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This Incoming Congress is on track to Have The Most LGBT Members in History

2026-11-08T11:05:50.660-05:00

US Congress (Canva)

The incoming 2027 US Congress is on track to be the most LGBTQ+ in history, with at least 17 out queer members.

Written by PinkNews Staff

Pink News

The incoming 2027 US Congress is on track to be the most LGBTQ+ in history, with at least 17 out queer members.

As 2026 midterm results continued to come in, the incoming Congress is set to be the most LGBTQ+ Congress ever. There are currently 14 out LGBTQ+ members of Congress. Three are leaving, but at least six are coming in, taking the total to 17.

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All nine out House members who sought re-election won again: Reps. Becca Balint (D-VT), Sharice Davids (D-KS), Robert Garcia (D-CA), Sarah McBride (D-DE), Mark Pocan (D-WI), Emily Randall (D-WA), Eric Sorensen (D-IL), Mark Takano (D-CA), and Ritchie Torres (D-NY).

Three sitting House members will not return to Congress next year: Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN), after running for the Senate and losing her primary; Rep. Julie Johnson (D-TX), after being gerrymandered out of her district; and Rep. Everton Blair (D-GA) won a special election earlier this year, but later lost the primary for the general election.

Who are the new LGBTQ+ winners and what’s still undecided?

Of seven LGBTQ+ people challenging an incumbent or running in an open seat, seven were elected and one is projected to lose (Chris Gallant in New York). There are six winners: Cait Conley (New York), JD Ford (Indiana), JoAnna Mendoza (Arizona), Jeremy Moss (Michigan), Marnie von Wilpert (California) and, most recently announced, Scott Wiener (California).

In the Senate, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) was not up for re-election, but current Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH) won his election to the Senate. The nonvoting Delegate to the US House of Representatives from the US Virgin Islands will be out lawmaker Janelle Sarauw.

In this edit, JoJo Siwa (R) and Kylie Prew kiss with a broken heart next to them

26 LGBTQ+ couples we were rooting for but whose break-ups really, really hurt

The US Congress is made up of the House of Representatives and the Senate, and it sets federal law and budgets. After the 2020 election, a total of 11 openly LGBT+ congresspeople was described as the most in US history, and in 2023, Congress was described as “the queerest its ever been, with 13 LGBTQ+ members of Congress”.

In Talarico's Texas, A Different Kind of Christianity Shows Up

2026-11-08T10:41:18.564-05:00

James Talarico slew his own giant this week, ending decades of Republican control in Texas. Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

By Ruth Graham

Reporting from Dallas

New York Times

James Talarico, a onetime Sunday school teacher, opened his acceptance speech on Tuesday night with a Bible story.

“I’m reminded of that story from Scripture of a shepherd boy who goes up against a giant,” he told an ebullient crowd in Austin, Texas. In the end, of course, the shepherd boy defeats the well-armed Goliath with only a slingshot.

Mr. Talarico slew his own giant this week, ending decades of Republican control in Texas with a decisive win that carried multiple other Democrats in the state to victory. He did it in part by speaking easily and openly about how his Christian beliefs inform his politics, starting with the biblical command to love God and “love thy neighbor,” as the sign on his lectern read on Tuesday night.

He was one of many successful Democrats across the country who framed their politics in terms of their Christian faith. The Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton pulled off a similar upset in Kansas. Two ordained ministers, Sarah Trone Garriott and Lindsay James, flipped House seats for Democrats in Iowa.

Adam Hamilton, hugging his wife.

The Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton became the first Democrat to win a U.S. Senate election in Kansas in nearly a century.Credit...Jim Vondruska/Getty Images

In Texas, Mr. Talarico was an underdog not just because of his party, but because of the type of Christianity he practices. He is a progressive mainline Protestant — a Presbyterian, specifically — in a state defined culturally and politically by conservative evangelicalism. Texas has seven of the 20 largest churches in the country, all of which can be characterized as evangelical. Sprawling big-box-style campuses line the highways, and steeples dot the back roads. In cities, Bible study gatherings often require microphones.

In recent years, an increasingly combative Christian conservatism came to feel like a kind of official state language of faith. This summer, Texas became the first state to mandate Bible readings in public schools, after a successful push to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms there. Republican lawmakers also turned the power of the state against some Muslim groups, often framing the cause as a spiritual battle.

More than a quarter of adult Texans are self-described evangelicals. But the state is also home to progressive Protestants like Mr. Talarico, millions of Catholics, and politically active Black congregations, including one in Dallas whose pastor was elected to Congress as a Democrat this week.

Mr. Talarico, an eighth-generation Texan and onetime seminarian, understood all that. His own grandfather, once a Baptist preacher, found himself on the “moderate” side when conservatives took over the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1970s and ’80s, a move masterminded in Texas. Mr. Talarico was raised in a church that has been known locally for its progressive activism for decades.

In a town hall hosted by CNN in October, a voter from his hometown of Round Rock, Texas, pressed him “Christian to Christian” about provocative past statements like “God is nonbinary.”

“Do you believe that the Bible is the absolute source of truth and God’s final authoritative word, even when our culture says otherwise?” she asked.

“Yes,” Mr. Talarico answered.

For many, his rise was a reminder of the capacious borders of Christianity in the state.

“The loudest voices that people hear are these megachurches, and they think that’s what we’re all doing,” said the Rev. Janet Maykus. She was raised in a progressive church in then-rural Lancaster, Texas, where she was taught that “faith is something particular to every person,” rooted in justice and kindness rather than doctrine.

Ms. Maykus, 64, now leads the United Christian Church of Austin, a small mainline Protestant congregation in the capital.

When her congregation recites the Lord’s Prayer, it’s a “train wreck,” she said fondly. Some people recite a version with gender-inclusive language; others tack on a few extra words here and there. In every service, Ms. Maykus also prays aloud for “our siblings in Christ who have lost their way to the lure of white Christian nationalism.”

In recent months, she said, she has talked with multiple visitors to the church who said they had been inspired by Mr. Talarico to seek out a church like hers. She is baptizing a baby on Sunday.

The growth of progressive congregations like hers is exactly why Robert Jeffress, pastor of the politically influential church First Baptist Dallas, watched Mr. Talarico’s ascent with alarm, he said in an interview this week.

Robert Jeffress, speaking at a lectern.

Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of the politically influential church First Baptist Dallas.Credit...Ronaldo Schemidt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“What James Talarico believes about the Bible and about Jesus, those beliefs don’t disqualify him from being a senator, but they do disqualify him from being a Christian pastor, or even a Christian,” Mr. Jeffress said, referring in part to Mr. Talarico’s suggestion that Christianity is not the only religion that points to the truth.

Last Sunday, Mr. Jeffress said, he alluded to Mr. Talarico as he preached about the tower of Babel, warning how “false religion always mixes truth with error.”

Mr. Jeffress’s church, established in the 1860s, is one of many institutions that have long made Texas a major exporter of politically conservative Christianity.

Texas is where the folksy fundamentalist radio host W. Lee O’Daniel became governor in 1938, with a platform based on the Ten Commandments and low taxes. It’s where W.A. Criswell, a predecessor of Mr. Jeffress, called the separation of church and state “the figment of some infidel’s imagination” in 1984. And it’s where Dan Patrick, the state’s current lieutenant governor, described his socially conservative agenda as an expression of his Christian faith.

In the run-up to the Senate race, pastors of some of the largest evangelical congregations in the state worked overtime to make the case against Mr. Talarico, even as they nodded at the scandal-ridden reputation of his opponent, Ken Paxton.

“Wise Christians can differentiate between a FALLEN candidate and an EVIL candidate,” Josh Howerton, the pastor of a large church in North Texas, wrote on X last week, without mentioning Mr. Paxton or Mr. Talarico by name.

Ken Paxton, approaching a set of stairs.

Ken Paxton at his election night watch party in Dallas. Credit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

A so-called fallen candidate has “personal sin” in his or her own life, the pastor wrote. An evil candidate, by contrast, “leads entire communities, states, and nations to sin.”

Mr. Paxton made his own pitch to conservative Christians. One ad used artificial intelligence to depict Mr. Talarico defacing a Bible and reciting quotes taken out of context from his sermons and speeches.

“If Christians don’t vote,” Mr. Paxton told the right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson on Election Day, “we’re going to have trouble sustaining Christianity in this country.”

But Mr. Paxton didn’t speak as easily about his own religious life. It was never clear during the campaign whether he still belongs to a church. His former pastor, Jack Graham, the longtime leader of a politically influential megachurch near Dallas, joined the faith council of his opponent in the primary, John Cornyn.

This week, some in the state wondered if they were seeing the end of one era of Texas Christianity, and the beginning of another.

“If that form of conservative Christianity was going to die out, this is what it would look like,” said Joseph Locke, an historian at the University of North Texas and the author of a recent book about religion in the state.

“It would start with these isolated victories, and you could see the cracks forming,” he said.

Why Did Trump's White Working Class Shifted and Left For Dems

2026-11-08T10:13:18.531-05:00

Kylee Wilson, at her house in Prairie City, Iowa, said she voted for Democrats after voting for President Trump three times. “Trump put a target on America’s back,” she said. Credit...

By Bayliss Wagner

Bayliss Wagner interviewed voters in Atlantic, Council Bluffs, Clarion, Harlan, Prairie City, Onawa and Sioux City, Iowa.

New York Times

Kylee Wilson, a part-time bartender in the blue-collar town of Prairie City, Iowa, turned to the bar and broke the news to one of her regulars. After voting three times for President Trump, she pulled the lever for Democrats this year.

“Tim, don’t hate me for this,” she told the customer, Tim Charls, 64. But Mr. Trump had become “too brash,” too bellicose, too tied up in the war in Iran, she said, all while she and her family struggled with rising costs and health care cuts.

“Trump put a target on America’s back,” said Ms. Wilson, 29, who works in sales support at a heavy machinery company during the day. She said she was concerned about “the state of the country and the world.”

All across the country, millions of white, working-class voters such as Ms. Wilson shifted toward Democrats in the midterms, part of a lurch to the left across demographic groups that propelled the party to its biggest rout in a generation.

While a clear majority of white voters without a college degree favored Republican House candidates over Democrats (59 percent to 40 percent), the margin was 14 percentage points smaller than Mr. Trump’s was in the 2024 presidential election, according to Times Voter Trends data.

A row of buildings and a stop sign on a street.

“People were really focused more on what was happening to their standard of living,” said Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University political scientist.Credit...Rachel Mummey for The New York Times

In many key Senate races, such as Iowa’s, the movement was even more pronounced. Even as other demographic groups shifted more drastically toward Democrats overall, the changing attitudes of white, working-class voters — who made up 39 percent of the electorate this year — were striking because they have been a cornerstone of Mr. Trump’s coalition for more than a decade.

Many of them vehemently oppose Democrats’ stances on issues such as abortion, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and immigration, said Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University political scientist. But in this election, “people were really focused more on what was happening to their standard of living,” he added.

Whether the Democratic gains with white, working-class voters will endure remains to be seen. But these voters’ frustrations with high costs, driven up by tariffs and the war in Iran, were a clear obstacle for the G.O.P. in the midterms.

Working-class voters “thought Trump would fix the economy,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist. “Two years later, they still feel like they’re falling behind.”

How white voters without a college degree swung left in battl

Democrats put inflation and corruption at the center of their midterm campaigns, arguing that the wealthy and powerful were helping themselves at the expense of everyone else. Mr. Trump, who rose to power stoking economic grievance, using anti-immigrant rhetoric, and vowing to keep the U.S. out of foreign wars, struggled this year to convince voters that he and his party had made their lives better with his agenda.

In North Carolina’s Senate race, Roy Cooper, the Democratic nominee, embarked on a “Make Stuff Cost Less” tour. In Ohio’s Senate contest, Sherrod Brown, also a Democrat, framed policy disputes as battles between workers and billionaires.

Here in Iowa, where nearly 60 percent of the electorate is white and working class, Josh Turek, the Democratic Senate nominee, often spoke about his own working-class upbringing and pinned high food and fuel prices on Mr. Trump’s tariffs and the war. He also ran as a centrist on social issues and immigration, saying politics should be less polarized.

That pitch resonated with voters such as Ms. Wilson, who voted for Mr. Turek and for Rob Sand, the Democratic nominee for governor. She said she felt both centrist Democrats, who each won on Tuesday, would provide counterweights to Mr. Trump’s “war words.”

“I just want everybody to get along,” Ms. Wilson said.

Kenneth Hessen, a retired truck driver who said he was furious about Medicaid spending cuts in Mr. Trump’s tax and spending bill, also broke with his usual voting practices.

“I’ve voted Republican since I was 18 years old,” Mr. Hessen, 69, said at a polling station in Council Bluffs on Tuesday. “This year, I voted for every Democrat. If there was one under a rock, I’d vote for them today.”

Mr. Chadwick leans against a car in an automotive shop.

Kevin Chadwick at his shop in Harlan, Iowa on Nov. 6, 2026. He said he was celebrating the Democratic sweep in Iowa, Texas and beyond because it “proves that money can’t buy everything.”Credit...Rachel Mummey for The New York Times

Others who flipped said they did so despite Mr. Trump, not because of him.

Kevin Chadwick, 69, had his first child before graduating from high school and eventually built his own towing and repair business in Harlan, Iowa. Mr. Chadwick still supports Mr. Trump — “I wish he could run another term,” he said — and sees the war in Iran as necessary to keep the country from “pushing us around.”

Yet he voted Democratic in the Senate race, saying he was concerned that the Republican Senate nominee, Representative Ashley Hinson, had become millions of dollars richer while in office. (Ms. Hinson has said the sale of her husband’s business drove her jump in net worth.) When it came to the governor’s race, Mr. Sand’s demeanor also played a major role in Mr. Chadwick’s choice, as did his plan to legalize marijuana.

“I just like him, you know?” Mr. Chadwick said. “I think he’s down to earth. He’s honest.”

Mr. Chadwick said he was celebrating the Democratic sweep in Iowa, Texas and beyond because it “proves that money can’t buy everything,” after Elon Musk and other wealthy donors gave historic amounts to Republicans.

Many white, working-class voters still support Mr. Trump and Republicans over Democrats, including some who believe the president is looking out more for wealthier Americans.

Dave Barickman, 77, a retired law enforcement officer who lives in Council Bluffs, Iowa, voted for Republicans again this year because he favors the party’s approach to border security, the economy and social issues.

Mr. Trump “has the wheels turning right” on the economy, Mr. Barickman said, though the president is “probably taking care of the rich people more than the others.”

In some cases, more aggressive Democratic efforts appeared to help them break through with white, working-class voters. American Bridge, a Democratic super PAC, turned research on the frustrations and priorities of working-class voters into a $50 million ad blitz across red-leaning states and districts.

An American flag hangs in the middle of a town with a sign that reads, “Harlan”.

At campaign events in Harlan, Iowa, and elsewhere, Mr. Turek spoke about his own working-class upbringing and pinned high food and fuel prices on tariffs and the war. Credit...Rachel Mummey for The New York Times

Corey Davis, a supporter of Mr. Turek and a Democrat, said his union participated in a statewide door-knocking campaign run by the A.F.L.-C.I.O. for the first time in years. He said he personally drove two first-time voters from his union to the polls.

“This year, I was like, I’ve got to do more than I’ve ever done before, because I’m sick of getting disappointed,” Mr. Davis, a member of the Communications Workers of America who lives in Sioux City, said.

Mr. Trump blamed Republicans’ widespread midterm losses on the fact that he “wasn’t on the ticket.” Other Republicans have dismissed that notion.

At the bar in Prairie City, Mr. Charls told the bartender, Ms. Wilson, that he blamed backlash to Mr. Trump for Tuesday’s Republican wipeout.

“He’s a drama queen,” said Mr. Charls, who owns an electronics store and farms part time. “He always says, ‘Well, it’s somebody else’s fault.’ No, you lost. Like in 2020.”

Mr. Charls stuck with Republicans this election, as he has for years. He said he felt Democrats would worsen the country’s economic problems, which he attributed to inflation that began during the Biden administration, and he is worried that the party will “go woke” again when they retake power. And he predicted white, working-class voters won’t stay with Democrats for long.

If Democrats “act stupid the next two years,” Mr. Charls said, “They’ll flop the other way.”

Mr. Chadwick, the towing business owner who voted for Democrats, sounded unsure about what his vote would deliver.

“I hope it gets better,” he said. “But we hope that every election.”

Korean Government Had to Apologize For Saying Being Gay is a Form of Deliquency

2026-11-07T10:37:01.676-05:00

Gay couple walking down the street in Myeong-dong in Seoul, South Korea 12-3-24 | Wynn Wygal / Shutterstock.com

Greg Owen

The government of South Korea apologized on Wednesday for language in a manual written for youth counselors that categorized homosexuality as deviant behavior.

Homosexuality was grouped with sexual violence, theft and drug abuse under “delinquency-related issues” in the manual, the Korea JoongAng Daily reported.

Human rights groups, led by a support center for LGBTQ+ youth, issued a joint statement Wednesday demanding that the offending language be removed. The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family responded the same day, expressing regret over the description.

“We regret that the classification of content concerning sexual minorities as a type of delinquency-related problem in the manual has caused discomfort and concern to sexual minority youth and those involved,” the ministry said in a statement.

The association of LGBTQ+ youth with juvenile delinquency in the publication, produced for “youth companions” and staff at youth counseling and welfare centers in South Korea, was first reported by local news outlets on Monday.

The manual, published by the Korea Youth Counseling & Welfare Institute, guides counselors who visit at-risk young people and connect them with counseling, welfare, healthcare, education, and other support services. The institute is affiliated with the ministry.

The categorization appeared in the first edition of the manual in 2019. The 4th edition, published in 2026, included the same language.

The institute blamed the manual’s writing team for the error, which it said had carried the wording over from outdated reference material. The ministry said it will correct the passage immediately and review the resource in its entirety in consultation with counseling experts. It pointed to another overhaul undertaken this summer to update a similar publication.

“Based on feedback gathered last December from groups supporting sexual minorities and others, we revised the youth human rights protection manual for youth shelter staff in August,” a ministry official said. “We will work to ensure that all young people can receive counseling and protection without discrimination.”

South Korea has a mixed record on LGBTQ+ rights following the country’s emergence from military dictatorship in 1988, and homosexuality is still considered taboo by a majority of its citizens.

While same-sex relations are legal in the country, homosexuality is a bar to military service. Trans service members are also barred from the military, and gender-affirming care for trans youth is illegal in the country. Transgender adults may change their gender identity on official documents.

South Korea does not recognize same-sex marriage or civil unions, but did change its census in 2025 to allow same-sex couples to identify as “spouses” or “cohabiting partners.” Adoption by same-sex couples is banned.

There are no federal protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, although sexual orientation as one of several protected classes came with the creation of South Korea’s National Human Rights Commission in 2001.

While polling indicates a higher acceptance of homosexuality among young people in South Korea, a survey from Human Rights Watch revealed LGBTQ+ youth face a hostile environment in the country’s schools. A 2021 investigation found that LGBTQ+ students in South Korea face “bullying and harassment, a lack of confidential mental health support, exclusion from school curricula, and gender identity discrimination.”

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How Elon Musk Threw Away Nearly 1/2 $ Bill On His Interference on Midterms

2026-11-07T10:22:24.162-05:00

Elon Musk has become by far the Republican Party’s biggest megadonor, spending nearly $500 million during the 2025-26 midterm election cycle.Credit...Jason Henry for The New York Times

By Theodore Schleifer

Theodore Schleifer extensively covered Elon Musk’s political work in the 2024 and 2026 elections.

The world’s richest person had face-planted — and was now trying to turn back time.

Elon Musk spent nearly half a billion dollars during the midterm cycle, the most in any election period for a donor who wasn’t a candidate himself.

Elon Musk’s campaign donations

A segmented bar chart showing where Elon Musk's campaign giving went during the 2026 midterm cycle.2023-24

$290 mil.2025-26

$474 mil.America PAC

$216 mil.Senate Leadership Fund

$168 mil.Congressional Leadership Fund

$30 mil.Other Republican groups

$44 mil.State groups

$16 mil.

Source: Federal Election Commission.Lily Boyce/The New York Tiimes

He hoped to defend Republican control of Congress and rescue Ken Paxton, the party’s embattled nominee for Senate in Texas. Instead, Democrats won shockingly large House and Senate majorities, and Mr. Paxton was trounced by James Talarico, who seemed to bother Mr. Musk like no other Democratic candidate.

When the devastating result became clear, Mr. Musk deleted an X post that had encouraged Republicans to turn out, and tried to joke his way out of how badly the night had gone for him. “Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn’t work this time,” he wrote early Wednesday.

It was a stunning failure. Now the onetime trillionaire is all but certain to face investigatory scrutiny and financial pressure with newly empowered Democrats in control of Congress and top state offices in Texas, where he lives and operates many of his businesses. Mr. Musk, who moved there from California in part to escape the regulatory environment, will soon be represented by a senator who has said he wants to “tax trillionaires out of existence.”

The political influence of Mr. Musk, who has become by far the Republican Party’s biggest megadonor, is now in serious question.

How he arrived at this point is a story of an unpredictable tycoon who was never in denial about Republicans’ predicament this year, but who was also characteristically starry-eyed about his ability to help the party beat the odds.

In interviews, nearly 30 people with insight into Mr. Musk’s political operation — most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations — recounted how he came to spend so much on the midterms, how tensions grew between his team and President Trump’s advisers, and how his varied and often last-ditch strategies fizzled.

There is now some finger-pointing in Mr. Musk’s broader orbit about who is responsible for what went wrong and whether he should have spent so much, particularly in Texas. Some advisers to Mr. Musk’s super PAC, America PAC, had argued internally that the group should be more focused on persuasion (winning over new voters) than on turnout (encouraging past Republican voters to cast ballots again).

But in private conversations, Mr. Musk has rejected that argument, saying that spending money to persuade Americans to vote for a certain candidate is a waste. Plenty of other groups spend money on that. The real return on investment, he has told people, comes from getting out the vote with door-knockers — something that Mr. Musk believes he is better at than anybody else.

Many elections come down to turnout. But not this one.

President Trump in the foreground, with Mr. Musk standing behind him with his arms crossed.

Mr. Musk served as an adviser to President Trump and led his cost-cutting effort in Washington before the two men fell out over the president’s domestic policy bill. By early this year, they had warmed back up again.Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

An Erratic, Frustrated Billionaire

If Mr. Paxton had won in Texas, according to two people with knowledge of his planned victory speech, he intended to issue a big thank-you to Mr. Musk.

The public message of appreciation, of course, went undelivered.

Mr. Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, went through a politically tumultuous 2025. He served as a powerful adviser to the Trump White House before the two men fell out spectacularly over the president’s domestic policy bill. By early this year, he and Mr. Trump had warmed back up to each other, but it was unclear even to Mr. Musk’s advisers whether he planned to lift a finger to help Republicans in the midterms.

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Mr. Musk began the year in a mood that did not seem aligned with Senate Republicans. He whipped up a frenzy against Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, because he had not forced through a major bill of voting restrictions. At a meeting in January at a Tesla factory near Austin, Mr. Thune tried to walk a patient Mr. Musk through why he didn’t have the votes to pass the measure, two people with knowledge of the discussion said. The meeting seemed to go well. But Mr. Musk continued his online rampage.

In private conversations, Mr. Musk was all over the place about whether he wanted to spend heavily on politics.

He was unnerved by his first foray into midterm-cycle spending, a 2025 judicial election in Wisconsin in which he spent $47 million only for his candidate to lose. Mr. Musk’s lesson was that he should not make himself the face of his campaign efforts.

His mind also seemed elsewhere, on A.I. and SpaceX. Early this year, he told a billionaire peer that he was not terribly optimistic about the Republican Party’s political standing or its chances in 2028. Throughout the year, he did not seem to want to talk much about the midterms, beyond voicing concern that a left-wing politician like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York could eventually become president.

He could be erratic. In January, Mr. Musk donated $10 million to support Nate Morris, a long-shot candidate for the Senate in Kentucky — a move that blindsided his own team, which had no heads-up. Several people close to Mr. Musk thought the donation to Mr. Morris, a friend of Vice President JD Vance’s, was a mistake, and Mr. Morris dropped out before the primary.

In May, as Mr. Musk rode aboard Air Force One on a trip to China, James Blair, Mr. Trump’s top political adviser, told Mr. Musk he hoped the billionaire would help Republicans in the midterms again, according to two people with knowledge of the discussion. Mr. Musk, whose super PAC spent hundreds of millions in 2024 to return Mr. Trump to office, said that yes, he was in for Round 2 — and told Mr. Blair to send him ideas.

Mr. Blair sketched out a request for a Musk-led door-knocking program costing about $100 million. The Musk team was taken aback. Such money might be pocket change for Mr. Musk, who is worth hundreds of billions, but it was far more than America PAC had been prepared to spend.

Mr. Musk eventually assented — and went even further, authorizing spending for a program beyond door-knocking that would cost $100 million to $120 million.

But at times the Musk team grew frustrated with the Trump team, according to three people with knowledge of the interactions. The Musk crew was deferential but sometimes felt resentful or used by the Trump operation. The Musk team also believed that the polling from Mr. Trump’s super PAC, MAGA Inc., was inconsistent and that the group was too slow to engage in races.

Asked for comment, an America PAC official said the relationship was strong.

Mr. Musk’s budget for his super PAC eventually grew to $150 million or $160 million — because of Texas.

The state wasn’t even on the initial list of six Senate races that Mr. Musk had in mind. But over the summer, Mr. Musk’s advisers began to tell close allies that he planned to allocate an eye-popping amount to Texas, primarily to help the state’s Republican candidates for the U.S. House.

An inflatable figure of resembling Elon Musk near a person wearing a Ken Paxton mask who is holding up a fake blank check from Mr. Musk to Mr. Paxton.

Ken Paxton’s heavy financial support from Mr. Musk in the Texas Senate race became a line of attack for Democrats. Credit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

All-In on Texas

Mr. Musk’s team saw how Texas was trending politically, and he found himself at a crossroads. He hardly knew Mr. Paxton well, and the two barely speak, according to two people with knowledge of their relationship. But he grew preoccupied with Mr. Talarico. Should he spend a fortune to beat him?

In mid-August, Mr. Paxton’s team was desperate and needed cash immediately. He had struggled mightily to raise money and was facing the strongest Democratic fund-raiser in the country, who had been pounding him with negative ads.

An extraordinary plan came together. The head of Mr. Paxton’s super PAC, Sam Cooper, hosted a fund-raising call alongside Mr. Paxton and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a fellow Republican. In dire terms, Mr. Cooper urged some of the party’s biggest Texas donors to give money to save Mr. Paxton before it was too late.

Listening, with some alarm, was Mr. Musk’s top political adviser, Chris Young. Soon after, he began negotiating with Alex Latcham, the head of the Thune-aligned super PAC for Senate Republicans. They agreed to split a $15 million ad reservation to help Mr. Paxton — and then things snowballed. They swapped spending proposals, and Mr. Young got Mr. Musk’s sign-off to send another $158 million to Mr. Latcham’s group for a Paxton rescue mission that began in mid-September.

Despite cutting some of the biggest checks ever recorded in American politics, Mr. Musk operated during those negotiations with the remove that defined all of his midterm engagement. Mr. Thune, too, was effectively absent: He was informed afterward that his Texas money problem, so to speak, had been solved. In private conversations with donors, Mr. Thune mostly stayed mum about Mr. Musk’s role.

Mr. Musk was now firmly in the persuasion game he had dismissed: Mr. Latcham’s super PAC ran ads to try to win over voters by focusing on transgender and crime-related issues.

The Musk team thought that its spending for Mr. Paxton had worked and had chipped 10 percentage points off Mr. Talarico’s favorability numbers.

Some allies of Mr. Musk were also nervous about what would happen to his companies if Gov. Greg Abbott and other top Republican state officials were to lose re-election. So the billionaire spent $12.5 million on state politics, too. All that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick needed to do to get his $500,000 was simply call Mr. Young and ask.

Mr. Abbott, Mr. Patrick and all the other Republican statewide candidates in Texas lost.

“Elon tried to spend a whole bunch of money in his home state and not only lost the Senate, but the governorship and all the rest,” Reid Hoffman, a major donor to Mr. Talarico and a business rival of Mr. Musk’s, said in an interview. “Clearly, his ability to spend money to win an election has been multiply disproven.”

A happy crowd in front of a James Talarico sign.

Mr. Talarico ended up winning by a bigger margin than expected, 12 percentage points. Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Did Musk Make a Mistake?

As Election Day approached, Mr. Musk’s advisers feared a blue wave and were skittish about being blamed. They came to see the midterms as an inescapable referendum on Mr. Trump and his second-term actions, especially his decision to go to war with Iran. How much power did they really have?

Mr. Musk’s team believed that its turnout operation could act like a special-teams unit in football — helping Republicans gain a few extra percentage points that could make the difference in a close race.

Mr. Musk expressed to at least one friend that he thought of his turnout work as effectively a civic duty and not political at all.

At the same time, Mr. Musk’s super PAC sent texts to voters that used A.I. to create personalized videos of Mr. Trump using their first names to encourage them to turn out. (“We need voters like you, Kathleen.”)

The operation that Mr. Musk assembled was enormous, bigger than what he had in 2024. Thousands of paid canvassers were dispatched to knock on millions of doors of Republican-leaning Americans who were seen as less likely to vote yet could be encouraged to do so. But as Republicans’ polling grew uglier in the final weeks, America PAC began knocking on the doors of likelier and likelier voters, drifting away from its original job.

Some Republicans wished that the Musk field operation had begun earlier — it did not kick fully into gear until around Labor Day.

Around then, Mr. Musk’s super PAC decided to scale up drastically in Texas. The group knocked on roughly 1.7 million doors there over the final three weeks of September. But it may have been too late: In some key Texas markets, the super PAC did not meet all of its door-knocking targets, in part because it could not find enough labor, according to people with knowledge of the figures.

Asked for comment, the America PAC official said the group had routinely raised its target numbers.

The Musk operation tried to do things as cost-effectively as possible — paying some canvassing firms about $4.50 a door, a relatively low amount, with canvassers earning their pay per door rather than per hour. Those firms in turn paid most canvassers roughly $2 or $2.50 per door.

A photo from Mintt, a mail-tracking firm, shows a flier from Mr. Musk’s super PAC that says “James Talarico is for they/them.”

A handout photo from Mintt, a mail-tracking firm, shows a flier from Mr. Musk’s super PAC. In Texas, the Musk operation focused heavily on transgender issues, viewing them as a liability for Mr. Talarico.Credit...Mintt

Slides from one America PAC training presentation for door-knockers that were obtained by The New York Times pulled back the curtain on its approach.

The trainers made no mention of Mr. Musk, telling canvassers only that America PAC was an “independent organization” that was “working to make sure that people who love America get out to vote in the November election to defend our American values and weaken the far-left agenda knocking on our door.”

The super PAC also used digital tools to try to crack down on fraud among its canvassers, a rampant problem in the industry. The slides warned that if canvassers “in any way cheat or commit fraud, we will report you to local law enforcement and assist them in your prosecution.”

In Texas, these door knockers focused heavily on transgender issues. Mr. Musk’s team saw this as essential to turning out right-wing voters against Mr. Talarico, but some advisers thought that focus was a tactical mistake.

Last Friday, in America PAC’s final internal poll of the Senate race, Mr. Talarico held a six-point advantage over Mr. Paxton.

On Tuesday, after more than $210 million in spending from Mr. Musk to help Mr. Paxton, the results finally arrived. Mr. Talarico won by 12 points.

Is JD Vance Toast? {Yes}

2026-11-07T10:03:06.735-05:00

Aleksey Kondratyev for The New York Times

By Matthew Schmitz

Mr. Schmitz is the editor of the magazine Compact and a host of the politics and culture podcast “Counterculture.”

New York Times

His name may not have been on the ballot, but the biggest loser of the midterms was Vice President JD Vance. President Trump will never face voters again. Mr. Vance, by contrast, doesn’t have the luxury of ignoring public opinion. If he hopes to win the presidency in 2028, he will need to sell voters on the tarnished Trump brand.

Republicans such as Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida are already distancing themselves from the Trump presidency. On Wednesday, Mr. DeSantis characterized the election results as “a rejection of Republicans in Washington.”

Mr. Vance will have a harder time putting daylight between himself and an unpopular president. Many Republicans have expressed fealty to Mr. Trump, but Mr. Vance has gone further. In both style and substance, he has presented himself as an avatar of the MAGA movement, more Trumpist than Mr. Trump. He has not only served as vice president but has also grown close with Mr. Trump’s family, particularly Donald Trump Jr. To a far greater extent than, say, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Mr. Vance is Mr. Trump’s man.

On Wednesday, Mr. Vance issued a carefully argued statement on X in response to the midterm losses, which he attributed to frustration over the Iran war and inflation, combined with a desire to put America first and change the country’s relationship with Israel. He was at pains not to appear at odds with the president. When he wrote that “the reason we lost is the war,” he was quick to add that “the president himself said so last night.” And Donald Trump Jr. reposted the statement approvingly (“Every word of this is 100, 100, 100”).

Notably, Mr. Vance’s statement made no mention of tariffs, which increased costs even before the price of gas was driven up by the war. His silence is not surprising. Mr. Vance’s political story centers on his connection to a working class left behind by globalization. He cannot change his tune on trade without betraying his political identity.

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On Iran, Mr. Vance has no good options. He argued against the venture in internal deliberations but, having lost the argument, backed the war in public. Now he has to convince voters to give him credit for privately opposing the same war he was publicly defending. That dog won’t hunt, unless he breaks with Mr. Trump in a more forceful and dramatic way.

Publicly crossing the president would be risky, though, given that Mr. Vance has already changed his tune on Mr. Trump once, going from staunch critic in 2016 to vocal supporter in 2021. Another reversal would seem all too politically expedient. A hard break with Mr. Trump would also be risky given the president’s support among Republicans. Though his backing has declined among independents, 82 percent of Republicans still approve of the job he’s doing.

As for changing America’s relationship with Israel, that is a pseudo-populist nothingburger. It won’t improve the life of a single Trump voter (most of the money “sent” to the country is spent in the United States) or eliminate the reasons the United States projects power globally. But cutting Israel loose is a lot easier to do than imposing tariffs and closing the border while keeping prices low.

Mr. Vance’s postmortem on Wednesday said nothing about corruption. No wonder. Mr. Trump promised to drain the swamp but instead permitted an algae bloom. Rank money-grubbing has surrounded the administration, making Hunter Biden’s attempts at self-enrichment look amateur. Democrats will do everything they can to expose these tawdry dealings through congressional investigations and hearings. Many of Mr. Vance’s closest allies, including Donald Trump Jr., will be subject to scrutiny. However spotless Mr. Vance’s own conduct has been, the dirt will rub off on him.

Mr. Vance retains important advantages. He has Mr. Trump’s favor, has raised money for countless Republican candidates and has successfully courted important parts of the right. But Mr. Vance’s wealthy connections may prove a liability. Populists on the left like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will eagerly tie Mr. Vance to Silicon Valley’s abysmally unpopular artificial-intelligence-fueled visions of a post-human society. Mr. DeSantis, who has gone after A.I. companies, may be prepared to do the same. And across the country this year, voters rejected candidates with close ties to the tech titans of Silicon Valley; even accepting a donation from someone like Elon Musk, for some politicians, seems to have backfired.

Likewise, the sectors of the right courted by Mr. Vance seem increasingly unhinged. Tucker Carlson, a longtime Vance ally and once a unifying MAGA voice, now devotes much of his time to promoting bizarre theories about Jews and Israel. Ten years ago, it seemed that populism might mean reshoring American manufacturing, securing the border, advancing a more modest foreign policy and resisting elite cultural priorities. But for many, it now means nothing more than denouncing a far-off country.

Mr. Vance is resourceful and shrewd. He made his way from the Rust Belt to Yale Law, and from saying Mr. Trump might be “America’s Hitler” to serving as his vice president. Perhaps he can complete another unlikely journey, to the presidency. But he now seems farther from that office than he did just one week ago.

Rainbow Wave We Now have The Gayest Congress in History

2026-11-06T11:17:12.030-05:00

Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images

Andie ValdesDailywire.com

The American people have made their voices heard. The 120th Congress will officially be the GAYEST Congress in history! (that we know of) Let's get to work 🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

With Democrat victories across the nation on Tuesday, the next Congress is set to become the gayest one yet.

After the rainbow wave on Tuesday, at least 17 LGBT candidates were elected by voters to serve on Capitol Hill. The Congressional Equality Caucus, which focuses on pushing LGBT policies forward, celebrated the results.

“The American people have made their voices heard. The 120th Congress will officially be the GAYEST Congress in history! (that we know of) Let’s get to work.”

Three LGBT members are leaving Congress, but at least six are coming in, moving the total to 17, according to LGBT site PinkNews.

Democrat Chris Pappas became the first openly gay man elected to the Senate after he defeated former Republican Senator John Sununu for the open seat in New Hampshire. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), who was the first openly lesbian senator, was not up for re-election.

Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE), a trans-identifying man representing Delaware, was re-elected to the House of Representatives.

Democrat JD Ford from deep-red Indiana became the state’s first openly gay member of Congress. He beat incumbent Republican Rep. Victoria Spartz to take the 5th Congressional District, a seat that has not elected a Democrat since 1990.

Lesbian Rep. Sharice Davids (D-KS) was re-elected for her fifth term, while gay Democrat Rep. Ritchie Torres won his fourth term representing New York.

Michigan also elected its first gay man to the House, with Democrat state senator Jeremy Moss, who will succeed Rep. Haley Stevens after her unsuccessful Senate primary run against Abdul El-Sayed.

Other LGBTQ members include Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI), Marine veteran JoAnna Mendoza (D-AZ), and Rep. Eric Sorensen (D-IL).

Ironically, this year’s Election Day results also brought a historic record of Muslims to Congress, including El-Sayed, who is set to become the first Muslim senator.

Several Muslims were also elected and re-elected to the House, including André Carson (D-IN), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Lateefah Simon (D-CA), Adam Hamawy (D-NJ), and Darializa Avila Chevalier (D-NY).

Trump tried to Undetermined The US Elections But It Didn't Work

2026-11-06T11:04:49.761-05:00

A person wears a ‘Stop the Steal’ hat at a rally to support Ken Paxton, the defeated Republican nominee for Senate in Texas, at a rally in Lubbock last month.Credit...Kaylee Greenlee/Reuters

Millions of Americans cast their ballots on Tuesday in an election that showed the resiliency of democracy. The president said he would accept the results.

By Richard Fausset and Nick Corasaniti

New York Times

President Trump started his second term intent on harnessing the power of the federal government to resurface false claims that widespread fraud had tainted his earlier defeat — and to use those claims to assert unprecedented control over the midterms this year.

He failed.

Voters so thoroughly rejected Republicans on Tuesday, ushering in one of the largest Democratic House majorities in generations and flipping seats that had been red for decades, that it became impossible to blame the outcome on fraud.

Since returning to the White House in 2025, the president has resurrected outlandish and disproven theories of machines tainted by Democrats to steal votes and rampant voting by noncitizens. He tried to redirect the Postal Service to restrict mail voting. He seized ballots from 2020 in Georgia. And his administration launched a massive investigation of state voter rolls, suing states to remove suspected noncitizens.

But the courts reined in many of his most brazen attempts, including on the eve of the election, when the Supreme Court rejected the administration’s effort to require that California set aside 20,000 mail-in ballots that the administration claimed had been provided to noncitizens.

The nation’s decentralized elections system worked reasonably smoothly on Tuesday. Millions of Americans cast their ballots in an election that showed the resiliency of democracy.

The U.S. Constitution states explicitly that the states hold the power to administer elections. Congress may pass laws. The executive branch is given no role.

The victories on Tuesday appear poised only to strengthen the independence of the nation’s election administrators. Democrats who opposed Trump’s federal intervention will soon control the top election office in nearly every significant battleground state for 2028, including newly competitive Texas and Ohio.

Democrats also swept into power in statehouses where Republican lawmakers had played a key role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election on Mr. Trump’s behalf, including in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona and Wisconsin.

That means fewer election deniers will hold office at the state and local levels as the nation heads into the 2028 presidential election. Fewer state legislatures are likely to adopt voting restrictions, such as limiting access to vote by mail or prohibiting nursing home aides from helping older voters cast ballots. There will also likely be fewer attempts to upend the electoral process through cumbersome hand counts or changes to the certification process.

Two people are seen standing at a high top with tiny American flags while in the background a screen reads, "Democrats Gain Senate Control."

Supporters at Senator Susan Collins’s watch party in Bangor, Maine, on Election Day, shortly before she conceded the race.Credit...Lexi Parra/The New York Times

Election administrators and voting-rights advocates who have spent the last six years fighting election deniers and their unfounded allegations of fraud are now hoping that the midterms have broken the movement.

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“I think American voters are tired of this,” said David Becker, a former Justice Department lawyer who runs the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonpartisan group that works to support election officials in both parties. “It’s not based on fact. They’ve been making claims for well over six years. They’ve been raising money off of these claims, taking money off of sincerely disappointed supporters of losing candidates. And after six years, they produced zero evidence.”

Even Mr. Trump acknowledged that he had fallen short. “I am absolutely willing to accept those results, yeah,” the president told The Times in a telephone interview late Tuesday. Tuesday’s sweeping Democratic victory, it seemed, was too big to deny.

It was not for lack of trying.

It remains to be seen whether Mr. Trump, the nation’s most influential election denier, is entirely done pushing the idea that this week’s election was rigged.

His administration has appeared eager to continue to investigate and intrude on the electoral process. On Tuesday, before polls closed, both Attorney General Todd Blanche and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin pledged in television interviews to investigate the election.

“After this election, we’ll be gathering all the data, we’ll be gathering the voting logs and we’ll be going through those and making sure that no illegals voted,” Mr. Mullin said during an interview with Fox News on Tuesday afternoon.

On Thursday, however, the Department of Justice lost one of its leaders in the crusade to find voter fraud. Harmeet Dhillon, the chief of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, resigned after conflicts with other department leaders, including disagreements over legal strategy in the midterm elections.

An ornate gilded and painted interior under a rotunda.

In addition to federal offices, Democrats this week also swept into power in a number of statehouses, including in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Pictured is the rotunda at the Pennsylvania State Capitol.Credit...Aimee Dilger/Associated Press

The president also continued to fixate on the Senate race in Alaska, where a spoiler candidate recruited by Democrats shares a name with the Republican incumbent, Dan Sullivan. His administration sued to throw out the results if Senator Dan S. Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, loses by a margin that can be blamed on the spoiler. The case was dismissed on Nov. 1, but the Justice Department has appealed.

It’s the one frontier the president has not abandoned since Tuesday’s resounding results. On Thursday, he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, that any votes for the spoiler, Dan J. Sullivan, should be awarded to the incumbent senator.

The core of the election denial movement is that the electoral system itself has been corrupted. Advocates over the years have alleged, among many theories for which they have no evidence, that large numbers of noncitizens vote illegally, that voting machines are compromised, that fake ballots made of bamboo were shipped to the U.S. from Southeast Asia, and that Italian satellites hacked voting systems to deny Mr. Trump victory.

The denialist movement has become central to Mr. Trump’s brand, and is deeply embedded in the culture of Republican politics. A Reuters/Ipsos poll this year found that 63 percent of Republicans believe the president’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

It’s not yet known if the size of the Democratic victories this week, which were fueled at least in part by Republicans voting for Democrats, has changed such views.

Some of the most fervent voices have been richly rewarded by Mr. Trump in his second administration. They have become his close allies, earned audiences with him, helped guide his agenda, and inspired a wave of voting legislation across the country aimed at making voting harder, often to the benefit of Republicans.

In April, ProPublica reported that at least 11 administration appointees had ties to the Election Integrity Network, a conservative group that has spread misleading claims about the American election system.

The group was founded by Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer and close ally of the president’s who was on the infamous 2021 phone call between Mr. Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which Mr. Trump made false claims of fraud and pressured Mr. Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn his loss in Georgia.

In a phone interview on Wednesday, Ms. Mitchell took umbrage when asked whether, like Mr. Trump, she had accepted the results of the election.

”I am not going to answer that question because that is a stupid question,” Ms. Mitchell said.

When asked if her movement would remain an influential force in American politics, Ms. Mitchell said, “We’ll see.”

“We’re going to be continuing to be very active,” she said. “We’re adding state coalitions as we speak.”

People sit at tables with piles of envelopes.

Election workers count absentee ballots in Fairfax County, Va., on Tuesday.Credit...Tierney L. Cross/Reuters

Looking ahead to 2028 was critical for Democratic candidates for secretary of state, said Cisco Aguilar, the Democratic secretary of state in Nevada.

“Everybody was thinking short-term of House and Senate, and we had to get donors and voters focused on the long-term goal of 2028,” Mr. Aguilar said. “And sometimes that didn’t register through the panic, through the chaos of what was happening. So it took us a while to get our message to resonate. But once it resonated, it hit. Really well.”

Some Republicans welcome the possibility that the election denier movement might be dimming. Gabriel Sterling, the former chief operating officer in the office of the Georgia secretary of state, said the dominance of false claims about election fraud made it harder for conservatives like him to focus on actually preventing fraud by keeping voter rolls clean. Although deniers talk regularly about the need to remove noncitizens from the rolls, they led the movement to dismantle the multistate system that helped states prevent double votes and duplicate registrations, which are far more common types of fraud.

Mr. Sterling, who serves as senior fellow at the Secure Democracy Foundation, was forced into the national spotlight just after the 2020 election. As Mr. Trump continued to spread falsehoods about that year’s election in Georgia, Mr. Sterling criticized the president for failing to condemn threats of violence against people overseeing Georgia’s voting system.

In an interview this week, Mr. Sterling said he was not sure whether the movement was on the way out.

“One election cycle does not an election denialism kill,” he said. “You know, it depends on the closeness of elections, and it depends on the efficacy of the election administrators.”

He said elections officials around the country likely helped beat back conspiratorial thinking by carrying off an Election Day marked by only a few glitches.

“We were all terrified to jinx it, because it was all going so smoothly,” he said.

In "You Can See Everything" Whose Idea Was For The Shower Scene?

2026-11-05T11:16:47.509-05:00

rom “You Can See Everything.”Credit...

By Malia Mendez

New York Times

Edit Aamfoxie Blog

Billy Evans, the partner of the disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes who many people have come to see as the antagonist of the documentary film “You Can See Everything,” has disputed an account of how one of the movie’s most jaw-dropping moments originated.

A scene early in the documentary shows Evans completely nude, taking a shower and apparently aware that he is being filmed. Lance Oppenheim, who with Nathan Fielder directed what is arguably the year’s buzziest film, told GQ that the shot was Evans’s idea.

But on Monday, during an “Ask Me Anything” on X, Evans said any account that asserted he wanted to be filmed naked in the shower was a “false narrative.”

Writing on the social media site, he instructed users to “trust the ‘sources’” cited in a recent article in People, who said that the scene “wasn’t Billy’s idea,” and told the magazine that Evans had agreed to the shower scene only “with an understanding they would keep it PG,” referring to the filmmakers. People attributed the quotations to a single source “familiar with the situation.”

According to Oppenheim’s account in GQ, he told Evans on a car ride back from the gym, “We will give you some time to shower.” He said Evans responded, “Want to film me showering?”

“I offered to film him in a way that could avoid seeing his genitals,” Oppenheim told GQ, “but Billy said he didn’t care about being seen naked.”

In the X thread, Evans also addressed several other widely discussed moments in the film, including his tendency to sniffle and the power of attorney he has been granted over Holmes’s affairs. Evans attributed the sniffling to illness and allergies, and of the power of attorney he wrote, referring to Holmes, “The POA was simply the legal mechanism that allowed me to act on her behalf while she’s incarcerated.”

Evans also cast doubt on the film’s re-enactment of a meeting in which Fielder recalled Evans asking to share in the film’s profits. As the documentary tells it, during a meeting at a house with the filmmakers and executives from A24, the company that released the movie, Holmes excuses herself to head upstairs and tend to their children, as Evans remains behind to negotiate — essentially insulating her from the messiness of bargaining.

Asserting that the house had only one story, he added, “All you need to know.” (A card at the end of the film states that Evans changed his mind about being paid.)

Requests for comment sent to an email address associated with Evans were not returned. Representatives for Fielder and Oppenheim did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A24 declined to comment.

“You Can See Everything,” which earned $15 million in its opening weekend and has since quadrupled that tally, follows Holmes in the 34 days before she is scheduled to begin a prison sentence for defrauding investors over her failed blood testing start-up’s technology. Some observers have suggested that the film may become the first documentary to be nominated for best picture at the Oscars.

Malia Mendez is a Culture reporter for The Times and part of the 2026-27 Times Fellowship, a program for journalists early in their careers.

How About A USA Rainbow Blue Wave? Its Here!!!

2026-11-05T11:03:32.393-05:00

Chris Pappas (D) - U.S. Senate - New Hampshire

Senator-elect Chris Pappas (D-NH) spoke at the 2026 Eleanor Roosevelt Dinner in Concord, New Hampshire, on October 3, 2026.Joseph Prezioso / AFP via Getty ImagesDawn EnnisAdvocate

Chris Pappas is the first out gay man elected to the U.S. Senate. New Hampshire voters overwhelmingly chose the Democrat congressman over Republican former Sen. John Sununu. With votes still being counted, Pappas led Sununu 60 percent to 37 percent at press time.

Sarah McBride (D) - U.S. House - Delaware

Sarah McBride, the first out trans member of CongressCourtesy McBride for Delaware

Delaware voters sent trailblazing transgender Congresswoman Sarah McBride back to the U.S. Congress Tuesday. The nation's first out transgender federal lawmaker handily won reelection as the lone member of Congress from the First State. During her first term, House Republicans targeted the Democrat's access to women's bathrooms in the Capitol before she could cast her first vote. McBride handily defeated Republican Joseph Arminio.

JD Ford (D) - U.S. House - Indiana

Longshot JD Ford elected first out gay member of Congress from Indiana, unseating GOP incumbentJ.D. Ford for Congress

JD Ford has made LGBTQ+ history in Indiana with a remarkable upset in the conservative state.

The Democrat bested incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz to triumph in the state’s 5th Congressional District, according toDecision Desk HQ data, where Ford led the race at 9:36 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday.

With more than 95 percent of votes counted, Ford led Spartz 51 percent to 48 percent.

Ford’s victory is remarkable, as a Democrat hasn’t held this seat since 1990. Spartz was first elected in 2020 and was running for her fourth consecutive term.

Ford, who is gay, is now the first out member of Congress from Indiana. The state senator had broken barriers before. In 2020, he unseated a 13-year incumbent who campaigned against same-sex marriage and became the first out member of the Indiana General Assembly.

Bentley Hudgins (D) - Georgia Assembly

Nonbinary Georgia Democrat Bentley Hudgins set to make history: ‘Hope is a discipline’Anna Girzone

Bentley Hudgins won a seat in the Georgia Assembly as the the state's first out transgender and nonbinary state lawmaker. The longtime Democratic organizer made history in the Deep South by defeating Republican Samantha Boston in House District 90.

Sharice Davids (D) - U.S. House - Kansas

Rep. Sharice Davids, D-Kan., walks down the House steps after the final votes of the week in the U.S. Capitol.Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Rep. Sharice Davids of Kansas won reelection to Congress, preserving her historic representation of the Sunflower State. The lesbian Democrat and Ho-Chunk Nation citizen defeated Republican Eric Jenkins, securing a fifth term in Congress after a campaign that highlighted competing visions for LGBTQ+ rights. Davids is one of the first two Native American women elected to the U.S. House and was the first out LGBTQ+ person elected to Congress from Kansas.

Ritchie Torres (D) - U.S. House - New York

U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres speaking at a press conference, New York, NYlev radin/Shutterstock

Rep. Ritchie Torres, the first out gay Afro-Latino member of Congress, won a fourth term representing New York’s 15th Congressional District Tuesday. Voters chose to send the Bronx Democrat back to Washington instead of Republican Stylo Sapaskis and Independents Andre Easton and Jose Vega. When first elected in 2020, Torres joined Democrat Mondaire Jones as the first openly gay Black men elected to the House of Representatives.

Read the full story here.

Malcolm Kenyatta (D) - Pennsylvania House

DNC Vice Chair Malcolm Kenyatta (D-PA) at a SiriusXM Town Hall on May 08, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for SiriusXM

Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta won reelection to represent Pennsylvania’s 181st District in the House of Representatives, securing a fifth term.

The out gay politician made history in 2018 when he became the first out gay Black person elected to the state legislature and the second out member overall. He has been married to his husband, Matthew Jordan-Miller Kenyatta, since 2022.

Jeremy Moss - U.S. House - Michigan

Jeremy Moss was elected to be Michigan’s first out LGBTQ+ member of Congress. He wants Democrats to fight harder.Courtesy Jeremy Moss

Michigan voters have elected Jeremy Moss to the U.S. House of Representatives, sending the state’s first out LGBTQ+ member to Congress after a legislative career that helped secure explicit civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ Michiganders.

The Democratic state senator defeated Republican Ethan Baker in Michigan’s 11th Congressional District, according to Decision Desk HQ, which called the race at 8 p.m. Eastern time as polls closed on Tuesday night, based on projections before the vote had been tallied.

Moss will succeed Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens, who left the Oakland County seat to run unsuccessfully for her party’s U.S. Senate nomination.

DeShanna Neal (D) - Delaware House

DeShanna Neal is Delaware’s first-ever nonbinary elected official.Delaware House Democrats

Nonbinary Delaware state representative DeShanna Neal secured their seat for District 13 after running unopposed.

Neal was first elected to the Delaware Statehouse in 2022, making them the state’s first-ever nonbinary elected official, and won reelection in 2024. Decision Desk HQ called their 2026 midterm win at 8 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday. They ran on a progressive platform focused on accessibility, housing rights, education and other issues, earning endorsements from LGBTQ+ groups.

Mark Pocan (D) - U.S. House - Wisconsin

Mark Pocan is one of the longest-serving living LGBTQ+ people in Congress.Rep. Mark Pocan

Rep. Mark Pocan, one of the longest-serving out LGBTQ+ members of the U.S. House of Representatives, will extend his service.

The Democratic U.S. Representative for Wisconsin’s 2nd congressional district had run unopposed for an eighth term. He won reelection on Tuesday, according to Decision Desk HQ, which was able to call the race early in the night due to his lack of an opponent. In the 2022 and 2024 elections, Pocan had defeated Republican challenger Erik Olsen by over 40 percentage points.

Zooey Zephyr (D) - Montana House

Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr attends a gathering of Park County Democrats in Livingston, Montana, on October 23, 2025.William Campbell/Getty Images

Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr, the transgender Democrat who became a national figure after Republican lawmakers barred her from the House floor in 2023, has secured another term representing the Missoula area.

Zephyr ran unopposed in Montana’s 95th House District, according to Decision Desk HQ, which called her reelection at 10 p.m. Eastern time.

The result extends the political career of Montana’s first out trans state legislator, who has emerged as one of the country’s most recognizable advocates for transgender rights.

In December 2024, Zephyr wed out trans journalist Erin Reed. The couple met protesting Texas investigations into the parents of transgender youth.

JoAnna Mendoza (D) - U.S. House - Arizona

JoAnna MendozaJoAnna Mendoza campaign

Democratic congressional candidate JoAnna Mendoza, an openly LGBTQ+ Marine veteran who served during the military’s discriminatory "don’t ask, don’t tell” era, has defeated Republican Rep. Juan Ciscomani in Arizona’s 6th Congressional District, flipping a closely watched House seat.

Decision Desk HQ confirmed Mendoza’s victory, calling the race at 10:12 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday night.

The result delivers a significant victory for Democrats in southern Arizona and sends a former Marine Corps drill instructor to Congress after a campaign shaped by her military service, working-class background, and commitment to LGBTQ+ equality.

Maura Healey (D) - Governor - Massachusetts

Massachusetts lesbian Gov. Maura Healey signs abortion and gender-affirming care shield law

Courtesy Maura Healey via facebook

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey defeated Republican Mike Minogue to win a second term, extending the tenure of one of the nation’s first out lesbian governors.

Decision Desk HQ called the election at 10:13 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday night. With 24 percent of the vote counted, Healey had 63 percent compared with Minogue’s 33 percent. Independent candidate Andrea James had received under four percent of the vote.

Healey, a Democrat, became the first out LGBTQ+ person elected to statewide office in Massachusetts in 2014, when she won the attorney general race. During her eight-year tenure, she advocated for gun control, sought to hold pharmaceutical companies accountable for their role in the opioid epidemic, and challenged President Donald Trump’s 2017 travel restrictions targeting several Muslim-majority countries, widely known as the “Muslim ban.”

Read the full story here.

Eric Sorensen (D) - U.S. House - Illinois

Eric SorensenBill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Rep. Eric Sorensen, a former TV meteorologist and the first out LGBTQ+ person elected to Congress from Illinois, has won a third term representing the state’s 17th Congressional District.

In Tuesday’s election, he faced GOP small business owner Dillan Vancil. Decision Desk HQ called the race for Sorensen with 59 percent to 40 percent. The Democratic congressman won at 9:46 p.m. Eastern Tuesday, with 24 percent of votes counted.

Sorensen was first elected in the 2022 midterm cycle after former Rep. Cheri Bustos retired from the seat she had held since 2013, narrowly defeating Republican opponent Esther Joy King 52 percent to 48 percent. In 2024, he fended off a challenge from Republican Joseph McGraw with a slightly larger margin to secure a second term.

Claire Snyder-Hall (D) - Delaware House

Claire Snyder-Hall wins reelection in Delaware.Claire for Delaware

Delaware state Rep. Claire Snyder-Hall has won a second term representing the coastal communities around Rehoboth Beach, returning an out lesbian and longtime democracy advocate to a legislature grappling with questions about civil rights, affordability, and the reach of the Trump administration.

The Democrat defeated Republican Mike Simpler in a rematch of their 2024 contest. Decision Desk HQ called the race at 9:25 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday night.

Snyder-Hall’s victory was another win for LGBTQ+ representation in Delaware, where U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride also secured reelection. McBride became the first openly transgender person elected to Congress in 2024.

Emily Randall (D) — U.S. House — Washington

Rep. Emily Randall speaks during a Congressional Hispanic Caucus news conference on Capitol Hill on June 5, 2025.Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Rep. Emily Randall , the first LGBTQ+ Latina in Congress, won reelection in Washington State. The queer Democrat defeated Republican Teresa Fox, and secured a second term representing Washington’s 6th Congressional District after her historic election in 2024. Randall vowed to continue advocating for healthcare access, reproductive rights, and economic opportunity.

Tina Kotek (D) — Governor — Oregon

Tina Kotek

Tina Kotek, Oregon’s first lesbian governor, won reelection Tuesday. Kotek is a supporter of LGBTQ+ rights and reproductive freedom. The Democrat defeated Republican nominee Christine Drazan in a rematch of the candidates who first faced each other in 2022. With 51 percent of the estimated vote counted, Kotek had 54 percent, compared with Drazan’s 43 percent. Pacific Green Party candidate Brett Smith received under three percent.

Read the full story here.

Robert Garcia (D) — U.S. House — California

Rep. Robert Garcia is the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and held a news conference on Monday, October. 19, 2026.

Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Powerful gay House Democrat Robert Garcia won reelection to Congress Tuesday. The representative from California's 42nd Congressional district delivered a two-word warning: "Lawyer up." Garcia, who defeated Republican Brian Burley with 62 percent of the vote, will be the new chair of the powerful House Oversight Committee.

Read the full story here.

Mark Takano (D) — U.S. House — California

US Representative Mark Takano, a Democrat from California, has vowed to support LGBTQ+ veterans after the Trump administration ended a specialized care program for them.Kent NISHIMURA / AFP via Getty Images

Rep, Mark Takano, the Congressional Equality Caucus chair, won reelection Tuesday. The California congressman has been a staunch defender of transgender service members and an advocate for LGBTQ+ equality amid the challenges of a second Trump administration. Takano, who was elected to the House in 2012 as the first out gay person of color, handily secured an eighth term by defeating Republican Steve Manos in California’s 39th Congressional District.

Marni von Wilpert (D) — U.S. House — California

LGBTQ+ congressional candidate Marni von Wilpert made history in California.Daniel Knighton/Getty Images

Out bisexual Democrat Marni von Wilpert flipped her California House seat, and vowed to bring her personal health care fight to Congress The bi San Diego City Council member defeated RepublicanJim Desmond in California’s 48th Congressional District 59 to 41 percent as of press time.

Ann Johnson (D) — Texas House

Ann Johnson has served three terms in a district that includes Houston’s historically LGBTQ+ Montrose neighborhood.Ann Johnson

Lesbian Texas lawmaker Ann Johnson won reelection Tuesday amid attacks on LGBTQ+ rights. The Houston Democrat defeated Republican Mike Michna, securing a fourth term in a state where lawmakers have repeatedly targeted LGBTQ+ rights. Johnson represents Houston’s 134th House District and defeated Michna 68.87 percent to 31.13 percent.

Becca Balint

Rep. Balint, who has co-chaired the Congressional Equality Caucus since 2023, will now serve a third term in Congress.Elena Bohm/U.S. House of Representatives

Becca Balint, co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, won reelection in Vermont Tuesday. The first woman and openly LGBTQ+ person to represent Vermont in Congress defeated Republicanopponent Gerald Malloy to earn her third term in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Allison Montgomery (D) — Alabama House

Allison Montgomery wins race to become Alabama’s first transgender state lawmakerInstagram/Allison Montgomery

In a historic win, Democrat Allison Montgomery unseated Republican incumbent State Rep. Phillip Rigsby for a seat representing Alabama’s House District 25 on Tuesday, becoming the state’s first transgender legislator.

According to the Associated Press, which called the race, Montgomery led Rigsby 53 to 47 percent with more than 95 percent of the vote counted. Montgomery is one of three Northern Alabama Democrats who flipped seats in Tuesday night’s blue wave, according to AL.com.

Russell Brand , Guilty! Rape and Sexual Assault

2026-11-05T10:44:09.695-05:00

Russell Brand arriving at the London court this week.Credit...Leon Neal/Getty Images

By Alex Marshall

Reporting from Southwark Crown Court in London

New York Times

Russell Brand, the popular conspiracy-minded YouTuber who first found fame as a comedy and acting star, was found guilty in a London court on Thursday of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault.

He was found not guilty of two other counts of rape and one count of attempted indecent assault.

The jury, at Southwark Crown Court in London, took about eight and a half hours to reach its unanimous decisions, which concerned episodes that prosecutors said involved six women and occurred between 1999 and 2009, a period when Mr. Brand was becoming a public figure.

The judge, Joel Bennathan, said he would sentence Mr. Brand, 51, to “significant custodial time” on Monday and denied him bail. Under British sentencing guidelines for rape, the maximum sentence is life imprisonment, although a more typical prison term is four to 19 years.

Mr. Brand could also face further legal challenges related to his past sexual behavior. A spokeswoman for London’s police said in an emailed statement after the verdicts that officers had questioned Mr. Brand about two further accusations of rape and submitted files to prosecutors. He has also faced a civil action in the United States.

Mr. Brand’s legal team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Russell Brand and Laura Brand hold hands while walking on a street.

In the trial, only Mr. Brand’s wife, Laura, gave in-person evidence in his defense.Credit...Hannah Mckay/Reuters

As the jury’s foreman announced the verdicts, Mr. Brand stood impassively in a glass box reserved for defendants at the back of the courtroom.

The jury’s decisions came just over three years after The Times of London, The Sunday Times and the prominent British television program “Dispatches” published a joint investigation into Mr. Brand’s past behavior, in which four women accused the comedian of sexual assault, including one accusation of rape.

Those accusations prompted some of Mr. Brand’s supporters to rally around him, including Donald Trump Jr., and Elon Musk, who wrote on X: “I support Russell Brand. That man is not evil.” Conservative personalities like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly and Charlie Kirk continued to express support after the police charged Mr. Brand.

Although the London trial did not include any of the women in the 2023 media investigation, some of the accusers in the trial told the court that they had come forward after seeing the coverage.

In October, Ian Winter, Mr. Brand’s lawyer, argued in a pretrial hearing that Mr. Brand could not receive a fair hearing because the news media had portrayed him as a rapist, and because the coverage had made “it impossible to persuade witnesses” to give evidence on Mr. Brand’s behalf. The judge dismissed that application, saying that a jury could be trusted to consider the accusations put before it.

In the trial, only Mr. Brand’s wife, Laura, gave in-person evidence in his defense.

During the trial, prosecutors called Mr. Brand a “ruthless” sexual predator who once considered women “simply a means to an end.” Then the jury heard testimony from the six women who said that Mr. Brand had assaulted or raped them, sometimes only moments after they had met him.

In Britain, anyone who makes sexual assault accusations is granted lifelong anonymity outside the courtroom regardless of a jury’s verdict.

Russell Brand, shirtless and wearing white pants and a belt, raises an upturned hand toward the camera.

Mr. Brand in a London Metropolitan Police handout photo, from 1999, that was taken by one of the complainants and shown during his trial.Credit...Metropolitan Police

The guilty verdict for rape concerned a 2009 episode in which a woman said in a police interview played in court that she had gone to Mr. Brand’s home expecting to have consensual vaginal sex. But during intercourse, she said, he removed his condom and began having anal sex with her.

She told the court that she was initially so shocked that she couldn’t breathe, but then managed to ask him to cease. “I said, ‘Can you stop?’” she added: “I said it repeatedly.”

The woman told numerous people after the episode that Mr. Brand had assaulted her, some of whom testified in court. She added that Mr. Brand had refused her pleas and left her bleeding and in pain.

Mr. Brand testified that they had consensual anal sex and that she had never told him to stop during the encounter.

The other guilty verdicts concerned episodes throughout Brand’s rise to fame. One woman told the jury that in 2005 Mr. Brand had pinned her against a wall and kissed and groped her as members of his entourage looked on.

“It happened in a flash,” the woman said. “There wasn’t time for me to even understand what was going on.”

Mr. Brand denied that the encounter had occurred.

In another case, a woman told the jury that while working on a project with Mr. Brand in 2009, members of his team told her that he would continue working only if she gave him a massage. The woman said that she had initially thought the request was a joke, but that Mr. Brand then put his head in her lap.

Mr. Brand testified that he did not recall the episode, but that if he had asked for a massage it would not have been of a sexual nature.

The jury gave two verdicts concerning a woman who testified that in 2024 she met Mr. Brand at a party and after a minute of conversation — without “any sexual flirting or anything like that” — Mr. Brand suddenly grabbed her breasts and then pulled her into a bathroom stall and forced her to give him oral sex.

Mr. Brand testified that he had invited the woman “into the lavatory to fool around,” and said that they did not have oral sex. The jury found Mr. Brand guilty of sexual assault in that case, but not guilty of rape.

In the trial, Mr. Brand mostly gave short answers when testifying. He told the jury that he had “misused” his fame to obtain sex but had always obtained consent, which he said was “fundamental, essential, necessary.”

Today, Mr. Brand is best known as a YouTuber — his channel has over 6.6 million subscribers — and he also posts clips to his 10 million followers on X. But in the early 2000s he was one of Britain’s most popular comedians, and a regular television and radio presenter, known for a distinctive look of wild hair and tight jeans.

The charges in the trial covered a period from 1999, when Brand was an aspiring comedian, to August 2009, just months after he performed his comedy show “Scandalous” to an audience of 16,000 in London.

During the period, Mr. Brand also started becoming better known outside Britain. A starring role in the 2008 movie “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” brought him recognition in the United States, and he hosted the MTV Video Music Awards that year and in 2009.

Russell Brand speaks into a microphone while standing on a stage in front of a cheering crowd.

Mr. Brand hosting the MTV Video Music Awards in New York in 2009.Credit...Christopher Polk/Getty

In the early 2000s, Mr. Brand openly discussed his addictions onstage, including to sex. In his 2007 memoir, “My Booky Wook,” he wrote that his manager had once sent him to a sex addiction clinic, in part because the comedian was becoming so well known for his “carnal overindulgences” that it was causing him “professional difficulties.”

During that period, Britain’s tabloid newspapers, and many comedy audiences, celebrated Mr. Brand’s promiscuity and lewd humor. The Sun, a popular tabloid, named Mr. Brand “shagger of the year” several times because of the amount of sex he was having.

In more recent years, Mr. Brand has become better known for his conspiracy-minded YouTube videos aimed at an American audience, sometimes featuring interviews with prominent conservative politicians and commentators. In recent months, those videos have also focused on Mr. Brand’s Christian faith, including with the comedian and his wife posting weekly “Sunday Service” clips.

Israelis Can See Through The Midterms How Far Their Star Has Fallen in USA

2026-11-05T10:17:57.480-05:00

The Detroit election night party of the Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan. Mr. El-Sayed won his race.Credit...

By Isabel Kershner

Reporting from Jerusalem

New York Times

For many Israelis, the results of the U.S. midterm elections showed how far their country’s relationship with the United States had deteriorated and underscored the limits of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reliance on his long friendship with President Trump.

The Democrats’ rout of the Republican Party, with some House and Senate members increasingly critical of Israel in the run-up to the vote, has only added to Israel’s growing sense of international isolation after years of war.

The results come at a sensitive time for Israel, as it grapples with its inconclusive election and faces another possible round of conflict with Iran.

Now, its future relationship with the United States, its most important ally, is also on the line, as are billions of dollars in annual U.S. military assistance, in a sign of how far traditional support for Israel has fallen among both Democrats and Republicans.

Mr. Netanyahu’s critics and political rivals seized on the results as proof of his mishandling of Israel’s national security interests.

“The results we see today are precisely the reason Israel always tried to maintain a bipartisan policy toward America,” said Jeremy Issacharoff, a former Israeli ambassador to Germany. He dealt with many aspects of Israel’s strategic relations with the United States during his long diplomatic career, which included two stints at the Israeli Embassy in Washington.

Mr. Netanyahu, a conservative, largely abandoned that approach about a decade ago, Mr. Issacharoff said, becoming “the most dependent Israeli prime minister on an American president.”

Early this year, Mr. Netanyahu declared that Israel had “come of age” and that he intended to do away with the financial aspect of America’s military assistance to Israel within a decade. He said he wanted to see Israel fund weapons purchases itself, build up its own defense industry and move “from aid to partnership,” possibly articulating a position that he thought Mr. Trump would like to hear.

President Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, both in dark suits and red ties, stand behind lecterns, one with the Presidential Seal. The Israeli leader is looking sideways at Mr. Trump. An American flag is in the background.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not commented on President Trump’s announcement that the United States was cutting billions in aid to Israel at year’s end.Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times

But on Election Day in America, Mr. Trump surprised Israelis by declaring that he was cutting off the nearly $4 billion in annual aid to the country “at the end of the year,” even though Israel’s current aid agreement with the United States expires in 2028.

Mr. Trump said, during an interview with Fox News, that the move was a political step to take “a bad talking point” away from the left wing of the Democratic Party, after aid to Israel became a divisive issue during the midterms. He suggested that Mr. Netanyahu was on board with the decision, though the prime minister has not yet commented.

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As Mr. Netanyahu battles for his political future, after an election that afforded neither his bloc nor his opponents a clear path to forming a government, the opposition was quick to reap political capital out of the situation.

Mr. Netanyahu’s main challenger, Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief and centrist leader, said the fact that Israel’s defense establishment had learned about such a drastic change in the strategic relationship through the news media “illustrates just how much Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct is a real danger.”

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“He can’t be trusted anymore,” Mr. Eisenkot added in his statement, “and he must be replaced.”

A person in a dark suit and red tie raises an arm. A blue and white flag is in the foreground, with people clapping and smiling behind.

Gadi Eisenkot, a centrist leader, says Mr. Netanyahu “can’t be trusted anymore.” Credit...Amir Levy/Getty Images

The leader of Israel’s left-wing Democrats party, Yair Golan, a former deputy military chief, said, “An end to American aid is very damaging to Israel’s security and to the quality of life in the country.”

And Avigdor Liberman, another Netanyahu rival from the right, said, “The cost of Trump’s support for Netanyahu — $3.8 billion annually,” an apparent reference to Mr. Trump’s effusive endorsement of Mr. Netanyahu ahead of Israel’s election last month.

Mr. Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The change in the aid relationship set the stage for even deeper concern as the midterm results emerged.

Tzipi Livni, a former minister in a Netanyahu-led government, wrote in a social media post that “Netanyahu gambled on the Republicans, broke the alliance that we maintained throughout all the years with both parties and has no way of defending the legitimacy of the existence of the Jewish people’s state and our right to defend ourselves,” citing the election of some candidates who are vehement critics of Israel.

The website of Channel 14, an Israeli news outlet that is widely regarded as supportive of Mr. Netanyahu, minimized coverage of the midterms on Wednesday. But it did run a news item highlighting a social media post from the White House after the results with a photograph of the president and the caption: “Trump is still your president.”

Israel had long had bipartisan support in the United States, which it viewed as a strategic asset. But as American public opinion has shifted, political support for Israel has eroded on both sides of the aisle, particularly over the war in Gaza ignited by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel.

The large civilian death toll in Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinians were killed, along with a humanitarian crisis and the lack of an Israeli exit strategy, stoked tensions with the Biden administration.

Amid this deterioration of relations, Mr. Netanyahu prided himself on his close ties with Mr. Trump, culminating in a joint campaign against Iran this year. But as that conflict ground on and Israel became embroiled in a war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, tensions arose with the Trump administration as Israeli and American interests diverged.

In April, Mr. Trump said Israel was “prohibited” from further bombing in Lebanon, saying, “Enough is enough!!!” And after the American leader reached a preliminary cease-fire deal with Iran in June, which many Israelis felt would not address their security needs, relations between Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu and his supporters devolved into mutual insults.

A street scene with smoke rising from a central point. People stand and walk on the dusty ground between damaged buildings.

An Israeli strike on a vehicle in Gaza City in August.Credit...Saher Alghorra for The New York Times

Support among Americans for Israel fell to new lows this year, worsened by the actions of Mr. Netanyahu’s hard-right government in the occupied West Bank, including a huge expansion of Jewish settlements, and its minimization of surging extremist settler violence against Palestinians.

The Israeli election offered the possibility of a reset, and once a new government takes shape, analysts say, one of its most urgent tasks should be to try to repair the bipartisan relationship.

“For Israel, there is an important distinction between its relationship with the U.S. and its relationship with the Trump administration,” said Gedaliah Afterman of the Abba Eban Institute for Diplomacy and International Relations at Reichman University in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv.

“The U.S. will remain Israel’s most important strategic partner,” he said. But the strong showing for the Democrats in the midterms “should be a wake-up call to invest more seriously in relationships across the American political spectrum,” he added.

Mr. Issacharoff, the former diplomat, said the future of the U.S.-Israeli relationship now largely depended on Israel’s actions.

Being a reliable strategic ally, he said, meant “being willing to take America’s interests into account in the region and Israel doing what it can to move the peace process forward in various arenas.”

“It’s pretty obvious,” he added.

Lame Duck and Still 2 Yrs to Go

2026-11-05T10:04:49.027-05:00

After huge losses for Republicans in the midterm elections, it remains to be seen whether President Trump adopts a pragmatic deal-making posture with Democrats.Credit...

By Katie Rogers

Katie Rogers covers the White House

New York Times

Over the course of his life, Donald J. Trump has readily embraced many identities: A hotel developer. A reality television star. A president. A firebrand.

Now, at 80 years old, he is confronting one he would rather not: a lame duck.

In the hours after voters put a check on the expansive power he has flexed in his second term, giving Democrats control of both the House and the Senate, Mr. Trump seemed to be cycling through the stages of grief. He denied that a blue wave across the country had been his fault, or a direct result of his decision to go to war with Iran. (The vice president explicitly said otherwise.) He accepted the election results. And, as he absorbed the waning power he will have in his final two years in office, he bargained, saying he’d work with Democrats while clinging to his veto Sharpie.

“I’ll get along probably with the Democrats, unless they want to be destructive,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Wednesday, standing in front of a steel beam that was being put into place as part of his cherished White House ballroom project.

He noted that he had “the power to veto,” before turning to a topic he seemed much more eager to discuss: his renovation projects.

Whether Mr. Trump adopts a pragmatic deal-making posture remains to be seen — one ally described the president as “dazed” after the rout on Tuesday.

After his loss in the 2020 presidential race, the last major political setback Mr. Trump confronted, he retreated to Mar-a-Lago, where he nursed his anger and then planned a defiant return. Once back in the White House, Mr. Trump had no use for compromise.

After a period spent as a political pariah and criminal defendant, Mr. Trump liked to say that he had gone from hunted to hunter. In his second term, his administration has tracked down his political enemies, unleashed a violent immigration crackdown and started a war that has made life more expensive for Americans. He didn’t need Congress to do any of it.

President Trump, wearing a dark suit, holds up a signed document while seated at a small desk on a red-carpeted stage. Vice President JD Vance, wearing a blue suit and red tie, stands behind him.

Mr. Trump began his second term by signing dozens of executive orders on Inauguration Day in 2025. They are a tool he can still use, even with Congress controlled by Democrats.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

But on Tuesday, that dynamic flipped again. Democrats are vowing to investigate government abuses, alleged corruption by the president’s associates and the heavy-handed tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. House lawmakers plan to scrutinize top officials involved in the administration’s immigration agenda, including the White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller; Tom Homan, Mr. Trump’s border czar; and the homeland security secretary, Markwayne Mullin, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions.

“LAWYER UP,” Representative Robert Garcia, the California Democrat poised to lead the House Oversight Committee, wrote on social media.

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The political pressure could make for an unpredictable two years for both Mr. Trump and the country, according to people who have observed firsthand his volatile personality and his refusal to acknowledge mistakes.

“When you look at things like his ability to do executive orders and grant pardons and all of these things, he’s going to still be doing enormous damage,” said Sarah Matthews, a former White House deputy press secretary who resigned after the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “And it’s just going to get even more chaotic and dangerous in these next two years.”

Political rivals believe that Mr. Trump, who has asserted his dominance over the Republican Party for the better part of the last decade, will also do everything to maintain his grip on a party that he effectively reshaped in his image.

President Trump silhouetted as he stands near an open curtain with American flags arrayed to the side.

Mr. Trump during a rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., in the closing days of the midterm campaigns. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

“Donald Trump needs attention like most people need oxygen,” said former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Republican who is considering another presidential run in 2028. “He can’t do without it, and he’s now going to experience for the first time in his political career being a lame duck. So what he’ll need to do is to act out even more than he normally does in order to divert you from the 2028 race.”

Mr. Trump has so far been vague about how he wants to spend the next two years, telling the podcaster and former top F.B.I. official Dan Bongino in an interview on Tuesday that he has “many, many things in the hopper.”

He did not elaborate and instead pivoted into a standard part of his stump speech: “You know, right now we have more factories and plants being built in the United States than at any time ever before, and that means the Roaring Twenties, that means every — there’s never been anything like it.” (Manufacturing has actually slowed since 2024, according to the National Association of Manufacturers.)

He suggested in interviews that he might seek to join forces with his political opponents on the debt ceiling and immigration enforcement — two thorny policy issues that have bedeviled past administrations.

And he repeatedly invoked his ability to veto legislation, implicitly underscoring how much he will be on defense in his last two years in office.

In his first public appearance after Election Day, Mr. Trump stood before reporters at the White House on Wednesday and talked not about any lessons learned, or the path forward for the Republican Party. Instead, he mused about his ballroom project and his own future, particularly the subject of impeachment.

“I think it would destroy the Democrat Party if they did that — impeachment for no reason,” Mr. Trump said. “What, for having a successful country? Our country is more successful now than at any time in history.”

He paused, turning his focus back on the ballroom construction.

“Watch the beam go up,” he said. “Now envision chandeliers all over.”

Several top aides had already been planning for what Mr. Trump could accomplish through executive power alone if Republicans lost one or both chambers of Congress. Those involved include Mr. Miller; Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director; and members of the White House legislative affairs staff, according to a White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions. The president would receive a “menu of options” soon, the person said.

A hushed conversation of what comes next for Mr. Trump’s presidency and those around him played out on Tuesday night inside the White House, where Mr. Trump gathered aides and cabinet members in the East Room for what turned into a morose watch party. As the president watched the returns and fielded phone calls, some of the people around him quietly discussed whether Mr. Trump would keep in place members of his cabinet or his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, according to two people who attended.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Administration officials and Mr. Trump’s allies said the president and his staff were girding themselves for both congressional investigations and high turnover for the remainder of his time in office.

Representative Hakeem Jeffries, wearing a dark suit, raises his arms with Representatives Katherine M. Clark and Suzan DelBene behind a lectern on a blue stage.

Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, celebrated the Democrats’ sweeping electoral victories early Wednesday morning with Representatives Katherine M. Clark of Massachusetts, left, and Suzan DelBene of Washington.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Some expressed anxiety that there had been little guidance for staff about what to do if they got pulled into investigations, other than a briefing earlier this year advising them generally how to respond to congressional oversight.

As the political conversation turns to the next cycle, Mr. Trump indicated that he was not ready to name a political heir or back a candidate to succeed him in 2028. Asked by Martha MacCallum of Fox News late Tuesday evening whether he wanted a Republican primary to determine the 2028 presidential nominee, the president said, “I think it’s going to end up being somewhat of that.”

By Wednesday morning, Vice President JD Vance had posted a lengthy message on social media placing blame for Republican losses on the decision to go to war with Iran, an apparent effort to separate himself from Mr. Trump.

Several people close to the president say they believe that he is unlikely to endorse Mr. Vance — or anyone else — anytime soon. Mr. Trump is an entertainer above all, they say, and he will want to stay in the spotlight.

Openly First Gay Senator Was Elected Making History Chris Pappas, N.H..

2026-11-04T10:18:49.247-05:00

Rep. Chris Pappas now senator and His Husband in New Hampshire
Democratic Senate candidate Chris Pappas speaks at an election night event, with Vann Bentley, left, in Manchester, N.H., on Tuesday

New York Times

Adamfoxie Blog

Chris Pappas, the first openly gay US senator!🌈

Democratic Representative Chris Pappas won election to the U.S. Senate, becoming the first openly gay man to serve in the upper chamber of Congress.

Representative Chris Pappas, Democrat of New Hampshire, will be the Senate’s first openly gay male senator with his victory over former Senator John E. Sununu, a Republican, on Tuesday.

Like other candidates on the precipice of breaking a barrier, he did not spend much time emphasizing the milestone on the campaign trail. But it is a notable breakthrough in the Senate, as L.G.B.T.Q. rights have faced pushback in some states and some gay rights activists have warned about a decline in public support.

While his husband was in attendance at some of his campaign events, Mr. Pappas largely focused his message on the themes that most Democrats highlighted: a pledge to deal with high prices and health care costs, and opposition to Washington corruption, among others.

“I think people, regardless of their politics, really just want their neighbors to be able to be themselves,” Mr. Pappas told The New York Times in October.

Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, voluntarily came out as gay in 1987, after six years of service in the House. Decades later, Tammy Baldwin, Democrat of Wisconsin, in 2012 became the first openly gay person elected to the Senate.

Before his career in politics took off, Mr. Pappas, 46, was probably most associated with his family’s restaurant in Manchester, N.H., the Puritan Backroom. His grandfather is said to have invented the chicken tender there.

At 22, Mr. Pappas ran for state representative in New Hampshire, winning the race. That set off a winding political career in the state, before he joined the wave of Democrats in 2018 that capitalized on anger against President Trump during his first term.

Mr. Pappas has served for four terms in the House and is a chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus. He will replace Senator Jeanne Shaheen, who did not seek re-election after three terms.

6 Midterm Take Aways

2026-11-04T10:03:36.050-05:00

Here are 6 midterm takeaways from NPR's senior political correspondent Domenico Montanaro:

All the signs were pointing in Democrats’ direction heading into election night. But nothing indicated quite this level of a romp.

1. President Trump wanted this election to be about him. It was and that hurt Republicans: Trump was historically unpopular. People were frustrated with the economy and the war, and it hurt the GOP. It turns out when you wage the kind of war that you said you wouldn’t get into — that drags on, raises gas prices and piles on people who were already feeling the pinch, don’t be surprised when you pay the price.

2. Republicans tried to insulate themselves with redistricting, but it didn’t work: Trump strongly encouraged conservative-led states to redistrict — but it backfired. There was always the possibility that weakening safe districts could make them more competitive and that happened. It’s a true cautionary tale of the “dummymander.”

3. Latinos are a true swing group in America now: Trump only lost Latinos by 5 points in 2024. In this election, they sided with Democrats by 27 points. The economy and deportation tactics were big reasons why. In a real indictment of the Trump deportation policies, the voter poll found 59% overall said they disapproved of ICE.

4. Is Texas — and other red states — in play for Democrats or was this election a giant asterisk? Democrats won in a lot of red states. The party has needed to show it can win in red and rural areas. They did that this time. But will that last, or is it a Trump-sized asterisk?

5. The results of this year’s elections don’t mean the country is enamored with the Democratic Party: The party is still unpopular and fissures within their coalition will be laid bare over the next several months in the 2028 presidential primaries. They’ll have to be careful politically with how they approach leadership with the opportunity they’ve been handed.

6. The polls got the direction right. If anything, they underestimated Democratic support: For a decade, polls have underestimated Republican support. In these elections, that was not the case. It’s important to understand that it’s hard to poll when the country has been going through as significant a political realignment as it has been in the Trump era.

DOMENICO MONTANARO

SENIOR POLITICAL EDITOR/CORRESPONDENT, WASHINGTON DESK

NPR

Dems Seize Control of Congress

2026-11-04T09:51:20.791-05:00

NpR

By Michael Gold Catie Edmondson and Carl Hulse

Michael Gold and Catie Edmondson reported from New York, and Carl Hulse from Bangor, Maine.

New York Times

Democrats won control of the House early Wednesday, capping a sweeping takeover of Congress as they harnessed a backlash against President Trump to end Republicans’ governing trifecta and secure a powerful foothold from which to check his power.

Capitalizing on widespread dissatisfaction over the war in Iran, Mr. Trump’s tariffs and corruption allegations, Democrats won decisive victories across the country, reaching deep into Republican territory where voters had soured on the president and his allies.

Having won control of the Senate despite a map stacked against them, Democrats early Wednesday clinched the 218 seats needed to take control of the House of Representatives, according to The Associated Press, and appeared on track to capture many more.

With final results still outstanding, it was unclear exactly how large Democrats’ majority would be, a factor that will shape their ability to set an agenda and muscle bills through the Senate, where Republicans retained the ability to block major measures from the minority.

But in a thrashing for the G.O.P., Democrats had won decisive victories across the country, including in solid conservative bastions, in what was projected early Wednesday morning to be the largest popular vote victory for either party since 1976.

The election results promised a new era of divided government in Washington and a freshly assertive Congress after two years in which Republicans generally ceded power to Mr. Trump and reduced the legislative branch’s role to that of a mere bystander. It capped a fiercely fought midterm election cycle that Democrats entered chastened from the 2024 presidential election but finished buoyant and with strong political winds at their backs.

“The American people have spoken and made clear they’ve had enough of the extremism, enough of the corruption,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader who is now in line to be speaker, told supporters in Washington. “They want a Congress that’s going to deliver for the American people.”

Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and the longtime leader who was deeply involved in his party’s uphill battle for the majority, vowed a swift change in direction.

“We have five words for the American people,” he told reporters in Washington. “Relief is on the way.”

With control of Congress and its committees, Democrats are expected to deploy their oversight powers to aggressively investigate Mr. Trump and his administration over allegations of corruption, aggressive immigration enforcement tactics and the president’s pardons.

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Representative Robert Garcia, the California Democrat who is poised to be the chairman of the Oversight Committee, the main investigative panel in the House, issued a warning in a statement on Tuesday night.

“Lawyer up,” he said.

Democrats have also promised a shock-and-awe legislative sprint in which they plan to push through bills that would restore health care subsidies and Medicaid funding, address the increased costs of food and fuel and seek to force Mr. Trump to roll back his tariffs and end the war with Iran.

Democratic control of the Senate will also give the party veto power over Mr. Trump’s judicial and administration nominees, as well as the leadership of the committees that will have the authority to subpoena administration officials and others.

Mr. Trump, who appeared stunned by the results even as he deflected any blame for the losses, insisted he would still have the upper hand over a Democratic Congress.

“I have total veto power, so they have to come to us,” he said in an interview with The New York Times as the Democratic victories piled up. “And if they have some good ideas, I’m certainly open to working.”

Despite their losses in the last presidential election, Democrats had been consistently bullish about their ability to win the House majority. The party out of power typically gains seats in midterm elections, and Republicans have held only a slender majority in the House since they took over in 2023.

They were less optimistic about their prospects in the Senate, where the political map was stacked against them with seats in states that had become solidly Republican during the Trump era.

But as voters who backed Mr. Trump in 2024 began souring on the president and his agenda, Democrats saw an opportunity to drastically expand their political map. They won in longtime G.O.P. bastions like Kansas and Texas, reversed years of losses in Iowa and Ohio, and flipped both North Carolina and South Carolina.

Mr. Schumer recalled that when he first began talking about reclaiming the majority in 2025, “people rolled their eyes.” Democrats, he argued, prevailed because they heeded voters who were frustrated with how things were going in Washington and felt ignored by Republicans.

“We listened; they didn’t,” he said. “And the American people reduced the red brick wall to a pile of bricks.”

Their victories were powered by Americans’ growing dismay over the rising costs of goods and fuel linked to Mr. Trump’s tariffs and the war. Democrats painted the G.O.P. as beholden to the president and indifferent to the financial struggles of everyday Americans.

Those arguments were bolstered by growing concerns among voters about corruption in Washington and the cuts to Medicaid and health care subsidies that Republicans enacted as part of their signature tax cut and domestic policy package last year.

Their strength became evident early in the night, when Democrats surged in crucial House battlegrounds and had notched victories in competitive races in Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. The party needed a net gain of only three seats to win the House.

Aware of the historical trend, Republicans had taken efforts to stem their expected losses with a frenzy of redistricting in red states that was meant to increase the number of G.O.P.-leaning districts and force Democrats out of what had been safe seats.

But those moves fell short in the face of Mr. Trump’s plummeting approval ratings. In Florida, Democrats won in three districts that Republican state lawmakers redrew to favor their party, including some where Mr. Trump won by more than 10 percentage points in 2024.

Even with many races uncalled, Speaker Mike Johnson effectively acknowledged his party’s defeat on Tuesday night.

“We knew that to keep the House and sustain our majority, we would have to defy more than a century of midterm history,” Mr. Johnson said. “It’s very, very difficult to overcome. And it looks like history will be kept tonight.”

The drubbing appeared to leave many Republicans reeling on Tuesday evening, and raised questions about the direction that the party would take in the final two years of Mr. Trump’s second term, a lame-duck period that has bedeviled many presidents.

Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the Republican leader, said his party would work to thwart Democrats at every turn.

“As we head into 2027, Senate Republicans will not stand idly by as the far-left, socialist wing of the Democrat party attempts to unwind everything we’ve done,” Mr. Thune said in a statement early Wednesday. “Thankfully, we still have President Trump in the White House, and we’ll work with him to stop the worst impulses of Democrat extremism. We cannot let their fringe positions become the mainstream.”

During the first half of his second term, Mr. Trump has enjoyed near-total control of Congress, with lawmakers showing little appetite for imposing guardrails on his actions.

But Senate races in particular suggested that Mr. Trump had lost his once dominant sway over Republican voters. The president won both North Carolina and South Carolina in all three of his presidential elections. But in both cases in this election, his handpicked candidates trailed significantly.

And with Mr. Trump losing ground even in Ohio and Iowa, two former battleground states that he transformed into G.O.P. strongholds, it was unclear whether he would exhibit the same hold on Republican lawmakers that has characterized his second term.

Sensing a political shift in the final weeks of their campaigns, many vulnerable lawmakers sought to put some distance between themselves and his policies, particularly his signature tariffs. But the pivot appeared to have come too late.

For The Gay, Queer Community What Does A Midterm Blue Sweep Will mean For Us~Adamfoxie

2026-11-03T10:49:36.067-05:00

Metro

Christopher Wiggins

Advocate

A Democratic wave would not strip the gold from Washington. It would, however, hand the party subpoena power, and the first thing many Democrats would point it at is the president’s ballroom.

The construction has become Donald Trump’s singular obsession, and it raises questions a committee could actually answer: Who is paying for it? What do the donors expect in return? How much authority does a president have to rebuild the public’s house around his own ambitions?

An election would not halt the work. Ground already broken stays broken; approvals already granted stay granted. Democrats would inherit the questions, not the crane.

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Which is the point. The ballroom is the easy target, and its appeal is that it is visible — a thing with a footprint, a budget, a donor list. The harder question is what Congress does with that same investigative power once the subject stops being marble. Military careers. HIV funding. Whether the federal government recognizes that transgender people exist. The ballroom would supply the spectacle. The administration’s policies would supply the substance.

Consider the language itself. Trump’s January 2025 military order declared transgender identity incompatible with an “honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle.” That sentence did something specific: it converted a judgment about an entire group’s character into the operating policy of the United States Armed Forces. A congressional inquiry could ask how the directive was drafted, who wrote that phrase, how commanders implemented it, and what it cost people who had spent their careers serving the country that issued it.

A Democratic midterm sweep could help turn the tide for LGBTQ+ Americans.Envato

The questions do not stop at the water’s edge. In August, California Rep. Robert Garcia demanded records from Secretary of State Marco Rubio concerning PEPFAR, the global HIV program created under President George W. Bush. He wanted to know which money moved, which didn’t, and what officials said to one another about decisions affecting several African countries.

Garcia could ask with considerably more force. The first out gay immigrant elected to Congress is Oversight’s ranking Democrat, and the gavel would be his if his party took the House. That investigative reach would arguably make him the most powerful gay man in Congress.

He has been preparing for it. Garcia has already pressed federal agencies to preserve records, including Signal communications — the unglamorous prerequisite to everything else. Before a committee can establish what happened, the evidence has to survive.

That is the part the victory speeches leave out. Documents must be obtained, then read. Witnesses must be compelled, then questioned well. Findings must hold up when the other side attacks them. A single televised confrontation travels farther than any report ever will, but the report is what establishes how a decision was made and who signed off on it.

Whether any of this happens remains an open question. As of press time, Silver Bulletin’s generic congressional ballot average showed Democrats ahead by 7.5 percentage points — a real advantage, but not a guarantee.

And even a wave has a ceiling. Trump would retain executive authority and his veto. A Democratic House could investigate and negotiate spending. A Democratic Senate would also control judicial and executive nominations. Each combination produces a different set of possibilities, and none of them produces a reversal.

The harder question is what Democrats would choose to do with what they won.

Oversight could establish, on the record, what dismantling a program actually cost. Appropriations fights could determine whether services get funded. Hearings could put the people described in the passive voice of executive orders in a chair with a microphone. None of that automatically restores anything.

For LGBTQ+ Americans, seeing one of their own hold the gavel would mean something. The more demanding measure is whether federal power becomes something they can count on again — a government that answers questions, follows the money, and delivers what it promised.

Rampant non Citizen voting No Problem Before Trump Tries To Make It One Now, still No Issue

2026-11-03T10:36:16.678-05:00

Ballots in Los Angeles County in November 2024. The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a federal effort to set aside midterm ballots this year from 20,000 people in California who the Trump administration suspects are “likely noncitizens.”Credit...Mark Abramson for The New York Times

By Madeleine Ngo

New York Times

The Department of Homeland Security has mounted an extraordinary campaign to hunt for illegal voters, devoting hundreds of federal agents to the task of poring over tens of thousands of voter records and knocking on the doors of people suspected of being noncitizens who unlawfully cast ballots.

But the crusade has so far resulted in the Trump administration’s charging only about 236 people with voting-fraud-related offenses across the country since the president took office, according to the Justice Department. That includes some noncitizens accused of registering to vote but not actually casting ballots.

The figure is a minuscule share of the more than 158 million ballots cast in the 2024 general election, and falls far short of the figures cited in July by Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, who claimed without evidence that more than 250,000 potential noncitizens were registered to vote in just four states alone.

The small number of charges has further undermined President Trump’s specious claims that voting by noncitizens is pervasive and tilting elections for Democrats, and raises questions about why the Homeland Security Department has dedicated vast resources to the effort ahead of the midterm election.

“This is about delegitimizing an election that they’re very worried about,” said David Becker, a former voting rights lawyer for the Justice Department who runs the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonpartisan group that works to support election officials. “They’re trying to manufacture evidence and they’re failing.”

The administration’s campaign to scrutinize noncitizen voters has involved a close partnership between the Homeland Security Department and the Justice Department, which has led efforts to criminally charge noncitizens with illegal voting. The Homeland Security Department’s investigatory work has also been core to recent attempts by the Justice Department to intervene in the election.

The Homeland Security Department has defended its focus on the issue, saying that it would root out election fraud wherever it could be found and ramp up deportations of noncitizens who illegally voted or registered.

“D.H.S. is committed to ensuring fair, honest and accurate elections,” the department said in a statement. “D.H.S. is upholding the rule of law and protecting the integrity of American elections by removing aliens who vote and dilute the votes of U.S. citizens. ONLY Americans should elect American leaders.”

Voting by noncitizens, who are barred by law from registering to vote or casting ballots, is exceptionally rare, according to multiple studies. Critics have said the Homeland Security Department’s aggressive efforts to investigate noncitizen voters instead appear to be aimed at intimidating voters and laying the groundwork to challenge the election results.

Immigration advocacy groups have also expressed fears for months that federal agents could turn up at polling places, though as of Tuesday morning, there were no signs of immigration authorities patrolling voting sites.

A line of people outside a building, with a sign reading “Vote” pointing to an entrance.

Early voting in Miami last week. Immigration advocacy groups have expressed fears for months that federal agents could turn up at polling places during the midterm election.Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Tasking hundreds of officers with scouring state voter rolls and deploying agents to interview people at their homes to root out noncitizen voters is a remarkable use of the Homeland Security Department’s powers. The largest federal law enforcement agency, the department was created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to help protect the country from threats.

The Trump administration has leveraged at least four of its nine main agencies to promote investigations into noncitizen voters. That includes agencies that typically focus on deportations, border management, disaster relief, and immigration applications.

Federal agents who specialize in investigating national security threats and immigration benefit fraud have been diverted to finding noncitizens on the voter rolls. Homeland security agents who usually investigate crimes like child exploitation and illegal trade have also investigated more than 150 organizations that they say may be helping noncitizens illegally register to vote.

But the department’s efforts have so far resulted in a small number of charges and little evidence that voter fraud is rampant. The bulk of the 236 charges have been made in the last nine weeks alone, according to the Justice Department, a sign that the administration has dramatically ramped up prosecutions ahead of the midterms. The proportion actually convicted of an offense could end up even smaller.

Investigations into noncitizen voters have historically followed a pattern. State or federal election officials first report that hundreds or thousands of noncitizens may be on the voter rolls. But the figures often shrink to dozens after further investigation. Each inquiry ends with few, if any, prosecutions.

“The massive amount of resources that have been devoted to this operation have uncovered only tiny numbers of individuals who may have voted or registered to vote,” said Wendy R. Weiser, the vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice. “It’s just reinforcing what is known and actually raises questions as to what is the purpose of this operation.”

Some of the Trump administration’s claims of large numbers of noncitizens on the voter rolls in certain states have also unraveled. After homeland security officials claimed that nearly 16,000 people might be noncitizens registered to vote in Nevada, they sent to the state a list of 185 names that had “gone through a rigorous manual review process.” State officials later determined that all 185 were citizens.

Some of the Homeland Security Department’s efforts have faced legal setbacks. Last month, a federal judge in California restricted the department from carrying out field interviews in nine states as part of an effort to investigate noncitizen voters. In September, a federal judge ruled that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which leads the federal response to disasters, could not withhold emergency preparedness grants from states that refuse to make changes to their election processes, including verifying voters’ citizenship.

But that has not deterred the department from pressing ahead with other investigations.

In late October, a group of officers with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — an agency within the Homeland Security Department — were directed to review about 15,000 cases of people suspected of illegally registering to vote in California, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.

The directive is a continuation of an earlier nationwide effort by the agency to examine voter records and federal databases to generate leads for ICE agents to further investigate potential cases of noncitizen voters. The agency’s investigation led immigration officers to identify more than 20,000 people the agency claimed illegally registered to vote in California, according to court documents.

The new effort underscores the Trump administration’s fixation on California, which the Justice Department recently sued to try to force the state to set aside ballots from the 20,000 people the administration suspects are “likely noncitizens.” In a court filing, data scientists analyzing that list of voters said they found that more than 40 percent of the people on the list do not appear on California’s voter rolls. The analysis also found that the list included thousands of people who appear to be citizens.

After a federal judge rejected the effort, the administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to require that California set aside the ballots. The court rejected the request just hours later.

Lines of cars on a road with ballot drop boxes down the center.

Ballot drop boxes in San Diego in November 2024. Voting by noncitizens is exceptionally rare, according to multiple studies.Credit...Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times

In an October email reviewed by The Times, Paul Gleason, a homeland security official, told officials involved with the new effort that officers would be examining registered voters in California “with no evidence of actual voting.” It is illegal for noncitizens to falsely certify that they are citizens when registering to vote, even if they never ultimately cast a ballot. Some immigrants, though, have said that they inadvertently registered while obtaining or renewing driver’s licenses, pointing to voter laws that have made it easier for people to register to vote at motor vehicle agencies.

In a September email reviewed by the Times, Mr. Gleason said that immigration officers had already reviewed more than 150,000 cases and made over 66,000 referrals to ICE for further investigation as part of the nationwide effort to find noncitizen voters. Several former homeland security officials said in interviews that the number of referrals amounted to a massive workload for ICE agents tasked with following up on the leads.

Proponents of the administration praised it for investigating a problem they believe deserves more scrutiny. Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, an acting deputy homeland security secretary during the first Trump administration, said he thought it was clearly appropriate for homeland security agents to investigate noncitizen voting and help secure elections.

“I realize that the extent or scope of the problem itself is debated,” Mr. Cuccinelli said in a recent interview. “But what can’t be debated is that the issue exists.”

But some former homeland security officials questioned why the department has devoted ample resources to the effort and tasked federal agents with investigating the rare issue of noncitizen voting.

“Should you be pulling special agents and federal criminal investigators off national security issues to focus on that? When I weigh out public safety threats, the answer is absolutely not,” said Eric Balliet, who worked at Homeland Security Investigations, the criminal investigations arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, for more than 20 years.

Beautiful man Trump Gets Hard On with Certain Men and He Verbalizes It

2026-11-03T10:06:57.265-05:00

Alex Kent/The New York Times

By Peter Baker and Dylan Freedman

Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent, and Dylan Freedman, the A.I. projects editor for The Times, conducted a review they previously produced in 2024.

New York Times

"You don't read in Dating Apps in Social Media what Trump Tells The Nation" Adamfoxie Blog

As he opened his speech at a recent campaign rally in Greenville, N.C., President Trump told the story of the Willie Horton crime case that helped sink the presidential campaign of the Democrat Michael S. Dukakis in 1988.

And then, 30 minutes later, still speaking at the same rally to the same audience from the same lectern, Mr. Trump told the same Willie Horton story all over again, using some of the same language (and getting the facts wrong both times).

Mr. Trump, who last year became the oldest person ever inaugurated as president and turned 80 in June, has demonstrated physical stamina as he barnstorms the country in advance of midterm elections. But his performances on the road and at the White House this fall have produced many head-scratching moments that have revived questions about his age and stability.

He can be forgetful and repetitive. He is more long-winded, more profane and more absolutist than when he ran for president a decade ago. His rambling speeches seem even more garbled at times. He makes comments that leave people wondering what he is talking about or that sound like he is saying something he is not. And even for a president who has never fully observed the norms of the office, he seems more willing to say things no other president would say.

He declared that at an unfenced construction site “only a Hispanic could survive that fall.” He wants to ban immigrants from Norway “because I didn’t get the Nobel Prize.” He says “I don’t give a damn” if he is seen as caring more about oil company profits than struggling workers. He mispronounces the Strait of Hormuz as the “Hormone Strait.” He has told supporters to “cheat like hell” in the Nov. 3 elections. He says military leakers “should be shot.” And then there is his baffling fixation with admiring men’s posteriors.

Even Mr. Trump seems astonished at times by what comes out of his mouth — and by how much his supporters embrace him nonetheless. “I could say the stupidest things and you’d clap. ‘Oh, I love you so,’” he marveled at a recent rally in Clarksville, Tenn. “But we don’t say the stupidest things,” he quickly added. “We say things of common sense. We say things that make sense.”

For Mr. Trump, making sense often places second to having fun at rallies, and some outrageous remarks appear aimed at generating a laugh. His allies say too much is made of comments that are really just jokes. He has always been a provocative speaker, willing to outrage for the sake of outrage. Mr. Trump defends his stream-of-consciousness rambling as a “brilliant” speaking style that he calls “the weave.”

But the weave seems to be getting weavier. An A.I.-assisted New York Times review of Mr. Trump’s comments from speeches, rallies, social media, interviews and public meetings found significant changes since he began a run for president at age 69 in 2015, although not as much of a notable shift since 2024 when a similar review was conducted. Broadly speaking, the review concluded, Mr. Trump’s public communication is more vulgar, more uninhibited and less coherent than it was a decade ago.

“He’s saying so many stupid things, even for him, so many outrageous and aggressive things,” said former Representative Francis Rooney, a Republican from Florida. “This aggressive kind of attack language, that’s something I’ve never heard from a president.”

The White House denied that Mr. Trump has lost a step. Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman, hailed his “sharpness, unmatched energy, relentless work ethic and historic accessibility” and dismissed concerns about his provocative comments.

“The president doesn’t care about being politically correct, he cares about making America great again,” Mr. Ingle said. “The American people love how authentic, transparent and effective the president is.”

The ‘Freaking Genius’

Trump at a rally in Bullhead City, Ariz., in October, where he bragged about passing a quick test usually used to screen for cognitive decline. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Measuring the effects of age can be difficult without a medical exam, although that has not stopped many physicians, political commentators and everyday Americans from drawing conclusions about Mr. Trump based on what they see on television.

The Times review from 2015 through Thursday found that the president in his second term has used 19 percent more all-or-nothing words like “always,” “never,” “everything” and “totally” at rallies than he did a decade ago and 5 percent more than in 2024, a sign of black-and-white thinking that experts say often accompanies advancing age or cognitive decline. He is cruder than he used to be, using nearly 15 swear words per 10,000 words compared with 14 two years ago and six a decade ago, a change consistent with age-related disinhibition.

The review, relying on an A.I.-assisted metric, found that he makes rambling or confusing digressions in his rallies and speeches two and a half times as often in his second term as in the 2016 campaign, although roughly the same as in 2024. His vocabulary remains about the same, as does the reading level of his speaking, which hovers between fourth and fifth grade. (The average modern president speaks at an eighth-grade level.)

Trump’s public schedule is thinner, down to 1.3 events per weekday versus 2.1 in the first term. But he is posting online an average of 21 times a day, up from 13 a day in 2016 although down from 34 a day two years ago. The night owl president has posted messages between midnight and 5 a.m. on 30 percent of his nights in his second term and has had 240 bursts of 10 or more posts an hour.

The president’s doctor has said that Mr. Trump is mentally sharp. In a three-page summary released in May, Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, the White House physician, noted that Mr. Trump had scored 30 out of 30 on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment. “Cognitive and physical performance are excellent,” he wrote.

The Montreal assessment is a quick test to screen for Alzheimer’s disease or other cognitive impairment and includes basic questions like identifying a lion, camel and rhinoceros; drawing a clock; repeating words or numbers in order; and naming as many words as possible in one minute that start with the letter F. “Nobody can do this,” Mr. Trump insisted a couple weeks ago, adding: “But I can. You know why? Because I’m a freaking genius!”

Trump appears sensitive to the perception that he is slipping, bringing up his cognitive tests without being asked at a half-dozen recent rallies. In Chillicothe, Ohio, on Wednesday night, he called himself “a very high-IQ person,” offered an extended description of the tests and compared his brainpower to that of former Presidents Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr.

“Don’t forget I’m the only president to pass without exception — I passed three cognitive tests,” he said. “I’m the only president that agreed to take them. And they’re hard, you know? Obama couldn’t have passed it. Biden we don’t even talk about.”

‘I Don’t Give a Damn’

Whil Trump has been known to nod off during White House meetings, he draws energy from crowds when he is on the road. He speaks and speaks and speaks — twice as long as in 2016, according to the Times review, for an average of 85 minutes per rally compared with 42 minutes a decade ago.

He is profoundly and proudly undisciplined. He says things that are manifestly unhelpful to him. Even as many Americans are upset about the cost of filling their gas tank, he said in Perry, Ga., the other day that high oil prices were good because the fossil fuel industry was making hundreds of billions of dollars. Even as he said it, he acknowledged it would produce bad headlines. “I don’t give a damn,” he said. “I’m going to say it. We’re making a freaking fortune.”

He wanders from thought to thought, often without finishing a sentence, embedding one off-the-cuff story within another. In Pendleton, S.C., he started talking about transgender athletes, interrupted to tell a story about someone he met in Israel, referred to a poll without explaining its results and then riffed on climate change:

“You have a lot of records that are not exactly going to be shattered by women. They’re going to say, ‘Who the hell broke it?’ Or the swimmer who was a great swimmer, and then she looked to her left, she looked to her right, and she saw this massive human being next to her.

You’ve seen him — her on television. And she had to compete. And my wife said, ‘Please don’t tell those stories. They’re terrible stories to tell as president. Can you imagine George Washington telling these stories?’ No, because George Washington lived in sanity. He didn’t have men playing in women’s sports.

I promise you this. I didn’t know George Washington personally, but they did not have the mutilization of your children for transgender purposes. Do you think George ever had any of the things that we have to go through, Tim? I don’t think so.

Abraham Lincoln — I met a young man from Israel. I said, ‘Who’s your favorite president?’ He said, ‘Abraham Lincoln.’ I said, ‘Oh.’ I said, ‘That’s nice.’ We love Abraham Lincoln. But you’re going to see something later, because they have a poll — they took a poll recently. You’re going to see it. But I also declared a national emergency on energy and terminated the Green New Scam, one of the greatest hoaxes in the history of our country.”

‘He’s All Man’

"Them"Like many people in their ninth decade, he is prone to say things that seem inappropriate. His focus on the male anatomy, for instance, has become remarkably pronounced lately.

“I don’t do this with men very often,” Mr. Trump said at a rally with Senator Jon Husted, Republican of Ohio, on Oct. 12. “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.”

Five days later, he repeated his appreciation of Mr. Husted’s backside. “I examined his ass,” Mr. Trump said at a rally in Kentucky. “I never did that with, no, I never did that with a man before.” Three days later in North Carolina, he praised Mr. Husted’s derrière again. “His ass is, it’s like a pile of muscle,” he said. In Chillicothe, he did it again: “I started by looking at his ass, and it was strong as hell.”

Mr. Husted is not the only object of Trump’s manly approval. Among the others:

Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina: “As much as I can fall in love with a man, which isn’t that much, I fall in love with him, and his name happens to be Tim Scott.”

The spouse of Senator Darline Graham, the other South Carolina Republican: “He’s a good-looking husband.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary: “He’s got the body of a 30-year-old.”

Representative Mike Collins, Republican of Georgia: “Mike Collins is a good-looking man. And he’s all man.”

In Michigan on Sunday,Trump made a point of praising a woman’s backside for a change. “I looked at one hell of a beautiful ass before — Nicki Minaj,” he told the crowd. “That’s hard to miss.”

A Quick Temper

”Are you a sick person?” Trump yelled at a reporter in response to a question about the East Potomac golf course project in the Oval Office on Oct. 20.Credit...Alex Kent/The New York Times

Mr. Trump has always displayed fits of public anger in ways that other presidents have not. But he seems even more prone to pounce these days.

He snaps at reporters so often now that he barely waits for their questions before calling them “sick” and ordering, “Quiet!” When a reporter asked on Thursday if he was canceling a trip to Kansas because he was tired of traveling, Mr. Trump accosted his physical appearance. “You are disgusting! Put yourself in shape. You look like hell.”

His exhortations to supporters to vote have grown more vulgar and violent as well. “If you do that,” he said in Vandalia, Ohio, “we’re going to win and we’re going to win big. And we’re going to shove it up their ass, OK?”

He depicts himself as all-powerful. “I can do whatever I want,” he told reporters in the Oval Office recently. As if to prove it, he regularly tries to rename bodies of water after America or himself. He demanded that tech companies stop using the term artificial intelligence, preferring instead “super intelligence”; those that disobey, he wrote online, are “THE ENEMY!”

He has never been burdened with excessive self-awareness, but even so, some of his recent comments have been jarring. The man who dispenses disparaging nicknames like “Talafreako” for James Talarico and “Annie Trannie” for Dr. Annie Andrews insisted with a straight face the other day that “I don’t go around mocking people.”

Likewise, the commander in chief who recently threatened to “annihilate” Iran complained bitterly that he did not win the Nobel Peace Prize. Even so, one night last month he could not remember the name of the prize he covets. “Does anybody know the name of that peace prize?” he asked in Pendleton, then came up with another: “the Pulitzer Prize.”

When he summoned the name of the Nobel Prize last week in Port Huron, Mich., he declared that he would like to ban all immigrants from Norway, where the award committee is based, because he did not win. “I don’t want anybody from Norway,” he said. “Frankly, Norway sucks. Norway has become a shithouse country, actually.”

These days, even Mr. Trump seems aware that eyes are on him, watching and waiting. “I love the weave,” he told the midterm Republican convention in Dallas in September. “You know what the weave is? You talk about something, then you bring in a ballroom or you bring in an airplane or you bring in Air Force One. But you notice I always get right back to the same topic.”

And yet, he went on, “when someday, there’ll be a time when I do the weave is weave, weave. Someday, there’ll be a time when I don’t get back to the original subject, and then you can say he’s had it. OK? You can say then he’s had it.”

20. Yr Old Was Piloting The Learjet That Crashed in Florida

2026-11-02T12:03:02.879-05:00

The private jet, which had been traveling from Texas to the Bahamas, crashed down in a residential area of Palm Beach, Fla.,Credit...Giorgio Viera/Reuters

By David Ovalle and Jacey Fortin

One of the pilots of a private jet that plummeted to the ground on Sunday afternoon in Florida, killing all nine people on board, was a 20-year-old aviator named Nathalia Filgueiras, her mother said on Monday.

Ms. Filgueiras, of Boca Raton, Fla., had logged more than 1,300 hours of flight time and earned her pilot’s license at 17, according to her mother, Camila Corteleti. She said her daughter had worked for Upper Jets, a private charter firm based in Fort Lauderdale, and was co-pilot of Sunday’s flight.

Ms. Corteleti said her daughter had been passionate about flying since childhood, a love forged soaring the skies with her father, who is a recreational pilot. She recalled that her daughter, as a child, used to enjoy going to the Boca Raton Airport to watch planes taking off and landing, and she announced when she was about 12 that she wanted to be a pilot.

“She loved the freedom,” Ms. Corteleti said. “It was completely different seeing the world from the top.”

Ms. Corteleti did not know the identity of the pilot, and it was unclear who was at the controls when the plane began to fall. Efforts to reach Upper Jets were not immediately successful.

Nathalia Filgueiras

The private jet, a Learjet 60, which had been traveling from Texas to the Bahamas, crashed down in a residential area of Palm Beach, Fla., leaving a smoldering crater and wreckage in the street. Investigators were working on Monday to determine what happened.

Nathalia Filgueiras earned a pilot’s license at 17, had logged more than 1,300 hours of flight time and was the co-pilot on Sunday, her mother said in an interview.

In 2023, CBS12, a news outlet based in South Florida, reported that Ms. Filgueiras had gotten her private pilot’s license when she was a senior in high school. “I like being different than everyone,” she said in a video interview at the time.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement on Sunday that all of the people on the plane had died. There was no information available about the identities of the passengers. Officials said that it did not appear that any people on the ground had been injured.

In the moments before the plane crashed, a pilot radioed air traffic controllers, and she said that the plane was facing rain, ice that was light and clear, and manageable and moderate turbulence, according to archived communications with air traffic controllers in Miami on Sunday afternoon.

The pilot asked if she could climb to 37,000 feet, but soon after she desperately declared mayday, a life-threatening emergency, to air traffic controllers. She screamed that the plane was descending at a rate of 20,000 feet per minute. “We’re going to crash into the ground,” she said.

Iran Says It Will Reopen The Strait of Hormuz in 2 days~Part of Deal w/US

2026-11-02T11:48:42.417-05:00

Off the coast of Iran in September. The conflict’s effect on shipping has shaken the global economy.Credit...Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times

By Erika Solomon and Sanam Mahoozi

Iran is prepared to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in two days if the United States agrees to a set of demands, its foreign ministry said on Monday, after a week of intensified negotiations to avert a return to war.

But those demands, which include the Trump administration lifting sanctions on Iran and releasing billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets, appear difficult for Washington to accept.

The foreign ministry’s spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, made the comments hours after President Trump had said at a campaign rally that he might eventually decide to give Iran “the hammer” if the two sides could not reach a deal to end the war.

Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for oil and gas shipping in the Persian Gulf, after U.S. and Israeli forces attacked the country in February. That move roiled energy markets, and continues to shake the global economy.

American and Israeli military officials have been drawing up plans for renewed strikes on Iran after this week’s U.S. midterm elections. Iranian leaders have warned that, if the country were attacked again, its forces would expand their range of targets, and are they are now publicly considering a withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which prohibits the development of a nuclear weapon.

Propelled by increasingly bellicose rhetoric from both Iran and the United States, Qatari mediators have been pushing to broker a last-ditch deal between the two countries.

In recent days, Iranian officials have signaled that those negotiations have made some progress, though Mr. Baghaei stressed that they were not at a point where Iranian negotiators were prepared to hold direct talks with their U.S. counterparts.

“If Iran’s legitimate demands are accepted and implemented, it would be possible to put the entire plan into operation within two days, restore security to the Strait of Hormuz, and initiate the negotiation process,” Mr. Baghaei told reporters on Monday. ⁠ “⁠The realization of this depends entirely on Washington’s will and decision.”

The global benchmark oil price, apparently responding to potential progress in the talks, declined 4 percent on Monday to about $109 a barrel.

Still, conditions around the Strait of Hormuz remain extremely dangerous. More than 35 ships were attacked in October, more than in any other month since the start of the war.

In September, Iran proposed a phased deal to reopen the strait, in which the warring countries would take turns to make concessions, culminating in Tehran ensuring safe passage through the strait, while Washington would lift a naval blockade on Iran’s ports.

After that initial phase, Iran proposed that the two sides could begin negotiating a comprehensive peace deal that would restart talks over its nuclear enrichment program. U.S. officials rejected this proposal, saying Iran should commit to nuclear concessions earlier.

Qatari mediators have managed to revive negotiations over the past few weeks, initially accelerating the implementation of the initial phase to five days, and more recently condensing that to two days, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told the broadcaster Al Jazeera on Saturday.

Abbas Araghchi stands amid a crowd of delegates at a meeting.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in Moscow last month. He told a broadcaster over the weekend that negotiators were looking at a more quickly implemented deal.Credit...Pool photo by Pavel Bednyakov

Mr. Araghchi made no mention of nuclear concessions. In a televised interview on Saturday, one of the officials overseeing the talks, Mohsen Rezaei, Iran’s national security adviser, said nuclear negotiations could begin only after Washington had met Iranian conditions.

Alongside the demands related to sanctions and frozen assets, Mr. Araghchi said in his interview that the U.S. would also have to recognize a deal between Oman and Iran for administering passage through the strait in the future.

At the same time, Mr. Rezaei said that a recent letter sent to him about negotiations from Vice President JD Vance had shown a changed tone toward Iran, which the Iranian official called a “good sign.”

Even as Gulf leaders pin their hopes on a diplomatic solution, they are “braced for the worst,” said Anwar Gargash, the diplomatic adviser to the president of the United Arab Emirates, at the Manama Dialogue security conference over the weekend. The stakes of the negotiations are particularly high for Gulf Arab countries, which were battered by Iranian drone and missile attacks in retaliation for U.S.-Israeli strikes.

“The rules of logic tell us that the Iranian stand and U.S. stand are far apart,” Mr. Gargash said at the conference in Bahrain. “If these positions are not bridged, then we have to worry about the worst.”

Iranian officials have repeatedly stressed that they are suspicious the talks could unravel. In his news conference on Monday, Mr. Baghaei said that the United States and Israel had attacked Iran in June 2025 shortly after Iranian officials had held negotiations with Washington.

Mr. Trump’s current stance remains ambiguous. On Sunday, he told journalists that he had had a “good talk” with President Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel over the weekend, which included a discussion of the war.

“The only reason we’re not finished with Iran is I want to be nice — I want to try and save all those lives if I can,” he told a campaign rally in Iowa later on Sunday. “But at some point we’re going to have to give them the hammer.”

Charges Vs.Former FBI Agents Who Follow Orders to Investigate Trump R Thrown Out/Judge

2026-11-02T11:33:23.455-05:00

Judge Zia M. Faruqui admonished prosecutors on Monday for trying to avoid some of the fundamental checks and balances of the criminal justice system.Credit...Craig Hudson for The Washington Post, via Getty Images

By Alan Feuer

Reporting from Federal District Court in Washington

A federal magistrate judge threw out charges against two former F.B.I. intelligence officials accused of lying to Congress on Monday, saying that prosecutors had failed in one of their most basic responsibilities: They had not shown there was any probable cause that crimes had been committed in the first place.

In an emotional, hourlong address from the bench in Federal District Court in Washington, the magistrate judge, Zia M. Faruqui, said that the case against the former officials — Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides — was a rushed, political prosecution ordered by the White House intended to affect the upcoming midterm elections. Two weeks ago, the administration charged the former officials with falsely minimizing their work on investigations involving Hunter Biden, the son of the former president.

Judge Faruqui excoriated the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington for how it handled the case, admonishing prosecutors for trying to avoid some of the fundamental checks and balances of the criminal justice system. At the same time, he apologized directly to Ms. Floris and Mr. Benavides for having been “dragged through the process” of being charged by the same federal government they had admirably served for decades.

“I am deeply troubled by what happened here in the case,” Judge Faruqui said. “What has transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization.”

The dismissal of the charges was the Justice Department’s latest failure to follow through on President Trump’s relentless demands to take revenge against a long list of people who have run afoul of him. In recent months, both judges and grand juries have repeatedly rejected the department’s attempts to prosecute the president’s enemies in a growing — and humiliating — series of legal defeats.

From the outset, the case against Ms. Floris and Mr. Benavides was a particularly bitter one, embodying a battle that has raged for nearly two years between the F.B.I.’s current leadership and the scores of agents who have been purged from the bureau because of their supposed disloyalty to Mr. Trump.

On full display in court on Monday as several former F.B.I. agents fired by the bureau’s director, Kash Patel, showed up to cheer the dismissal of the case. Among those in the gallery were Brian Driscoll, the former acting director of the F.B.I.; Dave Sundberg, the former agent in charge of the bureau’s Washington field office; and Steven Jensen, another longtime F.B.I. leader.

Ms. Floris and Mr. Benavides were charged in a complaint last month with making false statements during testimony they gave in 2023 to the House Judiciary Committee about the roles they played in the bureau’s contentious investigations of Hunter Biden, the former president’s son, and a laptop that belonged to him.

But during his speech, Judge Faruqui dismantled almost every aspect of the government’s case. He pointed out that most of the false statements the two defendants were charged with making were not actually false, that none of the false statements were made knowingly and that none of them had any material effect on the congressional investigation which they were called upon to assist.

Both Ms. Floris and Mr. Benavides served on the F.B.I.’s Foreign Influence Task Force, a group created after Russia interfered in the 2016 election. The task force was designed to help intelligence agencies monitor clandestine efforts by foreign governments to manipulate American politics and in the weeks before the 2020 election it raised concerns that reports about the younger Mr. Biden — especially those concerning a laptop that he left behind at a computer repair shop — may have been influenced by a Russian disinformation campaign.

Judge Faruqui was allowed to weigh in on the viability of the case because prosecutors chose to charge Ms. Floris and Mr. Benavides through a criminal complaint, not an indictment. Complaints require a judge to make a finding of probable cause, whereas indictments require only a majority vote by a panel of grand jurors and do not require a judge’s approval.

But federal prosecutors in Washington have failed so often over the past two years to secure indictments from grand juries that they have grown wary of the panels — especially in politicized cases involving Mr. Trump’s opponents. While their complaint against Ms. Floris and Mr. Benavides is dead, prosecutors could try to resuscitate the charges by asking a grand jury to approve them.

A New Level Of Risks of Fear Pushing The Us and Iran Hostilities to Ignite Again

2026-11-01T09:40:01.796-05:00

A senior official in Iran took to social media in recent days to say the country was preparing to take on its adversaries with surprise attacks.Credit...Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times

By David E. Sanger Julian E. Barnes Jonathan Swan Maggie Haberman Farnaz Fassihiand Eric Schmitt

The team of Times reporters has covered Iran’s confrontations with the United States for decades, particularly during President Trump’s two terms.//New York Times

Leer en español

Inside the Trump administration, officials are expressing fears that Iran is in the “advanced stages” of planning attacks against U.S. officials.

More than 6,000 miles away, the Iranians appear convinced that Israel and the United States are preparing to unleash their third major attack in 16 months, a final push to force Iran to surrender to U.S. demands.

The conflict in the Middle East has entered a new phase in which a maelstrom of factors, from the political calendars in the United States and Israel to the potential for all sides to be seeking pretexts for action, are creating heightened levels of tension and risk.

This is how countries can escalate into full-scale war, several diplomats and outside experts noted. If the U.S. intelligence disclosed this week is right that Iran has credible plans to attack Americans at home and abroad, one senior European official said — “and it probably is,” the official added — one gunshot that appears aimed at a U.S. official could touch off a conflagration. So could a stray explosion near a bunker sheltering Iranian leaders, who already survived their predecessors’ deaths in a decapitation strike in the opening hours of the war on Feb. 28.

The fact that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Trump are facing critical elections that could dramatically affect the balance of power in their countries feeds into the complex set of calculations that all sides are making. Even if he is defeated on Tuesday, Mr. Netanyahu could decide to launch one last strike that he may believe his successor would hesitate to execute. Similarly, Mr. Trump, who knows how unpopular the war is even among his strongest supporters, may want to show that at least when it comes to his powers as commander in chief, his authority is undiminished.

And, as in other moments of global peril — the Cuban Missile Crisis and the decision to invade in Iraq, as examples — partial or faulty intelligence, or just a failure to understand the adversary’s true motives, can carry deadly consequences. Iraq poses another cautionary tale, when selective intelligence can be used as an actual pretext for military action.

U.S. officials say they are focused on elements of the most recent intelligence suggesting that the Iranians may seek to kill U.S. ambassadors in the Middle East and American officials on U.S. soil — a longtime ambition of Iran’s elite Unit 840, which has carried out kidnappings and assassinations around the globe. But history suggests Iran’s desires often outstrip its capabilities. It has at times hired hapless hit men who have been arrested before they could do harm.

Still, those incidents are a reminder that U.S. and Iranian fears are rooted in bitter experience. And while Mr. Trump has said he would not attack before the midterm elections in 10 days, he has also hinted that all bets are off after that. Senior U.S. officials say that in private, Mr. Trump appears to be leaning toward another round of major strikes inside Iran. Plans developed by Central Command detail an expanded list of bombing targets, including energy infrastructure and other sites vital to the Iranian economy, according to an official with direct knowledge of the planning.

Echoing Mr. Trump’s bombast, a senior official in Iran took to social media in recent days to say the country was preparing to take on its adversaries with surprise attacks, with “zero red lines.”

A Rising Threat

U.S. officials and European allies said the intelligence about potential attacks had been rising in recent weeks, since a suspected Iranian plot against a military base in Britain used by the U.S. military.

A police officer in a yellow jacket leans into a police car next to a long fence in the dark. A 'POLICE SLOW' sign and traffic cones are in the foreground.

A police roadblock near the R.A.F. Fairford air base used by the U.S. military.Credit...Toby Shepheard/Reuters

The intelligence reviewed by senior officials included Iranian plotting of how to respond to an attack by either the United States or Israel with an assassination campaign, as well as other attacks Iran could carry out in retaliation for earlier U.S. attacks, officials said.

The intelligence about the plots remains highly classified, so it is hard to judge. Only the most senior U.S. lawmakers — members of the so-called Gang of 8 — had been briefed before the warning in a memo from Jay Clayton, the director of national intelligence, became public on Friday. Some officials have been puzzled by why Trump administration officials released the memo, given that they knew they could not back it up by discussing evidence of specific plots.

The gap between what Mr. Trump and most of his advisers say about the war publicly and the intelligence they are receiving is wide, and neither the White House team nor Pentagon leadership has given a briefing on the conflict in months. The president prefers to keep information closely held, but that has merely heightened the risks.

But the essence of the intelligence findings is that several Iranian plots have moved from the aspiration stage toward execution. And a Western official compared the U.S. reaction with the response to the warnings of the Iranian threats to attack American personnel and bombers at R.A.F. Fairford, a base in southern England, earlier this month. A dozen B-1 Air Force bombers were withdrawn, and Iranian officials said that if they returned, it would be taken as a sign of imminent attack.

Mr. Trump said nothing to reporters on Saturday about the intelligence, but did say he would decide soon whether to take renewed military action. He has been briefed regularly on the new intelligence, which some officials say is being taken more seriously than any warnings since the war began.

Midterms Q&A

Times journalists have been answering questions about our coverage. Our of our assistant managing editors, Patrick Healy, will take more questions live on Monday.

Answers to Your Questions About Our Midterm Election Coverage

Oct. 29, 2026

There is some evidence the Iranians have operatives inside the United States who are “not just simply Iranian nationals,” one official said. But even if Iranians are plotting attacks from the United States, it is not clear they can.

They note that Iranian officials, in their communications with colleagues, often exaggerate their ability to carry out covert overseas attacks.

Still, Iran almost always finds criminals and hit men to hire for assassination plots, particularly in Europe and the United States. The danger of any specific attack plan, U.S. officials cautioned, depends on the competence of the criminal hired to carry out an assassination, U.S. and Western officials said.

Haunting Memories From 2024

This is not the first time Washington has gone through this exercise.

The mix of real threats from Iran against Mr. Trump and some of his top advisers, along with other potential assassination attempt scenarios, created a climate of fear and paranoia for the president’s team throughout the 2024 campaign. Those threats had grown in intensity throughout Mr. Trump’s four years out of office, and were animated in part by Mr. Trump’s decision in January 2020 to order a strike on the head of Iran’s elite Quds force, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani.

The Biden administration tracked an increase in threats, and the F.B.I. arrested a Pakistani national on July 12, 2024, charging him with a murder-for-hire plot directed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps against Mr. Trump.

Separately, President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s senior advisers had tracked what was described as a credible threat against Mr. Trump from Iran, and sent countersnipers to his outdoor rally in Butler, Pa., on July 13 that year. One of those snipers shot an attempted assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, who officials said was acting on his own and had no connection to a foreign plot.

The funeral procession for Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani in Tehran in 2020.Credit...Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times

But the back-to-back incidents — along with a hacking of campaign officials’ emails that was said to have been led by Iran — generated constant fear inside the Trump campaign.

Other perceived threats and anxieties were comical. A small item was discovered in the campaign headquarters in South Florida, prompting a 9-1-1 call and fears it was a listening device. It turned out to be a device that could be purchased online, a prank carried out by someone on the campaign.

The Trump team has continued to sift through threats, including against senior White House officials. They pay close attention to the names of officials mentioned by Iranians in intercepted chatter.

In Iran, Telegraphing the Reaction

Iranian officials believe their most inspired moves after the Feb. 28 attack included striking U.S. bases across the Middle East and closing the Strait of Hormuz, which caught U.S. officials off guard. They have made no secret about their intentions to expand the scope of the war if a third round of fighting breaks out. In public remarks, senior officials have threatened to target civilian infrastructure, energy sites and underwater fiber optic cables that carry internet and other communications traffic.

A satellite image shows about two dozen airplanes arrayed at an air base.

A satellite image from February shows military planes at a base in Jordan where U.S. troops were killed in July.Credit...Planet Labs PBC, via Reuters

Two Iranian officials, one of them a member of the Revolutionary Guards, said in interviews on Saturday that the expansion of targets also included U.S. diplomats and personnel. The officials, who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly, confirmed State Department reports about Iran’s plot to target Americans.

The officials defended the plan and noted that Israel and the United States had killed dozens of Iranian officials and some family members. In their view, they said, that made targeting Americans “fair game.” It is not clear whether they have the reach, however.

Iran’s success rate has measurably deteriorated compared with the 1980s, in the earlier years of the revolution, when it carried out a string of assassinations of Iranian political dissidents.

Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the lead negotiator and speaker of parliament, said on social media that Iran views the coming part of the war as existential.

“We are in a surprise phase of the war, and we will not fight a classic war,” Mr. Mohammadi said. “It will be an asymmetrical, fierce and conclusive war that will target the enemy’s strong points and weak spots.”

Judge Tosses Trump $10 Bill Suit Vs. Wall St Journal

2026-11-01T09:17:27.847-05:00

The Wall Street Journal’s offices in Manhattan. Judge Darrin P. Gayles of Federal District Court dismissed President Trump’s lawsuit with prejudice, meaning the claim cannot be refiled again.Credit...Vincent Alban/The New York Times

By Katie Robertson

New York Times

A federal judge on Saturday once again threw out President Trump’s defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal over its reporting that linked the president and the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The president had argued that The Journal had maligned his “character and integrity” when it published an article in 2025 about a lewd birthday greeting that Mr. Trump appeared to have written to Mr. Epstein more than 20 years earlier. Mr. Trump denied writing the greeting and sued The Journal, asking for $10 billion in damages.

On Saturday, Judge Darrin P. Gayles of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida granted The Journal’s request that the complaint be dismissed, writing that the president “has failed” to prove that The Journal had “acted with actual malice.”

Actual malice is a legal standard that must be met by public figures in defamation proceedings. It means the defendants knew what they were publishing was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.

“In effect, President Trump argues that once he declared the Letter a ‘fake,’ Defendants should have disregarded everything else they learned in their investigation and not published the story,” Judge Gayles wrote in a 20-page decision. “But that is not what the actual malice standard requires and runs afoul of the First Amendment.”

Judge Gayles dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, meaning the claim cannot be refiled again.

“President Trump will continue to press forward in his powerhouse lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and all of the other defendants,” a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s legal team said in a statement. “The president will continue to hold those who mislead the American People with Fake News and smears accountable for their actions.”

A spokesman for Dow Jones, which publishes The Journal, said, “We’re pleased with the court’s decision.”

The president, who has a long history of vitriol against the press, has frequently turned to litigation to go after news media for coverage he deems critical or unfair as part of a broader effort to attack journalists. In recent years, he has filed lawsuits against outlets including The New York Times, the BBC, CNN and The Des Moines Register.

The dismissal on Saturday was the second time Mr. Trump’s lawsuit related to the Journal’s reporting about Mr. Epstein has been thrown out. The same judge dismissed an earlier defamation lawsuit from Mr. Trump in April, also because he had failed to adequately show that The Journal had acted with actual malice. Mr. Trump refiled his complaint in May.

Mr. Trump originally filed the defamation lawsuit against The Journal the day after the newspaper published an article on July 17, 2025, headlined: “Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump.” The article described a letter that appeared to be from Mr. Trump that was included in a 2003 birthday album for Mr. Epstein and contained the words: “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

The letter had a drawing of a naked woman on it with Mr. Trump’s signature below the waist, mimicking pubic hair, according to the article. The Journal also included Mr. Trump’s denial that he had written the letter or created the drawing: “This is not me. This is a fake thing,” the article quoted Mr. Trump as saying.

After the article was published, a copy of the birthday book was released to House Oversight Committee members by lawyers for Mr. Epstein’s estate. It included a letter and drawing that resembled the one described by The Journal. The 238-page book was compiled by Mr. Epstein's former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who has been convicted of aiding his campaign of sexual abuse.

The suit also named as defendants The Journal’s parent company, News Corp; its founder, Rupert Murdoch; its chief executive, Robert Thomson; its publisher, Dow Jones; and two Journal reporters.

This Might Be The End For Trumps Billionaires and Millionaires

2026-11-01T08:57:45.319-05:00

Brandon cell

By Noah Shachtman

Mr. Shachtman is a contributing Opinion writer. He writes frequently about government corruption.

New York Times

America has always had oligarchs, but for most of the past century or so, they steered the country in relative quiet. They knew how to support the right politician or use the law to protect their edge. And if a given law proved inconvenient, that’s what the skilled lobbyists and friendly judges were for.

President Trump’s second term has ushered in a starkly different arrangement. Tariffs, prosecutions and regulations are all now subject to one man’s whims. Business leaders are being asked to underwrite government projects, such as the White House ballroom. The government assigns to itself a cut of private businesses. The White House bestows enterprises from oil fields to social media platforms on loyal allies. A coterie of top officials, their children and their gaggle of hangers-on move through the world like princelings. The rule of law can seem situational at best.

It’s a throwback to an old style of governing centered on a father figure who treats the nation like an extension of his household and who dispenses resources and favors and jobs like a dad handing out candy to his kids. In an environment like this, fealty to the national patriarch can seem like the surest — in some cases only — way to get ahead.

The scholar of elite privilege Jeffrey Winters, drawing on the work of the great 19th- and early-20th-century sociologist Max Weber, has described the contours of “sultanistic” oligarchies, as in sultans of old, in which even for the very rich, “the head oligarch both can make you or break you.”

When Professor Winters wrote a history of oligarchy back in 2011, he told me, he had Vladimir Putin’s Russia in mind as the paradigm of a modern sultanate. Today, he’s seeing those tendencies closer to home.

Mr. Trump is now worth about $7 billion, thanks in significant measure to crypto deals that sound almost too shady to be true. His son Eric’s net worth at one point jumped tenfold, according to a Forbes estimate. Don Jr.’s venture capital firm has gained access to some of Silicon Valley’s most lucrative opportunities, helping drive returns for its primary investment fund in the neighborhood of 200 percent.

Wealth can still buy political power, just as it did in the oligarchy’s previous iteration. The difference today is that a new gusher of cash has erupted and is flowing in the opposite direction. Political power, or even just proximity to it, is generating wealth to a degree unknown in modern American history.

The Trump family, once ostracized by a large part of the C-suite set, is now front and center, exerting a gravitational pull over ventures of every kind. Crypto. A.I. Rare earths. Quantum computing. Drones. Nuclear power.

It’s not lost on anyone that these Trump investments tend to come with added bonuses. Take the prediction market Kalshi, which counts Don Jr. as an adviser. When New York’s attorney general tried to shut down operations in the state, the elder Trump’s administration threw it a lifeline, ordering the company to keep operating. Or look at Foundation Future Industries, a humanoid robotics firm backed by Eric Trump. It won a $24 million Pentagon contract this spring to continue development of A.I.-powered soldiers. That makes it one in an array of Trump-connected companies whose primary customer is the United States government. You know who’s in charge of that.

The Trumps say they’re simply savvy investors. Their representatives insist they don’t promote their companies to the government and that those companies have received no preferential treatment from the administration. Maybe so. What’s clear is that the Trump brothers don’t have much patience for all the hand-wringing about the blurring of public office and private gain. “We understand what the administration wants to do,” Don Jr. told an investment forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, last year, “because we helped craft some of that messaging.”

In a statement, Alan Garten, the executive vice president of the Trump Organization, firmly rejected the idea that any members had inappropriately benefited, noting that the Trump Organization dates back decades, “and Don and Eric were actively developing projects, pursuing investments and building business relationships for years before their father entered the White House.”

The president’s kids aren’t the only members of Washington’s new princeling class. Jared Kushner’s investment firm recently completed a $55 billion deal with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. Alex and Zach Witkoff, the sons of the White House envoy Steve Witkoff, have benefited from significant deals with the United Arab Emirates’ spymaster via World Liberty Financial, the crypto exchange they and members of the Trump family run together. Brandon and Kyle Lutnick, the U.S. commerce secretary’s children, have overseen record revenue at their family’s financial firm. A consulting firm at which the daughter of the White House chief of staff is a partner has received lucrative contracts from a Russia-aligned Balkan government. Mr. Trump reportedly bristles when people in his orbit try to make money off their proximity to him. “That’s my money!” he’s been repeatedly quoted as saying, with variations that sometimes include an expletive between “my” and “money.”

Mr. Trump’s political opponents denounce this as straight-up corruption. But the rise of the princelings is better understood as part of a new strain of American capitalism, one that turns the entanglements we used to regard as conflicts of interest into core operating principles, and then markets that coziness to retail investors for further gain. This goes beyond the old caricature of influence peddling, where you maneuver your way to some official’s good side. Here, the access is baked right in. The familial and the federal are one and the same. Responding to questions from The Times, the White House principal deputy press secretary Anna Kelly wrote, “President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public, which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media.” She added, “There are no conflicts of interest.”

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If Democrats take one or even both houses of Congress in next week’s midterm elections, they’re determined to investigate these deals. Representative Ro Khanna is already involved in an investigation into alleged stock manipulation schemes carried out by a firm based in Trump Tower. Representative Jamie Raskin wants to examine how seemingly overnight Don Jr.’s venture capital outfit went from “investing in total market flops” to being “the hottest firm in the United States.” (That firm’s attorneys, in a letter back to Mr. Raskin, called the description “not merely unkind; it is belied by the public record.”)

There’s a lot to sift through. Even if investigators manage to find every item in this supermarket sweep through the global market, it will still be just the most visible example of how the princelings reordered American business and politics. They have now had years to dig in and fully entwine their business interests with the business of the government. Mr. Trump will eventually leave office, but the consequences will last much, much longer.

This was not always the plan. As recently as late 2024, the Trumps and their allies were making almost the opposite play. They were trying to capitalize on being outsiders.

The left had bullied much of corporate America into accepting its agenda, the argument went. Democratic administrations had jawboned the social networks into treating MAGA views like disinformation. A bank had closed hundreds of Trump-related accounts after they were flagged for money laundering. A judge even found the family business liable for fraud. All that opened up an opportunity. Shut out of the corporate mainstream, in their telling, Trump allies could build what the investor Omeed Malik called the “parallel economy,” one that didn’t much care for Pride Month or carbon capture or vaccine mandates.

Mr. Malik and Don Jr. helped take public the firm that owns PublicSquare, which saw itself as a MAGA answer to Amazon, a place where like-minded businesses could market themselves to red America. Those companies included Garnuu, a tampon brand that touted itself as being for “Girls Only. Period.” and a pet supply firm that refused to “cater to alternative lifestyles.”

“It’s time to invest in companies that don’t hate you,” Don Jr. posted on social media.

The pitch worked — for about a day. PublicSquare’s stock price more than doubled shortly after its I.P.O. Then it tanked. By election night 2024, PublicSquare had fallen 90 percent from its peak value.

Of course by then, Don Jr. and Mr. Malik weren’t outsiders anymore. The “parallel economy” play no longer made sense. The Trumps and their allies were ascendant. The plan had to evolve, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told me — one of 25 I spoke to for this article.

They transitioned to a new strategy, based on their identities as the ultimate insiders. Don Jr., Mr. Malik and Chris Buskirk, a conservative media figure (and a former New York Times contributing Opinion writer), founded a private club in Georgetown and advertised a $500,000 initiation fee. The name wasn’t terribly subtle: Executive Branch.

1789 Capital, the venture firm Mr. Malik had founded with Mr. Buskirk and the far-right megadonor Rebekah Mercer, formally welcomed Don Jr. as a partner right after the election. It went from $150 million under management to more than $1.7 billion by the end of 2025. The cash came, in part, from the family offices of high-net-worth individuals and Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds.

Mr. Buskirk explicitly tied his projects, including 1789, to the rise of a new ruling class. “You either have an extractive elite — an oligarchy — or you have a productive elite — an aristocracy — in every society,” he told The Washington Post.

Starting in the Biden years, there has been a mounting wave of venture capitalist interest in defense, aerospace and other start-ups to help re-establish America’s manufacturing base. Mr. Malik and Don Jr., longtime advocates of such investments, rode the “patriotic capitalism” wave. As of last summer, 1789 Capital’s portfolio included the high-tech weapons manufacturer Anduril, Elon Musk’s company SpaceX and Axiom Space, which is working on new astronaut suits for NASA. These are minority positions, without board seats or operational control, but even so: As investments, they’re far from anti-woke tampons.

In a 2025 book, Eric Trump complained that during the first Trump term, the family passed up all sorts of lucrative opportunities, yet still found itself “accused endlessly of somehow ‘profiting’ off the presidency.” This time around, there would be no missing out on deals or listening to pious lectures about conflicts of interest. “They created this monster,” Don Jr. told CNBC. Investments in cryptocurrencies and prediction markets, originally portrayed as alternatives to the woke banking and polling industries, were repositioned as pillars of the new economic establishment.

When Peter Navarro, Mr. Trump’s trade adviser, pushed the Pentagon toward a deal with a rare-earth magnets start-up backed by 1789, was he legitimately promoting a national security priority, or was he doing a favor for the president’s son? The whole arrangement erases such distinctions. Now the drone-parts manufacturer Unusual Machines, which counts Don Jr. as an adviser, is in negotiations for a Pentagon loan. That would be a big development for the company, which doesn’t sell to the government directly; its stock rose 65 percent when The Wall Street Journal broke the news. Then it climbed 26 percent when the White House announced new tariffs on the import of foreign drone parts, functionally squeezing Unusual Machines’ rivals.

That’s what we used to call a conflict of interest, but “the entire notion of conflict of interest is based upon a world that I think these guys are questioning,” said the political scientist Jeffrey Kopstein, a scholar who has written presciently on the new Trumpist style of governing. There’s “no distinction between the public and the private.”

The embrace of this kind of state symbiosis is an ironic turn for a crowd that not long ago was raging against political interference in the markets. I asked Allan Evans, the chief executive of Unusual Machines, if he was bothered by the perception that the firm is unfairly benefiting from its coziness with the ruling family. “The narrative doesn’t hurt me,” he answered. “If you believe there’s coziness, wouldn’t you want to invest in our stock? And if you think that ‘oh no, that’s corruption and terrible,’ you’re not going to invest in our stock anyway.”

“From a game theory perspective, I just — I’ve got to let this ride,” Mr. Evans added. “There’s no negative outcome boxes, you know?”

There are about 20 golf courses within a 20-mile radius of Kissimmee, Fla. The Remington Golf Club is not considered one of the better ones. (“Traps were overgrown on many holes. Tee boxes were a bit bare,” wrote one GolfPass reviewer.) It was a primo pick, however, for an idiosyncratic financial play that’s become a Trump world staple: the reverse merger.

The idea sounds simple enough. Find a down-on-its-luck company that’s already listed on a stock market, and smash it together with a start-up in need of quick money. It’s a shortcut to a major cash infusion, without the paperwork of an I.P.O. or the hassles of dealing with venture capital investors. The results can be a little odd.

In February 2025, the holding company that owned the Remington Golf Club and a sister course went public on the Nasdaq stock exchange, with financial underwriting by a company based in Trump Tower. That company was Dominari Securities. The I.P.O. flopped, and when shares were at rock bottom, one of Dominari Holdings’ funds bought up a significant number of them. A few months after that, the golf course company announced it was merging with, of all things, a small firm building drones for the military. Dominari Securities would arrange the financing for that deal, too.

Between the two of them, Don Jr. and Eric Trump own about 11 percent of Dominari Holdings, and they serve on the company’s advisory board. Its president, Kyle Wool, is a frequent booster of the president on the Fox Business channel. When the impending merger was announced (“Trump Sons Back New Drone Company Targeting Pentagon Sales” was the headline in The Journal), the golf course company’s shares shot up 24 percent intraday. The number of shares traded jumped from around 24,000 to over 28 million in a single day. The fact that a Trump-backed company could be selling drones to the Trump administration wasn’t a bug; it was a feature. In fact, that feature seems to have been a selling point to a certain kind of investor.

Mr. Evans, from Unusual Machines, compared the Trump brothers coming on board to when Oprah Winfrey joined Weight Watchers, but it’s more than that. Buying into these companies offers people a chance to affiliate themselves with emerging technology, MAGA celebrities and Trump-adjacent businesses all at the same time. The Financial Times recently noted that a vast majority of companies backed by Dominari and 1789 — neither of which commented in response to questions from The Times — are in sectors aligned with Trump administration priorities.

Brett Velicovich, the president of Powerus, the merged golf course-drone company, told me in the spring that it would compete on merit, not connections. “With the way that the Department of War works, there are multiple layers of oversight,” he said, adding that it “would be virtually impossible for someone to make a call, and all of a sudden: a contract.” In June, Unusual Machines announced a $30 million equity investment in Powerus. In August, one of Powerus’s subsidiaries received the company’s first major Pentagon contract, a funding line worth up to $90 million from the U.S. Air Force. As Pentagon contracts go, that’s a pittance, but it’s a lot of money for a start-up.

Dominari Securities helped engineer lots of other reverse mergers, each more improbable than the last. The company achieved a mash-up of a crypto business with a company that makes sea otter plushies, another of a drone software company with a construction company known for the hundreds of waxing salons it’s built.

Then there’s the tungsten-mining operation in Kazakhstan. The Trump administration had given its preliminary OK to $1.6 billion in financing when it announced a merger with Skyline Builders. That’s a Hong Kong-based engineering company that previously went public with the help of none other than Dominari Securities.

Separately, Trump Media, which runs the Truth Social platform, is combining with a nuclear fusion firm. Seriously. Yes, this seems like some kind of MAGA Mad Lib. But we’re in an age of absurdity on Wall Street. Allbirds, the shoe brand, recently announced it was becoming an A.I. company. The princelings didn’t build this madhouse, but they seem to be making themselves very much at home in it.

These shell-company deals, which have historically been riskier than traditional I.P.O.s, fell out of fashion on Wall Street for a while. They have been making a comeback, though, and these princeling-connected deals are a part of it.

The entrepreneurs joining these deals aren’t necessarily MAGA. Often, their businesses just need the money, and right now the oligarchy is flush. “Unfortunately they are so far-right,” one chief executive told The Journal, speaking of his new partners. But now “we’ve got the capital we need.”

Many of these deals have turned out rather well for Dominari Securities and its American Ventures fund. Take those Kissimmee golf courses. After the fund put in $26 million, its holdings in the mashed-up golf course company are worth around 10 times as much. As for the everyday investors who bought in — well, they didn’t do so great. Powerus, the golf-drones combo, is down almost 70 percent since its merger was announced. Dominari Holdings’ chief executive has rejected any suggestion that his company improperly manipulated share prices, or that shareholder losses were evidence of anything other than normal market fluctuations. “Do stock prices rise and fall?” he asked Bloomberg. “Of course they do.” But that same pattern, of a sharp rise in value followed by a steep decline, played out in one Dominari-arranged merger after another after another.

The Trump administration is by no means the first in which family members leveraged their last name: Joe Biden’s son and Hillary Clinton’s brothers are just three examples. The Trump years have expanded that kind of operation to a global scale. Governments around the world are trying to tell the difference between the big fish and the remora.

In April 2025, Chase Herro, a self-described “dirtbag of the internet”; Zak Folkman, the former proprietor of Date Hotter Girls; and Zach Witkoff, the son of Mr. Trump’s chief envoy to the Middle East — otherwise known as co-founders of World Liberty Financial — traveled to Lahore, Pakistan. They were received like visiting dignitaries, draped with stoles and flowers in Shalimar Gardens, a UNESCO World Heritage site built in the 17th century. A trumpeter in a dress uniform signaled their entrance. A dancer spun in their honor. A drummer pounded. Fireworks ignited overhead. The whole event — plus a “fireside chat” about the future of finance with Bilal bin Saqib, the head of Pakistan’s crypto council — was filmed and distributed on government social channels.

This was Pakistan’s third attempt, at least, to use Trump-connected businessmen as interlocutors with the new administration. First, according to The Wall Street Journal, a meeting occurred with a hedge fund manager who had once been close with Don Jr., then another with that man’s 20-year-old son (who brought along a Malibu tech exec who boasts of “architecting a new dimension”).

Finally Islamabad turned to the dirtbag, the pickup artist and the princeling. “World Liberty Financial is not a political organization, has no role with the U.S. administration, and has nothing to do with regulatory or foreign policy,” a spokesman wrote to The Times, in response to questions for this article. “It is false to state or imply otherwise.” Still, those three were some of the best connections Pakistan could find to the new Washington.

Months later, the four would reunite in Islamabad, where the younger Witkoff was treated like a cabinet secretary as he signed a memorandum of understanding between his company and the Pakistani government. The country’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, looked on, applauding.

Something similar happened in the gilded halls of Mar-a-Lago in February when the World Liberty Financial trio welcomed a parade of American chief executives and titans of capital for a one-day conference. The head of Goldman Sachs was there. So was the investor who helped bankroll the merger of Warner Brothers and Paramount, as were the heads of the New York and Nasdaq stock exchanges, where all of those reverse-merged, Trump-linked companies were listed. Oh, and Nicki Minaj, too.

According to the conference agenda, everyone was there to discuss the “future of finance and technology.” The subtext, however, was that the future of finance and technology is whatever the Trump family and its business partners say it is. Behind the speakers on the main stage, a giant golden eagle loomed. It didn’t look exactly like the one on the presidential seal, but it didn’t look all that different, either.

The last time American oligarchs were this brazen was at the end of the 19th century. Their power was immense, and they weren’t afraid to show it, whether by openly buying a Senate seat or persuading the president to help them corner the gold market.

“It provoked a backlash,” said Professor Winters, the author of “The Blind Spot: How Oligarchs Dominate Our Democracy.” “That backlash lasted decades.” He ticked off a series of reforms that resulted: the progressive income tax, and its radical idea of asking more from the rich; the Sherman Antitrust Act, which broke up the biggest oligarchs’ biggest source of wealth; the direct election of senators, which undercut the oligarchs’ ability to pick the nation’s most influential legislators; and the rise of organized labor. There’s a reason the oligarchy retreated behind the hedgerows for the next century or so.

Around the world right now, there are indications that regimes with sultanistic tendencies are starting to wear out their welcome. Mr. Trump’s Hungarian ally Viktor Orban was ousted after a total of 18 years in power, defeated on a promise to prosecute the open corruption of Mr. Orban and his cronies. Antigovernment protests in Albania are nearing their 10th month after Ivanka Trump breezily mentioned on a podcast how she and her husband had “found” a protected island there and were planning a luxury resort on it.

America is by no means headed for changes of this scale. But it’s become increasingly clear that Americans are grossed out by the magnitude of self-enrichment in and adjacent to the Trump administration. In a late October poll, CNBC found that corruption was now the top issue on midterm voters’ minds. In a recent Gallup poll, 89 percent of all Americans surveyed said government corruption was widespread — a consensus almost unimaginable on any other topic. Investors have lost an estimated $3.8 billion on Mr. Trump’s crypto coin. The initiation fee for Executive Branch, the princelings’ private club in Washington, is now in the low six figures, down from half a million for founding members.

The Trump family’s sprawling business empire has become so unpopular that even members of the mostly fawning Republican Congress are pushing for oversight. In late September, Senator John Curtis of Utah formally asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to take a top-to-bottom look at Don Jr.’s business dealings — the crypto, the defense deals, all of it — in order “to prevent the presidency from becoming a vehicle for private enrichment by those closest to it.”

A few months before that, Representative John Moolenaar, the Republican chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, joined Mr. Khanna, the Democratic ranking member, to demand answers from Mr. Wool, the chief executive of Dominari Securities and the president of Dominari Holdings, the interrelated Trump-connected companies at the center of those wild reverse mergers.

Citing reporting by Bloomberg and Securities and Exchange Commission filings, the congressmen accused Dominari and the firm Mr. Wool previously led of being involved in “nearly two dozen” apparently fraudulent deals in which Chinese companies went public and then tanked, leaving investors broke. (In response, Dominari Holdings said in a statement to investors that Chinese deals represented a “fraction” of Dominari Securities’ overall revenue, and that the company was no longer doing I.P.O.s in Hong Kong.) The congressional investigators specifically mentioned the Hong Kong engineering company that, after its reverse merger with the Kazakhstan mining interest, is poised to receive as much as $1.6 billion from the Trump administration.

It didn’t have to be like this. The Trump family and its associates could have spent the duration of the second administration building towers in Tbilisi and private mansions in Saudi Arabia. They would have had their financial revenge, and the outcry would have been far more muted.

The princeling crowd didn’t stop there. It advanced its interest into myriad new arenas, almost as Trump enterprises did when they expanded beyond real estate to casinos, a for-profit university, a third-tier airline, an off-brand pro football team.

All those earlier ventures went bust, taking countless other businesses down with them. The United States Football League folded, thanks to Mr. Trump’s machinations. The revitalization of Atlantic City was a lost cause by the time he started his run of bankruptcies.

Mr. Trump emerged just fine from each disaster; the family is nothing if not resilient. His customers, his contractors, his business partners and his hangers-on — they suffered. There might be a lesson in that history, for anyone willing to look for it.

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