Decked out in a sparkly plaid shirt and a dangly necklace urging “VOTE,” US Rep. Susie Lee was rallying a roomful of canvassers to knock on doors around Las Vegas in support of Nevada’s abortion ballot measure, Question 6. The four-term Democratic congresswoman talked about her background—homeless advocate, nonprofit educator, mom of two adult children via IVF—as well as her history of miscarriages and the abortion care she needed to treat them. 

Nevada has statutory protections for abortion, but it also has a Republican governor who has described himself as “pro-life.” Question 6 would enshrine those rights in the state’s constitution. “I don’t want to have to worry about it,” Lee told the audience. “I don’t want to have to worry about it for my daughter, for my grandkids, for families all across the state.” 

But abortion isn’t the main topic on voters’ minds this fall—not in Lee’s sprawling Clark County district, not as her MAGA-y opponent Marty O’Donnell describes abortion rights as “satanic,” and not even in this roomful of purple “My Body. My Ballot.” T-shirts. So Lee devoted much of her time to talking about tariffs, the Iran war, $80-a-tank gas, Medicaid cuts, skyrocketing healthcare premiums, predatory housing costs, and student debt. She also drew a direct connection between affordability and reproductive autonomy. “It’s an economic issue for women and families as well.” 

When it comes to how reproductive rights are paying out on the ballot this fall, that scene is 2026 in a nutshell.

Two years ago, fury over the end of Roe v. Wade put abortion at the center of the national political conversation. This year, in an election dominated by Donald Trump’s economy, war, and corruption, abortion’s importance as a political issue has seemingly receded. Yet polls show voters care about reproductive rights as much as ever—and strategists say the issue could be a key factor in determining the size of the predicted Democratic wave. 

In the closing days of the midterms campaign, more and more pro-choice candidates—in Nevada and around the country—are leaning into the economic arguments. “The most consequential economic decision a family is going to make is whether to have a child,” says Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All, which has been working to support ballot initiatives and Democratic candidates in key battlegrounds. “The ability to decide if and how to have a family is critical to your economic future. Voters understand that nuance.”

At the same time, abortion-rights groups are doubling down on their main theme of the past two years: the need for Democratic firewalls in Congress and the states as the Trump administration and its far-right allies threaten access.

At the Las Vegas event, Timmaraju pointed out that Trump officials have been ratcheting up their attacks on medication abortion, federal family planning, contraception and IVF, while telling their supporters that the gloves will really come off after the midterms. “Why after the midterms?” she asked. “Because they know how deeply politically unpopular these attacks are.” 

The event’s special guest, Stacey Abrams, focused on the health impacts of abortion bans, including maternal deaths in her home state of Georgia. If Nevada doesn’t enshrine constitutional protections, she warned, it “runs the risk of being in the number of states where no one knows what they’re entitled to, and therefore no one knows what the future holds.”  

That kind of messaging resonates powerfully with voters, says Molly Murphy, president of the Democratic polling firm Impact Research. “In every poll I’ve done this cycle, [abortion] is a top negative against Republicans in focus groups,” she said at a press briefing last week. “Voters will say, this is a deal breaker. ‘They don’t support freedom and access to reproductive health care? I can’t support them. It’s over for me.’” 

Abortion groups are counting on those sentiments to help Democrats not just retake the House (and, if the latest polls are correct, the Senate) but also win new state trifectas by flipping key legislative seats and governorships—like Nevada’s—that Republicans now hold.

Meanwhile, four states have abortion-related measures on the ballot that could determine access for millions of women.

Here’s a look at some of the biggest reproductive rights battles of the midterms. 

The Fight for Congress

For a while, it seemed as if helping pro-choice Democrats like Lee win their elections and regain the House majority was the most that reproductive rights groups could reasonably hope for. Lee, first elected in the 2018 blue wave, was seen as vulnerable after Trump won her Third Congressional District in 2024 while she narrowly held onto her seat. But Lee has been helped by Trump’s plummeting popularity and by the extremism (and unseriousness) of her opponent. O’Donnell—a millionaire video-games composer endorsed by Trump—has a rabid online following (“The Marty Army,” recently busted for neo-Nazi and white nationalist comments) and far-right views about abortion and LGBTQ rights. Cook Political Report now rates the race as “Likely D.” 

With the House seemingly locked up for Democrats, reproductive rights groups have intensified their focus on the Senate, whose role in picking Supreme Court justices and federal judges makes it an especially important prize. According to one policy brief, anti-abortion messaging moved support toward Democrats by as much as five points and “significantly increased” motivation among independents. But Republican candidates have been playing down (or actively scrubbing) their anti-abortion records, and pro-choice groups weren’t getting through to voters. The repro-rights side has “a believability gap to overcome,” the polling firm Impact Research warned in a July report. “Most battleground voters are not hearing about the issue of abortion, so while many express concerns about Republican policies that restrict access to abortion, they also believe these policies are unlikely to happen.” 

For repro groups, the final weeks of the cycle have been all about filling that information hole. Reproductive Freedom for All has poured $23.5 million into its midterm campaign, which includes support for key Senate races in Michigan, Iowa, and Maine. Planned Parenthood Votes, a PAC affiliated with Planned Parenthood, announced a $47 million investment with targets including Maine’s Susan Collins and Michigan’s Mike Rogers. Timmaraju argues that repro rights has become a compelling closing argument: “[It’s] the tipping-point issue, the thing that really helps make it plain that Republicans are too extreme to represent average voters.”

The Fight for State Trifectas

In 2024, the trifecta that Democrats fantasized about winning was in Congress and the White House. This year, they have their eyes set on the states.

Gaining complete control of state governments has proven to be one of the best defenses against Trump and the GOP, says Sarah Curmi, executive director of States Win, which supports Democrats running for state legislatures. “Trifectas are critical to protecting abortion rights and reproductive rights generally.” 

Democrats could gain full control over state governments in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Minnesota, and Wisconsin by flipping a net total of just 22 legislative seats, Curmi says. Winning gubernatorial races would lead to trifectas in Nevada and Vermont.

“Being under Democratic control … would have a huge impact for those of us living in those states,” says Curmi, who hails from Michigan. “Not just for abortion access… but also voting rights, redistricting, environmental protections, LGBTQ+ equality—we could be here all day listing all the different ways that state legislatures impact our lives.” 

In Pennsylvania, Democrats are hoping that popular Gov. Josh Shapiro wins reelection by a big enough margin to help them take the state Senate, which Republicans have controlled since 1994. If they gained just two seats, Democrats could raise the minimum wage, increase funding for mass transit, repeal decades-old anti-abortion laws, and codify abortion and LGBTQ protections. While Democrats have a narrow majority in the state House, “the Senate is where our bills have gone to die,” says Signe Espinoza, executive director at Planned Parenthood Pennsylvania Advocates. “If we can change things in the General Assembly, we won’t just be playing defense, but really thinking about the needs of Pennsylvania women and families and moving forward legislation that can really support us.”

In Nevada, it’s popular incumbent Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo, running for a second term, who is standing in the way of a Democratic trifecta. Lombardo has a reputation as a moderate who, while personally opposed to abortion, has pledged not to impose his views on the state. Although he has signed some pro-choice legislation passed by the Democratic-controlled legislature, he has vetoed bills on IVF and paid family leave and told the Reno Gazette Journal last month that he would vote against Question 6, saying the current statutory protections are “sufficient.” He had been favored to beat his Democratic rival, Attorney General Aaron Ford, but heading into the final stretch, polls shows the race is tied, while early voting has trended strongly toward Dems.

The Fights Over Ballot Measures

Two years ago, 10 states had measures aimed at enshrining reproductive rights. This November, Nevada is one of only three states that do—and a fourth measure, in Missouri, is trying to repeal abortion protections. 

The vibe around ballot initiatives is also different. Two years ago, Democrats and abortion rights groups hoped the measures would drive angry women—including Republicans—to the polls and sweep Vice President Kamala Harris into the White House. This time around, the goals are more state-specific and expectations more muted. A new analysis by economists in Virginia and Texas helps explain why: Despite more than $250 million in spending in 2024, abortion measures may actually have helped Republicans by giving moderate GOP women a way to blow off steam on reproductive rights without abandoning their party or its anti-abortion candidates.

Nevada is a perfect example of how this played out. Question 6—which guarantees abortion rights until fetal viability or to protect the health or life of the mother—must be approved by voters in two consecutive elections. It was on the ballot for the first time in 2024, winning 64 percent of the vote. But Trump took the state. Something similar happened in Arizona, Missouri, and Montana—all passed abortion measures while reelecting Trump by margins ranging from comfortable to landslide. Trump’s handling of the abortion issue in his campaign—insisting that the Dobbs decision left regulation up to the states and minimizing the possibility of a national ban if he were elected—“was almost like a permission structure for Republicans to go vote for a ballot measure and then vote for him,” Timmaraju says.

Another hard-earned lesson of 2024: “It’s not enough to win ballot measures,” Timmaraju says. “If you don’t have the constitutional officers and you don’t have the legislature, you’re stuck.” 

Missouri is a cautionary tale. Two years ago, it became the first state to overturn a near-total abortion ban, passing its Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative with almost 52 percent of the vote. But as my colleague Sophie Hurwitz has reported, instead of working to implement the amendment, anti-abortion lawmakers pushed back at every opportunity, including putting their own measure on this year’s ballot that aims to overturn the 2024 measure by demonizing transgender kids. “The results of the 2024 election cycle taught us that we cannot fight for abortion access in a silo,” says Brittany Fonteno, president and CEO of the National Abortion Federation. 

That realization is one reason progressive groups are putting so much effort into state trifectas. Michigan and Arizona have both enshrined abortion rights into their constitutions, but without Democratic control of those legislatures, “we haven’t been able to finish the job,” Timmaraju says. Virginia offers a powerful counter-example: It it the only state in the South that hasn’t enacted some sort of abortion ban since Dobbs, thanks to Democratic lawmakers who were able to thwart then-Gov. Glenn Youngkin, an anti-abortion Republican. Now, after winning the governorship and a trifecta in 2025, Virginia Democrats have a trio of progressive constitutional amendments on this year’s ballot: one guaranteeing reproductive freedom and abortion rights through the second trimester of pregnancy, one repealing a 20-year-old ban on same-sex marriage, and one bolstering voting rights for people with felony convictions.

“We are just trying to remind people that we could be like North Carolina, South Carolina, other states across the South,” says Jamie Lockhart, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia. Enshrining abortion and other protections means “we don’t have to worry about turning into a state that backslides.” All three measures are expected to pass.

Because of the on-the-ground realities, repro advocates are keeping their expectations in check in deep-red Idaho, where abortion supporters are trying to pass Proposition 1, which would create a right to reproductive freedom and privacy under state law. Today, Idaho has some of the most draconian abortion laws in the country. While a win would send a potent signal to the state’s overwhelmingly anti-abortion lawmakers, because the measure wouldn’t amend the state constitution, those same Republicans could vote to reinstate the ban. A new poll shows the measure is losing.

In Nevada, meanwhile, Question 6 is expected to easily win, but to a lot of voters, it feels like a throwback. At the Las Vegas event, Denise Lopez, director of Nevada campaigns for Reproductive Freedom for All, addressed the problem head on. “Some voters are asking, didn’t we already pass this?” And the answer is yes,” she said. “We have to do it a second time to ensure that these rights are permanent in our constitution.” 

A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

During one of the recent frantic, manic, and racist rants Donald Trump has delivered at red-state campaign rallies to boost imperiled Republican candidates, the bloviator-in-chief—in between comments about people’s asses and boasts of his own purported greatness—claimed credit for turning Washington, DC, from a hellscape of crime to a citadel of safety. He brayed:

Nobody wanted to eat out. They were afraid. Even if you were in the restaurant, people would walk in and, like the Wild West, hold it up! Everybody is standing there. Can you imagine? A fancy restaurant. They were robbing the whole restaurant. It’s crazy.

That’s an absolute lie.

Trump is a serial prevaricator who cannot stop spouting falsehoods. During his first run in the White House, The Washington Post cataloged 30,573 false statements that he emitted. (Nowadays, the Post, following billionaire owner Jeff Bezos’ loving embrace of Trump, doesn’t bother to systematically track his deceptions.) But I am highlighting this particular fib because it is so idiotic and so transparently untrue. As a resident of the metropolitan DC area, I can say that folks here were not afraid to go out to dinner prior to Trump’s pointless dispatch of National Guard troops and that “whole” restaurants were not being pillaged by malfeasant marauders.

For Trump, lying is like breathing. It never stops. It occurs automatically, without thinking. Once upon a time, we rebuked politicians if their spin deviated too far from reality. They were afforded much license to hail their supposed accomplishments and policy proposals and assault their rivals’ liabilities and intentions. There was tremendous leeway for stretching the truth. But outright lying was considered a step too far.

During the 1988 GOP presidential primary contest, the campaign of Vice President George H.W. Bush aired ads accusing his main rival, Sen. Bob Dole, of being wishy-washy on tax policy. In an interview, when Dole was asked if he had a message for Bush, he growled, “Yeah, stop lying about my record.” That was considered a big deal.

These days, the lies are far more brazen and blatant, and an accusation of lying barely rates a mention in any news story.

That’s partly—or largely—because Trump has turned the Republican Party and the MAGA movement into one big disinformation outfit. He doesn’t spin. He lies over and over, and his party and cult happily go along with and cheer on his deceit. The GOP’s midterm effort that he’s leading—like his past presidential campaigns—is foremost a disinformation operation. Trump never stops pumping out extreme falsehoods.

He tells the crowd at one rally that “98 percent” of Somali immigrants in the United States “don’t work…because they steal so much. They all have a Mercedes-Benz…low IQ. And they live better than you.” He repeatedly proclaims that the United States is experiencing an economic Golden Age after he “inherited the worst inflation in American history” and that inflation is down to 1.8 percent. The worst inflation in US history was 23.7 percent in 1920, and it was 3.0 percent when Trump returned to the White House last year. Currently, it’s 3.7 percent.

He calls his Democratic foes and critics “communists.” They are not. Even members of the Democratic Socialists of America are not communists. He continues to spread the debunked MAGA conspiracy theory that James Talarico, the Democratic senatorial candidate in Texas, left the campaign trail to be treated for mental illness. He asserts that Democrats are for “open borders” (they are not) and that President Joe Biden allowed 25 million people to “pour across the borders,” including drug dealers, rapists, and 11,888 murderers. These numbers are exceedingly wrong.

Perhaps the most disturbing lie Trump has been hawking is that schools are performing gender transition operations on children without the knowledge of their parents. This is batcrap crazy—but it fuels anti-trans paranoia. Schools these days cannot even dispense an aspirin without the consent of a parent. And there is no evidence to support this claim. Does Trump—and the MAGA devotees he’s trying to stir up—believe there are operating rooms in schools where these procedures are happening in secrecy?

At a rally in Georgia, Trump went deep on this lie:

We got critical race theory and transgender mutilization insanity out of our schools. I mean, we have five states where your child goes off to school as Tim and comes back as Tammy, three or four days later. It’s true. And teachers make—somebody makes a decision. Can you imagine? “Goodbye, Timmy. I love you so much. I’ll see you later.” And you say, “Where’s my son? My son is in the hospital.” Can you imagine? Can you imagine? They don’t even need approval. It’s sick. You’ll have five—I think Minnesota and some others—I think it’s five or six states. You know that, right? 

That’s a bit he regularly injects into his meandering stump speech (which increasingly includes strange sounds that are not words).

I know. Complaining about Trump’s lying is like complaining about the weather. Two years ago, as the 2024 campaign was hurtling to its finish, I wrote an article headlined, “Trump Is Running a Disinformation Campaign, Not a Political Campaign.” (“They’re eating the dogs…They’re eating the cats.”) Nothing has changed. Except, it seems, the purveyors of fake facts have expanded in number. Now GOP disinformation is flying in scores of House, Senate, and gubernatorial campaigns.

In Texas, Elon Musk has spent close to $200 million so far to defeat Talarico and elect Ken Paxton, the corrupt GOP attorney general, with much of that money underwriting transgender-related attack ads. And Musk is echoing Trump’s false assertions. “Talarico will vote to take away your children and transition them,” he wrote on X this week. Again, an utterly false statement. Like Trump, Musk catches no flak for lying and amplifying false conspiracy theories. (As of October 25, Republican groups had aired about 217,000 ads nationwide exploiting the trans issue—about one-quarter of those were in Texas.)

I could go on and on about the lies coming from Vice President JD Vance, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and other Trump wingmen (are there any wingwomen?) who have hit the campaign trail. (You can find some below in Dumbass Comment of the Week.) Cruz claims Michigan Democratic Senate contender Abdul El-Sayed “is Muslim Brotherhood.” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott insists his Democratic opponent, Texas state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, supports Shariah law. This is all bunk—the sort of stuff that in years past would have derailed the campaign of the candidate spewing it.

Now, it’s GOP SOP. With his victory two years ago, Trump demonstrated that a con-man demagogue—who profoundly mismanaged a pandemic—could win back the highest office in the land by running a nonstop and extensive disinformation operation. This year, he’s relying on the same tactic to preserve Republican power on the Hill.

With Trump’s approval rating at a historic low and gas prices remaining high because of the stupid Iran war (which Trump barely talks about when he’s stumping for GOP candidates), selling all this bullshit is a harder task. Yet this election, like the last one, remains a test for the American political system. Can it beat back a political movement predicated on prevarication?

This election will tell us whether democratic backsliding will be reversed, whether voters will punish corrupt grifters, practitioners of plutocratic policies, and proponents of brutality, and whether such political chicanery as racist gerrymandering and big-money politics (see Musk and his hundreds of millions of dollars) can triumph. It will also show whether Trump’s disinformation crusade has stalled and his art of the lie has lost its shine.

Haley Stevens, the onetime Senatorial candidate who outspent Abdul El-Sayed 12 to 1 and still somehow lost the Michigan Democratic primary, endorsed Republican Mike Rogers this afternoon—two days out from the election.

Stevens’ staff resigned en masse, and the Michigan Democratic Party quickly put out statements condemning her “eleventh-hour distractions.” But whoever’s left on her team did not scrub her X archive as quickly as she’s flipped endorsements.

So, here’s a list of things Haley Stevens said about Mike Rogers before endorsing him.

“Millionaire Mike Rogers” is “the worst kind of politician.” (April, 2026.)

Mike Rogers “will be another rubber stamp” for Donald Trump’s agenda. (August, 2026.) “Rubber stamp” is also a phrase she used regarding Rogers at least 13 other times across her archived posts.

His “record on LGBTQ rights is repulsive.” (June, 2026.) Another post: “Heck, he’s filled his campaign with bigots.“

“MAGA Mike” is “disgraceful.” (April, 2026.) The linked article notes that Mike Rogers hired students who praised Hitler for his outreach team. “Amidst rising antisemitism across the country,” Stevens was reasonably concerned.

He “can’t hide his terrible record on abortion rights.” (June, 2026.) As a congressman, Rogers supported a national abortion ban.

It seems like everyone I know has a photo with Dolores Huerta. My social media feed has been flooded with photos of her with my friends and acquaintances since her family announced her passing, at age 96, this week.

We all have photos with her because Dolores was generous with her time, and she lived and worked long enough to inspire multiple generations of activists. She was most well-known for co-founding the United Farmworkers Union, but in her later years she became so much more than a labor rights activist. Dolores embraced intersectional activism and believed in civil rights for all people, and she was a particularly strong ally to the LGBTQ+ community.

She and her family were always on the move to support a cause or a candidate, to champion justice and seek better conditions for working people. In the decade that I knew her, it often appeared as if she was in a different city every day. There were a few weeks during the 2016 election season when I attended events throughout the country, from New York to Arizona to California, and she was at all of them. She said yes to every photo request even when she was swarmed by crowds after she spoke.

I’ve been taking in all of the stories and photos I am seeing on Instagram, because whether people knew her well or not, she had an immense influence on all of us who call ourselves activists. She made us believe that every one of us has the power to make change.

Dolores had a particular way of connecting with everyone on a personal level. When she found out that I serve on the board of the Center for Investigative Reporting, which publishes Mother Jones, she said, “You know, I visited Mother Jones’ grave site in Illinois.” Then she told me, “Someone compared me to Mother Teresa, and I said, ‘No, I’m not like Mother Teresa. I’m more like Mother Jones.'” Since that day, I’ve made sure that every new issue of the magazine was sent to her house.

Because she showed up for us, I wanted to show up for her, too. I have attended countless events to support her and the Dolores Huerta Foundation, and in doing so, I witnessed her magic in action, from prepared speeches to candid moments. Behind the scenes, she was funny and joyous, and she shared her deep love for music with her family and friends. She loved attending concerts and going to clubs to dance into the wee hours of morning, even into her 90s. She was truly tireless in both work and play.

Last year I got to hold her hand walking through the state capitol as she was celebrated on the Assembly and Senate floors on her birthday, designated Dolores Huerta Day throughout California. It was a personal honor to help her daughters Juanita and Jess accompany her as she worked the rooms and checked in on legislation to help working people. She knew that she had become an icon, and she used that to get everyone to work on her causes.

A brilliant marketer, Dolores coined the chant, “Sí se puede”—Yes we can!—and she led it as a rallying cry at every event, fist in the air. And she said repeatedly, “Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.”

Dolores spent the majority of the roughly 50 million minutes in her lifetime changing the lives of people throughout the country and the world. 

Sí, se puede. Forever.

This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

By the time the three hikers called for help from a rocky face on Mount Shasta in Northern California, they’d made a series of bad decisions. They didn’t bring enough food, and they’d overestimated their fitness. Instead of turning back in late afternoon when they hadn’t yet reached the top, they summited at 7:30 p.m. and had to descend in the dark.

Their lack of preparation and poor planning, as they admitted later, came partly from relying on Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot Gemini. By morning, they were lost on a gnarly part of the mountain, and one hiker had banged up his knee.

“We get plenty of people who come unprepared or don’t do any research at all. To these guys’ credit, they did try,” said Nick Meyers, U.S. Forest Service program manager of the Mount Shasta Wilderness Climbing and Avalanche Center, which responded to the call. “But I think they kind of turned their brains off.”

The three 20-year-olds aren’t the only ones making missteps in wild spaces with the help of artificial intelligence. Another Mount Shasta visitor pitched her tent near a “No Camping” sign, insisting she had a right to do so because AI told her she could, Meyers said.

His team also encountered a man wandering around at a trailhead with an AI-generated map that showed prominent features on the wrong side of a nearby mountain. In British Columbia, a helicopter crew rescued a 16-year-old hiker from a ledge in the Widowmaker Arete on the back of Crown Mountain. The teen had used Anthropic’s chatbot Claude to help him plan his trip. News stories focused on that fact went viral across Canada and the US, though the hiker said later that he also consulted Google Maps and the popular hiking app AllTrails.

Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming has also seen a marked uptick over the past year in the percentage of visitors who report using AI for travel information, said Park Superintendent Chip Jenkins. “It went from zero to 26 percent. And I’m guessing that curve is not going to flatten.”

It remains to be seen whether increasing AI use will lead to an increase in backcountry accidents and search and rescues, Meyers said. His office, which oversees a massive wilderness area in Northern California, averages a dozen rescues each year, and 2026 is shaping up to be an average year. Calls to search and rescue in Wyoming have actually gone down compared to 2025, with only 312 calls so far in 2026 compared to a total of 466 in 2025 and 377 in 2024.

Some search and rescue veterans say that AI chatbots are just the latest tools giving people new ways to get into trouble. Roughly a decade ago, when hikers, backpackers, climbers and other outdoor enthusiasts began to source their destinations, inspiration and information from Instagram and other social media sites, they faced sometimes deadly consequences. Before that, hikers and other recreationists were led astray by their reliance on Google Maps or smartphone connectivity.

“Over the last two decades, there’s been a phenomenal push in the media to get more people outdoors, and consequently we have more people outdoors and recreating,” said Jim Moss, a Colorado-based recreation attorney and search and rescue volunteer. It’s still unclear how questionable advice from a robot will influence all those people, he added.

Turning to an AI chatbot for guidance does come with unique risks. Not only can chatbots “hallucinate,” persuasively presenting misinformation as real, but their use can lead to a phenomenon called “cognitive surrender,” said Chris Flathmann, a human-centered computing professor at Clemson University in South Carolina who has studied AI and search and rescue.

“When humans work with AI systems, they can get so deep into it they give up thinking critically for themselves,” he explained. When AI pretends to be an expert on an unfamiliar topic, “you can’t call BS on that, because you don’t have the expertise.” And once you stop thinking critically, it can be hard to start again, especially in a stressful backcountry situation.

Chatbots also tend to tell users what they want to hear, and to do so with authority regardless of whether the sources they’re consulting are reliable, Flathmann and others said. Claude or ChatGPT might answer a query with extensive directions and advice that sound credible but are actually scraped from Reddit threads and out-of-date YouTube videos—and might even be entirely fabricated.

TikTok and Instagram may offer a viewer inspiration, but AI tends to offer instructions—right or wrong—as well as encouragement, Flathmann said. “AI isn’t trying to trick people into going up mountains, but I think it’s the natural evolution of what happens when you get a tool like this.”

Regardless of the resources recreators use, experts have the same advice: When you’re headed to a new place, make sure you double-check your information against reliable, authoritative sources like up-to-date public-land agency maps and websites, trail association websites or guidebooks. Even better, talk to a real-live guide, a national forest official or a park ranger.

“If you’re going to go into places that will kill you,” Meyers said, “you should take your planning seriously.”

In August, Representative Haley Stevens lost Michigan’s Democratic senatorial primary to Abdul El-Sayed, who now holds a narrow lead over the Republican candidate, Mike Rogers.

Most losing primary candidates either endorse their opponent or wait out the remainder of the election cycle before reentering politics.

But Stevens, in recent weeks, has made her way back into the conversation. Or, more accurately, her recent fiancé Jason Turkish has done so. Turkish, who announced his engagement to Stevens less than three months ago, has spent the past several days loudly condemning El-Sayed on every platform available to him, while announcing that he plans to vote for Rogers due to El-Sayed’s criticism of Israel.

Turkish, a Democratic donor living in Michigan who has also given to GOP candidates, attended a campaign event for Rogers Wednesday night. While there, he called El-Sayed antisemitic. Then, as Stevens sat for an interview with the New York Times on Friday, Turkish went on TMZ and, on his fiancée’s behalf, said “I don’t think she’s going to be supporting Abdul El-Sayed very much longer.”

Stevens, however, has repeatedly insisted she is still supporting El-Sayed. “I ran for a Democratic nomination, intent in understanding that I wanted a Democrat to win,” she told the Times.

Stevens has criticized one advertisement that was released in support of her former primary opponent—an ad that was not made or endorsed by El-Sayed or his team. Stevens called the ad antisemitic because it blamed U.S. support for Israel for high grocery prices. She demanded that El-Sayed publicly disavow it as a precondition for appearing at an event with him on Sunday; it is not clear whether the event will go forward.

Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, a prominent Democrat who also competed against Stevens and El-Sayed in the primary, said on Friday that she has “no idea what the hell Haley Stevens is doing.”

“This is a moment where we have to recognize the stakes,” she said, urging party unity. (“Cut the shit. Lock in. Knock doors. Get out the vote. That’s it,” she added in a statement Saturday.)

Turkish, meanwhile, is continuing his media tour. On Saturday morning, he went on Fox and Friends to assert that El-Sayed’s criticism of Israel “puts Jews at risk.”

Stevens’ fiancé, a lawyer and fundraiser, was not previously a sought-after political surrogate. As the New York Times delicately put it, “His endorsement had never made news before now.”

According to Politico, El-Sayed is currently asking Stevens to keep herself and her fiancé as far away from his campaign as possible. As a statement El-Sayed’s campaign released on Friday put it, “Congresswoman Stevens seems intent on relitigating a primary that ended three months ago.”

During an October 15 debate debate between Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and her Democratic challenger, Troy Jackson, a curiously apologetic heckler piped up. “Senator Collins, I’m so sorry to interrupt, but I’m terrified,” the person shouted. “AI data centers, they’re destroying our climate, they’re poisoning our water!”

“This is obviously one of Troy’s supporters,” Collins said. 

“Oh, shut up,” Jackson responded. “I don’t even know that kid.”   

The heckler was escorted out. But he had reason to target the senator: According to Forbes, Collins’ husband, Thomas Daffron, holds an estimated $300,000 to $800,000 in AI- and data center-linked investments, making their household the Senate’s fifth largest such investor. (A Collins staffer did not comment on Daffron’s holdings, but told Mother Jones she invests in index funds and has never personally traded individual stocks.) 

The share of America’s GDP contingent on data center buildout is now somewhere between 2 percent and 4 percent; total investment in the industry through 2032 is predicted to sit in the neighborhood of $10 trillion, per a recent Brookings Institution report. As a percentage of GDP, the AI infrastructure investment boom surpassed the size of the late-1990s dot-com bubble a year ago. So it’s no surprise that Congressional lawmakers are cashing in—collectively, US representatives and senators hold between $100 million and $300 million in data-center-related investments, according to their financial disclosures.

One in five members (including 62 Republicans and 43 Democrats) report that they or others in their household are personally invested in “AI developers, chipmakers, cloud infrastructure providers, data center companies, or private AI startups,” according to a September analysis by Sludge. The top five investing households in such projects were all Democratic, including those of California Reps. Ro Khanna and Nancy Pelosi, and Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey. Those lawmakers are also among Congress’ 10 most active stock traders, per the watchdog group Common Cause.

But members of Congress with smaller portfolios have also benefited from the boom. Often, they are lawmakers who—like Collins—have also publicly supported measures favorable to data center developers. While 76 percent of her constituents oppose further data center construction, Collins has opposed a blanket ban. She also, as The Verge has reported, utilized her position as Appropriations Committee chair to acquire $6.2 million in federal funding for a “high-performance computing hub data center” in central Maine.

Other data center investors in Congress have aided the industry more explicitly. Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), was reportedly behind a clause in this year’s National Defense Authorization Act to fund the construction of data centers and accompanying small nuclear reactors on military bases. As of 2025, Wittman’s financial disclosures show he owned between $100,000 and $300,000 in stocks related to the data center boom. (Wittman’s campaign website says his investments are overseen by a financial managers who make those “decisions without consulting him.”) 

Henrico County, in Wittman’s Virginia district, made headlines earlier this year when officials there told schools to turn off their lights to “save energy” during a scorching heat wave, at the same time the county’s 37 data centers kept operating at full capacity. 

Some of Congress’s data center investors have supported bills that seem counter to industry interests. Khanna introduced a so-called Data Center Bill of Rights in August that would ban them from “residential areas and within 2,500 feet of homes, schools, childcare facilities, hospitals and nursing homes.” Khanna’s wife and dependent children reportedly own between $3.4 million and $8.4 million worth of stock in AI infrastructure companies, including chipmaker Nvidia. Khanna has called the industry “extractive,” but has not discussed its place in his portfolio; he has previously stated that his wife’s assets are managed by financial advisers.

The disconnect between rhetoric and financial reality extends across the aisle. “America must win the AI race, but not at the expense of hardworking families who aren’t using the electricity data centers need,” Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) declared recently. She has up to $4.6 million invested in companies like Alphabet, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Broadcom. 

President Donald Trump, by contrast, has been fairly open about the connection between his investment portfolio and his desire for Americans to let data centers “reign.” According to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, he owns between $2.9 million and $9.5 million in stock in companies that own, operate, or provide infrastructure for data centers—a 600 percent increase in his ownership of such investments over just one year. 

“The only reason that communities throughout the USA should not want data centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump declared in August. Meanwhile, his political network is playing both sides—as Bloomberg reported this week, Trump’s No Going Back PAC is now attacking Democratic congressional candidates over their own data center ties. 

David Flippo, the Republican nominee for Congress in a competitive Nevada district, has repeatedly claimed he served in Operation Desert Storm. Yet, according to a US Air Force spokesperson, Flippo was not on active duty until nine months after that military campaign ended.

In a candidate questionnaire, Flippo said he was at Montana State University in 1990 and 1991. He also appears in Montana State’s 1991 yearbook as a member of the school’s Air Force ROTC program. The Air Force spokesperson told me that Flippo, who served as an enlisted airman before going back to college and becoming an officer, entered active duty as an officer on December 10, 1991.

Combat operations against Iraq by the United States and its allies during Operation Desert Storm began on January 17, 1991, and ended on February 28. They were preceded by the troop buildup during Operation Desert Shield, which began in August 1990 and continued until the start of Desert Storm.

Flippo has claimed he was in the “desert” in 1991. As he put it at a 2024 fundraiser during his first run for Congress: “Think about when I served, ’85 to ’09. What the heck was happening? What happened in ’91? What happened in ’03? I was in all of that. I was in the desert all that time.”  

The February 8, 1991, edition of Montana State’s student newspaper places Flippo at the university during the war. The article reports that Flippo became the student leader of Montana State’s Air Force ROTC program on January 31, two weeks into the war. It goes on to note, “As the new commander, Cadet Col Dave Flippo has many challenges ahead.”

The remarks at the fundraiser were not the only time that Flippo suggested he was in the Gulf War. As first reported by the conservative outlet Nevada News & Views, Flippo, who retired as an Air Force officer in 2009, has repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he was in Desert Storm and has often worn a hat that identifies him as a veteran of that war. 

Flippo has already faced accusations of exaggerating his military record. His campaign falsely claimed that he had a Bronze Star with valor that he did not earn. The Reno Gazette-Journal has also reported that Flippo was relieved of his command as an Air Force squadron commander in 2008. He left the Air Force the following year. 

Other aspects of his candidacy have also raised questions. Flippo has reported putting more than $2.5 million into his campaigns, despite having no obvious source of such wealth. The Nevada Republican has failed to file legally required financial disclosures dating back to 2023, when he launched his first bid for Congress. As I’ve reported, Flippo also has ties to a dubious Arizona land venture that says it aims to produce “constant” 20 percent returns for 20 years. The Washington Sun and Wall Street Journal have reported that Flippo’s campaign claimed to have received donations from two dead people. (His campaign blamed a clerical error for one of the donations; the campaign’s treasurer said he is “looking into” the other contribution.)

In October, Flippo told a Reno TV station, “I was in Operation Southern Watch and Operation Northern Watch and Iraqi Freedom and Desert Storm and all of that was all throughout my career because I came in ’85.” In a similar vein, Flippo told former Rep. Matt Gaetz earlier this year that with “24 years in the Air Force, I spent my life from Desert Storm all the way through Iraqi Freedom.” In a May 2025 podcast interview, he said, “I did 24 years in the Air Force from 1985 to 2009. So, I was in for Desert Storm, obviously.” 

In all three cases, he neglected to mention that he was not on active duty between about 1989 and December 1991, according to the Air Force and the article from the Montana State student paper. That period covers the entirety of Desert Shield and Desert Storm, the key operations related to that war. 

Flippo wrote in an October op-ed that he was “deployed to Saudi Arabia right after the birth of our second son” in 1992. Public records show that his second son was born in April of that year, meaning that Flippo would have arrived in the region more than a year after Operation Desert Storm ended. By that point, the United States was conducting a ceasefire campaign, rather than an active war.

In text messages, Rory McShane, Flippo’s main campaign consultant, called the questions about Flippo’s Desert Storm claims a “total non story,” saying that Congress and the Air Force “say he’s a Desert Storm Veteran.” He did not answer questions about when Flippo returned to active duty or whether Flippo served in Operation Desert Storm in early 1991. He also did not say why Flippo claimed to have been in the desert in 1991. 

McShane pointed to the fact that Flippo was awarded the Southwest Asia Service Medal. An Air Force website states that the award was given to “members of the U.S. armed forces who served in support of Operations Desert Shield or Desert Storm between Aug. 2, 1990 and Nov. 30, 1995.” According to that site, the award was given in relation to three campaign periods: the defense of Saudi Arabia in the lead-up to Desert Storm in 1990 and 1991, the liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi forces in 1991, and the “Southwest Asia Cease Fire Campaign” that ended in 1995. (The timing of Flippo’s 1992 deployment to Saudi Arabia suggests that he served only in the Southwest Asia Cease Fire Campaign.) Flippo’s military records do not list the Kuwait Liberation Medal that was given by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to coalition forces who served in Desert Storm.

McShane also highlighted language in a bill and an amendment passed by Congress in 1991 that defined Operation Desert Storm as “operations of United States Armed Forces conducted as a consequence of the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq” for the purpose of that law. The definition explicitly included operations Desert Shield, Desert Storm, and Provide Comfort, which protected Kurdish refugees in Iraq and Turkey between 1991 and 1996.

McShane did not respond to a question about when Flippo may have participated in Operation Provide Comfort. Flippo served at a base in Turkey associated with that operation, according to the Air Force spokesperson, and public records list him there starting around 1995.

According to a 2017 press release, the purpose of the Desert Shield and Desert Storm Memorial, which opened on the National Mall in October, is to honor the “650,000 service members who served and 383 military [personnel] who died in Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm from August 2, 1990 to April 6, 1991.”

Daniel Casentini, a retired Air Force master sergeant who has been critical of Flippo’s claims about his military record, said via email that he doubted that any “veteran who actually served in Desert Storm would see him as a Desert Storm veteran unless he was in theater during the operation itself.” Casentini added, “[I]t’s just another example of his lack of integrity, which is ironic since ‘Integrity First’ is one of the Air Force’s three core values.”

In September, Flippo was accused of stolen valor after his campaign falsely claimed that he received a Bronze Star with valor for his service in the second Iraq war, when he actually has the far more common standard Bronze Star. After the Washington Post revealed those false claims, Flippo said his staff made an honest mistake. 

The problem with that explanation was that Flippo repeatedly wore a hat featuring V-shaped emblems that suggested he had earned a Bronze Star with valor. After photos of him in the hat emerged, Flippo blamed his grandkids for putting the emblems on it. (Flippo wore the hat, which also identified him as a Desert Storm veteran, for years.)

Scott Maryott, a retired Army lieutenant colonel in Nevada who is supporting Flippo’s Democratic opponent, Teresa Benitez-Thompson, was also critical of Flippo’s Desert Storm claims. “If a guy said he was in Desert Shield, Desert Storm, I would have assumed he was in theater during that time,” Maryott said.

“You don’t do things to exaggerate your military service,” Maryott said. “The people that are most humble about their military service probably did the most. And it’s people that exaggerate their service that really show a character flaw.”

The US oil industry has earned almost $130 billion in profits since the US and Israel began bombing Iran in February. The same companies, according to the New York Times, earned less than $47 billion over the same span of 2025, when oil was comparatively cheap. 

Shipping and insurance costs have spiked thanks to the war, allowing oil companies to spike their prices. ExxonMobil and Chevron, the nation’s two largest fossil fuel corporations, saw profits surge. According to quarterly earnings reports released on Friday, ExxonMobil’s profits doubled over the same period last year, while Chevron’s grew by 180 percent. BP, another large oil company, reported its profits reached an 18-year high. 

Shareholders are making money. President Donald Trump’s personal wealth in oil and gas stocks grew as much as $35.8 million this year, according to a report this week from congressional Democrats. 

Americans, meanwhile, are paying the price—the median US household has spent $856 more at the gas pump than they otherwise would have since the war started. 

The national average price of gasoline during the third quarter of 2026 was $4.12 a gallon, according to AAA—up 96 cents from a year ago and the highest ever quarterly price. 

On the campaign trail, Trump has repeatedly attempted to assure Americans that this is a good thing: “The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in March, just one month into the war. Seven months later, his pitch hasn’t changed. 

“Our country is making hundreds of billions of dollars because of what’s happened in the Middle East, because they’re coming to Texas, and they’re coming to Oklahoma, and they’re coming to Louisiana and they’re taking that oil,” he said at an October 24 campaign event in Georgia.

“I don’t give a damn, I’m going to say it—we’re making a freaking fortune.”

On Tuesday, South Dakotans will decide whether to approve a Republican state legislature–led ballot measure that would automatically repeal Medicaid expansion in the event that Congress lowers federal matching payments, which currently sit at 90 percent.

The Republican push comes four years after South Dakotans approved another citizen-led ballot measure to pass Medicaid expansion.

The move would make South Dakota the latest state to implement Medicaid-gutting “trigger laws” that would eliminate expansion programs if federal funding drops below that threshold. Ten states have already passed such laws, almost all of which would be triggered by any further drop in Medicaid matching funds—most recently Utah, which passed its Medicaid trigger law this past March. Republican-dominated legislatures in other conservative states, including Oklahoma and West Virginia, have also pushed for Medicaid expansion trigger laws since President Donald Trump resumed office in 2025.

“It requires the state to eliminate coverage,” Adam Searing, an associate professor of practice at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, told me. “There’s not going to be a debate in the state about it. It’s not going to be up to the legislators.”

Federal matching funds were set up to incentivize states to adopt Medicaid expansion when the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, minimizing the impact on state budgets, explained Sharona Hoffman, professor of law and bioethics at Case Western University and co-director of the university’s Law-Medicine Center.

Right-wing policy think tanks including the Heritage Foundation and the Paragon Health Institute have advocated for cuts to federal matching funds that would set trigger laws into motion. The nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid in Trump’s 2025 budget bill, the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which involves implementing work requirements and reducing services and funds, has encouraged GOP state legislators across the country to move in just that direction.

“I do think that state policymakers, for the first time in a long time, are paying very, very close attention to the relationship between federal portions of the budget and really what the state is responsible for,” said Natasha Murphy, director of health policy at the Center for American Progress.

But their counterparts at the federal level haven’t succeeded in reducing Medicaid matching funds below 90 percent, despite an effort led by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) that would have amended OBBA to that end.

If South Dakota passes the law and federal matching is ultimately lowered, Murphy said, the outcome for the state will be disastrous—as it would be in the states that have already passed trigger laws.

“There is a trickle-down impact that has on healthcare providers and hospitals and health systems,” Murphy said. “In a state like South Dakota, where you know you have a very [substantial] rural population, this is just going to compound.”

But compared to the rhetoric around federal Medicaid cuts—where GOP legislators have largely denied the intent to reduce services or cut off many of their constituents, despite the clear impact. Searing grants that Medicaid expansion trigger laws are less deceptive.

“They at least have to admit, ‘Hey, we are holding the steering wheel here, and we’re going to cut people off of their health insurance if we don’t get enough money from the federal government,” Searing said. “[OBBA] cuts are more insidious. [But] I don’t think either of them is a good thing. It doesn’t make any sense to have more people uninsured.”