-old US citizen shot dead in her car by ICE agent Jonathan Ross on Jan. 7 during Trump’s “Operation Metro Surge” deportation sweeps, filed two lawsuits Thursday accusing administration officials of negligence and civil rights violations, demanding a jury trial and damages. Videos show Good telling Ross, “That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you,” moments before she tried to drive away and he fired into the car, hitting her in the head, arm and torso. Senior Trump officials initially branded Good a “domestic terrorist,” and the Justice Department blocked federal prosecutors in Minneapolis from investigating the agents, prompting at least half a dozen of them to resign in protest. No agent has been charged in her death or in the killing of VA nurse Alex Pretti two weeks later, and Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty’s state investigations have been slowed because DOJ cut off evidence-sharing, leading Minnesota to sue for access. DHS has defended the agents’ actions as justified uses of force, and the suits are among the first major civil actions over the sweeps.

White House Kicks CNN Out of Press Pool Days After Judge Blocks Trump’s Media Ban. The White House removed CNN from the press pool covering Trump’s Thursday trip to Texas and Oklahoma, even though the network had been scheduled to fly on Air Force One and provide on-the-ground coverage. The move comes less than a week after a federal judge halted Trump’s effort to ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, and follows the administration barring CNN from Air Force One last weekend when it was also slated to serve as pooler, exploiting the fact that the judge’s order only covers access on White House grounds. CNN’s attorney Theodore Boutrous said the White House is “persisting in unpredictably and inconsistently implementing the President’s unconstitutional ‘ban on the free press,’” to the detriment of the public, and the outlets have asked the judge to extend his order. The White House Correspondents’ Association, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and 49 news organizations have backed the three outlets in court, while Fox News, ABC, CBS and NBC briefly boycotted pool duties last week in solidarity with CNN.

Early Voting Data Shows Emerging Signs of a Democratic Advantage in the Midterms

More than 700,000 Americans have already voted in at least 30 states, and Democrats are making up a bigger share of early ballot requests in key battlegrounds than they did in 2024. In Iowa, home to a competitive Senate race, Democrats account for 67% of ballot requests, up from 54% at this point two years ago, while Pennsylvania is up from 62% to 66%, Maine from 53% to 57% and North Carolina from 36% to 42%. The trend lines up with polling, special elections and primary turnout that have all pointed to Democrats being more motivated this year. There are important caveats: ballots are secret, so the data can’t show who people voted for, and early voters tend to skew older and less Republican than the overall electorate, especially as Republicans have shifted toward voting in person. In every state except Iowa, ballot requests at this point in 2022 were actually more Democratic than they are now.

Virginia is showing the clearest signs of a Democratic enthusiasm edge, including in two GOP-held battleground House districts. Localities that voted for Kamala Harris by more than 20 points are at 78% of their 2024 turnout pace, while those Trump won by 20 points are at just 61%. Statewide, voters who have only participated in Democratic primaries since 2022 outnumber Republican primary voters by about 18 points, up from 8 points at this point in 2024. In the 1st District, held by Rep. Rob Wittman, and the 2nd District, held by Rep. Jen Kiggans, Democratic primary voters lead by 15 and 18 points, after both districts were roughly split at this point two years ago. Republicans could still close the gap as Election Day nears, since the votes cast so far are a tiny fraction of the roughly 112 million cast in the 2022 midterms and early in-person voting has barely begun.

Hegseth Unloads Slurs at Troops, Doubles Cuts to Top Brass and Hands Musk a Role in Planning Future Wars

Hegseth used his “State of the Force” address to rail against “fatties,” “weirdos” and “wimps,” using an anti-transgender slur in front of junior troops. “We are no longer the woke department or the weak department,” the defense secretary told service members at Marine Corps Base Quantico, before rattling off a list that included “no fatties,” an anti-trans slur, “no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors.” He said generals “who clung to the woke department, or seemed to think civilian control of the military is simply a suggestion, well, they no longer work here.” Hegseth also dismissed reports of low morale as “patently false claims” and “propaganda,” just a week after it emerged that eight sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln attempted suicide during a 286-day deployment extended by the Iran war. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office mocked the speech by posting a photo of Trump and JD Vance with the caption “You heard the man. No beardos and weirdos.”

Hegseth confirmed he’s cutting 20% of the military’s generals and admirals, doubling last year’s target, in what senators from both parties are questioning. The reduction covers roughly 800 general and flag officer positions and must be completed by Jan. 1, 2027, which Hegseth called “accountability and long overdue.” Sen. Mark Kelly, a former Navy combat pilot, said Hegseth has “some kind of like deep-seated grievance about leadership in the military” and is “purging a generation of great leaders” that will take a generation to replace. Republican Sen. Mike Rounds said there “may be some validity” to trimming a top-heavy structure, “but I want to see it first.” Trump and Hegseth have already fired or pushed out more than two dozen senior leaders without public explanation, including Army chief Gen. Randy George, with a number of those ousted being women or people of color.

Hegseth rolled out six major initiatives, including a project co-directed by Elon Musk, top Trump donor Palmer Luckey and Newt Gingrich to plan the “future of warfare.” Project Meridian, a 120-day effort to identify technologies the US needs for future conflicts, puts Musk and Luckey, whose company Anduril has won billions in government contracts, directly into military planning, raising obvious conflict-of-interest questions. Hegseth also announced a new four-star Autonomous Warfare Command for drones and robotics by October 2027, even as he slashes senior positions elsewhere, along with “FORTRESS America” to harden bases and supply chains and a “Next Great American Base” that states will compete for, built with classical architecture. A new officer pipeline called America’s Corps of Cadets will include Liberty University and Hillsdale College, as Hegseth, a Harvard and Princeton graduate, blasted Ivy League schools as “DEI-worshipping woke factories.” None of the initiatives came with price tags, staffing levels or details on what Congress would need to approve.

Hegseth also created a new Office of Religious Affairs, his latest move to elevate religion in the military. The office will give chaplains a “direct line” to Hegseth without “staff filters,” and a memo orders every military department to report “all unfunded and underfunded religious affairs requirements,” including support for faith-based homeschooling for military families. “Political correctness and secular humanism got a vote, chaplains did not,” Hegseth said, quoting Psalm 33:12 and declaring that the military is “putting on the full armor of God, because while we wage physical war, we all know the real battle is spiritual.” The Pentagon says the office won’t compel religious participation or favor any faith. It follows Hegseth’s move in March to have chaplains stop wearing rank insignia and his firing in April of the Army’s chief of chaplains, Maj. Gen. William Green Jr., without public explanation.

Tennessee’s Execution of Christa Pike Fails After She Survives Two Lethal Injections

Tennessee’s attempt to execute Christa Pike failed Wednesday night when she survived two doses of a lethal drug and was rushed to a hospital. Pike, 50, was set to become the first woman executed in the state in 206 years for the 1995 murder of classmate Colleen Slemmer, which she committed at 18. Officials administered pentobarbital twice at Nashville’s Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, but Pike stayed awake after the first dose and at one point raised her head to ask whether her arm was supposed to feel that way. After the second dose she could be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut at 8:53 p.m., media witnesses were escorted out, and she was taken to an outside medical facility for “life-saving measures.” Death Penalty Information Center director Robin Maher called it “singular and unparalleled,” noting that while seven people have survived executions where officials couldn’t find a vein, no one has ever survived after actually receiving the drugs.

The execution only went forward after the Supreme Court lifted a last-minute stay in a 6-3 vote. A divided 6th Circuit panel had halted the execution Wednesday morning to consider whether Pike’s history of childhood sexual abuse was fully weighed at her sentencing. The state appealed, arguing the delay traumatized Slemmer’s family and rewarded “abusive delay tactics,” and the Supreme Court’s conservative majority cleared the way without explanation, over a dissent from the three liberal justices who said her claims deserved a closer look. The curtain on the execution chamber opened at 7:27 p.m., hours before her death warrant was set to expire at midnight. In her final statement, Pike said, “I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life and that is in love,” and described herself as at peace.

Tennessee is defending its handling of the execution as anti-death penalty advocates erupt in outrage. The Department of Correction said it “followed every step” of its established protocol, that the drug “has consistently been effective,” and that the protocol “does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out.” Death Penalty Action co-founder Abraham Bonowitz called it “an outrage,” asking of state officials, “How do they sleep at night?” Laura Porter of the US Campaign to End the Death Penalty noted that people across the political spectrum had urged a pause after Tennessee’s botched attempt to execute Tony Carruthers earlier this year, saying the state “cannot be trusted to implement capital punishment.” Reprieve CEO Maya Foa said it’s impossible to know exactly what went wrong because lethal injection “relies on secrecy at every stage.”

The failed execution comes as death sentences are being carried out at the fastest pace in years under Trump. There were 47 executions nationwide in 2025, the most since 2009, and 28 so far in 2026, compared with between 11 and 25 a year under Biden. Women remain exceedingly rare among those executed, accounting for just 18 of more than 1,600 people put to death since 1976. Pike’s case had drawn international attention over her age at the time of the crime, her history as a victim of childhood sexual abuse, and her diagnoses of bipolar disorder and PTSD. In an interview before her scheduled execution, Pike said she felt a “kinship” with Lindsay Clancy, saying they were “both females who got into trouble because of uniquely female issues.”

Other news:

The Trump administration is threatening to ban US diesel exports unless France and Germany release their emergency stockpiles. Three people close to the discussions told Reuters the US has warned the two countries to draw down reserves to ease global fuel prices, with one source saying Washington wants the EU to release 120 million barrels of diesel over the next six months. The pressure comes as Trump weighs a diesel export ban to bring down US prices ahead of the midterms, even though experts, including some in his own cabinet, warn such a ban would only push prices higher. Europe has grown increasingly dependent on US fuel after cutting off Russian imports and losing Middle East supplies to the Iran war. “It is in Europe’s best interest to work with the United States,” one US official told Reuters, as officials from the EU, Germany, France, Italy, Ireland and Britain held a call Thursday on possible releases. French President Emmanuel Macron is now convening a video conference of G7 leaders on rising fuel prices and coordinated releases of reserves.

Mortgage rates hit their highest level since 2023 as a bond sell-off driven by war-fueled inflation sent Treasury yields to levels not seen since 2002. The 10-year Treasury yield rose as high as 5.34% Thursday and the 30-year as high as 5.68%, pushing the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate to 7.6%. A major driver is inflation from energy prices tied to the wars in Iran and Ukraine, with gas prices still 47% higher than when the Iran war began in late February and diesel up 70%, costs that trickle down to store shelves through shipping and farming. S&P Global reported last week that price pressures on businesses intensified in September at the fastest rate in four years. The Fed’s preferred inflation measure came in cooler than expected, but KPMG chief economist Diane Swonk said that was mostly due to a technical change, calling it “cooler on paper, hot underneath.” Markets now see roughly a 60% chance the Fed raises rates again in December.

Chinese refiners have suspended fuel exports for October, further squeezing a global market already strained by the Iran war. Beijing gave major refiners no green light to export diesel, gasoline or jet fuel beyond Hong Kong and Macau as the country began a week-long holiday, and state giant PetroChina canceled several planned shipments. Beijing has made exports contingent on domestic inventories returning to prewar levels, and Kpler estimates diesel stocks are about 20 million barrels short of that threshold. The move comes just after Trump urged President Xi Jinping during his Washington visit to help stabilize global fuel supplies. “International markets are an afterthought,” said Oxford Institute for Energy Studies analyst Michal Meidan, with countries like Singapore, Australia, Vietnam and Bangladesh among those most exposed. Bangladesh, which gets up to a third of its refined fuel imports from Chinese suppliers, says it hasn’t even been notified of the pause.

Former officials warn the Trump administration has abandoned the federal effort to investigate real threats to US elections while chasing unproven voter fraud claims. The Justice Department’s election threats task force, which received more than 2,000 threat reports, opened over 100 investigations and prosecuted 21 cases between 2021 and 2024, including a failed New Mexico candidate who organized shootings at officials’ homes, has brought no new cases and “appears to be defunct in practice,” according to former Oregon election security chief Nikki Fisher. The administration also eliminated the FBI’s foreign influence task force on Pam Bondi’s first day as attorney general and cut election security staff and training at CISA. “This administration … has dismantled the entire apparatus that is responsible for detecting and holding these bad actors accountable,” said former national security council official Caitlin Durkovich. Meanwhile, the FBI’s raids seizing 2020 ballots in Fulton County and election equipment in Puerto Rico have produced nothing, and Trump’s primetime claims that China acquired US voter data couldn’t be substantiated. Instead, Attorney General Todd Blanche is touting charges against more than 90 people for voter-related fraud, including 50 noncitizens in the past five weeks.

The parents of a Michigan toddler who pulled a loaded gun out of his backpack at daycare will face charges. No one was hurt Monday when the boy displayed the holstered pistol at Childrens World Early Learning Center in Canton Township, and police praised a staff member for intervening quickly and safely. One of the child’s parents is a Detroit-area police officer, though the gun was not described as a work firearm. Police Chief Joseph Bialy called video of the boy handling the weapon “shocking” and “hard to watch.” Michigan law requires firearms to be locked up at home when children are present, and the parents are set to make an initial court appearance Thursday. Penalties under the law increase sharply if a gun is fired, and a Newaygo County man is already serving more than three years in prison after his 5-year-old grandson was fatally shot by another child who got hold of a shotgun.

Naomi Campbell won her appeal to overturn a five-year ban on serving as a charity trustee in England and Wales. The UK Charity Commission had ruled last year that Fashion for Relief, the poverty charity Campbell founded about two decades ago, was “poorly governed” with “inadequate financial management,” finding only 8.5% of its spending went to charitable grants over six years starting in 2016. A three-person tribunal agreed there had been “serious misconduct and mismanagement,” but found it stemmed from the conduct of fellow trustee Bianka Hellmich. The tribunal ruled the financial failures and misuse of funds were “concealed” from Campbell and that she had been “deceived.” The decision clears the 56-year-old supermodel to serve as a charity trustee again, a little over a year after the commission imposed the ban.

Tropical moisture from Hurricane Polo is drenching the central US as another Pacific hurricane rapidly strengthens off Mexico. Hurricane Rachel is expected to become a major storm with winds topping 111 mph, though it poses no threat to land, while flood warnings remain in effect in New Mexico, where Albuquerque just recorded its second-wettest month ever. Flooding has devastated the state’s famous chile crop at harvest time, with one Hatch Chile Association board member saying of flooded fields, “everything’s toast.” Storms dumped up to 3.5 inches of rain in Amarillo, Texas, spawning a tornado, while Acting Gov. Howie Morales declared a state of emergency freeing up $3.75 million in aid. In Mexico, schools in 30 municipalities in Jalisco closed as a precaution, and the bodies of a mother and her two children were found after a river flooded in the town of Talpa de Allende. The busy Pacific season is consistent with El Niño conditions.

A former Northern Arizona University fraternity leader was sentenced to two months in jail after a pledge died of alcohol poisoning. Carter Eslick, 20, pleaded guilty to felony hazing in the January death of 18-year-old Colin Daniel Martinez, who had a blood-alcohol level of 0.425%, more than five times the legal driving limit, after four Delta Tau Delta pledges were made to share two bottles of vodka until they vomited. Witnesses checked Martinez’s pulse and breathing throughout the night instead of getting him help. Eslick, the chapter’s pledge master, apologized and said he takes “full responsibility,” and must deliver 305 anti-hazing presentations as part of three years of probation. The judge said she was troubled that no one spoke out, and Martinez’s parents are calling for accountability and reform within Greek life. The university suspended the fraternity after Martinez’s death, and its national organization has since shut down the chapter.

An immigration judge ruled the US can deport the leader of Wisconsin’s largest mosque on national security grounds, in a case his lawyers say is retaliation for his pro-Palestinian speech. Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, has lived in the US since 1993 with no criminal record here, but the government cited decades-old convictions in Israel that his attorneys say came from confessions extracted through torture. The judge gave “extreme deference” to a Rubio memo labeling Sarsour a foreign policy risk, the same rarely used provision used against Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, while rejecting the government’s claim that he lied to immigration authorities. Sarsour, who says deportation to the West Bank “means the end of my life,” plans to appeal, and a federal judge previously ordered him freed from ICE custody, finding he had a “substantial” claim of retaliation. His lawyers say he lost more than 30 pounds in detention, where his diabetes went largely unmonitored. He can’t be deported until he exhausts his appeals, and his lawyers are also fighting the removal order’s listing of Jordan, a country he has no connection to, as a possible destination.

A Microsoft-linked New Jersey datacenter ran 62 unpermitted gas generators for nearly a year, pumping out an estimated 140 tons of smog-forming pollution before regulators stepped in. Records obtained by Floodlight show DataOne’s generators in Vineland began operating in October 2025 and logged more than 46,000 hours, which a Rutgers professor estimates would rank it among New Jersey’s top five nitrogen oxide polluters of 2025. At full capacity, experts say the fleet could emit more than 1,500 tons a year, nearly double the state’s largest power plant, pollution linked to asthma, heart attacks and premature death. Local officials knew about the generators for months and residents filed more than 100 noise complaints, but the state only fined the company $1 million last week and is still letting it run them for 45 days while it seeks permits. “How did 62 generators get installed and operated and nobody did anything until now?” asked one resident who lives about a mile away and worries about her children’s exposure. The company’s CEO had told residents in January the site would be “polluting less than a farm.”

A medical helicopter crashed off Catalina Island near Los Angeles, killing two people and leaving two hospitalized, with a fifth person still missing. First responders pulled four people from the water after the crash shortly before 8 p.m. Wednesday, and two were pronounced dead at the scene while two were taken to mainland hospitals in stable condition. LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn said the medevac helicopter went down shortly after taking off from Catalina, and it now sits submerged in 240 feet of water. County firefighters, lifeguards, the Coast Guard and the sheriff’s department searched through the night for the missing person. The helicopter was believed to be owned by Reach Air Medical Services, and the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice  

 

tennessee mapNew York Times, Updates: Tennessee Governor Pauses Future Execution After Inmate Survives Lethal Injection, Billy Witz and Emily Cochrane, Oct. 1, 2026. Gov. Bill Lee ordered a review of the state’s capital-punishment process after the botched attempt to put Christa Pike to death. She was hospitalized late Wednesday.

Gov. Bill Lee paused capital punishment in Tennessee on Thursday and called for a review of the state’s policies on how it puts people to death. The announcement came hours after Christa Pike, a death row inmate, survived two doses of the lethal drug pentobarbital in the state’s second botched execution this year.

Ms. Pike, 50, was hospitalized late Wednesday night when she remained conscious after the injections. It was not immediately clear Thursday morning what her condition was, or what had gone wrong.

“It is deeply disturbing to me” that the execution was botched, Mr. Lee said. He said the pause he imposed includes Ms. Pike’s case.

The pause will also delay an execution that had been scheduled for December for a man convicted of murdering a friend. This year, Mr. Lee issued a reprieve for another death-row inmate whose execution had been canceled after medical staff members failed to find a vein.

Mr. Lee said it was not immediately clear who will conduct the independent review. He repeatedly said that the Tennessee Department of Corrections appeared to have followed its procedures.

Ms. Pike was found guilty in 1996 of torturing and murdering a classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in an attack carried out with her boyfriend and a friend. They slashed at Ms. Slemmer with a box cutter, carved a pentagram into her chest and removed a piece of her skull.

Media witnesses recounted the moments before the execution of Christa Pike was halted on Wednesday.Credit...George Walker Iv/Associated Press

Here’s what we’re covering:

Court actions: Ms. Pike had been scheduled to become the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Wednesday’s attempted execution came after a series of legal delays. Read more ›

In her words: Ms. Pike spent the better part of three decades alone on death row, and her victim’s family was in favor of her execution. Ms. Pike expressed remorse in an audio recording shared be her lawyers in response to questions by The New York Times. “I run through this execution every day in my heart,” she said. “Whatever happens on Sept. 30, this will not be my hell anymore.” Read more ›

New York Times, John Roberts and His Island, Jodi Kantor, Oct. 1, 2026. After decades of potlucks and paddle-boarding on Maine’s midcoast, rising anger and protests have left the Supreme Court’s chief justice more isolated than ever.

To many people on this remote stretch of Maine coastline, where every day looks like a fresh painting made of light and water, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., john roberts headshotright, is just “John.”

John, who has spent over 20 summers on Hupper Island, a refuge about 90 miles northeast of Portland with no cars and barely two dozen homes. John, who swaps favors with neighbors and endures jokes about his boating skills from more experienced operators. John, who has spent many mornings on the dock in Port Clyde, the postage-stamp-sized town across the water from the island, nursing a half-caff and a cinnamon bun.

For a long time, the chief justice’s life here was a story of potluck dinners and easy friendships, according to a summer of interviews with more than two dozen residents. Neighbors reveled in his position but kept exchanges with him about it brief or light. At a long-ago annual summer party, he used to participate in touch football, then call dinner to order by proclaiming: “Oyez, oyez, oyez, the lobsters are ready.”

But in recent years, as the Supreme Court has reshaped American life and handed more power to President Trump, a very personal form of anger has been rising here at the chief justice, transforming his getaways.

His summer retreats, long a well-known fact, are now a source of debate. Neighbors have taken to the water to protest him. Calling themselves “kayak-tivists,” they form flotillas facing his island home, holding waterproof signs conveying their disappointment. A local newspaper columnist recommended that people in town give him the finger.

Even some longtime friends who would not dream of joining the kayakers said they have been drawing back socially because of their distress over his decisions, notably the court’s 2024 decision granting the president broad immunity from prosecution.

He is now ringed by far more security than in the past, residents say, adding to the distance.

The chief justice’s narrowing world in Maine shows how the court’s controversial decisions and languishing public trust, along with increasing peril for public officials, have reshaped the lives of the justices, leaving them more isolated than ever before.

In Washington and beyond, ever-present security threats as well as protests are separating and shielding the justices from the people whose lives will be affected by their decisions. They are less likely to spontaneously interact with people who disagree with their work, and their exposure to the texture and mess of everyday life is diminishing. Being just John, even here, has grown much harder.

“From what I see, the barrier runs both ways,” said Mary Anne Mason, a friend and former law partner of the chief justice who lives in Port Clyde. “It’s harder for him to feel comfortable approaching people — and vice versa.”

The protests have split Port Clyde and the nearby villages on this peninsula, as people here have debated how best to convey displeasure with a justice, if at all. Is it better to ensure their famous neighbor hears from those who disagree or to leave him alone, because his job is to be impervious to pressure?

New York Times, Times Exclusive: How a Cornell Student Went From Shame to Seeking Justice, Debra Kamin, Matt Flegenheimer and Amy Julia Harris, Oct. 1, 2026. The woman known as “Jane Doe” was initially embarrassed about what happened at a fraternity party in 2024, but soon concluded: “I was assaulted.”

In October 2024, about a week after a Chi Phi fraternity party at Cornell University, the sophomore who would come to be known as Jane Doe was milling around an online forum about Greek life when she encountered a post that stopped her cold.

“Are Chi Phi brothers Crips or Bloods because I hear they have been doing hell Gang Banging?” someone had written.

“They do drugs and gang r*ped a sophomore,” another user said. “Report them.”

Since the evening that began on Oct. 19, 2024, Jane Doe had recounted the night’s events to her roommates without identifying herself as a rape victim. She had exchanged friendly text messages with men she would later accuse of assault. She had heard uncharitable appraisals of herself from undergraduate gossips.

Then she read the words.

“That’s the first time I had ever heard the narrative change that I wasn’t a whore and that I was assaulted,” Jane Doe told investigators, according to documents from a university review of the accusations obtained by The New York Times.

Those records, which have not been previously reported, help illuminate a case that has horrified the nation and plunged one of its elite institutions into crisis. They shed light on the crucial three-week period between the fraternity party and Jane Doe’s decision to take her story to the campus police, accusing multiple fraternity brothers of sexual assault and alleging that she was coerced into taking ketamine.

The bare facts of what happened after she made her accusations are by now well known: The Tompkins County, N.Y., district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, reviewed her complaint and declined to bring criminal charges, saying there was not sufficient evidence to do so. Jane Doe filed a complaint that prompted at least a dozen hearings by the school’s Title IX committee, which is supposed to ensure compliance with federal civil rights laws.ImageThe exterior of a fraternity house.The Chi Phi fraternity is under scrutiny after a women said that multiple members of the organization sexually assaulted her.Credit...Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times

On Sept. 16, Jane Doe also filed a lawsuit against seven men, accusing them of sexual assault. Lawyers for at least three of the accused men have broadly denied criminal wrongdoing; others have not yet made public statements.

What had not been known publicly, until now, were the detailed filings collected during the private Title IX proceedings — hundreds of pages of emails, text messages, photographs and interviews with Jane Doe, her friends and those she accused.

Taken together, the raw materials sketch Jane Doe’s journey from an unknown sophomore to the embodiment of another searing national dialogue about sexual assault and consent. (Although Jane Doe is identified in the documents, The Times is withholding her name.)The Cornell Rape Investigation: Five TakeawaysOct. 1, 2026

Some women around her, the documents show, were quick to say they viewed the events of the evening of Oct. 19 as sexual assault. But Jane Doe, the interviews and text messages reveal, first appeared to grapple with shame, humiliation and concerns about her reputation before she began to consider herself an assault victim.

“I don’t really remember her ever kind of citing that she had said yes to anything that occurred,” one of her roommates had said of the first hours after Jane Doe returned home the morning of Oct. 20, according to the Title IX files, which were compiled as part of the school’s formal process for investigating allegations of sexual harassment and assault.

On page upon page, the documents make for difficult reading, vacillating between the merry shorthand of college students — asides about the gym, Snapchat, Greek life — and the blunt-force details of an alleged gang assault that the victim appeared to be processing in real time.

From the beginning, the case has seemed to double as a referendum on so many vexing questions about what it means to be a young woman on a college campus, even a campus as nominally esteemed as Cornell’s: Who is believed, and who is coddled? How much good can Title IX do? Has anything changed, really?

For Jane Doe, the records suggest, the first task was to make sense of what had happened to her.

New York Times, Cornell Rape Investigation: Cornell Police Report Omitted Student’s Claim She Was Raped, Hurubie Meko, Oct. 1, 2026. Documents obtained by The New York Times show that the campus police at Cornell University sent a condensed statement to a prosecutor, who then declined to bring charges.

A person walks across a street.The Cornell Police Department summarized hours of interviews with a woman who said she was raped into a six-page document that excluded key details. A local prosecutor did not pursue criminal charges based on that document.Credit...Heather Ainsworth for The New York TimesHurubie Meko

By Updated 8:51 a.m. ET

At a campus police department on Nov. 14, 2024, a Cornell University sophomore detailed how she found herself naked in a fraternity house nearly a month before, with a “ring of men” around her. She was drunk and had been given ketamine, she said. Her phone was across the room.

“There was really no escape,” she said.

The woman spoke for hours with an officer, telling him how what began as a consensual sexual encounter with a man she liked spiraled into a prolonged drug-fueled attack by several men inside the Chi Phi fraternity house.

“I don’t remember the very end of the event where I was raped,” she told them. “I can say with 100 percent confidence I was raped.”

The officer then condensed the interview into a six-page “voluntary statement” written from her perspective, according to documents obtained by The New York Times. The student, after leaving about 20 handwritten corrections on a draft, signed a final version the next day.

While the shorter statement explained that she felt some of that night’s events were a crime, it omitted some of the more forceful and definitive language she used. And it was missing her unequivocal statement that she had been raped. The omission, which for a time seemed to end the case, instead now appears to have only delayed a case that has roiled the campus and renewed the national debate how colleges handle claims of sexual assault.

That condensed statement was shared with the district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, who decided there was not enough evidence to bring criminal charges against the seven men. It looked like the case was over.

Mr. Van Houten’s decision in 2024 largely transpired quietly, through a process that is often shielded from public scrutiny. Cornell, though, conducted its own investigation. That investigation, which The Times has reviewed, concluded months after the woman dropped out of Cornell because of the incident.

Then last month the woman, as Jane Doe, filed a lawsuit against Cornell, the seven men, the fraternity and her sorority. The lawsuit ricocheted online, plunging the university into a crisis and landing Mr. Van Houten’s office in a maelstrom of criticism. Many in the public, including politicians and celebrities, began questioning what law enforcement officials knew about the woman’s allegations two years ago and why a criminal case was never pursued.

The men have not been charged criminally, and during the university investigation the men almost universally denied the accusations against them and said any sex that took place was consensual. Several of the men suggested that Jane Doe had not only initiated the sexual encounters, but in some cases, had done so without asking.

Mr. Van Houten has defended his office’s decision, and said he wants to meet with the woman this week as he considers bringing new evidence to a grand jury.How a Cornell Student Went From Shame to Seeking JusticeOct. 1, 2026

In a nine-page public statement on Monday, Mr. Van Houten said that the statement the woman provided at the time did not “allege she was drugged against her will or gang raped.”

“On the contrary, Jane Doe’s statement described her participation in drug and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual,” he wrote.

But in the documents reviewed by The Times, the Cornell police did not inform Mr. Van Houten’s office that Jane Doe had said she had been raped. It’s unclear what other conversations the police and district attorney’s office had about the case.

In her interview with the police officer, Jane Doe described how Oct. 19, 2024, began with her filing an unrelated police report that her car keys and wallet had been stolen. After discovering one of her credit cards had been used, she said, she canceled all of them.

When members of her sorority heard about the theft, they decided she would no longer be the designated sober sister tasked with keeping an eye on sorority sisters at a bar that evening, she recalled.

She started drinking earlier in the night before heading to the bar, where the sorority was hosting an event, and she was served drinks even though she was underage, she said. She then briefly stopped at another bar before eventually trekking 20 minutes on foot to a fraternity house to meet a guy she was interested in. At around 10:30 p.m. to 11 p.m., she felt she was inebriated, she told the officer.

She spotted the man she was looking for, she said, and they talked, drank and danced. Soon after, she went to a room and had a consensual sexual encounter with the man, and another man she knew from the fraternity, both of whom she thought were her friends, she said.

But as the night progressed, there were more than the two men in the room and she began to feel used, she recalled. She could hear the men talking about taking turns with her, she said.

“I will never know who all touched me,” she told the officer. “I will not know.”ImageA photo shows a fraternity house at night.Jane Doe spoke for hours with a police officer detailing how a consensual encounter with a man quickly spiraled into a prolonged drug-fueled attack inside the Chi Phi fraternity house.Credit...Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times

At one point a group of men walked into the room where she was naked, she said.

“I was horrified, and I squealed and ran” and hid under the covers of a bed, she said. She described how she had to swat one man’s hands away throughout the night as he tried to grope her. The men snorted ketamine off her body, she said. It was the most intoxicated she had ever been in her life, she told the officer.

At around 5:45 a.m., she said wanted to go to bed and told two of the men, “I gotta turn in.” They stopped, she said.

She said she woke up at 10 a.m., then was driven home shortly after.

In the days after Jane Doe provided her statement to the police, officers tried to contact the men she accused, with varying degrees of success, according to the administrative documents.

On Nov. 25, the officer who took Jane Doe’s statement filed a document and said he contacted an investigator in the district attorney’s office to talk.

The officer reported that he was told, based on a review of Jane Doe’s statement, that the prosecutor’s office had decided that “criminal charges would not be pursued in this case.”

“Nothing further at this time,” he wrote.  

New York Times, What New York’s Rape Laws Mean for the Cornell Case, Maria Cramer, Oct. 1, 2026 (print ed.). State law makes it harder to prosecute when victims drank willingly. The prosecutor in the Cornell case said that kept him from charging students accused of sexual assault.

A New York prosecutor has blamed the state’s rape laws in part for his decision not to charge Cornell University students who were accused of sexually assaulting a 20-year-old woman in 2024.

Those laws make it much more difficult to charge people with rape if the accuser chose to become intoxicated, according to prosecutors and advocates for sexual assault victims.

For years, legislators have tried to change the law so that prosecutors could bring sexual assault charges in cases where a person had sex with someone who was clearly incapacitated and unable to control or understand their behavior.

The case of the young woman who said she was sexually assaulted by the students at their fraternity in Ithaca, N.Y., has renewed calls for that legislation to pass.

Here is what to know about the state’s rape laws.What does the law say about voluntary intoxication?

In New York, accusers who chose to drink or take drugs have a high burden of proving they were unable to consent, according to prosecutors.

The way the law is written now, people who were voluntarily intoxicated cannot claim they were mentally incapacitated during an assault, unless they can show they were physically helpless. This means that they had to be unconscious or physically unable to communicate consent at the time of the act.

That definition leaves out people who were semiconscious, slurring their words or unable to stand or walk steadily before they were assaulted, according to prosecutors and supporters of sexual assault victims.

Proposed legislation would allow prosecutors to charge third-degree rape in cases where a person under the influence of drugs or alcohol was unable to control their behavior and was assaulted by someone who should have “reasonably” understood the victim’s condition.

At least 23 other states, including California and Virginia, already have similar laws.How did the law affect the Cornell case?

Matthew Van Houten, the district attorney for Tompkins County, has said that when the woman first reported the assault in 2024, her claims did not support a criminal case.

The woman, who was an undergraduate student, took ketamine and drank tequila and beer; at one point, she consumed 10 drinks in a three-hour period, according to the lawsuit she has filed against the students, the fraternity, her sorority and the university.

The students pressured her into taking more ketamine and gave her so much alcohol she became unable to consent, the lawsuit states. They took her to a room and assaulted her for about seven hours. She tried to hide her naked body under the covers and push them away, but “she felt as if there was no way for her to escape this room full of predatory fraternity men,” the lawsuit says.

Since the lawsuit became public, Mr. Van Houten has been criticized for not charging the men when the woman first came forward in November 2024.

In an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, Mr. Van Houten said that if the woman’s initial report had shown she was unconscious when she was assaulted, “these guys would be in prison right now.”

He said he is reviewing new evidence and will decide whether her case could now be taken to a grand jury.

Mr. Van Houten said if the law had been changed in 2024, it would have been easier to show that the accused students should have known that “the person was incapable of consenting because of their consumption of alcohol or drugs.”

“That’s not the law,” he said.Why hasn’t the law been changed?

Defense lawyers have pushed back hard, saying proposed legislation would make it easier for prosecutors to charge people who had sex with someone they believed had given consent and later claimed they were too intoxicated to know what they were doing.

Some lawyers have described the legislation as “paternalistic” and say it would take away a woman’s agency and ability to stand by a decision to have sex even though she chose to get drunk or take drugs.

Assemblywoman Latrice M. Walker, a Democrat whose district includes the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn and who has opposed changing the statute, has said she is worried about passing laws that would hurt a person’s right to due process.

The New York legislature has failed to pass the bill since 2019, when Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, a Democrat representing the Bronx, introduced the first version.

In June, Carl Heastie, a Bronx Democrat and the speaker of the State Assembly, declined to bring the latest version of the bill to the floor even though it had broad bipartisan support.

But on Wednesday, Mr. Heastie released a statement saying the Assembly had formed a working group to examine the state’s sexual assault statutes and consider “how best to move forward so that New York’s laws are as strong as possible.”

“The allegations being reported out of Cornell University are truly horrifying,” Mr. Heastie said. “We want to do everything we can to ensure victims of sexual assault see justice served.” 

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

 

U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsHopium Chronicles, New 2026 Election Analysis and Advocacy: Betrayed By Trump And His Allies The American People Have Put Their Faith Back In Us -- And Now We Must Deliver, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 1, 2026. First of all -- holy smokes! When called this community answers again and again. We raised $256,000 for our candidates and party committees yesterday, more than twice as much as any other day this cycle.

It was a huge day on what was a very important day in this critical election. Thank you to everyone who stepped up and rallied for those on the frontlines of what has become a year of extraordinarily opportunity for our politics.

That was the main theme of my weekly talk last night - that we are on the cusp of having the election we all wanted to have, and need to keep our heads down and keep working as hard as we can. You can find a video recording and rough transcript of my talk above.

As we discussed last night I think we have four jobs now:

Support our candidates and party committees, and try to win the election by as big a margin as possible. Our goal should be to make this election a clear and unequivocal repudiation of Trump and MAGA, and to do that we must attempt to win both the House and the Senate - something that is within our grasp.

We need to drive the early vote and become early vote champions in our communities, organizations, networks and family. Driving the early vote makes it more likely we win and harder for them to cheat, but it also gives us an opportunity to create a necessary issue contrast between our party that believes in democracy and fights for our rights and freedoms and their party who has betrayed the American creed and wants to take our rights and freedoms away.

We need to work to protect our election and ensure there is a peaceful transfer of power. While there are many ways to do this we recommend three: 1) Volunteer for your state party election protection program 2) Become a state party Democracy Protector election day monitor 3) support our fundraising drive for the state party New Battlefield Project below.

Deliver for the American people, restore our global alliances, and renew our democracy when back in power.

Let’s drill down on all that a bit.

Let’s start with the election. Trump got his worst major independent poll of the cycle this morning. Things just keep getting worse for him and the Rs:

The upper end of the generic ballot has moved into big blue wave territory:

We have a legitimate chance of flipping the Senate, even getting to 52-53 seats:

FiftyPlusOne’s Senate forecast today gives us a 99% chance of flipping the House and a 73% chance of taking back the Senate:

With five weeks to go we are in a place that I frankly never thought we would be. Trump’s been an extraordinary failure in every way imaginable. His corruption is unprecedented and staggering. He is clearly unwell and wildly unfit. People are angry, and feel betrayed and abandoned by the corrupt Epstein class running our country - as they should. They are not just turning on the Republicans they are turning to us, and have put their faith back in us as a party to lead them to a better place.Subscribed

This is very important. It would be wrong to look at the data in front of us or what we hear from our candidates and conclude this election is only about a repudiation and rejection of Trump. Let’s review that data we saw last week from the Strength In Numbers poll:

In my talk last night I tried to articulate what I am hearing from our candidates and will try to capture it here too for I think it is very important. I’ve been involved in some fashion or another in every election since 1992. There is something happening out there this year that this profound, and particular to this election, to this moment. Voters are aware of the gravity of the problems we now face; how much Trump has betrayed and abandoned them; and are desperate for strong and admirable leaders to lead them out of this mess and restore dignity and a sense of purpose to our nation once again. I don’t think this is like any other election I’ve ever been part of for it simply isn’t like anything any of us - or this nation - has ever experienced before.

For no set of Americans in our history have ever been betrayed by their leaders as Trump and his allies have betrayed all of us.

And this collective sense of the gravity of the moment is causing our candidates to elevate, become bigger, and ever more effective champions of people and communities who feel abandoned and betrayed. They have become aware in their conversations with voters that people see this as no ordinary time, and are desperate for proven servant leaders, ones they can trust, ones they can touch and feel, ones who have been there for them before and are trusted members of their communities, to win these elections and begin to put things right.

In our interviews you’ve met these servant leaders, people of proven character, firefighters, union leaders, teachers, professors, ministers, doctors, navy helicopter pilots, seminarians, prosecutors, admirals, generals, Olympians, television anchors, well known and respected local elected leaders. In this time of enormous challenge and uncertainty voters are not looking for radical change, they are looking for something familiar, something tried, trusted, and true, and something far, far better than what they have now.

Which is why we are on the verge of having the election we all want to have. For voters like the Democrats they are seeing all across the country, and are once again putting their faith back in us to lead us to a better place. Our job now is not to let them down; to be strong enough to win this election by as big a margin as possible; to ensure there is a peaceful transfer of power in January; and then fight with everything we got to make things better for them and this battered nation.

So often when I finish one of my interviews with a candidate or party leader I think “wow, that was amazing. What a candidate, what a leader. I’m grateful they’ve decided to run. ” I know many of you feel that way too. And I think what we are feeling in that moment is this dynamic I am describing - of admirable people stepping up for their community in a time of crisis, who feel the weight of the moment on their shoulders, and are rising to meet the moment and lead their communities and neighbors to a better place. And in this process I think we are witnessing the birth of a new politics for our party and our nation, of servant-leaders, lifted up by love of country and love of neighbor, who are in the process of becoming ferocious and determined warriors for the common good and who will not stop fighting until they put things right……

That’s why we’ve been raising so much money these past few weeks and over the cycle. For we have been inspired by the leaders we’ve met, and have put our trust in them, as voters are doing with Democrats all over the country right now. Now we need to finish the job, my friends, and get these remarkable, admirable leaders elected all across the country; ensure there is a free and fair election and a peaceful transfer of power; and then go do the most important of all- go to work, tirelessly, for the American people and begin the arduous process of putting things right……

That’s some of what we talked about last night fellow patriots. Watch the video. Share it and this post with others. Hit like so more will see it. And yes, it that time, now. Time to….Go Kick These Corrupt Traitors’ Asses, Win The Midterms, And Prepare For The Fuckery To Come - For It Is Coming

Three things you can do in addition to supporting our intrepid candidates and state parties:

  • Become an Early Vote Champion in your networks, communities, and organizations.
  • Sign up to become a Democracy Protector too. Our next training is this Wednesday, Oct 7th at 10pm ET.
  • Email photos of your electoral work or physical act of voting to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or via links on our daily chat. We want to start showcasing them here on Hopium. 

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Ride the Wave, Baby! William Kristol, right, william bill kristol imdbOct. 1, 2026. Whoa. It’s not just that a new Quinnipiac poll shows only 34 percent of voters approving of Donald Trump’s job performance, with 61 percent disapproving. It’s that Quinnipiac has Democrats leading by 12 points on the generic congressional ballot. This is up from 7 points in Quinnipiac’s survey two months ago.

bulwark logo big shipYes, this poll is something of an outlier. The FiftyPlusOne polling aggregator shows “only” about an 8-point generic ballot lead for the Democrats. But even that’s a ten point swing from 2024, when Republicans won the national vote for the House by 2.6 points. A 10-point swing would be a wave that puts lots of districts and states in play. A 14-point swing, which is what Quinnipiac implies, would be a tsunami.

And I’ll note that Quinnipiac has been on the money before. Their poll in late September 2024 had Trump leading Kamala Harris by 48 percent to 47 percent. I remember seeing those numbers and hoping against hope that they were wrong, that surely Harris had at least a narrow lead. But they were right.

Just as notable as the generic ballot in Quinnipiac’s poll this week was what it found about voters’ views on how our government should deal with the challenge of artificial intelligence. The results were, to say the least, lopsided.

“Seventy-one percent of voters say they are more likely to vote for a political candidate who supports stricter guardrails for AI development,” compared to 16 percent who preferred a candidate who supports expanding AI development. Even Republican voters preferred stricter guardrails, by 52 percent 29 percent.

What’s more, 79 percent of respondents said that with respect to AI, they think safety is more important than staying at the forefront of innovation. Only 15 percent thought the opposite. Again, even Republicans prioritized safety over innovation, by 62 percent to 32 percent.

Voters seem to have noticed that the Trump administration doesn’t agree with them. Only 25 percent support the president’s handling of the issue, while 58 percent disapprove. And that disapproval has started to spill over to his party. Forty-two percent now prefer the Democratic party on AI, while 29 percent prefer the Republican party. Only three weeks ago, by contrast, a New York Times/Siena poll found basically no gap between the two parties on the issue.

I’ll add that this survey was in the field over the weekend, before Tuesday’s White House lunch for the tech oligarchs. There Trump confirmed he was going to do nothing to pause or safeguard or regulate developments in artificial intelligence.

But Trump did issue an executive order rebranding “Artificial Intelligence” as “Super Intelligence.” The order celebrated the fact that these technologies are “transformative” and will allow us to do “what was previously impossible.” But aren’t “transformative” technologies that allow the “previously impossible” the kind of thing that requires some oversight by government, and some guardrails that depend on more than the goodwill of tech oligarchs?

Apparently not. Indeed, it turns out that the “White House Accord on Super Intelligence” released after the lunch of the AI oligarchs was drafted by . . . the AI oligarchs. As Semafor reports:

The idea for what became President Donald Trump’s Tuesday pact with the AI industry came from a conversation between Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and House Speaker Mike Johnson at last week’s state dinner . . .

Zuckerberg spoke to Johnson—whom he was seated next to at the dinner for Chinese leader Xi Jinping—about regulatory concerns around AI . . . The Meta CEO then talked to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about crafting a set of principles that tech executives could use at their next meeting with Trump . . .

Zuckerberg then circulated a draft ahead of Tuesday’s meeting between Trump and AI executives. Huang played a role gathering support for it among the administration’s guests . . . Eventually Trump himself released the document as a “White House Accord on Super Intelligence,” outlining broad principles for self-regulation.

That story apparently comes from a single source, so it’s possible there’s more to it than that—but it certainly looks like the “White House” executive order was drafted by the AI firms. Trump merely signed it.

It was nice of Trump to throw the glitzy lunch for the AI guys and sign off on their no-safeguards policy. It should make it even easier for Democrats to say for the next month that Trump and his party are bought and paid for big AI.

Maybe the tsunami Quinnipiac forecasts will turn out to be about right.

AROUND THE BULWARK

  • WATCH: A Suspected Terror Plot Just Took a Much More Alarming Turn… Former CIA officer MARC POLYMEROPOULOS and national security reporter MICHAEL WEISS take on the attempted hijacking of a Tel Aviv–bound flight, a suspected plot targeting an air base in Britain, and the troubling signs that Iran may be taking its fight abroad.
  • bulwark logo big shipA Big Warning Sign for Trump’s GOP… On Command Post, SEN. ELISSA SLOTKIN joins MARK HERTLING and BEN PARKER to share what she learned from Hungary and Poland about post-Trump America.
  • How Some TOTAL Unknowns Could F*ck Up Republicans’ Midterms… Libertarian candidates are polling surprisingly well. In close races, a few points could be all Democrats need, reports LAUREN EGAN in The Opposition.
  • Pete Hegseth’s Speech Was a Hyper-Macho Freak Show… On Bulwark Takes, SAM STEIN and BEN PARKER give their takes on Pete Hegseth’s bizarre State of the Force address, from his “no fatties, no weirdos” vision for the military to his fixation on testosterone, wokeness, and American universities.
  • Maria Comella and The Trio: Holy Schmitt, That Was Bad… The Trio comes together on the daily pod for the first time to give a little taste of the MAGA-land news Sam, Will, and Tim are covering for The Bulwark.
  • Skittish Republicans Discover That ICE Is Bad—for Their Campaigns… Some endangered incumbents are trying to outrun the electoral consequences of Trump’s immigration agenda, writes ADRIAN CARRASQUILLO in Huddled Masses.

Quick Hits

TO BOMB OR NOT TO BOMB: President Donald Trump yesterday reiterated his threat to “blow up” Iran, telling reporters that “we have to make that decision: We blow them up or make a deal.” That followed the president’s comments last week at the United Nations: “Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before . . . or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?”

Over the weekend, the White House rejected a proposal from Iran that would have reestablished the conditions of this summer’s Memorandum of Understanding, with Iran at least partly reopening the Strait of Hormuz and promising to resume nuclear talks in exchange for the United States lifting its blockade. Trump, possibly responding to one of the major critiques Iran hawks made of the initial MOU, now seems to be pushing for concrete nuclear commitments as part of the ceasefire deal, rather than agreeing to haggle over them later.

A U.S. official also told The Bulwark this week that America is “skeptical of Iran’s promises after they broke the last MOU by firing on commercial vessels . . . so the U.S. needs assurances this time that Iran is serious and it’s not just them trying to get out of the tough situation they are in.” The official added that Trump would still be willing to grant sanctions relief and the release of frozen Iranian funds in exchange for concrete progress on Iran’s nuclear program.

Much of Iran’s nuclear program remains buried under rubble and largely inaccessible to the Iranian government thanks to U.S. airstrikes in June 2025.

NO UGGOS ALLOWED: These are going to be an annual thing, we guess. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave another chest-thumping speech in front of a giant American flag yesterday about his determination to build America the hottest, sexiest, sweatiest military the world has ever known. Here’s the WSJ:

Hegseth said he had eliminated “silly PowerPoint trainings” and “silly drag queen shows.” He touted getting rid of diversity quotas, gender pronouns and “identity months.” He also reprised a refrain from his speech last year: “No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors.”

“The ideological clowns are out,” he added. “The patriotic cowboys are in, with testosterone testing on top,” Hegseth said, referring to his recent mandate for male servicemembers over 30 to undergo annual screening for testosterone deficiency.

Hegseth’s tone throughout was combative, and he attacked the press in the opening minutes of the address. He accused the media of “treason,” denying news reports of munitions shortages and blamed reporters for revealing U.S. base locations to “the enemy.”

Hegseth also announced that Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich will lead a Pentagon team called “Project Meridian” on the future of warfare. Isn’t it nice to know we’re in good hands?

A BOTCHED EXECUTION: Christa Pike, a Tennessee woman who has been on death row for decades after brutally murdering a classmate at the age of 18 in 1995, was supposed to be executed last night after the Supreme Court declined to intervene on her behalf. But the state botched the job: After two doses of lethal pentobarbital, Pike was still breathing with a beating heart. Eventually, the state suspended the execution, and Pike was taken to a nearby hospital for medical care. The New York Times has the strange story:

It was not immediately clear what went wrong with the administration of the drugs, or what Ms. Pike’s medical condition was. In a statement late Wednesday, her lawyers said that she was at a nearby hospital but that they did not know her condition. Tennessee officials confirmed to a federal judge late Wednesday that Ms. Pike was receiving medical care.

“This event is the worst we’ve seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era,” said Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. “There is no precedent.” . . .

Ms. Pike’s lawyers had argued the procedure could be torturous for her because she has small veins, a history of sexual trauma and other medical conditions.

“We take no pleasure in being right, but the concerns raised by Ms. Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy,” they said in a joint statement after the execution attempt.

 

texas mapNew York Times, Should Democrats Spend in Deep-Red Texas? A Battle Could Echo in 2028, Reid J. Epstein, Oct. 1, 2026. Allies of Gina Hinojosa want a Democratic group to support her bid for Texas governor — putting pressure on its chairman, Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, who is weighing a run for president.

As polls suggest that Gina Hinojosa, a Democrat, is competitive in her campaign to become the first Latina governor of the usually reliably Republican state of Texas, a growing number of prominent Latino officials are angry that she is not getting more help from the party.

Now there are veiled threats that if the Democratic Governors Association fails to invest in her bid, some Latino leaders could withhold their support from the group’s chairman, Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, should he, as expected, run for president in 2028.

“We are asking you to invest in a competitive race with the largest Latino electorate in the country following an election cycle where Republicans made alarming inroads with Latinos,” read a letter more than 70 Latino officials sent Wednesday to Mr. Beshear at the D.G.A.

Ms. Hinojosa’s allies have recruited a cadre of officials, including some from the early-voting states of Nevada and New Mexico, to push Mr. Beshear to direct the group to spend $10 million on her campaign against Gov. Greg Abbott, the incumbent Republican who is seeking a fourth term.

“All Democrats would do better when and if we help Gina Hinojosa win Texas,” said one of the Democrats who signed the letter, Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona, who like Mr. Beshear is considering a 2028 run. “No matter who you are, no matter if you’re running for president, you want Gina Hinojosa to be the governor of Texas.”

Last week, the D.G.A. allocated $650,000 to help the Democratic candidate for governor in Alaska. Texas has been a back-burner race for the D.G.A., which has so far invested in backing Democratic candidates in Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, and Wisconsin. It has not yet spent or directed money on advertising in Texas.

“Gina Hinojosa is a great candidate and running a great campaign,” Mr. Beshear said in a statement to The New York Times on Wednesday. “The D.G.A. is currently investing by paying expenses and providing staff, with more to come. My goal as chair of the D.G.A. this year is to win as many races as we can and that’s exactly what we’re doing by going on offense and expanding the map.”

When asked about Ms. Hinojosa’s race in an interview published last week by USA Today, Mr. Beshear said he would not allow his own presidential aspirations to color how he directs D.G.A. resources this year.

Association.Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

“I, as the DGA chair, can’t be motivated by pleasing or not pleasing anyone when it comes to ’28,” Mr. Beshear said. “I made a commitment to win as many races as I can in ’26.”

The pleas for more aid come as polls show Ms. Hinojosa competitive with Mr. Abbott, whose campaign has spent $68 million in advertising so far, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm, while she has spent just $8.7 million.

Mr. Beshear’s PAC, In This Together, sent $25,000 to Ms. Hinojosa’s campaign and he has been making fund-raising calls to donors on her behalf, a D.G.A. official said. Mr. Beshear and Ms. Hinojosa spoke by phone on Tuesday, according to two people briefed on the exchange.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, the nation’s lone sitting Latina governor, has been phoning donors to help Ms. Hinojosa raise money, she said. She said she has also worked with Mr. Beshear to direct resources to Hispanic communities. “We should all be focused on supporting Gina,” said Ms. Lujan Grisham, whose state will be early in the 2028 primary calendar.

The fund-raising disparity in Texas illustrates a longstanding problem in Democratic politics: Their donors are far more inclined to invest in candidates running for Congress or president than they are in those running for state office.

“It is extremely challenging for us to get national donors to pay attention to governor’s races outside of their states,” said Peter O’Keefe, a former Democratic Governors Association treasurer who remains involved in the group’s fund-raising.

Texas has been a reliably Republican state for decades. President Trump won it by 14 points in 2024. The state’s last Democratic governor was Ann Richards, who lost her 1994 re-election bid to George W. Bush.

PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: Hispanics Are Furious At Trump So He Is Coming To Texas To Rub Their Noses In It, Jason Easley, right, Oct. 1, 2026. jason easleyHispanics Are Furious At Trump So He Is Coming To Texas To Rub Their Noses In ItTexas Hispanics feel betrayed and angry at Trump for his economic disaster and immigration deportations, so Trump is coming to the state to rub their noses in it.

The Republican theory of the 2026 midterm election was based on the idea that Hispanic voters who supported Trump in 2024 made a permanent shift rightward and could be used to build a wave-proof gerrymandered majority to keep the House with the GOP.

PoliticusUSA is 100% independent news and opinion. Please support us by becoming a subscriber.Subscribed

That was the entire idea behind Texas Republicans redrawing their congressional districts to net them more House seats, but even texas mapbefore the ink was dry on the new map, signs showed Republicans had gotten it totally wrong.

Trump immediately did everything that he could to alienate the Hispanic voters who supported him in Texas, and they are seething with rage at the president.

The New York Times talked to Hispanic voters in Texas and found a grim scene for Republicans:

In more than two dozen interviews across the region in recent weeks, Hispanic voters said they were furious over the president’s approach to immigration and the economy — the very problems they had counted on him to fix.

There is no bigger case study in how badly Democrats screwed up the 2024 election than Hispanic voters. Hispanic Democrats were warning the party that their voters, especially in Texas, were upset and feeling ignored, but the Democratic consultant class was more worried about getting rid of Biden and the money that they could make off of Democratic donors with a new candidate; the vast majority of your $5 donations to Kamala Harris went to four big Democratic consulting firms in 2024, rather than listening to the voters.

Hispanics in Texas were like other groups of voters who cast ballots for Trump because they were upset about inflation, felt neglected by the Democratic Party, and believed Trump’s promises.

The problem is that Hispanic voters, like many others, didn’t hear the fine print on Trump’s promises.

Trump always talked about deporting criminals, but he never specified until after he won the election that, to him, criminal immigrants were anyone in the country illegally. However, illegal immigration is a civil offense. When attendees at the 2024 convention held up mass deportation signs, that was a giveaway, and Trump spent his entire campaign praising tariffs.

Republicans are in free fall. Trump has few places to go. The president is coming to Texas.

One Hispanic woman in Texas told The Times that after Trump deported her brother, “I started to hate,” she said. “I started holding resentment and grudges, especially from those people that I rallied with for Trump.”

Trump is going to be holding a rally in Texas where he will tout his mass deportations and gaslight about the economy, which is the last thing that angry Hispanic voters in the state want to hear.

Donald Trump is coming to apologize to the voters that he betrayed. Trump isn’t going to make amends. The president is going to rub the noses of Texas Hispanic voters in his betrayal.

His presence won’t help Republicans in Texas. It is almost certain to hurt.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

Former Olympian David Hearn, center, as defended by attorney Norman Eisen, right, against false charges brought by the Trump Administration on a claim he vandalized the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool's new liner that was actually damaged by the Trump Administration's own contractor (New York Times photo).

Former Olympian David Hearn, center, as defended by attorney Norman Eisen, right, against false charges brought by the Trump Administration on a claim he vandalized the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool's new liner that was actually damaged by the Trump Administration's own contractor (New York Times photo).

PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: After Reflecting Pool Humiliation, Rep. Jamie Raskin Gives DOJ Hot Tip On Felon Orange Vandal Desecrating DC, Jason Easley, Oct. 1, 2026. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) responded to the judge barring the Trump DOJ from charging an Olympian in the Reflecting Pool case by telling the DOJ about a felon vandalizing the Kennedy Center.

The Trump administration’s DOJ suffered another humiliating defeat when a judge barred the government from bringing a case against an Olympian who the Trump administration accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

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Judge Todd Edelman wrote that Davey Hearn, "faces the unique possibility that the government will revive this case — one that it has already announced to be meritless — based on political pressure brought by the President of the United States upon his subordinate officers.”

The judge continued, “The government has no right to retain the ability to compound the errors it has already made, or even to threaten to do so, at Mr. Hearn’s expense.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin, the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, responded to the judge’s ruling on X:

Judge Edelman just permanently (“with prejudice”) dismissed the farcical charges brought against my wonderful constituent Davey Hearn.

As Judge Edelman pointed out, there was “no crime” so there’s no reason to hold the case up for further counterfeit prosecutions. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro never had any evidence against Davey, a three-time Olympian who has taught generations of my constituents canoeing, kayaking and how not to spend $15 million of taxpayer money turning your swimming pool into an algae farm.

Trump’s prosecutorial deflecting pool picked Davey as a scapegoat for Trump's Mar-a-Lago pool guy’s “rushed and botched” installation job of a new Royal hue in America’s Reflecting Pool, now known throughout the DMV as the "Strait of Warm Ooze."

So many Marylanders, led by Rockville Councilmember Adam Van Grack, stood strong with Davey as he fought these murky, trumped-up bogus charges. Now America celebrates a victory for justice and the rule of law.

Meantime, if Detectives Pirro and Blanche are still searching for felon vandals in the Nation’s Capital, I’ve got great leads on who illegally bulldozed the East Wing of the White House and who has been desecrating the Kennedy Center with deranged narcissistic graffiti.

If federal law enforcement were interested in stopping vandalism of monuments in Washington, they would begin with the guy who tore down the East Wing of the White House, destroyed the Reflecting Pool, and scribbled his name all over the Kennedy Center.

The real vandal has always been sitting in the Oval Office, seemingly napping most of the time.

Trump was willing to send an innocent person to jail to cover up his Reflecting Pool botch.

The corruption is endless, and the legal system is the only guardrail that has been effective in Trump’s second administration. 

Hope For America, Opinion: Trump’s incoherent rambling has reached a DISTURBING new low, Heather Delaney Reese, right, helen delaney reese djtSept. 30, 2026. At 1:39 this afternoon, after a nearly 40-minute delay and an unexplained commotion outside the doors, Donald Trump finally walked into the East Room of the White House. The guests raised their phones and cheered. They had come to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, but for the first 23 minutes, they mostly listened to the president talk about himself.

He invited them to see his ballroom floor, repeated praise from Xi Jinping, and compared himself to George Washington. Building monuments to himself, he said, was “really like relaxation.” Then he told a room filled mostly with Hispanic people that “only a Hispanic could survive that fall” from the edge of his construction site. The man who was supposed to be honoring them made a racist joke at their expense. He also announced that you are not allowed to talk about women’s beauty, then did exactly that to Rachel Campos-Duffy and her sister. He said it with a smirk. He wanted everyone to know that the rules did not apply to him.

The consequences of that example travel far beyond the White House. Our children and grandchildren are watching powerful people treat women this way without repercussions. Meanwhile, outside that carefully selected room, Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar had already told Trump that the same Hispanics who helped him reach the White House now feel betrayed. He promised raids against the worst criminals, but people without criminal records have been swept up too. I sat watching and taking notes, missing who I was before Trump and imagining a country with a leader focused on making our lives better. It brought me back to junior high, covering a talk about the First Gulf War for the school newspaper. A protest walkout was announced, and I was frightened to attend, even as a student reporter. A teacher helped me understand that sometimes responsibility to others requires pushing through fear and following your conscience. He told me to remember that feeling, write about it, and never let it go.

I think about that lesson now, when so many people feel overwhelmed and want to walk away. We are still the people who once believed we could change the world. We can see what is happening, and every time we speak out, we take a stand against it. There are people preparing for accountability, too. Robert Garcia said the senior leadership of the House Oversight Committee had spent the last two days “planning out the future of our investigations and hearings.” A Democratic-controlled Congress could make the remainder of Trump’s presidency look very different. On my daily walks, I see children playing on the beach and a country still filled with promise, people of different backgrounds who came together to form “a more perfect union.” That is what we are fighting for. The day accountability starts can and will come. We have to vote, and then we have to keep participating. Americans are not quitters, and we are not going to start now.

See the full story in the video. 

New York Times, Kristi Noem Files for Divorce After 34 Years of Marriage, Michael Levenson, Oct.1, 2026 (print ed.). Ms. Noem, a former homeland security secretary and governor of South Dakota, filed court papers there seeking to end her marriage to Bryon Noem, an insurance salesman.

Kristi Noem, the former South Dakota governor whom President Trump fired as homeland security secretary in March, has filed for divorce from her husband, Bryon Noem, after 34 years of marriage, according to court records.

Ms. Noem claimed “for settlement purposes only” that “irreconcilable differences” were to blame for the dissolution of the marriage, according to a complaint for divorce filed in Hamlin County, S.D., where she and Mr. Noem live in the small town of Castlewood.

The document was signed by Ms. Noem’s lawyer on April 6 but was not filed with the court until Monday.

“Kristi Noem has filed for the dissolution of her marriage to Bryon Noem,” her lawyer, Michael K. Sabers, said in a statement. “She has great faith in the South Dakota judicial system and will reserve any further comments for the legal process.”

Mr. Noem’s lawyer, Timothy G. Bottum, said in a statement on Wednesday that Mr. Noem was “saddened that the marriage is ending and hopes for a private and amicable resolution.”

“If court proceedings become necessary, Bryon will welcome the opportunity to truthfully share his perspective,” the statement said. “Bryon’s priority is to protect the family and move forward as loving parents and grandparents.”

Ms. Noem, 54, and Mr. Noem, 56, were high school sweethearts who got engaged on the Fourth of July in 1991. They were married less than a year later, on May 23, 1992, in Watertown, S.D., where Ms. Noem was born. They have three adult children.

Mr. Noem, an insurance salesman, received intense public scrutiny in late March when The Daily Mail published what it said were images of him wearing what appeared to be large inflated balloons under a spandex shirt.

Ms. Noem said in a statement at the time that she was “devastated” by the images and that “the family was blindsided by this.” Mr. Noem declined to comment in March, responding in a text to a New York Times reporter: “I will at some point. Today is not the day. I appreciate your heart.”While the images provoked online mockery, they touched off a more sympathetic reaction in Castlewood, where some residents said they felt sorry for Mr. Noem.

Ms. Noem’s personal life was also the focus of speculation and rumor in South Dakota and Washington.

On March 4, the day before Ms. Noem was fired as homeland security secretary, a Democratic member of Congress asked her at a hearing on Capitol Hill whether she had had sexual relations with her lieutenant, Corey Lewandowski. Responding under oath, Ms. Noem called the question “tabloid garbage.” But she did not say no. Mr. Noem accompanied Ms. Noem to the hearing.

Mr. Trump announced in November 2024 that he was selecting Ms. Noem to lead the Department of Homeland Security, a position that put her in charge of the administration’s aggressive crackdown on immigration and its large-scale deportation operation. The department includes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Mr. Trump fired Ms. Noem in March, making her the first cabinet official ousted in his second term.

The immediate catalyst for her firing appeared to be her answers during two congressional hearings, particularly her statements asserting that Mr. Trump had approved of tens of millions of dollars in government ads in which Ms. Noem was prominently featured riding on horseback in chaps and a cowboy hat. Mr. Trump had denied that he was involved, telling Reuters in March, “I never knew anything about it.”

Ms. Noem had presided over other controversies during her tenure.

In January, federal immigration agents fatally shot two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, during vigorous protests of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis. As bystander videos of the shootings caused a national outcry, Ms. Noem responded by accusing Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti of domestic terrorism.

When Mr. Trump announced that he was firing Ms. Noem and replacing her with Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, he said in a social media post that she had “served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results,” particularly on the border.

He also announced a new role for her: the previously nonexistent post of special envoy for the Shield of the Americas, which he said would be a new security initiative for the Western Hemisphere.

More On Artificial Intelligence

New York Times, Women Can Now Assess Their Breast Cancer Risk With the Help of A.I., Roni Caryn Rabin, Oct. 1, 2026. Clairity Breast, an A.I. tool that can predict five-year risk of developing breast cancer, is rolling out nationwide. Here’s what experts want you to know.

Starting Thursday, women across the United States will be able to find out their risk of developing breast cancer in the near future with the help of an A.I. tool that examines a single recent mammogram.

Everlywell, a digital health company, announced it would now offer patients nationwide access to Clairity Breast, an A.I. tool approved by the Food and Drug Administration last year to predict a woman’s five-year risk of breast cancer based on imaging. The test, which was previously available only at select locations in Massachusetts and Colorado, will cost $249. It is not covered by insurance.

Doctors use mammograms to detect the presence of cancer, sometimes with the help of A.I. models that can read the images. But Clairity’s software uses the scans for a different purpose: predicting the risk of developing cancer and providing a probability score that reports the patient’s future risk in the form of a percentage, from zero to 100.

That score, which doctors should consider along with other clinical information like family and patient medical history and other risk factors, could aid in efforts to detect cancers earlier, when they are more treatable and more likely to have better outcomes, said Dr. Eleonora Teplinsky, head of breast and gynecologic medical oncology at Valley Health System in Paramus, N.J.

The broader availability of a technology that can help women understand their breast cancer risk and talk to their doctors about it “has the potential to be practice-changing for us,” said Dr. Teplinsky, who is not involved with the work.

“We’re seeing younger and younger women with breast cancer, many of them diagnosed before they would even have started screening mammography at age 40,” she said.

Most have no telltale signs — like a strong family history of breast cancer — that would indicate higher-than-average risk. In fact, a majority of breast cancers occur in women with no family history of the illness.

“For so many women, it comes out of nowhere,” said Dr. Connie Lehman, founder and chief executive of Clairity, whose research led to the development of the new technology. “We’re trying to identify women at risk for these sporadic breast cancers, and to have fewer women fall through the cracks.”

But there are other factors to consider, including that the technology could lead to unnecessary alarm or medical interventions for people who ultimately won’t develop cancer. Here's what to know.

How does the test work?

The model detects subtle imaging patterns that are correlated with future cancer development, even in mammograms that appear normal to the human eye. It was developed and trained on hundreds of thousands of mammograms from women around the world, Dr. Lehman said, and its results have been validated in further testing since it was authorized.

Anyone who has had a routine standard screening mammogram within the past 12 months will be able to request the test on the Everlywell website. Typically, mammograms start at 40, though guidelines issued this year introduced A.I.-driven risk assessments at the age of 35 as an option for gauging the disease risk earlier. This change could lead more women to get mammograms at younger ages.

Everlywell will retrieve a patient’s image from the mammography center and then feed it into Clairity’s platform, which produces a digital report on the patient’s risk. The report classifies patients as at average, intermediate or high risk of developing breast cancer over the next five years. It does not detect cancer itself.

Someone with a score below 1.7 percent — meaning less than a 1.7 in 100 chance of developing breast cancer in the next five years — is considered to be at average risk. Patients with a score between 1.7 percent and 3 percent are considered at intermediate elevated risk; those with a score of 3 percent or more are at high risk. (Women who are undergoing cancer treatment or who have genetic mutations that put them at high risk of breast cancer are not eligible.)

More On Global Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets 

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: A Globalist Comeback?, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 1, 2026. Hints of a business break with MAGA.On September 28th Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, one of the most prominent, most successful financial figures in the United States, published an article in the Wall Street Journal titled, “The Hell with Trump, Let’s Go Back to Globalism.”

Okay, that’s a lie. That wasn’t what the article was titled, but it was, in effect, what it said.

And it was a very interesting message to be coming at this moment in time. I think Dimon’s op-ed can be viewed as a harbinger of a big shift in the business community’s political positions and its attitudes that may be coming in the very near future — in effect a bet that Trump and MAGA in general are going to be in the rearview mirror, not too far from now.

Now, a word about Dimon. He’s an extraordinarily successful financial leader. He navigated the 2008 financial crisis and aftermath better than almost anyone else in Wall Street. He had the good sense to limit JP Morgan’s exposure to the practices that helped to create that financial crisis.

He is also a very, very smart political operator. He has had a talent for not making enemies, for staying at least on decent relationships with administrations from both parties, which is no mean feat in 21st century America. He certainly did not join the cavalcade of business leaders rushing to prostrate themselves at Trump’s feet after the 2024 election, and yet he was subtle enough about his restraint to not get put on Trump’s enemies list. So,you know, his political judgment should be trusted.

His economic judgment, all right, being a great businessman is not at all the same thing as being a great economist. And there’s no particular reason to think that he is always right about economic affairs. But that is, in a way, mostly beside the point.

So what did Dimon call for? Well, he basically said, we need to repair theWestern alliance. We need to bring the Western world, the advanced democracies, above all the United States and Europe, back together in part as a way to stand up against the threat of a rising China. And his proposal for how to do that was to negotiate a free trade agreement between the United States and the European Union.

That’s quite something. That’s a very un-MAGA position to take. You want to bear in mind that, first of all, we’re currently under a government of people who do not at all believe in the virtues of free trade. In fact, are extremely hostile to globalism. Certainly don’t believe in binding international agreements. Maybe they want agreements that bind other countries, but not them.

And they are also not of the mind that we have a lot of shared values with the democratic governments of Europe. The MAGA position, if anything, is that they like the anti-democratic forces in Europe. J.D. Vance essentially campaigned for Viktor Orban in Hungary. Trump officials have been quite clear that they have sympathy for the AfD in Germany. So if we have common values with some Europeans, the Europeans with whom they have common values are neo-Nazis. And Trump’s de facto support for Putin in his invasion of Ukraine has been alarmingly clear over the past two years.

What we’re seeing here is Jamie Dimon basically saying that I don’t care about any of that. I don’t believe that you people are going to be in charge. And I think that we can go back to trying to rebuild bridges to Western Europe.

Now, it’s kind of interesting the way he phrases it. He puts a lot of it in terms that I suspect are intended to appeal to economic conservatives in the United States who are not MAGA types. He sells his proposal in part as an incentive for Europe to conduct pro-business, pro-economic reforms. He cites the Draghi report on European Competitiveness, which has been very influential in Europe. And points to him for even knowing about it! There are probably not a lot of people in the United States who have read the Draghi Report, absorbed its lessons.

I myself have read it. I have had some criticisms of some of the analysis in the Draghi Report, but the reforms that Draghi proposes, which have a lot to do with completing the European internal market, making the capital markets in Europe more flexible and responsive and so on, are very much in the right direction. So this is a good thing. And I’m glad to see someone in the United States, someone prominent, actually taking European affairs seriously and wanting the Europeans to do things that will improve their own position.

Dimon is almost surely overstating how important a free trade agreement with the United States could be. The reality is that the obstacles to European reform are internal — as are the obstacles to all the reforms we should be making here. Politics is real on both sides of the Atlantic.

And we are not as important to Europe — or they to us — as a lot of people imagine. The fact of the matter is that Europe only exports around 3% of what it produces to the US. And we were pretty close to free trade with Europe until Trump II came along. We had our average tariffs of only something on the order of 2% on European products. So it’s not as if he’s actually offering a tremendous benefit to Europe, something that would radically dislocate their internal politics and move them in a positive direction.

But, all right, it’s a good proposal. And I think that, as I understand it, Dimon believes that the process of negotiating towards a free trade agreement would in itself help to improve politics. That it would be a signal that the ultra-nationalist, anti-democratic, often anti-European policies of theTrump era are behind us.

So he’s looking forward to the day when we can start to try to repair some of the immense damage that has been done to our international relations during the Trump years.

Dimon is a smart political operator. I’m reasonably sure he would not have written this op-ed if the polls weren’t pointing towards a Democratic blowout. And of course, he could be wrong in believing that that’s going to happen, as we all could. But I’m sure that he is looking at the situation and envisaging a Democratic Congress — almost surely the House and quite likely the Senate — after the November election.

And a reasonable president, not necessarily a Democrat, but most likely, but in any case a reasonable president after Trump has gone from the scene.And a president and Congress that would be interested in trying to rebuild the Western alliance. Because ultimately, although Dimon’s proposal is economic in the narrow sense, it’s really political. It’s about rebuilding an alliance.

That won’t be easy. The fact of the matter is that the United States did just casually rip up solemnly signed trade agreements. Almost everything that Trump has done on tariffs is a violation of agreements made over several generations. Also, it’s not just Trump. The American people elected Trump twice, and the rest of the world is not going to forget that.

But free trade agreements can be a way of not just of enhancing trade, which is important, but maybe not as important as economists would like to think. But they can also be a way of binding countries closer together. They can be a gesture of alliance. And Diamond obviously thinks that this is possible, or at least thinks that it might be possible — close enough to being something that would really be on the table, that it’s worth making a case for it, and that it’s worth positioning himself and his institution for a post-MAGA era. And as Isaid, Diamond is a smart guy with a very, very good political judgment.

So that op-ed was one of the most encouraging things I’ve seen in months.

On that happy note, take care.

New York Times, Trump’s Threat to Ban Diesel Exports Sets Off Global Alarms, Lisa Friedman and River Akira Davis, Oct. 1, 2026. A reduction in refineries has already driven the price of diesel to record highs, threatening economies. An U.S. export ban would be “tremendous shock and blow.”

The Iran war has sent diesel prices soaring around the world, straining national budgets, adding costs to businesses and snarling supply chains from farms to ports.

Now President Trump is threatening to ban or restrict the export of diesel from the United States, which is the top supplier to more than a dozen countries including Mexico, Canada and much of Europe. Oil executives and world leaders are issuing increasingly dire warnings that the result could be global price spikes on everything from groceries to jet fuel.

“I’ve sent a very clear signal to my American counterpart and also the public, which is that it is not in the interest of anybody — not the U.S., not us — to not have as free a flow of energy as possible in these difficult times,” Dan Jorgensen, the European Union’s energy minister, said on Tuesday.

Often called the workhorse fuel of the global economy, diesel is made from crude oil at refineries. It powers the heavy machinery, trucks, tractors and agricultural equipment crucial to heavy industry. When diesel prices rise, so do freight charges and other transportation costs, which often cascade into higher prices for things like food at the supermarket or even gasoline at the pump — because the heavy-duty tankers that deliver gas themselves run on diesel.

The primary reason for the price jump is a lack of refining capacity caused by the war in Iran. Missile strikes have damaged refineries in the Middle East, and the disruptions in shipping in the region have made it harder to transport. In addition, Ukraine has attacked and damaged many Russian refineries. That has forced Russia, a major exporter, to hoard its supplies of diesel.

In the United States, retail diesel prices climbed last month to a record high of more than $6.50 per gallon — nearly 70 percent more than this time last year. That’s put intense pressure on Mr. Trump and Republicans to find ways to lower costs, particularly before the midterm elections in November.

The crunch touches many corners of the world.

In Europe and Britain, the price of diesel has gone up by 40 percent since mid-June. In Canada prices have surged to record highs of more than 2 Canadian dollars per liter for the last 12 weeks, up about 59 percent compared with before the war. In some places, diesel shortages and high fuel costs are leaving irrigation pumps empty, damaging rice harvests.

Analysts are warning, nearly uniformly, that if the United States held back its diesel from the global market, the result would briefly lower prices for Americans, but rapidly hurt the rest of the world. Even in the United States, many warn, a ban would soon be self-defeating.

A U.S. export ban on diesel would be deeply damaging in Europe, which has become increasingly dependent on American fuel since the loss of supplies from Russia.

New York Times, U.S. Bond Yields Hit Highest Level Since 2002, Eshe Nelson and Joe Rennison, Oct. 1, 2026.The higher yields, which are pressuring consumer and corporate borrowers and increasingly weighing on certain corners of the stock market, are unlikely to dissipate soon.

The yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes reached its highest level since 2002, driving up borrowing costs for consumers and companies around the world, as a global sell-off in the government bond market continued.

The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield, which underpins corporate and consumer interest rates, soared as high as 5.34 percent on Thursday before easing back to around 5.26 percent, still on course to end the day at it highest level since 2007.

The yield on 10-year French bonds rose to 4.92 percent, also its highest since 2002. Benchmark 10-year notes in Italy and Japan also rose on Thursday, while other regions were more mixed. When bond yields rise, the price, or value, of that bond declines.

The latest moves came as oil prices remained elevated, intensifying short-term inflation pressure that will likely keep central banks around the world from lowering interest rates soon. Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, is trading above $100 a barrel, even as more oil is flowing from the Middle East than at any point since the start of the war with Iran. Brent has risen roughly 40 percent since the start of the conflict in late February.

More Global News

 

all rise news adam klasfeldAll Rise News, Judge orders Trump DOJ to produce boat strikes memo, Adam Klasfeld, right, adam klasfeldSept. 30, 2026. The secret memo justifying strikes that killed 234 people inches closer to public release. Also: Blanche goes after Minnesota judges.

The Trump administration must produce a memo containing the legal justifications for boat strikes that have killed 234 people in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean for a federal judge’s private review.

In a 66-page order on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer gave the government two weeks to send him the memo for him to determine whether to publicly release it.

The judge’s opinion also rejected the Trump Justice Department’s claims that deliberative process and attorney-client privilege prevented its disclosure.

Jeffrey Stein, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, called the ruling a “a huge step in the right direction of ensuring that the government does not get to summarily execute people based on secret law.”

“The public deserves to know how our government is justifying the cold-blooded murder of hundreds of civilians,” Stein said.

The ACLU, the ACLU Foundation, and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking the memo’s release.

Justice Department log circularCreated in September 2025, the Trump Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel memo purported to justify strikes on boats suspected of being involved in drug trafficking.

Judge Engelmayer found that the Pentagon had treated the memo “as its effective law and policy governing the boat strikes,” making it “working law.”

“It reflects that other components of the Administration, including the White House, have held out the Memo in a similar manner,” he added.

The judge declined to rule yet on the government’s assertion of presidential communications privilege pending his review of the document.

Attorney Baher Azmy, the legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, described the importance of the memo’s release.

“No president can arbitrarily assassinate people from the sky based on their sole say-so,” Azmy said in a statement. “If the OLC opinion seeks to dress up the obvious illegality of these serial murders in legalese to provide Trump cover, the public needs to see that analysis and ultimately hold accountable all those who facilitate murder in the United States’ name.”