How Trump’s FBI Purge Saved Lindsey Graham and James Clyburn From a Bribery Investigation

On March 3, 2020, Sen. Lindsey Graham walked into a private dining room at Charlie Palmer Steak in Washington, D.C. Graham’s time was expensive. He was meeting with two executives and a lobbyist from a Hawaiian naval defense contractor called Navatek. And he had required them to commit to $40,000 in campaign contributions for a 45-minute meeting.

Navatek’s CEO, Martin Kao, was confident that was all the time he needed.

“Shoot all he has to really do is stop by and say ‘yes,’” Kao wrote to a Navatek lobbyist and a fellow executive the day before, in an email seen by ProPublica. “That should only take a minute and he’s on his way. We don’t need to pretend we give a shit about each other.”

At the dinner, Graham ate little and talked a lot. But Kao got the “yes” he was hoping for: Graham agreed to steer a $10 million government contract Navatek’s way in his native South Carolina, Kao later recounted to the FBI. In exchange, he said, Graham asked Kao to pledge a total of $100,000 to his reelection campaign.

In early 2025, the FBI opened a sweeping investigation into bribery on Capitol Hill with Graham’s steakhouse dinner at the center. Kao confessed to federal agents that his business model consisted of bribing public officials in exchange for government contracts, and that the research Navatek was providing to the government was often worthless.

The scheme involved some of the most powerful figures in Congress, he said — in both parties. In South Carolina, Kao told agents, Navatek made a campaign cash-for-contracts deal not only with Graham, but also with the state’s top Democrat, Rep. James Clyburn, and another influential Republican, Rep. Joe Wilson.

Kao told agents that Graham in particular left little room for ambiguity: “This is how much I want, and how much I am going to give you,” Kao remembered Graham saying, according to notes one agent took during their debrief in late 2024.

Kao’s admissions would constitute a vast criminal bribery scheme if they could be proved in court — a challenge, given recent Supreme Court rulings that have made it more difficult to win corruption cases. Kao himself posed another hurdle. He was facing prison for fraud and campaign finance violations and was speaking to the FBI in the hopes of reducing his sentence.

But the FBI agents who took Kao’s confession — two experienced anti-corruption investigators — could see that much of it lined up with a trove of records they had seized from Navatek. They forged ahead. The FBI took the formal step of naming two former Navatek executives who had worked with Kao as subjects of a bribery investigation. The agency did not designate Graham, Clyburn and Wilson that way, but the agents were actively investigating their interactions with Kao. The agents indicated to their superiors that the lawmakers could become subjects in the future, according to records viewed by ProPublica.

The details of this investigation have not previously been reported.

President Donald Trump returned to the White House and almost immediately gutted the specialized FBI and Department of Justice teams dedicated to taking on public corruption — an act of revenge for having previously investigated him. The two experienced agents on the case were swept up in the purge, and the career prosecutor assisting them quit after Trump appointees forbid the DOJ’s anti-corruption section from filing any new cases. Today, there is no one left to look into Kao’s explosive allegations, as the Trump administration has abandoned any pretense of prosecuting public corruption. The case is dead.

ProPublica has unearthed the investigation by reviewing thousands of pages of legal documents, internal company emails, evidence the FBI used to vet Kao’s claims and dozens of interviews with people who saw how Navatek operated, including an eyewitness to Graham and Kao’s secret steakhouse dinner.

This story is part of a series based on our reporting. Last month, ProPublica reported that the FBI had probed the conduct of Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who steered millions in government funding toward Navatek while Kao gave her illegal campaign donations. Collins denied wrongdoing and dismissed Kao as a “convicted liar.”

Kao is indeed the only person involved to serve prison time. He pleaded guilty to making illegal campaign donations and a loan fraud scheme in 2022. In 2025, he was sentenced to 87 months in prison.

Graham died at 71 earlier this year. His sister, Darline Graham, who was appointed to fill his seat, retained most of his senior staff, including those who dealt with Navatek. She even took up some of his committee assignments, including appropriations. Darline Graham is running for a full term in office this November.

Clyburn, 86, is one of the most powerful Democrats in Washington. He is widely credited with tipping the scales for Joe Biden during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. Wilson remains influential on national defense spending from his senior perch on the Armed Services Committee.

“Whatever a donor may think or say, a donation would never cause Congressman Clyburn to increase his support for the donor’s request,” Jami LaRue, Clyburn’s communications director, wrote in response to detailed questions. “The Congressman has always striven to assist the University of South Carolina and all of the colleges and universities in his district when called upon to further their important missions. The crimes and lies of an imprisoned fraudster will not cause the Congressman to waver in his support for these fine institutions.”

David Snider, Wilson’s communications director, did not address a detailed list of questions sent by ProPublica. “Congressman Wilson does and has always abided by campaign donation regulations set forth by the Federal Election Commission,” Snider said in an email.

In an emailed statement, Taylor Reidy, who was Lindsey Graham’s communications director and now holds the same post for his sister, wrote that “any allegations of quid-pro-quo behavior or wrongdoing by the late Senator Lindsey Graham or his staff are simply false.” She said the accusations were the “ravings of a convicted felon” and that her office was never contacted by the FBI about the matter. After Kao’s arrest, they disgorged his donations, she added.

The two executives who were subjects of the FBI investigation, Duke Hartman and Joshua Knight, were never charged. Hartman, the other executive at the dinner meeting with Graham, is now the CEO of a new naval research company called Integer Technologies that he co-founded with Knight after Kao’s arrest. Integer was recently recognized as one of the fastest-growing government contractors in the country. It also became the ultimate beneficiary of the Graham dinner meeting, picking up the contract Graham allegedly agreed to facilitate that night.

Hartman and Knight did not respond to detailed requests for comment.

“[It’s] corruption at its best,” Kao wrote to ProPublica from federal detention in South Dakota, before cutting off contact. “But I am the only one rotting in prison.”

Small Company, Big Ambitions

Kao’s dinner with Graham was part of his grandiose plan to make Navatek a major defense contractor.

He had become the CEO at an uncertain moment in the company’s history. Founded in Hawaii in the 1970s, the company originally thrived on a close relationship with the state’s powerful senior senator, Daniel Inouye. When Kao assumed ownership in 2019, it had been several years since Inouye had died, and Navatek was in need of a new patron in Washington.

At times, Kao hardly seemed the person to pull this off. He had started out as the company’s CFO and was openly uninterested in its technology. He told bombastic lies about his personal life. Former employees said he regaled them with tales of selling newspapers for members of the Bloods and Crips street gangs as a youth. In a deposition, Kao later admitted that wasn’t true.

But what he lacked in engineering chops he made up with ambition. Once, Kao held a company town hall using a map of the U.S. dotted with future Navatek offices as his backdrop, a former employee recalled. “He would talk about how we’re a $10 million company, and in the next three years, we’re going to be a billion-dollar company,” said a former engineer. “He was an absolute megalomaniac.”

Kao hatched a plan to expand Navatek’s presence across the country, making new friends in Congress along the way. He courted politicians using something he called “the method,” as ProPublica detailed in September.

Navatek would open an office in the state or district of a powerful member of Congress and partner with a local university to concoct a proposal for federally funded research. Then, aided by a well-connected lobbyist and the sheen of credibility from its association with the university, Navatek would approach the member for federal research funding.

Kao told the FBI he would strike deals in small, face-to-face meetings with the members or their trusted staff. Navatek — through executives, family members and lobbyists — would make generous campaign donations. In exchange, the member would add detailed language to the defense budget to fund the company’s work.

That legislative language would not name the company. But it would describe specific work that Navatek was already planning to do behind the scenes, making it the only logical choice for the eventual government contract. The lawmakers’ staff would also backchannel with the Navy after the bill was passed to make sure contracting offices knew to direct the money to Navatek, emails seen by ProPublica show — even though the contracts were in theory competitive.

Kao “wanted to build a company as big as he could as fast as he could,” a former executive later testified in court. For a while, he succeeded. Under Kao, Navatek went from having to “rebuild,” as the executive put it, to winning $40.7 million in new government contracts in 2020.

Hartman, the other Navatek executive who went to dinner with Graham, was in charge of maintaining friendly ties in Congress while tracking the millions of dollars the company had requested in research funds. He kept careful tabs on the company’s progress using dozens of color-coded spreadsheets. “If anyone knows the impropriety of the business model, it’s him,” Kao told the FBI, referring to Hartman.

Later, these spreadsheets provided the FBI a detailed picture of which congressional offices worked closest with Navatek. In the tables devoted to South Carolina, Navatek denoted Graham as a “key supporter.”

The company primarily targeted lawmakers from smaller states who sat on appropriations committees, like Collins, Kao explained to the FBI, because they wielded huge power over the budget while having fewer “constituents to ‘feed.’”

The senior senator from South Carolina was another prime target. “You can get access to Lindsey Graham,” Eric Schiff, a former Navatek executive, said in an interview.

Kao, Hartman and other Navatek executives approached the offices of Graham, Clyburn and Wilson — all powerful members of the South Carolina delegation — in the beginning of 2019. The company had recruited the University of South Carolina for a joint research project, and together they asked the lawmakers to find $9.5 million to fund the work. If it succeeded, Navatek planned to ask Congress to re-up the funding for two more years as well as green-light two more projects, internal company records show, for a total of up to $90 million in South Carolina alone.

Yet Navatek had “zero people” capable of doing the research it was pitching, said a former executive with direct knowledge of the work.

Its $9.5 million “power and energy” proposal promised cutting-edge research on how to distribute the limited power on board a ship between multiple energy-intense systems, like radars, lasers and rail guns. Graham’s office later boasted that the work would lead to new technology that would “ensure that our fleet is ready for the fights of the future.”

In reality, Navatek’s initial research “looked like a college senior’s graduation project,” the executive said. “Something you go get from RadioShack.” Graham’s office referred questions about the quality of the work to the Navy and the university. The Office of Naval Research, which awarded the contract, did not respond to questions.

But for Congress, that lack of expertise wasn’t a problem. Throughout 2019, the FBI noted, as the ensuing year’s budget came together, both Graham’s and Clyburn’s offices took steps to make sure it included Navatek’s funding.

In May 2019, Willie Lyles III, Clyburn’s legislative director, alerted Navatek that the House Appropriations Committee would endorse new funding for a “modular and scalable integrated power and thermal system capable of powering a directed energy weapon system of 100 or more kilowatts,” according to an email flagged by the FBI. Three days later, that exact language appeared in the House Appropriations Committee report. Lyles did not reply to a request for comment.

In September, the Senate Appropriations Committee — Graham’s committee — released a budget report that set aside $9.5 million in funding for “Talent and Technology for Navy Power and Energy Systems.” Agents noted that Navatek may have ghostwritten the technical description that accompanied this line item because “an almost identical paragraph” appeared in Hartman’s internal spreadsheets two months before the Senate report became public.

After the Senate advanced its version of the budget in the fall, Navatek dropped $4,799 to send bourbon to a handful of lawmakers, including Graham and Collins, the FBI found in company records — a likely violation of Senate gift rules. Both Collins’ and Graham’s offices denied receiving bourbon. Navatek later sent Clyburn a fruit basket from Edible Arrangements for $102.60.

Congress passed the final spending bill containing $9.5 million for Navatek’s pet project on Dec. 19, 2019.

At that point, Kao and other Navatek executives had not made any donations to Clyburn, Wilson or even Graham.

That would change within days of Congress passing the budget, when an executive pledged $750 to Wilson’s campaign at a fundraiser held at Bullfeathers, a Capitol Hill watering hole for lobbyists and Hill staffers, emails show. In the following weeks, Kao and his lobbyist gave Wilson’s campaign $3,500.

And bigger checks were imminent. Kao kicked off 2020 by making plans to spend $300,000 at a slew of political fundraisers, according to text messages filed in court and a recent deposition. Navatek’s lobbyists at that time were seeking private meetings with Graham, Wilson and Clyburn, where Kao planned to ask for significantly more federal funding. Kao eventually met with all three, and each asked for $100,000, he told the FBI.

During that same period, Kao and Hartman met a top fundraiser for Collins at a Corner Bakery in Washington, D.C. As ProPublica reported, that meeting led Kao to donate $150,000 to the pro-Collins super PAC. Kao told the FBI that the money was a bribe in exchange for the senator’s support for more Navatek funding. The head of the super PAC and Collins have denied Kao’s version of events.

Kao told the FBI it was not unusual for donations to come after the favor: “We became clever in our own right and figured out how to dangle the carrot,” he wrote in a memo seen by ProPublica, “until we saw some assurance that the Ask was in the budget.”

To secure a meeting with Graham, Kao hired Michael Tongour, a veteran South Carolina lobbyist who was old law school friends with the senator and family friends with Clyburn and Wilson. Graham was up for reelection against a well-funded challenger, Jaime Harrison, and had a crowded fundraising schedule, said Tongour, but they eventually found a time.

“The Graham fundraiser says that it [sic] you want to reserve a date for Senator Graham to attend a private dinner, the campaign wants to get $40,000 in contributions,” Tongour wrote to Kao, Hartman and lobbyist Andy Winer, in an undated email seen by ProPublica. Winer, whom Kao described as Navatek’s chief lobbyist, chimed in to say that Graham could stay only 45 minutes, and Kao replied that all they needed to hear was “yes.”

“These discussions are very frank and oddly not at all awkward,” Kao told the FBI. “I suppose once we got that far, everyone knows the deal.”

A Dinner With Graham

Graham showed up late to his March 3, 2020, dinner with Kao, Hartman and Tongour. A fundraiser working for Graham appeared first and accepted an envelope from Kao containing checks made out to Graham’s campaign, Kao said. Kao did not know the fundraiser’s name; in an FBI debrief, he simply referred to the person as the “money man.” After that person departed, Graham entered.

Graham, Kao recalled to the FBI, was “very abrupt” and “straight to the point”: He asked how much Navatek wanted, to which they said $10 million a year for three years. Graham asked Kao to pledge $100,000 in donations in exchange for his support, Kao told the FBI.

Navatek was juggling multiple proposals in South Carolina worth around $10 million, and it’s not clear which one Kao was describing.

Congress had just approved the $9.5 million for the power and energy project, but Navatek still needed the Navy to award the money in the form of a contract. The company was also about to ask Congress to fund the same project for a second year at $10.5 million. On top of that, Navatek was planning to pitch a new research proposal, at $10 million, to study the transport of supplies inland from ships using autonomous vehicles. It was another area where Navatek had “zero past performance,” the former executive said.

The same week of the steakhouse dinner, Graham’s office was working behind the scenes with Navatek and the University of South Carolina to make sure the Navy sent the first $9.5 million to the right company.

A day before the dinner, an official with the Office of Naval Research emailed Graham’s office to ask about the money, which “the Senator may have an interest in.” Craig Abele, Graham’s national security adviser, called her a few days later to confirm that Graham’s office had intended the money to be awarded to the Navatek partnership, emails show. “Spoke to ONR this morning,” Abele wrote March 6. “Should be set.”

The company received the contract, which it split with the university, in July 2020. 

Abele became Graham’s deputy chief of staff and still holds the position for Darline. He did not reply to an email requesting comment. A Graham spokesperson confirmed to ProPublica that their office had indeed added the $9.5 million to the budget at the request of the university and Navatek. The spokesperson said the research was supported by the Navy and rejected the notion that Graham was motivated by campaign cash.

Graham’s spokesperson said requiring a fundraising minimum for a dinner was normal practice.

The checks Kao handed over at the dinner added up to about half of the $40,000 he had agreed to raise for the dinner, according to Tongour. The rest came in May, campaign records show.

“My understanding at the time was that the contributions associated with the event were lawful political contributions,” Winer said. “I never advised Kao to make a political contribution in exchange for official action. I never participated in, witnessed or had knowledge of any illegal political contribution.”

After Kao’s 2020 indictment, the University of South Carolina broke off the partnership. “University officials were not aware of any political contributions from Navatek,” Jeff Stensland, a university spokesperson, wrote in an email. “Our sole objective in partnering with them was to expand our research enterprise.”

One week after the dinner, on March 10, a University of South Carolina lobbyist sent written requests to Graham’s office for $20.5 million in appropriations: $10.5 million to continue Navatek’s power and energy research and $10 million for its new autonomous vehicle research.

Tongour confirmed many elements of Kao’s story. In a recent interview with ProPublica and subsequent emails, he remembered Kao giving the envelope full of checks to Graham’s fundraiser and even agreed that Graham kept the meeting short. “I don’t recall that he stayed more than 30 minutes,” Tongour said in an email. “Certainly not for appetizers, entrée, and dessert.”

But he denied Kao’s most significant claim: that Graham and Navatek struck an explicit, potentially illegal deal for contracts.

“I would remember that forever,” Tongour said. Graham supported Navatek’s requests, he said, because they were good for the state. “If I had seen that kind of quid pro quo, I would have quit earlier.” Tongour fired Navatek as a client later that year, immediately after Kao’s arrest.

Navatek considered Graham its chief patron in South Carolina, internal records show, just as it viewed Collins in Maine. But the company also wanted support in the House.

For that, Navatek turned to Clyburn, a member of Democratic party leadership and one of the most powerful figures in Congress. Agents found Navatek emails setting a meeting with Clyburn for early March. The goal, Kao said, was to make sure that the House draft of the budget “mirrored” whatever Graham inserted in the Senate version.

Over a meal, Clyburn asked Kao how much he was donating to Graham and then asked for the same amount, $100,000, Kao told the FBI.

The FBI tallied $20,000 in contributions that Kao and his family members made to Clyburn a few days after their scheduled meeting. A month later, Hartman arranged for a $10,000 gift to Clyburn’s alma mater, South Carolina State University, according to an email seen by ProPublica. Hartman noted it was “Congressman Clyburn’s favorite school.”

The spokesperson for Clyburn confirmed the dinner occurred but did not respond to questions about what was discussed.

Kao and Hartman struck a similar bargain with Wilson, Kao told the FBI, at a private lunch he secured by donating to his campaign. The FBI pulled records of $3,500 in donations Kao and Tongour made in late 2019 and early 2020.

Wilson has an influential role on the House Armed Services Committee, which authorizes defense spending. Wilson was “very clear and knew what the ask was,” Kao told the FBI. He wanted however much Clyburn was getting in campaign contributions in exchange for his support, Kao said.

Tongour denied this. “There was no ‘pay to play’ with Joe Wilson or his staff either,” he wrote in an email, adding that he donated because Wilson “is a friend and I want to see him re-elected.”

Kao claimed to the FBI that he paid for meals with all three politicians, but campaign finance records appear to show the lawmakers’ campaigns picked up the check.

By August 2020, Hartman had gotten word that Graham’s and Wilson’s committees would each support part of the company’s requests, internal company records show. Clyburn was not on key committees while he was a party leader. In one of his myriad spreadsheets, Hartman projected that the final budget could include up to $15.5 million of the $20.5 million the company had lobbied for.

Kao told agents he was gearing up to make more significant donations to Graham, Clyburn and Wilson by the end of the year. Instead, on Sept. 30, 2020, he was arrested.

Kao reflected on his time at Navatek in a deposition taken last month inside a federal prison. The company’s founder has sued Kao, saying his stewardship defrauded Navatek of millions.

“It’s nothing more than government contracting done through placating senior appropriation members for contracts,” Kao said. “The whole thing is a grand lie.”

An Arrest, a Lifeboat

Kao’s arrest plunged Navatek into disarray. Federal prosecutors charged him with defrauding a federal loan program; not long after, he was also charged with making illegal donations to the Collins campaign and super PAC. Lobbyists, universities and congressional offices abruptly cut off contact. “Don’t call us,” one congressional office told an executive, he later testified.

The Collins campaign said it disgorged Kao’s contribution. Yet the senator, facing a tight reelection bid, has had to field questions following the ProPublica report about her support for Navatek and why the super PAC supporting her accepted the $150,000 donation from the shell company in the first place.

As Navatek sank, Hartman began building himself a lifeboat. In 2021, he and Knight started a new military research company headquartered in South Carolina called Integer Technologies. Integer’s first project was one that Navatek had brokered with Graham.

Hartman didn’t face any criminal charges at the time and left Navatek largely unscathed. He would later settle a civil lawsuit brought by his former employer, which contended he played a role in Kao’s campaign finance and loan fraud schemes, for $425,000. He admitted no wrongdoing.

In September 2024, FBI agents flew to Hawaii for what would be their final interview with Kao. They pressed him for details about what happened in South Carolina, quizzing him on his dinner with Graham and a second in-person meeting he said he had with Clyburn. Agents wanted Kao to help them find more records that would back up his account and asked him to point them toward lobbyists in D.C. who he said facilitated the pay-for-play scheme.

As the year came to a close, FBI agent Michelle Ball felt she had enough material to move forward. The FBI had “uncovered a lengthy history” of a government contractor making donations “in exchange for government contracts,” she wrote in a Dec. 9, 2024, memo viewed by ProPublica.

In federal corruption probes, agents often begin by focusing on lower-level targets with a goal of working their way up to more prominent figures. Ball named Hartman; his business partner, Knight; and their company, Integer, as the formal subjects of the probe, as they prepared to potentially issue subpoenas and gather more evidence. They had Graham, Clyburn and Wilson in their sights. Ball devoted entire sections of the memo to detailing the lawmakers’ conduct. And she flagged the case as a sensitive matter that might implicate politicians in the future.

In the summer of 2024, Kate Fifield, a prosecutor in the Justice Department’s anti-corruption section, had been assigned to join the case. Fifield was wrapping up a high-profile prosecution of a retired Navy admiral who traded a government contract for a future job. Turning her attention to Kao, she and the FBI agents weighed their options. They considered getting high-level approval to deploy undercover agents. Proving an exchange of cash for favors often requires the kind of inconvertible evidence that undercover recordings can provide.

But before the investigation took flight, the new Trump administration began to demolish the Justice Department. The president’s handpicked leaders ordered prosecutors to drop a corruption case against New York Mayor Eric Adams, triggering a wave of resignations in the Public Integrity Section where Fifield worked, and revoked the section’s authority to bring new cases.

Then Trump’s FBI director, Kash Patel, began to purge the anti-corruption unit in the Washington D.C., field office, where many agents had investigated Trump.

Ball was fired in October 2025. Kevin Gounaud, another agent who had been working with her on the investigation, was pushed out in early 2026. Through their lawyer, the agents declined to comment.

The corruption investigation, just launched, suddenly went dark.

The White House referred ProPublica’s questions to the FBI and DOJ. 

The Department of Justice didn’t respond to detailed questions about the investigation. 

“Under President Trump, the Justice Department is rooting out the weaponization, corruption, and institutional rot that ran rampant under Joe Biden’s two-tiered system of justice,” DOJ spokesperson Audrey Cook said.

Kao’s claims are “half baked” and “misleading,” FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson said. “Additionally, as we have said repeatedly, personnel are only removed at this FBI if they have been found to have acted unethically, undermined the mission, or engaged in weaponization of law enforcement.”

Meanwhile, Integer has rapidly expanded. Last year, it reported $81 million in contracts and announced that number would climb to $375 million by 2030. The company inked partnership deals with universities in New Hampshire, Louisiana and Mississippi. The University of South Carolina called its partnership with the firm a “model for public-private success.”

The company continues to forge ties with powerful politicians. In late 2024, Hartman posted a photo of himself with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson on his LinkedIn. “It was great to visit with the Speaker of the House today,” he wrote. “It’s good to know there are people in positions of power who seem to really care for the people they serve.” Johnson’s office did not reply to an email requesting comment. 

The occasion was a new research partnership in Louisiana. Hartman thanked his lobbyist for making it happen.

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The classic musical “Damn Yankees” featured the song “Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets.” Today it would be “Whatever Putin Wants, Putin Gets,” and the fellow delivering the goods is Donald Trump.

In recent weeks, Trump has taken a series of actions that benefit Russia and Vladimir Putin at Ukraine’s expense. He may insist he’s trying to end the war. But his version of peace increasingly seems to involve giving Putin what he wants and telling Ukraine to live with it.

Trump abruptly eased sanctions on Russian diesel, opening the door to fuel sales that could put money into Moscow’s coffers. This came despite years of American efforts to economically isolate Russia for invading Ukraine.

Apparently Ukraine is supposed to defend itself against Russian aggression without doing anything that might inconvenience Russia.

Then there’s the intelligence controversy.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country failed to receive customary advance warnings about incoming Russian ballistic missiles. Trump insists American intelligence sharing continues, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio denies there was an interruption.

But the warnings were missing. Russian missiles weren’t.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military suddenly experienced restrictions on SpaceX’s Starlink and Starshield satellite communications systems, disrupting drone operations used to defend Ukrainian cities and attack Russian forces.

Trump denies his administration ordered the restrictions, and the disruptions were eventually eased. But the timing raised serious issues, including among bipartisan members of the U.S. Senate.

And when Zelenskyy objected to Trump’s Russian diesel deal, Trump suggested Ukraine would be better off with another president.

Imagine that: A country invaded by Russia is being told by the American president that perhaps its own president should go.

Somewhere in Moscow, champagne corks must be popping.

Which brings us to ventriloquism.

I have special credentials to discuss this subject. I’ve been a professional ventriloquist for 36 years.

I own a $2,000 state-of-the-art wooden ventriloquist dummy. He’s an impressive piece of craftsmanship, with movable eyebrows, eyes that wink and a tongue that sticks out.

He doesn’t do anything unless I make him do it.

When he talks, I’m doing the talking. When he raises his eyebrows, I’m controlling them. When he sticks out his tongue, I’m pulling the appropriate lever.

The dummy may get the laughs, but I’m controlling the show.

Watching Trump’s recent dealings with Putin, I can’t help seeing a familiar act. Putin wants Zelensky weakened. Trump publicly suggests replacing him.

The difference is my dummy is made of wood and nobody mistakes him for the president of the United States.

Of course, Trump isn’t literally controlled by Putin. His administration argues its actions are intended to lower energy prices and negotiate peace.

But intentions don’t erase consequences. And the consequences of these decisions increasingly favor the country that launched the invasion.

This isn’t merely a political comedy routine. Ukranians are dying. Cities are being bombed. American credibility with its allies is at stake.

A ventriloquist act is supposed to entertain an audience by creating the illusion the dummy speaks for himself.

The frightening question now is whether the American president is speaking for our interests or echoing the wishes of Vladimir Putin.

I’ve spent 36 years making a dummy look like he’s talking. Vladimir Putin may have figured out how to do it without moving his lips.

Copyright 2026 Joe Gandelman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

For more discussion of this story GO HERE.

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by Tom Purcell

Technology has enabled a new breed of bullying, and it’s nastier than ever.

Bullying transformation

In 1972, when I was 10, Franky Leper busted my handmade go-cart into pieces, then shoved me into the mud.

Leper was in his teens, then — a big, fat, man-sized kid — and I stood no chance.

But my older sister, Kris — then 5 feet tall and 90 pounds — was so angry at what she saw that she tackled him to the pavement and pounded on him with her fists until he blubbered like a baby.

Everyone was so shocked by his beating that his bullying career ended that day.

Throughout millennia, bullies have typically been larger kids who invoked fear in everyone else.

Psychologist Dan Olweus found that traditional bullies usually weren’t insecure kids with low self-esteem. They were kids who liked power, enjoyed being in control and bullied for the simple reason that they enjoyed how it made them feel.

The only way to get them to leave you alone, generally, was to win their respect by fighting back — or having an older sibling do so.

Today, however, the bully doesn’t need size to invoke fear — all he or she needs is an iPhone.

Tech-enabled bullying

According to CNN, 14-year-old Adriana Kuch was beaten in a New Jersey school hallway. Classmates filmed it and posted the video online. Her father said the relentless comments and continuous bullying broke her. Two days later, she committed suicide in her home.

In Louisiana, reports the Associated Press, a 13-year-old girl became the target of relentless teasing after classmates circulated AI-generated nude images of her. She and other girls begged school officials for help, but adults initially doubted the images even existed. When she caught a boy showing them on a school bus, she attacked him. The school expelled the girl who had been humiliated, only later to be reinstated once the truth finally came out.

In Peters Township, Pennsylvania, reports CBS Pittsburgh, an 18-year-old senior — the class president — was charged with sextorting at least 21 boys, ages 14 to 17. Police say he posed as a girl online, lured them into sending explicit images, then threatened to expose them if they didn’t pay or do what he demanded — such as film other boys in the locker room and, in two cases, have sex with older men.

Terrified and alone, these kids do not know what to do or where to turn.

Modern bullying solution

To be sure, bullying victims have it way worse today.

First, they cannot escape the torment — even in the safety of their own homes. Today’s bullying victims carry the torment around in their pockets — on their smartphones. They’re humiliated by bullies in front of many others online — and they have no escape.

“When bullying goes online, that safe refuge is lost,” reports WebWatcher. “The bullies enter the home via computers, tablets and cellphones. Even if a child chooses to disengage by turning off their internet-connected devices, the bullies can continue sending harassing messages. The next time the child turns on their devices, the attacks are there waiting for them.”

Second, a new class of bully has emerged. Leper used his size to physically bully younger, weaker kids, but the contemporary bully need not be physically dominating. All he or she needs is a mean streak, a smartphone and access to AI apps.

Hiding behind a computer screen, contemporary bullies can demonstrate levels of inhumanity and cruelty that they might not be capable of if they were looking a victim in the eyes.

Third, today’s bullying victims are increasingly isolated. The torment they carry around may affect their grades, their sleep and their health. Fortunately, we all can do something to help them, thanks to the PACER National Bullying Prevention Center.

October: National Bullying Prevention Month

Founded in 2006, PACER, Parent Advocacy Coalition for Educational Rights, established its National Bullying Prevention Center to help ensure all children are safe and supported in their schools, communities and online.

In the ’70s, the solution to a bully was often to stand up to him. Today, bullying can follow a child home, spread across an entire school in minutes and linger online indefinitely. AI deepfakes and other digital tools have made the problem even more complicated.

PACER offers practical advice: save screenshots and messages, tell a trusted adult, report abusive content to schools and online platforms, block perpetrators and refuse to share or encourage humiliating material. Bystanders can help by supporting victims and helping them get adult assistance.

When children bully others, PACER urges parents and educators to intervene, help them understand the harm they cause and teach kindness and respect. Changing a young bully’s behavior takes time, but ignoring it only allows the damage to continue.

But today, saving a child from a bully does not require a physical fight — it takes logging on, stepping up, monitoring the devices and refusing to let digital cruelty go viral.

Maybe if someone had helped Franky Leper become kinder back in 1972, his teen years wouldn’t have been ruined with my sister’s right hook.

Copyright 2026 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. See Tom Purcell’s syndicated column, humor books and funny videos featuring his dog, Thurber, at TomPurcell.com. Email him at Tom@TomPurcell.com.

Parents, educators and students can find free guides, videos, classroom activities and action plans at PACER’s National Bullying Prevention Center.

The post How social media and AI changed bullying appeared first on The Moderate Voice.

Five decades ago on “Saturday Night Live,” John Belushi played a character called “The Thing That Wouldn’t Leave,” a slobbering uninvited houseguest who crashed on the couch, littered the living room, and refused to go despite his host’s persistent pleas.

Who does that sound like?

About two weeks before the most crucial midterm elections in living memory, Donald Trump is in peripatetic overdrive, littering the land with his rhetorical junk food, desperate to outrace his cratering polls, hurtling hither and yon to wherever he’s not invited, refusing to abide by the axiom that it’s wisest for an unpopular president to stay off the trail when control of Congress is at stake.

During the 1998 midterm season, Bill Clinton – saddled with the Monica Lewinsky scandal – largely stayed off the trail. So did George W. Bush in 2006 and Barack Obama in 2014, who learned from the 1986 midterms, where Ronald Reagan stumped in 14 states and saw the Republicans cough up eight Senate seats and control of the chamber.

By contrast, Trump is historically unpopular. Despite that, he has staged 17 (often ill-attended) rallies since Sept. 9, with at least five more on tap this week. Nothing and nobody can stand between Trump and the cameras, despite the fact a number of Republican candidates are doing all they can to steer clear of his cooties. As former Ohio congressman Jim Renacci told Politico the other day, “In most cases you do not want him standing near you.”

Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan political analyst, told me Trump “is simply incapable of receding into the background or allowing the midterms to be about anyone other than himself.” Stu told me that in the autumn of 2018, when Trump was refusing to leave the midterm trail despite low job approval – and wound up fueling the loss of 41 House seats and handing the gavel to Nancy Pelosi.

This guy is incapable of learning lessons. His only play is to bellow at the clueless sheep who bahhh at his rallies, though not in sufficient numbers to fill all the seats. There’s still a market for his amped-up rants about “radical left Dummocrat communists” who supposedly plan to “raise your taxes by $5 trillion.” There’s still a market for his on-stage stunts, like last week when he pardoned two guys who’d confessed to violating the Clean Air Act, declaring them “as clean as a newborn baby’s ass.” And there’s still a market for pearls of wisdom like this: “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.”

But that’s just crap for the shrinking cult. Everyone else in America recoils or tunes it out.

Indeed, his travel itinerary exposes his desperation. Since early September, 21 of his 22 visits (including the five this week) have targeted red states only. He spent an entire day flying all the way to Alaska to support an endangered Republican senator. He has stumped in places like Alabama and Tennessee and Oklahoma and Texas and Nebraska and Montana. This week he’s due in South Carolina to support an endangered Republican senatorial candidate (he refers to the Democratic nominee as “Annie Trannie”).

He’s just trying to plug multiple leaks in the porous MAGA dike, and none of those pit stops would be necessary if he was politically healthy;. He hasn’t dared show his face in any purple swing states, because independents have told the pollsters he’s dead to them. But even his red-enclave efforts have been undercut by Republican candidates who in some cases have discovered that at rally time they needed to wash their hair. Republicans in Ohio and Nebraska have omitted him from their campaign ads. Elsewhere, some have scrubbed him from their websites.

I almost feel sorry for them. Republican candidates want to talk about stuff like tax cuts and highlight whatever qualifies as an administration achievement, like his efforts to lower prescription drug prices. Instead, they’re drowning in his never-ending sludge, like his diesel deal with Vladimir Putin, firing his new press secretary after just five days, and so much more. One GOP operative privately complained to a reporter last week that while the guy is everywhere, he is effectively nowhere, because he’s “not focused on what the voters care about. It’s insane.”

Which is fine by me. The Thing That Wouldn’t Leave needs to settle in and wreck the premises for another two weeks. For the Democrats and independents who are yearning for accountability in D.C., there is arguably no better mobilization message than what recently fell from his lips, in the service of his narcissistic mindset:

“Pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot.”

Copyright 2026 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes the Subject to Change newsletter. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com

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Peter McPhee, The University of Melbourne

Mass protests in France have spiralled into riots, with between 500,000 and 800,000 demonstrators in cities and towns across the country, most of them students. More than 100 police and many more protesters have been injured and up to 2,000 people have so far been arrested.

Major public buildings – such as the town hall in Limoges and the historic tourist office in Lyon – were destroyed, while other public buildings were damaged and hundreds of shops were looted by small groups of mainly young men.

The protests began in the working-class suburb of Créteil in southeastern Paris on September 21 when high school students demonstrated against poor conditions: dilapidated facilities, a shortage of teachers and inconvenient timetabling (schools in France often spread classes between 8am and 6pm, including Saturday mornings, leaving one clear afternoon).

This summer’s heatwaves were still being felt in September in classrooms with no cooling systems. Senior school students have been further frustrated by the inefficiencies and inequities of the Parcoursup university application online portal.

Many French schoolteachers share their students’ concerns with large classes and poor conditions – and salary scales which are comparatively low compared with other professions (police earn more, for example).

There are many other schools where facilities are poor and classes are large. Even so, no one expected the protests to spread so rapidly to another 700 schools across the country. There was widespread shock at the speed with which the protests spread, apparently without leaders or manifestos.

But the protests in comparatively wealthy parts of cities suggested there is more going on than just anger at cockroaches in the toilets.

1968 parallels

The parallels with May 1968 are important here. Then, it was predominantly university students who protested against a stultifying and traditional educational system. But they were also protesting against what they described as a société bloquée: a world of conservative politics and social hierarchies, and limited opportunities.

There is plainly a similar mood among high school students today that their life chances are limited by AI and the grim realities of climate change and international conflict.

Neither the centre-right government of Emmanuel Macron nor its likely right-wing successor, the Rassemblement National led by Marine Le Pen, appeals.

Similarly, the recent eruption of student and wider protests in Spain, Italy, Portugal and Belgium suggests the issues are not confined to the nature of secondary schooling in France alone.

In Spain, for example, the largest protests for many years have been primarily focused on access to affordable housing. Across the western world, the years since 2020 in particular have been marked by deep resentment from those whose lives were upended by pandemic restrictions, rising costs of living and housing crises. These combined have hit particular sections of society hard while others have benefited.

Now, this is being exacerbated by an energy crisis aggravated by war in the Middle East and Ukraine.

It is important to distinguish clearly between the protesting school students, their supporters and many teachers and parents, and the hooded, violent young people (mainly men) – popularly known as casseurs. These men smashed their way into shops, set fire to public buildings and attacked police.

Over recent decades, labour protests and those of the “yellow vests” (gilets jaunes, largely focused on cost of living issues) have also been the occasion for violent confrontation and property destruction on the margins. Such deliberately anti-social action represents a violent repudiation of the structures of French institutions and society. It has no claim to the legitimacy of a centuries-long tradition of collective protest in France.

Where will it end?

It is impossible to know just where the protests might lead. As in 1968, hostility over disruptions and property damage may cause a backlash against the students where there has until now been sympathy. It’s also possible divisions may again emerge between students and the union movement. Perhaps the protests will continue to spread through Europe.

Certainly, they have become a key factor in the looming French presidential elections of April 2027. French politics are broadly divided into three blocs that refuse to cooperate with each other: an extreme right, a centre-right and an extreme left.

It has been simple for Le Pen and other right-wing politicians to both promise she would reimpose discipline in schools, increase funding for police and target the casseurs as “obviously” illegal migrants to be deported.

The violence on the margins of what were massive, peaceful demonstrations has been an early Christmas present for her. It is also potentially ruinous for Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his left-wing La France Insoumise party, which has strongly backed the protests.

The immediate issue is whether Macron’s beleaguered government is able to respond to legitimate student demands in a way which might defuse the tensions within a deeply angry society.

Peter McPhee, Emeritus professor, History, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The Moderate Voice would not be complete without some Halloween humor during the month of October, especially with U.S. elections coming up. Plenty of Americans are on pins and needles while they wait for those elections to be over with. So, this blogger will, in the words of comedian Pete Davidson, “… try to be funny. Remember, I said ‘Try’.”

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Will Trump’s new press secretary outlast a head of cabbage, and is she smarter?

What is it with Donald Trump hiring so many unqualified people? It’s like we should not take them seriously because he keeps hiring non-serious people, but then again, we better take this seriously because he’s hired so many non-serious people. Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth are dangerous.

Trump installed amateurs to head the FBI, the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense. He is even endorsing amateurs like Darlene Graham for the Senate in South Carolina, who couldn’t find Taiwan on a map if you told her it was the little China. And yesterday, Trump’s brand new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, held her very first press briefing, which lasted only 15 minutes, where she only took three questions and could only answer two.

About an hour later, when she was leaving the White House with Trump to campaign in Alaska (Republicans are even in trouble in Alaska), Trump was asked where Katie took her bar exam. For years, she has claimed that she is a lawyer while working as a commentator at Newsmax and Fox News. Trump turned to Katie and asked her where she took her bar exam. You would think that’s something he would already know, having looked at her résumé, right? But perhaps the only thing he noticed was that she worked for Newsmax, a lying propaganda outlet, and that she is blonde, like his last press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, his nanny, Natalie Harp, his two daughters (one of whom he wants to date), and two of his three wives.

So where did Ms. Zacharia say she took her bar exam? China. That’s weird. The last time I looked, China was not an American state. It’s actually one of those communist countries that Trump is so afraid Democrats want to turn us into. Except with China, he throws state dinners for those communists.

So like his ties, suits, shoes, and red hats, was Trump’s press secretary made in China too?

Zacharia has a law degree from the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, but there’s no evidence she ever passed a bar exam. She claims to have obtained a credential in China, but what credential is she talking about? The only real credentials we can find are her sharing Qanon conspiracy theories on social media.

Trump used the term “attorney” to describe her when he announced she would be his press secretary, and a review by CNN’s K-File found at least six instances when she referred to herself as either a lawyer or a corporate lawyer and multiple other instances in which she posted or reposted to social media using the term attorney or “legal strategist.”

Zacharia later told Politico she had “practiced international transactional law, with all the appropriate credentials,” but she did not say what certification she obtained in China. Only Chinese citizens can become licensed to practice law in China. Fact, fact, fuckity, fact, fact.

When she told the press that she got her law credentials in China, Donald Trump did a double take, as though she said she obtained her credentials from a box of Cracker Jacks…or Trump University. Quite frankly, a degree found inside a box of Cracker Jacks would have more credibility than one from Trump University.

Here’s another fun fact: in California, where Zachariah is from and has lived, it is a misdemeanor to pretend to be a lawyer. But why shouldn’t she be allowed to pretend to be a lawyer? It’s working for Todd Blanche.

But back to the White House press briefing. As Shawn McCreesh (he was in the room) with The New York Times describes it: She spent the next eight minutes reading nervously from a script, looking up at the cameras every couple of lines. Then she said she was ready to take some questions. She called on only three reporters, dropped one wild piece of news, made a slip mixing up her husband and her president, then darted out of there after just five and a half minutes, leaving the White House press corps to scratch its collective head.

The three outlets she called on were Breitbart, Fox News and The Daily Mail. No New York Times, no CNN, no Washington Post, no Politico, no Guardian…only Trump-friendly outlets, and she still couldn’t handle it.

Why was she nervous to speak in front of people? She worked on television and, granted, it was Newsmax, which has an audience of about six angry grandpas, but she was working for Fox News when Trump hired her.

GO HERE TO READ THE REST.

Visit Clay Jones’s website and email him at clayjonz@gmail.com.

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Fear of federal interference in the 2026 midterms, from intimidation stoked by armed officials at the polls to seizure of ballots, has been growing in the United States. That’s led state and local voting officials across the country to draw up plans for scenarios requiring them to summon law enforcement or prepare legal filings so they can keep the polls open.

In an interview with The Conversation’s politics and legal affairs editor Naomi Schalit, election law scholar Justin Levitt takes the temperature down a bit. Levitt says that while voting officials’ preparations mean they are doing their jobs, the anticipated election interference won’t happen – in part because of that preparation.

Schalit: Could we see widespread intimidation and challenging of voters at the polls?

Levitt: It’s extremely unlikely. I completely understand that Americans are freaked out. They are at an electric level of anxiety right now, not just about the world but about the coming elections. But I don’t think the intimidation and challenges they’re fearing or forecasting are going to manifest for a couple reasons.

I have run a nationwide election protection program. It’s real work to get people to dedicate a full day to helping others. It’s that much harder to recruit a group of people to show up and look for fraud, and fraud at scale doesn’t really happen. It’s even harder to recruit people to show up to actively intimidate voters.

Not that many people are in for it – there are keyboard warriors who love to act out online, but to actually show up is a totally different thing. And they’re really risking either getting thrown out of the polling place or going to jail, because intimidating voters is a crime.

What about intimidation and challenges by government officials?

On the government side, which is something people are also really freaked out about, we are a giant country and there are almost 100,000 polling places. The logistics of an intimidation operation don’t work countrywide.

To go from Step A, I’d like to intimidate people, to Step C, intimidate people everywhere? You’re missing a pretty giant Step B.

Here’s what I believe will happen: The federal government will send a group of a dozen goons to a suburban polling place somewhere, and they’ll have a camera crew with them. Bystanders will happily oblige them in filming. That clip will go viral and scare voters into not showing up at the polls because they think that there are individuals intimidating voters all over the place.

If people are worried about intimidation, go outside and see for yourself that in your neighborhood things are very normal. Even if social media depicts pure chaos.

Local and state election officials are preparing for mayhem or interference by the federal government. Are their efforts just based on overwrought imaginations?

No, they are being responsible. It’s their responsibility to prepare for everything so that the voters don’t have to worry about it. And they are as prepared as I have ever seen them. They’re preparing for a lot of truly outlandish scenarios, and some that are more realistic, so that they can be ready to make sure that the election is smooth and secure and feels very normal.

Could ballots be seized by state or federal officials?

Ballot seizure is also very much on people’s minds, and I think it’s particularly salient because the feds did it in Fulton County, Georgia, and because local sheriffs did it in Riverside, California. But there are two big reasons that’s not going to happen this fall.

First, the seizures in both Fulton County and Riverside were of old ballots. Fulton County’s ballots were 6 years old. California was more recent. It was a 2026 seizure for the 2025 elections, but those elections were still over and results had already been tallied.

That’s very different from an attempt to seize ballots while results are still pending, which is flatly unconstitutional. I just worked on an article with the former chief of the public integrity section at the U.S. Department of Justice. We did a lot of research and we think there’s never before been a federal warrant to seize ballot material when the results are pending. And that’s because judges don’t like to sign off on things that are illegal.

These seizures, in Fulton County and in Riverside, California, surely took the judges in those districts by surprise. Judges see applications for search warrants all the time, all day, every day. But warrants for election materials when the results are still pending are vanishingly rare. The warrants in Fulton and Riverside did us a favor because there are very few judges anywhere who are going to be surprised right now. Those seizures were big news.

In Fulton County, the judge allowed it, but he said very, very clearly this would be different if we were talking about a pending election where results weren’t still in the door. In California, the trial judge signed off on it. But the California Supreme Court came back just about a month ago, said this was absolutely, flatly illegal, there is absolutely no reason why a sheriff needs to seize these ballots. It is unlawful under California state law in a way that mimics other states’ laws too.

If somehow ballots get seized during the election process before they are counted and certified, that would mean that the chain of custody was broken and they would no longer be valid. Is that correct?

In the extraordinarily unlikely event that there’s actually a seizure, we’re in a little bit of terra incognita. It’s not entirely clear what happens. There will be immediate efforts legally to get the ballots back.

But the election system is built with belts and suspenders. If there’s a seizure of some materials, that doesn’t mean there’s a seizure of all materials or all materials relevant to a count. Sometimes there are paper ballots that are backed up by electronic copies, or vice versa. So what’s really important is that the election officials have a set of reliable records they can count.

The federal government may come in and say, “Give us the materials,” and the states are likely to say, “How about we make you copies?” And that’s fine. They can go off and have their copies and do whatever they want with them as long as the states are still able to count the records. It’s not really clear what would happen if there’s an extended lapse where the ballots are out of state custody. It’s not that those ballots are immediately invalid, but there’d be a fight about it.

I’ve been covering politics for a long time, and in the past 10 years the number of times we’ve gone into terra incognita was entirely unanticipated. Which is why I have to ask certain questions that seem completely implausible.

I’ve been working on elections for a couple decades now. My list of things to watch out for in 2000 was long. My list of things to watch out for in every subsequent election grew longer. The last couple of years, my list of things to watch out for has spilled off the page and onto the floor. For election officials, it’s a lot. They are stressed out, they’re underpaid, they’re overworked.

But all that said, they’ve got this. They’re actually as prepared as I have ever seen, including dealing with things that they haven’t ever seen before and should never have to be seeing.

I understand why people are afraid. I understand why people think there are risks. And that’s because it’s not normal to have the president fostering this much concern about the democratic process and who is this unattached to the democratic process.

But the good news is the process doesn’t depend on the president. It depends on us.

Justin Levitt, Professor of Law, Loyola Law School Los Angeles

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The polarization of the two major parties and their adherents makes a centrist third party even more necessary. Why should American voters have to hold their noses and choose between extremes?
www.robertlevinebooks.com

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How bad was new White House Press Secertary Katie Zacharia’s first abbreviated, abandon ship 14 minute press briefing? She made the nuclear bomb seem like a firecracker.

She was so bad she made the Hindenburg disaster look like a routine landing. She made the Titanic look like a successful Caribbean cruise. She made the 1985 New Coke rollout look like a marketing triumph. She made a kamikaze pilot look like a cautious driver. She made the musical “Cats” look good.

She made a 14-minute press conference feel like a six-hour hostage negotiation. She made a deer caught in the headlights look like a seasoned NASCAR driver. She made Battlefield Earth look like Schindler’s List. She made the Fryer Festival look like a masterclass in event planning.

She made a Yoko Ono conert sound like a night at the Metropolitan Opera. She made Sarah Palin’s Katie Couric interview look like a doctoral dissertation.

Now, as a Mediaite report points out, Zacharia could be in line to set a new record.

Anthony Scaramucci’s eleven days as White House Communications Director instantly sparked a million memes, but he might soon find his record beat by Katie Zacharia’s tenuous hold on her new gig as White House Press Secretary.

Scaramucci was appointed by President Donald Trump on July 21, 2017. From the beginning, the “Mooch” had a notoriously fractious relationship with then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. Within days, Priebus had resigned and Scaramucci had gotten tangled up making overly chatty comments to a reporter without first getting an agreement to go off the record; Trump fired Scaramucci on July 31, 2017.

Zacharia’s first day as press secretary has been a contender for Scaramucci’s brief White House tenure. She was announced as the latest MAGA mouthpiece for the administration earlier this month, taking over after her predecessor Karoline Leavitt resigned after the birth of her second child. She kicked off her tenure presiding over the White House Press Briefing Room Tuesday to decidedly brutal reviews.

In addition to the awkwardness of her first press briefing, Zacharia is facing more serious questions about her résumé. She has repeatedly publicly claimed she is a lawyer but there does not seem to be any evidence she passed the bar exam anywhere in the U.S. A job she had at a law firm in Beijing, China a few months after graduating law school does not plausibly appear to have conveyed any Chinese bar admission (only Chinese citizens can take the Chinese bar exam and she did not meet the requirements for foreign lawyers admitted in another jurisdiction to advise Chinese clients on those outside jurisdictions); there is similarly no reports of her earning any bar admission in another country.

Still, Zacharia insisted Tuesday that she had “practiced international transactional law, with all the appropriate credentials;” a White House official told a reporter she “moved to China with her husband after graduating because of his job at an American private equity firm while she worked on international transaction law.”
Did people hear her wrong? Maybe she didn’t say she was liar and said she was a liar.

Immediately after the fiasco Trump officials indicated she better get her act together super fast or she’d wind up like Saraamucci.

Her flop has been a major subject on social media:

?BREAKING: An anonymous White House official just told MSNBC that Katie Zacharia’s job is now in JEOPARDY after her abysmal performance today.

“She got off on the wrong foot. She needs to get better fast otherwise she’ll break Scaramucci’s record.”

DAMN. https://t.co/Vy4JUTnhjJ

— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) October 13, 2026

Trump’s new White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia is completely lost for words and fumbling on her first day as she reads off a script https://t.co/58fMuVbvDg

— Headquarters (@HQNewsNow) October 13, 2026

Katie Zacharia makes Karoline Leavitt seem like Winston Churchill https://t.co/AgFbrCALAq

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 13, 2026

Katie Zacharia just held her first White House briefing as Press Secretary, and she completely nailed it!
She’s sharp, loyal, and ready to take on the biased media. With midterm momentum higher than ever, President Trump picked the absolute best person for the job! ? https://t.co/YDHviFYVyV

— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) October 13, 2026

Katie Zacharia is bombing her first White House press conference. But on the bright side, she’ll absolutely crush the swimsuit competition. https://t.co/ma4v5WUBP0

— Canada Hates Trump (@AntiTrumpCanada) October 13, 2026

One cannot take an American state bar exam in China. Bar exams are administered at designated testing locations in each state of the union.

Are Katie Zacharia and trump lying when they say she is an attorney?

If not, then she needs to disclose in what state she passed the bar.

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) October 13, 2026

I give Katie Zacharia 4 Scaramuccis.

This is atrocious.
https://t.co/BxqW1cDjWq

— BrooklynDad_Defiant!?? (@mmpadellan) October 13, 2026

@tedlieu And if she is referring to the Chinese equivalent of the bar exam, it’s offered only in Mandarin, has a 10% pass rate, and wouldn’t make her a US Attorney.

But she is welcome to bust out her fluent Mandarin skills to prove that.

— Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth) (@adamscochran) October 13, 2026

@mmpadellan https://t.co/oEVbwNPljv

— Rick Compton (@rickcomp52) October 13, 2026

?Holy shit Katie Zacharia is terrible!!!!

“My president…excuse me, my husband..”

She’s reading, she’s nervous, she’s lying. Trump will NOT be happy after seeing her performance!! https://t.co/T805wDtVNg

— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) October 13, 2026

? Katie Zacharia’s first press briefing was brutally bad ?

Trump managed to find a press secretary who can barely read, but she does have the number one qualification — looking like Ivanka

Here’s a supercut from Zacharia’s first briefing, which made Karoline Leavitt seem like Ronald Reagan

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 13, 2026

Katie Zacharia with all the enthusiasm and vocal cadence of a butt worm. #katiezacharia #parody #politicalcomedy #politicalsatire #awkward https://t.co/eP08KKLUUt

— Maggie Reed (@mermaidmamamags) October 13, 2026

Katie Zacharia is the human equivalent of a Fox News chyron with a concussion.

— ??????_???? (@SundaeDivine) October 13, 2026

The good news for Katie Zacharia is that her first press briefing lasted only 14 minutes.

The bad news is that everyone was awake for it.

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Nearly 17 years after the Fort Hood shooting that killed 13 people and wounded 32 others, the planned execution of former Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan has sparked a new debate over whether executions may be televised and viewed by the public.

Hasan, who was convicted of carrying out the November 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, is scheduled to be executed by firing squad on December 3, 2026. If carried out, it would be the first U.S. military execution since 1961 and the first military execution by firing squad since 1945. The Pentagon has announced plans to livestream the execution, although President Donald Trump said on October 10 that he would make the final decision about whether the execution is in fact televised. As of October 12, Axios had reported that Trump had privately expressed doubts about the plan.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the decision to use a firing squad a “no-brainer.” He also defended making the execution public, saying, “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand [that] there are serious consequences for these types of things.” 

Trump has implied that making an execution public could deter future attacks. While addressing reporters, he said, “By showing it, maybe other people won’t be doing what he did.” The proposal has drawn criticism from lawmakers in both parties, religious leaders and human rights advocates, raising questions about whether broadcasting an execution would serve a public purpose or turn it into a spectacle or form of entertainment. On October 11, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin defended the plan during an appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation, dismissing concerns that livestreaming the execution could create a security risk or turn Hasan into a martyr. “But I don’t see an elevated risk at this point at all because of this,” Mullin said. He also argued that “no one has to watch it if they don’t choose to.”

One of the most widely recognized public executions in U.S. history took place in 1936, when Rainey Bethea, a Black man convicted of raping a white woman, was hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky. Thousands of spectators attended the execution. Bethea’s hanging is often described as the last fully public execution in the United States, although Roscoe “Red” Jackson was publicly hanged in Missouri the following year in what is widely considered the last public execution in the country. 

The closest modern comparison to a televised execution in the United States came in 2001, when Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was executed by lethal injection. The Justice Department arranged a closed-circuit television broadcast for designated survivors and relatives of victims. According to The New York Times, 232 survivors and relatives gathered in a viewing room in Oklahoma City to watch McVeigh’s execution.

Some proponents of making executions public argue that allowing people to witness the process could increase transparency and help the public understand what capital punishment entails. Deborah Denno, a death penalty expert and law professor at Fordham University, has argued that livestreaming could make the process “much more transparent.”

“I think it could possibly be a good idea because it would be transparent and the public would be fully aware that it’s happening,” Denno said.

The proposed broadcast has also prompted mixed reactions among Fort Hood shooting survivors. In an ABC News report, survivor Alonzo Lunsford said he planned to attend the execution but expressed reluctance about making it available to the general public.  He was also concerned that the execution could become a spectacle resembling a sporting event. Another survivor, Dayna Ferguson Roscoe, expressed a different perspective, saying that although she had not expected the execution to be livestreamed, she viewed the decision in the context of the historical documentation of death and war. 

The debate surfaces amid renewed scrutiny of execution procedures following the failed lethal-injection attempt involving Christa Pike in Tennessee. The case has raised further questions about how executions are carried out and the methods used by states to enforce death sentences. 

The various reactions illustrate the controversy surrounding the prospect of a public execution. For some survivors, the execution represents an opportunity to confront the person who attacked them and experience a sense of closure. For others, broadcasting it to a worldwide audience raises concerns about how the victims and their families will be remembered.

With President Trump’s decision on whether to livestream the execution still pending, the debate remains unresolved. The controversy is no longer simply about Hasan’s scheduled execution, but whether the public should witness it as it happens.

The post Could Public Executions Become a Circus? appeared first on The Moderate Voice.

As midterm elections near, Democrats enjoy advantages in national “generic ballot” polling, suggesting they may secure majorities in the House of Representative or Senate, if not both chambers.

But the reality is that partisan control on Capitol Hill will be determined by just a handful of competitive House and Senate contests. The Cook Political Report currently classifies only 22 House campaigns and only seven Senate campaigns as toss-ups, where either the Democrat or the Republican has a genuine chance of winning.

By definition, neither party enjoys a clear advantage in these contests, so both will look to augment their base support with the votes of independents.

As a political science scholar focused on voting and elections, I believe that in the last few weeks before Election Day, those voters will feature prominently in campaign strategies.

Independents are dissatisfied

Midterm congressional elections serve as a referendum on the president’s performance.

Presidential approval polls and surveys about the economy indicate that independents do not favor President Donald Trump or the Republican Party.

A September 2026 YouGov survey found that only 23% of independents approve of Trump’s job as president, compared with 79% of Republicans and 2% of Democrats. This continues a steady drop in independents’ approval of Trump throughout his second term.

Independents have also soured on Trump’s handling of the economy, with 73% in a September Fox News poll saying that Trump has made the economy worse, a sentiment also expressed by 95% of Democrats and 26% of Republicans.

Independents have also registered their discontent with the war in Iran. Only 22% of independents think the war has been worth fighting, a view expressed by 63% of Republicans and 8% of Democrats. And 83% of independents do not think the Trump administration has a clear plan for ending the war.

Across these policy questions and performance assessments, Democrats and Republicans express clear and consistent support for their party’s positions and candidates. Independents, not surprisingly, stake out something of a middle ground.

But on key predictors of vote choice, especially presidential approval and economic evaluations, the opinions of independents appear to be closer to those of Democrats than to Republicans. Independents’ current pro-Democratic slant is not dramatic, but it could be significant in crucial toss-up contests.

One prominent Republican pollster, David Winston, has sounded an alarm about “unhappy independents” and their threat to continued GOP control of Congress.

How to win the independent vote

In closely fought House and Senate contests, both parties need to make inroads with independent voters, which poses some challenges.

First, independent voters’ turnout in midterms usually lags behind that of party members. So motivating and mobilizing independents will likely require added effort.

It’s worth noting, however, that a recent Emerson College poll showed 70% of independents were very excited about voting in the midterms. That’s on par with the level of enthusiasm expressed by Republicans and Democrats.

A second challenge for candidates is to develop campaign messaging that can connect with independent voters. For almost any candidate running for office, a top priority is to mobilize the party base. This is especially critical in toss-up contests such as the Michigan or Texas Senate races, where the base alone won’t guarantee victory.

But the themes that motivate the party faithful may not sit well with independents, who tend to recoil against partisan rancor.

For instance, Republican voters in Michigan’s 10th Congressional District might applaud Mike Bouchard’s pledge to combat “radical socialism,” but independent voters might find it a bit overdone. By contrast, independent voters do appear to be responsive to the more substantive policy priorities of congressional candidates.

In other words, congressional candidates, especially those in highly competitive races in Texas, Nebraska and Kansas, will need to employ sharply partisan rhetoric to fire up their base while also offering more sober, policy-based appeals to independents.

Striking that balance might be especially difficult for Republican candidates.

Trump clearly wants the midterms to be a referendum on his record, and he wants voters to imagine that he is on the ballot. It’s an effort by the White House to increase turnout among so-called low-propensity Trump voters. These are people who have voted for Trump in presidential elections and continue to support the president, but who often do not vote in midterms.

Putting Trump center stage might well excite this segment of Trump supporters, but it might also remind independents of their deepening reservations about the president.

Democratic congressional candidates will also need to be careful about balancing partisan messages to their base with more measured appeals to independent voters. But Democrats don’t have to share the spotlight with the president, so their balancing acts are not as delicate as those confronting their Republican opponents.

At this point in the campaign, it appears that the Trump administration’s record on issues that matter to Americans is pushing independents – in some cases gently, in some cases more decidedly – in a Democratic direction.

Julio Borquez, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan-Dearborn

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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I’ve said it before. With Donald Trump, the unthinkable is indeed thinkable and can well quickly morph into reality. But Donald Trump is predictable.

As many columnists and social media types have pointed out, it seems one of the few people Donald Trump will never say a bad word about is Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

But, then Putin would never say a bad word about Vladimir Putin, so it’s understandable.

The latest echoing of his masters voice has come in the form of Trump’s announcement that the U.S. will buy Russian diesel, despite the facts that there are reportedly laws on the books that the President can’t do that without Congressional approval. Then came Trump’s declaration that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has to go.

The Atlantic’s David Frum writes that Trump’s deal sells out Ukraine, and does nothing for Americans.”

Late last night, President Trump announced a “massive” deal to buy diesel fuel from Russia. For the American truckers and farmers Trump claims to be serving, the deal means little or nothing. Trump may not know or may not care that his latest gambit will not reduce diesel prices. His poll numbers are plunging to Herbert Hoover levels. He needs a last-minute electioneering gimmick.

But while the deal will not benefit American consumers, it has immense consequences for others. For Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the deal is a potential lifesaver. For war-ravaged Ukraine, it is the most outrageous and heartless Trump betrayal to date. For Trump’s entourage, the deal promises corruption opportunities on a multibillion-dollar scale. And for people trying to understand the Trump presidency, the deal is further proof of the accusation that Nancy Pelosi flung in Trump’s face in 2019: “With you, all roads lead to Putin.”

And:

Russian energy assets are not worth much if those assets are regularly wrecked by Ukrainian drones. This makes plain the implicit quid pro quo in these lucrative deals offered to Trump’s family and friends: If you compel Ukraine to surrender, we will enrich you beyond reckoning.

Putin is attempting to leverage Russia’s most strategic asset in his war on Ukraine: Trump’s weakness for corruption. The 2.25 million barrels of diesel Putin offered Trump will have zero net impact on world energy markets or the world price of diesel. But accepting those barrels will collapse the U.S.-led sanctions regime on Russia—and align Trump with Putin against the Ukrainian air attacks on Russian energy production.

Trump stopped providing aid to Ukraine long ago. But the U.S. still provides Ukraine with crucial intelligence information. If Putin can entice Trump to cut Ukraine off from U.S. intelligence, he can do real damage to Ukraine’s capabilities. Russian diesel fuel is the cheese in that mousetrap. Trump’s negotiators are sniffing at the bait: The Kyiv Post reported today that Witkoff and Kushner are already threatening to stop information-sharing if Ukraine continues to strike Russian energy assets. And meanwhile, FBI Director Kash Patel is reportedly planning his own trip to Russia—one that members of Congress are urging him to cancel, as my colleague Sarah Fitzpatrick recently reported.

There is much about Putin’s offer of diesel that remains doubtful. Does Trump have the legal authority to buy previously sanctioned Russian oil? Does Russia even possess the diesel to sell? But one thing at least remains as clear as ever: With Trump, all roads lead to Putin.

Putin does all this with Donald Trump. And his lips don’t move.

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It continues to be amazing how easily American norms can be shattered. All it took was for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to advocate live streaming the upcoming death-by-firing-squad execution of the Army officer convicted in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting and the Pentagon announced it, then Donald Trump said Me, too. Suggest it and who cares if it’s at odds the vast majority of countries’ policies about executions….it shall be done.

And it will:

Pentagon officials said on Thursday that the Army officer convicted in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting would be executed in public, a practice that ended in the United States nearly a century ago and is most commonly carried out in a handful of countries, including Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan.

The Pentagon said in a statement that the military execution, scheduled for Dec. 3, would also be broadcast via livestream. Such a broadcast has little precedent, and releasing video of executions is most often associated with extremist militant groups like the Islamic State.

The announcement adds to the growing spectacle around the planned execution of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people and wounded 32 others when he brought a personal handgun onto the grounds of Fort Hood, Texas. The rampage was the deadliest shooting at an American military base and sent shock waves through the U.S. military.

There are few countries that hold public executions. The human rights group Amnesty International has highlighted some cases in which public executions in Iran and Saudi Arabia have been filmed by bystanders.

The practice of filming and releasing video of an execution is more common with terror groups like the Islamic State, which became infamous for videos of gruesome executions of prisoners who were not given due process or convicted of crimes. Mass shooters have in some cases broadcast their killing sprees on livestream sites.

In an interview with Real America’s Voice, a conservative outlet, aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Thursday that the execution would be public and available to watch “because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.” The Pentagon later confirmed in a statement that the execution would be livestreamed.

The Army has said the public execution of Major Hasan will be conducted by firing squad at Fort Hood, the site of the shooting. If carried out, it would be a first in modern American history.

The last state-sanctioned public execution in the United States occurred more than 90 years ago in Owensboro, Kentucky. Some 20,000 people gathered to witness the August 1936 hanging of Rainey Bethea, a young Black man who had been convicted of raping an elderly white woman.

Major Hasan’s execution would be the first by the military justice system since 1961, and he would be the first soldier put to death by firing squad since World War II. The firing squad is a rare method of execution, but one that has been used by the military, particularly during wartime. The Trump administration has proposed expanding its use as a method of execution.

The reaction of many leaders worldwide? The Guardian:

The United Nations’ office of the high commissioner for human rights warned on Friday that broadcasting the killing would amount to a public execution and “breach the absolute prohibition of torture”.

The plan also drew opprobrium from politicians, religious leaders and human rights advocates in the US and abroad. Hillary Clinton, the former US secretary of state, wrote on social media: “A barbaric idea, beneath our dignity as a country. Push back on this.”

Yassamin Ansari, the first Iranian American Democrat elected to the US Congress, posted: “In Trump’s America, we’re doing public executions now. WTF. This is what happens under brutal dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan. It’s all part of Trump’s authoritarian takeover of the United States.”

Britain, which abolished the death penalty in the 1960s, moved to distance itself from the execution. Bridget Phillipson, the UK’s equalities minister and Labour party chair, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that she found the concept “rather disturbing”.

Phillipson stressed that the decision was a matter for the US government, adding: “They are a close ally. Does that mean that we support everything the US government does? No.”

Under US military law, a president must approve an execution by firing squad. Trump did so on the recommendation of his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, according to the Pentagon.

Hegseth gleefully confirmed the livestream plan after previously saying that the execution would be public. Speaking to the conservative broadcaster Real America’s Voice, he said people should be able to watch because they need to understand that there were “serious consequences” for such crimes.

Asked whether Hasan had made any final requests, Hegseth replied: “Don’t care. We’ll see him on December 3.”

And:

….Media have sought to televise US executions ?in the past, but have been blocked by the courts. No other country is known to televise or livestream legal executions, experts said.

Indeed, public executions have largely disappeared around the world. Amnesty International recorded at least 17 in 2025, including 11 in Iran and six in Taliban-run Afghanistan.

In the US, executions have been conducted privately for about nine decades. The hanging of Rainey Bethea in Kentucky in 1936, witnessed by thousands, is generally regarded as the country’s last public execution, although another hanging took place in Missouri the following year.

Experts said there was no known precedent for livestreaming a legal execution….The proposed live stream has prompted criticism from religious leaders. Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, said it was a “barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered”.

Politicians from both sides of the aisle also spoke out. …Others warned that the spectacle would be counterproductive and act as a recruiting sergeant for US enemies seeking fresh propaganda.

Ned Price, a former deputy to the US representative to the United Nations, posted on X: “You can take it from those of us who’ve spent years working on terrorism: the surest way to spawn more radicalized zealots is to glorify violence, embrace a cult of death, and create a martyr for the cause.

“Or take it from [al-Qaida] and ISIS, whose tactics offer the closest modern-day approximation of Hegseth’s proposal. Either way, it’s hard to conjure a more vivid example of his trademark performative bravado, which routinely damages America’s image and, in this case, so ghoulishly leaves us more vulnerable.”

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Does Tarzan have a real-life sister?

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With just four weeks to go until the 2026 midterm elections, democracy watchdogs are warning that President Donald Trump is breaking the law in a desperate bid to retain Republican control of the US Congress.

A Monday report in USA Today highlighted the unprecedented steps that Trump is taking to rig the midterms for the GOP, ranging from his promises to pay every American $5,000 if Republicans retain Congress, to his efforts to get the US Postal Service to not deliver ballots to voters, to his push to have Republican-led states redraw their electoral maps in the middle of the decade.

Adav Noti, executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, told USA Today that the president has shown he is willing to behave lawlessly to keep power.

“I think the president is trying to use all of the powers at his disposal to control the election results, and almost all of those efforts are illegal,” Noti said, “but that has not deterred the administration.”

Noti added that Trump has gone well above and beyond what any past president has done to meddle in elections.

“We’ve never seen anything like this before,” he said. “The issue of the president of the United States using the powers of the presidency to try to control the election. That is a new development with this election.”

In an analysis published by Democracy Docket on Monday, election attorney Marc Elias warned that Trump in the coming weeks could take even more extreme steps, many of which he has already mused about publicly.

“Trump is once again in power, and he is again telling us his plan,” Elias explained. “He has weaponized the entire federal government—including the Department of Justice and the US Postal Service—to make voting more difficult.”

The “most dangerous” threat Trump has made, Elias continued, has related to the counting, tabulation, and certification of votes.

“Despite what the US Constitution says, he has repeatedly claimed the power to direct this process,” Elias warned. “This is not a new idea. It has been his plan all along.”

Elias also slammed the US media for continuing to downplay Trump’s authoritarian attacks on democracy, arguing that the press has learned nothing since the president incited a violent attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Elias isn’t alone in his concern about another January 6-style event.

In an interview that aired on CBS News Sunday, retiring US Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) was asked about the potential for Trump to try to overturn Democratic victories in this year’s elections, and he expressed real concern.

“I think there’s a risk,” Tillis said. “I really do. It would be another political unforced error if we do that.”

The post ‘Almost All of Those Efforts Are Illegal’: Watchdogs Raise Alarm About Trump Election Threats appeared first on The Moderate Voice.

The first round of Brazil’s 2026 elections held this Sunday ended with a resounding victory for the far-right Liberal Party (PL). Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of the jailed former president, Jair Bolsonaro, came out ahead of the current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, with more than 47% of the valid votes. His party also secured the largest blocs in both the Chamber of Deputies – the lower house of Brazil’s Congress – and the Senate, in addition to five state governments.

Political scientists had already predicted such a scenario. Even with polls showing better numbers for Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT), we saw a shift in votes in the final days of the campaign driven by anti-PT sentiment and discontent fueled largely by unmet consumer expectations. This came even at a time of low inflation and low unemployment.

Still, the race remains wide open, as the two candidates now head to a runoff on October 25.

So far, the electoral process has proceeded without serious incidents

Elections alone do not build democracy. But, to cite just two essential figures in political science, Joseph Schumpeter and Adam Przeworski, free elections are one of the necessary conditions for its existence: an arrangement in which leaders compete for votes periodically and the defeated candidate accepts their loss.

Notably, this is an instrumental view and, as such, is strongly contested by those who expect more from democracy than just elections. But that is precisely why it is worth remembering the day after the first round of voting in Brazil. Being able to choose governments through the ballot box, respecting the outcome, without anyone taking up arms or staging a sit-in at a military barracks, is no small matter.

Since 1989, the year of the first direct presidential election in Brazil after the end of the military dictatorship, the Workers’ Party has been one of the main political contenders, consistently finishing among the top two parties.

In seven of the ten elections, PT’s presidential candidate was Lula. He won three of them and is now once again in the runoff election.

In the last three elections (2018, 2022 and 2026), the other side of the race has been contested by the far right, represented by Jair Bolsonaro in the first two and — now that he is under house arrest — by his son, Flávio.

In 2018, Jair Bolsonaro emerged victorious. The right reorganized itself around him, primarily centred on conservative moral agendas, such as the defense of Christian values, support for the military dictatorship, and opposition to sexual and reproductive rights, with a strong emphasis on reinforcing traditional gender roles.

In 2022, Lula, who had been arrested on charges of alleged involvement in corruption scandals, ran for office again and, this time, emerged victorious, defeating Jair Bolsonaro, who was seeking reelection. In a blatant disregard for even the most basic principles of democracy, Bolsanaro’s far-right supporters occupied roads and military barracks the day after the election — a clear sign of their refusal to accept defeat.

Restrained at first, they returned after the inauguration in an orchestrated act on January 8, 2023, when organized groups of Bolsonaro supporters stormed and vandalized the headquarters of the three branches of government in the Federal District, mirroring the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. The acts of vandalism at the National Congress, the Planalto Palace, and the Federal Supreme Court led to hundreds of Bolsonaro supporters being convicted.

Given the severity of the act, Bolsonaro himself was sentenced to prison by the Federal Supreme Court (STF) as the leader of the criminal organization that attempted the coup, alongside high-ranking military officers and a federal deputy.

Erratic polls

This will be the third election in which PT supporters and Bolsonaro supporters will engage in a fierce race for the presidency that goes all the way to the runoff. Throughout the entire campaign this year, poll predictions have not held up consistently for more than a week at a time. Studies in political science offer some clues as to why.

It is well known that the PT has a hard-core base that guarantees about 30% of the vote, while the anti-PT camp accounts for another 30% or so. Not every leftist is a PT supporter, and not every anti-PT voter is a Bolsonaro supporter, but the groups often overlap.

Recent articles report that identification with the right has also taken hold among voters, beyond just support for Bolsonaro. And some evidence shows that women have a stronger preference for Lula, while evangelicals have an even stronger preference for Bolsonaro — whether the father or the son.

Runoff elections rarely alter the outcome of the first round (even if it is possible). The pattern in which incumbents had a better chance of winning has been changing. And in Latin America, the “pink tide” has been replaced by a wave of victorious far-right candidates, as has occurred in Argentina and Chile.

Once the elections are over, we must ensure the strength of our institutions far beyond simply guaranteeing fair elections to preserve democracy. This is especially true in a context where the far right — which has attacked institutions on numerous occasions and is a persistent denier of science (as we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic) — will hold the largest blocs in Congress and may also secure the presidency.

Thus, the work of these institutions — composed of people with different political preferences — becomes even more crucial. It is up to them to ensure rules that apply to everyone and that allow, even if only minimally, for the independence of the three branches of government, as well as fair, periodic elections with political opponents who can win or lose.

Upholding democracy, in victory or defeat

With an eye on Latin America but deeply concerned about the situation in the United States, Przeworski — the scholar known for his minimalist conception of democracy — drew attention to two points at a conference in Paris last May. According to the political scientist, we cannot assume that democracy ceases to exist when a candidate we do not like is elected; on the contrary, this demonstrates that the system is functioning properly.

On the other hand, he noted that in the U.S., the erosion of democracy during Donald Trump’s second term has been threatening the possibility of fair, periodic elections in which defeat is accepted. This serves as a warning for Brazil.

We will not know who Brazil’s next president will be until October 25. Whoever emerges victorious, the rule remains the same: the election must be fair, and the loser must accept the result.

On this point, the two sides do not have the same track record. Lula lost three consecutive presidential elections, and yet members of the Workers’ Party did not go to Brasília to ransack Congress. The same cannot be said of the far right. The last time it lost, the January 8, 2023 riots broke out, during which not even the most basic concept of democracy was respected.

For this reason, the commitment expected of the Brazilian far-right now is twofold.

If it loses, it must accept defeat. If it wins, it must govern within the rules that enabled its victory, respecting the Judiciary, the press, the opposition, and the possibility of being defeated four years from now.

A democratic government must go beyond this, ensuring that different groups have access to power and that inequality is reduced. But without this first step, no other step is possible. It is this step that the far-right must guarantee.

This piece is the result of a partnership between The Conversation Brazil and Brazil’s National Association of Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences (ANPOCS). Débora Thomé will present one of her papers at the 50th ANPOCS Annual Meeting, taking place October 7–9. Check out the full program here.

Débora Thomé, Professora, Instituto Brasileiro de Ensino, Desenvolvimento e Pesquisa (IDP) ; Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV); Associação Brasileira de Ciência Política (ABCP)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

ID 139928183 | Brazil ©
Hyotographics | Dreamstime.com

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A family can live happily in a two-bedroom rental for years, then watch the math change the spring before kindergarten registration. Suddenly, the address decides which public school a child attends, how long the morning drive takes, and whether a parent still gets to work on time. That shift explains why housing decisions become more complicated once children reach school age. Price and square footage still matter, but they now share the table with attendance zones, transfer rules, and long-term affordability.

Why Housing Decisions Become More Complicated Once Children Reach School Age

The main reason is that most U.S. public schools still assign students by home address. An attendance boundary is the line a district draws to decide which school serves each street. Before children enroll, parents can pick a home mostly on cost, commute, and space. After enrollment, the same move may also mean a new teacher, new friends, and a new set of district rules.

The time horizon also stretches. Parents of a five-year-old are often planning for thirteen years of schooling, not the next lease renewal. That longer view pushes many families toward buying rather than renting. It also makes them more hesitant to move again once a child has settled into a classroom.

What Trade-Offs Come With Buying Into a Strong School Zone?

The biggest trade-off is cost. Homes inside well-regarded attendance zones tend to sell for more, so families often pay a premium for the school as much as the house. Some parents accept a smaller yard or an older kitchen. Others take on a longer commute to reach a district they can actually afford.

These pressures hit hardest in high-cost states such as California, where rising prices keep nudging households toward cheaper regions. Population shifts caused by housing costs can have effects beyond the housing market, which is part of the broader discussion around why where people move matters in 21st-century elections. For parents, the question is rarely abstract. It comes down to whether a stretch mortgage today leaves enough room for childcare, activities, and savings later.

How Should Families Compare Cities in the Bay Area?

Families comparing cities in the Bay Area usually make better choices when they weigh the whole community rather than one school rating. Fremont, which WalletHub named the best U.S. city to raise a family in both 2024 and 2025, shows how schools, parks, and local jobs can reinforce each other. Other parents look at Pleasanton, San Ramon, or Albany for similar reasons, at very different price points. A useful comparison usually covers:

• Commute times during school drop-off hours
• Access to parks, libraries, and after-school programs
• Housing stock with room for a growing family
• Enrollment trends and district budget stability

A shortlist saves time when a move is on a deadline. Families narrowing down family-friendly Bay Area cities can use that shortlist as a starting point, then visit the neighborhoods in person and test the school commute on a weekday morning. Driving the school route on a weekday morning reveals traffic, crossing guards, and neighborhood rhythm that no listing can show.

Can School Choice Loosen the Tie Between Address and School?

School choice can loosen that tie, but it rarely breaks it. Charter schools, magnet programs, and open enrollment give some families options beyond their assigned campus. School-choice rules can also become tied up in legal and constitutional disputes. The controversy surrounding Oklahoma’s approval of the nation’s first religious charter school is one example of how quickly the landscape can change. In most districts, though, residents of an attendance area still get first claim on available seats.

That makes choice a backup plan rather than a housing strategy. Lotteries can fall through, many districts offer no transportation for transfer students, and siblings may land on different campuses. Buying a home around a hoped-for transfer can leave parents with a long daily drive and no guarantee.

What Do Families Gain by Moving Somewhere Cheaper?

Moving to a lower-cost area often improves a family’s finances, even when local wages are lower. Housing costs are often the clearest financial reason families consider leaving California. The California Policy Lab’s Priced Out report found that people who moved out of the state ended up in neighborhoods where monthly housing costs were about $672 lower. Seven years later, those movers were 48% more likely to own a home than people who stayed.

The cost shows up elsewhere. Families give up nearby relatives, long friendships, and schools they already know. Middle and high schoolers often feel that loss more sharply than younger siblings. For that reason, many parents find a long-distance move easier to justify before kindergarten than in the middle of eighth grade.

How Much Should Test Scores Drive the Decision?

Test scores deserve weight, but they should not settle the decision alone. Ratings reflect student demographics as much as teaching quality, and they reveal little about whether a specific child will thrive. Family engagement matters too. School performance also depends on factors that a rating cannot capture. One discussion of conservatives and education recounts a teacher’s observation that stronger parental involvement tended to go along with better student performance.

Visiting classrooms, talking with current parents, and asking about class sizes often tell parents more than a single number. A slightly lower-rated school with strong arts, language, or special education programs may suit a child better than a pricier zone.

When Is the Best Time to Move With School-Age Children?

Summer is usually the easiest window, because children can start fresh alongside everyone else in August or September. Mid-year moves work too, but they take more planning. Families should confirm enrollment documents, proof of residency, and transfer deadlines before they sign a lease or close on a home. Before moving, California families can also review the Department of Education’s overview of statutory school attendance alternatives to understand how intradistrict transfers, interdistrict agreements, and the district of choice program work.

Parents can also ask the old district whether a child may finish the term at the current school. Some districts approve that request for families who move late in the year, and it can soften the transition considerably.

Planning a Home Around the School Years Ahead

Housing decisions become more complicated once children reach school age because a single address now carries financial, educational, and emotional weight. Families who compare whole communities, understand transfer rules, and time their moves carefully tend to avoid the most expensive surprises. Before the next enrollment season arrives, sit down with a realistic budget, a shortlist of neighborhoods, and the school calendar. Then decide which trade-offs your family can comfortably live with for the years ahead.

The post How Housing Decisions Become More Complicated Once Children Reach School Age appeared first on The Moderate Voice.

The initials EPA stand for Environmental Protection Agency. The Agency is supposed to protect the environment and the American population from harmful substances. Under the Trump administration, however, the EPA is not doing its job.

The EPA headed by Lee Zelden ruled in February 2026 that climate change did not endanger public health despite scientific evidence to the contrary. Trump agrees with this decision, his administration rescinding the 2009 endangerment finding that greenhouse gases were driving climate change, including carbon dioxide and methane. The EPA also reversed regulations that limited hazardous air pollutants from coal-fired plants, including mercury, other heavy metals and toxic substances. Under Trump’s aegis, the EPA has abandoned its obligations to protect Americans’ health and the environment. 546 polluting facilities have been given exemptions from Clean Air Act rules, permitting toxic air pollution to be uncontrolled. It is estimated that 4.6 million Americans could be exposed to higher cancer risks, some of whom already have air-pollution risks 80 times greater than EPA standards.

In addition, the EPA repealed some limits on forever chemicals in drinking water. These have been shown to cause cancer and other serious diseases. The weedkiller atrazine which poses an extinction risk to some wildlife and has been linked to cancer and hormonal diseases has also been certified as safe by the Fish and Wildlife Service. The Trump administration is easing restrictions as well on climate ‘Super Pollutants”. These include hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) used in refrigerators and air conditioners which will be phased out more slowly than was anticipated.

To go along with the new pollution regulations from the EPA, the independent chemical referee who for decades made decisions on which chemicals were hazardous to human health is being sidelined. There will no longer be a neutral chemist assessing which substances are dangerous. Current and past assessments will be subject to review within the EPA and decisions will take into consideration jobs, importance of chemicals, policy, etc, besides the substance’s hazard. All harmful chemicals will be reevaluated using more lenient criteria.

In addition to changes in place at the EPA, the ideas behind MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) have been eliminated to a large degree by other Trump government employees aligned with big business. Problems with food and pollution are not controlled by Kennedy and HHS. Dangerous substances like glyphosate, mercury, other airborne particles, forever chemicals in pesticides and drinking water are allowed by the Trump administration. The staff at HHS was cut by 25 percent last year.

For the EPA, HHS and the Trump Administration, money and business are all that counts, with health and the environment taking a back seat to profits
www.robertlevinebooks.com

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America’s health system is poised to rise to another divisive issue at the mid-term elections following publication of new global health data that ranks the US 62nd for overall life expectancy and 40th for healthy life expectancy, despite spending more than any other nation on healthcare at $13,473 per person.

The World Health Organization (WHO) placed American healthy life expectancy (HALE) at 66.2 to 67.3 years and overall life expectancy at 76.4 to 77.5 years in data published on Friday in its latest Global Health Estimates.

In a positive note, WHO reported that global life expectancy has bounced back to 73.3 years, which is just shy of the historical peak of 73.4 years before the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. Global HALE — the number of years a person can expect to live in full health without severe disease or disability—has recovered to 62.8 years, just 0.4 years below its pre-pandemic high.

But WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that simply increasing lifespan without securing physical and mental well-being only shuffles the cards in healthcare systems instead of improving them. “Now we must make sure people don’t just live longer, but live those extra years in good health,” he pointed out.

The flagrant gaps between American health performance and other rich countries could draw attacks against Trump for further widening the near complete decoupling of financial health spending from actual biological health outcomes. The WHO report could provide a numbers-driven indictment of America’s healthcare framework.

Using different measures from WHO, expert estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and others placed US health care spending per person at $14,775 to $14,885, American HALE at 67.8 to 68.5 years and overall life expectancy at 79 years with 76.5 years for men and 81.4 years for women.

It turns out that health spending per person in the US was almost $5,000 more than in Switzerland, the next highest peer country. Other highly developed nations like France, Canada, and Britain spent $7,367, $7,301, $6,747 per person respectively, which is half of what the U.S. spends. The U.S. spent more tax dollars per citizen on healthcare programs like Medicare and Medicaid than Britain or Japan.

America’s low HALE ranking suggests that its massive health expenditure does not buy proportional health benefits. A core goal of modern medical systems is not just to keep sick bodies alive but to ensure that people stay healthy as close to the end of their lives as possible.

Top-performing nations in the WHO report seem to achieve this, e.g., a Singapore citizen enjoys a HALE of 73.6 years on average, meaning she faces just a short window of late-life decline. The American system favors high-cost, late-stage treatments over lower cost early prevention. It keeps chronically ill patients alive for decades but fails at keeping them healthy for much of their lives.

WHO measures health data a little differently because it applies a uniform tracking model across its 183 member states to allow for accurate international comparisons and smoothen currency conversions. It incentivizes health systems that maximize average national life expectancy and equitable treatment of all categories of people.

In contrast, the U.S. health system is a global leader for those with premium insurance or independent wealth because it focuses on medical innovation, rapid diagnostics and access to cutting-edge subspecialty care, such as advanced oncology or complex gene therapies.

In light of WHO ideals, the U.S. does not have a healthcare system designed for the collective population; it has a highly sophisticated, hyper-expensive medical marketplace stratified by income, social stratum and locality.

American figures are a little different from WHO because they are adjusted locally for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) and real-time national healthcare consumption. They use metrics published by the advanced nations’ OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) and the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker. WHO uses those metrics as well but analyzes them differently to take account of all countries, rich, middle-income and poor.

ID 185974277 ©
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By: David Anderson
Columnist

In this column I write about what I think is the most successful country in Africa, Somaliland. On Wednesday I got to meet some more Somalilanders at “UN Week” and what a day it was!

Understand this is not “Somalia”, a failed state of “Black Hawk Down” fame, “Al Shabab” terrorists, famine, khat and misery. Somalia is a superlative in failed statedom, they give Afghanistan a run for its money. Our president has a name for these countries.

But Somaliland is an entirely different matter: a democracy with peace, free capitalism and freedom of speech. The difference is like the difference between North and South Korea which I’ve written about in these pages previously.

This is U.N. Week in New York, a big deal here and even President Trump turned up to entertain us. Always a treat.

I used to live in Midtown and UN Week is very disruptive to locals. But, after a $50 (I know, right?) cab fare from my home in Chelsea I joined the Somalilander demonstration as planned at a plaza opposite the iconic UN building.

Their mission is to get international recognition – particularly American – for their country. They’re close allies with Taiwan and as of this year Israel. All the best people and I say that in a non-ironic manner: friendships matter, get the best friends you can and the Somalilanders are doing just that.

Being de jure not just de-facto “recognised” matters a great deal for a country. It means embassies, passport acceptability and travel rights. It means membership in vital international organizations (like the U.N.). It means being able to buy insurance, sign treaties, issue debt, print a currency that isn’t laughed at and even control one’s own borders. With recognition they could better plan their own future as their elected — don’t skip that word – elected – leaders can negotiate as equal partners with other countries.

What Somaliland needs most is official American recognition because then others will follow. South Sudan had a similar path – an American sponsored new country – though South Sudan got independence before a functioning state which was a disaster. Somaliland has had a functioning state for 35 years. Even without recognition they’ve done an impressive job of building a peaceful democracy.

They don’t have a lot of dough but they’ve got all the right ideas.

Whether you like Trump or not he is a master of the big surprise. Witness (former, now) President Maduro of Venezuela who is enjoying the best NYPD accommodations we can offer at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Brooklyn.

And the mullahs, those still alive, in Tehran are on the run. If anybody can make the bold move of recognition it is Trump though I told my friends Jared Kushner is the best route to “the top” in these matters.

The demo was in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza opposite the U.N. Building which frequently plays host to our First Amendment rights for all sorts of international aspirants, like London’s “Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner” but with skyscrapers.

One of the many protesters in the plaza was the Falun Gong sect. They are ferociously anti-communist so they got my attention, mainly by their group exercises and rigid meditation. Most were older East Asians, nice folks for sure but I’m not joining.

In the middle of the Plaza were “my” Somalilanders, on the other side first Syrians (my Arabic isn’t good enough to know which side they were on!) and then a huge number of Ghanaians and Guineans arrived, annoyed about something. A middle aged bald white guy like me sticks out in a large crowd of young Africans so I made quite a splash socially. Unlike the other African and Arab camps the Somalilanders had a pretty equal sex ratio.

There was also a HUGE Iranian dissident demo with great, dramatic drum skills.

The contrast between the old Chinese meditators and the all young – all male – African parties next door was quite profound.

Midtown is crazy during U.N. Week: “frozen zones” aplenty and I had to “Pull to the side of the sidewalk and STAY STILL, sir!” as a badged and armed Secret Service agent ordered as he (legally) “halted” me. I think the Peruvian president and his entourage walked by.

Some years ago there were scandals as various official motorcades drove into each other, lots of accidents. Imagine: you’re a chauffeur for your President, King or Emir, visiting NEW YORK DAMN CITY! – the big leagues – you’re not yielding for any other motorcade so they used to collide in a diplomatic game of motorcade chicken. It was hilarious.

I noticed a pretty young hijabi with many fancy shopping bags alighting from an SUV motorcade on East 46th with diplomatic plates: Some Gulfies’ girlfriend or wife no doubt. Tiffany’s is fun with an unlimited credit card I’m sure.

The traffic was terrible. I’ll have to talk to my editors here about that $50 taxi fare, but that’s U.N. Week. And it is inspiring that our planet’s big shots can visit, spend their money and argue peacefully in a common forum, irrespective of the U.N.’s many faults.

Further, my Somalilander friends could demonstrate with the kind of freedom of expression enjoyed both in the US and Somaliland to argue their valid case.

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Universities have been trying for years to cut back on the abuses among fraternities, with limited resources and limited success.

A new lawsuit, filed by a former Cornell University student in September 2026, is now rattling higher education and drawing national attention.

The person, identified as Jane Doe, has alleged that seven Chi Phi fraternity members drugged and gang-raped her at an on-campus fraternity house when she was a sophomore in 2024.

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten declined to pursue criminal charges against the fraternity members in 2024. Following the filing of the case and emergence of new information, however, Van Houten said on Sept. 26 that he is planning “to discuss new evidence that exists” with the former Cornell student about her sexual assault claims.

The high-profile Cornell case is just one of the latest fraternity scandals. In August 2026, Pennsylvania announced charges against current and former Penn State fraternity members for their involvement in a criminal narcotics operation.

As an education scholar who researches the experiences of undergraduate college students and fraternities, I believe that universities and colleges have not devoted enough resources toward curtailing the hazing, sexual assault and other kinds of dangerous behavior that sometimes happens at fraternities or other student organizations.

But there is only so much they can do – in part because beneath it all is a hypermasculine culture of proving one’s worth.

A need for more enforcement

In 1984, the National Minimum Drinking Age Act pressured states to set 21 as the minimum age to purchase and consume alcohol. All states made 21 the minimum age by 1988.

The change meant that most college students could no longer legally purchase alcohol, leading some of them to drink in more private settings, like fraternity houses.

Some universities felt concerned about the alcohol-related injuries and deaths occurring at fraternity houses. Schools also faced the possibility of lawsuits over underage drinking.

Harmful binge drinking remained a major problem on college campuses throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. A lot of the documented hazing incidents at fraternities during this time also involved alcohol.

Sexual assault on college campuses, including at fraternities, was another major issue during this time.

A lot of universities started to respond to students’ excessive alcohol use, in part through social norming. This term means correcting people’s mistaken beliefs about what their peers normally do, like regularly drinking excessively.

They also tried other harm-reduction strategies, like sharing direct information with students about the negative effects of consuming alcohol, as well as peer-led interventions to try to reduce unsafe drinking or encourage alcohol moderation.

But they didn’t necessarily respond to related problems surrounding hazing, such as substance misuse or addiction.

Some of the students’ parents, including those who had children who died as a result of hazing, were concerned. They developed a large, nationwide parent lobby to advocate for changes in hazing laws across states. These groups, not the universities, have been the most influential in advocating for changes in hazing laws.

Some prevention efforts

It’s not that some universities haven’t tried to reduce hazing on their campuses. These efforts include practices such as hosting educational sessions, workshops, speakers and even placing moratoriums on social fraternity events that include alcohol.

Recent approaches have included teaching students how to recognize when their peers are emotionally distressed and need help.

Some universities have started research centers on hazing or hired full-time staff members whose jobs involve prevention and response work following a harmful incident such as hazing or sexual violence.

Limited responses

Universities can kick fraternities off campus and kick out athletes who are charged with hazing or sexual assault.

But fraternities can also exist as private organizations, independent of a university. A university can withdraw recognition from a fraternity chapter and prohibit it from hosting events on campus, but that does not necessarily prevent the organization from hosting gatherings off campus.

Another issue is that universities and colleges like Cornell have a civil process for dealing with hazing and other crimes, including sexual assault, but not a criminal one. Schools cannot launch a criminal investigation, but they can levy educational sanctions, including banning students from campus or taking away students’ scholarships.

Expelling students for illegal misconduct such as sexual assault and hazing is a really common approach, but that is about as far as these schools can go in terms of discipline.

Schools may also cooperate with criminal investigations. Campus police, for example, can share their evidence and records with outside law enforcement. Or university staff may testify against students in court. But universities themselves cannot bring criminal charges.

After Jane Doe reported the incident to university police, Cornell says it took action.

In a September 2026 statement, Cornell said its range of sanctions included “expulsions and suspensions.” A few students were asked to write essays, but Cornell says this wasn’t “as a sole consequence of their involvement.”

The Chi Phi chapter involved in the incident was also closed in 2024, according to Cornell.

Following the lawsuit and recent national attention it received, Cornell agreed to bring in outside lawyers to determine whether it properly conducted the 2024 rape investigation.

The role of masculinity

Proving your masculinity can become a central part of proving your worth and fit at a fraternity.

This hypermasculine culture – combined with a culture of secrecy – could be a powder keg for sexual violence. It’s a dynamic also seen in the military and on sports teams.

Hypermasculinity is not simply tied up in an individual’s behavior, but can become embedded within organizational cultures that reward toughness, dominance, risk-taking and silence.

In fraternities, these expectations may shape how members understand belonging and status. These issues may also discourage students from expressing vulnerability and seeking help.

Understanding these gendered and cultural dynamics is, I believe, essential to developing prevention efforts that address not only individual conduct, but also the organizational norms that allow harmful behaviors to persist.

Pietro A. Sasso, Associate Professor of Education, Old Dominion University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Gann is a Jew with roots in Baltimore, but pretended to be, alternately, Black, Tunisian and Palestinian, cosmetically altering her appearance and adopting a certain way of speaking that led people to believe she was “one of them.”

The “them” was clearly “not white.” The ruse worked for a while, but as most lies tend to do, it unraveled. And then the melodrama ensued.

Blacks, Palestinians and I’m assuming one or two Tunisians were apoplectic they had been fooled, that the Keffiyah had been pulled over their eyes, so to speak. The pain and anguish of her Free Palestine buddies was palpable on social media and in news articles, where they breathlessly expressed shock, anger, and a sense of betrayal that Miss Gann was, horror of horrors, a Jew.

As I read the reactions from Gann’s former friends, it struck me how incredibly narcissistic they were. They had no problem when she was spouting anti-Jewish and anti-Israel propaganda as a member of the tribe.

They welcomed her with a touching naivete. Who knew that not combing your hair and wearing a foundation two shades darker than your skin color could gain entrée into an exclusive club.

We can call it “Tan Face,” a different version of the Black Face that white people employed in the early part of the last century for entertainment at the expense of minorities.

But when these people who traffic in anti-Semitic lies realized she was actually from a very different branch of the Tree of Abraham, they choked.

“All mistakes and deceptions are mine and mine alone. Please do not let them affect how you engage with any people, organizations, causes, or communities to which I was connected,” Gann said on Instagram. “Please reach out if you know me and want to have a direct conversation about how I hurt you. I will regret causing this hurt for the rest of my life.”

After taking a sip of tea and a nibble of falafel, she continued on another post:

“I lied about my identity and have been lying for years. I have no Palestinian or Tunisian heritage. I am a white woman of significant privilege and wealth,” Gann said. “Anyone who supported me was manipulated and should not be judged as a result of their support for me.”

It’s doubtful anyone is judging Gann because of the people who support her. They are as bad as she is, only they don’t need to lie.

They are brutally honest about their bigotry, marching in the streets screaming anti-Jewish slurs and calling for the annihilation of Israel while celebrating the deaths of Jewish children and women on Oct. 7. They are open about their bigotry, and embrace it.

Gann is being judged by both her former allies and the people who were against her from the beginning, only no one actually knew how justified that anger really was.

It is one thing to have an enemy who is clear about who she is and why she hates you, it is quite another to have someone fromyour own tribe try and destroy you.

There is nothing worse than a self-hating creature, whether it be an Italian from South Philly who actually swallows the idiocy that Columbus was a genocidal maniac, a Catholic who supports Planned Parenthood or a Jew who gives comfort to the people who celebrate her ancestors’ deaths.

The psychology of that sort of person is difficult to gauge, but it has something to do with a sense of self-loathing and a desire to belong to the “in” crowd.

I call it “identity suicide,” and I attribute it to the fact some people are so desperate to be loved that they will sacrifice their ownfamilies, and their own souls, to gain entrée into the desired club.

It is very much like the light-skinned Black woman Sarah Jane in “Imitation of Life,” who tries so hard to pass for white and only learns when it is too late that you cannot run away from your roots. They are incredibly elastic, and will always pull you back home, even against your will.

Hannah Gann did not betray the Black, Brown, Palestinian and Tunisian folk by whom she so desperately wanted to be accepted.

She betrayed the young Jewish students who cannot walk down the street without looking over their shoulders in trepidation, who are afraid to wear the Star of David around their necks, who are forced to listen to lies about their heritage and their people, and who are gaslighted into accepting that there is a genocide in Gaza, but that the Holocaust is a myth.

Perhaps Hannah should take to Instagram and, in this somber time after Yom Kippur, and beg forgiveness for being a traitor to her family, to her people, and to the truth.

Copyright 2026 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at cflowers1961@gmail.com.

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Catherine A. Sanderson, Amherst College

As an undergrad student decades ago, I attended a dorm presentation describing the importance of giving and receiving sexual consent. The workshop leaders explained that if your partner said “no” or “stop” but you proceeded to have sex anyway, it was considered rape.

A high-profile athlete on campus raised his hand and said, in utter disbelief, “That can’t be right. By that definition, everyone I’ve ever had sex with I’ve raped.”

I was horrified by his comment, but most students laughed. He clearly saw nothing wrong with the view he’d expressed, presumably believing it was widely shared.

I immediately thought of this experience when I heard about the alleged sexual assault committed by seven fraternity members at Cornell University. As a social psychologist, and the author of a book examining why so-called good people stay silent in the face of problematic behavior, what I find most tragic about the events at Cornell is that reportedly over 50 men on a group chat learned about the assault as it was happening. Yet there’s been no public report that any of them tried to stop the assault, help the victim or contact campus or local police departments.

This type of inaction is very common. In about one-third of sexual assaults, at least one other person is present who potentially could intervene but in most instances chooses not to. Why?

Misperceiving that you’re the only one

Data suggests a minority of men actually commit sexual assault. Researchers estimate about 6.5% of male college students in the United States and Canada have committed rape. Yet many men who find sexual violence offensive mistakenly believe that other men do not.

Undergraduate men in one study reported their beliefs about common rape myths, such as “If a girl doesn’t physically fight back, you can’t really say it was rape,” and “If a girl goes to a room alone with a guy at a party, it is her own fault if she is raped.” Researchers then asked participants how they thought both their close friends and average male college students would answer these same questions.

The results provided clear evidence that college men have skewed views of what those around them are thinking. Most students saw their classmates and friends as more supportive of rape myths than they themselves were.

Unfortunately, believing that other men generally accept sexual violence – even when this belief is wrong – inhibits their willingness to intervene to stop such behavior when they encounter it. In fact, men’s beliefs about their peers’ attitudes are a stronger predictor of their willingness to intervene than their own stated attitudes about sexual aggression.

What’s behind these mistaken beliefs

Men who underestimate their peers’ discomfort with sexually aggressive behavior often fear the consequences of calling out problematic views or intervening in the face of inappropriate behavior. The most common reason male college students give for failing to intervene in situations involving sexual violence is a fear of being laughed at or ridiculed – in particular, a desire not to appear weak to other men.

Men who actually commit assault also tend to overestimate support for such behavior. Not surprisingly, men who report having committed sexual assault believe that other men are more accepting of such behavior and have engaged in such behavior themselves.

This assumed support leads them to feel comfortable describing problematic behavior, which leads other men to believe that sexual violence is more common, and more accepted, than it actually is.

Resetting a social norm

Given the consistent evidence that men wrongly believe that most men are more comfortable with sexual violence than they themselves are, the challenge is not to change the social norm. It’s getting people to see what it actually already is.

Correcting such misperceptions can go a long way toward reducing sexual violence. First-year male college students who participate in a 90-minute sexual assault prevention program – focused on refuting rape myths, increasing awareness of the importance of consent, and correcting misperceptions about other men’s attitudes and behaviors – report reduced levels of sexual aggression themselves four months later.

These programs work in two ways. First, men who receive accurate information about what other men actually believe are less inhibited about speaking out and intervening. Second, men who are at risk of engaging in sexual aggression may change their intentions after learning that their peers do not support such behavior.

At the same time, men in tight-knit groups feel considerable pressure to show loyalty to other group members, which may lead to ignoring bad behavior committed by their peers.

But the underlying dynamics of peer influence can help shift group norms from protecting group members by staying silent to stepping in to prevent bad behavior. One college football player described looking out for his teammates, even if that meant interrupting a potential sexual encounter: “Maybe you don’t get the girl, but you’ll keep your scholarship and still be on the team.”

Learn strategies for intervening

Another approach for preventing sexual assault is to learn strategies for intervening. Bystander intervention programs emphasize the importance of stopping bad behavior before it escalates, teach specific skills for intervening, and remind people that everyone has a responsibility to prevent sexual violence.

Students who participate in such programs are more confident in their ability to intervene and more willing to do so. Most importantly, rates of sexual violence are markedly lower on campuses that have implemented these programs. For example, one study found that experiences of sexual harassment and stalking were 11% lower and that instances of unwanted sexual activity with women who were too drunk or high to stop them were as much as 17% lower.

It’s tempting to read about the Cornell case and assume the apparent inaction in the face of problematic behavior is uniquely a problem at one college, or only with members of fraternities, or only college students. But the reality is that pretty much everyone has been in situations where they’ve seen potentially problematic behavior and failed to speak up.

Understanding the very normal psychological factors that lead people to misperceive what others are actually thinking and feeling – and learning specific strategies for intervening – can make a real difference.

Catherine A. Sanderson, Poler Family Professor of Psychology, Amherst College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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“Show me your nuts.” That double entendre is spoken by Lenka Novak in The Kentucky Fried Movie, at which time singer-songwriter Stephen Bishop replies by demonstrating that he is nuts.

It’s your turn to be nutty. Do you dare?

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I recently wrote this personal essay for San Diego Jewish World about an unexpected change in my life. I’m sharing it here with TMV readers as well.

And there I was on Yom Kippur 2026 at Chabad of Rancho Penasquitos , as Rabbi Yechiel Cagen led the service. I was fasting.

It was the manifestation of a series of events that had transformed a non-observant Reform Jew into an observant Jew who loves prayer. Suddenly, in my old age, I’d become religious.

How religious am I now? I’m so religious I want to be circumcised again.

It’s quite a journey from the days when my religious grandfather, Abraham Ravinsky, once asked me: “Do you have tefillin?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “I have a couple of rolls of Kodak film upstairs.”

My grandfather, who immigrated to the United States after the Russian revolution, looked a bit startled but politely didn’t pursue it.

Our family belonged to Mishkan Israel in Hamden, Connecticut, the 14th oldest continuously operating synagogue in the United States. Its legendary Rabbi, Robert E. Goldberg, challenged McCarthyism, supported the civil rights and anti-war movements, invited Martin Luther King, Jr. to speak at the temple, and was even arrested at a civil rights gathering in Georgia. He officiated at my bar mitzvah.

I attended Hebrew school, but the main thing I retained was my teacher repeatedly saying “sheket, bevakasha” to me. I thought it was my Jewish name. I later learned it meant “quiet please.”

As a student at Colgate University I attended one High Holy Days service. But in another way, Colgate became a major launching pad in my religious journey. I took a course in Hinduism that sparked a longtime fascination with theology. I began visiting Chapel House, a secluded interfaith retreat and meditation center nestled in the woods on campus. For years after graduation. I periodically returned to spend several nights there praying, reading about theology and meditating.

After receiving my master’s in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, I spent five and a half years freelancing in India and Spain for newspapers, Newsweek, and later National Public Radio. I lived with a Hindu family in New Delhi and participated in their holidays, and spent a wonderful week living with a Muslim family in Bangladesh.

In Madrid I was a special correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor. I immersed myself in key Christian Science books because I wanted to understand the theology behind the church and the newspaper. Meanwhile, I rented an apartment with a huge crucifix hanging over my bed.

In 1982, after working as a reporter in Wichita, Kansas, the San Diego Union brought me to California. Among other assignments, I covered the border and Baja California. While doing a feature on the Jews of Tijuana, I met Jose Galicot, one of Tijuana’s prominent business and Jewish leaders, who invited me to celebrate Passover with his family.

I joined a Conservative synagogue in San Diego but left after several years because I never feel fully accepted or part of the community.

Then tragedy began changing the direction of my religious journey.

After I left the San Diego Union in 1990 to become a full-time ventriloquist, my foster son, Thomas Powell, learned shortly before his planned wedding that his wife-to-be had AIDS. He went ahead with the wedding.

I was devastated. I made an appointment with Tifereth Israel’s late Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal. At one point I asked him: “Why are we here? What does it mean?”

His answer stayed with me. We are here to do prayers, he told me, but also to enjoy life and make the world a better place. He gifted me a Conservative prayer book.

Meanwhile, my ventriloquism career increasingly brought me into Jewish life. I performed for Jewish groups and was amazed at how different Judaism seemed from what I remembered as a child. Services then had seemed staid, sometimes boring and almost perfunctory. Now I encountered Judaism presented with energy, warmth and joy.

I was particularly drawn to Chabads. I performed at Chabads, met wonderful rabbis and their families, read Chabad-related books and occasionally attended services, although I couldn’t read or understand Hebrew.

Then came the seismic shift.

In 2020, Tom – the boy I had been matched with in the Big Brother program—was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. By late 2024 his condition had become incredibly grave and he only had a few months left before dying at age 52. He lived with me; I was his principal caregiver. I felt a stronger-than-ever need to pray.

By then a new Chabad had opened in Rancho Penasquitos. I had been hired to perform there and eventually began attending services.

Rabbi Cagen urged me to read the English translations during the service because I couldn’t follow the Hebrew.

I had never thought of doing that.

It changed everything.

During the long services, I began reading every word in English. The prayers that had once seemed remote became personal. I began to see prayer not simply as words Jews had been instructed to receive, but as a conversation with God and a connection to generations of Jews who had said those same prayers before me. The spiritual search that had taken me through Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and years of reading about theology had, in an unexpected way, brought me home.

Rabbi Cagen asked me whether I owned tefillin.

This time I knew he wasn’t talking about Kodak.

I didn’t. He gave me a set and invited me to come early in the morning to put them on and pray.

I began becoming part of the Chabad minyan, attending its events and expanding my Jewish reading. The Shema became part of my daily life.

And today?

I still can’t read Hebrew, Long-term COVID memory fog has made learning it not an option. But I read and ponder the English words of the prayers. I attend services and special events at the Chabad of Rancho Penasquitos and have accepted invitations to spend some Shabbat weekends at Chabad of Beverlywood. Six days a week I put on tefilllin and pray.

The grandson who once thought tefillin was Kodak film now wraps it around his arm most mornings.

Abraham Ravinsky must be smiling.

ID 123122486 | Journey ©
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For the first time in his life, Ken Paxton may have said something true. No, not his wedding vows. No, not the oath of office he took to represent Texas. No, not when he claimed to believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. And no, not when he was defending himself from accusations of massive heaps upon massive heaps of corruption.

Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas and the Republican/MAGA nominee to become senator of that state, admitted on a hidden audio recording that Donald Trump’s midterm emotional support convention hurt his election chances.

Republicans, I know that you’re worried about the Democrats springing an October surprise on you, but you’re not supposed to create that surprise for them.

I’m sure you recall Trump’s two-day circle jerk in Dallas last month that posed as a political convention. Trump spoke both nights in an arena that contained a lot of empty seats, despite Trump pointing at those seats and telling us how full they were. Some of the more intelligent Republicans, such as Susan Collins, stayed away as if it was a Jeffrey Epstein party being held in a leper colony with musical entertainment provided by Kid Rock.

One of the candidates featured at this midterm convention was Ken Paxton, who was basically required to attend. Last week, during a fundraiser for Paxton, he told a group of donors and lobbyists that the convention had actually hurt his campaign to become the state’s next senator.

Paxton defeated Senator John Cornyn and the Republican primary for the Senate seat, and he is now trailing Democratic nominee James Talerico in every poll. In every. Single. Poll.

During this fundraiser, an audio recording later provided to the New York Times captured Paxton explaining that the convention had hurt him.

The recording, which is muffled at times, captures Paxton being asked, “Do you feel like he’s a little bit of a drag?” The questioner is obviously referring to Donald Trump.

Paxton responds: “So to be honest with you, the numbers — when we did that convention — it dropped our numbers. Everybody’s numbers dropped. Right now, yeah, not good.” He might as well have said his numbers made a big ploppy splashy sound like a big turd into a toilet. Too much?

The audio of Paxton was shared with The Times by an attendee who recorded him speaking at a private fundraiser in Washington attended by roughly a dozen people. The person, who opposes Paxton’s campaign and provided the recording to The Times, was granted anonymity because Paxton’s remarks were private, and MAGAts are violent lunatics who would probably murder him. Three other people with knowledge of the event confirmed Paxton’s attendance. Two of these people recalled that Paxton had been posed this question, and one recalled his response about the negative consequences of Trump’s convention.

The event was hosted last Thursday by two Republican lobbyists, Susan Hirschmann and Chris Brinson, in a conference room near Capitol Hill.

During the convention, Trump said Paxton “may not dress right, may not talk exactly perfectly and may not be the best-looking guy I’ve ever seen, but you know what, he is — he’s the greatest attorney general in America.”

Gee, I don’t know why Paxton thinks that hurt him. Why didn’t Trump also say he has breath that smells like a burnt diaper full of Indian food? Trump has given higher praise to Kim Jong-un.

Asked about the remarks, Nick Maddux, a senior Paxton adviser, said, “This is more manipulated nonsense from The New York Times to create a story that doesn’t exist.” Except the Times did not manipulate it, and the story does exist.

Maddux continued, “Our latest poll from the last week has Ken Paxton leading by three points, and every serious pollster will tell you that our numbers have improved since early September. Ken Paxton is going to win this race, and he looks forward to closing strong alongside President Trump, including when he comes to Texas this week.”

Sure, you have secret polls no one else can see that have Paxton leading. Why they are so strong for Paxton, they probably have Paxton breathing into a paper bag for an hour.

A new poll by Big Data Poll has Talarico leader Paxton at 43.6% to 39.3%. Other recent polls by Texas Southern University, ReconMR Texas Poll, Emerson College, Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, SoCal Strategies, AARP, and N+ Univision each have Talarico leading by one to five points.

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Visit Clay Jones’ website and email him at clayjonz@gmail.com

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When Ron DeSantis was first elected governor of Florida in November 2018, he won with a margin of just over 30,000 votes – less than four-tenths of 1% of all the votes cast in the election.

At that time, Florida was the biggest swing state in presidential politics, and DeSantis had hitched his wagon to Donald Trump, a president who had only narrowly won the state two years earlier.

Immediately after the election, DeSantis requested that his staff assemble a binder of information about the powers afforded him as governor.

I’m a political scientist with firsthand experience in state political campaigns. My research with colleagues on Florida elections will be published in a forthcoming book in January 2027.

Over the past eight years, I have observed how DeSantis has mastered the powers of his office. While the governor leaves behind countless new conservative policies, perhaps his most lasting legacy is how he wielded and expanded those powers.

Veto power

Throughout his time in office, DeSantis benefited from a Republican majority in the Legislature, which became a supermajority at the start of his second term in 2022.

But he didn’t rely on partisanship alone to ensure his legislative agenda would pass. He held lawmakers in check by wielding line-item veto power over their pet projects. This allowed him to control the legislative agenda with little pushback for most of his tenure.

One illustration of this is what happened in Republican stronghold Manatee County in 2025: The county faced DeSantis’ wrath after local officials criticized his pro-development legislation and voters rejected his handpicked candidates at the ballot box in November 2024. Months later, DeSantis vetoed all US$4 million in budget requests by county lawmakers and placed the county under a state DOGE audit.

The pandemic years

No issue has defined DeSantis’ image and political legacy more than Florida’s response to COVID-19. The governor used the pandemic to enhance his authority with emergency powers, an expanded budget with personal control over federal funds and, later, a popular reversal of pandemic restrictions on public life.

Initially, DeSantis followed the lead of the Trump administration’s public health authorities and ordered emergency lockdowns in March 2020. But by August of that year, Florida had mostly reopened. DeSantis recounted in his memoir how he concluded that reopening was safer than commonly assumed, based on his own reading of public health research.

Ultimately, Florida’s public health record during COVID was mixed. The state initially ranked 26th in COVID-related deaths per capita during the first wave, due to vaccine promotion and protective public health measures for older adults. But after the delta and omicron waves of the virus in the summer and fall of 2021, the state climbed to eighth in deaths per capita.

By 2025, Florida had recorded over 100,000 COVID-related deaths.

Many newcomers moved to Florida during the pandemic, with some seeking the state’s less restrictive COVID-19 policies and many registering as Republicans.

Expanding executive power

Partly in response to COVID-19, in 2022, the state Legislature created a special $500 million emergency fund that the governor could access in response to a declared emergency without needing to wait for legislative approval.

On Jan. 6, 2023, DeSantis declared a state of immigration emergency over an influx of migrants to the Florida coast. For the past three years, he has renewed this emergency declaration every 60 days.

During that time, DeSantis has used his emergency powers to spend more than $1 billion on federal immigrant detention centers. This includes Alligator Alcatraz, a detention center built on protected land in the Everglades, where detainees were kept in conditions that U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schulz, D-Fla., described as “cruel and unnecessary” after her visit to the site.

The emergency declaration allowed DeSantis to use no-bid contracts and funds that the federal government has yet to reimburse to construct the facility.

The declaration of emergency has also allowed the governor to deploy the Florida National Guard to work with federal authorities to stop immigrants from landing on Florida shores. During the second Trump administration, DeSantis has required state and local law enforcement authorities to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement officers.

Immigration-related arrests have quietly surged in Florida since Trump took office in January 2025.

A conservative warrior for policy change

While speaking to conservative audiences nationwide, DeSantis has called on his audience to put on the “full armor of God.” This quote from the book of Ephesians invokes themes of Christian nationalism.

He has delivered on those priorities by enacting the enshrinement of parental rights in education, universal vouchers for private schools, a six-week abortion ban and a series of bills targeting the LGBTQ community.

He even took on the Walt Disney Co.’s private fiefdom in Florida, dissolving their special district after they opposed him on policy and creating one of his own in its place.

Higher education reform

DeSantis, who attended Ivy League universities, also used the powers of his office to remake the Florida state university system through appointments to the Board of Governors and boards of university trustees.

In January 2023, DeSantis announced that he was appointing six new trustees to the board of New College of Florida in Sarasota. Several had ties to conservative think tanks. DeSantis’ commissioner of education announced his hope that they would remake the college into the “Hillsdale of the South,” referencing the conservative Christian college in Michigan.

Many of the initiatives begun at New College have become a model for the entire state university system. DeSantis has called for a less “ideological” university system, which, in practice, has meant closing diversity offices, censoring sociology courses, post-tenure reviews for professors and more administrative oversight over faculty hiring.

He has also begun the process of creating a new system of higher education accreditation for Florida and like-minded states.

Partisan remake of the state – and elections

After two terms as governor, DeSantis leaves Florida much more conservative than he found it. The once-purple state is now much redder, with Republican voter registrations outnumbering Democratic ones by 1.5 million voters statewide.

And the governor has taken measures to ensure that the trend will continue.

In 2022, DeSantis created an Office of Election Crimes and Security to investigate allegations of voter fraud, though there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the state. Voting rights groups view the office’s enforcement actions as a form of voter intimidation, raising doubt in the minds of eligible voters as to whether they can vote.

DeSantis signed legislation that tightened restrictions on voting by mail, a method that has become especially popular with Democrats since the pandemic.

DeSantis made it harder for groups to register new voters and easier to purge voters from the rolls if they do not vote regularly. In addition, he has made it more difficult for citizens to amend the state constitution by ballot initiative.

He also delivered on Trump’s demands for unprecedented mid-decade congressional redistricting. He pushed partisan gerrymandered maps through the Florida Legislature that were allowed by a Florida Supreme Court stacked with judges he had appointed. The new maps were drawn in hopes of winning Republicans as many as four new congressional seats.

What’s next for Florida

But while DeSantis’ conservative policies cement a legacy that will be difficult to overturn, the political fate of Florida remains less fixed.

DeSantis has officially endorsed U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., in the 2026 gubernatorial race against Democratic candidate David Jolly, a former congressman. The rising number of independent voters, in particular, could make the election competitive. And it’s hard to predict how Republicans’ current unpopularity on the national stage will affect state and local races.

So it’s an open question as to whether Florida will remain the red “Free State of Florida,” where law and order come first and, as DeSantis put it, “where woke goes to die.”

Liv Coleman, Professor of Political Science and International Studies, University of Tampa

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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