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Editor's Choice: Scroll below for our monthly blend of mainstream and alternative October 2026 news and views

Note: Excerpts are from the authors' words except for subheads and occasional "Editor's notes" such as this. 

 

Oct. 7

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djt corruption on trial hartmann 10 7 2026The Hartmann Report, Commentary, Democrats Can Put the Entire Republican Party on Trial With One Word: Corruption, Thom Hartmann, right, thom hartmann newOct. 7, 2026. Trump’s profiteering is only the latest chapter in a decades-long transfer of American wealth and political power into the hands of billionaires…

In a nationwide poll conducted a few weeks ago and reported on by Axios, the majority of all registered voters surveyed said the number one word to describe Donald Trump is “corrupt.” This represents a massive opportunity for Democrats both now and for the next two years.

hartmann report newAnd the experience of candidates in today’s Democrats’ position around the world validates the argument that this is the best way to both campaign and win elections and political power.

Péter Magyar defeated Viktor Orbán in the Hungarian elections because he ran a Navalny-style playbook, calling Orbán’s and his billionaire buddies’ capture of the media and most other aspects of Hungarian life a “state capture system” grounded in good old-fashioned “corruption.”

From Orban’s son-in-law pulling a Jared and using his government position to become one of the richest men in the country, to his billionaire cronies buying up the media like the billionaire Ellisons are doing here now, corruption was Magyar’s singular through-line message. And it worked, producing an overwhelming turnout and undeniable victory.

It will work here, too!

Democrats are (continuously, it seems) debating what should be their campaign strategy, their main through-line message, for the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election. Every faction and special interest group in the country is pushing their own idea, but there’s one overarching concept — one word — that can encompass most all of them and do so with a proven political punch: “Corruption.”

At every level, ever since the Reagan Revolution, the heart of Republican policies has been the naked corruption of our American political and economic systems. Since the 1980s, Republicans have sold their corruption with slogans like, “Government is the problem, not the solution,” and “Let the market decide,” but their real message is, “Turn it all over to the billionaires and their corporations.” The result has been:

— Tax cuts and loopholes for billionaires and big corporations that, in aggregate since 1981, add up to more than our total national debt of $40 trillion (in other words, Republicans borrowed $40 trillion in our names that our kids will repay and gave all of it to the morbidly rich).

— Reagan’s 1983 suspension of enforcement of the anti-trust laws that has caused every industry in America to become a form of monopoly dominated by five or fewer massive corporations, gutting competition and raising prices.

— Five on-the-take Republicans on the Supreme Court ruling that corporations are persons and money is the same thing as “free speech,” handing our elections over to the highest bidders.

— Virtually every legacy federal regulatory agency being run by industry insiders working on a revolving-door basis.

— Members of Congress and the corrupt Trump regime engaging in insider trading with impunity.

— A GOP-aligned military-industrial complex that’s essentially taken over Pentagon procurement.

— An anti-labor Labor Department; an anti-education Education department; an anti-civil rights Civil Rights enforcement agency; an anti-environment Environmental Protection Agency; etc…

— Trump’s mysterious pardons that always seem to go to people who’ve given him millions of dollars (after Giuliani claimed he and Trump were selling pardons for two million each and splitting the money).

— The wholesale gutting of the Internal Revenue Service enforcement budget and staffing that’s largely ended audits of morbidly rich people and increased audits of working-class people instead.

— The systematic sabotage and privatization of public institutions

— from the US Postal Service to public schools to prisons — with virtually every one of the for-profit replacements becoming big GOP donors.

— The explosion of dark money after Citizens United so we don’t even know who’s buying our elections.

— The weaponization of the Federal Communications Commission to loosen media ownership rules while threatening outlets that dare criticize Trump or the GOP.

— Red-state-level voter suppression laws including strict ID requirements, purges of voter rolls, and reduced polling access all to discourage voting by people in demographic groups associated with Democrats.

— The Republican refusal to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices for years and they’re still blocking most efforts.

— The systematic dismantling of campaign finance enforcement, turning the Federal Election Commission into a deadlocked, do-nothing body.

— The use of tax havens and trade policy to encourage offshoring American jobs.

— The Republican normalization of lobbyists literally writing legislation via groups like the Koch-funded ALEC.— The rewriting of environmental and labor rules to favor polluting industries by GOP appointees who often came from those very industries.

— The strategic packing of the federal judiciary with hardcore rightwing/neofascist judges.

— And now Trump’s pathetic attempts to bribe voters with his $5000 offer backed up by $80 and $500 checks going out this week to people on Medicare and the Affordable Care Act.

Even Republicans understand the power of mobilizing the public’s outrage against the corruption that they themselves have participated in for over 40 years. Astonishingly, cynically, that’s the meta-message to Trump’s main campaign slogan each of the three times he’s run for president:

“Drain the swamp.”

It worked, even though it was an outrageous lie. Democrats, who have actually been trying to do something about corruption for years, need to appropriate the anti-corruption theme as their main message. Because, universally, it works.

— When working in Russia, I witnessed the way Alexi Navalny came so close to taking down Putin that the Russian dictator ordered him murdered; it was done via Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. It systematically and relentlessly exposed the ways Putin and his cronies were looting their nation’s government while passing out favors to oligarchs willing to align themselves with them.

— In the 1980s, I was working for a German international relief organization in The Philippines when Cory Aquino mobilized an anti-corruption message against the Marcos dynasty; the week Marcos and his wife fled the country I was bumped off Philippine Airlines flights five days in a row because so many of their cronies were appropriating all the seats (the airline was run by a crony).

— When Jair Bolsonaro first successfully ran for president of Brazil it was on a campaign against the corruption “Operation Car Wash” had exposed in the Lula administration. When elected, Bolsonaro, instead of ending the corruption, slid right into the system and expanded it, leading to his own ultimate downfall and current imprisonment.

— In Delhi, activist Anna Hazare’s 2011 anti-corruption hunger strike ignited a nationwide movement that helped spur passage of India’s Lokpal anti-corruption law and led his former allies to found the “clean government” Aam Aadmi Party.

— And, of course, it was the anti-corruption message of the EuroMaidan “Revolution of Dignity” in 2014 that lifted then-comedian and TV star Volodymyr Zelenskyy into the presidency of Ukraine.

From Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive Era of the early 20th century to the present, anti-corruption messages have repeatedly proven to be one of the most potent forces in American politics, too.

— In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt built a foundation of mass support by casting monopolies as a “corrupt alliance” between the morbidly rich and our government, while the exposure of William M. “Boss” Tweed’s graft by Thomas Nast’s biting cartoons helped bring down New York’s Tammany Hall by converting complex examples of corruption into the simple story of “stolen public money.”

— The Watergate scandal turned corrupt abuse of power into a national reckoning that forced Richard Nixon from office and fueled sweeping electoral gains for reformers like Jimmy Carter, while more recent scandals like George Santos’ reinforced “clean government” as a winning local message.

— At the national level, Donald Trump’s “drain the swamp” campaign and the “rigged system” critiques advanced by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren show that, across the ideological spectrum, framing political battles as struggle against entrenched, self-dealing elites remains one of the most consistently reliable ways to get energized voters to the polls and win power.

It makes perfect sense that this should be the Democrats’ main strategy: the core philosophy of the GOP that was first made explicit by the Reagan administration — “greed is good” — openly invites corruption. As we’ve seen in virtually every congressional vote over the past decade, Republican politicians are entirely in the pockets of the fossil fuel, health insurance, tax preparation, and weapons industries, among others.

Whether it’s the corrupt collusion between the Kushner and Netanyahu families that helped lead us into an illegal war against Iran, the billions Trump’s family has made in crypto and other schemes, the insider trading on the war, putting industry insiders in charge of regulatory agencies, the DeSantis and Paxton/Abbott corruption scandals, there are vivid examples of Republican corruption laying on the public ground all over the country in plain sight.

Every Democrat in America should scan their local horizon for examples of corruption they can use against Republicans. The words “Republican corruption” should be continuously on their lips, whether campaigning, speaking to constituents, or making media appearances.

Hammer these corrupt SOBs with their own crimes against democracy and the middle class, and Democrats will see results like Magyar, Zelenskyy, Aquino, and so many others have achieved.The New Republic,

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Reasons for Hope. Reasons for Alarm, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Oct. 7, 2026. bulwark morning shots logoThings are looking up—for now.  

Donald Trump is a friendly boss; he lets his top aides freelance. Two of those aides, James Blair and Chris LaCivita, are spending most of their time spearheading midterms spending for Trump’s bulwark logo big shipPAC.

But last week, they both managed to find time for a quick trip to the Balkans, where—the New York Times reports—they have each been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to consult on behalf of the pro-Russian sub-national government in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Seems fine.

Happy Wednesday.

News Roundups

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: California Leaders Call Trump ‘Mentally Ill,’ Paxton Turns on Trump's War, Gold Star Families Snub Trump, Trump Eyes Golf Club Camp David, Aaron Parnas, aaron parnas new headshotright, Oct. 7, 2026. Ken Paxton got caught on tape admitting that Trump’s Iran war and soaring gas prices are sinking his Texas Senate campaign, as Republicans find themselves in trouble from Iowa to Maine. A US senator says the Pentagon blocked him from visiting a military base as part of an effort to hide the true costs of the war, while most families of the soldiers killed in its deadliest attack skipped Trump’s White House event for Gold Star families. And Trump wants to turn his own Palm Beach golf club into the next Camp David, complete with free memberships for future presidents.

This week, I'll be sitting down with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Sen. Chris Murphy and Rep. Sara Jacobs. I'll be asking Sen. Murphy about the Pentagon blocking him from that base in Qatar and what Congress can do to force transparency on the Iran war, and I'll be pressing all three on the biggest issues heading into the midterms. You won't want to miss these conversations.

With less than four weeks until the midterms, the stakes could not be higher, and the stories that matter most are often the ones that get buried. Every day, I bring you the news straight, sourced and without spin, with no corporate owners and no algorithm deciding what you see.

Let’s get into it.

Calls for Trump’s removal are growing after he suggested Iran could “take out” Los Angeles and San Diego, with California’s governor and senator both demanding the 25th Amendment. Gov. Gavin Newsom told The Hill that Trump is “mentally ill,” declaring “TIME FOR THE 25TH!” and Sen. Alex Padilla echoed him on X: “Three words. 25th AMENDMENT NOW.” Section 4 of the amendment allows the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to declare a president unable to serve, making the vice president acting president. Newsom has called Trump’s remarks “dangerous” and possibly “treasonous,” ordered California’s State Threat Assessment Center to watch for foreign actors who might take the comments as an invitation to attack, and slammed JD Vance and Marco Rubio for their “deafening” silence. The White House continues to insist Trump was talking about a nuclear Iran, though he never mentioned nuclear weapons, while a former Trump aide working on the midterms admitted the comments mean Republicans are now “addressing something he said” instead of focusing on Democrats.

Republicans Face Mounting Trouble in Key Senate Races From Texas to Iowa to Maine

Ken Paxton privately admitted that Trump’s Iran war and soaring gas prices are dragging down his Texas Senate campaign. In audio obtained by Axios from a closed-door fundraiser in Washington, Paxton told donors and lobbyists that his biggest problem is “the war, it’s gas prices, it’s diesel,” adding that diesel over $6 a gallon means “people are feeling the pinch.” He called affordability “by far our biggest problem” and the reason “we’re having a hard time with numbers,” then conceded he has “no control over gas prices” and that “I don’t make the decisions.” At the same fundraiser, he reportedly said Trump’s Dallas convention “dropped our numbers” and that his campaign is “all coming from D.C.” Polls show Democrat James Talarico narrowly leading in a state Democrats haven’t won a Senate seat in since the 1980s, and Trump is rallying with Paxton in San Antonio on Wednesday.

In Iowa, a state Trump won by 13 points in 2024, Democrat Josh Turek now leads Republican Ashley Hinson 48% to 44%. A new Suffolk University poll found independents breaking for Turek by a stunning 58% to 30%, and one in four Trump voters who aren’t backing Hinson said it’s because she’s a “sycophant” or “puppet” of Trump. Trump’s favorability in the state is 15 points underwater, while tariffs have hammered corn and soybean exports and the Iran war has driven up diesel costs for farmers. In the governor’s race, Democrat Rob Sand leads by 12 points in a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic governor in two decades. “We’re seeing independents turning their backs on Republican candidates in three states in a row,” Suffolk’s pollster said, pointing to similar shifts in Michigan and Ohio.

In Maine, Sen. Susan Collins struggled through her debate against Democrat Troy Jackson in one of the country’s most competitive Senate races. When Collins touted her success in getting road salt removed from Trump’s tariff list, Jackson shot back, “We can’t eat road salt,” a line that quickly went viral. Collins also tried to rebut Jackson’s claim that she has “always had health care” by pointing to a single year without coverage in 1994, a response critics widely mocked. Others hammered her vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and some online critics called her performance “pathetic.” Collins, 73, has survived tough races before, but this cycle she’s running against a national environment that is punishing Republicans tied to Trump.

Republicans are trying to spend their way out of trouble, outspending Democrats by more than $400 million in Senate races. Much of that money is going to Texas, where GOP groups have already spent nearly $200 million to prop up Paxton after Talarico out-raised him by $50 million. Meanwhile, the top Republican super PAC has pulled its ads out of North Carolina, effectively conceding that race, and shifted money into Kansas and deep-red South Carolina. Democratic Senate candidates have generally far out-raised their Republican opponents, and the top Democratic Senate super PAC just posted a record $151 million quarter. A recent New York Times/Siena poll showed Democrats tied or ahead in five reliably Republican states.

The common thread across these races is a backlash against Trump’s war, prices and policies, even in places he once dominated. Trump is spending the final weeks of the campaign rallying in red states like Nebraska, Texas and Oklahoma instead of traditional battlegrounds, a sign of how much ground Republicans are defending. In Iowa, two Republican House members recently broke with Trump to back a resolution to pull US forces from Iran without congressional approval. Voters across these states consistently cite grocery prices, gas and fuel costs and health care as their top concerns. With less than four weeks to go, Democrats need to flip four Republican seats to win the Senate, and the map of possible pickups keeps growing.

Pentagon Blocks Senator From US Base as Gold Star Families Skip Trump’s White House Event

Sen. Chris Murphy says the Pentagon denied him access to the largest US base in the Middle East, calling it part of an “unconstitutional effort” to hide the costs of the Iran war. The Connecticut Democrat was blocked from visiting Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, which Iran has repeatedly attacked during the war, and says the Pentagon also refused to brief him while he was in the region. “There is an active, unprecedented, unconstitutional effort underway to hide the costs of this war and the implications of this war from Congress and the American people,” Murphy said. A Pentagon official said the denial was consistent with a travel restriction issued by Pete Hegseth in March and applied “evenly.” Murphy noted that Marco Rubio’s State Department helped arrange his meetings with Gulf leaders, including Qatar’s emir and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a sharp contrast with the Pentagon’s stonewalling. “I’ve never encountered anything like this in my time in the Senate,” he said, calling on Republicans to demand an end to what he described as “a deliberate campaign of obfuscation.” He’s not alone: members of Congress from both parties have been pushing the administration for more information on the war’s cost, strategy and casualties.

Most families of the six soldiers killed in the war’s deadliest attack are skipping Trump’s White House event for Gold Star families. Only one relative of those killed in the March 1 Iranian drone strike at Port Shuaiba in Kuwait confirmed they would attend Tuesday’s reception with Trump and the first lady. Joey Amor, whose wife, Master Sgt. Nicole Amor, was among those killed, said there are still questions about “what information was available” and “what decisions were made” before the attack, writing, “I am done asking quietly. Today, I am asking the American people to stand with these six families and demand transparency.” His frustration comes after soldiers told the AP that commanders were warned the base was vulnerable to drones and sent troops there anyway, while the Army’s investigation, completed in June, still hasn’t been released. The widow of an airman killed this summer said she was given less than two weeks’ notice and had no interest in supporting “an administration that has been so reckless with the lives of our service members.” Some Gold Star families have said they are grateful for how the administration has honored their loved ones. The war, launched Feb. 28, has killed 19 US troops and wounded more than 800.

JD Vance appears to be softening Trump’s demands on Iran’s nuclear program, even as Marco Rubio declares victory in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump said the day before the war began that he wanted “no enrichment” from Iran, insisting, “Not 20%, 30%,” but Vance told Reuters that Tehran just needs to do “something meaningful on their enrichment capacity” and stop building highly enriched fuel. That’s a notable shift for an administration that launched a war over Iran’s nuclear program, and it echoes the limits Trump once mocked in the Obama-era nuclear deal he tore up in his first term. Rubio claimed Wednesday that Iran has “lost complete control” of the Strait of Hormuz and that its economy is “in total and complete freefall.” But oil prices rose and stocks fell the same day after a British maritime monitor reported nine attacks on tankers in the strait so far this month, already half of September’s total. Rubio insisted that any deal must ensure “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon, simple, period, end of story.”

The US pulled its bombers from a British air base after Iran-linked threats aimed at killing as many American troops as possible, a US official said. RAF Fairford, about 100 miles west of London, has been used by US planes to strike Iran during the war, and the Trump administration believes the threat was intended to destroy as many US aircraft and kill as many troops as possible. The official could not say what kind of attack was being planned, and British police have released few details about their investigation. Police have arrested seven people in connection with the suspected plot, most recently a 22-year-old man in central London on Tuesday. Six of the seven have been released on bail, which drew criticism from Trump last week. Trump said he removed the bombers because he didn’t want to tempt “the enemy.” The threat is a reminder that the war’s risks now reach well beyond the Middle East, even as the administration insists Iran is on the verge of defeat.

Trump Wants to Turn His Palm Beach Golf Club Into the New Camp David

Trump wants to transform his West Palm Beach golf club into an official presidential retreat modeled after Camp David. The Washington Post has confirmed that, under a proposal from the club’s lawyer, Palm Beach County, which owns the land the course sits on, would hand a parcel to the federal government to serve as a permanent retreat for future presidents and a venue for summits with foreign leaders. Trump would pay to build a presidential residence and facilities on that land, while the rest of the course would remain a private club run by the Trump family business. Future presidents would even be offered complimentary memberships to the Trump club. “Just as Camp David, Windsor Castle, or the Elysee Palace are known worldwide, so too will the Presidential Golf Course in Palm Beach County,” the lawyer wrote. County officials say they are seriously considering the plan and are already in talks with the General Services Administration.

The plan would likely be a boon for Trump’s own business. Trump reported nearly $37 million in income from the golf course last year, and his club would continue to operate privately right next to an official site of presidential importance, likely drawing even more business. The White House pitched the location’s advantages, noting it’s minutes from what is now called “Donald J. Trump International Airport.” The club’s lawyer said construction wouldn’t finish before Trump leaves office, framing the project as “a gift” to his successors. Trump has visited Camp David far less often than many of his predecessors, once saying its rustic charm would wear off after half an hour. Instead, he has spent at least 137 days golfing during his second term, according to one tracker, despite once mocking Barack Obama for golfing as president.

The proposal is the latest example of Trump reshaping the presidency around his own properties and brand. The Palm Beach area has already been transformed in Trump’s image, with the airport and nearby road renamed after him and Mar-a-Lago serving as a hub for MAGA events and networking. Ironically, Mar-a-Lago itself was once gifted to the federal government as a “Winter White House,” but the National Park Service returned it because it was too expensive to maintain, and Trump bought it in 1985. Sportswriter Rick Reilly, who has golfed with Trump, said the president cares less about the game than the attention he gets at his clubs. Bringing foreign leaders there, Reilly said, would be a way for Trump to “make a power play with these people and show them who is the king of America.”

Other news:

Cornell students are skipping class and refusing to spend money on campus Wednesday in a “Zero Day” economic blackout in solidarity with Jane Doe. Organized by Cornell Black Students United and the Cornell NAACP, the protest includes a seven-hour sit-in at Toni Morrison Dining Hall, one hour “for the seven hours she endured,” according to organizers. Students are being asked to avoid the campus store, dining halls, vending machines and printing services, while being careful not to interfere with dining workers, with organizers saying, “Our pressure is on the institution. Our solidarity extends to its workers.” The action follows a “Justice for Survivors” rally that drew thousands to campus Monday and a student town hall on sexual violence Tuesday. Students are demanding Cornell expel or revoke the degrees of everyone “complicit” in the alleged assault, rewrite its sexual misconduct policy, require prevention training, fully comply with New York’s “Enough is Enough” law and submit to an external review of its administration. “We really just want Jane Doe to know that we care about her,” one organizer said, adding that students want to make sure “nothing like what she has to go through ever happens again.”

A previously unreleased Army study found the shock gloves ICE just bought cause intense pain, instant compliance and lasting fear. ICE leaders knew about the findings before signing a $16.7 million contract in August for 6,000 pairs of the gloves, according to records obtained by the watchdog group American Oversight. In a military prison exercise, participants, including large men, stopped resisting within seconds and said “just seeing the GLOVE was enough to make them want to comply.” The study found the gloves work by “overloading the peripheral nerve endings” to cause pain, and participants who were wet reported even stronger shocks, with one feeling discomfort for 30 minutes afterward. Critics warn the gloves are easy to use, leave no marks and give ICE another tool to intimidate people as the agency faces scrutiny over deaths and injuries, and even the manufacturer says they shouldn’t be used on children, pregnant women or disabled people. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto says ICE still hasn’t answered a letter from 16 Democratic senators demanding to know how the gloves will be used.

Tropical Storm Isaias has formed in the Gulf and is expected to become the first hurricane of the Atlantic season before hitting the Gulf Coast this week. The storm formed early Wednesday off eastern Mexico with winds of 40 mph and could make landfall anywhere between eastern Louisiana and the western Florida Panhandle. The National Hurricane Center warned of an “increasing risk of dangerous wind and storm surge” and urged residents to have a hurricane plan in place. Heavy rain is expected across the Gulf Coast and much of the Southeast starting Friday and into the weekend. The storm was about 580 miles southwest of the mouth of the Mississippi River as of Wednesday morning, moving east-northeast at 8 mph. The Atlantic season has been unusually quiet this year because of a strong El Niño.

Two of Trump’s top political advisers spent part of the midterm crunch in the Balkans, getting paid to advise a pro-Russian government on its election. James Blair and Chris LaCivita, who run MAGA Inc., the Trump super PAC sitting on $415 million to help Republicans keep Congress, traveled to Republika Srpska in Bosnia ahead russian flag wavingof its elections Sunday and were each paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to The New York Times. The territory’s ruling party is aligned with Vladimir Putin and has spent heavily courting Trump’s orbit, with Trump-connected lobbyists and operatives collecting more than $4 million from its government since last year. That influence campaign paid off when the Trump administration lifted sanctions last year on party leader Milorad Dodik, who was sanctioned for undermining the US-backed peace agreement that ended the Bosnian war. After his party won Sunday, Dodik thanked Putin for his support and credited Trump’s 2024 victory with creating a favorable political environment. A MAGA Inc. spokesman insisted the two remained “fully engaged” in the midterms, noting they hosted a team call during the trip.

Israel marked three years since the Oct. 7 attack, as grieving families turned the anniversary into demands for accountability from Benjamin Netanyahu. Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostages on Oct. 7, 2023, the deadliest day in Israel’s history, and mourners gathered Wednesday at the Nova music festival site, where 378 people were killed, at 6:29 a.m., the minute the attack began. Across Israel, protesters blocked highways, filled a Tel Aviv fountain with red dye and lined a beach with figures representing the dead beside Hebrew letters reading “total failure,” calling for an independent state inquiry that Netanyahu has resisted. A bereaved father interrupted Netanyahu’s speech at a state memorial, shouting, “You did not protect my son,” and a new book by Haaretz reporters claims the UAE’s president warned Netanyahu of a major Hamas operation a week and a half before the attack, which Netanyahu calls “an absolute lie.” In Gaza, more than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war that followed, according to the territory’s health ministry, and Israeli strikes have continued despite a ceasefire declared last October. The anniversary comes less than three weeks before Israel’s Oct. 27 election, the first chance for voters to pass judgment on Netanyahu since the attack.

Sen. Ruben Gallego says he is “absolutely thinking about” running for president as he rolls out a sweeping economic plan. The Arizona Democrat’s 32-page agenda calls for a $20 minimum wage and a New Deal-style public service jobs program funded by taxes on data centers and AI companies, paying people for work like coaching Little League, caring for the elderly and counseling people fighting addiction. He’s also proposing a “robot” tax to discourage replacing workers with automation, letting people charge tech companies for their personal data and tripling union membership by 2035. The plan would also require companies to pay double for overtime instead of time and a half, and require humans to review AI-driven hiring and firing decisions. Gallego blamed both parties for failing the working class, saying Republicans have been worse but “Democrats can’t not be blamed.” He said his biggest consideration is whether he can run while still being “an active father” to three young children.

Members of Meta’s Oversight Board are warning that the AI safety committees promised under Trump’s new White House accord could be little more than window dressing. Last week, companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Nvidia and xAI pledged to create independent safety committees, but the voluntary accord doesn’t bind them to anything and says the committees should be made up of the companies’ own board members. Board members say real oversight requires independence, transparency, its own budget and the power to push back, with one saying, “If that friction doesn’t exist, it’s a sure sign that there’s no effective independent oversight going on.” Another member put it simply: if a committee can’t control its own budget, membership and decisions, “that isn’t oversight.” A Stanford law professor called Meta’s own board “more of a cautionary tale” than a model, noting it’s hard to “bite the hand that feeds” you. The warning comes as OpenAI and Anthropic prepare to go public at estimated valuations of more than $1 trillion each.

A new Florida poll shows Republicans leading the governor and Senate races, even as Hispanic voters turn on Trump. Republican Byron Donalds leads Democrat David Jolly 48% to 41% in the governor’s race, and Sen. Ashley Moody leads Democrat Angie Nixon 50% to 40%. But among Florida’s Hispanic voters, who helped Trump win Miami-Dade County in 2024, 49% now disapprove of his job performance compared with 45% who approve. Statewide, Florida voters are split evenly on Trump at 48% approve and 48% disapprove. The cost of living was by far the top issue, with 30% saying it’s most likely to influence their vote. Democrats point to recent special election wins in Florida as proof the party is winning back Hispanic voters, driven in part by anger over Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for solving a century-old mystery about how molecules come to favor one “mirror image” over another. Kagan, 95, of France, discovered a way to manipulate chemical reactions that has revolutionized how chemists make pharmaceuticals, flavors, scents and new materials. Soai, of Japan, designed the first chemical reaction in which only one of two possible mirror-image molecules forms, a feat the Nobel Committee said no one had achieved “other than life itself.” The committee called their work “spectacular.” The two will share a prize worth about $1.2 million. The literature prize will be announced Thursday, followed by peace on Friday and economics on Monday.

Texas is set to carry out the first US execution since Tennessee’s botched attempt to put Christa Pike to death last week. Jamaal Howard, 46, is scheduled to receive a lethal dose of pentobarbital Wednesday for the 2000 killing of convenience store clerk Vickie Swartout, which was caught on surveillance video. Howard, who was 20 at the time, took $114 and a carton of cigarettes during the robbery. His attorneys argue he is intellectually disabled and has an appeal pending at the Supreme Court, which barred executing intellectually disabled people in 2002. The state argues he hasn’t presented evidence meeting the legal requirements for that claim. It would be the 30th execution in the US this year, with Florida leading the country at 16.

Two commercial ships were hit by drones off Bulgaria’s coast, the first attack on shipping in the NATO member’s waters, and Ukraine’s president is blaming Russia. One vessel sank at the scene with no immediate word on its crew, while the other caught fire and its 18 crew members were evacuated, with two severely injured. Bulgaria’s prime minister called it “a blatant violation of international law,” and Zelenskyy said it was “a combined Russian attack using maritime and aerial drones.” Russia has not commented, and NATO declined to comment. Bulgaria’s prime minister warned the war is expanding geographically and increasing the risk of a wider global conflict. The attack came a day after a Turkish-owned cargo ship sank following a drone strike in the Black Sea, killing two people.

Iran-backed Houthi rebels claim they launched missiles and drones at airports and military bases in Saudi Arabia, deepening a new front in the Iran war. The Houthis said they targeted Riyadh’s main international airport, where flights were briefly disrupted, as well as Abha airport and several military bases near the Yemeni border. Saudi-led forces said they intercepted a ballistic missile north of Riyadh. The rebels also fired missiles at Aden’s airport, with one landing near the runway just before a passenger flight from Cairo was set to land. Yemen’s Human Rights Ministry warned the strike threatened “a humanitarian disaster,” as other passengers were waiting to board a flight to Jeddah when it hit. The attacks come as Saudi and allied Yemeni forces push a major offensive to retake territory the Houthis seized along the Red Sea coast, threatening a key shipping alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.

Germany’s former foreign intelligence chief has been arrested on suspicion of espionage and attempted treason in one of the country’s biggest spy scandals since the Cold War. Prosecutors say August Hanning, who led the BND from 1998 to 2005, paid a former agency office manager for about 2,000 secret documents and used them to prepare an analysis for a foreign spy service. The documents reportedly included material on Iran’s nuclear program, the Russian military and highly sensitive intelligence from allied countries. The office manager, who worked for successive BND presidents until March, was also arrested. Der Spiegel reported investigators are examining a possible link to Azerbaijan. A German security lawmaker warned the case could damage the country’s intelligence relationships with its allies.

A New Orleans judge tried to have a local TV station criminally charged over its reporting on her, but police found the station hadn’t broken any law. Criminal court Judge Kimya Holmes filed a police complaint against CBS affiliate WWL after it reported that her then-fiancé, who was charged with fraudulently collecting more than $712,000 in Covid relief money and later pleaded guilty, donated a $765,000 home to her in 2025. Holmes accused the station of putting her “in harm’s way” by publishing the home’s address and a photo of a Corvette leased by her ex-fiancé, relying on a state law requiring media outlets to remove certain information about judges. But the parts of that law she cited had been repealed weeks before the story aired, and when a detective told her, Holmes admitted that if true, “she does not have any grounds for a criminal complaint.” Holmes, who says she didn’t know about the fraud until after the couple split, faces a tough reelection race this month, and a media attorney said he “can’t imagine a public official filing a criminal complaint in response to reporting” whose accuracy was never challenged.

McDonald’s is being sued over claims it uses an AI tool that effectively lets its franchises fix prices. The proposed nationwide class-action lawsuit, filed in federal court in Chicago, alleges the company’s pricing platform pulls nonpublic sales and pricing data from thousands of independently owned restaurants to set menu prices, amounting to “algorithmic price-fixing aimed at customers who are already stretched thin.” McDonald’s calls the complaint “filled with inaccuracies,” insisting that “AI does not set menu prices” and that franchisees decide for themselves, though a Reuters investigation found some owners were pressured to use the tool and log when they ignored its recommendations. The suit was brought by an Illinois man who noticed the price of his usual Quarter Pounder meal varied even within his own neighborhood. McDonald’s own data shows the average price of a menu item rose about 40% between 2019 and 2024, and at least 90 bills have 

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance 

 

U.S. 2026 Midterm elections

bulwark morning shots logoMorning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Blue Wave. The Rocky Shore, William Kristol, right, william bill kristol imdbOct. 7, 2026. It could be the best of elections. So it makes sense to be hopeful. But it’s surely the worst of administrations. So it makes sense to be alarmed.

On the hopeful side: The blue wave shows no sign of abating. Democrats are doing a decent job of getting out of their own way. Meanwhile Donald Trump is traveling around the country and doing his best to make the election about himself.

Which is good.

bulwark logo big shipAccording to the polling aggregator FiftyPlusOne, President Trump’s job disapproval stands at 61.9 percent, compared to 35 percent approval. The Democratic advantage on FiftyPlusOne’s average of the generic congressional polling is a still impressive but less overwhelming 51.1 percent to 43.4 percent.

There’s a simple lesson here: The more this election is about Trump, the better. The more the generic ballot numbers move towards the presidential approval numbers, the better. The more Trump visits competitive states for rallies that are all about himself, the better. The more ads we see that feature Trump, the better.

Share this newsletter with someone who doesn’t want to be told whatever they want to hear or to be rage-baited.

Yesterday morning, stung by media reports that his rallies aren’t what they once were, Trump posted:

My Rally crowds and enthusiasm are unbelievable! Nobody has ever seen anything like it. We are flipping races all over the place. . . . It’s all happening! The Dumocrats [sic, needless to say] never counted on this. Watch for the “Midterm Surprise!”

About an hour and a half later, Trump had a further thought to share, this time in ALL CAPS:

MY RALLIES ARE SAVING THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, AGAIN!!!

Lots of Republicans would beg to differ with the leader of their party. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, for example, apparently has decided not to join Trump’s rally tonight in San Antonio. After all, as Abbott explained, “Because of my schedule, where I go to multiple cities a day doing events like this, I already have events like this scheduled that day and will not be able to make it.”

It will be amusing to see what important event Abbott’s attending that couldn’t have been rescheduled to make room for the president. And it will be interesting to see if Trump takes offense at the slight. A little intra-Republican squabbling in these closing weeks couldn’t hurt Democrats’ chances, either.

So much for Trump and the GOP.

As for the Democrats, they’re doing a pretty good job of riding the wave of voter discontent. They’re keeping the focus on the Trump administration’s failures and corruption, and on the Republican Congress’s complicity in them. They don’t even seem to be over-thinking things and tying themselves in knots nearly as much as they normally do.

Their biggest problem may be that many of their big donors and key operatives don’t seem to realize what a historic moment this year could be. They’re being cautious when their party has a golden opportunity to win senate seats and governorships that have long appeared to be out of reach. Democrats have a chance to turn a shrinking map into an expanding one.

The implications of a Democratic senate majority of fifty-four seats would be very different from getting to fifty-one. And as for governorships, six of the ten most-populous states now have Democratic governors, and Democrats seem unlikely to lose any of them this November. But in the other four of the ten most-populous states—Texas, Florida, Ohio, and Georgia—the gubernatorial races are competitive. If Democrats win, say, two of the four, they’d govern eight of the ten largest states, and twelve of the largest fifteen. This would affect the character of our politics going into 2028 and beyond.

So there’s reason to be hopeful.

But there are reasons to remain alarmed.

The main reason is obvious: Trump and his loyalists will control the levers of executive power over the next two years. You’d have to be crazy not to be alarmed by what they can do during this time—to our nation’s well-being at home and to its standing abroad, to our civil liberties and civil service, to any remaining guardrails against corruption and lawlessness. So Donald Trump and JD Vance, Todd Blanche and Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller and Russell Vought in positions of great power remain a clear and present danger to our constitutional republic.

As do their collaborators outside the government. The public has moved pretty decisively in the right direction over the past two years. Our elites have not. Some are eagerly taking advantage of the benefits of crony capitalism. Others, intimidated, are cowering or cutting deals. Few are standing up to autocracy.

And all of this is to say nothing of the threat to free and fair elections in 2028. Trump and his cabinet officials, and all the loyalists they’ve stuffed into government agencies, really do not want to lose power in 2028. They don’t want a new administration to come in and turn over the rocks to uncover their corruption and lawlessness. The threat of election interference in 2026 has been worrisome. But the threats in 2028 will be of a whole different order of magnitude. And the stronger the popular opposition to Trump and Trumpism becomes, the more determined Trump and his authoritarians will be to subvert the democratic process.

So be hopeful and alarmed. And organize, persuade, and vote. It’s our country, after all, either to nobly save or meanly lose.

AROUND THE BULWARK

  • MAGA’s Racism Is Blowing Up Its Own Coalition… WILL SOMMER joins SARAH and JVL for a wild, wild NEXT LEVEL.
  • bulwark logo big shipEx-CIA Officer Reacts to Insane Spy Scandal Rocking the Intelligence World… Reporter MICHAEL WEISS and former CIA officer MARC POLYMEROPOULOS break down a staggering spy scandal involving the former head of German intelligence, and discuss an alleged Iranian plot targeting U.S. bombers in Britain.
  • Scott Bessent’s Interview Gets Weirder and Weirder… How big is the treasury secretary’s ego? CATHERINE RAMPELL tries to get a sense in Receipts.
  • Massive Cash Infusion Coming to Dems, Courtesy of Gun-Control Group… New ads are set to run in key battleground House districts, reports JOE PERTICONE in Press Pass.

Quick Hits

NOW WE JUST FEEL BAD FOR HIM: At this point, Ken Paxton may never open his mouth in a private fundraiser again. First it was the New York Times reporting that Paxton had privately admitted Trump’s midterm convention hurt him. Then it was Politico releasing audio in which Paxton complained that “I’ve never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign” because “it’s all coming from D.C.” And this morning, Axios released even more audio of Paxton lamenting that the Iran war and gas and diesel prices were “dragging” on his campaign.

“So many factors in this federal race are uncontrollable,” Paxton said in the audio. “I don’t make the decisions, and I don’t . . . know what’s behind some of the decisions.”

All of the leaked audio in question is sourced from the same small fundraiser last month, which suggests Paxton was unlucky enough to let a very determined hater into the room: Not only was the leaker eager to release damaging audio, but he or she has been drip-feeding it into the news—different days, different outlets—to keep the story hanging around and maximize the damage against Paxton. I tell you what, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

STILL REFUSING TO LOSE: All this time later, Ukraine is still holding tough. The New York Times reports on Ukraine’s fruitful counteroffensive in the Donbas:

A monthslong Ukrainian counteroffensive in the northern part of the Donbas has thwarted Russian efforts to encircle the remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in the region. Russia, Western analysts say, has lost dozens of square miles of territory during the Ukrainian campaign, which Kyiv is calling Operation Vivaldi.

In the southern Donbas, Russia continues to mount furious assaults to break through Ukrainian lines. But Kyiv has reorganized its defense there and has so far kept the Russian military from pressing farther in its efforts to surround the major Donbas cities.

More broadly, Russian gains across Ukraine have slowed markedly in 2026 from their already glacial pace of last year. September was the worst month in net territorial gains for Russia inside Ukraine since June 2023, according to the Finland-based research firm Black Bird Group.

MAINE DEBATE: Sen. Susan Collins has been a unicorn in politics: a GOP senator who has enjoyed consistent success in her blue state of Maine no matter how bad the national environment. But she’s never faced a wave environment quite like this one, and she’s working hard to pull one more rabbit out of her hat.

Yesterday, Collins and Democratic challenger Troy Jackson had a televised debate—their first of four over the next ten days. Unsurprisingly, Jackson’s main strategy was to do everything he could to tie Collins to Trump. He castigated her vote for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, said that Mainers shouldn’t trust her to pick the next justice who comes up for confirmation, and scoffed at her track record of voting for Trump’s priorities while using her leverage only to get certain kickbacks and carveouts for Maine. “Sen. Collins is like an arsonist who set the fire and then she wants credit for bringing a cup of water to put it out,” Jackson said.

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, More Encouraging Senate Polls, Early Vote Is Picking Up, MAGA Hearts Putin, “Can’t Eat Road Salt,” Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 7, 2026. Our friend Devon Murphy-Anderson of the Maine Democratic Party joins us live at 115pm ET today to talk about last night’s debate, the early vote, & more. 

Let’s start with some data. Here’s a summary of encouraging new YouGov polls of the Senate battleground:

A new Suffolk poll of Iowa shows Turek making major gains and leading: The early vote is picking up. Here’s the current national early vote via TargetEarly (10/6/26 758pm update). This comparison is 27 days before Election Day in each of the last three cycles:

2022 D+22

2024 D+23

2026 D+29

I want to stress that it is very, very early, and that it will take a few days in every state that turns on the early vote for the data to become something worth diving into. There is going to be incredible noise around the early vote and my role will be to cut through the noise and try to make sense of the data as it becomes available. So far, so good. Keep calm, carry on peeps, and keep working the early vote in your communities as hard as you can.

Here’s the generic ballot from the high-quality Economist/YouGov poll this week. Double digit leads in two cuts of likely voters:

Other things we’re tracking this morning…….

From Politico: Republicans enter triage mode as their election hopes continue to dim:

Republicans are flooding the electoral map with a deluge of advertising to defend their House and Senate majorities. But their once-towering financial advantage is starting to show its limits.

In recent days, Republican campaign groups began to make concessions to the punishing political environment, shifting money away from races they no longer believe to be winnable and falling back to reinforce another tier of seats in solidly red states that no longer look safe.

After abandoning a GOP-held Senate seat in North Carolina — a state President Donald Trump won three times — the outside groups began spending money to defend a seat in South Carolina. And they’re intensifying their advertising in Kansas, where Democrats haven’t won a Senate race in nearly a century.

In the battle for control of the House, national Republicans gave up on defending a blue-leaning seat in Nebraska held for a decade by retiring GOP Rep. Don Bacon.

Those dispiriting setbacks signal that the party’s defensive position is weakening with a month still left in the campaign.

One national Republican strategist, granted anonymity to speak freely about the party’s predicament, said the GOP could wind up facing even worse losses than in President George W. Bush’s disastrous second term.

“If the bottom continues falling out like it has been,” this operative said, “this will be worse than 2006.”

The NYT has a bit of a shocker this morning:  Amid Midterm Crunch, Trump Advisers Took Time to Help Russia-Aligned Government. As Putin commits war crimes in Ukraine and escalates in Europe Trumpworld rallies for him, not our European allies:

As President Trump crisscrossed the country last week trying to help his party avoid a blowout in next month’s midterm elections, two of his top political advisers were in the Balkans helping a pro-Russian government looking to tighten its grip on power.

James Blair and Chris LaCivita, who are leading a big-money midterm advertising campaign for the Trump political operation, spent some of the past few days in a small self-governing territory in Bosnia and Herzegovina called Republika Srpska ahead of elections there on Sunday, according to four people familiar with their travels who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the Balkan work.

The engagement is the latest example of Trump advisers profiting from far-right politicians abroad who have sought favor from the U.S. president while bucking the international community.

Mr. Blair and Mr. LaCivita were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars each through a Washington-based law firm that was retained by Republika Srpska’s government to provide counsel on voting issues, according to two of the people familiar with the engagement. They said the work was for the government and not the nationalist party that controls it, though they are essentially one and the same.

Last night Maine saw the first of four debates between Susan Collins and Troy Jackson. From what I am reading and hearing Jackson held his own against the more experienced Collins, while also winning the viral clip of the night, below, when he said “we can’t eat road salt.” When watching just listen to how ridiculous Collins’ arguments are about her persuading Trump to do marginally less harmful things. These arguments are simply not persuasive:

The NYT also has this story this am: Trump Officials Ramp Up Investigations Into Voter Registration Groups (gift link):

As the Trump administration promotes doubts about the integrity of the voting system ahead of the midterm elections, homeland security officials have investigated more than 150 organizations as part of its effort to scrutinize nonprofits that they say may be helping noncitizens illegally register to vote, according to internal government documents reviewed by The New York Times.

The documents also reveal that the department has considered deploying undercover agents to investigate the organizations. If they were found to be actively recruiting noncitizens for voter registration, the agents could gather evidence and “disrupt activities,” the documents said. The findings could then be used to initiate prosecutions and “dismantle illicit facilitation networks,” according to the documents, which were shared with The Times by Democracy Forward, a legal advocacy organization that received them through a public records request.

The details were included in a June memo providing status updates on the Department of Homeland Security’s “election integrity investigations,” an effort by the Trump administration to find and root out noncitizens who illegally voted or registered to vote.

The problem of noncitizens voting in the United States is a rare one, and there is no credible evidence that it has swayed an election. But the administration and its allies have been aggressively seeking data to back up assertions that Democrats could benefit from the support of noncitizens in the Nov. 3 midterm elections, in which Republicans are at risk of losing control of one or both chambers of Congress.

Paid subscribers gather tonight at 7pm ET to talk about all this - register here.

Yes, peeps, it is now that time. Time to go…..Kick These Corrupt Traitors’ Asses, Win The Midterms, And Prepare For The Fuckery To Come - For It Is Coming (And May Already Be Here)

PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: The Darline Graham Train Wreck Worsens As Republicans May Lose South Carolina, Jason Easley, right, jason easleyOct. 7, 2026. Republicans are facing potential losses everywhere, but now they are rushing money into South Carolina, as the Trump-created fiasco in deep red South Carolina could flip a Senate seat blue.

The 2026 midterm election is shaping up to be historic. Even Republicans admit they are facing losses, and their best-case scenario for Election Day would be to lose only control of the House of Representatives.

politicus usa logoTrump and his party had hoped for a replay of the 2022 midterm, when Democrats narrowly lost the House but gained a Senate seat.

The initial comparison baseline was Trump’s first midterm election in 2018, when Democrats gained 41 House seats, but Republicans gained 2 Senate seats.

As Trump has made the political climate worse for Republicans throughout the year, the combination of voter rage, a worsening economy, high gas prices, inflation, and a war in Iran has opened up the entire map for Democrats.

Democratic Senate candidates are running close in deep red states like Texas, Florida, and Kansas, with the latest addition to the list of endangered Republican Senate seats being in South Carolina.

Most comparisons for 2026 point to 2006, which matters because Republicans were wiped out in 2006, losing control of the House, the Senate, a majority of governorships, and state legislatures.

The situation has become so dire that even Republican operatives are saying that the bottom has fallen out for the party.

A sign that Republicans are hitting bottom is what is happening in South Carolina.Republicans Have A South Carolina Problem

The biggest factor in the GOP’s Senate woes has been Donald Trump. Trump single-handedly created a money pit in Texas when he put his personal grudge against John Cornyn ahead of winning. Trump got Ken Paxton the Senate nomination, and now Republicans are forced to throw resources at Texas.

What happened in South Carolina was not. Lindsey Graham's sudden death created a problem Republicans didn't expect.

annie andrewsTrump compounded the problem by backing Graham’s sister, Darline, to run for a full term. Darline Graham got Trump’s backing by promising to be unwaveringly loyal to the president. Otherwise, Graham has shown herself to be not knowledgeable about anything and has opened the door for Democratic candidate Dr. Annie Andrews, right, to make it a close race.

Politico reported:

One national Republican strategist, granted anonymity to speak freely about the party’s predicament, said the GOP could wind up facing even worse losses than in President George W. Bush’s disastrous second term.

“If the bottom continues falling out like it has been,” this operative said, “this will be worse than 2006.”

There is a pattern here. Unpopular Trump picks bad Republican candidates in red states and turns what should be safe elections into possible Democratic victories.

Democrats won’t win in all of these red states, but they don’t need to.

With both parties admitting that North Carolina looks like a Democratic flip, Democrats need to hold on to Michigan and flip three currently Republican seats. The Democratic Party’s best chances of victory are in Iowa, Ohio, Maine, Texas, and Alaska.

Kansas and South Carolina are, in my view, in the next tier of possible Democratic pickups. If South Carolina goes blue, Florida will also be in play, and the result will be a history-making blowout and one of the worst midterm defeats a president has ever suffered.

If such a loss happens, it will all be Donald Trump’s fault.

The New Republic Daily, Analysis: “We Can’t Eat Road Salt”: Susan Collins Crashes and Burns in Debate, Edith Olmsted, Oct. 7, 2026. The incumbent Maine senator gave a dumpster-fire performance.

new republic dailyMaine Senator Susan Collins, one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the midterms, faced a humiliating reality check Tuesday night during her debate against Democratic challenger Troy Jackson.

In the first of four televised debates, Collins struggled to defend her efforts to rein in President Donald Trump’s disastrous policies.

“Troy mocked it, but I was successful in getting concrete, pulp, and road salt removed from the tariff list,” Collins said.

“I didn’t mock the fact that she got road salt back, I mocked the fact that, what about everything else? We can’t eat road salt,” Jackson said. “And the thing about it is, is that everything that she’s doing with Iran war, stuff like that, there’s going to be so many less people that’ll be able to afford to drive that I’m not even sure the road salt is going to be worth anything, either.”

It was a startling moment dealt by a comparatively novice challenger against a five-term senator, highlighting just how Collins has failed to truly stand up to Trump.

Collins has voted five separate times to extend Trump’s military campaign in the Middle East. A study found that as of July, the average Maine household has had to pay $3,900 more for goods and services during Trump’s second term.

The Daily with Sarah Jones via PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: Plague: Trump Says He’s in Deep Talks with Russia, Kremlin Says No Call is Scheduled, Jason Easley and Sarah Jones, right, sarah reese jonesOct. 7, 2026. It seems as if a plague comes around every time Donald Trump is elected to office. Or perhaps most accurately, it’s that Donald Trump’s incompetence as a leader of a government is seen very clearly when a plague comes calling.

So now comes mentions of the Black Death.

politicus usa logoYes, the suspected plague case linked to a lab worker's death in Russia is caused by the same bacterium, Yersinia pestis, that caused the historical Black Death, a deadly plague pandemic that swept through Eurasia and North Africa from 1346 to 1353, killing up to 60% of Europe's population.

It seems fitting for Donald Trump’s second term, which has been giving off End Times vibes in various ways as he plunders our coffers and destroys public land while taking a wrecking ball to the East Wing and destroying the Kennedy Center because it’s not legal for him to put his toxic brand name on a memorial building for an assassinated president.

So yeah, it seems we might have a maybe plague, except given the lockdown on Russian news and the hold the government has on it resulting in propaganda churned out, sort of like Trump is trying to do here, it’s hard to know if there’s a plague or not.Trump’s Word or Putin’s? How about Neither

But never fear! Donald J Trump is here. And he, who has shown himself to be a dedicated Putin lapdog of the highest order while pretending to be a strong alpha male, is going to “speak” to Russian President Putin about this plague/not plague.

"So far we are in very deep discussions," Trump said according to the BBC, saying he would report on his talks with Putin "probably" on Thursday.

However, “Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said no phone call had been scheduled.”

“The US, however, has issued a formal diplomatic message to Russia requesting additional information. Peskov told reporters he was not aware of such a request,” the BBC added.

So, Trump said he was in “deep talks”, implying the talks were already happening, but the Kremlin says there aren’t even any talks scheduled.

A Trump apologist will claim that Trump was referencing setting up talks, but that’s exactly the problem with Trump’s always unclear and contradictory speech and the some of the media’s willing stenography of it.

And who is responsible for Trump’s speech that leaves it open to interpretation? I’d argue that at 80 years old, the president can be held accountable.

If I were to follow current U.S. journalist protocol, I’d take Trump’s word for this and report both sides with no context, but that’s not what we do here, because it allows for easy manipulation and exploitation.

The context is that Russia can’t be trusted, but neither can the Trump administration, which not only has been busted lying in court to smear peaceful protesters and Olympians, but already showed us in his first term — during which, by the way, he had some competent people unlike 2.0 — that he won’t properly manage a pandemic because he’s too selfish to put American lives ahead of short term pain in the stock market.

The facts thus far are that on October 2, a 28-year-old laboratory worker at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia died after being hospitalized with severe pneumonia, following reports of an alleged accidental lab exposure.

International concern and a formal U.S. diplomatic inquiry were triggered after The New York Times reported on this death.

On Tuesday, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the agency “has asked Russian authorities to clarify what caused the severe case of pneumonia that killed the 28-year-old worker at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute last week.”

It’s being reported that Donald Trump said he will speak to Putin about this incident, but his own words suggest he’s already in deep talks.

Either way, though, we can hardly trust Donald Trump to put even the slightest pressure on Putin to be honest about a potential plague incident, and even if Putin changed everything about his leadership style and was honest with Trump, we can hardly expect Trump to be honest with the public.Guess the Propagandist

It’s deeply disturbing to see how similar Putin is to Donald Trump. For example, can you guess which leader accused the media of reporting "false information" by reporting on the concern over the death?

This time, it’s Putin, via his spokesperson, but it easily could have been Trump.

We all recall how he lied about the deaths from COVID-19 in his first term, repeatedly claiming the virus would "disappear" and comparing it to a normal flu. Trump publicly minimized the severity of COVID-19 and questioned official data, while privately acknowledging to journalist Bob Woodward in recorded interviews that the virus was deadly and airborne.

Trump’s misleading statements led to health officials struggling to convey accurate risk levels and lower compliance with safety guidelines. Journalists documented numerous instances where public briefings conflicted with internal administration data.

Trump told Woodward on February 7, 2020, that he wanted to "always play it down" to prevent panic. Yes, February 7th. That early. He already knew.

On Wednesday, Putin’s spokesperson claimed Russia's reporting was in line with standard practice and accused the media of reporting "false information".

But the BBC noted that actually, pro-government news outlets deleted several articles about a possible plague case, including a travel advisory:

However, after this announcement, a pro-government federal news outlet deleted five posts mentioning a possible plague case, and authorities in the town of Baikalsk deleted a message advising against travel to Shelekhov because of a possible plague infection.

Russian officials stated that the cause of death was not the pneumonic plague, but rather a "pneumonia of an undetermined etiology.” Given that the Russians are even less transparent than Donald Trump’s administration, this means nothing.

New York Times, Can Ken Paxton’s Estranged Wife Help Close the Deal With Texas Voters? Beth Reinhard and Lisa Lerer, Oct. 7, 2026. Angela Paxton is urging Texas voters to support Mr. Paxton’s Senate campaign, even as she is divorcing him and accusing him of adultery. She has political aspirations of her own.

Again and again, throughout his long political career, Ken Paxton has gotten himself into trouble. Each time, his wife, Angela, has come to his defense.

texas mapIn 2022, a process server trying to deliver a subpoena to Mr. Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas, said he watched Ms. Paxton drive him away from their home in a truck.

The next year, during Mr. Paxton’s impeachment trial, which aired multiple allegations of corruption and an extramarital affair, Ms. Paxton, a Republican state senator, sat stoically through the entire proceedings, which she later dismissed in a social media post as “all of this foolishness.”

And now, in the homestretch of the 2026 campaign, with polls showing Mr. Paxton trailing the Democrat James Talarico in the U.S. Senate race, Ms. Paxton is urging voters in a new television ad to back the entire Republican ticket — even as she is divorcing her husband and accusing him of adultery.

It is not just Mr. Paxton’s political future at stake. It is also her own.

Ms. Paxton, 63, has tried to build a political identity separate from her polarizing and scandal-plagued husband in Texas, staking out ground in policy debates over artificial intelligence, campaign finance reform, and social issues like abortion. Allies envision her running for statewide office in the future — regardless of whether Mr. Paxton is serving in Washington.

The new ad — in which Ms. Paxton never mentions his name — is a new and surreal chapter in the long-running saga of one of the most powerful attorneys general in the country. The decision to deploy Mr. Paxton’s soon-to-be ex-wife in this reliably red state reveals how precarious the Texas race has become for Republicans, as they fight to maintain control of the Senate.

Ms. Paxton feared staying silent in such a close race could hurt her reputation and open the door to politically damaging questions about her loyalty to the party, according to a person familiar with her thinking. A loss by Mr. Paxton in Texas, which hasn’t elected a Democrat in a statewide race in more than three decades, would be viewed as disastrous for the Republican Party.

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

New York Times, Whistle-Blower Says I.R.S. Leaked His Tax Records in Retaliation, Jesse Drucker, Oct. 7, 2026. Brian J. Visalli, a veteran investigator of tax fraud, said in a lawsuit that the agency had sent his personal and tax information to federal prosecutors.

An Internal Revenue Service investigator sued the agency this month, claiming officials illegally leaked his confidential personnel records to federal prosecutors to punish him for years of whistle-blowing on the agency’s failure to tackle tax dodging.

Brian J. Visalli, a 24-year I.R.S. veteran, specializes in investigating complex offshore tax shelters. He has publicly criticized the agency, writing articles about its unwillingness to aggressively target schemes that multinational companies use to skirt their taxes. He contributed to two reports published by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration: one on conflicts of interest within the I.R.S. and the other on the agency’s refusal to investigate advisers who design and sell aggressive tax strategies.

He says the I.R.S. is using relatively small mistakes in his personal tax return to retaliate against him. The suit claims the I.R.S. illegally disclosed his employee and tax information to Justice Department prosecutors to discredit and fire him. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Illinois. The Internal Revenue Service did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Visalli’s investigations included a probe into Malta pension plans, a tax-dodging strategy used by wealthy Americans. To fight the crackdown, promoters of the scheme hired lobbyist Ken Kies, who last year became the top tax official in the Treasury Department under President Trump.

In the past year, Mr. Visalli has written articles in Tax Notes, a trade publication, criticizing the I.R.S.’s record on pursuing multinational tax dodgers. He attacked his employer for failing to use a 2010 law requiring transactions that generate tax benefits to have “economic substance.” He said the agency suffered from “institutional cowardice.”

The refusal to invoke that law “represents a fundamental abdication of the IRS’s responsibility to protect the fiscal foundation of American government from sophisticated tax fraud masquerading as legitimate business planning,” he wrote.

The agency has turned tax enforcement “into a negotiation in which the government starts from a position of weakness and retreats from there.”

Jeffery Kadet, one of Mr. Visalli’s co-authors and an adjunct professor on tax law at the University of Washington, called him “exemplary in his focus on understanding” complicated corporate tax strategies. “He has an energy and a commitment to the rule of law that is exactly what we, as a society, need,” Mr. Kadet said.

Mr. Visalli’s criticism of the I.R.S. and the “abusive tax industry” has drawn attacks from right-wing groups. Chuck Flint, president of the Alliance for I.R.S. Accountability, a group that opposes the agency, with headquarters at a Houston mailbox, told The Washington Examiner in May: “This guy is just the latest in a long line of people at the I.R.S. that seem to take matters into their own hands.”

The lawsuit claims that the I.R.S. sent Mr. Visalli a letter in August 2023 stating he failed to fully pay his tax liability on time for 2021. The agency found the failure was an “oversight” and “not willful” and proposed a one-day suspension, then reduced it to a counseling letter, which managers often use to document minor misconduct. But he claims his supervisors escalated the episode as an excuse to push him out of his job. In late summer 2024, Mr. Visalli filed a whistle-blower retaliation complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal agency that protects employees from reprisal for whistle-blowing.

Mr. Visalli said that an assistant U.S. attorney told him a few weeks later that Justice Department Tax Division personnel were describing him as “impaired” based on a Supreme Court case, Giglio v. the United States, which requires prosecutors to disclose to defense lawyers any past evidence of dishonesty by a law enforcement official involved in a case.

“For a federal criminal investigator, a Giglio label is a scarlet letter,” according to the lawsuit. The characterization “that Visalli was a witness whose credibility was so compromised that it had to be disclosed to criminal defendants, could only have originated with unauthorized disclosures by I.R.S. officials concerning an investigation into a financial disclosure previously made by Visalli.”

In March, Mr. Visalli met with a special agent for the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration to report his supervisors’ actions.

Despite internal findings in March that his tax failures were an oversight, the agency moved a month later to remove him from his job. He is still employed by the I.R.S.

Mr. Visalli is seeking damages for a withheld annual performance reward along with medical costs — including anti-depression medication and expenses from a stress-induced fall and hospitalization — following the news of his pending removal.

New York Times, The Military Explodes Bombs on This Beach. Is It Following the Law? Abbie VanSickle, Visuals by Hiroko Masuike, Oct. 7, 2026. The Supreme Court will hear arguments over whether the U.S. Air Force can keep destroying munitions on a beach in Guam, a practice it began in 1982.

Tarague Beach is a tropical expanse of white sand on the island of Guam, where sea turtles lay their eggs, migratory seabirds forage and reef fish glide in the clear blue-green water.

But the future of this beach, nearly 8,000 miles from Washington, D.C., now rests with the Supreme Court. The court will hear arguments on Wednesday to decide whether the U.S. Air Force can continue to use it to dispose of expired rockets, bombs and hazardous waste munitions.

The dispute pits Prutehi Guahan, a local nonprofit dedicated to protecting Guam’s natural and cultural resources, against the U.S. military, which has long maintained a major presence on the island.

Guam’s proximity to Asia — it’s closer to Beijing than to Hawaii — has made it an increasingly important military outpost. That presence has only grown in recent years with rising tensions in the Pacific. Military experts often refer to the small island — about 170,000 people live on its 210 square miles, roughly five times smaller than Rhode Island — as the tip of the spear for American military might in the region.

Tarague Beach is near the northern tip of the island, within the bounds of Andersen Air Force Base, and for decades the military has used it a place to destroy expired munitions. The leaders of Prutehi Guahan have challenged the practice, arguing that the explosions threaten the fragile marine ecosystem, nearby archaeological remains, traditional fishing sites, and the island’s water supply, sending dangerous toxins and debris hurtling into the air and the water.Tarague Beach is a tropical expanse of white sand on the island of Guam, with a fragile marine ecosystem.

The legal question for the Supreme Court is a technical one about whether the Air Force followed environmental regulations as it sought a permit in recent years to continue detonations on the beach. In court filings, the Air Force has said that the detonation site is crucial for disposing of hazardous waste and that although it must reapply for a permit every three years, that process is meant to ensure ordinary compliance with the rules and not impose new restrictions.

The challengers say that the dispute is deeply personal. They argue that enforcing federal environmental laws is among the few ways for Guam residents — who are U.S. citizens by birth but who cannot vote for the president — to make their voices heard against the powerful U.S. military.

“It’s truly one of the only mechanisms that we have to have an impact on federal projects that will permanently alter our physical landscape, our environment, our cultural resources and our daily lives,” said Monaeka Flores, executive director of Prutehi Guahan, who is Chamorro, the Indigenous people of Guam.

Ms. Flores, whose family has deep roots in Guam, said that her relatives took shelter on the beach when Japan attacked the island hours after Pearl Harbor, hiding from the bombing and fishing for food.

More Global News

New York Times, Ukraine Claws Back Land in the Donbas, Thwarting a Russian Push, Marc Santora and Josh Holder, Oct. 7, 2026. Moscow says its capture of the region is inevitable. But Kyiv has so far stymied Russian efforts to encircle Ukrainian “fortress belt” cities.

The Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, has repeatedly said that the fall of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine is inevitable and will happen faster than Kyiv thinks.

Recent trends on the battlefield paint a different picture.

A monthslong Ukrainian counteroffensive in the northern part of the Donbas has thwarted Russian efforts to encircle the remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in the region. Russia, Western analysts say, has lost dozens of square miles of territory during the Ukrainian campaign, which Kyiv is calling Operation Vivaldi.

In the southern Donbas, Russia continues to mount furious assaults to break through Ukrainian lines. But Kyiv has reorganized its defense there and has so far kept the Russian military from pressing farther in its efforts to surround the major Donbas cities.

More broadly, Russian gains across Ukraine have slowed markedly in 2026 from their already glacial pace of last year. September was the worst month in net territorial gains for Russia inside Ukraine since June 2023, according to the Finland-based research firm Black Bird Group.

While Western researchers who track the battlefield report varying numbers, they generally agree that Russia has gained only slightly more land than it has lost this year.

That contrasts sharply with the narrative put forward by the Russian Ministry of Defense, which said on Sept. 19 that Russia had captured more than 2,000 square miles. Even ultranationalist Russian military bloggers have pushed back, voicing concern that Russia’s push to envelop the so-called fortress cities of the Donbas is failing.

The Ukrainian gains have come as both sides have tried to find a way to restore movement on a battlefield that had become largely deadlocked because of ubiquitous drones.

The Vivaldi operation, said George Barros, a senior analyst at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, shows that when a military lays the necessary groundwork, mechanized movement remains possible even under dense drone surveillance. Still, it took Ukraine months of preparations to reclaim a tiny fraction of its lost land.

Mr. Putin has said that full Russian control of the Donbas, gained either through force or through Ukrainian concessions, is a nonnegotiable condition for ending the war. Ukraine has rejected Trump administration proposals that it hand over land that Russia has failed to seize on the battlefield.

With its goals still unmet in the Donbas, Moscow has escalated its air war against Ukrainian cities, using its advantage in missiles and drones to bombard Kyiv, the capital. Strikes in several cities overnight Wednesday left at least 20 people dead, Ukrainian officials said. They have called the Russian bombardment a campaign of terrorism aimed at breaking the country’s will to fight.The Northern Donbas

New York Times, U.S. Formally Seeks Information From Russia About Possible Plague Death, Paul Sonne and Edward Wong, Oct. 7, 2026. The lack of details from the Russian authorities has unnerved U.S. officials and others around the world.

The State Department has sent a formal diplomatic note to Russia asking for more information about a possible outbreak at an anti-plague research laboratory in Siberia.

“We have officially requested additional information from the Russian government,” the department said in a statement on Tuesday. “We are also in official communication with other countries around the world to share information.”

The plea for more information comes after Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old employee of the Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East in Irkutsk, died this month of a mysterious pneumonia at a hospital in Shelekhov, the town near Irkutsk where Ms. Shipilova lived.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

The death prompted the Russian authorities to quarantine part of the hospital, the institute’s staff and other people whom Ms. Shipilova had come into contact with in her final days. Other facilities in and around Irkutsk have also implemented restrictive measures, in some cases as a precaution.

War in the Middle East

New York Times, How the Houthis Triumphed on the Red Sea and Sparked a New War in Yemen, Vivian Nereim, Saeed Al-Batati and Shuaib Almosawa Maps by Samuel Granados, Oct. 6, 2026 (interactive). In a single night, an Iran-allied militia trounced Saudi-backed forces to take control of Yemen’s Red Sea coast. No one was able, or willing, to stop them.

In the weeks before the Iran-backed Houthi militia fanned out along Yemen’s Red Sea coast, sending their foes into a frenzied retreat, a Yemeni government commander called for help.

It was obvious to the commander, Lt. General Tareq Saleh, that the Houthis wanted to seize his territory in order to reach the Bab al-Mandab Strait, one of the most important waterways in the world.

According to three Yemeni officials, he tried to warn his powerful allies in Saudi Arabia and the United States. About 10 percent of global trade goes through the strait. Amid the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, both countries had an interest in preventing an Iran-linked militia from winning a perch beside it.

Yet last month — when the Houthis did just that — no one was able, or willing, to stop them.

The militia’s stunning triumph over the Bab al-Mandab, which unfolded in a single night of chaos and panic, triggered a cascade of events that has plunged Yemen into a war with global reverberations.

This week, Saudi Arabia began a bombing campaign to help the Yemeni government reclaim the territory it lost, with intelligence and targeting assistance from the U.S. military. By Tuesday, government-allied forces claimed to have made significant gains, besieging the Houthi fighters who held the strait.People in military uniforms holding guns int eh back of a truck.

Houthi fighters escorting a convoy carrying prisoners freed in the Yemeni port city of Mokha to Sanaa, the capital, on Sept. 12, after the Houthi takeover of Mokha. Associated Press

Yet it is unclear whether their advance will hold, or where they will stop if it does. The Saudi government has pledged to help the Yemeni government “eliminate” the Houthis. The last time they took up that mantle, a decade ago, it devolved into a bloody quagmire.

This is the inside story of the battle that reignited Yemen’s war and the dark lessons it imparts for the next phase of fighting. The Houthi victory on Sept. 10 showed how a once ragtag militia has transformed into a formidable force with advanced technology. It was also a major defeat for the Yemeni government and its Saudi patrons, demonstrating that they were unable to fight cohesively and plagued by internal strife.

This article is based on interviews with more than 15 people who participated in the fighting or were briefed on what happened, including soldiers, Yemeni military officers, officials with Yemen’s internationally recognized government, U.S. officials and Houthi officials. Almost all of them spoke on the condition of anonymity, either because they feared retribution from the Houthis or Saudi Arabia, or because they were not authorized to discuss what happened.

Their accounts make it clear that while the Houthis’ victory last month was surprising to many, it was foreseeable.

Oct. 6

Top Headlines

President Trump made inflammatory remarks inviting Iran to bomb two California cities during a rally for the re-election of Nebraska Senator Pete Ricketts, right, a fellow Republican and heir to a wealthy family..President Trump made inflammatory remarks inviting Iran to bomb two California cities during a rally for the re-election of Nebraska Senator Pete Ricketts, right, a fellow Republican and heir to a wealthy family.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

  • Hope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump must be removed from office, Heather Delaney Reese, right, helen delaney reese djtOct. 6, 2026. At 6:22 tonight, at the Pinnacle Bank Expo Center in Grand Island, Nebraska, the room filled with red hats and shirts suddenly went quiet. A minute later, the President of the United States of America pushed through the curtain and emerged onto the stage with newly dyed hair and thick orange makeup. As the music blared through the speakers, he slapped his right thigh over and over again as he made his way to the podium.

Standing there, he said something so horrifying that it is difficult to believe the words were actually said by an American president. He looked into the camera and told Iran, the country we are at war with, that they should blow up one of two American cities, potentially killing millions of people. “It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. That’s a very small price to pay.”

What the President of the United States said tonight should disqualify him from the office he holds. No president, or any elected official for that matter, should hold any position in our government after saying something like this. It should be immediate grounds for impeachment and removal. There should never be a circumstance where the commander in chief can stand on a stage and tell a foreign enemy to destroy American cities and harm American citizens. We should never see a day where the man who has access to nuclear weapons would even think of saying what Donald Trump said.

  • The Contrarian, Words & Phrases: A Crazy Rant Isn’t a ‘Speech’ or an ‘Interview,’ Jennifer Rubin, right, jennifer rubin new headshotOct. 6, 2026. 🚨 28 Days to the Midterms 🚨 Donald Trump’s political toxicity, rampant illegality, and utter incompetence should not obscure a bigger worry: namely, that he is stone-cold nuts. Yet the legacy media continue to use language to describe his “speeches” as ordinary political addresses and “interviews” as within the realm of normal presidential interactions with the press. Legacy media’s sanewashing of Trump’s campaign appearances as “speeches” bears less and less resemblance to the reality of his verbal incontinence, evidenced in recent campaign blather about Iran.
  • Martin Vasquez via Medium, New October 2026 Palm Beach Case Accuses Trump of Rape While Epstein Watched, Martin D. Vasquez, Oct. 5, 2026. A Kentucky woman’s complaint faces steep procedural hurdles, but it adds to the pressure on the Justice Department to account for what remains hidden in the Epstein files. A new civil lawsuit filed on October 2nd in Palm Beach County alleges that Donald Trump raped a young woman in a Florida hotel while Jeffrey Epstein was present. The complaint describes a violent assault and is among the most graphic accusations ever filed against Trump in court. The new case has a difficult road ahead. It lands, though, in the middle of a larger legal fight over what the Justice Department is still holding back in the Epstein files. 

More On Trump Governance 

 

djt god made trump ad

  • New York Times, Facing Backlash, Trump Says His Super PAC Will Pay for Taxpayer-Funded Ads, Shane Goldmacher, Theodore Schleifer and Maggie Haberman, Oct. 6, 2026 (print ed.). The president said that his PAC, MAGA, Inc., would pay for TV ads promoting him that had been paid for with taxpayer money. 
  • New York Times, Trump Does Not Plan to Reimburse Taxpayers for Promotional Ads, Shane Goldmacher and Maggie Haberman, Oct. 6, 2026. A day after the president said his super PAC would pay for the ads, which had drawn bipartisan backlash, officials said that he meant moving forward. A new taxpayer-funded ad aired Tuesday.
  • Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The President’s Palmetto Preoccupation, William Kristol, right, Oct. 1, 2026. william bill kristol imdbThe nineteenth-century American writer Henry David Thoreau famously claimed that “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” I’ve always thought this assertion unfair, even untrue. But it’s neither unfair nor untrue to observe that one man, Donald J. Trump, is today exhibiting clear signs of not-at-all-quiet desperation.

More On Global Affairs 

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  • Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Sept. Oct. 5, 2026 [More U.S. Killings in Caribbean], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 6, 2026. Last night, on October 4, U.S. Southern Command posted that it had struck another small boat in the Caribbean, killing another four people it called “narco-terrorists.” This brings the number of strikes to more than 70, and the number of people killed in the strikes that began a year ago to more than 230 people. The administration’s justification for the strikes has not been made public. It has claimed—without evidence—that the men on the boats were trafficking drugs, but such a charge would normally be handled by the legal system. The Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice produced an opinion providing legal cover for the strikes, and some of the members of Congress who have seen it are alarmed.
  • New York Times, Ex-C.I.A. Officer Who Stashed Gold Bars Admits to Far Larger $145 Million Scam, Devlin Barrett, Oct. 6, 2026. david rushA plea hearing revealed a far larger pattern of fraud against the government, while keeping some key secrets still hidden. The shocking details of the case were revealed in federal court in Alexandria, Va., where David J. Rush, right, pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud, which could earn him up to 20 years behind bars.

The Fight For Democracy in the Trump Era

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Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker in 1986. Their world came tumbling down the next year with a revelation that he had sex with a secretary in his Assemblies of God ministry (AP photo by Lou Krasky).

Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker in 1986. Their world came tumbling down the next year with a revelation that he had sex with a secretary in his Assemblies of God ministry (AP photo by Lou Krasky).

  • New York Times, Jim Bakker, Television Preacher Felled by Sex and Financial Scandals, Dies at 86, Clyde Haberman, Updated Oct. 6, 2026. With his wife, Tammy Faye, Mr. Bakker built a broadcasting juggernaut around the gospel of prosperity. Jim Bakker, a television evangelist who lost his popular and prosperous ministry in a 1980s sex scandal and then lost his freedom for five years, imprisoned for having violated federal laws with his conflation of God and mammon, died on Monday.
  • The Triad Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Propagandist in the Press Pool, Jonathan V. Last, above, Oct. 6, 2026. From “covering” Trump to covering FOR Trump. In mid-September, the Trump administration bestowed press pool status on reporter—sorry, “reporter”—Beni Rae Harmony as she traveled to Ireland to cover the president. Then, on September 26, the 24-year-old(!) Harmony, who worked for the network Real America’s Voice, took CNN’s spot on the presidential plane after Trump refused to let the network onboard. Last Friday, Harmony switched sides, going from covering the White House as a member of the press to serving Trump as his newest assistant press secretary.

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

wayne madsen new observerJustice Integrity Project Editor's Note: Investigative reporter Wayne Madsen, left, a courageous reporter, a former Navy intelligence officer and a close colleague of this editor, broke the Hastert story in a three-part series in the fall of 2006 published on "The Wayne Madsen Report" naming the then-powerful House Speaker as a gay pedophile and hypocrite who presided over a "gay Mafia" of powerful Republicans in Congress who abused youths while winning elections as "family values" purists.

More On Artificial Intelligence, Inflation, Jobs, Markets

  • Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: AI Versus Everything Else, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 6, 2026. The hyperscaler boom is crowding out other investment. Until now, discussions of the potential economic problems created by the AI boom have mostly focused on the future. Will it destroy millions of jobs? Is there a bubble and will it cause a severe recession if it bursts? Will it destroy humanity? While these are doubtless very important questions, attempts to answer them are at best educated guesses.We don’t have to guess, however, about one major effect of the AI boom, because it’s happening right now: Massive spending on data centers is crowding out 
  • Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Recordings show Stacy Garrity claiming Trump’s data center plan as her own, Brendan Hartnett, Oct. 6, 2026. As Andrew Egger wrote in Morning Shots in August, politicians are suddenly noticing that everybody hates data centers. The data center backlash is moving so quickly that politicians are scrambling to keep up—sometimes contradicting themselves in the process. 

Top Stories

President Trump made inflammatory remarks inviting Iran to bomb two California cities during a rally for the re-election of Nebraska Senator Pete Ricketts, right, a fellow Republican and heir to a wealthy family..President Trump made inflammatory remarks inviting Iran to bomb two California cities during a rally for the re-election of Nebraska Senator Pete Ricketts, right, a fellow Republican and heir to a wealthy family.

New York Times, Fury in California After Trump Suggests Iran Could ‘Take Out’ L.A. or San Diego, Laura Chung, Oct. 6, 2026. Gov. Gavin Newsom called the president “dangerous and deranged” after his remarks at a political rally, where Mr. Trump said the Iran war was necessary to “keep the world safe.”

California leaders condemned President Trump on Monday night after he appeared to suggest that Iran could “take out” Los Angeles and San Diego if it develops a nuclear weapon.

Department of Defense SealSpeaking at a Republican political rally in Nebraska, the president sought to justify the Iran war as necessary for “keeping the world safe.” He then suggested there could be strikes on the United States, including the Democratic-led Californian cities.

“They could take out a city,” he said. “Let them take — Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.”

It was not immediately clear what Mr. Trump meant, but his comments were met with anger from officials in California, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, who called the president “deranged and dangerous.”

“After sending the National Guard and Marines to occupy California, Donald Trump is now saying our foreign enemies should ‘take out’ Los Angeles and San Diego,” Mr. Newsom posted on social media.

Mayor Todd Gloria of San Diego wrote on social media that his city was not “collateral damage” and not “expendable.”

“Keep our city out of your reckless war talk,” he added.

In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass said that the president’s comments were “dangerous” and could “potentially compromise” the city’s safety.

“The role of a president is to protect the country, not to actively threaten it and encourage attacks on American lives,” she said in a social media statement.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Mr. Trump’s remarks.

In his speech on Monday, Mr. Trump also suggested the war with Iran was “going to end very soon,” but did not provide any information as to how. Among his key justifications for launching the war in Iran this year was to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.

Last week, Mr. Trump turned down Iran’s latest cease-fire proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and restart talks on the country’s nuclear program in exchange for U.S. concessions.

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Grandpa Trump Is Getting Desperate, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Oct. 6, 2026. And it’s starting to show.

bulwark logo big shipThe hot-mic moments just keep coming for Texas GOP Senate hopeful Ken Paxton, right. Last week, it ken paxton mugwas leaked audio of Paxton admitting that Trump’s ballyhooed midterm convention had actually hurt his numbers.

This week, it’s audio of Paxton complaining about how little control he has over his own campaign strategy—since most of the money behind him is super PAC money from Trump. “I’ve never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign and, like, what issues are going to matter,” Paxton told a small fundraiser room, “because it’s all coming—you know—from D.C.” Happy Tuesday.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

djt la small price to pay health reeseHope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump must be removed from office, Heather Delaney Reese, above right, Oct. 6, 2026. At 6:22 tonight, at the Pinnacle Bank Expo Center in Grand Island, Nebraska, the room filled with red hats and shirts suddenly went quiet. A minute later, the President of the United States of America pushed through the curtain and emerged onto the stage with newly dyed hair and thick orange makeup. As the music blared through the speakers, he slapped his right thigh over and over again as he made his way to the podium.

Standing there, he said something so horrifying that it is difficult to believe the words were actually said by an American president. He looked into the camera and told Iran, the country we are at war with, that they should blow up one of two American cities, potentially killing millions of people. “It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. That’s a very small price to pay.”

What the President of the United States said tonight should disqualify him from the office he holds. No president, or any elected official for that matter, should hold any position in our government after saying something like this. It should be immediate grounds for impeachment and removal. There should never be a circumstance where the commander in chief can stand on a stage and tell a foreign enemy to destroy American cities and harm American citizens. We should never see a day where the man who has access to nuclear weapons would even think of saying what Donald Trump said.

What he said is how he truly feels. He thinks that millions of American lives are expendable, and he is fine with entire cities being sacrificed. In his eyes and heart, the deaths of the people there really are a small price he, himself, is willing to pay because he does not care about his country or the people he was elected to serve. Donald Trump cares about only one thing: himself.

What concerns me the most right now, in this moment, is that we have reached a place where the president can say something like this without the entire country erupting in outrage. We are not angry enough. Our elected officials are not angry enough. Every single lawmaker in this country, Republican and Democrat, should be standing up right now and saying this is unacceptable. They should all be issuing statements, making it beyond clear that we do not talk about American cities this way, and that we do not offer our own people to our enemies, whether he means it or not, whether he is joking or not. They need to demand action against this president for abandoning his most basic duty to the citizens he swore to protect. If this does not cross the line, there is no line.

The danger of this moment goes way beyond what he said, because he has the power to make decisions that can determine whether millions of people live or die. He is the one who can and has started wars, and he controls our nuclear arsenal. In a catastrophic event, the president must be able to communicate clearly. He also needs to be able to think precisely, understand the consequences of his decisions, and act decisively. Those are not optional capabilities when one person holds that much power. What we heard tonight proves that he cannot meet those basic requirements.

He might walk it back tomorrow and make excuses for what he said. He might deny he even said it. Maybe he meant every word of it, or maybe he genuinely does not care about the cities that didn’t vote for him. Or maybe what we heard tonight was simply a president speaking recklessly about the destruction of American cities without grasping, or without caring about the weight those words carry. Whatever the explanation, the words themselves do not change. The President of the United States stood on a stage and spoke about millions of Americans dying as a “small price to pay.”

I was born and grew up in Southern California. I’ve raised my children here, and we still live here. This is personal, but I would still feel this exact way had he named any other places. But when I heard him tell a cheering crowd that the cities where my daughters sleep should be destroyed and that it would be a very small price to pay, something inside me cracked open that I don’t think I can ever close again.

I was watching this speech live, and I actually ran into my husband’s office and had him listen to what he said to make sure there wasn’t something I was missing. Donald Trump has said some despicable things in the past, but even the most morally bankrupt among us know there is a line that cannot be crossed. Donald Trump does not.

When Pete confirmed that I had indeed heard Donald Trump correctly, I immediately thought about how San Diego County is home to some of the most critical military installations in the country. Naval Base San Diego, Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, Camp Pendleton are all here in San Diego alone. There are tens of thousands of active duty service members and their families who live in the very counties he told Iran to take out. I thought of how he was offering to sacrifice their lives too. I thought about Los Angeles and how it is one of the most diverse cities on earth, a place built by generations of immigrants and their descendants, a melting pot of cultures and languages and communities. People who came to this country because they believed in its promise.

What Trump said about LA and San Diego goes even further than just his comments tonight. There is a real possibility that those two cities were not chosen at random. Because just four days ago we learned that Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal criminal defense attorney who he has now made the United States Attorney General, had five grand jury subpoenas sent to San Diego County election officials demanding voter registration records. The Los Angeles Times reported that LA County also received at least five of its own subpoenas for voter information this year as well.

The Brennan Center for Justice called these subpoenas “highly unusual” and described them as “part of a broader sweeping fishing expedition in order to try to identify and uncover elusive non-citizens who were inappropriately registered to vote.” A federal judge has already blocked the DOJ from using a federal database to search voter rolls, finding that officials had unlawfully shared Social Security records and risked misidentifying eligible voters. Taken together with the earlier ICE raids, the subpoenas and what Donald Trump just said about Iran and these Southern California counties, it is hard to see this as anything other than a coordinated retribution attack.

But even that was just a very small part of what Donald Trump said. His 1 hour and 23 minute speech was full of lies, rambling, and a very concerning level of cognitive deterioration. Donald Trump is doing what desperate people always do, but he is also falling apart in front of our very eyes.

At one point during the speech, Trump decided to bring up Ronald Reagan and how his slogan, “Make America Great Again,” was something that he had come up with himself in 2015. And then he added that “Somebody said no, that was Ronald Reagan. No, no, his was uh, ‘Let’s make America great.’ There’s a big difference. And he never used it too, so he didn’t.”

His thoughts and words were a bit garbled, but they were also 100% untrue. Ronald Reagan did use the phrase. “Let’s Make America Great Again” was one of his 1980 presidential campaign slogans. Trump took a slogan that had already been used by another Republican president, dropped the “Let’s,” built the entire MAGA political movement around it, and now he is insisting that somehow he invented it. It is such a small lie compared with everything else he said tonight, but it is also a perfect example of how Donald Trump operates. History becomes whatever he says it is, and the truth becomes whatever he needs it to be. And he expects everyone around him to just go along with it.

He spent time during his remarks boasting about Venezuela, saying, “1 hour and 48 minutes it took us. Nobody killed. Nobody killed. They don’t talk about that.” He was complaining about the “fake news,” or what he is now calling the “artificial news,” for never reporting all of his amazing accomplishments. But he conveniently left out the Americans who have died in his other war, the one in Iran that he doesn’t want to talk about. At least 19 American service members have been killed, and he didn’t mention a single one of them tonight.

His other big moment came when he announced an executive order expanding access to red-dyed diesel, a tax-exempt fuel used by farmers and off-road vehicles. Before getting on his plane to Nebraska, he was asked about red-dyed diesel and admitted he didn’t know anything about it. Hours later, he was signing an executive order about it, a policy written specifically for the agricultural audience sitting in front of him. But in true Donald Trump fashion, he managed to expose himself here too. Just as he was about to sign it, he said to the entire room, “Do you know what that is? I don’t know what the hell it is, but whatever it is, it’s supposed to be very good. Does anybody want to explain that?” He then signed it anyway without understanding what he was even doing.

Just as he was signing it, he turned to Senator Pete Ricketts and Governor Jim Pillen and said, “Pete and Jim, this should absolutely assure your election. I guarantee you that.” He didn’t even try to hide what he was doing right then, signing an executive order to help elect Republicans.

He also talked about sending federal money to Nebraska and how it feels like a personal favor he was doing for the governor and how much he doesn’t like to be asked for money. He made it a recurring theme throughout the speech, coming back to it multiple times. The first time, saying, “He calls me all the time, always looking for money for this state. I hate it.” He then imitated a phone call from Ricketts about flood relief. “Sir, it’s been horrible. We had a flood. Could you send us 25 million? I said to Pete, that’s a lot of money, but you know, I won it (Nebraska) three times. I say, the hell with it. Give him the money.” Later, he came back to it again. “He wants money every time it rains.” He described a request for drought relief the same way. “It’s a little, just a little money instead of a lot. He says it’s tremendous crop destruction. Please send us 5 million.” Federal disaster relief is not a gift from the president. It belongs to the people and is funded by taxpayers. The fact that he frames it as something he hands out because Nebraska voted for him tells every state that didn’t vote for him exactly where they stand in his eyes.

djt george washington signing 8 15 2026President Trump in August published the message above portraying himself as an American co-founder coequal to the nation's Revolutionary War leader and first President Georg Washington.

He also declared that he is the greatest president in American history. “I said, what about Washington and Lincoln?” he said of a supposed prior conversation. “And they say, you’re better, sir. You’re better.” He paused and smiled. “I don’t know if it’s true, but I’ll tell you, it got to be, cuz there has been no president that’s done more in the first two years than President Trump.”

The crowd chanted “four more years” at one point, and Trump leaned into it, saying that he has Trump 2028 hats just to antagonize the Democrats. “Oh, they go crazy. You know, we have a hat. It says four more years. Another one. Trump 2028… the radical left is going, ‘No, no, I’m telling you, he’s not going to leave. He’s not leaving… We’ve driven them crazy. They’re sick individuals.”

Throughout the speech, he continued to call Democrats, “dumocrats” and “communists.” He said he had “skipped socialism” and gone straight to communist. He used the word over and over, trying to make sure everyone would now consider every single Democrat a communist.

While Donald Trump was acting out his worst impulses in Nebraska, an interview that aired this past weekend on 60 Minutes was getting increasing attention. Thom Tillis, a Republican senator who decided not to run for reelection, has been making the rounds ahead of the release of his new book. During the interview, he said at least 30 of his Republican colleagues in the Senate have privately expressed serious reservations about Trump’s actions, but that the executive branch has stripped them of their independence by threatening primary challenges if they step out of line.

Tillis warned that without checks on that power, “we will have a sort of dictator king if we’re not careful.” He predicted an “electoral bloodbath” for Republicans in the midterms. When he was asked if he worries about how Trump might react to a bad election night, given what happened on January 6, Tillis said, “I think there’s a risk. I really do.”

They know. The Republicans cowering behind Donald Trump know what is coming. They must have also seen what he said tonight and watched more nails being driven into his political coffin while he was still talking. Donald Trump has promised more of these events ahead of the midterms. A lot more of them. And this is a good thing for those of us who love this country. We need him talking. We need as many people as possible to see the depths this man is willing to go to hold onto power, even if that means throwing his own fellow Americans at the feet of our enemies.

The walls continue to close in on Donald Trump. Nothing, not the polling numbers, the economy, or the growing cracks inside his own party, has been good for him. But this is all good news for us. Because it means we still have an opening. It means that if we show up and get enough people out to vote, we can slow down his destruction and begin the long process of rebuilding this country. It will not be quick, and it will not be easy. No single election can fix what has been broken. But it’s a start, and it is going to take every single one of us deciding that a president who tells a cheering crowd that our cities and the people living inside them are a small price to pay does not get to keep the Congress that enables him.

That is where our power is right now. It is in what we do over these next 29 days. It is in every door we knock on, person we talk to, voter we help get to the polls, and every single one of us refusing to believe that what we are watching can’t be stopped. Because we can stop it and we will. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too. 

The Contrarian, Words & Phrases: A Crazy Rant Isn’t a ‘Speech’ or an ‘Interview,’ Jennifer Rubin, right, jennifer rubin new headshotOct. 6, 2026. 🚨 28 Days to the Midterms 🚨

Donald Trump’s political toxicity, rampant illegality, and utter incompetence should not obscure a bigger worry: namely, that he is stone-cold nuts. Yet the legacy media continue to use language to describe his “speeches” as ordinary political addresses and “interviews” as within the realm of normal presidential interactions with the press.

contrarian logoDonald Trump’s political toxicity, rampant illegality, and utter incompetence should not obscure a bigger worry: namely, that he is stone-cold nuts. Yet the legacy media continue to use language to describe his “speeches” as ordinary political addresses and “interviews” as within the realm of normal presidential interactions with the press.

Legacy media’s sanewashing of Trump’s campaign appearances as “speeches” bears less and less resemblance to the reality of his verbal incontinence, evidenced in recent campaign blather about Iran:

We did it in one night with those beautiful B-2 bombers. They left Missouri. They flew both ways, 37 hours. They were refueling. We have the greatest tankers. We have the greatest military in the world. They went from Missouri and then at one o’clock in the morning, with no moon, dark as can be, these unbelievable machines led by the most incredible pilots in the world, they unloaded every single bomb, went right down air chutes into this, uh, drug factories, really. That’s what they were doing. They were nuclear and drugs. They were doing drugs, but they were doing the nuclear. These drug factories/nuclear factories were hit so hard.

When he unilaterally dragged us into a war, did he think we were attacking “drug factories” (or did he think the Iranians were “doing drugs”)? Examination of his unedited verbal vomit should provoke further, frightful questions about the 25th Amendment.

What we get from legacy media, instead, is the sort of New York Times’ light-hearted trip down nostalgia lane in lieu of exacting coverage of his crazed appearance in Mobile, Alabama on Friday. One had to search for independent media to uncover full accounts of his crazed rants.

Trump was more unhinged in Ohio on Saturday, where Trump blathered about James Talarico: “I see that ‘Tala-freako’ in Texas. So he’s been a vaygan' all his life. He’s a vaygan vaygan, I didn’t even know what the hell a vaygan was. A vaygan is vegetables. A vaygan is eating a piece of lettuce all day long.” Ignoring his apparent ignorance of the word ‘vegan,’ the nature of his obscene, irrelevant insults suggests a complete loss of impulse control. These are not “speeches,” but rather psychological breakdowns. But, unfortunately, you would not know it from mainstream media coverage. He was back at it in Nebraska on Monday with more unhinged rambling. (“With the war, it’s just artificial. It’s a little bit high. It’s a small price to pay ... let them take out Los Angeles, let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay.”)

Similarly, Trump’s encounter last week with TIME was routinely labeled an “interview.” But an “interview” denotes responsive answers — not a stream of non sequiturs, insults, and outbursts. A few commentators ventured that the session was “grievance”-filled or “emotional,” but even those descriptions falsely suggest some orderly presentation of reality-based complaints in response to questions.

By lopping off his full replies and interweaving explanatory narrative, reporters often wind up sanitizing Trump’s babbling, as TIME did:

He said he regretted appointing Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, after they ruled against him on tariffs, mail ballots, and birthright citizenship. “I gave them the position of a lifetime,” he said, “and they voted against me often.” On his expectation of fealty, he was unapologetic: “I do like loyalty, yeah.” Again and again, he returned to the condition of the White House itself, complaining that his predecessors had left the building in disrepair and deriding Barack Obama as someone who “doesn’t know if something’s dirty or clean.”

They also posted the original, “lightly edited” transcript, which was exponentially crazier:

You said [Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Coney Barrett] were like shells of their former selves. Do you regret nominating them?

Yeah. Yeah. What can I do? I put them in. They voted against me too often. I was very—I gave them the position of a lifetime, and they vote against me often. They vote for me too. The Democrats stick like glue—those three, they virtually never vary. You can come up with the worst thing in the world and they’ll vote as a group. And while I don’t like it, there’s something I admire about it: there’s loyalty. So they have loyalty to Barack Hussein Obama. They have loyalty to Biden, even though Biden doesn’t even know who the hell they are. He wouldn’t know. He doesn’t even know what the Supreme Court is. And me, I gave them the chance of a lifetime, and it’s unfortunate what they did.

Is that—

It’s unfortunate what they did—not to me, to our country. Birthright citizenship. It’s becoming a major industry now. People are making millions and millions of dollars, and we’re losing trillions of dollars. And it’s become a corrupt business, all because of the Supreme Court decision. That decision was for the babies of slaves. Look at where it was—look at where it was approved. It wasn’t for Chinese people, wealthy or unwealthy, coming, you know, pouring into our country. And this tariff decision again, all they had to do was a little clause saying any money paid does not have to be paid back…would have saved $400 billion. They chose not to save that.

You mentioned the word loyalty a moment ago. Is that what you want from your Supreme Court picks?

I do like loyalty, yeah.

Is that what you want from your Supreme Court justices?

No, I don’t want loyalty. I want good decisions. The tariff decision was disastrous for the country. I want good decisions for the country.

Sir, do you care about—

They’ve treated me. . . . Look, I put these people in. It is what it is. Very disappointing, very disappointing for the country—their decisions. And the country knows it. Very disappointing for the country. The other ones—they stick like glue. It’s unbelievable, right?

The Mob boss mentality, lack of logical connection between sentence fragments, self-contradictions, and elementary-school-level vocabulary in a froth of vicious anger reflect a deeply unwell mind — albeit notably less so absent in the sanitized version. Obsessive efforts to explain what Trump must mean are indicative of PR; not journalism. It takes a heavy hand and no small amount of spin, for example, to transform his rant on his disastrous war into: “In Trump’s telling, he is simply doing what has to be done, even when that means breaking foundational promises to his voters. He campaigned as a president of peace, but is now waging a war he says was necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

Aaron Rupar, who assiduously records and posts Trump’s and his minions’ remarks arguably more thoroughly than any journalist, recommended (of the transcript) that we “read this to get a sense of the president’s grave cognitive impairment.” As he put it, “Trump is either unwilling or unable (or maybe both) to answer the questions he’s actually asked, so he just rants and raves while the interviewers do their best to provide structure to his random brain firings.”

As he ages, Trump’s decline will continue (maybe accelerate), meaning this is likely the “best” version of Trump we will see from here on out. Billionaire-owned media has essentially covered up that national crisis, refusing to acknowledge that he is deteriorating mentally and emotionally, just as he is physically (evidenced by bruising, swollen ankles, consistent somnolence).

Responsible coverage would highlight his mental unfitness daily, provide ample extracts of rants, and play them back to Republicans’ faces. Conscientious journalists, at the very least, could stop calling unhinged rants “speeches” and vitriolic outbursts “answers to interview questions.”

 

bulwark morning shots logoMorning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The President’s Palmetto Preoccupation, William Kristol, right, Oct. 1, 2026. william bill kristol imdbThe nineteenth-century American writer Henry David Thoreau famously claimed that “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

bulwark logo big shipI’ve always thought this assertion unfair, even untrue. But it’s neither unfair nor untrue to observe that one man, Donald J. Trump, is today exhibiting clear signs of not-at-all-quiet desperation.

Yesterday afternoon, for example, Trump was engaged in a typical flurry of posts alternately attacking the media and promising $5,000 to Americans if they re-elect Republican majorities in Congress. And then out of the blue came an attack on the Democratic senate nominee in South Carolina:

Annie “Trannie” Andrews is running against our wonderful Darline Graham for the Senate in South Carolina. . . . Darline is a High Quality person, maybe the Highest, and Annie Trannie is not, in particular, as it pertains to representing the Values of the Great People of South Carolina—She is in favor of Transgender for Everyone, Open Borders, Defunding the Police, High Taxes, a Weak Military, and will absolutely fight to take your guns away—In other words, she is against our Great Second Amendment! Trannie is not for South Carolina, and South Carolina must show, in the upcoming Election, that it is not for her. VOTE FOR DARLINE GRAHAM—SHE HAS MY COMPLETE AND TOTAL ENDORSEMENT, AND WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN! President DONALD J. TRUMP

Before going on to explain Trump’s sudden interest in the South Carolina contest [Ed. note, where his target, Dr. Annie Andrews, is the Democratic nominee for U.S. senator, a mother of three and a physician running against the sister of the late accused customer of at least one transexual prostitute who has described their interaction], I do want to note that his bigotry is of course revolting. In a civilized era, it would be shocking to see it coming from a president of the United States. But we do not live in a civilized era. In a non-cowardly era, the slur would be denounced by Republicans as well as Democrats. But we do not live in a non-cowardly era. In a better era, Andrews’s Republican opponent, Sen. Darline Graham, would step up to criticize a supporter for using the term. But we do not live in a better era.

If we want better politics, we have to make it ourselves. Share this newsletter with someone who should join our community.

Why, though, this sudden attack on Dr. Annie Andrews, of all people? She’s running for a supposedly safe Republican seat. And since she knows that she needs to win Trump voters over to have a path to victory, she’s actually been sparing in her own attacks on Trump. Consider her response to Trump’s post yesterday:

As a mom and a pediatrician, I’m in this race to fight for my patients, my three kids, and South Carolina. And I’m going to work with anyone to put South Carolina first, because lowering costs and making life better for families across our state is going to take all of us working together. If you care more about your bills than the politics in Washington, this campaign is for you.

So why was Andrews on Trump’s mind? He hasn’t been to South Carolina recently, and isn’t scheduled to go soon. When Natalie Harp (presumably) sent the post on his behalf at 5:23 p.m. yesterday, she and her boss were on Air Force One, heading to Nebraska, where Trump was going to campaign for that state’s endangered Republican, Sen. Pete Ricketts.

So why the rhetorical detour to South Carolina? I’d like to think that it was because yesterday, on Tim Miller’s podcast, I went out on a limb and suggested that Andrews had a real chance to win. Could it be that Trump was watching the most recent Bulwark Daily podcast on Air Force One?

Who knows? Only Natalie, I suppose. But. I suspect the explanation is simple: In recent political updates from staff, Trump has been told that South Carolina looked surprisingly competitive.

And it is. The two most recent public polls on the South Carolina race, one of them from a decidedly Republican-friendly firm, have Graham leading by only one point. A news story over the weekend noted that “Republicans, for their part, said they expected Ms. Graham to need a financial boost to secure a win in the end,” and that there were “conversations about getting more help for Darline.” And then, just this morning, Axios reported that the main Republican Senate super PAC is shifting $5 million to South Carolina to help Graham.

It seems President Trump and I are not the only ones who reached the conclusion that South Carolina is in play. And with a wave of the sort we’re seeing, why shouldn’t it be? After all, Trump won Nebraska in 2024 by a wider margin than South Carolina, and he was in Nebraska last night trying to help save that Republican incumbent. And last weekend’s New York Times/Siena polls had Democratic senate candidates up by seven and six points in Alaska and Texas, and South Carolina was only about five points more Republican in 2024 than those two states.

So with a wave this real, and this big, and probably still getting bigger, even South Carolina could be swept away. And so Trump is living a life of noisy desperation.

Thoreau remarks later on in Walden that “It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.” Trump is not a man of wisdom. He will say and do desperate things over the next four weeks, and over the next two years. So while enjoying the change in circumstances that is making Trump desperate, we should also prepare for the dangers we’ll face from a desperate and unhinged megalomaniac in control of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States.

Sen. Annie Andrews—along with her colleagues—will have her work cut out for her over the next couple of years.

djt epstein birthday card

The collage above portrays Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein and a notorious birthday card that Trump sent Epstein some two decades ago addressed "to a Terrific Guy," illustrated with a seemingly naked portrayal of a young female.

Martin Vasquez via Medium, New October 2026 Palm Beach Case Accuses Trump of Rape While Epstein Watched, Martin D. Vasquez, Oct. 5, 2026. A Kentucky woman’s complaint faces steep procedural hurdles, but it adds to the pressure on the Justice Department to account for what remains hidden in the Epstein files.

A Kentucky woman’s complaint faces steep procedural hurdles, but it adds to the pressure on the Justice Department to account for what remains hidden in the Epstein files.

A new civil lawsuit filed on October 2nd in Palm Beach County alleges that Donald Trump raped a young woman in a Florida hotel while Jeffrey Epstein was present. The complaint describes a violent assault and is among the most graphic accusations ever filed against Trump in court. It arrives after the Supreme Court declined to disturb the verdict finding Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll. The new case has a difficult road ahead. It lands, though, in the middle of a larger legal fight over what the Justice Department is still holding back in the Epstein files. That fight includes Katie Phang v. Todd Blanche, where records that mention Trump remain at the center of the dispute.

What the Complaint Alleges

The plaintiff is Elyse Relford of Georgetown, Kentucky, and she is representing herself. The case was assigned number 50-2026-CA-011136-XXXA-MB in the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit.

The complaint alleges that in or about 1997, Relford was at a hotel in Florida with Epstein and Trump. It says she told Trump her birthday was the next day and that she was disappointed she could not celebrate it. It alleges that Trump then raped her, causing bleeding and severe physical injury. According to the complaint, Trump repeatedly taunted her by pretending to be her biological father. It alleges he knew Epstein had separated her from her father. The complaint also alleges that Trump made a racist remark about her, and that Epstein replied by remarking on her wealth.

The suit brings four counts: sexual battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, defamation, and harassment. It seeks $1.3 million in compensatory damages plus costs and other relief.

The complaint does not name the hotel or give an exact date. It does not state Relford’s age at the time. Its defamation count does not identify any specific statement Trump made about her.

Trump has not filed a response, and no attorney has appeared for him. He has consistently denied any wrongdoing connected to Epstein. All of the claims in the complaint are allegations that have not been tested in court.

The Obstacles in Front of the Case

The Palm Beach County Clerk placed it on hold because of a deficiency in the civil cover sheet. Self-represented filers must meet the same filing and service rules as licensed attorneys. Until the hold is cleared and Trump is properly served, he has no obligation to answer..

Why Discovery Is the Real Question

Discovery is the process that forces parties to hand over documents and sit for depositions. It is what turns a lawsuit into a source of new information. In practice, cases dismissed at the pleading stage rarely reach meaningful discovery. Defendants routinely ask courts to pause discovery while a motion to dismiss is pending.

Even if this case survived, discovery would not reach the Epstein files directly. Those records belong to the Justice Department and the FBI, which are not parties to the suit. A private litigant seeking federal records must go through the department’s own approval process for subpoenas to federal employees and records. The department can refuse and force a separate court fight. It is the same department that is currently fighting to end the Phang case.

So the Relford complaint is unlikely to pry open the Epstein files on its own. What it does is add another public allegation tying Trump to Epstein. That puts more weight on the cases that can actually reach the records.

Where Phang v. Blanche Stands

On October 1st, Attorney General Todd Blanche asked U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan to end Katie Phang’s lawsuit on the pleadings.

Phang sued under the Administrative Procedure Act. She argues that the department’s decisions about what to release, redact, and withhold were final agency actions that violated the Epstein Files Transparency Act. In June, Sullivan granted her preliminary injunctive relief. He rejected the administration’s argument that the case was over because the department had declared its release complete.

The department produced about 3.5 million pages and announced compliance on January 30th. Sullivan’s June opinion noted that none of the productions came with a privilege log, even though the department had promised one. The opinion also noted that the department invoked deliberative process, attorney work product, and attorney-client privileges. Those grounds are not among the narrow categories the statute allows.

The statute is direct on the points that matter most here. It required the attorney general to publish all unclassified Epstein-related records held by the Justice Department, the FBI, and U.S. attorneys’ offices. It bars withholding records because of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity. It requires a written justification for every redaction, published in the Federal Register and sent to Congress. Phang also alleges that the department has withheld entire records and failed to publish those justifications. She further alleges it declined to review foreign-language documents, which the law does not exempt.

Blanche argues that Congress left enforcement to political oversight rather than private lawsuits. He also argues that Phang lacks standing and that the Freedom of Information Act is the proper tool. Todd Blanche has failed to provide documents that Judge Sullivan has demanded and will likely be held in civil contempt unless an appellate court hears his arguments, which have no basis in law.

The Other Cases Pressing on the Same Records

Phang’s suit is not the only pressure on the department.

On September 30th, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered the Justice Department to expedite FOIA requests filed by the Democracy Defenders Fund. One request seeks Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell investigative records that mention Trump or Mar-a-Lago, including any code names used for either. Another seeks communications about how officials were told to handle references to Trump in those files. It targets communications involving former Attorney General Pam Bondi, Blanche, Emil Bove, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Dan Bongino.

The judge found the requests involve widespread and exceptional media interest and possible questions about government integrity. Her opinion considered reporting that roughly 1,000 FBI personnel were directed to review Epstein records and flag mentions of Trump. The court did not find that reporting to be true. The order does not require immediate release, but it moves those requests to the front of the line.

In August, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued the Justice Department and Blanche for unredacted Epstein investigative materials tied to the state’s Zorro Ranch criminal investigation. The state says the federal refusal is obstructing its ability to identify witnesses and pursue crimes. Torrez and Representative Teresa Leger Fernández are also backing a proposed Epstein Files Transparency Act II. It would give survivors, state attorneys general, and prosecutors stronger enforcement tools. That bill has not passed.

How These Cases Connect

Courts do not decide cases based on public pressure. Each of these cases, however, turns on the same question: what does the government hold about Epstein and the people around him, and on what legal basis is it withholding it?

The transparency law was written to prevent the department from withholding records to protect anyone’s reputation, including a sitting president’s. Each new allegation involving Trump and Epstein makes the department’s unexplained redactions harder to defend in public. That holds even when the allegation, like Relford’s, may never be tested in court. It also sharpens what Phang is asking Sullivan to require: a specific, written reason for every redaction.

If Sullivan denies Blanche’s motion, the Phang case moves toward the question of whether each withholding was lawful. If the Democracy Defenders Fund requests are processed on an expedited basis, records about how the department handled Trump references could become public on a separate track. Either outcome would produce more information than the administration has chosen to release so far.

That information may not help the president. It also may not confirm any particular accusation. The department has said its releases include unverified tips and administrative material. Disclosure would show what the government has, not what is true. The point of the transparency law is that the public, and not the attorney general, gets to see the record.

What to Watch

In Palm Beach County, the first signs will be whether the clerk clears the hold and whether Trump is served. After that comes the expected motion to dismiss on limitations grounds. In Washington, the next major development is Sullivan’s ruling on the October 1st motion. Also watch how quickly the department processes the Democracy Defenders Fund requests under Kollar-Kotelly’s order. In New Mexico, the state’s suit for unredacted Zorro Ranch records remains pending.

 More On Trump Governance

 

djt god made trump ad

New York Times, Facing Backlash, Trump Says His Super PAC Will Pay for Taxpayer-Funded Ads, Shane Goldmacher, Theodore Schleifer and Maggie Haberman, Oct. 6, 2026 (print ed.). The president said that his PAC, MAGA, Inc., would pay for TV ads promoting him that had been paid for with taxpayer money.

President Trump reversed course on Monday and announced that his super PAC would now pay for the television ads promoting him that have been airing nationwide at taxpayer expense.

In a post on his social media platform, Mr. Trump wrote, “I have decided to do the Patriotic Ads, among others, and pay for them myself, and with money I raised for MAGA, Inc.”

More than $10 million in taxpayer-funded ads have run since September, according to AdImpact, the ad-tracking service. The ads, which are running on cable and network television, were paid for through a $20 million contract that used funds from the Department of Homeland Security.

Democrats — and some Republicans — have criticized the ads as a possible violation of federal laws for using taxpayer funds for “publicity or propaganda purposes.” The ads were broadcast in the heat of the campaign for the midterms, as Republicans are trying to hold control of Congress. At least one of the ads featured footage that originally had appeared in a 2024 Trump campaign video.

The White House had defended the ads as simply public service announcements. But the use of material that had originated in a campaign provided further fuel to critics of the ads.Sign up to get Maggie Haberman's articles emailed to you. Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent reporting on President Trump. Get it sent to your inbox.

There were four different ads and each featured an unusual disclaimer: “Paid for by the U.S. government.”

One of them featured images of Mr. Trump as the song “Love Me” by Christian Berishaj played. The artist, who performs as JMSN, has complained about the use of his song.

The New York Times wrote over the weekend that Mr. Trump had personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads. Federal records show that U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which falls under the Department of Homeland Security, awarded a contract to LMD, a Maryland marketing firm, on Sept. 20.

Mr. Trump referred to the backlash in his post.

“The Radical Left is upset with the fact that I am taking Ads, which I consider to be a positive promotion for our Great U.S.A., and paying for them with U.S.A. money,” he wrote, defending them as “a rather standard thing to do.”

The White House did not immediately respond to an email for comment or how the president’s super PAC would pay for the ads. A spokesman for MAGA Inc. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Trump’s claim in his social media post that he would pay for the ads “myself” through his super PAC is likely to add fodder to another formal complaint against the president.

A campaign watchdog group, the Campaign Legal Center, accused Mr. Trump of violating federal election laws by directing his super PAC in a complaint to the Federal Election Commission because of his previous claims to control the super PAC.

Mr. Trump has referred to the super PAC’s funds has “my money that I control” in the past.

Federal law bars federal office holders from directing spending decisions for a political organization with no contribution limits, such as a super PAC. 

New York Times, Trump Does Not Plan to Reimburse Taxpayers for Promotional Ads, Shane Goldmacher and Maggie Haberman, Oct. 6, 2026. A day after the president said his super PAC would pay for the ads, which had drawn bipartisan backlash, officials said that he meant moving forward. A new taxpayer-funded ad aired Tuesday.

A day after President Trump said his super PAC would pay for television ads promoting him that had been funded by taxpayers, White House officials said the group did not plan to reimburse the government for the more than $10 million it had already spent on the ads.

Mr. Trump announced on Monday evening that he was planning to have his super PAC, MAGA Inc., pay for the ads, which had drawn backlash from members of both parties. The White House officials later said that his promise would only apply “moving forward.”

Then, on Tuesday, a new taxpayer-funded ad — bragging about the American success in taking out Venezuela’s former leader Nicolás Maduro — began airing on television. The new ad features Mr. Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Officials in both parties have criticized the ads, which are being aired amid a heated midterm campaign. And some have said they could violate federal laws for using taxpayer funds for “publicity or propaganda purposes.” One of the ads included footage that had originally appeared in a 2024 Trump campaign video.

Facing backlash for the use of public funds for the promotional ads, Mr. Trump appeared to retreat on Monday, posting a message on Truth Social while en route to a rally in Nebraska. He wrote, “I have decided to do the Patriotic Ads, among others, and pay for them myself, and with money I raised for MAGA, Inc.”

A White House spokesperson said on Tuesday that “the president’s Truth was not referring to reimbursement.”

When Mr. Trump posted the message, more than $10 million of such ads had run, according to AdImpact, the ad-tracking service.

When Mr. Trump was asked on Tuesday if he would reimburse the government for the ads, he demurred and defended them as “promotion for the country” and said “we’ll decide.”

As of midday Tuesday, nearly $11.5 million has run, including a small sum for the new 60-second ad about the Venezuela operation. So far about $17,000 had been spent on the new ad, which began airing in the early hours of the day.

Most of the funds so far — $7.2 million — have paid for an ad that reused material from his 2024 campaign that casts Mr. Trump’s detractors as “villains.”

The ads are running nationally on cable and network television and paid for through a $20 million contract that uses funds from the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Trump personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads.

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, called for an investigation into the payments for the ads. “It’s not enough to simply have his super PAC slush fund foot the bill — an illegal action itself,” he said in a statement. “Trump must return this money to the American people and there must be a full investigation into this gross waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars.”

The White House did not respond to questions about whether the administration was canceling any or all of the remaining money planned on the ads. The White House also did not answer questions about whether Mr. Trump planned to have his super PAC pay for ads that have run after his post on Monday.

But the declaration from the president is a rare reversal in a second administration in which Mr. Trump has governed by gut instinct and a refusal to accept norms or most limits on executive power. The ads drew criticism from Democrats and some Republicans as an inappropriate use of taxpayer dollars; the spots tend to glorify the president rather than focus on any specific policy item.

More On Global Affairs 

New York Times, Potential Iranian Drone Attack Led to Exit of U.S. Aircraft from British Air Base, Eric Schmitt and Julian E. Barnes, Oct. 6, 2026 (print ed.). According to U.S. and British officials, 12 B-1 Air Force bombers from R.A.F. Fairford air base were withdrawn because of the risk of a drone attack ordered by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The United States abruptly withdrew all 12 B-1 Air Force bombers from an air base in southern England based on new information that commanders received about a potential drone attack ordered by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to U.S. and British officials.

The suspected attack was part of a complex, multipronged Iranian plot to strike aircraft and kill some of the several hundred American personnel stationed at the base, R.A.F. Fairford, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. All of the Air Force bombers were withdrawn over the weekend.

Some of the officials said they believed that the plot was loosely modeled on an audacious attack that Ukraine launched against Russia last year when it smuggled drones deep into the Russian heartland and launched them from semi trucks. The attack destroyed or damaged at least a dozen aircraft, including many of Moscow’s nuclear-capable strategic bombers, on runways in Siberia and Russia’s Far North.

Vice President JD Vance said on Monday that the Pentagon quickly moved the bombers “out of an abundance of caution trying to protect our guys.” He accused Iran of plotting attacks against the United States but stopped short of commenting on any details about the most recent threat.

“We do feel with some confidence that the Iranians are trying to do what the Iranian state has done for 49 years, which is engage in acts of terrorism against the United States and against a lot of other people as well,” Mr. Vance told reporters at Joint Base Andrews before leaving on a trip to Alaska. “We are being extremely cautious.”Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Iran and the United Kingdom? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

President Trump said on Monday that people linked to Iran posed a threat to the U.S. bombers at the British air base, prompting the order to return them to the United States. “There were some threats,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “Why should we leave them there?” he added, referring to the bombers.

The Wall Street Journal earlier reported the drone threat as the reason for the withdrawal.

The sudden pullout of the bombers came a week after the British police arrested five men who had been traveling the morning of Sept. 27 in white vans near the base, which has been used by American bombers in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. The men were released on bail a day later after the authorities did not discover explosives in the vans.

But the police have repeatedly said the men remain under investigation, and a British-Iranian dual national was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts.

The rushed order to withdraw the bombers was highly unusual: Such moves are rarely made so quickly from an allied air base in a peacetime country thousands of miles from a combat zone.

Indeed, the need to move the bombers from the base was deemed so urgent that some of the planes and their flight crews left while aerial refueling aircraft were still being deployed to support their flights to the United States, American officials said.

Many details about the potential threat that prompted the rapid withdrawal of the Air Force bombers, some of which had arrived just in the past week as part of a regular rotation of forces, remained murky on Monday. One U.S. official said the new information was part of the same threat warnings that surfaced three weeks ago, though a sense of urgency spiked over the weekend, alarming commanders.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham said last week that the British government believed Iran played a part in planning the events that led to the arrests. U.S. and British officials, as well as those in Germany and Israel, believe the operation is connected to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps or a separate military headquarters in Tehran. Iran has denied the accusations.

New York Times, Strikes, Barricades and Fiscal Turmoil: An Autumn of Discontent Grips France, Mark Landler, Oct. 6, 2026. Chaos in schools, on the streets and in the markets is rooted in France’s struggles to fund its social welfare state, with a presidential election approaching.

Striking public workers. Barricaded high schools. Blocked ports. Budget paralysis. Spiraling bond rates. Fears of a far-right takeover.

France suddenly finds itself engulfed by crisis — not a single spasm of unrest, but a cascade of disruption that is roiling city streets, trading floors and public offices across the country. France’s “rentrée,” or “return,” as the French call the back-to-school and back-to-work season, has been anything but orderly.

While the causes of the chaos may appear disparate, they can be traced to a common root: France’s two-decade-long struggle to fund its state, now exacerbated by high borrowing costs, surging fuel prices and political uncertainty, with jockeying underway to replace President Emmanuel Macron next spring.

French public finances, already fragile, continue to deteriorate, fanning fears in financial markets that France could be the next European country to tumble into a full-blown financial crisis. The fiscal jitters were amplified by recent polls that show the far-right candidate, Marine Le Pen, would beat all her rivals in presidential elections that will be held next spring.

On Tuesday, teachers and other public workers plan rallies against proposed wage freezes as the government labors to pass a budget. They will join thousands of students who have blockaded schools to protest underfunding that has led to crumbling facilities and a shortage of teachers.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

 

U.S. 2026 Midterm elections

New York Times, Texas Pediatricians Face Paxton Investigations for Vaccinating Children, Christina Jewett, Oct. 6, 2026 (print ed.). Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general and Republican Senate candidate, has alleged a sprawling profit-driven conspiracy. Pediatricians say the accusations are an attempt at intimidation.

It was a bustling Monday morning at a little pediatrician’s office in central Texas. Children with rashes, fevers and runny noses cycled through exam rooms decorated with butterflies, planets and colorful maps. The doctor, who had been treating kids in the community for 20 years, was delighted when a woman she had cared for as a child came in with her newborn.

Until recently, she had planned to continue her practice for years to come. But this year, she has begun to ken paxton mugreconsider amid the stress and legal costs of defending herself in a statewide investigation by Ken Paxton, left, the attorney general of Texas and Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, who has accused doctors, drug companies and insurers of conspiring to push parents into vaccinating children.

She agreed to be interviewed and allowed a reporter to visit her practice but asked to be identified by her middle name, Rachel, to protect her from retaliation.

In December, Dr. Rachel received a letter from the attorney general’s Consumer Protection Division demanding her vaccine purchase records over the past 10 years. “The division believes that you are in possession, custody or control” of material, “involving potential misleading or deceptive acts regarding incentives associated with the administration of childhood vaccines,” it said, adding that such acts could be in violation of the state’s deceptive trade practices law.

The letter also requested her practice’s vaccine policy, and said that it would not be sufficient to cite the childhood vaccine schedule recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mr. Paxton has also implicated the nation’s largest organization of pediatricians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, in the alleged conspiracy over the workaday task of protecting children from polio, measles, meningitis and more than a dozen other dangerous and sometimes life-threatening diseases.

“I will ensure that Big Pharma and Big Insurance don’t bribe medical providers to pressure parents to jab their kids with vaccines they feel aren’t safe or necessary,” he said when announcing the investigation in January, describing his efforts as working “alongside President Trump” and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“Together, we will Make America Healthy Again,” he said, using the rallying cry of a movement that helped elect Mr. Trump and propel Mr. Kennedy into the top health position in the federal government.

In many ways, pediatricians, among the lowest-paid specialists in medicine, make for an unlikely target. But they have become a focus in what has become a wide-ranging campaign to raise doubts about vaccination, part of a 20-year quest for Mr. Kennedy that some of his political allies have joined.

The efforts have gained steam despite decades of evidence of the effectiveness of vaccines. More than 1.1 million deaths, from diseases like diphtheria, hepatitis B and measles, were prevented by childhood vaccines in the United States from 1994 through 2023, according to an estimate from the C.D.C.

Unlike many organizations that have drawn fire from the Trump administration and its surrogates, the 67,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics has not retreated. It has sued the Trump administration over policy changes and grant cancellations, with some success so far.

New York Times, How Alaska’s Fish Became a Defining Issue for the Midterms, Anna Griffin, Visuals by Kerry Tasker, Oct. 6, 2026. In the battle for an Alaska Senate seat and the governor’s mansion, the oil-dependent state’s declining fisheries loom large, but no one wants to look at the biggest culprit, climate change.

Like corn in Iowa and cattle in Oklahoma, fish are always a hot topic in Alaska. This year, they could help determine which party controls the Senate.

Former Representative Mary Peltola ended a nearly half-century Republican hold on Alaska’s lone House seat four years ago campaigning on “fish, family and freedom,” a phrase that was treated as something of a cute joke in Washington but was deadly serious back home. As politicians of all parties know, Alaska’s fisheries are central to the state’s fragile economy and facing an extraordinary convergence of threats.

In Alaska’s Senate race, Ms. Peltola has accused Senator Dan Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, of putting “Seattle-based factory trawlers ahead of Alaskan families and our rivers.” She has doubled down on her fishing-first platform with a proposal to ban out-of-state trawlers, massive vessels that sweep the Bering Sea with funnel-shaped nets and process their catch onboard.

Mr. Sullivan has promoted his work to reduce the accidental catch of juvenile salmon and halibut, and has targeted Russian and Chinese fishing fleets that he says undercut Alaska fishermen.

“We are both talking about our fisheries in this campaign, but the difference is, I’ve actually done things to help protect them,” Mr. Sullivan said at a September Kodiak Chamber of Commerce debate focused entirely on fisheries.

A chorus of candidates for other offices, including governor and the House, has joined the fight — though few in oil-dependent Alaska are as eager with ideas for combating what scientists say is the broader threat, climate change and warming waters.ImageDan Sullivan and Mary Peltola participated in a fisheries debate on Kodiak Island last month.ImageMs. Peltola accused Senator Dan Sullivan of putting “Seattle-based factory trawlers ahead of Alaskan families and our rivers.”

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, Dems Up 11 In Gallup Party ID, Troy Jackson Up 4 In Maine, “Elections are decided in November, but they’re won in October,” Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 6, 2026. With 4 weeks to go, all the data is pointing to a good election for us. We’ve seen it in the overperformances in special, local, and state elections of all kinds in states all across the country since early last year.

We’ve seen it in the heightened Democratic performance in the primary vote in state after state throughout 2026. We’ve seen it in the many, many Republican retirements from the Senate and House this year. We’ve seen it in the voter registration data from the past few months. We are seeing it in the national polls, battleground state polls, the generic ballot polls, and are starting to see it in the early Early Vote data too. We are seeing it in the lowest consumer sentiment readings we’ve seen in 65 years. We are seeing it in how Rs are already abandoning battleground states and districts that Trump won in 2024, and we are seeing in the panicky on-the- record and blind quotes we are seeing from Republicans in story and after story, day after day after day.

My main point to this morning is that there is a mountain of data, from all sorts of sources, all pointing in the same direction my friends - that it is going to be a good election for us, and a bad election for them - without any really serious outliers or challenging data that you can point too.

We got more affirming data and events this morning. Here’s a big one - the venerable Gallup quarterly Party ID series dropped this am. It has Dems up 50%-39% in the third quarter of 2026, fully 15 points higher than q4 of 2024. Just look at the trend lines of this graph (!!!!!), and note that we are just below our highest mark in the last 35 years:

A new high-quality Marist poll has Troy Jackson ahead and over 50% in Maine, and the fundamentals there really favoring us:

What we are seeing in the early Early Vote so far is exactly what we thought we would see in the data - Democrats running ahead of 2022 and 2024:

As we start diving into the Early Vote data in the coming weeks always keep in mind that the unaffiliated or independent category will be running much more Democratic this year than 2022 or 2024, so the Dem advantage will be even greater than the Dem/GOP numbers we will see each day.

Trump’s campaign stop in Nebraska yesterday is further confirmation of just how much trouble Republicans are in now. First, that Trump was campaigning the final month in a state he won by 20% points and Senator Pete Ricketts won by 25% just two years ago is astonishing. But also yesterday Trump reminded us that in his desperation, in his addled and incoherent state, that he is likely to say and do things that will further drive the electorate away from Republicans. For while we see how awful, depraved, and insane he is every day most Americans do not see it; and they are not going to like what they see.

In his Nebraska rally Trump implied he would be OK with Iran “taking out” two of the largest cities in America:

And he has ended his illegal ad campaign for closing out the election by breaking laws and cheating is not going to play well with voters:

Finally that quote in today’s headline comes from our ass-kicking friend NC Dem Chair Anderson Clayton in an email she sent to supporters today. It is going to become one our closing mantas here at Hopium: 

The Fight For Democracy in the Trump Era

The Hartmann Report,  Opinion: The Billionaires See the Revolt Coming. Can They Buy Their Way Out Again? Thom Hartmann, right, thom hartmann newOct. 6, 2026. A worldwide backlash against oligarchy is gathering force, while America’s richest pour fortunes into keeping voters angry at everyone but them…

Will the worldwide revolt against oligarchy reach America before the billionaires buy our elections this fall?

hartmann report newTwo weeks ago tomorrow, on September 23rd, Madrid’s police had to cordon off a downtown street to carry an 87-year-old woman named María del Carmen Abascal out of the apartment she’d lived in for seven decades. She normally uses a wheelchair, so they carried her out on a stretcher, which provided some truly inflammatory social media video. All because her landlord wanted to raise the rent, which requires a change of tenants.

The pictures of María being carried out of her apartment lit Spain on fire; she’s become the face of the nation’s housing crisis which has seen average rents nearly double in the past ten years. This past weekend tens of thousands marched again, with about a thousand people camped out in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol: one banner read “Looking for an apartment, selling a kidney.”

While the pressure campaign worked on the landlord, who backed down and agreed to let her go home, it didn’t work on the “conservative” politicians who dominate the Spanish parliament. When Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government proposed emergency tenant protections, the conservative opposition parties joined forces to kill them in parliament. As a result, Sánchez has pretty much been forced into taking the gamble of calling a snap election for November 29th.

Spain is the microcosm, but this is happening all across the developed world. France is on fire because students are tired of their schools being starved for resources. Populist movements are sweeping the European continent.

Forty-five years of “conservative” neoliberalism and austerity — all specifically designed to make the rich richer at the expense of working class people — have left average citizens furious.

And that fury is driving two parallel movements; the big question before us is which one will prevail both this fall here and over the next few years worldwide.

One movement is reflected in the encampment in Puerta del Sol where people understand that the landlord, land speculators, and the morbidly rich are the cause of their pain. You could call this the New Deal movement, for shorthand.

The other is seen in the far-right parties that have been topping the polls in Germany, France, and Britain by telling those same frightened people that it’s not the billionaires that are the problem; it’s that brown-skinned immigrant with a funny name or the queer kid who lives down the street.

Whichever side wins the argument over who’s the villain in today’s economic crisis for working people will be the one that ends up running these countries, including America.

We’ve seen this movie before here in America, although most people have no memory of it and could only vaguely recognize a quick telling of history.

The last time the morbidly rich held as much of our nation’s wealth and political power as they do today was the Gilded Age from the 1880s to the late 1920s, and popular rage at the oligarchs led to real progressive change:

— Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890, and then progressive Republican Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft used it to break up the railroad and oil trusts along with dozens of others.

— The Tillman Act of 1907 made it a crime for corporations to give money or any sort of support to federal candidates for office.

— The income tax arrived in 1913 and the estate tax in 1916, and by the 1930s Franklin Roosevelt was building Social Security, the right to unionize, and the rest of the New Deal on that simple foundation.

— After World War II, democracies around the world copied FDR’s American New Deal formula, and that tightly regulated capitalism along with high taxes on the morbidly rich produced the largest middle class in history.

Then working class people and progressives got complacent, thinking this would be the new normal forever, with a single paycheck being the entrée into the middle class. The oligarchs, however, were just getting started, just like they did during the Industrial Revolution following the Civil War that produced the first Gilded Age.

As I lay out in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy, the counterattack began in 1971 when a corrupt tobacco lawyer named Lewis Powell wrote a memo for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce urging corporate America to step up and use their great wealth to seize control of our courts, campuses, media, low-media-cost low-population states that could be flipped Red, and Congress.

The Heritage Foundation and ALEC followed within two years, as rightwing billionaires started buying radio stations, newspapers, and television networks, while Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, below right, turned the project into government policy.

ronald reagan oThe regulations and tax rates that had restrained great wealth and political corruption came down, and the money and political power of giant corporations and the morbidly rich have largely controlled both our politics and our economy ever since.

Working people noticed they were getting screwed but by then there was a massive rightwing media infrastructure to redirect their anger, probably the oligarchs’ greatest achievement.

For example, when Bush’s 2008 property- and bank-crash set off real rage at the banks and their oligarch CEOs, Koch-funded front groups organized it into the Tea Party and pointed it at Obama and his attempts to give all Americans healthcare.

It hit its peak of success when Donald Trump came down the escalator in 2015, telling voters he didn’t need anybody’s money because, as he put it, “I’m really rich.” Suddenly it wasn’t the rich who were screwing average Americans: it was the rich who’d save us!

To pull it off, he appropriated New Deal and Great Society language, promising to save and even strengthen Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; this is what con men have done throughout history.

The voters wanted their New Deal back with its middle class security on a single paycheck, but, true to Republican form, what they got instead was trillions in tax cuts for billionaires like Trump and his cabinet, paid for with almost a trillion dollars in cuts to Medicaid, an experimental program in six states to further privatize Medicare, and threats to cut Social Security.

One of the most interesting laboratories for finding out whether billionaire money can still buy public opinion the way the Kochs did with the Tea Party is Prop 40 in California, the 5 percent one-time tax on that state’s roughly 230 billionaires that will cover the healthcare shortfall the state will experience because of the Big Beautiful Billionaire’s Bill’s cuts to Medicaid.

A billionaire-backed group has gathered more than $187 million to stop it, while the measure’s backers have only pulled together an estimated $31 million. Google’s Sergey Brin alone has put in over $100 million.

The billionaires’ group even succeeded in getting two decoy measures, Props 41 and 42, on the same ballot, written so that if either one gets more votes than Prop 40, the billionaire tax dies even if a majority of Californians vote for it.

And the ads for the “No on 40” campaign is featuring teachers, firefighters, and the head of the state’s Planned Parenthood affiliates while the “Yes on 40” side says in the official voter guide that actual teachers, nurses, and Planned Parenthood workers support the tax.

It’s the same kind of phony grassroots campaign Reagan used when he promised cutting taxes and killing unions would increase prosperity, and when the Tea Party and GOP warned against “communism” in Obamacare, forcing the end to the possibility of a public option.

This same billionaire and corporate money is now pouring into the Senate races nationwide, using tools the robber barons of the late 19th century could have only dreamed about.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee released a deepfake of Texas Democrat James Talarico in a dress with a disclosure so small and faint that Berkeley digital forensics expert Hany Farid said most people wouldn’t immediately know it was fake. Another group produced a phony “Daisy” ad portraying him as a doctor performing gender surgeries on children.

In Michigan, Republicans greeted Abdul El-Sayed’s primary win with ads built around his full name and the Muslim Brotherhood, and their main super PAC has committed $51 million to that one race. On Sunday, I watched MS NOW play two of the newest deceptive Republican deepfakes, one putting Talarico in a makeup chair and another inventing “terrorists” in El-Sayed’s family.

Spending just on Senate races is projected to pass $3.4 billion this cycle, and most of the big money is just now starting to hit the airwaves and, thus, tightening the races that had seemed were in the bag for Democrats.

And if the lies don’t work, there’s always the power of our currently-billionaire-run government to insert itself in ways that can spin an election out of control. Last September Trump signed a national security memorandum called NSPM-7 that directs the FBI, the Treasury, and the IRS to go after the networks and funders behind what it calls domestic terrorism, and it lists among the “indicators” of that terrorism:

“anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity.”

By that standard, María’s Spanish neighbors camped in a public square to protest a greedy landlord could find themselves under investigation. Add the masked, anonymous, trigger-happy ICE thugs already working our streets with their new electric shock gloves, and the machinery of a “papers, please” society is right here right now.

There’s no way this one single election will settle all this. During the first Gilded Age, it took 45 years to go from the Sherman Act to Social Security — with quite a few lost elections along the way —and the people who won that fight went through it never knowing if they’d prevail or not; the biggest intervention was probably the Republican Great Depression.

But this November is a hinge moment in history. A Congress that can check Trump, a billionaire tax passed in the biggest state in the union, and senators like Talarico and El-Sayed who explicitly have run against the Epstein billionaire class would tell every Republican and the oligarchs who own them that their old trick of pointing at immigrants and trans kids has stopped working.

On the other hand, if the deepfakes, decoy ballot measures, massive rightwing media penetration, algorithmic manipulation on billionaire-owned social media platforms, and billions in ads win out instead, they’ll be used in every election from here on.

The easy lesson here is that if Spain’s protesters got an 87-year-old woman back into her home by showing up, we can do the same for our democracy that’s been so badly battered by 45 years of Republican con men and Democratic neoliberals.

The next No Kings day of action is Saturday, October 17th, and “No Kings” has always meant “No Oligarchs,” too.

Check your registration at vote.org, call your members of Congress through the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 and tell them you want deepfake political ads outlawed, and if you live in California, vote yes on 

The Fight For Democracy in the Trump Era

garrett graff doomsbury1Doomsday Scenario, Historical Commentary: A thirsty Patel juices FBI stats — and DOJ gets Watergate wrong, Garrett M. Graff, above, Oct. 6, 2026. It's not as funny as it sounds.

Two Justice Department nuggets that I want to mention today — two nuggets that may, at first glance, seem both quotidian, even silly, but that together offer an important warning about the coming months:

1. Kash Patel Juices the Stats?

First, here’s the strangest scandal to emerge from newly engaged Kash Patel’s FBI. (Stranger, you might wonder, than the scandals about the customized bottle of bourbon? Okay, maybe not.) But it’s still quite weird: is Patel juicing the arrest stats of the Ten Most Wanted?

FBI logoOn Friday, the Justice Department blasted out a press release about how an alleged Venezuelan Tren de Aragua cybercriminal appeared in court in Nebraska after being apprehended overseas. FBI director Patel, fresh off his latest turn of scandals, bragged that the arrest of Anibal Alexander Canelon Aguirre, the 540th individual added to the bureau’s historic “Top 10 Most Wanted Fugitives” list, itself marked a significant milestone in the FBI’s 110-year war on crime: “Since the start of the Trump administration, we’ve captured TEN of the Top Ten Most Wanted, 2.5 times the number of TMW [the Ten Most Wanted] fugitives captured during the previous four years combined.”

But the arrest also renewed suspicions that Patel is manipulating the Ten Most Wanted list. Traditionally, the “Most Wanted” list has been used to build public awareness, build political pressure on fugitives overseas, or highlight specific threats. Now Patel seems to be featuring fugitives whose arrest is imminent.

Earlier this year, MS NOW’s Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian reported that the bureau appeared to be adding fugitives that the FBI had already located or were close to locating. Writing in May, they calculated, “Of the six fugitives caught since Patel was sworn, four were seized within a month of the FBI leadership elevating them to the top of the Ten Most Wanted list. Two of those four were grabbed within 24 hours of being added to the list, according to the FBI.” In one particularly eyebrow-raising case, a fugitive “was apprehended in Culiacán, Mexico, in March, just one hour and 13 minutes after FBI leadership placed him on the Most Wanted list,” meaning that the operation to arrest him had been in the works for days before. Another was added less than a day before she was arrested, again indicating that the plan to arrest her was well underway before the paperwork cleared the Hoover Building.

“They are literally just nominating people they’re about to arrest or that they have solid information on and can affect arrest,” one FBI official told MS NOW. “Gone are the days of nominating the worst of the worst and fugitives that we haven’t been able to find.”

The Ten Most Wanted has long been more what one might call a “statement of priorities” than a ranked list of the ten worst criminal fugitives. Today’s list is a strange and sad mélange of drug dealers, murderers, and fraudsters. Osama bin Laden was added to the list in the summer of 1999, more than two years before the 9/11 plot, and long sat alongside on the list Russian mafia leader Semion Mogilevich, who was living openly in Russia at the time.

If past is prologue, I’d be real careful if I were Satinderjeet Singh, a racketeer added last week to the Ten Most Wanted list — I’d assume that means that the FBI arrest team was already lining up in my hallway outside.

Yet Patel’s need to apparently juice the stats shows just how he thirsty he remains, how desperate he is amid his million scandals and embarrassments to remain in Trump’s favor. His Twitter feed is just an endless scroll of self-congratulatory posts and strange stat-filled graphics championing how tireless his personal efforts have been. My recent favorite, from last week, is about how he calls people overseas more often than his predecessor. No, really

Like, really, who cares? Posts like this make Kash Patel out to be the worst “Inbox Zero” middle manager of your career — the type of person who writes down items on his daily to-do list just to cross them off and then brags to the team about how many emails he’s answered and Zoom meetings he’s participated in. Imagine being a fully-grown mid-career adult (Patel is 46), someone who on paper even has even achieved meaningful career success and power, and bragging to literally anyone about how many phone calls you’ve made in your job.

The idea that this brag almost surely involved government staff, career FBI personnel, counting up his telephone calls and then tallying Chris Wray’s telephone calls and then building a graphic about said details on taxpayer-paid work hours is even more insane.

It is, though, all sadly consistent with a man so crushingly insecure that he wouldn’t let his aides talk him out of responding on Twitter to a bot that called him a retard.Upgrade

* * *2. What the Justice Department Doesn’t Get About Watergate

Second, as if Todd Blanche’s modern Justice Department wasn’t doing enough to undermine law and order in our time, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday that it was now entertaining the idea that somehow Richard Nixon was unfairly targeted and maligned as president amid his umbrella of the Watergate scandal.

I wrote in June about the latest era of rehabbing Richard Nixon’s image and the growing obsession and power inside Trumpworld of the idea that “Nixon was wronged.”

Justice Department log circularNow it appears that the Justice Department is giving official thought to the idea: Researcher Geoff Shepard, who has written three conspiracy-filled books on Watergate, including one that the whole thing was an effort to make Ted Kennedy president, gave a two-hour presentation, including 78-page slide deck, to the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility about how Nixon and his fellow targets were targeted unfairly and mistreated by prosecutors. Shepherd’s presentation was called “Watergate As Lawfare.”

Shepard, whose research I went over when I was writing my own book and who boasts of his own heartwarming encounter with Nixon at a scholarship luncheon in college, has become one of the leading voices of the movement of “Watergate revisionism,” a foolhardy view that broadly holds a mostly innocent Nixon was betrayed by insiders around him.

Much of the recent revisionism around Watergate equates the “persecution” of Trump, and his many many many crimes, with the idea that somehow Nixon was also targeted by a “Deep State plot.” It’s clearly based on (a) a wildly simplistic and misguided understanding of what Watergate “was”; (b) a desire to hand-wave away both Donald Trump’s egregious corruption, abuse of office, and conspiracies to hold onto power and persecute his enemies; as well as (c) to promote the idea that presidents deserve to be above the law.

The latest DOJ interest seems heading toward some official apology or rebuke of the past prosecution, presumably as a way to excuse Trump’s behavior today and make clear how the Deep State has always wrongly persecuted presidents.

It’s all wrong — both historically and in the modern-day.

The WSJ wrote, “Mainstream scholars have long concluded that Watergate generated a genuine constitutional crisis and that Nixon, not those who investigated him, was guilty of a malfeasance which not only doomed his presidency but also led to overhauls that significantly curtailed executive power.”

Count me in the mainstream.

As the author of what I’d like to believe is the definitive “mainstream” account of the scandal, I think it’s worth remembering the full arc of Watergate and how it was much more than a burglary. I think most Americans still misremember, wrongly, that the whole prosecution was the burglary itself — if you ask the average American they’d probably tell you that the only people prosecuted were the burglars.

In reality, 69 people were indicted or charged with crimes stemming from the Watergate prosecutions — and 48 of those in the end pleaded guilty or were found guilty at trial. As I summarized the full scope in my book:

Ultimately, multiple Cabinet officials would face criminal charges, an FBI director would resign and face prosecution, a congressman would commit suicide, and a CIA director would plead guilty to misleading Congress. There were secret hush money payoffs, threats of blackmail, layers upon layers of betrayals, an alleged kidnapping, and even a suspicious plane crash.

There were rumors of high-priced call girls, allegations of the CIA and the Pentagon spying on the Nixon White House itself, and accusations of illegal donations from the Greek military junta. All told, 69 people would be indicted on charges stemming from the related investigations—including George Steinbrenner—and companies from Goodyear Tires and Gulf Oil to American Airlines and 3M found themselves pleading guilty to illegally financing Nixon’s reelection. Nixon’s attorney general and commerce secretary were put on trial together, a case then dubbed the “trial of the century,” despite being all-but forgotten today. The careers of three consecutive attorneys general would be upended.

It was the largest, most egregious and far-reaching scandal in American presidential history — until the current era we’re all living through.

To me, the scandal worth focusing on now isn’t the events of Watergate or the reaction and reforms thereafter. The scandal we need to focus on as a country is that we didn’t engage in a similar post-Watergate era of robust reforms and oversight mechanisms after the first Trump administration. Had we been more aggressive in those post-Trump prosecutions, congressional and democracy reforms, we might have been able to prevent this second, increasingly unrepairable debacle.

* * *

Now it would be easy to think these two scandals — Kash Patel’s thirsty stat obsession and DOJ’s embrace of Nixon era conspiracism — are unrelated stories, just tiny pictures into the day-to-day corruption and misguided antics of the Trump administration two years in.

Yet to me they are very much the SAME story — the story of one of the most important corners of the US government, one that all Americans rely on daily both to protect us from criminal and terrorist threats but also to safeguard our privacy and civil liberties, has been corrupted by being led by the President’s own personal defense attorney and operate not as if it’s the government’s law firm, but as if it has but a single client: Donald Trump himself. Kash Patel knows that to keep his job, he must keep Donald Trump happy. Justice Department staff recognize that embracing Trump’s brain-melting conspiracies and persecution complex is critical to pleasing their boss, the attorney general, and thus the president.

It would be easy to write off Patel’s thirst as a punchline, except that The Atlantic’s Sarah Fitzpatrick reminded us Friday too of the stakes: A month out from the midterms, Patel seems determined to stir up trouble and please his boss by entertaining conspiracies about the elections. As she asked: “Is There Anything Kash Patel Won’t Do for Trump Before the Midterms?” Her underlying article then makes clear how thirstily Patel is trying to make hay out of Trump’s incorrect and false election conspiracies — and how he’s overpromising on what he can deliver arrests-wise and evidence-wise. After all, this is the guy who bragged for years about wanting to release the Epstein Files — and then has stonewalled releasing them time and again in office, so much so that it basically drove his fellow MAGA podcaster Dan Bongino to quit as his deputy director.

The reporting about Watergate makes clear that it’s a broader question than that too: Is there any hoax, conspiracy, or fabricated evidence that won’t meet the bar of Todd Blanche’s Justice Department? As we enter the final weeks of a very high-stakes, high-tension election — one where Americans are already voting today — it’s deeply worrisome that the primary threat actor we need to protect against is our own Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security.

Similarly, it’s an astounding realization to understand that we’re living in an era where the Justice Department under John Mitchell — Nixon’s campaign manager, architect of Watergate era dirty tricks, and the first former U.S. Attorney General to be convicted of a crime and serve time in federal prison — probably ran a cleaner, less corrupt, less personally subservient Justice Department than Todd Blanche. 

More On U.S. Law, Courts, Rights

 

dennis hastert gavel wikipedia

New York Times, Dennis Hastert, Powerful Politician Disgraced by Child Sexual Abuse, Dies, Carl Hulse, Oct. 6, 2026 (print ed.). The longest-serving Republican speaker of the House, shown above, admitted in 2016 to abusing teenage boys decades earlier. He was 84.

J. Dennis Hastert, a once-obscure Illinois congressman who rose to become the longest-serving Republican speaker of the House before falling from grace in a sex abuse scandal that came to light after he left government, has died. He was 84.

The coroner’s office in Kendall County, Ill., was notified of Mr. Hastert’s death on Saturday evening, according to a statement. He was pronounced dead at his home while under hospice care, the coroner said.

dennis hastert prison wheelchair abcMr. Hastert, a former teacher and wrestling coach (shown above in a prison wheelchair with his wife), was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison in April 2016 for violating federal banking laws, having made millions of dollars in secret payments to cover up sexual misconduct with a male student. He was released in July 2017 and from then on lived out of the public eye despite his earlier prominence in Washington.

Mr. Hastert admitted at his sentencing that he sexually abused teenage wrestlers as young as 14 whom he coached at Yorkville High School in Yorkville, Ill., where he worked from 1965 to 1981. The federal judge who sentenced Mr. Hastert called him “a serial child molester.”

It was a stunning downfall for Mr. Hastert, a burly, stooped figure who had once trudged through the Capitol hallways surrounded by aides and a security detail.

He had emerged as a surprise consensus choice for speaker in 1998 during a period of partisan uproar over the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. He held the post during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and their aftermath, working closely with President George W. Bush in pushing a tough antiterror agenda and fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He also forced through an expansion of Medicare to cover prescription drug costs, a long-sought benefit. But the way that vote was handled contributed to an ethical cloud that gathered over House Republicans in the Hastert era.

Mr. Hastert lost the speakership after Democrats reclaimed the majority in the 2006 midterm elections. The Democratic victory was fueled in part by accusations that Mr. Hastert and his leadership team had failed to respond aggressively to accusations that a Republican House member, Mark Foley of Florida, had behaved inappropriately with male House pages of high-school age.

Mr. Hastert chose not to seek a Republican leadership role after the repudiation of his party in 2006. He left Congress in November 2007 to pursue a lucrative lobbying and consulting career.

Justice Integrity Project Editor's Note: Investigative reporter Wayne Madsen, left, a courageous reporter, a wayne madsen new observerformer Navy intelligence officer and a close colleague of this editor, broke the Hastert story in a three-part series in the fall of 2006  published on "The Wayne Madsen Report" naming the then-powerful House Speaker as a gay pedophile and hypocrite who presided over a "gay Mafia" of powerful Republicans in Congress who abused youths while winning elections as  "family values" purists. No other publication dared follow up on the story until the federal indictment years later.

New York Times Magazine, Congress Is Supposed to Be More Powerful Than the Supreme Court. Why Isn’t It? Emily Bazelon, Oct. 5, 2026. Trump and his allies in the Capitol have revealed a problem that has been developing for decades.

President Trump’s second term has revealed many weaknesses in America’s political system. This is one of them: It turns out that the government can function (or malfunction) based just on orders of the president and the Supreme Court’s rulings on those orders. Congress is largely irrelevant, if it wants to be.

As the court returns for a new term this week, we are due for another round of debate about the separation of powers — the fight between the executive and the courts, especially. Just as important, though far less frequently noted, is the balance between the Supreme Court and Congress. And that situation is deeply weird.

Here’s how it’s supposed to work but no longer does: Congress writes laws. The courts interpret them. When Congress disagrees with these statutory interpretations, it has the power to pass a new law to override them. Constitutional rulings are different: The Supreme Court claimed that it had say over interpreting the nation’s founding document in the case of Marbury v. Madison in 1803. Congress may still have room to respond with a new law, but it can’t just say the court got the Constitution wrong.

Today, Republicans in the House and the Senate have the power to give the president — the leader of their party — what he wants, even when the Supreme Court disagrees. Over the summer, for example, the justices handed Trump defeats on two cherished priorities, imposing global tariffs and resetting the rules for mail-in voting. A lower-court judge blocked Trump’s appointees on the board of the Kennedy Center from putting his name on it, which he appears to care about even more. 

New York Times, Ex-C.I.A. Officer Who Stashed Gold Bars Admits to Far Larger $145 Million Scam, Devlin Barrett, Oct. 6, 2026. A plea hearing revealed a far larger pattern of fraud against the government, while keeping some key secrets still hidden.

A former C.I.A. officer who the authorities say stashed hundreds of gold bars in his home admitted in court on Tuesday to a far larger web of deception, including a $145 million scam involving luxury real estate and providing sensitive intelligence to a foreign government official.

david rushThe shocking details of the case were revealed in federal court in Alexandria, Va., where David J. Rush, right, pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud, which could earn him up to 20 years behind bars.

The new details of his crimes, however, far surpassed what had been previously known about the unusual case, even as they in some ways deepened the mystery of an episode at the heart of America’s intelligence community that has been cloaked in secrecy.

Those crimes included his admission in court that he had shared the identity of a human source with a foreign government, a grave violation of what is among the C.I.A.’s most highly protected secrets.

John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, said Mr. Rush had “abused his position and betrayed the public trust and should be held fully accountable for his actions.”

Mr. Rush, a 49-year-old former intelligence officer, was arrested in May after investigators found roughly 300 gold bars stashed in the basement of his Virginia home. U.S. officials have previously said he created a fake classified program — one that only a few people were permitted to know about — that allowed him to accumulate the bars, worth more than $40 million.

In court on Tuesday, a federal prosecutor, Kevin Hakala, described far more sweeping and potentially consequential crimes beyond the gold bar scam. In all, the schemes totaled more than $193 million in fraud.

In October 2025, Mr. Rush used his “position of trust” as a senior C.I.A. officer to create a fake secret government program to purchase roughly $145 million worth of “luxury real estate in South Florida,” Mr. Hakala said. All the luxury properties were in the Palm Beach area, according to court papers.

The funds for the purchases were transferred to a holding company by a government contractor who expected to be reimbursed, officials said. Mr. Rush planned to also have expensive renovations done on the properties so they could be resold for profit, the prosecutor said.

Separately, in 2025, Mr. Rush knowingly disclosed “certain descriptive information of a U.S. government clandestine human source” to a “foreign government official,” Mr. Hakala told Judge Michael S. Nachmanoff of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Prosecutors did not explain further, and a portion of Mr. Rush’s guilty plea was conducted under seal. Court papers, however, say that on April 28, during an interview conducted by the C.I.A., Mr. Rush admitted to disclosing the information to a foreign official.

Mr. Rush also orchestrated a scheme in which he arranged to take roughly $1.8 million in private charter flights, paid for by the government, that had no legitimate purpose, prosecutors said.

After prosecutors recounted his crimes in open court, Mr. Rush, wearing an olive green prison jumpsuit, agreed that he had committed those acts.

A lawyer for Mr. Rush declined to comment outside court. His sentencing was scheduled for January.

Officials say they learned about the full details of Mr. Rush’s schemes after he was arrested.

When F.B.I. agents first searched his house, they said they found 303 gold bars. In court on Tuesday, prosecutors said that the correct number was 298 gold bars, and that they had cost the government more than $46 million to obtain. As part of that scheme, Mr. Rush told colleagues that he had given the gold to others as part of the secret program, when in fact he had taken them from his office in Loudoun County, Va., to his home nearby.

“The program did not exist,” Mr. Hakala said in court.

People familiar with the investigation had said Mr. Rush’s fake top secret program to obtain the gold bars was supposedly related to “continuity of government operations.” That term usually refers to the government being able to operate during a national disaster or an attack.

Mr. Rush “read in” two colleagues to the program in a manner that prevented them from talking to others about it. Then he persuaded one of them to transfer millions of dollars to the program via a fraudulent government contract, the people said.

According to court documents, Mr. Rush requested and received “a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses” from last November to March.

A public trial of Mr. Rush was always unlikely, given the sensitive nature of his work.

At the time of his arrest, he was at work on highly classified programs for both the C.I.A. and the Pentagon that government officials wanted to keep under wraps.

Mr. Rush had worked closely with Stephen A. Feinberg, the deputy secretary of defense, for years. Before the C.I.A. fired Mr. Rush, the two had collaborated on a highly classified program focused on spying on China.

When the C.I.A. began investigating Mr. Rush, Mr. Feinberg reached out to the agency to vouch for Mr. Rush’s work for the Pentagon.

New York Times, How the Midterms Could Complicate the Supreme Court’s New Term, Ann E. Marimow and Abbie VanSickle, Oct. 6, 2026 (print ed.). Even before the justices start their new term on Monday, the court has spent the summer resolving fast-moving requests on election-related disputes.

At a public appearance this spring, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. insisted, as he regularly does, that members of the Supreme Court are not “political actors.”

Yet with the court’s new term beginning Monday, scarcely a month before the closely watched midterms, the court may be unable to avoid getting uncomfortably pulled into electoral politics.

With partisans on both sides primed for potential election challenges, lawsuits to settle hotly contested elections could end up before the court, potentially with the control of Congress at stake. They would land on top of an already packed docket of cases on culture war issues and President Trump’s agenda that were selected by the justices to be heard from the thousands of petitions they receive each year.

The result could be another consequential and controversial span on the bench for the justices, even as their public poll numbers have dipped and elected leaders and candidates, particularly in the insurgent wing of the Democratic Party, have called for an overhaul of the court. 

New York Times, Justice Dept. Turns to Partisans and Conspiracists to Fill Depleted Ranks, Glenn Thrush, Oct. 6, 2026. The civil rights unit has recruited people whose questionable work histories and dearth of education and experience might have disqualified them in the past, former officials said.

  • A former prosecutor forced off a high-profile murder case for peeking at the defense team’s strategy documents.
  • A onetime gambling executive who promoted conspiracy theories about the Las Vegas massacre in 2017.
  • A Florida activist who once served 20 days in jail for hacking a local elections system.

They are among the 130 lawyers who have recently joined the Justice Department’s short-staffed civil rights division as the Trump administration has struggled to fill the depleted ranks of a unit that was once a magnet for legal talent. Since early 2025, upward of 300 nonpolitical career employees, representing decades of experience, have left the division after its leader, Harmeet Dhillon, repurposed it to pursue President Trump’s agenda.

As a consequence, the division has opened its doors to recruits, many of them conservatives, some with education and work histories that might have disqualified them from being hired in the past, former officials said. Some have left a trail of hyperpartisan, conspiratorial and, in some instances, bizarre statements, according to an examination of about a dozen recent hires based on court records, social media posts and interviews.

Department officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters, said they have rejected nearly as many applicants as they have hired, 126. Any ideological tilt in the career ranks, they added, reflected the Trump-era applicant pool, which includes conservative activists and recent law school graduates.

Ms. Dhillon praised the quality of the new lawyers, and said she was revamping a division that had been dominated by liberals for far too long.

“For years, the civil rights division recruited from a narrow pipeline of progressive activists and called it excellence,” she said in a statement.

“We are hiring trial lawyers,” she added. “The attorneys The Times singled out have collectively tried hundreds of cases, prosecuted those who prey on trafficked children, won at the Supreme Court and practiced law for decades. That is the experience this division needs to enforce civil rights laws for every American.”

Among her top hires: The gun rights activist Barry Arrington, the acting chief of a new Second Amendment unit, is a high-profile opponent of the theory of evolution and same-sex marriage. Last year, he successfully argued before the Supreme Court against Colorado’s ban on so-called conversion therapy.

The person she appointed to temporarily lead the voting section — the epicenter of the department’s aggressive actions ahead of the midterm elections — is Eric Neff, who tried more than 50 criminal cases during a 12-year career as a prosecutor in California. His stint as a prosecutor in Los Angeles County ended in rancor.

In 2022, Mr. Neff was placed on administrative leave after the office withdrew his indictment of an executive at a software company for storing data on poll workers on a Chinese server. His bosses cited irregularities in the case. The county ended up paying the company $5 million in a settlement.

Mr. Neff was reinstated in 2024 and has filed a whistle-blower claim against the county, which remains unresolved.

Questions for individual prosecutors and officials were routed to the Justice Department’s public affairs office, in keeping with longstanding policy. 

Critics have raised questions about lawyers assigned to crack down on voter fraud, which includes a thus-far unsuccessful effort to obtain sensitive state voter roll information, and the deployment of 1,000 election monitors across the country.

On the day of Minnesota’s primary elections in August, two Justice Department officials approached a polling place in Minneapolis and were reminded by a local election worker to obey a law requiring them to stay outside at a certain distance, a video showed.

One of the department officials, David Michael Levin, a conservative lawyer and businessman, was himself a convicted lawbreaker.

In 2015 and 2016, Mr. Levin twice hacked into the Lee County, Fla., election system as a political stunt. He faced felony charges before pleading to a pair of misdemeanors in September 2016, and served a 20-day jail sentence with two years of probation, according to court records.

His application, like all the others, was reviewed and approved by the department’s personnel office. His record alone would not have precluded him from being hired — the department is allowed after seven years to hire people who committed misdemeanors. But critics said it set a dangerous precedent.

News Roundups

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Trump Faces Calls for Removal, Teases "Big Surprises" for the Midterms, Blocks Election Observers Like Russia and Belarus, and More, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 6, 2026. Trump is teasing “big surprises” ahead of the midterms, pointing to Project 2025 architect Russ Vought, as his administration shuts out international election observers for the first time in more than two decades. Gov. Gavin Newsom has ordered California’s threat assessment center to monitor for foreign attacks as Trump faces growing calls for his resignation and removal after saying, “Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.” And Justice Samuel Alito’s new book calls same-sex marriage the “decisive point” in America’s turn against religious liberty.

Before we get into it, an update on our reporting. Last week, we published a deep dive exposing how Trump has been misusing taxpayer dollars, including on campaign-style ads promoting himself that end with “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” Now, after that reporting and mounting pressure from lawmakers, Trump is walking it back, saying he’ll pay for the ads himself. But don’t be fooled: the White House confirmed today he won’t repay the roughly $10 million taxpayers have already spent. We’ll keep following the money.

I also need your help with something. There has been a wave of accounts impersonating me on TikTok and other platforms, using my name and face to spread misinformation and scam people. I’m fighting back, reporting these accounts and working to get them taken down, but the best protection is getting your news directly from me.

That’s what this newsletter is. It’s the one place you know the reporting is actually mine, sourced and fact-checked, with no fake accounts and no algorithm deciding what you see. If you’re not already subscribed, please subscribe today.

Let’s get into it.

Trump Teases “Big Surprises” Before the Midterms as Administration Bars International Election Observers

Trump is hinting at “big surprises” ahead of the midterms, and he’s pointing to Russ Vought. In remarks Tuesday, Trump shouted out Vought, his budget director and a key architect of Project 2025, then said, “We have some big surprises coming up in a few weeks, right Russ? He’s gonna be one of the important people in the history of our country.” The comment came the same day Trump posted on Truth Social telling supporters to “Watch for the ‘Midterm Surprise!’” without explaining what he meant. MAGA influencers celebrated the tease, with one writing that “October is Trump’s month,” while a Republican strategist told Newsweek it was likely “spin” meant to boost turnout. With the election less than four weeks away, Trump hasn’t said what the surprises are, and the White House hasn’t explained.

At the same time, the Trump administration is refusing to allow international election observers for the first time in more than two decades. The administration declined to invite monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which has observed every federal election in the US since 2002, including the 2018 midterms during Trump’s first term. That puts the US alongside only Russia and Belarus in excluding OSCE observers. The OSCE called the decision “regrettable,” and Human Rights Watch warned it “fuels fears of serious human rights concerns around the upcoming elections.” A former US ambassador to the OSCE said refusing observers “is usually something that countries in a position of weakness do, when they know that they have corrupt or unfair elections.”

Instead, Trump’s Justice Department plans to send 1,000 of its own monitors to the polls in November. The move has alarmed Democrats and election experts, especially after reports that top DOJ officials warned prosecutors they would be fired for not pursuing alleged voter fraud cases. Unlike OSCE observers, who have no enforcement power and simply report on how elections are run, DOJ monitors answer to an administration that has repeatedly pushed false claims of fraud. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said the decision to exclude international observers “risks undermining public trust in America’s safe and secure election system.” The State Department claimed the OSCE “should focus its limited resources on elections where it can have the greatest impact.”

The teases and the observer ban come as forecasts show Republicans heading for major losses. Election simulations from RacetotheWH give Democrats an 88% chance of retaking the House and a 73% chance of winning the Senate. Trump’s approval is hovering near record lows, and on Tuesday the Cook Political Report shifted three Senate races toward Democrats. Trump has spent the past week calling American voting “corrupt” and laying the groundwork to dispute the results. Taken together, a president promising “big surprises,” shutting out independent observers and sending his own monitors to the polls is something every voter should be watching closely.

Newsom Calls Trump’s Comments “Treasonous,” Orders Threat Monitoring and Demands 25th Amendment as White House Scrambles

Gov. Gavin Newsom called Trump’s comments about Los Angeles and San Diego “dangerous, if not treasonous,” and ordered California’s emergency center to monitor for threats. Newsom wrote on X that Trump’s remarks put “a target on two of our biggest cities and one of America’s largest naval hubs.” He directed the State Threat Assessment Center to watch for any sign that “foreign actors interpret the President’s remarks as an invitation to target California.” Newsom later told The Hill that Trump is “mentally ill” and declared, “TIME FOR THE 25TH!” He also called out JD Vance and Marco Rubio for their “deafening” silence, and his office labeled Rep. David Valadao a “traitor” for not condemning comments about attacking the very state he represents. Newsom, a likely 2028 presidential contender, has made clear he has no intention of letting the story fade.

The White House is insisting Trump was talking about a nuclear Iran, even though he never mentioned nuclear weapons. Communications director Steven Cheung called the backlash a “media freakout” that is “not rooted in reality,” claiming Trump “was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped.” Trump’s Rapid Response account went further, telling critics, “No, he didn’t, you buffoons.” But in his actual remarks, Trump said only, “They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego,” as the crowd applauded. Cheung also claimed Iran now has “no nuclear, no navy, no air force, and no money,” which raises the question of why Trump would be warning about Iran taking out American cities at all. White House spokesman Davis Ingle responded to Newsom by calling him “Gavin Newscum” and “the worst governor in America.”

Even Trump allies say the comments are hurting Republicans a month before the midterms. “While it’s clear the president was joking, it’s not helpful to have these comments out there with a month to go,” a former Trump campaign aide told The Hill, adding that Republicans now have to address Trump’s words instead of focusing on Democrats. California Republican Jim Desmond, who is running in one of the state’s last competitive House races, said he “vehemently” disagrees, and Rep. Kevin Kiley called the rhetoric “unhelpful.” Veteran GOP strategist Rob Stutzman put it bluntly: “One of the biggest problems Republicans are facing is that the president of their party is unhinged.” A Democratic strategist also noted that Los Angeles is home to the largest Iranian expatriate community outside of Iran, making the remarks “doubly egregious.” The backlash comes as the Cook Political Report shifted three Senate races toward Democrats on Tuesday. Trump refused to answer a question about the comments today:

Trump Escalates His War on Fox News, Attacking Network for Interviewing Democrats as His Rally Crowds Shrink

Trump attacked Fox News again Tuesday for interviewing Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and independent Dan Osborn. On Truth Social, Trump called Osborn, who is running a close race against Sen. Pete Ricketts in Nebraska, a “sleazebag” and asked why the network would interview him. He also accused Fox of covering “Dumocrat Jihadists like El-Sayed” with a “softball interview by Martha MacCallum,” complaining, “She never interviews me like that.” But Fox’s own account says MacCallum challenged El-Sayed for accepting money from wealthy donors after campaigning against corporate money. It’s at least the third time in a week Trump has attacked the network that has long served as his media home.

The attacks began with a Sunday morning meltdown over Fox not covering his rallies the way he wanted. Trump wrote that it was “sad to see” Fox & Friends not covering his “packed house” in Ohio and his rallies in Alabama, Texas and Oklahoma, warning that MAGA viewers “will very quickly stop watching (like I am doing right now!).” He called Fox commentator Jessica Tarlov “stupid,” demanded to know “who makes these decisions” and called whoever fired Maria Bartiromo a “loser.” Bartiromo left the network after she allegedly shared an internal Fox memo with the White House. Trump closed with a threat: “Fox tried this act once before, and almost went out of business (and always right before an election!). That can happen again!”

Fox did cover his rallies; it just isn’t airing them live. A Snapstream search found “Fox and Friends Weekend” aired a segment on the Ohio rally shortly before Trump’s post, and the network typically teases his speeches and runs correspondent reports without carrying them in full. CNN’s Brian Stelter reported that Fox has decided Trump’s long, repetitive rallies are “not a ratings magnet right now.” After Trump’s attacks, Fox opened “The Five” and “The Will Cain Show” on Monday with rally clips. Trump’s rift with the network deepened last month when Fox stood with CNN, Politico and MS NOW against his White House press ban, prompting trade adviser Peter Navarro to call for a boycott of Fox.

The meltdown comes as Trump’s crowds shrink and his poll numbers fall. The New York Times reported empty sections at his Alabama and Ohio rallies, describing his midterm swing as feeling “more like a farewell tour,” and Trump responded by saying Times reporters should be “arrested.” When CNN’s Kristen Holmes asked about a poll showing his approval among Latino voters at 27%, he shot back, “You’re fake news!” Meanwhile, the White House barred Politico from Air Force One and replaced CNN in the TV pool with friendly outlets like LindellTV and Real America’s Voice. A federal judge will hear arguments Thursday on whether to keep blocking Trump’s ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico.

Alito Calls Same-Sex Marriage a “Decisive” Turn Against Religious Liberty, Signaling Openness to Overturning It

Justice Samuel Alito’s new book signals he is open to overturning the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage ruling. In “So Ordered,” a collection of 19 speeches, seven of them delivered to Catholic groups, Alito calls the 2015 Obergefell decision “perhaps the decisive point in our nation’s turn against religious liberty.” He compares opponents of same-sex marriage to Catholics who were persecuted in post-Reformation England, declaring that “what I predicted in my dissent is coming to pass.” Despite claiming in 2025 that he was “not suggesting that the decision should be overruled,” Alito is now publicly casting the ruling as the moment America turned on people of faith, laying out exactly the kind of argument used to justify reversing precedent. With fellow conservative Clarence Thomas already openly urging the court to revisit Obergefell, which was decided 5-4, LGBTQ advocates have good reason to fear the right to marry is no longer safe.

Alito’s claims about religious liberty don’t match the court’s own record. In nearly every case he cites as evidence of hostility toward religion, the court actually sided with the religious parties, from the Colorado baker who refused to make a cake for a gay couple to the Christian website designer who objected to same-sex weddings. The court has also let employers opt out of contraceptive coverage on religious grounds, required states to fund religious schools in tuition programs and effectively struck down state bans on LGBTQ conversion therapy. Alito joined the majority in all of them. Even leading religious liberty groups like First Liberty Institute say there is “more religious freedom today than at any other time in our lives.”

Alito says he plans to stay on the court through at least next summer, even if Democrats win the Senate. The 76-year-old told Bloomberg he has ruled out retiring during the lame-duck session after the midterms, when Republicans would still control the Senate. “I intend to stick around through this term,” he said, adding that he doesn’t “feel mentally or physically decrepit.” That means if Democrats take the Senate in November, Trump could lose his chance to replace Alito with a younger conservative, since Democrats have signaled they’d block any Trump nominee. Some analysts say that could be a gift to Democrats, since Trump has already appointed three of the court’s six conservatives.

Alito brushed off criticism that the court is partisan, even as he and Clarence Thomas were the only justices never to rule against Trump in major cases this year. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has warned about the court looking partisan, writing in one dissent that the court seems to have a rule that “this Administration always wins.” Alito told USA Today he applies “the same legal standards regardless of which administration is affected.” He also said he was “honored” to write the opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. Asked about a false NPR report in June that he was retiring, Alito said he was “amused and puzzled” and wondered “how many people were crest-fallen” when it was corrected.

Other news:

Trump won’t pay back taxpayers for the campaign-style ads promoting his administration that have already aired on the public’s dime, the White House confirmed. After bipartisan backlash and threats of legal action, Trump said Monday night he would “pay for them myself” and with money raised for his super PAC, MAGA Inc., but the White House clarified Tuesday he “was not referring to reimbursement.” The ads, which end with “Paid for by the U.S. Government,” have reportedly already cost $10 million out of a $20 million Homeland Security budget, plus more than $2 million in national TV airtime. One appears to be lifted directly from a 2024 Trump campaign video and promotes a “final battle” against “globalists,” while another uses a song whose artist has sent a cease-and-desist letter. Former White House ethics lawyer Norm Eisen called it “an unlawful and outrageous misuse of public funds,” and Sen. Maggie Hassan is demanding Trump “immediately repay the taxpayers.” Trump’s new plan raises its own legal problems, since he’s barred from directing how a super PAC spends its money, and a new survey found 86% of Americans think the taxpayer-funded ads are inappropriate.

This is the letter nearly 1 million Americans are receiving alongside their $500 Obamacare refund. The letter attacks Joe Biden, is signed by Trump, and says "I am proud to return your money to you, and I will never stop fighting to put the American People FIRST, restore Affordability ..."

The Trump administration has deported dozens of LGBTQ migrants, who were granted US protection from persecution, to African countries where they face the very same danger, a Reuters investigation found. Reuters documented 40 cases of migrants protected by US judges because of persecution over their sexual orientation who were instead sent to countries like Sierra Leone, Cameroon and Eswatini, which criminalize same-sex relations, or to countries the State Department has flagged for abuses like “corrective rape” and conversion therapy. One gay man from Togo, who fled after a mob attacked him for kissing his partner, was flown to Sierra Leone, where gay men can face life in prison, and then forced back to Togo with $100 to his name before fleeing to Ivory Coast. Of the 40, sixteen remain in the countries they were sent to, sixteen were forcibly returned to their home countries, nine are in hiding, and one man has lost contact with his family and lawyers entirely. A former senior US immigration official said the practice “makes a mockery of our protection systems,” while DHS insisted that “when an individual is no longer in ICE custody then ICE will no longer be responsible for them.” More than 40,000 people have been deported to third countries since Trump returned to office, and the Supreme Court has allowed the practice to continue while it hears arguments in December.

Christa Pike is now conscious and speaking nearly a week after surviving her botched execution, in what her lawyers call a “medically unprecedented” recovery. Pike, convicted of the 1995 torture and murder of Colleen Slemmer, survived two doses of what should have been lethal amounts of pentobarbital on Sept. 30 and was rushed to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where she spent days unconscious on a ventilator. Her attorneys say that despite “severe damage” to her arms, she remains handcuffed and shackled to her hospital bed, and that while her prognosis is unclear, they expect “a long recovery.” They had warned beforehand about her difficult vein access, degraded drugs and a lack of emergency medical care, all under a protocol they say “remains veiled in secrecy.” Gov. Bill Lee has ordered a review and called off Tennessee’s remaining executions for 2026, and a Vanderbilt law professor says Pike’s lawyers now have “a pretty good argument” that trying to execute her again by lethal injection would violate the Eighth Amendment.

David Ellison’s new media empire, Skydance, officially took control of CNN, CBS News and HBO on Tuesday, and he wants to run it like a tech company. The $110 billion merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery unites two of Hollywood’s five biggest studios, dozens of TV channels, two of the country’s biggest TV news divisions and more than 200 million streaming subscribers under the 43-year-old son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, one of the richest men in the world and a close Trump ally. Ellison has packed his leadership team with veterans of Google, Facebook and Scale AI, called AI a “force multiplier” and plans to eventually merge Paramount+ and HBO Max into a single service. But the company is carrying roughly $80 billion in debt, and when executives promise to “tech-ify” the business, one analyst told CNN, “I hear layoffs.” Critics also warn the deal concentrates too much power in one company, with one former New Line Cinema executive asking, “How are monopolies ever good for any industry?” The Ellison family’s reach now extends from Hollywood to TV news to TikTok, where Oracle holds a stake and oversees Americans’ data.

A hacking group claims it stole personal data on 3,615 Trump Mobile customers, and there are signs the breach is real. The group, called BYOD, says it infected an employee at Liberty Mobile, the Florida company that powers Trump Mobile’s network, with malware, then used that access to pull customer names, phone numbers, emails and home addresses. PCMag confirmed with three people in the leaked file that they had interacted with Trump Mobile, and one customer said the file correctly showed she had canceled her plan. BYOD claims Trump Mobile responded that it had “no team to handle this” and called anyone who hacks them a terrorist. The group also claims it still has “live access” to the company’s dashboard, and neither Trump Mobile nor Liberty Mobile has responded to requests for comment. It’s the latest in a string of security problems for the Trump-branded phone company, after another group claimed last month to have stolen data on 4,000 users and YouTubers exposed a flaw on its website in May.

The FBI says a contractor’s failure to install a security patch led to last month’s hack of its jobs website. Cyber Division Assistant Director Brett Leatherman said a contractor managing the FBIJobs.gov platform “failed to implement a security patch explicitly issued to secure the platform,” and that the contractor has since been removed. The cyber-extortion group ShinyHunters claimed credit for the hack and told NBC News it used the portal to break into other agency systems, stealing 2 to 3 terabytes of files, though those claims haven’t been verified. FBI Director Kash Patel announced the arrest of one of the group’s alleged leaders, and the FBI says multiple arrests have been made. Some FBI employees were reportedly upset that they learned about the breach from the media.

A former high-ranking CIA officer caught with nearly 300 gold bars in his home admitted he exposed details about a secret US intelligence source to a foreign official. David Rush, 49, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and admitted to siphoning off $194 million in government funds, including by inventing a fake classified program to funnel $145 million toward luxury Florida real estate. Prosecutors say his disclosure about the clandestine source could “endanger the safety and life” of that person and the US officers working with them. Investigators seized about $2 million in cash and 35 luxury watches along with the gold, and say Rush fooled the agency for years with a fabricated education and military record. He faces up to 20 years in prison when he’s sentenced in January, and the case has put a spotlight on his work with Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg, who has been interviewed by the FBI but is not accused of wrongdoing.

A wealthy California couple with 21 children, most born through surrogates, has been charged in what prosecutors call a “house of horrors” abuse case. Silvia Zhang and Guojun Xuan were arrested Tuesday at their Arcadia mansion on charges including conspiracy to commit child abuse and witness intimidation. Prosecutors allege the couple ran a surrogacy operation, lied to surrogates about how many children they already had, and watched on 32 cameras as nannies beat and punished the children “on a daily basis,” with Xuan allegedly telling one nanny to hit a child harder. The investigation began after a 2-month-old was hospitalized with head injuries in 2025, and prosecutors say the couple told nannies not to leave visible marks. All 21 children have been removed from the home or placed with family and friends, and prosecutors are seeking $100 million bail.

Dolly Parton’s estate says her nephew barricaded his home with barbed wire and caution tape to avoid being served with a lawsuit. She’s Alive, the entity that manages Parton’s business, is suing Bryan Seaver, the nephew Parton personally chose to announce her death, accusing him of a “campaign of threats” that drove employees and business partners to quit. In one message, Seaver allegedly threatened to start a podcast “dedicated to ruining Dolly’s brand partnerships” unless he was paid. A judge granted a restraining order after finding he made targeted threats and boasted about his access to weapons and experience with violence. Seaver, who previously provided security for Parton, says his messages were taken out of context, and a hearing on a temporary injunction is set for Friday.

Kilmar Ábrego Garcia is back in federal court as the Trump administration keeps trying to deport him to Liberia. The government is asking a judge to lift an injunction blocking ICE from detaining and deporting the Maryland father, who was wrongly sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT mega-prison last year in what ICE admitted was an “administrative error.” Ábrego Garcia says that if he’s deported, it should be to Costa Rica, which already agreed to take him, but a former ICE official argued sending him there would be “prejudicial” because the US had invested resources negotiating with Liberia. The administration has kept pushing for Liberia even after the US signed an agreement with Costa Rica to accept deportees who can’t be returned to their home countries. A federal judge already threw out the human smuggling charges the administration brought against him after his return, finding they were meant to punish him for challenging his deportation. Supporters call him “an international symbol of due process,” and his lawyers are seeking to make the injunction permanent.

Robert Kelker-Kelly, the soap opera star best known for “Days of Our Lives” and “General Hospital,” has died at 62. A Missouri medical examiner’s office confirmed he died Saturday but did not release a cause of death, saying death certifications typically take about 12 weeks. Kelker-Kelly played Bo Brady on “Days of Our Lives” from 1992 to 1995 and Stavros Cassadine on “General Hospital” from 2001 to 2014. He got his start in daytime TV in 1987 on “Another World” and won a Soap Opera Digest Award for outstanding lead actor in 1994. He and co-star Lisa Rinna won the award for hottest soap couple the following year, though Rinna wrote in her recent memoir that the two “hated each other” behind the scenes. “Days of Our Lives” honored him on Instagram with a simple message: “Rest in peace.”

Jury selection is underway in the murder trial of an Ohio father accused of running down a deputy hours after watching police kill his son. Prosecutors say Rodney Hinton intentionally struck and killed retired Hamilton County deputy Larry Henderson, who was directing traffic near the University of Cincinnati during graduation in May 2025. Hours earlier, Hinton had watched body camera footage of a Cincinnati officer fatally shooting his 18-year-old son, Ryan, who police say was armed and running from a reported stolen car. Police say Hinton slowed near the intersection, then “accelerated quickly” toward Henderson with no sign he tried to stop. Hinton has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and a court-appointed psychologist testified he has bipolar disorder, which makes him ineligible for the death penalty under Ohio law. His attorney says finding 12 impartial jurors will be “difficult,” and more than a dozen potential jurors have already been dismissed.

A new lawsuit claims some Starbucks “sugar-free” drinks contain as much sugar as a Kit Kat bar. The federal suit says the chain’s protein lattes and protein matcha drinks, sold as sugar-free in vanilla and caramel flavors, contain 13 to 21 grams of sugar per serving. “No reasonable person” would expect a “sugar-free” drink to contain that much sugar, the lawsuit argues. The suit was filed on behalf of three customers in California, New York and Washington, whose lawyer says many people avoid sugar for health reasons like diabetes. Starbucks says it doesn’t add sugar to the drinks and that the sugar comes from the protein-boosted milk, adding that it has clearly listed nutritional information and will “vigorously” defend itself. The suit seeks damages for customers nationwide and a court order stopping Starbucks from labeling drinks with sugar as “sugar-free.”

A 23-year-old woman died and her baby girl was critically injured after falling from a Bronx apartment early Tuesday, and police are looking to question her ex-boyfriend. The NYPD said the two had injuries consistent with falling from a height at an apartment building on Olinville Avenue, and the woman later died at the hospital. The baby, who is under a year old, remains in critical condition. Witnesses told detectives they heard a disturbance in her apartment before the fall, according to police sources. Sources also said there is a history of domestic violence at the address. It’s not yet clear whether the mother and daughter fell, jumped or were pushed, and no arrests have been made. 

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: “Treasonous”—Trump Faces Bipartisan Outrage Over California Comments, Calls for Journalists' Arrest, Measles Hits 35-Year High, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 6, 2026. While defending the costs of his war with Iran at a Nebraska rally, Trump told the crowd, “They could take out a city. Let ‘em take out Los Angeles, let ‘em take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay,” as his supporters applauded.

This morning, his comments are being called “treasonous,” sparking bipartisan outrage. At the same time, he said New York Times reporters should be “arrested” for reporting on empty seats at his rally. And a former FBI supervisor says the White House pushed the bureau to investigate protesters because “the President wants this investigation.”

There is going to be a real attempt by some in the media to sane-wash and sanitize Trump’s comments about Los Angeles and San Diego. You’ll see headlines saying he “appeared to suggest” or was “likely referring to gas prices.” You’ll see the story buried by the afternoon.

Just imagine if any other politician had stood in front of a cheering crowd and said a foreign enemy could “take out” Dallas and Houston, and that it was a small price to pay. It would be wall-to-wall coverage for weeks.

I don’t sane-wash. I don’t normalize any politician’s comments, no matter their party. If a president says something dangerous, I’m going to tell you exactly what he said, in his own words, and let you judge for yourself.

Let’s get into it.

Trump Suggests Iran Could “Take Out” Los Angeles and San Diego, Sparking Bipartisan Backlash

Trump told a Nebraska rally crowd 'Let 'em take out Los Angeles, let 'em take out San Diego' while defending the costs of his war with Iran. Speaking in Grand Island on Monday night, Trump called rising prices from the war “a small price to pay for keeping the world safe.” He then said, “They could take out a city. Let ‘em take out Los Angeles, let ‘em take out San Diego,” as the crowd applauded. Trump insisted the war is “essentially almost over” and will end “one way or the other.” The comments came in the middle of a rambling, nearly 90-minute speech in which he also said he hoped to see a “tremendous victory” in the midterms. He was in Nebraska to boost Sen. Pete Ricketts, who is locked in an unexpectedly close race with independent Dan Osborn, and urged supporters to vote as if his own name were on the ballot.

California leaders immediately condemned the remarks as dangerous. Gov. Gavin Newsom called Trump “deranged and dangerous,” noting that after sending the National Guard and Marines into California, Trump is now suggesting foreign enemies should “take out” its two largest cities. His office added that the president was talking about an attack on more than 10 million Americans and said “this is not normal.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the comments “could potentially compromise our safety,” adding that a president’s job is to protect the country, not threaten it. San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria fired back that his city is “not collateral damage” and “never a ‘small price to pay.’” Los Angeles is the second-largest city in the country, and San Diego, the eighth-largest, is home to critical US military infrastructure.

Even some Republicans distanced themselves from Trump’s comments. Jim Desmond, a California Republican running for a US House seat, said he “vehemently” disagrees with the president. “No American city is expendable, and no American family should ever be treated as collateral damage,” he wrote. Democratic gubernatorial nominee Xavier Becerra said the 13 million people who live in LA and San Diego counties are not a “punchline for Donald Trump.” The remarks are also a headache for Trump-endorsed Republican Steve Hilton, who is trying to pull off an upset in the California governor’s race. With Republicans already on defense heading into November, the last thing California GOP candidates needed was the president appearing to shrug off an attack on their own voters.

The comments set off a debate online about what Trump actually meant. Some conservative activists argued Trump was talking about high gas prices being the “small price to pay,” not Iran’s ability to strike a US city. Others questioned whether it was a crude joke about two blue cities, or whether he accidentally hinted at intelligence about potential Iranian targets. US defense officials have previously said Iran currently lacks the capability to launch a direct missile attack on the US mainland, though Trump himself claimed in his last State of the Union that Iran was building missiles that would “soon” reach US soil. The White House did not respond to requests for comment. The remarks land about a month before midterms, with the Iran war unpopular and Trump’s approval at a record low.

Trump Says New York Times Reporters Should Be “Arrested” for Reporting Empty Seats at His Rally

Trump called for journalists to be arrested over reporting that his Ohio rally had empty seats. “The New York Times, and many other Artificial Media Outlets, should be arrested for their dishonesty and disservice to our Country,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday. He was responding to Times reporter Katie Rogers, who wrote that several areas of an upper deck were empty by the time he finished speaking at a 4,500-capacity high school student center in Vandalia, Ohio. Trump insisted there were no empty seats and that “thousands of people had to be turned away.” He also accused outlets of inflating crowd sizes for Sen. Bernie Sanders while downplaying his own. It’s not an empty threat from an administration whose Justice Department subpoenaed the phone records of Times journalists and their family members this summer before dropping the request days later.

Trump then posted a 292-word meltdown claiming his crowds “migrate” down from the empty upper sections. He insisted the “Arena was totally MAXED OUT, including all upper sections,” and explained that at his “SOLD OUT Rallies,” people in the upper sections “tend to migrate down to the Main Floor,” calling it a “migration” process that “always happens.” He declared, “I never have empty seats — Never have, and never will!” and said he now has cinematographers filming his events to counter the “Fake News.” Trump claimed his rallies are “HOTTER” than ever and that networks refuse to show the crowds. At the rally itself, he even told attendees that if they wanted to give up their seats to people outside, “we can work it out, get out of here.”

The reporting is backed by photos, video and a striking comparison to 2024. Journalist Jay Bookman noted the Ohio event was held in a high school gym, not an arena, and that Trump drew 35,000 people to a rally in the same area in 2024. Rep. Ted Lieu mocked Trump’s “arena” claim, posting simply that the rally was at “a high school gym.” The Times also reported empty seats at Trump’s recent events in Oklahoma and Alabama, two states he won easily in 2024, and the Daily Beast compiled photos and video showing empty sections in Mobile. The Times concluded his rallies are more modest, and at times more sedate, than they used to be. The meltdown comes as Trump’s approval sits at a record low, with an unpopular war and rising costs weighing on Republicans heading into the midterms.

Measles Surges to Worst Levels Since 1991 as New York Declares Emergency and Pennsylvania Passes 1,000 Cases

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a statewide disaster emergency over measles, the first by any state since cases began surging in 2025. New York has reported 108 cases this year through Oct. 3, including 92 since mid-July in under-immunized rural communities across 18 counties. “No one should get seriously ill or die from a vaccine-preventable disease,” Hochul said. The order lets registered nurses order measles tests and allows pharmacists to vaccinate children as young as 2. It also requires all MMR shots to be reported to state or city registries within 72 hours, though vaccination itself still requires consent. The emergency runs through Nov. 4, and local health departments have already given more than 1,000 MMR doses in rural areas since July.

Pennsylvania has now passed 1,000 measles cases, the largest state outbreak in more than three decades. State health officials reported 1,004 confirmed cases, 198 hospitalizations and five deaths, with Lancaster County, home to large Amish and Mennonite communities, hit hardest at 391 cases. The outbreak began in April west of Philadelphia, and officials blame low vaccination rates. But those numbers aren’t included in the CDC’s count because of a dispute between Gov. Josh Shapiro and Health Secretary RFK Jr. over how to classify measles deaths. Kennedy has publicly questioned whether Pennsylvania’s deaths were actually caused by measles, and his CDC lists only two measles deaths nationwide this year. Shapiro has called Kennedy “incompetent” and expanded access to the MMR vaccine in affected communities.

The US is having its worst measles year since 1991, and international health officials will soon decide if the country has lost its measles-free status. The CDC reports 3,887 confirmed cases this year, with major outbreaks in South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Ohio, which has more than 200 cases. Measles was eliminated in the US in 2000 thanks to high vaccination rates, but coverage has fallen below the 95% needed to prevent outbreaks. Measles also causes “immune amnesia,” wiping out 11% to 73% of a person’s existing antibodies and leaving survivors vulnerable to other infections for up to five years. In November, international health officials will meet to determine whether the US and Mexico have lost their measles-free status. The last outbreak of this size, in New York City in the early 1990s, infected more than 4,500 people.

Mumps is also spreading, even as the Trump administration pushes to break up the MMR vaccine. A mumps outbreak has sidelined 17 San Diego State University football players since mid-September, and 31 jurisdictions had reported 157 mumps cases as of Sept. 10. Experts say those outbreaks are largely driven by waning immunity, since protection against mumps declines over time and lasts roughly a decade. In August, Trump signed an executive order calling for the MMR vaccine to be split into three separate shots and pushing to expand parents’ ability to opt their kids out of vaccines. Public health experts warn that spreading shots across multiple visits will raise costs and lower vaccination rates, and at least 23 states say they’ll keep following the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendations instead of Kennedy’s. RFK Jr. has falsely linked the MMR vaccine to autism, even though it protects against the very infertility he has claimed to be worried about.

Other news:

A conservative Christian lawyer who spent 18 years at the Interior Department resigned in protest, warning of “a deeply troubling assault on the rule of law” under Trump. In a resignation letter obtained by the Guardian, John Murdock cited “glaring legal flaws” he witnessed, including the administration’s decision to exempt a massive Gulf of Mexico oil and gas lease sale from key environmental laws. He decided to quit after the acting head of the offshore drilling agency claimed the administration was “upholding the highest environmental standards,” then later left the government to work for Halliburton. Murdock also slammed the decision to exempt Gulf drilling from the Endangered Species Act, the push to pay a French energy company nearly $1 billion to abandon wind leases, and a weekly internal video he said had turned into “something approaching cultish worship” of Trump. Murdock, who once helped clean up BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill, wrote that he did not want to be part of “creating an even greater disaster.” The Interior Department dismissed his concerns as “one former employee’s personal disagreement.”

A former FBI supervisor says the White House pushed the bureau to investigate Los Angeles protesters in violation of their constitutional rights. In a whistleblower complaint to Senate Judiciary leaders, former intelligence analyst Jill Fields says the White House directed FBI Director Kash Patel to investigate people using megaphones to warn residents about immigration raids and advise them of their rights, after agents had already declined to open a case. She was told the investigation would move forward because “the President wants this investigation,” and says agents were pulled off active cartel cases to “make a show for the president.” Fields also alleges that Emil Bove, then the acting deputy attorney general, ordered an investigation into protest activity outside a federal building that she says was protected free speech. Fields says supervisors were told not to put directives in writing, and she resigned after being stripped of her programs for raising concerns. Sen. Alex Padilla is demanding answers from Patel and Attorney General Todd Blanche, asking how many more investigations have been opened under White House pressure.

Senate Republicans are pouring $5 million into deep-red South Carolina to rescue Darline Graham as polls show a dead heat. According to Axios, the main GOP Senate super PAC is calling it an “insurance policy” after two Republican-leaning pollsters showed Graham, the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s sister, essentially tied with Democrat Annie Andrews, a pediatrician running as “a mom and a doctor.” Graham, appointed to the seat in July at Trump’s urging, has been outraised and outspent by Andrews, avoids the press and stumbled on foreign policy during her primary debate. The move comes as Republicans pull ad money from North Carolina, where Roy Cooper leads, and after the same super PAC dumped $131 million into Texas over 17 days to prop up Ken Paxton. Trump weighed in Monday by attacking Andrews on Truth Social with an anti-trans slur, prompting her backers to call him “perverted.” Democrats haven’t won a statewide race in South Carolina since 2006, which shows just how bad the environment has become for Republicans four weeks out.

Paramount completed its $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, putting CNN, CBS and HBO under one roof controlled by David Ellison. The new company, called Skydance, combines the studios behind “Mission: Impossible,” “Harry Potter” and DC with networks including CBS, CNN, Paramount+ and HBO Max. Ellison, son of Oracle co-founder and Trump ally Larry Ellison, beat out Netflix in a bidding war for Warner Bros. Analysts say the Skydance name underscores how much control Ellison now has over some of Hollywood’s most iconic brands. The company plans $6 billion in cost cuts that are expected to hit jobs across Hollywood, and it will carry about $80 billion in debt. CNN chief Mark Thompson and CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss will keep their roles, meaning two of the country’s biggest news operations now answer to the same billionaire.

France is struggling to contain its biggest student protests in decades, with more than 5,000 people taken into police custody, most of them minors. What began on Sept. 21 as a small protest backing striking teachers at a high school outside Paris has snowballed into a national crisis, with students blockading schools from Lille to Marseille, hundreds of schools forced to close and more than 100 damaged. The violence has been severe on both sides: one student in Lens lost his hand after reportedly picking up a grenade, another in Tours lost the use of an eye, and police have been accused of heavy-handed tactics, including a banned headlock used on a girl in Alençon. Students say they’re demanding the bare minimum, pointing to overcrowded and understaffed schools where 70% of public classrooms have more than 30 students and there are fewer teachers than in 2008 despite 250,000 more students. The education minister met with student leaders Friday without reaching a deal, and the government’s response is hamstrung by a budget crisis that pushed France’s 10-year bond yield to its highest level since 2002. Thousands more are expected to march Tuesday, as the unrest kicks off a bitter battle between the far left and far right ahead of next spring’s presidential election.

Russia now says no plague was found among contacts of the Siberian lab worker who died, but questions remain. Russia’s health watchdog said testing of about 60% of her contacts found only two Covid cases and two common colds, without ever mentioning the word “plague.” The WHO says Russia told it no plague case was recorded, but the agency is still waiting to learn what pathogen actually caused her death. The regional governor also claimed no microorganisms linked to her lab work were found in her body, while local officials called reports of strict regional restrictions “fake.” The US State Department continues to refer to a “fatal case of suspected pneumonic plague” and is urging more transparency. Meanwhile, some of Russia’s neighbors have tightened quarantine controls at border crossings, and the Kremlin keeps deferring questions about her lab results and autopsy.

Two major Latino advocacy groups are launching a six-figure turnout push in South Texas, where a majority backed Trump in 2024. The Voto Latino Foundation and Hispanic Federation are targeting the Rio Grande Valley, where they estimate nearly 316,000 eligible Latinos didn’t vote in 2024, plus nearly 500,000 Texas Latinos who have turned 18 since then. The effort includes a town hall in Edinburg this Saturday, a televised Telemundo event and a rally later this month. Organizers are urging voters to vote early and check their registrations, warning of efforts to push people off the rolls. Voto Latino’s María Teresa Kumar called the Valley “the epicenter of the Latino vote,” saying a swing back to Democrats there would signal what to expect in 2028. A new NBC News/Telemundo poll found 69% of Latino voters disapprove of Trump, and 54% say they want their midterm vote to signal opposition to him.

Cornell faculty have introduced a no-confidence resolution against the university’s administration over its handling of the alleged gang rape. The resolution declares the Faculty Senate has no confidence in leadership’s ability to “effectively address the ongoing crisis of sexual assault” at Cornell and will be considered at an Oct. 14 meeting. Sponsor Paul Ortiz said students have been telling faculty “they don’t feel safe” for years and called it a “systemic problem.” Faculty say alumni have also come forward with their own traumatic stories from their time as students. Ortiz stressed the effort isn’t targeting any individual, saying “the goal is to really force systemic change.” It comes as students are rising up and making their voices heard in major campus protests, all of which peaceful:

Belgian-born physicist Francis Halzen won the Nobel Prize in physics for capturing cosmic neutrinos at the South Pole. Halzen, 82, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was instrumental in building the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica, which uses the ice to detect tiny “ghost particles” that carry clues about exploding stars and distant galaxies. The Nobel Committee credited him with opening a new kind of astronomy. Halzen said the win was “a great surprise” and joked that he hoped it would help get a pending proposal approved. Ellen Moons, the first woman to lead the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, made history by announcing the award. The prize is worth about $1.2 million, with chemistry, literature, peace and economics still to be announced.

More On U.S. Military, Foreign Policy 

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Sept. Oct. 5, 2026 [More U.S. Killings in Caribbean], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 6, 2026. Last night, on October 4, U.S. Southern Command posted that it had struck another small boat in the Caribbean, killing another four people it called “narco-terrorists.” This brings the number of strikes to more than 70, and the number of people killed in the strikes that began a year ago to more than 230 people.

The administration’s justification for the strikes has not been made public. It has claimed—without evidence—that the men on the boats were trafficking drugs, but such a charge would normally be handled by the legal system. The Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice produced an opinion providing legal cover for the strikes, and some of the members of Congress who have seen it are alarmed.

Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) saw the memo in November and said: “If that opinion were to be adopted, it would not constrain any use of force anywhere in the world. I mean, it is broad enough to authorize just about anything.” In December the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights sued to gain access to the memo after the government denied their requests to see it under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

On September 21 a report from the United Nations concluded that the extrajudicial killings broke international law and may be crimes against humanity.

Last Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice to show him the memo and let him know who else has seen it, in order to evaluate whether to release it to the public.

On October 1, John Hudson of the Washington Post reported that the Trump administration has taken $52 million Congress appropriated for countries impacted by Russia’s war on Ukraine and rerouted it to right-wing governments in Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Peru.

On Saturday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters the U.S. could move U.S. military personnel from Europe to the Western Hemisphere, saying: “Well, we’re definitely expanding our presence and our footprint in Central and South America with partners, and because of the bold move the president made in Venezuela,” referring to the U.S. capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife in a nighttime raid in early January. “We have a whole new suite of options economically and militarily with partnerships.”

While the administration is billing its intervention in Latin America as a battle against drugs, the comparison to Venezuela, where Trump has claimed control over the country’s oil fields and says he has taken billions of dollars out, although there is no public acknowledgement of where that money has gone, is instructive.

On Sunday, Jan Crawford of CBS News published an interview with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, in which Alito said one of his first thoughts after he learned that a draft of his Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision had been leaked was that “this would endanger” the people on the court.

Alito went on to say that he does not anticipate that the court will overturn the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision recognizing the right to same-sex marriage. That case is different from Roe v. Wade, he said, because people have come to rely on Obergefell as they organize their lives.

“One of the important factors we take into account in deciding whether we should reexamine a past decision is the degree to which there has been reliance on the decision,” Alito said. “Obviously a great deal had changed in the country as a result of Obergefell. There was a lot of reliance in various ways on the decision in Obergefell.”

In fact, all but one of the justices who overturned Roe—Thomas declined to answer—said in their confirmation hearings that they considered Roe settled law. Crawford pointed out that people thought Roe was settled law and had organized their lives around it, just as people had organized their lives around Obergefell.

“After Obergefell, people of the same sex got married and entered into contracts…it was much more concrete,” Alito told Crawford. “Whereas with Roe, the argument was made that it had an effect on people’s ideas, women’s ideas about the kind of society that they were going to live in, that this would have an effect on the society. It was much more abstract than what would’ve been involved had we been asked to overrule Obergefell.”

These are the same story: the deliberate destruction of the post–World War II order those who had lived through the horrors of World Wars I and II put in place to prevent another world war.

Even before the U.S. entered World War II, U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill and their advisors laid out principles for an international system that could prevent future world wars. In the 1941 Atlantic Charter, they declared that countries must not invade each other.

In April 1945, 850 delegates and their staff and advisors met in San Francisco, California, where they wrote, and adopted unanimously, the United Nations charter prohibiting “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”

Trump and his loyalists reject this framework in favor of one favored by those like Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, one that looks much like the world did before 193 nations signed onto the United Nations charter. In their worldview, strong nations exercise spheres of influence, taking political and economic control of neighboring nations.

Part of the post–World War II attempt to prevent future wars was an insistence that all human beings had certain rights and must be treated equally before the law. In 1948 the United Nations General Assembly announced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which provided a common standard of fundamental rights for all human beings.

Eleanor Roosevelt, widow of former president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and much beloved defender of human rights in the United States, led the commission that wrote the UDHR, figuring out how to define the violation of human rights not only internationally but also within a nation, and how to protect “the rights of man all over the world.”

Drafted over the next two years, the final document established that “[a]ll human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights…without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status” and regardless “of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs.”

Those rights included freedom from slavery, torture, degrading punishment, arbitrary arrest, exile, and “arbitrary interference with…privacy, family, home or correspondence, [and] attacks upon…honour and reputation.” They included the right to equality before the law and to a fair trial, the right to participate in government, either “directly or through freely chosen representatives,” the right of equal access to public service. After all, the UDHR noted, the authority of government rests on the will of the people, “expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage.”

Under Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the U.S. has abandoned the U.N. prohibition on violating the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, as well as the human rights of the people in the small boats, not to mention migrants. As Alito’s statement that the right of women to have control over their healthcare was simply an abstract idea that didn’t have to be protected suggested, undermining the post–World War II order has been a long-term project.

In its place, Trump and his allies propose a dictatorship. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who was jailed in the U.S. for money laundering but pardoned by Trump, worked with the Trump family to establish the crypto start-up World Liberty Financial, which put $799 million in Trump’s pocket last year. Zhao now lives in the United Arab Emirates.

In a recent interview with David Yaffe-Bellany of the New York Times, Zhao explained: “Democracy has been hailed as, like, the holy grail for the last couple hundred years, but democracies are inefficient. If you get a benevolent dictator, it’s actually extremely efficient. There’s very little debate going on. You don’t waste time on a lot of frivolous stuff.” It’s a model for which Trump repeatedly has expressed admiration.

In March 1941, eight months before the U.S. joined World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt noted that “Nazi forces are not seeking mere modifications in colonial maps or in minor European boundaries. They openly seek the destruction of all elective systems of government on every continent—including our own; they seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers who have seized power by force.”

“[T]hese men and their hypnotized followers call this a new order,” FDR said, but “[i]t is not new and it is not order.” “[T]he rallying cry of the dictators, their boasting about a master-race, will prove to be pure stuff and nonsense,” he said. “There never has been, there isn’t now, and there never will be, any race of people on the earth fit to serve as masters over their fellow men.”

“The world has no use for any Nation which, because of size or because of military might, asserts the right to goosestep to world power over the bodies of other Nations or other races,” he said. “We believe that any nationality, no matter how small, has the inherent right to its own nationhood” and that “the men and women of such Nations, no matter what size, can, through the processes of peace, serve themselves and serve the world by protecting the common man’s security; improve the standards of healthful living; provide markets for manufacture and for agriculture. Through that kind of peaceful service every Nation can increase its happiness, banish the terrors of war, and abandon man’s inhumanity to man.”

“Never, in all our history, have Americans faced a job so well worthwhile,” he concluded. “May it be said of us in the days to come that our children and our children’s children rise up and call us blessed.”

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

Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker in 1986. Their world came tumbling down the next year with a revelation that he had sex with a secretary in his Assemblies of God ministry (AP photo by Lou Krasky).

Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker in 1986. Their world came tumbling down the next year with a revelation that he had sex with a secretary in his Assemblies of God ministry (AP photo by Lou Krasky).

New York Times, Jim Bakker, Television Preacher Felled by Sex and Financial Scandals, Dies at 86, Clyde Haberman, Updated Oct. 6, 2026. With his wife, Tammy Faye, Mr. Bakker built a broadcasting juggernaut around the gospel of prosperity.

Jim Bakker, a television evangelist who lost his popular and prosperous ministry in a 1980s sex scandal and then lost his freedom for five years, imprisoned for having violated federal laws with his conflation of God and mammon, died on Monday. He was 86.

His wife, Lori Bakker, announced the death in a statement on Mr. Bakker’s official Instagram account. She did not cite a cause or say where he died. Mr. Bakker had what was described as a mild stroke in 2020.

In the 1970s and ’80s, Mr. Bakker and his first wife, Tammy Faye Bakker, rode to fame and riches preaching the gospel of prosperity, the notion that those who embraced genuine Christian faith would reap material rewards. Their pulpit was the television ministry PTL, which stood for Praise the Lord and People That Love, and their appeal was a combination of sermons, songs and tears. Both had a penchant for crying in public. Tammy Bakker wept on the air so often that she made sure her thickly applied mascara was waterproof.

The Bakkers drew as many as 13 million viewers a day and brought in yearly revenue as high as $129 million. On a 2,500-acre site in Fort Mill, S.C., they created and sold shares in Heritage USA, a sort of Christian Disneyland, with water slides and skating to go along with prayer and Bible study.

Mr. Bakker (pronounced Baker) was a gifted speaker who made no apologies for doing well in the name of the Lord. “Excess and success are close together,” he said in 1985. “Anyone who is successful has got to be excessive.”

More On Artificial Intelligence, Inflation, Jobs, Markets

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: AI Versus Everything Else, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 6, 2026. The hyperscaler boom is crowding out other investment.

Until now, discussions of the potential economic problems created by the AI boom have mostly focused on the future. Will it destroy millions of jobs? Is there a bubble and will it cause a severe recession if it bursts? Will it destroy humanity? While these are doubtless very important questions, attempts to answer them are at best educated guesses.

We don’t have to guess, however, about one major effect of the AI boom, because it’s happening right now: Massive spending on data centers is crowding out investment in everything else in the economy.

“Crowding out” is a familiar term in economics, usually considered a consequence of government spending. When a government engages in deficit spending and the economy is at or near full employment, it drives up interest rates. That’s because, at near or full employment, the private sector is using all the available credit in the economy at the current interest rate. Therefore, in order to attract enough funds to satisfy its deficit, the government has to offer a higher interest rate. And this, in turn, leads to lower private investment. In effect, private investment is “crowded out” by the government deficit.

Note that this story only applies when the economy is near full employment. In the past, conservative claims about crowding out were widely invoked to justify fiscal austerity after the 2008 financial crisis, when all the world’s major economies were deeply depressed. Harsh spending cuts created severe slumps in Europe, while in the US Republicans compelled Obama to cut government spending, delaying full recovery from the Great Recession. In fact, when an economy is suffering from high unemployment, deficit spending doesn’t hurt private investment. Instead, it often leads to “crowding in”: government spending boosts the economy, and the private sector is more willing to invest when the economy is stronger.

However, given the situation we are in now, with relatively low unemployment and elevated inflation, crowding out is a legitimate concern. Yet it’s important to understand that the sources of crowding out aren’t limited to government spending. Surges in private spending, like the current immense AI boom, also drive up interest rates. And that is where we are now: the surge in AI spending is driving up interest rates and crowding out all other investment. Indeed, in my October 4 primer I argued that the AI boom is the main cause of soaring long-term interest rates.

Evidence of that crowding out is revealed by a recent article in the New York Times, which noted that the AI Boom is not being slowed by these soaring rates. Yet the spike in interest rates is being felt throughout the non-AI economy. In other words, all that money going into construction of datacenters and purchasing foreign produced semiconductors comes at the expense of investment in everything else.

The chart at the top of this post, which I borrowed from Steve Rattner, clearly makes this point: construction of datacenters appears to be diverting funds and resources from the construction of housing, office buildings, and factories — more or less everything that isn’t AI-related.

That said, AI-related construction — building the structures that house datacenters — is only a fraction of the AI spending boom. Most of the money is going for equipment and software. In fact, that’s one main reason AI spending is so resistant to high interest rates: Borrowing costs matter much less for assets like GPUs, which depreciate rapidly in any case, than they do for long-lived assets like buildings.

Does this story hold if we focus on investment in equipment and software rather than construction? Yes.

Chart 2 shows my version of Rattner’s story. I look at business investment in “tech” — information processing and software — measured as a percentage of GDP. The blue line in the graph below shows how much that measure of tech spending has changed since the beginning of 2023. I compare that with the corresponding change in all other investment. This chart clearly reveals dramatic crowding out by tech spending of all other investment:

So the AI boom is crowding out everything else. While high interest rates are the main mechanism, there are also others: datacenters are gobbling up scarce electricity, and their demand for semiconductor chips has caused a “RAM apocalypse” of soaring chip prices that is hurting a wide range of industries such as autos and personal computers.

There are, as I see it, three main questions that we should ask about this AI-induced crowding out.

First, wasn’t it always thus? That is, isn’t this what always happens when a new technology drives an investment boom?

Surprisingly, the answer is no. Chart 3 shows the same calculation as Chart 2, but applied to the tech boom of the 1990s, and it doesn’t show any crowding out at all — in fact, non-tech investment rose:

How was that possible? Most of the answer is that during the 90s boom America attracted very large inflows of investment from abroad, which effectively financed the tech boom even as other investment rose.

That isn’t happening this time. True, Donald Trump insists that he has brought in 20 quadrillion dollars of foreign investment, or something like that, but most of that alleged foreign investment surge is a figment of his imagination, and there’s no sign of such a surge in balance of payments data.

A second question is, shouldn’t we assume that the private sector knows what it is doing -- that the reallocation of investment toward AI and away from everything else makes economic sense?

Definitely not. We shouldn’t assume that this reallocation of investment makes economic sense for the country as a whole. Through the tax code, and especially through changes in the tax code in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, the data center boom is effectively being subsidized by taxpayer dollars.

Moreover, we shouldn’t assume that the private sector knows what it’s doing. There’s often a double standard when thinking about bad investments, in which public investments that go bad are treated as evidence that the government can’t do anything right, while private malinvestment is brushed off as no big deal.

Think about the $80 billion that Meta, formerly known as Facebook, spent on the “metaverse,” only to basically abandon the concept. A government program that spent $80 billion on a failed project would be the subject of endless Congressional hearings. Yet the waste from a failed private investment is equally real.

Finally, how much risk is the AI boom creating in the rest of the economy? Tales of financial stress caused by high interest rates are proliferating. For example, a report in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal was titled “The surge in rates is blowing up commercial real-estate deals.” There’s a growing sense among observers I talk to that the adverse financial fallout of the AI boom for private credit and other loosely regulated parts of the financial system may be larger than many realize.

So it’s clear that crowding out by the AI boom is happening on a very large scale. And unlike the risks of technological unemployment or a burst bubble, this isn’t a hypothetical risk. It’s happening right now. 

 

bulwark morning shots logoMorning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Recordings show Stacy Garrity claiming Trump’s data center plan as her own, Brendan Hartnett, Oct. 6, 2026. As Andrew Egger wrote in Morning Shots in August, politicians are suddenly noticing that everybody hates data centers. The data center backlash is moving so quickly that politicians are scrambling to keep up—sometimes contradicting themselves in the process.

bulwark logo big shipPennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity publicly supported data centers in the summer of 2025. Then, according to audio obtained exclusively by The Bulwark, she voiced the same opinion at a December 2025 Greene County Republicans event, saying that while people hold “mixed views” of data centers, they are a “nice opportunity for rural PA, where we have a lot of space where it wouldn’t be so intrusive.” Two months later, at an Elk County meet-and-greet, Garrity dismissed voters’ concerns about the noise generated by data centers and their impact on energy prices on the grounds that “there’s some misinformation out there,” according to the audio recordings.

Then in May, Garrity called for a pause on construction of new data centers.

Garrity insisted she hadn’t switched at all. In July she stated that her “position has not changed: It’s up to the communities.”

More recently, however, she’s mirrored Trump’s position. Last month, according to the recordings shared with The Bulwark, she told a voter at a campaign event in Westmoreland County that her policy was the same as President Trump’s “Ratepayer Protection Pledge”—a voluntary pledge without enforcement mechanisms that asks hyperscalers and tech companies to provide their own electricity to avoid raising rates on locals—“except mine was before the president.” She continued, “I agree with Trump, I’m glad he put it out.”

We reached out to Garrity’s campaign asking if her views on data centers have changed. A spokesperson pointed us to Garrity’s January 2026 remarks at the Pennsylvania Press Club when she said, “There are a lot of areas where you could put data centers where communities would welcome them, but you have to engage with them, you have to talk to them, you just can’t jam it down their throat.” The spokesperson noted that this is “the same answer to a question that the Governor has sliced and diced for his advertising purposes where he leaves out the second part of her statement,” and pointed to “Josh Shapiro’s position and ‘evolution’ on the issue,” accusing him of “selling out the people of Pennsylvania for his own political gain.”

As Garrity’s campaign has pointed out, and The Bulwark previously reported, incumbent Gov. Josh Shapiro has in fact changed his position on the issue. Shapiro started out with a mission to make Pennsylvania an AI haven before signing an order with new restrictions on data center development statewide. The difference is that while Shapiro has held two different positions, he at least admits it.

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jonathan v last jvl triad logoThe Triad Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Propagandist in the Press Pool, Jonathan V. Last, above, Oct. 6, 2026. From “covering” Trump to covering FOR Trump.

In mid-September, the Trump administration bestowed press pool status on reporter—sorry, “reporter”—Beni Rae Harmony as she traveled to Ireland to cover the president.

Then, on September 26, the 24-year-old(!) Harmony, who worked for the network Real America’s Voice, took CNN’s spot on the presidential plane after Trump refused to let the network onboard.

Last Friday, Harmony switched sides, going from covering the White House as a member of the press to serving Trump as his newest assistant press secretary.

There are so many questions here, but let’s start with the most obvious one: Do you think she’ll get back pay?

Every once in a while a “journalist” will jump from the press side into a comms role in a presidential administration. Tony Snow did it. Jay Carney did it. I find such shifts distasteful, but whatever. Not everyone is a priss like me.

What has never happened before (so far as I can tell) is a supposedly straight news reporter working as a pool representative covering the president on behalf of the full American media blob one week then becoming a paid shill for that president a few days later.

How bad was it? OMG. Whatever it is you’re imagining, the reality is worse.

Buckle your chin straps; it’s about to get wild.

President Donald Trump traveled to Ireland on September 12. Beni Rae Harmony was in tow as a representative of the network Real America’s Voice.

On September 13 the president went to a golf tournament before later departing from Shannon Airport to return to Washington. At the tournament he held a gaggle with reporters. Beni Rae Harmony asked him a penetrating question. Let’s go to the transcript:

Trump: I think [U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham is] a very nice guy. He tends to be on the liberal side, unfortunately. The one thing he is gonna be doing, I think he’s gonna be stopping the stupid windmills, and he’s be going, he’s going to be drilling in the North Sea. That’s my impression. I hope no windmills. If you have a windmill in your backyard—

Harmony: You remember the Oval Office? I was the windmill girl in the Oval Office that asked you, and you said they were heinous and they were—

Trump: Who are you with?

Harmony: Real America’s Voice.

Trump: That’s good.

Unfortunately, the gaggle ended before Harmony could hit him with a follow-up.

Fortunately, Trump gaggled again on the tarmac just before boarding Air Force One, when one of the reporters asked an interesting question. We have video of the exchange, but it’s a little noisy, so I’ll give you a transcript, too.

Reporter: Who's your top contender for press secretary?

Trump: I don’t know. Would anybody like to be press secretary?

Reporter: No favorite? No short list?

Trump: No, no. But I may have developed one over the weekend.

Ha ha. Look at the president, jokingly asking the reporters if any of them would like to join his administration. How unconventional. How daring.

Except that shortly afterward, aboard Air Force One, a photographer snapped a picture of Trump holding a sheet of paper that sure looks like it has the words “Beni Rae Harmony” at the top of it.Trump speaking with reporters while in flight on Air Force One from Shannon, Ireland to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, Sunday, September 13, 2026. (Photo enhancement by The Bulwark | Photo: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP)

Whatever might that be? Oh, I’m sure there’s an innocent explanation.

Anyhoo, last Thursday, on October 1, Trump was gaggling again and Real America’s Voice was part of the press pool again, when Trump (again) suggested that someone (or someones) in the gaggle was applying to be his press secretary.

Reporter: What are you looking for in a new press secretary?

Trump: Well, we have a lot of people that want that job. I would say many of them are right here. Would you like that job?

Unfortunately, I can’t tell if Beni Rae Harmony was the RAV reporter in the pool that day, because we don’t have video. What we do know is that the very next day she announced that she was joining the administration.

At the risk of belaboring the obvious: Beni Rae Harmony was not ever a journalist. She was a propagandist. Pure and simple. Not an “opinion” journalist. Not a biased media figure. Not a reporter with a point of view.

A propagandist.

There’s a difference, you know.¹

And as far as Harmony goes, I don’t really fault her. If anything, I’m glad she’s out of the closet and gets to live as her authentic self. It’s good that she has left the press side.

But this episode tells you a lot about institutional media bias.

When Trump came back into office, he seized control of the White House press pool. Historically the pool was run by the White House Correspondents’ Association. Trump arrogated that power to himself. The WHCA went along with it. They weren’t happy, but they submitted.

And in so doing they handed Trump the ability to name his own propagandists as the deputized representatives for the entire American media.²

Think about that for a moment. This isn’t state control of the media, exactly. But you can see Pravda and Sputnik from the front porch.

If we get out of this, we’re going to need to rethink a great deal of the American political order. One part of that will be how to prevent presidents from appointing propagandists as members of his pooled press.

And part of that reform will be changing the old guard institutions that bent over for Trump.

I don’t blame Beni Rae Harmony for going from pool reporter to Trump mouthpiece. I blame the White House Correspondents’ Association that let Trump put her there in the first place.

Oct. 5

Top Headlines

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  • Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: The Trump Administration is a Cesspit of Corruption, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 5, 2026. And fighting it should be at the heart of the Democratic agenda. The level of corruption that Trump has engaged in and enabled in others is completely unprecedented – self-dealing that, as Trump would say, is like nothing anybody has ever seen before. America currently has a Republican president who, along with his family, has raked in billions, possibly close to $10 billion in personal gain from office in less than two years. He has effectively sold criminal pardons to scammers, invalidating the legal claims of their victims for restitution. His son-in-law Jared Kushner has become a billionaire running an investment fund for Gulf petro-state autocrats despite having no discernible investment skills. The Times just reported that Kristi Noem paid hundreds of millions over the reasonable price for 5 aircraft – one of which contains a marble bathroom and luxury bedroom – that were ostensibly for deportations but are instead sitting on the runway. And then there’s Trump’s Secretary of the Commerce, Howard Lutnick, whose family has doubled its net worth to over $7 billion, largely through its investments in Tether, the crypto-currency of choice by Iran, terrorists and rogue states.
  • Defiance.org, Commentary: Trump just told Americans: vote MAGA, or lose federal aid. His threats will backfire, Miles Taylor, right, miles taylor 1 gmaOct. 5, 2026. Trump just told Americans: vote MAGA, or lose federal aid. The president says he’ll withhold money from states that don’t vote MAGA. That’s obviously illegal, and it’s pissing off a country already sick of his corruption.

Breaking News

 

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Special Report

Shown above are some of those convicted in a Republican-orchestrated 1972 plot to burglarize Democratic offices at Watergate complex in Washington, DC in advance of that year's presidential elections.

Shown above are some of those convicted in a Republican-orchestrated 1972 plot to burglarize Democratic offices at Watergate complex in Washington, DC in advance of that year's presidential elections.

  • Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Erasing Watergate: Trump's Campaign to Rewrite American History, Wayne Madsen, right, wayne madsen new observerOct. 5, 2026. Trump is channeling the late Communist Chinese leader Mao Zedong and his Cultural Revolution in not only destroying Washington DC’s memorial to President John F. Kennedy (the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts) and East Wing of the White House but ordering the Justice Department to investigate veteran federal prosecutors of President Richard Nixon for misconduct.

News Roundups

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance 

  • U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsDemocracy Docket, Opinion: This time, take Trump literally, Marc Elias, Democracy Docket founder, Oct. 5, 2026. Earlier this year, The New York Times asked Donald Trump whether he regretted not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines in swing states after the 2020 election. His answer was chilling: "Well, I should have." Trump is telling us what he plans to do in this year's midterms. He is trying to rig the elections and subvert their results. While we have been able to stop him so far, there is no guarantee that we will continue to prevail in the weeks ahead.Yet despite the obvious signs of Trump's plan, too many reporters and pundits downplay it. They adhere to the false neutrality that has come to dominate legacy media coverage over the last decade.
  • Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion: House Dems Expand The Battlefield, Early Early Vote Data Encouraging, Trump Is Campaigning Today In Nebraska!!!!!!!!!!!! Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 5, 2026. Here’s some news from Politico: Democrats’ House campaign arm is expanding its targets even further into Trump country, as the party grows increasingly bullish they will not just win, but win big next month.
  • The Contrarian, Opinion: Please, Mr. President, Campaign For My Republican Opponent! Jennifer Rubin, right, jennifer rubin new headshotOct. 5, 2026. The horrendous September jobs numbers — only 29,000 new jobs (a fraction of the 84,000 expected) and unemployment up to 4.2% — tell only part of the story. With downward revisions, the economy actually lost 10,000 jobs in July and added just 133,000, not 162,000, in August (as Donald Trump touted in his rant-filled encounter with TIME magazine last week). Coupled with inflation, the soaring debt, and spiking energy prices, the Trump economy has become a nightmare for ordinary workers and consumers.
  • PoliticusUSA, News and Comment: Trump Blames Blue States, Not His Iran War, For Gas Prices, Jason Easley, right, jason easleyOct. 5, 2026. The reality that he is soon going to be a lame-duck, irrelevant president is slowly creeping in on Donald Trump, who accused blue states of cheating in elections, and causing high gas prices.
  • Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Oct. 4, 2026 [Bribing Voters With Federal Funds], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 5, 2026. On Friday night, just before 11:00, Trump announced that his administration “will, immediately, begin sending ‘Checks’ of nearly $100 to over 20 MILLION wonderful Seniors to help pay for their Medicare Part B premiums, which we have already reduced by significant amounts."  A Republican congressional aide told Dan Diamond of the Washington Post that lawmakers had been planning to use the fund to help fund several health programs this year, and were taken aback by Trump’s announcement.

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

wayne madsen new observerJustice Integrity Project Editor's Note: Investigative reporter Wayne Madsen, left, a courageous reporter, a former Navy intelligence officer and a close colleague of this editor, broke the Hastert story in a three-part series in the fall of 2006 published on "The Wayne Madsen Report" naming the then-powerful House Speaker as a gay pedophile and hypocrite who presided over a "gay Mafia" of powerful Republicans in Congress who abused youths while winning elections as "family values" purists.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption 

 pete hegseth treason graphic

  • Hope for America, Opinion: Pete Hegseth's TREASON accusation reveals a dark plan, Heather Delaney Reese, above right, Oct. 5, 2026. Pete Hegseth stood at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs beneath a redesigned military seal that looked like something pulled from 1930s Germany, and told cadets that “the flyovers will continue until morale improves.”
  • Hope for America, Opinion: Pete Hegseth is obsessed with men and power, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Oct. 5, 2026. heather delaney reeseEarly yesterday morning, the United States Secretary of “War,” Pete Hegseth, stepped up to the podium at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and stood directly under a desecrated version of the Department of Defense seal.

More On Middle East Wars

More Global News  

  • Israel FlagDrop Site News, CIA Report Warns Israel Could Head Toward Civil War, Total Collapse, Aída Chávez and Ryan Grim, Oct. 5, 2026. U.S. intelligence raises fears of civil unrest and state breakdown in Israel ahead ofOctober 27 elections. TCIA Logohis article is being co-published with Capital & Empire. Israel is at risk of civil war or state collapse, a classified CIA assessment warns, as years of genocide in Gaza and war in Lebanon and Iran deepen political, economic, and social fractures within thecountry. The August report, titled “Fracture From Within,” was compiled by experts in the CIA’s Red Cell, according to two U.S. sources who described the contents of the report to Drop Site News. The Red Cell, which is the unit responsible for providing “alternative analysis” within the agency, produced the assessment through a combination of open source information and U.S. intelligence. 
  • german flagPolitico, Germany risks being drawn into ‘violent conflict’ with Russia, spy chief warns, James Angelos, Oct. 5, 2026. The head of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency also cautioned that NATO countries must beware of Moscow’s “little green men.”
  • Politico, Suspected plague in Russia puts EU on alert, Claudia Chiappa, Oct. 5, 2026. “We are aware of the reports concerning the laboratory incident in Russia, seemingly involving a pathogen-causing plague,” says European Commission spokesperson.
  • New York Times, ‘No Help’: Aid Arrived Too Late as Ebola Spread in a Congolese Town, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Photographs by Arlette Bashizi, Oct. 5, 2026. What happened in Mangala, where residents were left with little outside support, helps explain how this outbreak became the worst seen in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
  • New York Times, Trapped in a Kill Zone, a Ukrainian City Is Beginning to Starve, ukraine flagSiobhán O’Grady, Liubov Sholudko and Yurii Shyvala, Oct. 5, 2026. Evacuation is almost impossible and food is running out in Russian-occupied Oleshky, a city menaced by mines and drones.
  • New York Times, News Analysis: In a Major Boost for the Right, Another Bolsonaro Nears Brazil’s Presidency, Ana Ionova and Adam B. Ellick, Oct. 5, 2026. Flávio Bolsonaro’s first round lead leaves President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva three weeks to find the votes to stop Brazil’s, and Latin America’s, rightward shift.
  • New York Times, Spain’s Leader Calls Early Election After Housing Crisis Roils Government, Carlos Barragán and Jason Horowitz, Oct. 5, 2026. Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish prime minister, has faced challenges including a migration crisis and several corruption scandals involving his inner circle.

More On #MeToo Experiences

  • Are you f'ng kidding me? Personal Essay, I Was Drunk. I Was Raped,.Both Things Can Be True At The Same Time, JoJo From Jerz, right, jo jo from jerzOct. 5, 2026. The Cornell “7” rape story has been excruciatingly difficult for me to talk or write about. This piece has taken me the better part of three days to write because every single time I sat down to do so, some piece of it dragged me back inside the worst night of my life.

More On Epstein Files, Trump Team Coverup

epstein suspicious deaths wmr 10 5 2025

Wayne Madsen Report, Commentary: Suspicious deaths connected to Trumpstein continue, Wayne Madsen, Oct. 5, 2026. Latest “suicide” is linked to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

U.S. Inflation, Markets, Jobs, High-Tech 

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Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: The Trump Administration is a Cesspit of Corruption, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 5, 2026. And fighting it should be at the heart of the Democratic agenda.

We found out that Donald Trump Jr.'s lavish Bahamas wedding was heavily funded by a secret benefactor: Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin. Kremlev footed the bill for

The cesspit of corruption that is Donald Trump’s presidency is finally getting the attention it deserves. It’s about time. And if a massive blue wave sweeps Washington on November 3rd as polls now suggest, Democrats should put corruption front and center of their agenda in Congress.

The level of corruption that Trump has engaged in and enabled in others is completely unprecedented – self-dealing that, as Trump would say, is like nothing anybody has ever seen before. America currently has a Republican president who, along with his family, has raked in billions, possibly close to $10 billion in personal gain from office in less than two years.

He has effectively sold criminal pardons to scammers, invalidating the legal claims of their victims for restitution. His son-in-law Jared Kushner has become a billionaire running an investment fund for Gulf petro-state autocrats despite having no discernible investment skills. The Times just reported that Kristi Noem paid hundreds of millions over the reasonable price for 5 aircraft – one of which contains a marble bathroom and luxury bedroom – that were ostensibly for deportations but are instead sitting on the runway. And then there’s Trump’s Secretary of the Commerce, Howard Lutnick, whose family has doubled its net worth to over $7 billion, largely through its investments in Tether, the crypto-currency of choice by Iran, terrorists and rogue states.

And I shouldn’t omit the tragic fate of Simon Andriesz, the British banker and whistleblower, who recently died by suicide. Andriesz revealed to the Senate that Lutnick had lied about the extent of his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Right before his death, Andriesz spoke openly about how threats to himself and his family as a result of his testimony had ruined his life.

Despite the extent of Trump and Co’s corruption, there’s still some voter education to be done here. Given everything else — the disastrous Persian Gulf war, tariffs, inflation, threats against our closest allies, visions of AI annihilation — it has taken a long time for Trump and Co’s lurid, open corruption to emerge as a major political issue. But there are growing signs that corruption is finally breaking through into the public consciousness. Hopefully this breakthrough will be hugely important not just for the midterm elections but for what happens afterwards.

A clear indication of this breakthrough was the startling Oct 2nd lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal — yes, that left-wing rag, the Wall Street Journal —excoriating the Trump family’s corruption. True, the headline — “Don Jr.’s star turn is coming” — was oddly elliptical, and the example of corruption it chose to focus on – the wedding gift bestowed by a Russian oligarch worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, is penny-ante by Trump standards. The tone was more “this is a public relations problem for Republicans” than “the Trumps are selling America to the highest bidders, some of whom are enemies of the State”. But apparently even the formerly pro-Trumpian Wall Street Journal editorial page has finally reached its gag level.

Reflecting this trend, the latest Economist/YouGov poll included questions about corruption and which political party voters blame most. This appears to be the first time that this question has been asked systematically. Here’s what the poll found:

At first sight, these poll results are somewhat disappointing: only 30 percent of Americans see Republicans as the more corrupt party, with a majority either saying that Democrats are more corrupt or that there is no difference between the parties. But if one combines a closer look at these numbers with a more realistic understanding of public opinion, this poll actually shows that corruption is becoming a serious G.O.P. problem.

First, only a small fraction of independents say that Democrats are more corrupt than Republicans. The only group in which a majority say that the Democrats are the more corrupt party are MAGA Republicans — and as the old line puts it:“they would say that, wouldn’t they?”

Second, most voters, too busy trying to cope with daily responsibilities compounded by inflation and surging car loan rates, don’t pay close attention to the news. They are vaguely aware that corruption is an issue, and too often equate low-level, routine grifting like that of Hunter Biden or Bob Menendez with Trump’s wholesale looting and vandalism. They have little sense of the reality that recent corruption is orders of magnitudes bigger and more blatant than anything we saw in the past.

But that may soon change. According to all the polls, Democrats have a virtual lock on winning the House by a large margin. In addition, polls indicate a high probability that they will also take the Senate. And this means subpoena power. Through Congressional hearings and investigations, Democrats can vastly elevate the visibility of the extent of the outright looting and vandalism of this country by Trump and his gang.

Given the extent of the corruption, the rise of oligarchy in America, and the ever-rising flood of money in politics, many people may reasonably ask “Why will this matter?” Having elected Trump twice, can we trust Americans to vote for what is right rather than for lies? And can we trust Democrats, once in power, to be immune to the seduction of Big Money, as the Big Money will certainly try?

So, in a very real sense, once in power Democrats will have multiple battle fronts on their hands. In addition to battling Trump in his two remaining years of power, they will also have to prove to the American people that they will be immune to the inevitable attempts by Big Money to buy them off through campaign contributions and back-room deals. A couple of examples of what is already going wrong are the recent employment of Chuck Shumer’s daughter by OpenAI and the crypto billions raised by Kirsten Gillibrand’s 22-year old son for a new venture.

Granted, these two examples are exceedingly small potatoes in comparison to Trumpian corruption. But a significant number of voters won’t see it that way and will instead settle into a disaffected stance that both parties are equally bad. Furthermore, it’s a sure bet that once Democrats are in power, the Wall Street Journal and its ilk will revert to form, lambasting Democrats and elevating the Republicans.

So Democrats need to use this coming blue wave not only to clean out Trump’s corruption but to also put their own house in order. Because the forces that gave rise to Trump will not go meekly into the night. 

miles taylor defiance.org logoDefiance.org, Commentary: Trump just told Americans: vote MAGA, or lose federal aid. His threats will backfire, Miles Taylor, right, miles taylor 1 gmaOct. 5, 2026. Trump just told Americans: vote MAGA, or lose federal aid. The president says he’ll withhold money from states that don’t vote MAGA. That’s obviously illegal, and it’s pissing off a country already sick of his corruption.

Donald Trump went to Ohio on Saturday and, like a desperate gangster, threatened an entire state: vote for his candidates, or else.

He’s not even trying to hide the thuggery anymore. In a high school gym north of Dayton, the president of the United States told a few thousand people that their entire state’s access to federal cash now depends on how they vote next month. It was like a robber pulling aside his jacket to show you the pistol in his waistband.

Trump said that Ohio’s Republican officials call him all the time asking for money, and that he’ll be a lot less inclined to pick up the phone if Democrats win control of the state. Of the Democratic candidate for governor, Amy Acton, he was blunt: “I’m not going to help her.” Then he dangled a bribe, telling the crowd that if Republicans win, Ohio will be “strongly considered” for the new Space Academy. Then he told them all to vote as if he were on the ballot himself.

I had two reactions to this. First, it’s a disgusting and blatantly unconstitutional weaponization of presidential power. Trump is using your taxpayer dollars as a carrot-and-stick to get you to vote for his candidates. Second, it’s going to blow up in his face. He’s reached the total desperation stage, Americans can sense it, and his thuggery is only making them more inclined to throw out MAGA candidates and a MAGA Congress.

Let me explain what Trump is describing in plainer terms. Imagine a burglar breaks into your house. You call 911. The dispatcher answers and says that before sending a squad car, she needs to check your voter registration. Republicans get priority. Everybody else waits. You would call that a dictatorship, wouldn’t you? Or the very least a corrupt police state. And you’d be right. Yet that’s what Trump keeps describing, with federal dollars in place of squad cars.

This is the scenario I warned about before Trump’s 2024 re-election. In Blowback, I said that a second Trump administration would build a system of selective protection, in which the government treats you as friend or foe based on your politics, and that the agency I used to help run, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), would be used as a favors agency. DHS hands out billions in grants every year for emergency response and public safety. During my time there, we fought off pressure from Trump to use that money for political rewards and punishment, including his repeated attempts to hold disaster aid hostage in places like Puerto Rico and California.

We said no to him. A lot. But I worried that the next crew wouldn’t. And they haven’t. In fact, Trump’s “threat” isn’t so much a threat as it is a description of what’s already happening.

In the first fourteen months of this term, the president approved a mere 23 percent of major disaster requests from states with Democratic governors and senators, as opposed to 89 percent from Republican-led states (for comparison, in his first term those numbers were 93 and 89, respectively). See the trend? In July, he approved disaster aid for six red states, then denied aid to four blue states, even though they all cleared FEMA’s own damage thresholds. He bragged on Truth Social about the cash he was giving to the red states. Politico later reported he overruled his own agencies to carry out this lawless act of political favoritism. And it’s continued that way. Just last week, his administration rejected Massachusetts’s appeal for help with a devastating February blizzard… for the second time.

If you can believe it, disaster aid is the small end of all of this. A new tracker from the States United Democracy Center and Grant Witness, called “Lost Funds,” documents $177 billion in federal grants canceled, frozen, delayed or otherwise interrupted since Trump took office. Every dollar of it was appropriated by Congress. Health funding alone accounts for $58 billion. The president is doing something no administration has ever dared to do on this scale. He’s breaking the literal laws passed by Congress, hoarding funds he’s supposed to spend, and often doing it to punish blue states.

That’s why states have gone to court 23 times to fight Trump’s financial thuggery and clawed back $35 billion so far. But the Trump I served under doesn’t give a damn about judges, which is why he felt emboldened to say what he said on Saturday in Ohio.

This is just as much about a weak-willed Congress as it is about a wayward Trump. While the states are suing to defend money that Congress appropriated from being turned into the president’s personal piggy bank, Congress isn’t. The body whose major constitutional purpose is to control the purse has sat back and allowed a president to rewrite its spending decisions by region and party. They’ve let stand the gravest misappropriation of taxpayer dollars in history. For what? To please the boss.

But as I said, it’s going to blow up in his face like a pile of fireworks lit by a blowtorch.

Polls keep showing the president’s approval rating cratering. Voters are struggling to fill the tank and afford groceries; they’re drowning in his tariffs, which are just taxes with a different name. And Trump thinks the way to appeal to those suffering people is to threaten to take even more money from them? Great move, pal. You just pissed off anyone who wasn’t already pissed off.

So here’s what that fireworks show is going to look like when voters tell the president to go pound sand on November 3:

It will look like a new Congress that takes Trump to court to defend its power of the purse… It will look like a barrage of subpoenas delivered to Trump officials ordering them to testify, under oath, about who knew what and when regarding the president’s political favoritism schemes… and it will look like representatives voting to take away Trump’s allowance — yanking away every penny meant for vanity projects for himself or gratuitous rewards for his friends — while forcing the administration to comply with the law and provide federal aid to ordinary people the way it’s supposed to be distributed, without political bias or cronyism.

Threatening the very people who hired you is a pretty bad management strategy and even stupider politics. This weekend, Donald Trump proved that he doesn’t need an opponent. If left to his own corrupt devices, he will defeat himself, again and again. 

Breaking News

 

djt god made trump ad

New York Times, Facing Backlash, Trump Says His Super PAC Will Pay for Taxpayer-Funded Ads, Shane Goldmacher, Theodore Schleifer and Maggie Haberman, Oct. 5, 2026. The president said that his PAC, MAGA, Inc., would pay for TV ads promoting him that had been paid for with taxpayer money.

President Trump reversed course on Monday and announced that his super PAC would now pay for the television ads promoting him that have been airing nationwide at taxpayer expense.

In a post on his social media platform, Mr. Trump wrote, “I have decided to do the Patriotic Ads, among others, and pay for them myself, and with money I raised for MAGA, Inc.”

More than $10 million in taxpayer-funded ads have run since September, according to AdImpact, the ad-tracking service. The ads, which are running on cable and network television, were paid for through a $20 million contract that used funds from the Department of Homeland Security.

Democrats — and some Republicans — have criticized the ads as a possible violation of federal laws for using taxpayer funds for “publicity or propaganda purposes.” The ads were broadcast in the heat of the campaign for the midterms, as Republicans are trying to hold control of Congress. At least one of the ads featured footage that originally had appeared in a 2024 Trump campaign video.

The White House had defended the ads as simply public service announcements. But the use of material that had originated in a campaign provided further fuel to critics of the ads.Sign up to get Maggie Haberman's articles emailed to you. Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent reporting on President Trump. Get it sent to your inbox.

There were four different ads and each featured an unusual disclaimer: “Paid for by the U.S. government.”

One of them featured images of Mr. Trump as the song “Love Me” by Christian Berishaj played. The artist, who performs as JMSN, has complained about the use of his song.

The New York Times wrote over the weekend that Mr. Trump had personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads. Federal records show that U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which falls under the Department of Homeland Security, awarded a contract to LMD, a Maryland marketing firm, on Sept. 20.

Mr. Trump referred to the backlash in his post.

“The Radical Left is upset with the fact that I am taking Ads, which I consider to be a positive promotion for our Great U.S.A., and paying for them with U.S.A. money,” he wrote, defending them as “a rather standard thing to do.”

The White House did not immediately respond to an email for comment or how the president’s super PAC would pay for the ads. A spokesman for MAGA Inc. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Trump’s claim in his social media post that he would pay for the ads “myself” through his super PAC is likely to add fodder to another formal complaint against the president.

A campaign watchdog group, the Campaign Legal Center, accused Mr. Trump of violating federal election laws by directing his super PAC in a complaint to the Federal Election Commission because of his previous claims to control the super PAC.

Mr. Trump has referred to the super PAC’s funds has “my money that I control” in the past.

Federal law bars federal office holders from directing spending decisions for a political organization with no contribution limits, such as a super PAC.

New York Times, Potential Iranian Drone Attack Led to Exit of U.S. Aircraft from British Air Base, Eric Schmitt and Julian E. Barnes, Oct. 5, 2026. According to U.S. and British officials, 12 B-1 Air Force bombers from R.A.F. Fairford air base were withdrawn because of the risk of a drone attack ordered by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The United States abruptly withdrew all 12 B-1 Air Force bombers from an air base in southern England based on new information that commanders received about a potential drone attack ordered by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to U.S. and British officials.

The suspected attack was part of a complex, multipronged Iranian plot to strike aircraft and kill some of the several hundred American personnel stationed at the base, R.A.F. Fairford, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. All of the Air Force bombers were withdrawn over the weekend.

Some of the officials said they believed that the plot was loosely modeled on an audacious attack that Ukraine launched against Russia last year when it smuggled drones deep into the Russian heartland and launched them from semi trucks. The attack destroyed or damaged at least a dozen aircraft, including many of Moscow’s nuclear-capable strategic bombers, on runways in Siberia and Russia’s Far North.

Vice President JD Vance said on Monday that the Pentagon quickly moved the bombers “out of an abundance of caution trying to protect our guys.” He accused Iran of plotting attacks against the United States but stopped short of commenting on any details about the most recent threat.

“We do feel with some confidence that the Iranians are trying to do what the Iranian state has done for 49 years, which is engage in acts of terrorism against the United States and against a lot of other people as well,” Mr. Vance told reporters at Joint Base Andrews before leaving on a trip to Alaska. “We are being extremely cautious.”Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Iran and the United Kingdom? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

President Trump said on Monday that people linked to Iran posed a threat to the U.S. bombers at the British air base, prompting the order to return them to the United States. “There were some threats,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “Why should we leave them there?” he added, referring to the bombers.

The Wall Street Journal earlier reported the drone threat as the reason for the withdrawal.

The sudden pullout of the bombers came a week after the British police arrested five men who had been traveling the morning of Sept. 27 in white vans near the base, which has been used by American bombers in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. The men were released on bail a day later after the authorities did not discover explosives in the vans.

But the police have repeatedly said the men remain under investigation, and a British-Iranian dual national was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts.

The rushed order to withdraw the bombers was highly unusual: Such moves are rarely made so quickly from an allied air base in a peacetime country thousands of miles from a combat zone.

Indeed, the need to move the bombers from the base was deemed so urgent that some of the planes and their flight crews left while aerial refueling aircraft were still being deployed to support their flights to the United States, American officials said.

Many details about the potential threat that prompted the rapid withdrawal of the Air Force bombers, some of which had arrived just in the past week as part of a regular rotation of forces, remained murky on Monday. One U.S. official said the new information was part of the same threat warnings that surfaced three weeks ago, though a sense of urgency spiked over the weekend, alarming commanders.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham said last week that the British government believed Iran played a part in planning the events that led to the arrests. U.S. and British officials, as well as those in Germany and Israel, believe the operation is connected to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps or a separate military headquarters in Tehran. Iran has denied the accusations.

Special Report

 

Shown above are some of those convicted in a Republican-orchestrated 1972 plot to burglarize Democratic offices at Watergate complex in Washington, DC in advance of that year's presidential elections.

Shown above are some of those convicted in a Republican-orchestrated 1972 plot to burglarize Democratic offices at Watergate complex in Washington, DC in advance of that year's presidential elections.

wayne madesen report logoWayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Erasing Watergate: Trump's Campaign to Rewrite American History, Wayne Madsen, left, wayne madsen new observerOct. 5, 2026. Trump is channeling the late Communist Chinese leader Mao Zedong and his Cultural Revolution in not only destroying Washington DC’s memorial to President John F. Kennedy (the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts) and East Wing of the White House but ordering the Justice Department to investigate veteran federal prosecutors of President Richard Nixon for misconduct.

Justice Department log circularThe Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Justice Department was reviewing allegations that Nixon-era prosecutors had committed misconduct during the Watergate investigation. Geoff Shepard, a former Nixon administration aide and longtime critic of the Watergate prosecution, reportedly delivered a two-hour presentation to the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility in September.

This is significant for several reasons.

First, the review reportedly involves the very office whose origins lie in the reforms following Watergate.

Second, the allegations concern prosecutorial conduct during one of the most consequential constitutional crises in American history.

Third, the development comes amid broader changes to Justice Department oversight. A June 2025 Reuters investigation documented how the administration had substantially weakened the department’s Public Integrity Section, another institution created in Watergate’s aftermath.

The Todd Blanche Justice Department is currently deliberating whether to move beyond historical reassessment of Watergate toward criminal referrals, investigations, or charges. A new DoJ investigation of the Watergate investigation could focus on the prosecutors, congressional investigators, lawyers, and institutions that established the historical record of Nixon's misconduct. Those being subjected to an investigation overseen by Blanche and FBI director Kash Patel include the following living veterans of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force: former Justice Department prosecutors retired U.S. Judge Jill Wine-Banks, Richard Ben-Veniste, Nick Akerman, Richard J. Davis, Carl Feldbaum, George T. Frampton, Jr., Kenneth S. Geller, retired U.S. Judge Stephen E. Haberfeld, Henry L. Hecht, Philip Allen Lacovara, retired U.S. Judge Paul R. Michel, Robert L. Palmer, Roger Witten, James L. Quarles III, and former U.S. Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Stephen G. Breyer.

House Judiciary Committee impeachment-inquiry staff members who are still alive include Hillary Rodham Clinton, former Massachusetts Governor William Weld, former Clinton White House Senior Counsel Bernard W. Nussbaum (a DoJ investigation could branch into a renewed DoJ investigation of the 1991 death of White House adviser Vince Foster), retired U.S. Judge Robert D. Sack, Evan A. Davis, Owen M. Fiss, and Rufus Cormier Jr.

The DoJ could also posthumously besmirch the reputations of Watergate special prosecutors Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworsky. If Blanche and Patel get away with that sort of defamation, where does it stop? Are past presidents, senators, attorneys general, Supreme Court justices, generals and admirals, and anyone else of historical note fair game?

Nick Akerman responded publicly on October 3 to the new DOJ activity, rejecting Shepard's allegations that Watergate prosecutors improperly communicated with judges or suppressed exculpatory evidence. He said the prosecution team was careful about its disclosure obligations and characterizes the present effort as an attempt to recast Nixon as the victim.

The DoJ review is taking place against a broader and increasingly contentious struggle over the institutions responsible for preserving America’s past.

Since returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump has dismissed the Archivist of the United States and the Librarian of Congress. His administration has also challenged the traditional institutional independence of the Library of Congress.

Trump had the entire White House East Wing demolished over three days in October 2025 to make way for his proposed roughly 90,000-square-foot ballroom. Trump has also threatened to tear down the Kennedy Center, while Congress and the courts have been trying to prevent unilateral demolition.

Trump's March 2025 order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” says federal institutions should emphasize American “greatness,” directs officials to remove what it calls “improper” or “anti-American” ideology from the Smithsonian, and orders the Interior Department to review monuments and historical markers changed since 2020.

Under incessant attack by the Trump cultural aggressors are the histories of the Civil War, slavery, Reconstruction, Native Americans, the labor movement, women’s suffrage, immigration, the modern civil rights movement, Andrew Johnson and impeachment; Reagan and Iran-Contra; . In July 2026 Trump issued another order declaring that a White House review had found the National Museum of American History ideologically compromised and directing the government to put warning signs outside the museum informing visitors about the administration's findings.

Donald Trump Orders Warning Signs Outside The Smithsonian Over Historical Framing

Meanwhile, across the country, thousands of books have been removed or restricted in public schools amid political disputes over race, sexuality, national identity, and the teaching of American history.

The Watergate scandal did more than end a presidency. It produced an enduring body of documentary evidence—White House recordings, sworn testimony, congressional proceedings, judicial decisions, and prosecutorial records. It also inspired reforms intended to ensure that presidential misconduct could be investigated and documented independently of political pressure.

A democracy can survive arguments about its history. It becomes more vulnerable when those holding power can determine which evidence remains accessible and which versions of the past receive official approval. The nation has a chance by voting out all Republicans on November 3, from U.S.senators and House members and governors down the ballot to state legislature members and county commissioners.

Note: This author feared that Trump was coming after our history and that his first target would be African American and civil rights history. This book was but one attempt to preserve but one of America’s most important legacies: A Woke Coloring Book: Re-adding Color to a Whitewashed History

News Roundups

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Trump Loses Latinos and His Temper, Russia Changes Its Plague Story, Cornell Boils Over, GOP Endorses Man Accused of Abusing 3 Year Old, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 5, 2026. Trump is calling reporters “fake news” as his support among Latino voters collapses and his White House bans yet another outlet from Air Force One. A lab worker at a Russian plague institute is dead, Moscow keeps changing its story, and Trump is offering to help Putin. And Cornell students smashed windows at the university’s main administration building as new records show fraternity brothers scrambled to contain gang rape allegations.

Before we get into it, I need to show you a headline that stopped me in my tracks. CBS News ran this about Dennis Hastert. What an insane headline.

Let’s be clear about who Dennis Hastert is. He admitted in federal court to sexually abusing boys he coached as a high school wrestling coach. A federal judge called him a “serial child molester.” He was a registered sex offender. That’s the story. And CBS failed again.

This is exactly what I mean when I say some mainstream media is watering down the news. When outlets bury the truth to sound neutral, they aren’t being objective. They’re protecting the powerful at the expense of the people who were hurt. You saw it today too, as Trump called reporters “fake news” for simply stating facts about his polling and his voter fraud lies. The answer to that pressure isn’t softer headlines. It’s telling you exactly what happened, plainly, every single time.

Trump Calls Reporters “Fake News” When Pressed on Latino Support and Mail-In Voting

Trump dismissed a question about his collapsing support among Latino voters by attacking the reporter who asked it. When a reporter noted his approval among Latino voters has dropped to 27%, Trump shot back, “You’re fake news. You’re CNN.” He insisted his poll numbers are “great” and told reporters to look at the crowds he’s drawing. But reports showed rows of empty seats at his recent rally in Mobile, and a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Monday found his approval at a record low, with Hispanic voters souring on Republicans.

Trump also couldn’t explain why he’s urging supporters to vote by mail while calling it fraudulent. Asked about the contradiction, Trump said he’d rather supporters vote in person but that they can vote by mail if they want, while claiming “there is a lot of cheating in vote by mail.” When the reporter pointed out there’s no evidence for that, Trump again responded, “You are fake news.” His fraud claims have been rejected by courts and contradicted by his own Justice Department and Homeland Security. The exchange comes as Trump escalates his war on the press, banning CNN and Politico from Air Force One despite a judge’s order to restore their access.

He also attacked the New York Times for suggesting there were empty seats at his rally:

Trump Offers to Help Russia After Suspected Plague Death at Siberian Lab as Moscow Downplays Fears

Trump says the US will help Russia after a lab worker at a Siberian plague research institute died in murky circumstances. “We’ll help,” Trump told reporters before leaving for Nebraska. “Anybody who has that kind of a problem, we’ll always help.” He called it “a rough disease” and claimed microbes have “gotten stronger and stronger,” saying “they’re like an army.” Asked what the US is doing to guard against the risk, Trump said only that officials are “looking at it very strongly,” while the White House declined to say whether he had been briefed.

The worker, identified in Russian reports as 28-year-old Darya Shipilova, died after Russian media said she broke a test tube containing plague bacteria. Shipilova worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute in Shelekhov, more than 2,500 miles east of Moscow, a facility that studies dangerous diseases including plague, cholera and anthrax. According to Russian reports, she broke the tube around Sept. 25, developed severe pneumonia and died, with the WHO saying she died overnight into Oct. 2. The hospital where she was treated has been quarantined and lab operations suspended, and nearly 200 people who came into contact with her were tested. The local mayor says none of those under observation have shown signs of infection.

Russian officials have been walking back their own statements as the Kremlin tries to contain public fears. A regional leader initially posted that Shipilova died of the plague, then edited it to say “possibly,” and local dmitry peskovofficials deleted a warning telling people not to visit Shelekhov less than two hours after posting it. Russia’s health agency now denies there was any lab accident and attributes her death to “pneumonia of unknown origin,” saying no dangerous pathogens were found in contacts. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, right, urged Russians to “listen to official information.” Unconfirmed reports say Russian security services escorted vehicles to hospitals.

US officials are tracking the situation but say Russia’s secrecy makes it hard to judge the threat. The CDC, State Department and other agencies are working to learn more, with one health official admitting, “We don’t have a lot of intel.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it’s not “cause for alarm” but “cause for focus,” noting limited travel between the US and Russia. Former Biden pandemic official Ashish Jha warned that Russia has an active offensive biological weapons program, and some officials want to know whether the lab was altering plague samples in gain-of-function research. Trump’s former pandemic preparedness chief, Paul Friedrichs, said human error is plausible but cautioned that “first reports are usually wrong” and Russia has a history of not being forthcoming.

Health experts say the risk to Americans appears low, but pneumonic plague is the most dangerous form of the disease. It hasn’t been confirmed that Shipilova had pneumonic plague, which attacks the lungs, can spread person to person and is almost always fatal if untreated. It can be treated successfully with antibiotics if caught early, ideally within 24 hours of symptoms, and its incubation period is up to six or seven days. The WHO says the risk to the general public appears low, and a US health official said that unless someone infected gets on a plane to the US, “it is low risk.” The US already sees about seven human plague cases a year, mostly in New Mexico and Arizona.

Cornell Protests Turn Destructive as New Records Show Frat Brothers Scrambled to Contain Gang Rape Allegations

Student activists smashed windows and spray-painted Cornell’s main administration building as protests over the university’s handling of the alleged gang rape escalated. Around 2 a.m. Monday, protesters vandalized Day Hall, home to Cornell’s senior administrators, leaving messages like “At Cornell rapists are protected protestors are expelled.” The activists said they want to halt “business as usual until justice is attained,” arguing that property damage isn’t violent but condoning rape is. Cornell said it understands the frustration but that “damaging property is not the answer,” and it will investigate the vandalism. The night before, a packed rally in downtown Ithaca demanded that administrators be fired, the accused men’s degrees be revoked and Greek life be abolished, with a larger campus protest planned for Monday afternoon.

New records obtained by ABC News show some Chi Phi brothers ran “damage control” in the weeks after the alleged assault. A friend of Jane Doe told campus investigators the men contacted her almost daily to keep her “not upset about the situation,” and when she went to police, the chapter’s leadership told members to hold off on calling her while they figured out a plan. In a recorded call, Doe told Matthew Ingalls, who invited her to the house that night, that “what y’all did would be classified as gang rape,” while he insisted she had told him she was sober and that the door was simply unlocked. Ingalls never mentioned the messages he sent to the fraternity’s nearly 60-member Snapchat group openly inviting brothers into the room. He later allegedly urged one of Doe’s friends to “submit new evidence” to get him cleared, and during the school’s investigation claimed he was too intoxicated to consent and suggested Doe had assaulted him.

The New York Times obtained summaries showing how Cornell punished each of the seven men, from expulsion to writing reflection papers. Ingalls and Jonathan Newell, who allegedly sent a Snapchat message encouraging others into the bedroom, were expelled, with the panel finding Ingalls exploited and endangered Doe for his own interest and others’ entertainment. Winston Lee was suspended for two years and Gillio Lopes for three semesters, while Diego Sarabia, who had already graduated, was barred from campus for three years. The final two, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar, were ordered to avoid contact with Doe, complete training and write “reflection papers,” with Kretzschmar found responsible only for attempted sexual exploitation. Doe’s lawyer said the punishments “did not reflect the severity of the charges,” noting five of the men can still graduate with a Cornell degree, while all seven deny wrongdoing and none have been charged.

A student who gave Cornell police leads in 2024 says she feels “betrayed” after learning her information never reached prosecutors. The student told NBC News she went to police after seeing screenshots of the fraternity’s Snapchat messages and shared details about the group chats, potential witnesses and where ketamine was allegedly kept at the house. Police records show campus police spoke to multiple witnesses and received anonymous tips, but that information wasn’t referred to the Tompkins County district attorney, who declined to bring charges. Gov. Kathy Hochul has since removed the DA and appointed Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor, and Cornell has brought in an outside law firm to review its handling of the case. Chi Phi’s national organization has permanently expelled the Cornell chapter, and Cornell’s rugby club removed two of the accused men.

The case is now being invoked in disturbing threats at an Idaho high school, where students allegedly wrote “think Cornell was bad just wait for us.” Boise police are investigating Snapchat messages in which Timberline High School students allegedly directed sexually explicit and violent threats at a female classmate, including stated intentions to rape and kill her. A petition calling for accountability, which claims members of the school’s football team were involved, gathered more than 6,000 signatures in a single day. The Boise School District said it is cooperating with police and was asked to pause internal action to protect a potential criminal investigation. No arrests have been announced.

Other news:

The White House has banned Politico from Air Force One, defying the spirit of a judge’s order to restore press access. The outlet was excluded from Monday’s travel pool, days after a federal judge ordered the administration to reinstate press passes for reporters from CNN, Politico and MS NOW, finding the ban likely violated the First and Fifth Amendments. CNN has also been blocked from the plane, and on one trip no TV pooler traveled with the president at all. The White House claims restoring press passes is different from allowing reporters into the Oval Office or onto Air Force One, while the Justice Department argues the outlets failed to meet “minimum requirements of professionalism.” Judge Timothy Kelly already rejected the administration’s claim that the ban was about national security, finding no factual support for it. He will hold a hearing Thursday on a preliminary injunction, the same day his temporary restraining order expires.

The Palm Beach County Republican Party is still backing Mike Caruso for Clerk of Court despite his pending felony child sex abuse charges. The local GOP lists Caruso as its nominee in its official voter guide, and a staffed “Keep Mike Caruso” table with signs and hats appeared at a candidate expo on Sept. 28, more than a month after his arrest on charges including kidnapping, lewd or lascivious molestation and child abuse involving a male relative who was under 5 at the time. Caruso has pleaded not guilty and is out on $160,000 bond, but Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended him and the state GOP said it would not support him if he stayed in the race. Local party chair Carl Cascio defended the support, pointing to a judge’s finding on the strength of the state’s case and calling Caruso the county’s “only Republican constitutional officer,” while telling the Miami Herald the party has a “duty” to campaign for its nominees. It’s not the first such allegation against Caruso, whose ex-wife accused him of sexually assaulting a child in 2013 divorce filings, though that case was closed as unfounded, and he now faces Democrat Yvette Drucker on Nov. 3.

Public schools banned nearly 12,000 books over the past year, the most since PEN America began tracking five years ago. The bans hit 7,370 individual works, more than 4,500 of them for the first time, ranging from “Jane Eyre” to the manga series “Tokyo Ghoul.” Stephen King was the most banned author for the second straight year with 312 removals, while Patricia McCormick’s “Sold,” about a girl sold into sexual slavery, was the most banned single title. Other frequent targets include “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Speak,” a prize-winning novel about a teenager who stops speaking after being raped. Many bans took place in Florida and Texas, with themes of race, sexuality and gender identity the most common targets. PEN also found school administrators are increasingly relying on AI to decide which books get pulled.

Senate Democrats say they won’t confirm a Trump Supreme Court nominee if they win back the chamber. richard blumenthal portraitChuck Schumer said a major reason to take the Senate is to stop Trump from putting “MAGA justices” on the courts, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal put the odds of Democrats backing a Trump pick at “slim to none.” Sen. Ruben Gallego said Democrats should “do exactly what McConnell did to us,” referring to the seat McConnell held open for 10 months under Obama. The stakes rose after Justice Samuel Alito, 76, told CBS he considered retiring earlier this year before deciding against it. Blumenthal also said any Trump judicial nominee must be able to correctly say who won the 2020 election. Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take control, and if Republicans hold the Senate, Trump will keep adding to his total of 290 confirmed federal judges.

GOP Sen. Thom Tillis warned he has Trump’s phone number too after the president doxxed Sen. Tom Cotton. Trump posted Cotton’s personal cellphone number on Truth Social to pressure him over the bill to make daylight saving time permanent, even arguing it would give PGA golfers more afternoon daylight. Asked on “The View” whether Trump would leak his number next, Tillis responded with a straight face: “With all due respect, I have his number, too.” Tillis, who is leaving the Senate in January, is promoting a new book that includes private texts in which he told Trump he doesn’t take his “BS.” The book also rebuts Trump’s claim that he forced Tillis out of the Senate, though Tillis still called Trump a “great political force.” Cotton has held firm, saying Arkansans don’t want their kids going to school in the dark.

Trump is blaming Ukraine and blue states, not his Iran war, for soaring gas prices. In a Truth Social post, Trump claimed the Strait of Hormuz is no longer driving up gas costs and pointed instead to Ukraine blowing up Russian refineries and “Dumocrats” closing refineries in states like California. The claim makes little sense: the US has imported zero Russian petroleum since 2022, and most US refining capacity is in Republican states like Texas and Louisiana. Drivers are paying about $67 more a month for gas and at least $139 more for diesel than a year ago, according to AAA. Trump previously told a rally that higher prices are “a very inexpensive price to pay” for the war. He even said a more peaceful Middle East would be worth it if gas cost “a lot more,” a tough sell with the midterms less than a month away.

Kristi Noem, below, is raging at the New York Times over a report that DHS overpaid a donor’s company for luxury jets on her way out the door. The Times reported DHS paid $108 million for a Boeing 737 with a stand-up bar, two bedrooms and marble showers that Daedalus Aviation had bought months earlier for under $90 million, along kristi noemwith marked-up Gulfstreams and two aging passenger jets. The deal was amended on March 24, Noem’s final day in the Cabinet after Trump fired her. Noem demanded a full retraction and called it “libelous” to describe Daedalus’ chairman as a donor, but the Times stood by its reporting, noting he gave $10,000 to a PAC supporting her. Her successor, Markwayne Mullin, considered canceling the deal but kept the planes after the White House cited a hefty termination fee. Under Noem, DHS awarded more than $900 million in contracts to companies led by the same chairman, and 10 planes it bought earlier for deportation flights have largely sat unused because the agency lacks crews to fly them.

PepsiCo is recalling about 122,000 cases of Gatorade across 37 states over undeclared yellow food dyes. The recall covers 28oz bottles of Gatorade Lemon Lime, Lime Zero, Orange and Orange Zero, according to a notice posted on the FDA’s website. PepsiCo started the recall on Sept. 25 after the drinks were found to contain Yellow No. 5 and/or Yellow No. 6 that weren’t listed on the label, a concern for people sensitive to the dyes. The FDA classified it as a class II recall, meaning the products could cause temporary or medically reversible health effects, while the risk of serious harm is remote. Affected states include California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia and Michigan, among others. It’s not yet clear whether refunds are available, and the recall comes as the FDA faces criticism after Trump-era layoffs cut its staff by nearly 20%.

DC tour operators say Trump’s construction projects and policies are driving tourists away from the capital. Landmarks like the drained Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the demolished East Wing and the scaffolded Kennedy Center are fenced off, leaving visitors snapping photos through gaps. One operator said bookings are down about 50%, another reported a 65% to 75% revenue drop from two years ago, and a third said the administration has made the city’s brand “toxic.” Guides also blame Trump’s immigration crackdown, tariffs and National Guard deployment for scaring off international visitors. International visits to DC fell 4% in 2025, while overall US visitor numbers dropped 5.5%, driven largely by 4.2 million fewer Canadians. The White House called it “a completely false narrative.”

Flávio Bolsonaro is poised to win Brazil’s presidency after a shock first-round victory over Lula. The far-right senator won 47% to Lula’s 45%, and no first-round runner-up has come back to win since Brazil returned to democracy in 1985. The Bolsonaro family also won four seats in Congress, and hard-right parties now hold a Senate majority that could pass an amnesty freeing Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup. Trump, accused of trying to sway the election, praised Brazil’s fast vote count, while Milei and Netanyahu celebrated the result. Lula’s best hope may be turning out some of the record 33 million Brazilians who didn’t vote, though analysts called Sunday a catastrophic night for the left. The runoff is set for Oct. 25.

The Supreme Court appeared divided as it heard the blockbuster climate case against ExxonMobil and Suncor. Chief Justice Roberts warned that if Boulder wins, municipalities in every state would sue the next day, while Justice Kavanaugh was the most vocal supporter of the oil companies. Justice Kagan compared the case to tobacco and opioid lawsuits, and Justice Sotomayor noted Boulder is challenging deceptive marketing, not regulating emissions. With Alito recused, a 4-4 tie would let Boulder’s lawsuit move forward. Hanging over the case is the Trump EPA’s push to eliminate greenhouse gas regulations, which Boulder’s lawyer argued makes it hard to say federal law blocks these claims. The ruling could decide the fate of more than two dozen similar lawsuits nationwide.

A Florida TikToker calling himself a “demonologist” was arrested for allegedly hacking women and broadcasting their private information. Mark Asea, 36, allegedly secretly placed a virus on a woman’s computer after she let him remotely access it for tech help, then posted her private messages in his videos. In another video, he taunted a second woman about her password and her last 10 online purchases. Investigators say he tracked one woman’s location through her phone’s GPS and posted more than 100 TikToks about her. His TikTok bio also lists him as a “Grey Hat Hacker,” “Empath” and “Woodsman.” Prosecutors revived the case after dropping earlier charges in May, and he’s set to be arraigned Nov. 19.

A British Airways flight to Chicago plunged 28,000 feet in about seven minutes before returning to London. The Boeing 777 declared an emergency over Ireland about 30 minutes after takeoff, dropping from 36,000 to 9,000 feet. It then spent roughly four hours circling over the Bristol Channel before landing safely at Heathrow. British Airways blamed an unspecified “technical issue” and said passengers got off normally. Passengers will likely be put up in hotels until another flight can be arranged. It comes after UK air traffic control software failures caused major delays and hundreds of canceled flights last month.

A school bus crash in Winter Haven, Florida, killed a 10th grade student and another person. The bus, carrying 37 high school students to Winter Haven High School, was struck by a car early Monday, lost a tire and then crashed head-on with a Jeep, which overturned. The second victim was in the Jeep, and three other vehicles were involved. The bus driver’s 9-year-old daughter was also on board. The victims have not been identified. Officials closed Lucerne Park Road in both directions as they investigated.

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Major Epstein Whistleblower Dies, Trump Primes His Base to Reject the Midterms, KKK Seeks Comeback, Paxton in Trouble, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 5, 2026. The Epstein whistleblower who exposed the relationship between Trump’s Commerce Secretary and Epstein has died by suicide. Trump is calling American voting “corrupt” and lashing out at Fox News as new polls point to a Democratic wave, including Democratic leads in Senate races in Texas, Ohio and Alaska. Wounded soldiers and Gold Star families say Army leaders ignored warnings before the drone strike that killed six of their own in Kuwait. A former Army Secretary says he was pushed out after Pete Hegseth fired the generals modernizing the military. And Ken Paxton got caught on tape admitting his campaign is “all coming from DC.”

Before we get into it, I need to tell you about something happening on TikTok. The platform has started putting warning labels on my videos telling viewers to “check your sources before sharing.” Think about that for a second. I report on Trump attacking the press, on soldiers who say their warnings were ignored, on Epstein survivors demanding accountability, and suddenly my work comes with a caution sign attached.

Here’s my promise to you: I won’t stop. Every story I bring you is sourced, and I’ll keep showing my work so you can check it yourself. If TikTok wants you to check sources, great. Check them. You’ll find the facts hold up.

But platforms can label us, bury us or shut us down whenever they want. This newsletter is the one place they can’t touch. 

Let’s get into it.

Trump Calls US Voting “Corrupt” and Lashes Out at Fox News as Polls Point to a Democratic Wave. 

Trump claimed voting in America is “CORRUPT” in a late-night Truth Social post less than a month before the midterms. Pointing to Brazil, where 125 million people voted in the first round of its presidential election and results came out the same day, Trump wrote that in “Detroit, Philadelphia, California, and numerous other U.S. Cities and States, the results, with much smaller numbers, will often take weeks to Rig, I mean, calculate.” It’s a revival of the fraud narrative Trump has pushed since losing in 2020, a claim rejected by courts and contradicted by reports from both the Justice Department and Homeland Security, which found “no evidence of fraud or interference that changed the outcome.” Even Trump’s own AI government chatbot cited those findings last week before it was “fixed” to change its answers. At the top of his Truth Social feed sat a video renewing his promise of $5,000 checks if Republicans keep Congress.

New polls show Democrats leading in Senate races in deep-red states, as Trump insists the polls “have ALWAYS underestimated MAGA.” A New York Times/Siena College poll released Saturday found Democratic Senate candidates leading in Texas, Ohio and Alaska, while races in Kansas and Iowa are tied or close. A CBS News poll released Sunday gave Democrats a nine-point lead on the generic congressional ballot and projected they would win 229 House seats to Republicans’ 206. Trump responded by claiming pollsters “try to suppress the Vote,” adding, “I won all 7 Swing States, the Popular Vote, 86% of Counties, and 99% of Primaries this year. I AM ON THE BALLOT!” A Reuters/Ipsos poll last month put Trump’s approval at a career-low 32%, with his support among Republicans falling to 73%.

Trump lashed out at Fox News for not airing his weekend rallies, threatening that MAGA viewers would “very quickly stop watching (like I am doing right now!).” He complained that “Fox & Friends” wasn’t covering his “packed house” in Vandalia, Ohio, or his rallies in Alabama, Texas and Oklahoma, though reports showed rows of empty seats at his Mobile rally. “Fox spends more time talking to Communists, Socialists, and Dumocrats, often without rebuttal,” Trump wrote, attacking Democratic commentator Jessica Tarlov by name and calling her “stupid.” He also blasted whoever at the network removed Maria Bartiromo, calling that person a “loser.” The outburst comes as Trump escalates his war on the press, after a judge blocked his attempt to ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House.

Trump is heading to Nebraska to campaign in another state he won by more than 20 points, where Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts is locked in a close race. Polls consistently show Ricketts in a competitive contest with independent Dan Osborn, part of a broader trend of Democrats and independents running competitively in states Trump carried by double digits. Trump will push his message of new investment and manufacturing in Grand Island, but farmers and truckers there are facing sharply higher diesel prices driven by the Iran war. The stop is part of a 32-day sprint to the Nov. 3 election that has mostly kept Trump in Republican strongholds rather than traditional battlegrounds. Over the weekend, he also pushed to make daylight saving time permanent, saying farmers support it, and publicly shared GOP Sen. Tom Cotton’s cellphone number in their fight over the issue.

At his Ohio rally, Trump admitted his daily mega-dose of aspirin might only be working “psychologically,” and said he’s ignoring doctors’ advice to cut back. “I take an aspirin a day. I don’t know if it works, but psychologically, I need it,” Trump said, pointing to his head, adding that he takes “the big one” and that “it’s a monster.” He said doctors told him “Sir, you don’t need that!” but that he refused, joking that if he switched to a lower dose and “something bad will happen,” he’d say, “You son of a b****, doctor!” The tangent was a lead-in to congratulating Bayer on a planned $2.2 billion manufacturing facility near Columbus. Trump previously told the Wall Street Journal he’s “a little superstitious” about the pills and acknowledged they may be behind persistent bruising on his hands, which he covers with makeup.

Soldiers and Gold Star Families Say Army Leaders Ignored Warnings Before the Deadliest Iranian Strike on US Troops

Soldiers wounded in the deadliest known Iranian strike on US troops told the AP that commanders were warned their base in Kuwait was vulnerable to drones and sent them there anyway. On March 1, the day after Trump launched the war with Iran, a drone crashed through the roof of a makeshift Army logistics headquarters at Port Shuaiba, killing six soldiers and wounding dozens, with one survivor saying the roof peeled back “like opening up a sardine can.” Five officers and an enlisted soldier said Maj. Gen. John Hinson and Brig. Gen. Clint Barnes knew the port, about 65 miles from Iran, had no defenses against drones, and that intelligence officers had pressed them not to go, warning it was a likely secondary target. “We did our work on a computer,” said Maj. Billy Key, who said proposals to move the unit to safer sites outside Kuwait were rejected. “We could have been anywhere.” One enlisted soldier defended the command team, saying it faced hard decisions balancing a crucial mission against the risks of war, while Hinson declined to comment and Barnes didn’t respond.

The night before the attack, soldiers spotted quadcopter drones hovering over the port, and the next morning they were moved out of their bunkers about 20 minutes before the strike. Key said at least five drones appeared to be surveilling the site, one just 40 feet above him, and that he passed the warning up the chain but “that was the last I heard about it.” Capt. Cody Khork, the unit’s safety officer, who had strongly advised against going to the port, told a colleague they should stay in their bunker, but higher-ranking officers pushed for an all-clear, according to Maj. Stephen Ramsbottom, who suffered a traumatic brain injury. “This type of fight has been going on for five years in Ukraine, and our excuse is we didn’t expect it to happen to us,” Ramsbottom said. “That’s preposterous.” Khork was killed seconds after passing his fellow officers and saying “good morning.”

Wounded soldiers also say the military’s medical system failed them, with some sent to barracks instead of hospitals. Soldiers said there was no mass casualty plan in place, forcing some to use Google to find the nearest medical facilities, and that one group spent about a week in residential homes in Kuwait under missile fire before being flown to Germany. There, they said, they were turned away from inpatient care at the military’s main medical hub because they hadn’t been documented as combat-injured, then sent to a demobilization process in Texas. The Army completed its investigation in June but still hasn’t released it, and the Army’s inspector general found no misconduct by Barnes based on “limited evidence,” while the Army and Pentagon declined to comment on the AP’s reporting. “If somebody messed up, those people need to be held responsible,” said Tina Marzan, widow of Chief Warrant Officer Robert Marzan, a 36-year veteran killed in the strike.

Seven months in, the war Trump once called a “little excursion” has killed 19 US service members, wounded more than 800 and cost at least $44 billion. Lt. Col. Tim Halbur, an Iowa reservist with nearly 30 years of service, can no longer salute after the blast shattered his right forearm in four places. “I can’t squeeze both arms around my kids because my one arm won’t allow me to do that anymore,” he said, adding that his children are learning “dad’s never going to be the same.” He wears a wristband engraved with the names of the six soldiers killed: Maj. Cody Khork, Master Sgt. Noah Tietjens, Maj. Jeffrey O’Brien, Master Sgt. Nicole Amor, Sgt. Declan Coady and Chief Warrant Officer Robert Marzan. “I know that there are six families who would give that up in a heartbeat,” Halbur said. “I’m still here.”

Former Army Secretary Says He Was Pushed Out After Pete Hegseth Fired the Generals Modernizing the Military

Former Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, right, in his first interview since resigning in August, told Rolling Stone he tried daniel driscoll oto drag the Army into the age of cheap drones and AI, only to watch Pete Hegseth fire the generals leading that effort. Driscoll, a combat veteran and Yale Law classmate of JD Vance, championed an “Amazon for war” marketplace to buy counter-drone systems quickly, cut $48 billion from the Army budget over five years, and created a “drones first” experimental battalion that trained with Ukrainian advisers. “When you’re an American soldier, you would get to work every day, and you basically step back like 20 or 30 years with tech,” he said, calling it “humiliating” to see how fast Ukraine adapted with a far smaller budget. But Hegseth forced out Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George in a “15-second call,” and later pushed into retirement Gen. Christopher Donahue, whom Driscoll wanted as George’s successor. According to news reports and a former Pentagon official, Driscoll told Trump in an Oval Office meeting that he was resigning because Hegseth had fired everyone working to modernize the Army.

Sources describe Hegseth as more focused on fitness standards, grooming and his media image than on the drone-dominated battlefield exposed by the Iran war. As cheap Iranian drones have struck US bases and depleted the military’s supply of interceptors, one former Army official asked, “Tell our guys on the ground when we don’t have anything to intercept the next Shahed coming at them that we’re going to launch some standards up at it.” Hegseth has fired or blocked promotions for roughly 10% of the military’s top officers, including the Joint Chiefs chairman, the Navy and Army chiefs and both the Army and Navy secretaries, and the US military currently has no active four-star women. “All the guys who had guts and were willing to speak the truth... they got rid of,” a former senior Army officer said, adding that Hegseth wants “people that are compliant and loyal, not people who think.” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell, Hegseth’s pick to replace Driscoll, called the story “fake news” and said Hegseth “has been a generational secretary.”

Since Driscoll left, the Army has begun rolling back his modernization efforts, even as Hegseth announced a drone warfare headquarters that appears to mirror Driscoll’s plans. The Army’s acting chief of staff ordered Driscoll’s experimental drone battalion to revert to a standard airborne infantry unit, a decision one former senior officer said “nobody can” explain. At Donahue’s retirement ceremony at Fort Bragg, attendees reportedly referred to Hegseth as “No Tab Pete,” a jab at his failure to earn the Ranger qualification held by the commanders he removed. Driscoll was careful not to attack his former boss directly, saying “we probably agreed on more than 50 percent of things” and calling himself “a custodian of the seat for 18 months.” But one Army officer who worked at the Pentagon warned the cost of Hegseth’s priorities “is going to be measured in American lives, in our sons and daughters coming home in body bags.”

Ken Paxton Privately Admits His Campaign Is “All Coming From DC” as His Fatherhood Video Backfires

Ken Paxton, below, privately admitted his Senate campaign is being run from Washington, despite spending his primary attacking John Cornyn as a creature of the “D.C. establishment.” “I’ve never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign and, like, what issues are going to matter because it’s all coming, you know, from D.C.,” Paxton said at a small Sept. 24 fundraiser hosted by lobbyists in Washington, according to audio ken paxton mugobtained by Politico. “I don’t control message or what we’re doing,” he added. “I don’t have ability to change anything. So I have to live with whatever I’ve got.” An attendee said Paxton never named Trump’s team explicitly, but “everybody knew what he was talking about,” while his campaign said he was referring to super PACs, which campaigns can’t legally coordinate with. It’s the same fundraiser where, according to separate audio obtained by the New York Times, Paxton said Trump’s Dallas convention “dropped our numbers.”

Paxton’s estranged wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, appeared in an ad urging Texans to vote for the GOP ticket without ever mentioning him by name. “In a general election, it’s not as much about the individual players on the team; it’s about getting the whole team across the finish line,” she said in the ad, funded by a PAC affiliated with Senate Majority Leader John Thune. Angela Paxton filed for divorce last year on “biblical grounds,” alleging adultery, which Ken Paxton denies, and her office hasn’t said whether she’ll vote for him. The race has become one of the most expensive of the cycle, and Trump told a rally crowd, “Ken Paxton has to win.” Democrat James Talarico leads 46% to 43% in an NBC Dallas-Fort Worth/Telemundo poll and by six points in the latest New York Times/Siena poll, in a state where Democrats haven’t won a Senate seat since 1988.

Paxton’s new video offering parenting advice with his daughter drew a wave of mockery online over the adultery allegations at the center of his divorce. In the three-minute clip, Paxton told his daughter Mattie that “nobody is the perfect parent” and advised young parents to “always focus on the main thing, which is loving your kids.” The post racked up 250,000 views and hundreds of replies, many turning to his marriage, with one asking, “Where did cheating on their mother rank?” and another writing, “Oh dear lord, the irony.” Some commenters defended it, calling it “nice to see another side of a politician father.” The video came a day after his campaign released an ad featuring Mattie, and Paxton called it the first in a series.

Other news:

Simon Andriesz, the whistleblower who alerted Congress to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein, has died at 57. The British former banker, who once worked under Lutnick at the brokerage firm BGC Partners, died by suicide, according to The Banker, and a transparency group that had hosted him at whistleblowing events confirmed his death. Earlier this year, Andriesz searched the Justice Department’s Epstein files for “HWL,” Lutnick’s initials, and gave House Oversight lawmakers a 2018 email chain in which Lutnick and Epstein discussed Adfin, a company they had both invested in. The emails contradicted Lutnick’s claim that he cut off contact with Epstein soon after meeting him in 2005, showing the two remained in friendly contact a decade after Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea for soliciting a minor, and Lutnick later acknowledged traveling to Epstein’s island with his family in 2012. Years earlier, Andriesz, who said he was fired from BGC after raising concerns about accounting irregularities, told the FBI in 2020 and 2021 that Lutnick had undeclared business ties to Epstein, but the FBI did not investigate, according to the BBC. The Commerce Department and FBI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Ku Klux Klan is trying to rebrand itself as “The Knights Party” to grow its base, but its leader admits it’s still a white nationalist movement. In an Al Jazeera report from Boone County, Arkansas, Thomas Robb, head of the group formerly known as the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, said members want to refocus on “family and faith,” yet flatly said a Black person would not be welcome at the group’s church. Robb claimed Muslim politicians like Zohran Mamdani and Michigan-born Abdul El-Sayed are “not Americans,” arguing only the children of white immigrants can be American. The report comes as experts warn of a white supremacist resurgence: the Southern Poverty Law Center counts at least 152 such groups active today, Patriot Front marched through the DC area on July 4, and a PRRI survey found nearly one in three Americans agree with the core claim of the great replacement conspiracy theory. Critics say Trump has helped normalize these views through “invasion” rhetoric on immigration, his “fine people on both sides” remark after Charlottesville, probes into alleged discrimination against white people, and prioritizing white South Africans for refugee status. Robb refused to share membership numbers or back up his claim that support is growing, conceding, “Maybe everybody hates us.”

The Supreme Court opens its new term Monday with a blockbuster climate case that could decide whether communities can hold oil companies liable for climate-fueled disasters. Boulder County, Colorado, is suing ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy, arguing they knew for decades that fossil fuels would raise the risk of floods, extreme heat and wildfires but deceived the public, and it wants them to help cover the costs of disasters like the 2021 Marshall Fire, which destroyed more than 1,100 homes. The companies, backed by the Trump administration, argue only the federal government can address something as big as climate change, while Boulder says it isn’t trying to regulate emissions, just recover damages. “If you know you are going to cause harm, and you don’t tell someone, then you should help clean up that harm,” said Corey Riday-White of the Center for Climate Integrity, and experts say the ruling could shape lawsuits over forever chemicals, opioids and AI data centers. In a last-minute move, Justice Samuel Alito recused himself without explanation after watchdog groups pointed to his investments in Phillips 66 and ConocoPhillips. That leaves eight justices, meaning a 4-4 tie would let Boulder’s lawsuit move forward, though the court could also decide it’s too early to hear the case at all.

According to the Miami Herald, the Palm Beach County Republican Party isn’t ruling out supporting a GOP candidate charged with child sex abuse, who says he still “intend[s] to win” in November. Mike Caruso, the suspended county clerk of courts and a former DeSantis ally, was arrested in August on charges including lewd or lascivious molestation, kidnapping and child abuse involving a young male relative, and prosecutors have said a second person alleges he abused her when she was 4. Caruso has pleaded not guilty and was released on $160,000 bail after a judge said the state’s case had weaknesses, and he told the Miami Herald, “I maintain my innocence... My name is on the November ballot, and I intend to win this election.” The state GOP said it would not support his reelection, and local officials even delayed printing ballots so Republicans could find a replacement, but Caruso refused to withdraw. Local party chairman Carl Cascio declined to distance the party from him, noting Caruso is “currently Palm Beach County’s only Republican constitutional officer” and that the party has a “duty” to campaign for its nominees. He faces Democrat Yvette Drucker, a Boca Raton council member, in a county that leans Democratic, and if he wins, DeSantis could suspend him again.

A mass shooting at a homecoming weekend block party in Vienna, Georgia, left two men dead and 35 people injured. More than 1,000 people had gathered early Sunday when more than 50 shots were fired across at least two locations about a block apart, with gunfire continuing even after deputies were on scene, Dooly County Sheriff Craig Peavy said. The two men killed were 20 and 23, and the county coroner said roughly a dozen of the injured were hurt while trying to flee, calling the scene “horrific.” No suspects or motive have been announced, and the school district said the party was not a school-sponsored event, though schools are opening Monday with added safety measures. Vienna’s mayor said the city never issued a permit for the block party, which took place about a block from his home. It comes a week after 12 teens were wounded in a shooting at a birthday party in nearby Macon.

The family of Jeffrey Epstein survivor Virginia Giuffre appears in a new campaign ad accusing Colorado GOP Rep. Jeff Crank of covering up Epstein’s crimes and refusing to meet with them. “Jeff Crank covered up Epstein’s crimes to protect Donald Trump,” says Sky Roberts, Giuffre’s brother, in the ad for Democratic challenger Jessica Killin, an Army veteran running in a tightening race for Colorado’s Fifth District. Roberts and his wife, Amanda, both Crank’s constituents, say they repeatedly asked to meet with him but were refused, even as they spoke with about 20 lawmakers from both parties, and the ad ends with them meeting Killin instead. Crank didn’t sign the bipartisan discharge petition that forced a vote on releasing the Epstein files and voted to block consideration of the bill, though he ultimately joined nearly every House member in passing it. “At the end of the day, the bare minimum of this job in this role is to hear your constituents,” Amanda Roberts said. Republicans have held the Colorado Springs-area seat since it was created in 1973, but Democrats now see it as a pickup opportunity, and a New York Times analysis found Epstein has come up in ads in at least 35 congressional races this year.

Christa Pike’s former lawyer says Tennessee was warned her execution could be “difficult and perhaps cruel” because of her compromised veins. James Crowson, who represented Pike during her post-conviction appeals, said defense filings flagged that she was at risk for “exactly what happened” before her failed lethal injection on Sept. 30. Pike remains hospitalized on a ventilator and critically ill, with her current attorney telling CNN “we don’t really know the prognosis yet.” The state insists it followed its protocol, but Crowson said states writing execution protocols “don’t really include medicine or science in the discussions.” He also noted the arbitrariness of her sentence: her co-defendant, just months younger at 17, received life in prison instead of death. If she survives, Crowson expects intense pressure on Gov. Bill Lee to commute her sentence, and said any brain damage would raise serious questions about whether Tennessee could legally try to execute her again.

The White House is defending its new assistant press secretary, who posed with a rifle in a “F* Joe Biden” shirt.** Beni Rae Harmony, 24, joined the press office days after covering Trump as a correspondent for Real America’s Voice, a far-right outlet launched as a platform for Steve Bannon, and previously worked for Rep. Paul Gosar and former Rep. Matt Gaetz. The 2021 photo showed her and her uncle holding rifles in matching anti-Biden shirts, and she appeared to confirm its authenticity at the time. A White House spokesperson praised her as “a trusted voice for the MAGA movement as a White House correspondent.” AP photos from a recent Air Force One press gaggle appeared to show her name atop papers in Trump’s hand as she asked him friendly questions, suggesting he may have been holding her résumé. Her hiring comes as Trump has tried to ban CNN, Politico and MS NOW from the White House, while his aides hand-pick outlets, often friendly ones, to question him.

Quebec appears poised to elect a separatist government for the first time in more than a decade, with the Parti Québécois promising an independence referendum by 2028. Polls show the PQ, led by 49-year-old Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, on track to win Monday’s provincial election, though at around 30% it may fall short of a majority. Analysts say his rise is driven less by separatism, which most Quebecers oppose, than by hardline stances on immigration and identity, including blaming immigrants for crowded schools and housing costs and vowing to ban “conspicuous” religious symbols for teachers and students. He has defused the referendum issue by saying he won’t hold one while Trump is in power. He’s also promised to introduce a law cutting the province’s ties to the British monarchy. A victory would likely reignite clashes with Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government over language and immigration.

The Senate passed bills to make it easier for pilots and air traffic controllers to get mental health care without fearing for their careers. The legislation would cut the time pilots must stay grounded after starting an antidepressant to two months, down from the FAA’s current three months, and direct the agency to reduce burdensome testing requirements. Industry leaders say stigma and fear of disqualification keep aviation workers from seeking help, with one study finding nearly 13% of pilots met the criteria for depression. One of the bills would also launch a public information campaign to destigmatize aviation workers who seek mental health care. “When you raise your hand asking for help, it is no longer a third rail,” said pilot Chris Finlayson, who spent nearly five years out of the cockpit after seeking treatment. The bills still need House approval and the president’s signature.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the world should accept “some bad things happening” with AI in exchange for its benefits, sparking immediate backlash. In a Politico podcast interview, Altman said OpenAI’s “lighter touch regulatory stance” means accepting that hacks, scams and misuse will happen, because people “will do tremendously, orders of magnitude, more good stuff than bad stuff.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he had “no dice” with “a handful of tech oligarchs” making that decision for everyone, while AI critic Gary Marcus said Altman was “saying the quiet part out loud.” The comments came days after an OpenAI safety researcher resigned, saying companies “aren’t being nearly careful enough,” and after OpenAI agents hacked into Hugging Face over the summer. Altman contrasted his approach with “stricter AI safety people,” as Anthropic has called for slowing development. Despite those calls, Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and other AI leaders signed a largely hands-off pact at the White House last week, with Trump saying he wants companies to “self-police.”

Elon Musk says he’ll rename his AI company “SpaceXSI” after Trump ordered artificial intelligence to be rebranded as “super intelligence.” Trump announced the rebrand at the UN General Assembly last month, saying the word “artificial” “makes it sound fake,” and has since signed an executive order directing federal agencies to use the new term. “No more AI. SI. It’s better,” Musk posted, confirming that SpaceXAI, formerly xAI, would change its name. Experts note “superintelligence” already has a distinct meaning, popularized by philosopher Nick Bostrom to describe AI that vastly exceeds human abilities. Trump had previously floated “supreme intelligence,” “superior intelligence” and “extreme intelligence” before settling on SI. He has also unveiled a new “Super Intelligence Force,” which he now says will be a group of advisers.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is taking legal action against British police in a bid to quash the search warrants that led to his arrest. The former Duke of York was arrested in February on his 66th birthday on suspicion of misconduct in public office, over allegations he shared sensitive information with Jeffrey Epstein while serving as the UK’s trade envoy. Warrants allowed police to raid his residence on the Sandringham Estate and his former home, Royal Lodge. A private High Court hearing is set for Thursday, beginning with a police request to restrict access to court documents, and it’s unclear whether he’ll attend. Thames Valley Police said its investigation continues. King Charles stripped his brother of his prince title and dukedom over his Epstein ties last year.

Investigators believe the FlyDubai co-pilot who allegedly tried to crash an Israel-bound flight acted as a “lone wolf,” according to US and Israeli officials. Preliminary findings suggest Hamam al-Hammami, 29, was not tied to any organization or government, despite Benjamin Netanyahu claiming he underwent “Islamist radical indoctrination.” Officials said he told UAE interrogators he planned the attack before being hired and had considered hijacking an earlier flight to Tel Aviv but backed out. He allegedly attacked the captain with an emergency axe, sending the plane into a 17,000-foot plunge before passengers subdued him. Australian authorities are also investigating his time in the country, where the Financial Times reported he visited extremist websites and intelligence services held a file on him. Questions are mounting over how he was allowed to fly the route, after regional officials said he had been barred from flying in his native Oman over extremist views.

Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in medicine for optogenetics, a technique that lets researchers switch individual brain cells on and off. American Karl Deisseroth and Germans Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel will share the $1.2 million prize, awarded by Sweden’s Karolinska Institute. The prize-givers said the method “is now being used in laboratories around the world to reveal the brain’s mysteries.” Last year’s prize went to scientists who discovered how the immune system spares healthy cells, opening new paths for treating diseases like cancer. The medicine prize traditionally opens the annual Nobel announcements, with physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics to follow this week. Laureates will receive their awards on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death.

The FBI arrested a California woman accused of spying on a son of Taiwan’s president at the direction of Chinese officials. Wanying Zhang, 34, of Irvine, was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport before a planned flight to China and charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent. The Justice Department says she traveled to Seattle in 2025 and sent Chinese officials photos, video and license plate information on the president’s son, Lai Ting-yu, a US resident, and his family. Prosecutors say she used tradecraft to avoid detection and never notified the US government she was acting for a foreign power. Taiwan’s presidential office called it “a typical case of transnational repression” and thanked the US for protecting its citizens. Zhang is due in federal court in Los Angeles Monday, and China’s foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

Nolo has become a typhoon after crossing the international date line, following its brush with Hawaii as a hurricane. The storm was a Category 3 hurricane with 115 mph winds before it crossed the date line, where the same storms are called typhoons, and had winds of about 100 mph Monday morning Japan time. After skirting Hawaii a week ago, Nolo weakened to a tropical storm before regaining hurricane strength on Friday. “The good news is there’s a large, vast ocean, so even though it is still going to be strong, it’s not near any land,” a National Hurricane Center specialist said. Nolo is forecast to keep moving west and gradually weaken. Meanwhile, Hurricane Rachel is heading away from Mexico but still sending dangerous waves to the west-central coast and Baja California.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance 

U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsDemocracy Docket, Opinion: This time, take Trump literally, Marc Elias, Democracy Docket founder, Oct. 5, 2026. Earlier this year, The New York Times asked Donald Trump whether he regretted not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines in swing states after the 2020 election.

His answer was chilling: "Well, I should have." Trump is telling us what he plans to do in this year's midterms. He is trying to rig the elections and subvert their results.

While we have been able to stop him so far, there is no guarantee that we will continue to prevail in the weeks ahead.

Yet despite the obvious signs of Trump's plan, too many reporters and pundits downplay it. They adhere to the false neutrality that has come to dominate legacy media coverage over the last decade.

No phrase captures this attitude more clearly than the admonition to take Trump seriously but not literally. The suggestion is that only out-of-touch elites pay attention to his actual words. Real voters — and those in the media who claim to speak for them — know to focus on his vibes.

When it comes to voting and elections, this advice has been catastrophically wrong. In 2020, Trump's words before the election were prophetic about what he would do afterward. His refusal to concede foreshadowed the attack on Jan. 6, 2021.

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

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion: House Dems Expand The Battlefield, Early Early Vote Data Encouraging, Trump Is Campaigning Today In Nebraska!!!!!!!!!!!! Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 5, 2026. Here’s some news from Politico:

Democrats’ House campaign arm is expanding its targets even further into Trump country, as the party grows increasingly bullish they will not just win, but win big next month.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added six more candidates to its coveted “Red to Blue” list on Monday, districts President Donald Trump won by an average of 16 points or more in 2024, according to plans shared first with POLITICO.

The DCCC’s Red to Blue program, the program that works to flip Republican held seats, is now targeting 46 races across the country. As we are currently supporting 30 of those races here at Hopium we will be reviewing these new recommendations and perhaps expand our own target list as the family goes deeper and deeper into Republican held territory.

The six candidates added to Red to Blue:

  • Arkansas’ 2nd District: Democrat Chris Jones against GOP Rep. French Hill (Trump +15.5)
  • Colorado’s 3rd District: Democrat Dwayne Romero against GOP Rep. Jeff Hurd (Trump +9.7)
  • Florida’s 27th District: Democrat Eliott Rodriguez against GOP Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (Trump +14.6).
  • New York’s 21st District: Democrat Blake Gendebien against Republican Anthony Constantino (Trump +20.7)
  • Nevada’s 2nd District: Democrat Teresa Benitez-Thompson against Republican David Flippo (Trump +13.9)
  • Tennessee’s 9th District: Democrat Justin J. Pearson against Republican Brent Taylor (Trump +21.1)

Yesterday The NYT broke out the results for Governor in their new battleground polling that we reviewed on Saturday. This remarkable data is additional confirmation that 2026 has become a year of extraordinary opportunity for us to take power away from MAGA all across the country:

Another confirmation about how profoundly the battlefield has eroded for the Rs is that Trump is campaigning today in Nebraska for Senator Pete Ricketts. Trump won Nebraska by 20 points in 2024, and Ricketts won by 25 points just two years ago in a special election. Today Trump is defending a sitting US Senator, and former Governor, who won by 25 points just two years ago!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Subscribed

In related news here’s the #2 story on The Guardian’s home page right now. Yes, this terrible, terrible people deserve to get their asses kicked this November:

The Early Early Vote Is Encouraging - With early in person voting kicking off this week in eight states - Arizona, Indiana, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, Wyoming - the early vote, and the election itself, is going to really kick into high gear this week. I will be working on how to best report on the early vote across the country each day - will be lots of data! - but let’s now review the kind of data that will be available to us through TargetEarly, our data source.

As I go to press this morning here’s what we know about the early vote across the country. It is encouraging but still very early:

As this data is coming from the national voter file itself we are going to be able to break out the underlying data demographically and geographically too. Here’s the national data broken out by race, for example (don’t read too much into this, yet - it’s still too early):

The NYT has a wonderful new article, full of video - Mayors Are Filming Videos, Mamdani Style, With Varying Degrees of Cringe (gift link).

Trump’s failed war keeps failing (gift link):

The U.S. military has removed all of its bombers from Royal Air Force Fairford, a base that authorities in the United Kingdom called the target of a suspected terror plot.

The Pentagon confirmed the redeployment of the aircraft in a statement Sunday.

“While operational security precluded us from confirming the movement of our assets and forces in real-time, we can acknowledge now that all U.S. bombers that were deployed to RAF Fairford have re-deployed to their home stations in the United States,” the Pentagon statement said. It gave no further details.

A reminder that Trump got a crap jobs report on Friday, and has the worst jobs record of any American President since Hoover.

The Contrarian, Opinion: Please, Mr. President, Campaign For My Republican Opponent! Jennifer Rubin, right, jennifer rubin new headshotOct. 5, 2026. The horrendous September jobs numbers — only 29,000 new jobs (a fraction of the 84,000 expected) and unemployment up to 4.2% — tell only part of the story.

With downward revisions, the economy actually lost 10,000 jobs in July and added just 133,000, not 162,000, in August (as Donald Trump touted in his rant-filled encounter with TIME magazine last week). Coupled with inflation, the soaring debt, and spiking energy prices, the Trump economy has become a nightmare for ordinary workers and consumers.

These rotten jobs numbers, the last monthly jobs report before the election, will prove difficult for all but the most indoctrinated MAGA cultists to spin. The New York Times reported, “Yes, it’s a hard time to be looking for a job — the average unemployed worker has been looking for a job for nearly six months.” But even people with jobs are struggling given the “weakness in wage growth.”Gasoline prices at a Shell gas station in Houston on October 2. (Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images)

For millions of workers, salaries have not kept up with inflation, and with mortgage prices now streaking past 7.3 percent, dreams of purchasing a home any time soon have evaporated for many Americans. Heather Long, a former economics reporter and now chief economist of the Navy Federal Credit Union, explained, “The financial pain is real: Wage growth fell to 3% (y/y) in September. That’s the lowest in 5 years.” With wage growth at 3 percent but inflation at 3.4 percent, “Inflation has eaten up all wage gains for the average worker since April. Many people are having to make hard choices about what to buy and what to skimp on right now.” Though consumption is still sustained by richer Americans, “a lot of people have to think hard about every dollar they spend,” she explained. “Notable: Wages only ticked up 0.1% in the month of September. That was the weakest monthly gain since December 2025.”

No wonder Trump’s economy approval numbers are cratering. The latest AP-NORC poll reported:

Sixty-five percent of adults overall say higher-than-usual prices are the result of Trump’s policies, while 67% of Republicans say higher prices are due to factors beyond the president’s control….

Trump is also falling short of expectations on the cost of living, with 69% of the public saying his handling of the issue has been worse than expected, including 52% of Republicans.

More than half of adults say the country as a whole, the national economy, and their local economy are worse off since Trump was reelected in 2025. Forty-six percent say they and their families are worse off since the start of Trump’s second administration. Most Americans (73%) say the country is heading in the wrong direction, including 92% of Democrats and 47% of Republicans.

This is no outlier. In the most recent Quinnipiac poll, Trump’s approval on the economy is at an all-time low (31 percent). Likewise, Fox’s September poll showed “nearly two-thirds of voters (63%) say the Trump administration has made the economy worse, including a quarter of Republicans.”

Democrats were quick to underscore the lousy job numbers. As Yahoo Finance reported: “Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts calculated that Trump’s economy has added an average of 33,000 jobs a month since Inauguration Day in 2025 — ‘far below the 120,000-a-month average in 2024’ of the last year of former President Joe Biden’s time in office…. Like other Democrats, Warren also zeroed in on weak wage growth, writing that ‘since the start of Trump’s war [in Iran], real wages have fallen.’” Former Biden official Gbenga Ajilore added that “in the broader context, lower wage growth is a warning sign given the administration’s harmful policies.”

The regime’s utter contempt for voters’ economic woes (Vice President JD Vance lectures them to stop worrying about “little things”) leads Trump and his flunkies to make ever-more cringeworthy comments that, if anything, will only infuriate voters. After the miserable September report, Kevin Hassett, the National Economic Council director, when asked if he was disappointed in the jobs report, told Fox Business, “No, not even a little bit.” Well, for now, he has a job.

Trump makes even more appalling gaffes in instructing Americans not to believe their lived experiences. Last week en route to Texas, he declared, “I give us an A+ on the government, on economics, on everything.” Voters struggling to decide whether to pay medical or grocery bills will recoil at that grade inflation. Likewise, Trump’s insistence that energy costs are “worth” his unpopular, disastrous war is of little consolation to those paying sky-high prices for regular gas and all-time high prices for diesel.

With Trump’s poll numbers so dismal and his self-congratulatory pronouncements so jarring, Democrats are no doubt delighted that Trump has announced he is heading out to campaign for Republicans, although his focus on already-safe red areas means the amount of damage he can inflict on his fellow Republicans may be less than we hope for. (A Republican president going to Alabama, for a shockingly sparse crowd, this close to the election, as Trump did on Friday, should be a flashing siren that things are terribly amiss for his party.)

Indeed, a flock of vulnerable Senate Republicans wants nothing to do with Trump. The Hill reported on an anonymous Republican senator warning it was a mistake for Trump “to campaign in Midwestern states where higher costs caused by the Iran war and Trump’s tariff policies are fueling voter anger.” That senator confessed, “We need our voters to turn out, but the ones that are making the decision, really, are those independent voters. And right now, they’re not looking favorably at President Trump.”

As Democrats make their final pitches to voters, they will no doubt emphasize that House and Senate Republicans are wholly responsible for Trump’s inane tariffs, Iran war, huge deficits, chaos-generation (e.g. ICE wreaking havoc with local economies, incompetent financial advisers spooking the markets), and self-indulgent graft (building monuments to himself while ordinary voters cannot pay the bills). They could have taken back tariff authority. They could have cut off authorization and funding for the war. They could have reined in ICE to, among other things, protect hard-hit industries rocked by loss of workers (e.g. construction, agriculture, hospitality, tourism). They could have refused to confirm unfit Cabinet secretaries and a weak Federal Reserve chairman. And, most of all, they could have rejected the Big, Ugly bill which took away SNAP benefits and healthcare coverage, doled out trillions to the ultra-rich, and sent the deficit soaring.

Republicans did none of those things, and now they will have to face the voters with an economy that cannot be blamed on anyone but them and their addled president. And if they now dread Trump coming to their district/state or appearing in ads paid for by the taxpayers (another egregious affront), that’s simply political karma.

PoliticusUSA, News and Comment: Trump Blames Blue States, Not His Iran War, For Gas Prices, Jason Easley, right, jason easleyOct. 5, 2026. The reality that he is soon going to be a lame-duck, irrelevant president is slowly creeping in on Donald Trump, who accused blue states of cheating in elections, and causing high gas prices.

There was a time just a few short years ago when the President Of The United States believed that they governed for all Americans, whether they supported the president or not.

A president is a member of a political party, but the presidency, which is supposed to be different from the person holding the office, has always been intended to be above partisanship. Part of the president’s job is to lead the nation when it is under attack, in times of tragedy, or after a natural disaster.is 100% independent news and opinion. Support us by becoming a subscriber.Subscribed

The presidency represents all of America and every American, and that is the way it was until Donald Trump came along.

Democrats are tapping the brakes to make sure that their supporters don’t get lulled into complacency, but the party seems to be heading for a positive result in the upcoming midterm election.

The current president is term-limited, which means that if Democrats win control of all or part of Congress, he will inhabit the office, but he will be viewed by many as keeping the seat warm for the next president to be elected in 2028.

Trump views himself as the president of Republicans. Trump views those who voted against him not as those who disagree with him, whom he still represents, but as enemies.

Trump only knows the politics of division, and with the midterm election looking like a disaster for Republicans, the president is trying to pit red against blue.Trump Blames Blue Cities And States For High Gas Prices

The president started out trying to make excuses for his likely midterm election defeat.

Trump posted on Truth Social accusing blue cities and states of rigging their vote totals:

125 Million People voted today in the first round of India’s Presidential Election. The results came out shortly after the vote closed, on the SAME DAY! In Detroit, Philadelphia, California, and numerous other U.S. Cities and States, the results, with much smaller numbers, will often take weeks to Rig, I mean, calculate. Voting in America is CORRUPT!!!

The president also understands that gas prices, which he caused to skyrocket, are a main issue for voters, so he blamed Ukraine and blue states for that:

What's driving up Gasoline is no longer the Strait of Hormuz, because Record Numbers of Barrels are coming out now on an almost daily basis, but the word, "Refineries," where Russia's are being blown up by Ukraine, and where ours are being closed up, in Blue States, like California, by the Dumocrats.

It is impossible for Trump to argue that a vote for Democrats is a vote for higher gas prices, which seems to be what he is sort of getting at, when he won the election and he and his party sent prices, inflation, and gas prices through the roof.

To anyone who is paying attention and not a blind partisan, it would seem that a vote for Republican candidates is a vote for continued high prices.

The one rule of thumb with Donald Trump is that his failures are always someone else’s fault, but voters aren’t buying it, and his politics of division are as stale as his red hat.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Oct. 4, 2026 [], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 5, 2026. On Friday night, just before 11:00, Trump announced that his administration “will, immediately, begin sending ‘Checks’ of nearly $100 to over 20 MILLION wonderful Seniors to help pay for their Medicare Part B premiums, which we have already reduced by significant amounts. This money will come from the Medicare Improvement Fund, a pointless ‘Slush Fund’ that has only been used by Dumocrats in Congress to pay for the Waste, Fraud, and Abuse for their Special Interest friends, and drive up Healthcare costs.”

Congress established the Medicare Improvement Fund in 2008 to enable improvements to the program and periodically adjust payments to healthcare providers. A Republican congressional aide told Dan Diamond of the Washington Post that lawmakers had been planning to use the fund to help fund several health programs this year, and were taken aback by Trump’s announcement.

Trump continued: “Because I delivered on this very important issue for the American People, they can also rest assured the highly popular $5,000 Trump Dividend will be distributed to every U.S. Citizen if, and when, the Republicans win the Midterm Elections!”

The fact that he is openly using taxpayer money to buy votes in the election suggests just how worried Trump is about Democrats winning control of Congress in the upcoming midterms.

He has reason to be worried. If Democrats retake control of one or both chambers of Congress, they will not necessarily be able to pass legislation, since Trump will still be able to veto it. But they will be able to start investigations immediately, and they have made it so clear they intend to do so that the administration is already taking steps to trip them up.

In April the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice issued an opinion that the president doesn’t have to comply with the Presidential Records Act, enacted to make sure presidents after Richard M. Nixon could not destroy their records; in May a federal judge said they did, in fact, have to follow the law. In August the Department of Justice issued a memo saying that the executive privilege that enables a president to protect his conversations with government advisors also covers any civilian to whom the president speaks “so long as they relate to official presidential decisionmaking.”

As Trump’s time in office stretches out, more and more stories of corruption are surfacing. As Aaron Parnas reported in Meidas News, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, wrote a letter on September 30 to Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI director Kash Patel demanding they immediately release a document they are “illegally” concealing, and any others like it.

Wyden has been doggedly following the money trail connected to sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein, noting that his operations, including human trafficking and sexual abuse, depended on the banks whose officers looked the other way as Epstein’s finances repeatedly indicated he was engaged in criminal activity. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has refused to give the Senate Finance Committee access to Treasury materials about those finances, including Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs). When Wyden tried to get Congress to pass a law forcing the release of those files, Senate Republicans blocked it.

Now Wyden’s investigators have discovered that the FBI conducted an interview with a banker tied to Epstein, but the bureau did not release the transcript of the interview, known as a “302 report,” as Congress required when it passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Wyden suggested that the Department of Justice (DOJ) Justice Department log circularand the FBI “are withholding key documents from Congress and the public.”

“Furthermore,” he added, “the existence of this 302 indicates that it is likely that the FBI possesses additional, related, FBI 302s that have not been released” as they should have been under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

A new report from Anton Troianovski and Eric Lipton of the New York Times Saturday revealed that the administration’s talk about doing business deals with Putin while he continues to strike Ukraine was not hypothetical. As they have allegedly been negotiating for an end to Russia’s war on Ukraine, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff—neither of whom are diplomats—have been talking with Russia’s president Vladimir Putin about a multibillion-dollar deal to buy the assets of Russian oil giant Lukoil at the rock-bottom prices to which they have sunk because of U.S. sanctions.

Because such a sale would immediately remove those assets from U.S. sanctions, they would instantly become far more valuable. Those looking to benefit financially from the purchase would include a major Trump donor, as well as Middle Eastern investors tied to the Trump family and the Witkoffs. The U.S. government would take a stake in the company as well, through the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, which Congress authorized in 2018 to invest in development projects in lower- and middle-income countries.

While Lukoil is technically a private company, observers believe Putin has control over it. And while the deal would have to be approved by the U.S. Treasury Department, it seems unlikely that Trump loyalist Bessent would stop it.

According to Troianovski and Lipton, Putin suggested the deal on September 5. It was likely not coincidental that the offer came after Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) died on July 11. Graham, who was close to Trump, was firmly behind Ukraine as it tried to fight off Putin’s invasion. Until Trump, Democrats and Republicans both felt strongly that American national security depended on stopping Putin’s aggression, and they stood behind Ukraine.

Trump’s ties to Russia are extensive and well known, but this apparent attempt to buy Trump’s support for Russia even as the war drags into another winter and Ukraine’s drones are destroying Russia’s oil sector seems especially blatant. It puts a spotlight on the fact that, under Trump, U.S. national security is for sale. A Democratic-led Senate would undoubtedly object to what the Republicans have permitted.

Indeed, under Trump there does not appear to be a line between foreign affairs and Trump family business deals. On October 1, Allegra Goodwin, Katie Polglase, and Majlie de Puy Kamp of CNN reported that while in discussions about ending the war in Gaza, Kushner has major financial interests in the Israeli military.

Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners, has invested in Phoenix Financial, a firm based in Tel Aviv, Israel, that, in turn, has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in at least nine companies that provide equipment for the Israeli military. The CNN journalists report that the stock values of all the nine companies grew last year and that many of the companies attributed the growth to the war in Gaza. Kushner’s firm sold a quarter of its stock in Phoenix in July for more than $340 million, more than five times the value of its initial purchase.

If he were a government employee, Kushner would have to disclose his finances, but he is a “volunteer” negotiator. One of Kushner’s lawyers told the reporters that Kushner has “never participated in or directed Phoenix’s decisions” about investments, but, as the journalists note, Kushner told Forbes that he meets with the leaders of the financial group every few weeks and maintains “a very active dialogue” with them.

Kushner’s lawyer confirmed that was true a year ago when Kushner said it, but that since he has been “substantially more engaged in volunteer public-service and diplomatic efforts,” he has scaled back that contact significantly.

It’s not just Kushner. The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal on October 2 warned that “Don Jr.’s Star Turn Is Coming,” noting that the “Trump family businesses will be in the spotlight on Capitol Hill for the next two years.” “Does the Trump family know what is about to hit them?” the board asked. It noted that even Republicans are upset at the news that an oligarch close to Putin had paid for Don Jr.’s wedding celebration. Senator John Curtis (R-UT) has called for the Senate to subpoena Don Jr. to find out how that financial underwriting came to happen. While they’re at it, Curtis wants to learn more about the family’s cryptocurrency and prediction market ventures.

The corruption of the administration is matched by its incompetence, and neither will come out well in congressional investigations.

In September, hackers broke into the FBI jobs portal and stole information about nearly every FBI employee as well as more than 8,000 state and local law enforcement officers who had worked with the FBI agents. On Saturday, Ken Dilanian and Carol Leonnig of MS NOW reported just how devastating that breach was. The hacked data included “names, home addresses, cell phone numbers, FBI email addresses and employee ID numbers, in addition to personal identifying information for emergency contacts, including Social Security numbers and personal email addresses.”

According to FBI officials and outside experts, Dilanian and Leonnig report, the breach is a counterintelligence disaster—one of the worst in U.S. history. The information not only exposes the people involved, but also enables adversaries to figure out U.S. priorities and who is working on what.

One cybersecurity expert at the FBI said the cause of the breach was “definitely incompetence.” The information should never have been linked to the internet, the expert said. “It belonged on our internal system and some dumbass moved it all” to a system connected to the internet. The expert told Dilanian and Leonnig that in chats the FBI obtained, the hackers wrote they couldn’t believe that the hack of such important information was so easy.

Speaking at a high school gymnasium in Ohio Saturday night, Trump told an audience: “Just get out and vote. If you do that, we’re going to win, and we’re going to win big, and we’re gonna shove it up their *ss.”

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption 

pete hegseth treason graphic

Hope for America, Opinion: Pete Hegseth's TREASON accusation reveals a dark plan, Heather Delaney Reese, above right, Oct. 5, 2026. Pete Hegseth stood at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs beneath a redesigned military seal that looked like something pulled from 1930s Germany, and told cadets that “the flyovers will continue until morale improves.”

This is the man whose department was forced to admit that eight sailors attached to the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group attempted suicide during a deployment that went more than 260 days without a port call. They dismiss the suffering of our troops as fake news, then offer more flyovers to fix the morale problem they insist does not exist. Behind all the flags, staged workouts, and speeches about warriors, they are trying to rebuild our military as a personal instrument of the Trump Regime.

At Quantico, the approximately 600 people in the audience were handpicked to meet appearance standards, according to the Wall Street Journal. Hegseth was giving Trump the “central casting” military he wanted. Hegseth bragged about firing 10% of our generals and admirals and announced another wave of leadership cuts. He is removing the people who would push back against an unlawful order. He demanded the “highest male standard only,” promoted widespread testosterone testing, and announced an Office of Religious Affairs with a direct line to him. He put Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey, whose companies already do enormous business with the Pentagon, alongside Newt Gingrich in Project Meridian to study the future of warfare. Then he stood in front of our military and used the word “treason” to attack the press. They want obedience inside the chain of command and fear among the people telling us what is happening.

We do not have to accept the image Hegseth is selling us. Calling this propaganda takes away the power he wants it to have, and a Democratic Congress gives us a path toward holding him accountable through impeachment. Check your voter registration through your state’s official website, and ask friends and family to do the same. When I watched him in Colorado Springs, I also remembered the people my family met there, their care for service members, their pride in the Olympic Training Center, and the beauty of Pikes Peak. I remembered feeling weak from the altitude and still wanting to see that extraordinary view. That country still exists. Hegseth can redesign an eagle and tell soldiers what they should look like, but he cannot decide what America means to the rest of us. We can keep building a country worth fighting for.

 

pete hegseth tatoos

Hope for America, Opinion: Pete Hegseth is obsessed with men and power, Heather Delaney Reese, right, heather delaney reeseOct. 5, 2026. Early yesterday morning, the United States Secretary of “War,” Pete Hegseth, shown above in a file photo showing off his tattoos, stepped up to the podium at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and stood directly under a desecrated version of the Department of Defense seal.

What was once a gold eagle carrying a shield of red, white, and blue is now a cold, white eagle with its rigid wings spread inside a stark blue circle. It no longer represented American freedom and power. Instead, it looked like a symbol of Nazi propaganda pulled straight from 1930s Germany, bearing an unmistakable resemblance to the Reichsadler, the imperial eagle that served as the official symbol of the Third Reich.

This was the second stop on his “Send Me” tour, a campaign to radicalize the military and to signal to the American people and the rest of the world that the United States Armed Forces now belong to him and the Trump Regime. During this short 21-minute address to cadets, he harnessed all of his performance skills to project strength and power. Yet his words still gave him away. He invoked God, told a strange story about “young Americans” singling him out and telling him they are desperate for him to “send me to fight the Redcoats,” “send me to fight the Communists,” “send me to fight the Nazis,” “send me to fight the Islamists.”

But even with all these theatrics to project a military that is flourishing with no morale issues, he also said this: “I’ve always been a big believer in civic ritual in parades, and the flyovers will continue until morale improves. That’s why I believe in flyovers.”

This, much like Pete Hegseth’s other events this week, and everything he said, was about building a false narrative ahead of the midterms. Especially what he said about morale. He knows morale isn’t improving, and the troops know it, too. His department was already forced to admit that eight sailors attached to the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group attempted suicide during its record-setting deployment during Donald Trump’s forever war in Iran. Their deployment went more than 260 days without making a port call. There were supply and hygiene product shortages. They even ran low on food. When the Navy’s acting secretary confirmed the suicide attempts in a letter to Congress, Hegseth responded by saying the conditions were “completely misrepresented.”

Donald Trump also weighed in, saying he thought the deployment was “not nearly long enough.” Both have dismissed media reports about conditions aboard the Lincoln as untrue because they came from the “fake news.” Yet Hegseth still felt the need to offer a solution to this supposedly nonexistent morale problem by suggesting more flyovers. He says he cares about our troops, but his actions, and lack of action when our troops actually need him, tell us something completely different.

This speech wasn’t really about our troops; it was part of a much larger, and deliberate effort to concentrate power and strip the military of experienced, ethical, and constitutionally grounded leadership. They want to rebuild it as a personal instrument and extension of the Trump Regime. His remarks in Colorado Springs were just a small part of their efforts to accomplish this.

Last Wednesday, just two days before he was in Colorado Springs, Pete Hegseth delivered what he called the “State of the Force” address in Virginia at Marine Corps Base Quantico. Before the speech even started, he made sure to be seen running laps and doing PT with military personnel in matching T-shirts that said “THIS IS WAR.” It was an odd shirt choice for the man tasked with keeping our military out of war, but it was downright bizarre when we consider that Hegseth’s boss, Donald Trump, has spent months insisting that the “military action” in Iran is not, in fact, a war. After he made sure there were enough videos and photographs of this workout spectacle, he took a helicopter the 33 miles to Quantico, where he walked back and forth on a stage in front of a massive American flag for 52 minutes and delivered what he wanted us to believe was just a normal address to the military, but what was really a staged political rally.

What is becoming more obvious at every recent event is the visual language they are using to get us to think and feel something. We don’t even have to look that closely to see the symbols they plaster across the stages and entire rooms at not just Pete Hegseth’s events, but also JD Vance’s and Donald Trump’s. They are going all in with the heavy Americana glorification. There are American flags, red, white, and blue imagery everywhere, with thick blue backdrops, and stars and stripes strategically placed so that every frame of the camera catches them and fills the space around whoever is speaking. It is coordinated and deliberate visual conditioning for us to see nationalism as patriotism, and it mirrors so much of what authoritarian regimes have always done when they need their symbols to do just as much work, if not more, than the words that they say. The Nazis are one of the easiest regimes to compare this to because they understood the power of visual identity better than almost any political movement in history. They designed their banners, logos, and even their uniforms to project a single message of uniformity and as a reminder that they were the ultimate power. There was no room for anything or anyone else.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the approximately 600 people in that Quantico room were handpicked to meet a very specific look. They had to meet physical requirements, including body fat standards, and were required to have “impeccable grooming and uniform.” As Pete Hegseth has said about Donald Trump and how he wants our military to be presented, “I want central casting.” It seems Hegseth took that to heart when deciding who would sit in that audience. And it goes so much deeper and darker than surface-level looks. They are building a brand, not building an army.

History has shown us where this kind of thinking can lead. When we were in Berlin, we purposely spent time with our children in museums learning about the image the Nazis created of what the ideal German was supposed to look like. The blond hair and blue eyes. The athletic, muscular builds. The emphasis on physical strength and uniformity. None of that was accidental. It was part of showing Germans what they were supposed to look like and who they were supposed to be. I took a photograph inside Berlin’s Olympic complex of a massive mural from that era that I have included below. When we look at the people in it, we see vibrant and young, seemingly healthy, physically fit, orderly, and cheerful Germans. This was the image the Nazis wanted people to emulate. It showed them what their country was supposed to look like, while also defining who belonged and who did not. We tend to think of Nazi propaganda as primarily swastikas, banners, and speeches, but it was so much more than that.

That is what makes handpicking an audience based on their looks so dangerous. We know what comes next if it is not stopped.

Pete Hegseth also included the press, much like Trump has been doing, in his disgusting rhetoric. “It’s worth saying again so the fake news understands it,” Hegseth declared. “We are no longer the woke department or the weak department. Simple translation of that: no fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors.”

I would normally never repeat such vulgar language, but in this moment it has to be pointed out. He chose to use that slur on purpose and as a signal to others. It told every person in that room and every person watching that this military is no longer being governed by decency, dignity, or respect for the people who serve in it. It is being reshaped around the ideology of those pulling the strings behind Donald Trump. This regime has now decided what an American soldier should look like, how they should talk, and even who they should pray to.

He went on with his cringeworthy performance, saying that “The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in, with testosterone testing on top.” He bragged about firing 10% of the military’s generals and admirals, and then announced he was cutting even more, explaining it like he was simply decluttering and getting rid of people who “clung to the woke department.” But that is not what this is. He didn’t get rid of 10% of the military’s senior leadership just to clear out people who disagreed with his personal brand. He got rid of the ones who would resist and who would push back. The people who were most likely to actually stick by their oath to the Constitution instead of pledging loyalty to Pete Hegseth or Donald Trump.

With this second wave of cuts, he is going after the middle layer of military leadership, so that there are fewer and fewer people between the person giving an order and the person expected to carry it out. There will be fewer people in the room willing to push back and say, “No. That order is unlawful.” That is the point. They don’t want people in the way. They don’t want resistance inside the chain of command. They just want orders coming from the top and being carried out from below.

He told the room that “each service will ensure that every requirement for every combat military occupational specialty, for every designated combat arms position, returns to the highest male standard only.” He said multiple times that our military is gender-neutral and then turned around and said that. It is a direct effort to push women out of combat roles and to continue banning transgender service members, while pretending all decisions are based on his definition of merit. Women, LGBTQIA+ and transgender people have all volunteered to defend this country, and they have brought skills and perspectives that have made our military stronger. Now he is pushing people out and making the world more dangerous for them, because of who they are, not because of how they perform. In doing so, he risks losing some of the talented, out-of-the-box thinkers our military needs.

He brought up his obsession with men’s bodies and their testosterone levels multiple times as well. Doctors are sounding alarms over his decision to widely screen men for testosterone deficiency even when they have no symptoms, something that goes against the recommendations of major medical organizations. Those who are diagnosed with low testosterone will then have the option of testosterone replacement therapy. Hegseth insists this isn’t about artificially enhancing troops, but then he talks about testosterone as part of building what he calls the “High-T Department of War” and keeping our troops on the “leading edge of lethality.” So which is it? Is this about treating a medical condition, or is it about his belief that more testosterone somehow makes a better warrior? And why is the Department of War dedicating its time and resources to widespread testosterone testing when members of the VA who desperately need medical care are still waiting?

He also announced “Project Meridian,” which he called “an effort led by America’s best minds to study the future of warfare.” Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich are those “best minds”. Elon Musk, whose SpaceX already has billions of dollars in government and military contracts. Palmer Luckey, a 34-year-old defense tech billionaire whose company, Anduril, also does enormous amounts of business with the Pentagon. And Newt Gingrich, the 83-year-old former speaker of the House who never served in the military but has spent decades weighing in on when and where America should use military force. These are the people Hegseth has chosen to help decide what the future of American warfare should look like. Two of them own companies that stand to make money from the very technologies the Pentagon will need to build that future.

He couldn’t possibly end his speech without some sort of Christian Nationalist sermon, and this one was no different. He announced, “Today, at my direction, I’m establishing the Office of Religious Affairs… It will report straight to the top, a direct line to the secretary...as Psalm 33:12 extolls us, blessed is the nation in which God is the Lord.”

He announced new partnerships with Liberty University, Hillsdale College, Tuskegee University, LSU, and Mississippi State to create a “new core of cadets.” Liberty University is not just a school. It is one of the primary breeding grounds for far-right Christian nationalism in this country, a place that has produced exactly the kind of ideological soldiers Hegseth wants filling the ranks. And placing it at the center of military recruitment tells us everything about what kind of force he is building.

Nearly every war in human history has been fought in the name of God, and God is always conveniently on the side of whoever is doing the killing. This is one of the oldest tools in the authoritarian playbook. You tell soldiers that the fight is divine, that their sacrifice is holy, and that their enemies are not just opponents but enemies of God himself. Putin used this same playbook when he invaded Ukraine, telling Russian soldiers they were protecting and liberating Ukrainians from Nazis, while he and the Russian Orthodox Church increasingly framed the war as a spiritual fight for Russia itself. Hegseth is doing the same thing. He is building a military that isn’t fighting for the American people, but for a version of God that only he and his allies get to define.

He also said that “A free press is of course important… but partisan activism that intentionally smears the troops and the historic mission that they are undertaking is fundamentally anti-American. It’s sick. It’s a national betrayal. It’s treason. I hate to have to say it, but it has to be said.”

The Secretary of Defense, or War, as he prefers, stood in front of the military and called journalism treason, one of the most serious crimes in American law. It can carry the death penalty. This is just another piece of a coordinated effort across Trump’s government to call anyone who reports what they don’t want us to know, hear, or see a traitor. What Hegseth is trying to do is help create fear around speaking the truth that we stop and ask whether it’s worth the risk even though we know he is perverting free speech into being seen as treason.

We did not see any actual leadership from Pete Hegseth at any of these events because he does not know how to lead. His experience came from being a Fox News personality who, while still serving in the National Guard himself, was removed from providing security for Biden’s inauguration after another Guard member flagged him as a possible “insider threat.” His own mother wrote him a letter saying she was embarrassed and disappointed in him over his treatment of women. Multiple former colleagues have also accused him of excessive drinking, something he has denied. He is a performer, and that is exactly what we saw this week.

By acknowledging what he is doing and not pretending it is anything but propaganda, we strip it of the power he thinks it holds. We know the truth about what he is doing to our military and our country. The most immediate remedy we have is to have him impeached. The House of Representatives was very close to doing so just weeks ago before Speaker Johnson urgently sent everyone home to avoid a vote. That all changes if we have a Democratic Congress, and we will have the chance to make that happen in less than a month. So take a moment and make sure you are still registered to vote. Most Secretaries of State, if not all, have links where you can check on their official websites. Take some time to do that, and also keep your eyes open for opportunities to ask friends and family to check theirs too.

When I watched Pete Hegseth in Colorado Springs, I saw beyond the fear he was spreading and back to some very special times my own family spent there when I was writing a travel story years ago. While we were there, I spoke to so many people who shared the struggles the area faced, but also why they loved it. The beauty that surrounded them. The sense of community and the care for the military service members who lived there. The pride they felt in the Olympic Training Center and Pikes Peak. I remember standing at the top of Pikes Peak, feeling weak from the altitude, needing to be cleared by EMS, and still going to the edge anyway because the view was too extraordinary to miss.

That America still exists and always will, no matter how hard Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump try to steal it from us. Pete Hegseth can stand under whatever seal he wants. He can rename the department, redesign the eagle, order every soldier to watch his speeches, and hand out his personal manifesto like it’s scripture. He can demand that our military follow his maximum lethality “warrior ethos” and look like whatever they think they should look like. But nobody, not even a corrupt regime controlling our government, can take away what this country means to us or stop us from fighting to keep building a country that is worth fighting for. 

U.S. Law, Courts, Rights

New York Times, Texas Pediatricians Face Paxton Investigations for Vaccinating Children, Christina Jewett, Oct. 5, 2026. Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general and Republican Senate candidate, has alleged a sprawling profit-driven conspiracy. Pediatricians say the accusations are an attempt at intimidation.

It was a bustling Monday morning at a little pediatrician’s office in central Texas. Children with rashes, fevers and runny noses cycled through exam rooms decorated with butterflies, planets and colorful maps. The doctor, who had been treating kids in the community for 20 years, was delighted when a woman she had cared for as a child came in with her newborn.

Until recently, she had planned to continue her practice for years to come. But this year, she has begun to ken paxton mugreconsider amid the stress and legal costs of defending herself in a statewide investigation by Ken Paxton, left, the attorney general of Texas and Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, who has accused doctors, drug companies and insurers of conspiring to push parents into vaccinating children.

She agreed to be interviewed and allowed a reporter to visit her practice but asked to be identified by her middle name, Rachel, to protect her from retaliation.

In December, Dr. Rachel received a letter from the attorney general’s Consumer Protection Division demanding her vaccine purchase records over the past 10 years. “The division believes that you are in possession, custody or control” of material, “involving potential misleading or deceptive acts regarding incentives associated with the administration of childhood vaccines,” it said, adding that such acts could be in violation of the state’s deceptive trade practices law.

The letter also requested her practice’s vaccine policy, and said that it would not be sufficient to cite the childhood vaccine schedule recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mr. Paxton has also implicated the nation’s largest organization of pediatricians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, in the alleged conspiracy over the workaday task of protecting children from polio, measles, meningitis and more than a dozen other dangerous and sometimes life-threatening diseases.

“I will ensure that Big Pharma and Big Insurance don’t bribe medical providers to pressure parents to jab their kids with vaccines they feel aren’t safe or necessary,” he said when announcing the investigation in January, describing his efforts as working “alongside President Trump” and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“Together, we will Make America Healthy Again,” he said, using the rallying cry of a movement that helped elect Mr. Trump and propel Mr. Kennedy into the top health position in the federal government.

In many ways, pediatricians, among the lowest-paid specialists in medicine, make for an unlikely target. But they have become a focus in what has become a wide-ranging campaign to raise doubts about vaccination, part of a 20-year quest for Mr. Kennedy that some of his political allies have joined.

The efforts have gained steam despite decades of evidence of the effectiveness of vaccines. More than 1.1 million deaths, from diseases like diphtheria, hepatitis B and measles, were prevented by childhood vaccines in the United States from 1994 through 2023, according to an estimate from the C.D.C.

Unlike many organizations that have drawn fire from the Trump administration and its surrogates, the 67,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics has not retreated. It has sued the Trump administration over policy changes and grant cancellations, with some success so far.

 

dennis hastert gavel wikipedia

New York Times, Dennis Hastert, Powerful Politician Disgraced by Child Sexual Abuse, Dies, Carl Hulse, Oct. 5, 2026. The longest-serving Republican speaker of the House, shown above, admitted in 2016 to abusing teenage boys decades earlier. He was 84.

J. Dennis Hastert, a once-obscure Illinois congressman who rose to become the longest-serving Republican speaker of the House before falling from grace in a sex abuse scandal that came to light after he left government, has died. He was 84.

The coroner’s office in Kendall County, Ill., was notified of Mr. Hastert’s death on Saturday evening, according to a statement. He was pronounced dead at his home while under hospice care, the coroner said.

dennis hastert prison wheelchair abcMr. Hastert, a former teacher and wrestling coach (shown above in a prison wheelchair with his wife), was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison in April 2016 for violating federal banking laws, having made millions of dollars in secret payments to cover up sexual misconduct with a male student. He was released in July 2017 and from then on lived out of the public eye despite his earlier prominence in Washington.

Mr. Hastert admitted at his sentencing that he sexually abused teenage wrestlers as young as 14 whom he coached at Yorkville High School in Yorkville, Ill., where he worked from 1965 to 1981. The federal judge who sentenced Mr. Hastert called him “a serial child molester.”

It was a stunning downfall for Mr. Hastert, a burly, stooped figure who had once trudged through the Capitol hallways surrounded by aides and a security detail.

He had emerged as a surprise consensus choice for speaker in 1998 during a period of partisan uproar over the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. He held the post during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and their aftermath, working closely with President George W. Bush in pushing a tough antiterror agenda and fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He also forced through an expansion of Medicare to cover prescription drug costs, a long-sought benefit. But the way that vote was handled contributed to an ethical cloud that gathered over House Republicans in the Hastert era.

Mr. Hastert lost the speakership after Democrats reclaimed the majority in the 2006 midterm elections. The Democratic victory was fueled in part by accusations that Mr. Hastert and his leadership team had failed to respond aggressively to accusations that a Republican House member, Mark Foley of Florida, had behaved inappropriately with male House pages of high-school age.

Mr. Hastert chose not to seek a Republican leadership role after the repudiation of his party in 2006. He left Congress in November 2007 to pursue a lucrative lobbying and consulting career.

Justice Integrity Project Editor's Note: Investigative reporter Wayne Madsen, a courageous reporter, a former Navy intelligence officer and a close colleague of this editor, broke the Hastert story in a three-part series in the fall of 2006  published on "The Wayne Madsen Report" naming the then-powerful House Speaker as a gay pedophile and hypocrite who presided over a "gay Mafia" of powerful Republicans in Congress who abused youths while winning elections as  "family values" purists. No other publication dared follow up on the story until the federal indictment years later.

New York Times Magazine, Congress Is Supposed to Be More Powerful Than the Supreme Court. Why Isn’t It? Emily Bazelon, Oct. 5, 2026. Trump and his allies in the Capitol have revealed a problem that has been developing for decades.

President Trump’s second term has revealed many weaknesses in America’s political system. This is one of them: It turns out that the government can function (or malfunction) based just on orders of the president and the Supreme Court’s rulings on those orders. Congress is largely irrelevant, if it wants to be.

As the court returns for a new term this week, we are due for another round of debate about the separation of powers — the fight between the executive and the courts, especially. Just as important, though far less frequently noted, is the balance between the Supreme Court and Congress. And that situation is deeply weird.

Here’s how it’s supposed to work but no longer does: Congress writes laws. The courts interpret them. When Congress disagrees with these statutory interpretations, it has the power to pass a new law to override them. Constitutional rulings are different: The Supreme Court claimed that it had say over interpreting the nation’s founding document in the case of Marbury v. Madison in 1803. Congress may still have room to respond with a new law, but it can’t just say the court got the Constitution wrong.

Today, Republicans in the House and the Senate have the power to give the president — the leader of their party — what he wants, even when the Supreme Court disagrees. Over the summer, for example, the justices handed Trump defeats on two cherished priorities, imposing global tariffs and resetting the rules for mail-in voting. A lower-court judge blocked Trump’s appointees on the board of the Kennedy Center from putting his name on it, which he appears to care about even more.

The judge in the Kennedy Center case, Christopher R. Cooper, underscored in his ruling what power Congress has. “Simply put,” he wrote, the board “cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing.” Yet Republicans have not moved a bill to authorize adding Trump’s name.

In a sense, Congress’s inaction is easy to explain. It’s an increasingly do-nothing institution. The Senate rule requiring 60 votes to break a filibuster gives Republicans an excuse to distance themselves from some of the least popular decrees of an unpopular president. Trump also often disregards Congress. There was no reason for lawmakers to do anything, he said, when the Supreme Court struck down his tariffs last year.

But this is not really about Trump. He and the current MAGA Congress have revealed — and accelerated — a structural flaw that has been developing for a couple of decades. Several presidencies ago, Congress stopped asserting authority to override major Supreme Court decisions. Its passivity has continued no matter which party is in power.

By 2013, it was already “exceedingly rare” for Congress to reject a court decision, Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote that year. Hasen charted the drop. From 1975 to 1990, Congress overrode an average of 12 Supreme Court decisions per term. The number fell to an average of 2.8 per term from 2001 to 2012. Since then, it has fallen nearly to zero, Hasen says — “certainly, nothing I’ve seen shows the numbers have turned around.”

Congress’s inaction is upsetting the balance of power between Congress — the branch that, according to the Constitution, is supposed to be most responsive to the electorate and the strongest — and the judiciary, which is supposed to be most removed and weakest. It’s a distortion of the separation of powers that has largely had the effect of moving American governance to the right.ImageAn old black-and-white photographs of three lawyers outside the Supreme Court.Thurgood Marshall (right) with Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach (center) with Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights John Doar (left) at the Supreme Court in 1966. Marshall argued for the government in Katzenbach v. Morgan, defending the Voting Rights Act.Credit...Bettmann Archive, via Getty Images

One of the court’s most contentious decisions last term was Louisiana v. Callais, which gutted part of the Voting Rights Act. The history of the landmark civil rights law since its enactment in 1965 shows how things have changed in Congress’s push-and-pull with the court. The Supreme Court upheld it in the 1966 case Katzenbach v. Morgan. The 14th Amendment, the justices argued, gave Congress the power to enforce the promise of equal rights, a responsibility that the court respected.

But in 1980, a different court struck back with a ruling that required states to prove that laws intentionally discriminated on the basis of race. The ruling made part of the Voting Rights Act nearly toothless. Congress objected — and did something about it by amending the law so a plaintiff could win with proof that a state voting practice had a discriminatory effect. This back-and-forth was what the Constitution’s framers envisioned, and it continued for decades. The court enforced Congress’s amendment in 1986. In 2006, Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act by overwhelming majorities. 

Seven years later, however, in Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court gutted another key provision of it. This time, though, Congress did not pass an amendment or a new voting rights bill in response, even later when Democrats controlled the White House, the House and the Senate. The resulting power vacuum surely made it easier for the conservative justices to dismantle the remainder of the Voting Rights Act last spring — by reimposing the standard of proof of discriminatory intent in Louisiana v. Callais.Get updates when new midterm election polls are added to our poll trackers. When new polling data drops we’ll send an update straight to your inbox. Get it sent to your inbox.

The main reason a new voting rights bill failed to pass is the same reason Congress has stopped responding to the court: partisan polarization, which ramped up in the 2000s. As conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans went extinct, bipartisan overrides ended. When one party is in control and can reject a court ruling on its own, the filibuster remains a barrier to such a bill passing.

In their new book, “Supremacy,” Nikolas Bowie and Daphna Renan, Harvard law professors, argue that Congress is passive because the Supreme Court made it so. “The court’s interpretation of Congress’s statutory authority has gotten stingier and stingier,” Renan said. Congress stopped responding to the court out of “learned helplessness.”

In the last few years, the Supreme Court’s conservatives have suggested that when they strike down statutes, they are inviting Congress to pass laws in response. Liberals in the minority, on the other hand, say the court is simply taking more power for itself. The dispute came to a head in a 2022 case in which the conservative majority said that the Clean Air Act did not authorize the Environmental Protection Agency to implement the Obama administration’s plan to limit carbon emissions at power plants. The majority imposed a relatively new standard, the “major questions doctrine,” saying that Congress was required to clearly state what it wanted the E.P.A. to do and that it had not done so. “A decision of such magnitude and consequences rests with Congress itself,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority.

New York Times, How the Midterms Could Complicate the Supreme Court’s New Term, Ann E. Marimow and Abbie VanSickle, Oct. 5, 2026. Even before the justices start their new term on Monday, the court has spent the summer resolving fast-moving requests on election-related disputes.

At a public appearance this spring, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. insisted, as he regularly does, that members of the Supreme Court are not “political actors.”

Yet with the court’s new term beginning Monday, scarcely a month before the closely watched midterms, the court may be unable to avoid getting uncomfortably pulled into electoral politics.

With partisans on both sides primed for potential election challenges, lawsuits to settle hotly contested elections could end up before the court, potentially with the control of Congress at stake. They would land on top of an already packed docket of cases on culture war issues and President Trump’s agenda that were selected by the justices to be heard from the thousands of petitions they receive each year.

The result could be another consequential and controversial span on the bench for the justices, even as their public poll numbers have dipped and elected leaders and candidates, particularly in the insurgent wing of the Democratic Party, have called for an overhaul of the court.

The court “knows what an extraordinary politicized moment we are in,” said Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University Law School. For that reason, the justices would prefer not to be involved in lawsuits that would affect results or allow state officials to affect results.

But, he said, if the justices see a true post-election emergency, “it’s hard to imagine they wouldn’t intervene” if called on.

The court will hear oral arguments in about 60 cases, starting on Monday with a major environmental lawsuit, and continuing through late April. During that period, they will deliberate at private conferences, draft and exchange opinions and release the court’s rulings. The most closely divided decisions are typically announced on the final days of the term in late June or early July. But the justices also field emergency requests and issue quick-turn orders without a lengthy briefing period or hearing arguments.

The new term was foreshadowed by a busy summer for the court, which grappled with a series of emergency requests critical to the nation’s political system.

The justices blocked both President Trump’s plan to dramatically overhaul how Americans vote by mail in the upcoming election and three separate times stepped in to block Missouri from using a congressional map drawn to advantage Republicans. At the same time, they allowed the administration to deploy an online system combining citizenship information, Social Security numbers and other sensitive data about millions of Americans to help states hunt for supposedly ineligible voters.

In each case, the majority issued unsigned orders that academics and advocates said suggested that the justices were trying to avoid changing voting rules or creating confusion for state election officials ahead of November.ImageThe Supreme Court building is seen next to a window reflecting an image of the U.S. Capitol.Apart from Mr. Trump’s agenda, the court plans to hear a series of other consequential cases, including a blockbuster case dealing with gun control in December.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

“There is a robust majority of the court that does not want to be the decision maker that’s going to be the one allowing the chaos to happen,” said Roman Martinez, a lawyer who argues frequently before the court and is a former law clerk to Chief Justice Roberts.

In the mail-ballot matter, election officials from both parties had cautioned that Mr. Trump’s mail-in ballot plan would be disruptive and confusing, potentially putting millions of votes at risk. In the Missouri case, the court warned of “electoral chaos” if the state were to change course so close to the election and use the GOP map, as pressed by Republican officials.

Even in the online database case, where the court sided with the Trump administration, the justices seemed to try to dampen the impact on the upcoming election. They noted that their own ruling could be limited by what’s known as a 90-day “quiet period” before elections that prevents elections officials from making broad changes to state rolls ahead of the vote.

Erin Murphy, another former law clerk to Chief Justice Roberts, said the court seemed to be sending the message: “Stop doing this to us because we really don’t want to be in this position.”

That posture could change after the election if there are disputes over vote counts or the certification of elections. There is already a flood of election-related litigation filed around the country by both parties and concerns about the possibility of voter intimidation and the seizure of ballots.

If the court were to get drawn into closely contested elections that could determine control of Congress, it would raise echoes of the post-presidential election period in December 2000. That was when the Supreme Court put a stop to a Florida recount in the election that sealed George W. Bush’s victory over the Democratic nominee, Al Gore.

The Supreme Court was likewise the final arbiter of Mr. Trump’s challenges in December 2020, rejecting post-election challenges involving the use of mail ballots in Pennsylvania and a Texas lawsuit seeking to throw out election results in four battleground states that President Trump lost.

“Everyone’s eyes are on the election,” said Cecillia Wang, national legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, which is preparing for a possibly intense burst of post-election challenges.

Such challenges would pose a conundrum for the court, putting it at the heart of the deeply divided political landscape, even as polls show Americans increasingly disapprove of its work and worry the court is putting its thumb on the scale in partisan battles. Democrats particularly have grown to believe the court, with a 6-3 majority of Republican nominees, is too conservative, according to a new Gallup poll.

A poll conducted by Marquette Law School in September found that 57 percent of Americans, a sizable majority, now believe the justices are motivated mainly by politics rather than law. The percentage of those approving of the court dipped to 43 percent.

Those numbers were divided along party lines. Sixty percent of those surveyed said the court has ruled in Mr. Trump’s favor often or fairly often. Seventy-eight percent of Democrats said the court was going out of its way to avoid ruling against Mr. Trump.

In an interview with CBS News posted on Friday, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who is one of the court’s most reliable votes in favor of the president’s agenda, insisted that the court “is not part of any political movement. And we are not attempting to further any political agenda.” He added: “We are trying to interpret the Constitution as best we can and apply it in the cases that come before us.”

Emptywheel, Analysis and Opinion: Judge Perry May Have Flipped a Witness, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Oct. 5, 2026. marcy wheelerLet me propose a second-hand interpretation of last Thursday’s hearing in the Broadview 6 case. Judge April Perry did what prosecutors (like she used to be) do: flip a useful witness against others.

Not long after the Broadview 6 hearing began on Thursday, the exonerees and their lawyers became spectators. That happened via this part of Judge April Perry’s minute entry on the hearing.

Motions for attorneys’ fees and expenses [201] [210] are granted. The parties are to meet and confer and determine if a settlement of this matter can be reached, if they would like the court’s assistance in mediating the issue, or if they prefer a briefing schedule. A joint status report on the attorneys’ fees motions is to be filed by 11/2/2026. Motion to conduct discovery in connection with the requests for attorneys’ fees [206] is denied.

Justice Department log circularShe granted them the attorneys fees DOJ already agreed to pay, Chris Parente said if discovery needed to happen, Judge Perry could do it, and they were told to report back in a month. From that point forward, they were done. With that, Perry dispensed with the argument DOJ was making that exonerees did not have standing to ask for more.

Much later in the hearing, she appointed law professor William Baude (whom she had already asked to serve) as Amicus, effectively replacing the exonerees with the law professor and in so doing dodging some of the problems that giving exonerees discovery would have caused. In recent months Baude has written about what to do when the Executive refuses to follow a judge’s orders which, among other things, advises to think ahead to how the Executive will respond to your orders before you give them.

Even before that, though, Perry approved Sheri Mecklenburg’s intervention, which is reflected in this part of the minute.

For the reasons stated on the record in open court, Petition to Intervene filed by Sheri Mecklenburg [261] is granted and Ms. Mecklenburg may intervene to challenge the possible appointment a special prosecutor and any potential consideration of sanctions.

That left two questions on the table: Would Judge Perry impose sanctions and/or would she appoint a special prosecutor.

Almost immediately after granting Mecklenburg’s motion to intervene, Perry asked which lawyers would be willing to testify. Mecklenburg’s attorney said he thought she would be willing. The AUSA speaking for Andrew Boutros, William Hogan, Matthew Skiba, and potentially others, Nate Whalen, hedged.

Perry asks if any of the AUSAs would “take five,” or cite their Fifth Amendment privileges.

Whalen: “I don’t know the answer to that.”

Perry asks Mecklenburg attorney Sergio Acosta whether Mecklenburg would be willing to testify.

Acosta: “I expect that she would, judge. We have not discussed that with her in any detail.”

Even before that, though, Whalen hedged on whether DOJ would turn over documents, effectively arguing that first Perry had to find misconduct before she could get evidence of it.

Perry: “Generally speaking, if I ask you to produce documents, you would produce them subject to claims of privilege?”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathaniel Whalen: “If the court determines there’s been willful misconduct.”

Perry calls that “kind of circular.”

Here’s where everything gets interesting. As reflected in Perry’s minute entry (and her own request to intervene) Mecklenburg was present only to weigh in on sanctions and a Special Prosecutor. But Perry said she’s looking only at lack of candor and other misconduct before her — effectively not the grand jury misconduct itself, but the cover-up of what happened and why.

Here’s how Jon Seidel captured it in his live blog, though Perry’s limitation — that she is focused on lack-of-candor — showed up in the detailed coverage:

U.S. District Judge questions the feds about outside communications about the case.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathaniel Whalen quibbles on whether there are relevant communications, which prompts many smiles on the defense side of the courtroom. Defendants had pressed for communications with the White House and Justice Department headquarters.

Whalen indicates there were communications outside the U.S. attorney’s office after a charging decision was made.

Perry tries to pin down when that was. Whalen tells her the feds tried to clarify that in a brief, and Perry’s eyes go wide. She also tells Whalen that a footnote he’s been pointing to “is a mess.”

As Perry presses, Whalen tells her he understood today’s proceedings to be an oral argument. “I’m not here to supplement the record with additional facts,” he says.

Perry: “My sole focus at this point is on lack of candor, concealment of material facts, or other misconduct that occurred before me.”

What this means is that Mecklenburg’s misconduct will have been punished by her retirement from DOJ, DOJ’s refusal to pay her legal fees, and the very public airing of her misconduct. But her legal exposure will be closed.

As such, Mecklenburg in an equivalent position to a cooperating witness. She has already acknowledged improprieties in the grand jury in her motion to intervene that got published; though some of her explanations ring hollow. Her further legal exposure would arise, based on what Judge Perry is reported to have said, from lack of candor going forward.

Procedurally, Perry seems to be treating the next phase of proceedings as further information-gathering before she decides whether to hold DOJ in contempt. Since that is why Perry granted Mecklenburg’s motion to intervene (and since Mecklenburg said she had information to share), I assume the now-retired prosecutor will be asked to answer some of the same questions Perry is preparing that DOJ will — questions like, who got the rush grand jury transcript Mecklenburg ordered, what Boutros told her to do after getting no-billed, what communications between Main DOJ and Chicago she knows of.

DOJ has said they may not answer these questions or share documents. Mecklenburg intervened for the express purpose of answering such questions.

If DOJ continues to stonewall, they will leave whatever Mecklenburg says unrebutted — though they couldn’t manage that on her claim that Andrew Boutros overrode her recommendation that DOJ charge misdemeanors, thereby potentially waiving privilege for everything else. And while Mecklenburg doesn’t have access to relevant documents anymore, if she can remember what they are, it provides Judge Perry with a sense of what DOJ is withholding. If DOJ lies about what happened a year ago, Mecklenburg can rebut it, which would give Perry cause to demand the documentation. If DOJ refuses to cooperate because (as Whalen argued) they don’t have to do so until Perry finds them in contempt, Mecklenburg can elucidate what they’re withholding. DOJ can try to come clean, but that may further chip away at their own privilege claims.

Meanwhile, consider the timing. DOJ has to submit their view on whether Judge Perry can appoint a prosecutor if she holds them in contempt by November 2. That same day, exonerees will report on whether DOJ is paying any of their legal bills if DOJ does not, it will suggest DOJ said they would pay exonerees’ legal bills solely to stonewall. But then Professor Baude will have a month to respond. The contempt question will not be made until close to the time a new Congress should be sworn in, at such time as there may be other alternatives to a special prosecutor.

In his rush to scapegoat Mecklenburg, Boutros mooted the grand jury problems by dismissing the case. And that effectively provided Mecklenburg to flip. And Judge Perry seems to have considered how DOJ was bound to respond to her orders and planned accordingly.

 

bulwark morning shots logoMorning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Grief and Fear in Two Ohios, Andrew Egger, right, andrew eggerOct. 5, 2026. Springfield, Ohio: They buried Pierre Damas Bel on Saturday. That night, Donald Trump came to town to take a victory lap on the policies that killed him.

It’s been a bit more than a month since Bel, a 20-year-old Haitian who had come to the United States legally as a high schooler in 2024, threw himself under a truck on the interstate—a death of despair following the revocation of his legal status by the Trump administration this summer. Among the hundreds gathered to mourn Saturday at Springfield’s St. John Missionary Baptist Church, the grief was still raw and immediate.

bulwark logo big shipThe banners on the church walls proclaimed messages of scriptural comfort: “Jehovah Shammah: The Lord is always present. Jehovah Rophe: The Lord heals.” As family members audibly wailed and sobbed, the ministers asked God in English and Haitian Creole for consolation amid heartbreak.

“You are near the brokenhearted. We pray that you would draw near us today,” prayed Pastor Ernie Brown of St. John. “When questions have no answers, give them strength to trust you with what we cannot understand.”

Many unanswerable questions hung over Bel’s funeral. Here are two. How could a country extend such a shining future to a young man like him—only to shatter that future, and him, by suddenly ripping it away? And how could the president who made it happen show his face that same day, just miles down the road, not only to defend that change, but to bask in it?

Hours later, 25 miles away in the Dayton suburb of Vandalia, Trump spiked the football. “This is in honor of Springfield, Ohio,” he said, “a quaint little town of 32,000 people where they took in 35,000 people and put them into Springfield, and it didn’t work out too well. And they’re being removed.”

If there was ever a kid America’s immigration system was for, it was Pierre Damas Bel. America, to him, wasn’t just a safe haven from his broken homeland of Haiti. It was a place where he seemed destined to flourish.

Speakers recalled how Bel had distinguished himself in school, in athletics, socially, in junior ROTC, and at work. He had been bound for local Wittenberg University to play soccer on a scholarship; he intended to study neuroscience and hoped one day to open a hospital back in Haiti.

Bel couldn’t have known it, but his dream had started to die the same year he arrived—the year Republicans selected Springfield’s Haitians as their national scapegoat for Joe Biden’s immigration excesses, the year they became the targets of a million racist political lies: “They’re eating the dogs,” Trump blustered from a debate stage. “They’re eating the cats.”

This summer, the hammer dropped. The Supreme Court ruled that it couldn’t really know that Trump’s attempt to evict the Haitians was motivated by racism, so who were the justices to put up a fuss? Just like that, the way was clear for Trump to transform America’s Haitian TPS recipients from a law-abiding, integrating community into illegal immigrants—no longer able to work, get driver’s licenses, or otherwise participate in society; systematically shackled with ankle monitors, under immediate threat of getting dragged into an ICE van and deported.

Maybe the most remarkable and heartrending thing about Bel’s story was this: He kept his faith in America almost to the end. Unable to play soccer at Wittenberg because of his ankle monitor, he instead enrolled at a nearby state school, Wright State.

According to his family, the last humiliation came at Wright State’s ROTC program. Because he was not an American citizen, Bel was ineligible to become an ROTC cadet; he was participating in the program as an elective.

Perhaps, at first, he saw this as a distinction without a difference. But then came the news that he, alone among his classmates, could not receive a ROTC uniform. He had embraced America; there was no mistaking the signs that America was not embracing him back.

He wanted to wear the cloth of the country. The country put an ankle monitor on him instead. Days later, he threw himself under a truck.

None of this had had to happen. “Our dear friend and brother may have died by suicide,” said Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, at the funeral. “But he was killed by the system.”

How are the local Republicans feeling about all this? In theory, these are the beneficiaries of Trump’s policy toward the Haitians. But many don’t seem particularly enthusiastic about the whole messy business. There’s an ambivalence, a sheepishness about the thing, even among some otherwise pot-committed Trump fans.

I learned this later on Saturday, in Vandalia, where Trump was scheduled to make his latest red-state rally ahead of next month’s midterms. Talking to MAGA voters outside in line, I was struck by how few were willing to offer a full-throated endorsement of the unpersoning of the Haitians.

When I asked Dayton resident Joe Brafford what he saw as Trump’s greatest accomplishment so far, he didn’t hesitate: “I like the fact that he closed down the border.” But when it came to the local Haitians, he was far more conflicted. “I wouldn’t have given them [temporary protected status] in the first place,” he said. “I think it was wrong, but they were given that status by Biden, and they have that status.¹ So I don’t know how you in good conscience can just kick them all out. . . . It really is a dilemma.”

“I worked in construction for many years, and I had a crew of Mexican workers. A lot of them were illegals,” chimed in David Snavely, who was standing nearby. “Great guys. I mean, they were a great crew. I didn’t care about their status. All I cared about, none of them were bad people. They worked their ass off. Actually, they were better workers than some of the guys on the crew.”

“I feel sorry for the people that have been here a long time and are productive,” said Sharon Hardwick. “But at the same time, they’ve already overstayed a long time. And I think America’s economic system could fail if we keep all these people in our country and try to pay for everything that the Democrats want to pay for.”

Later, watching the rally unfold ahead of Trump’s arrival, I wondered if this twitch of discomfort explained why, despite the issue’s huge local salience, most speakers steered wide around it. Sens. Jon Husted and Bernie Moreno, gubernatorial hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, Rep. Mike Turner, state party chair Alex Triantafilou—all came and went without a single mention, positive or negative, of the local Haitians.

And why not? These men were here, ahead of the midterms, to channel the crowd’s big, uncomplicated emotions: loyalty to Trump, enthusiasm for America’s supposed “golden age,” and fear of the Communist Takeover they insisted Democrats wanted to bring about. Many in the crowd may have wanted their Haitian neighbors gone, but they didn’t want to have to think about it much. Easier to ignore all that suffering just down the street then to grapple with the role you played in it.

But then came Trump, who had no such compunctions. Far from skirting around the issue, the president leaned in—dedicating his usual reading of the immigrant-panic poem “The Snake” to the people of Springfield.(Photo by Andrew Egger/The Bulwark)

“Springfield, Ohio—do you know that story? It’s a very sad story,” Trump said. Springfield, he insisted, had been a “beautiful” and “idyllic” little town—“that’s a word they use in high scripture: ‘idyllic’”—until those Haitians showed up.

“It was an idyllic place. Was, is the better word. Not anymore, but it soon will be. They’re all being brought back to their country.”

This, too, was spiritual leadership—though of a very different sort than I’d seen at St. John. Trump spoke with the leering confidence of a decade of MAGA-rally experience—secure in the knowledge that a crowd never loves him more than when he gives them permission to indulge in a little communal vice. And he was right. Whatever scruples, whatever discomfort they might have had going in, the crowd abandoned them now. They grinned, laughed, and struck up a chant: “Deport! Deport! Deport!”

Trump says they’re all going back. For Pierre Damas Bel’s friends and family, the future is murky; whether they can stay, and for how long, still remains to be seen. But they won’t all be going back. They buried Pierre Damas Bel on Saturday. He’s here to stay.

Donate to the Haitian Support Center.

AROUND THE BULWARK

  • Why You Must Care About the Ballroom… Trump is defying Congress and robbing the American people to build it, writes AMANDA CARPENTER.
  • bulwark logo big shipAn Older, Slower Trump on the Stump… On The Bulwark on Sunday, ANDREW EGGER joins BILL KRISTOL to talk about what he saw during his visit to Ohio.
  • Jack Smith Reveals the Words That Could Have Buried Trump… WILL SALETAN lays out the case against Donald Trump that Jack Smith never got to present at trial.
  • Trumpism in Trouble on the Prairie… Democrats have found an opening in one of America’s reddest states. Now comes the Republican money, reports LAUREN EGAN in The Opposition.
  • RFK Jr. Wants to AI-ify Health Care. Claude Says He’s Full of Sh*t… Kennedy is suddenly bullish on artificial intelligence—so JONATHAN COHN asked some AI assistants to rate his vaccine claims in The Breakdown.

More On Middle East Wars

 

New York Times, Burst of Attacks in Gulf Heightens Fears Over Fragile Energy Trade, Lisa Friedman and Jenny Gross, Oct. 5, 2026. Strikes on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia came as the region’s exporters were getting more oil to the world market.

Small boats dot a wide expanse of dark blue water. A hazy mountainous shore stretches along the horizon beneath a clear sky.

At least eight tankers have been attacked in and around the Strait of Hormuz since last Monday, a stark reminder that the recent increase in exports from the volatile region rests on a series of fragile workarounds.

The drone and missile strikes have continued as the Middle East risks plunging deeper into war, with the Saudi-backed government of Yemen on Sunday announcing a major military campaign against the Iran-backed Houthi militia. The announcement followed Houthi strikes on critical oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia.

The attacks have underscored the unsettling reality for Gulf oil exporters. U.S. forces have provided protection for ships seeking to transport oil through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran asserted control over after the United States and Israel attacked it more than seven months ago. But heightened risks continue to shadow the global energy trade.

“Few expected a near closure of the world’s most critical energy artery to last so long, or its impact to spread so widely,” Amin Nasser, chief executive of Saudi Aramco, the national oil company, said in a speech to the Energy Intelligence Forum in London on Monday. He added, “This is one of the worst crises of my career, and my career is long.”

The price of Brent crude oil, the global benchmark, was little changed on Monday, hovering around $102 a barrel. Analysts said the big run-up in oil prices since the war had been held in check in recent weeks by the increase in oil exports from the Persian Gulf, which have reached higher levels than at any point since the start of the war.

And on Friday, the Group of 7 nations, which includes Britain, France and Japan, said they had agreed to release emergency stocks of diesel and crude over the next four months.

The multinational release of backup supplies — the second since March — could end up providing only temporary relief from high prices and shortages, analysts said. A top Japanese official said on Monday that the country, which has already tapped its stockpiles, had no plans for further releases.

Mr. Nasser said the world’s current oil stockpiles were “scarily thin” and warned that replenishing national inventories could take as long as two years.

  • New York Times, Saudi-Backed Yemeni Government Declares War Against Houthis, Vivian Nereim, Eric Schmitt and Saeed Al-Batati, Oct. 5, 2026 (print ed.). More than 200 U.S. intelligence and military analysts are in Saudi Arabia helping it provide assistance to its Yemeni allies, current and former U.S. officials say.

More Global News

 

Israel FlagDrop Site News, CIA Report Warns Israel Could Head Toward Civil War, Total Collapse, Aída Chávez and Ryan Grim, Oct. 5, 2026. U.S. intelligence raises fears of civil unrest and state breakdown in Israel ahead of October 27 elections. This article is being co-published with Capital & Empire.

CIA LogoIsrael is at risk of civil war or state collapse, a classified CIA assessment warns, as years of genocide in Gaza and war in Lebanon and Iran deepen political, economic, and social fractures within the country.

The August report, titled “Fracture From Within,” was compiled by experts in the CIA’s Red Cell, according to two U.S. sources who described the contents of the report to Drop Site News. The Red Cell, which is the unit responsible for providing “alternative analysis” within the agency, produced the assessment through a combination of open source information and U.S. intelligence. The CIA did not respond to a request for comment.

CIA experts pointed to a volatile mix of pressures converging ahead of Israel’s elections on October 27: economic crisis and soaring military spending; heavily armed veterans returning from prolonged combat, many carrying serious psychological trauma; growing fury over ultra-Orthodox men who are exempt from military service; escalating settler violence in the occupied West Bank; and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fighting to hold onto power and igniting a constitutional crisis.

The CIA’s “red teams” are tasked with developing analysis and ideas that challenge prevailing assumptions and expose groupthink or blind spots that can take hold within the intelligence apparatus. “The writers of this are Israel experts,” a source in the intelligence community noted, “this isn’t a fantastical what if—with the upcoming election and the fissures in Israel we should take seriously their conclusion that Israel is one spark away from real internal conflict.”

One of the deepest fractures in Israeli politics has emerged not over opposition to the country’s war crimes—but over who is expected to fight and who is exempt. Ultra-Orthodox men have historically received broad exemptions from military service while continuing to receive state benefits, an arrangement that has become increasingly contentious amid repeated reserve mobilizations. Their collective refusal to serve is not rooted in opposition to Israel’s wars, as ultra-Orthodox leaders argue that military service threatens religious life and their obligation to Torah study. But after years in which reservists have been repeatedly called away from their jobs and families, the exemption has become a potent source of resentment in Israeli society. Households have also been absorbing the costs of Israel’s belligerent policies. Food prices have reached record highs, with the cost of food—including fresh fruit and vegetables—rising 9.5 percent over the past two years, deepening an already severe cost-of-living crisis after years of war.

Yet much of the opposition to Netanyahu is not opposition to Israel’s brutality against Palestinians, but anger over how he has managed it. The major anti-Netanyahu Zionist parties are themselves divided over leadership and coalition strategy, while a central line of attack against Netanyahu has been his responsibility for the October 7 security failure. Recent polling has shown both the Netanyahu and anti-Netanyahu blocs struggling to reach the 61 seats required to govern.

The sources warned that the combination of political fracture and a growing population of heavily armed, traumatized veterans has historical precedents. “Famously the Freikorps of Germany were PTSD-addled veterans with weapons and bloodthirst,” he said. “I’m not saying Israel post Gaza is Germany post-WWI but there are certainly aspects of this that ring similar to me.”

Israel is also confronting growing isolation abroad, including an erosion of support in the United States that Israeli officials themselves have privately treated as a long-term threat. The August report pointed to Israel increasingly becoming a pariah state as a factor that could lead to state breakdown.

According to another CIA assessment Capital & Empire reported in July, Israeli officials believe the American political consensus underpinning the alliance is breaking down and that continued reliance on billions of dollars in direct U.S. military aid may eventually become politically untenable. Their response has been to seek deeper integration into the American military, intelligence, and defense establishment—ties that would be harder for future governments to unwind. By this spring, 60% of Americans viewed Israel unfavorably, up from 53% a year earlier, according to a Pew Research Center survey.

That deterioration of support is increasingly visible inside the U.S. national security establishment, as well. “The intelligence community, like America, like the military, like everywhere, is growing frustrated with the real and political capital that’s spent on propping up Israel,” the source said. “As we’re moving forward with further integrating our military-industrial capacity with them, there’s deep frustration that we’re doing this for a country that dragged us into a war we’re losing, a country that spies on us.”

The CIA report also tried to game out how these pressures could interact if Israel’s internal crisis deepened—how a single spark could turn political fracture into open civil conflict, and what would follow from there. Among the scenarios raised were foreign technology and artificial-intelligence companies pulling investment or personnel from Israel, further eroding an already strained economy, regional governments reconsidering the political and strategic value of deeper normalizing relations with Israel, and Hamas or Hezbollah exploiting a period of domestic weakness. The report specifically used the term “civil conflict,” according to the sources.

Politico, Germany risks being drawn into ‘violent conflict’ with Russia, spy chief warns, James Angelos, Oct. 5, 2026. The head of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency also cautioned that NATO countries must beware of Moscow’s “little green men.”

politico CustomGermany's foreign intelligence chief warned Monday of the rising risk of a direct clash with Russia as the Kremlin escalates its “shadow war” on Berlin and hits Ukraine with increasing brutality.

“Germany is in danger of being drawn into a violent conflict with Russia,” Martin Jäger, the head of the German’s foreign intelligence agency, or BND, told parliamentarians, citing what he called Russia’s attempted attack on a Ukrainian Antonov cargo plane at Leipzig Airport in August as an example. “Germany has become a major obstacle to Russia’s hegemonic power projection in Europe and, as a result, a primary target of Russian actions.”

german flagJäger also warned that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is entering its most dangerous phase yet as President Vladimir Putin faces growing domestic pressure to show military progress with the war entering its fifth winter.

“Russia is determined to bring Ukraine to its knees this coming winter,” Jäger said. “We must expect Russian attacks of a severity and brutality that we have not yet seen on this scale. The war in Ukraine is entering a new and extremely dangerous phase.”

Jäger’s comments come a day after a politically weakened Chancellor Friedrich Merz visited Kyiv in what appeared to be an attempt to show resolve following two first-place finishes by the Kremlin-friendly Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in regional elections last month. Those AfD victories, blamed in large part on the chancellor’s historically low domestic approval ratings, raised concerns in Ukraine and across the EU that German support for Ukraine might waver due to the chancellor’s troubles at home.

With his highly symbolic visit to Kyiv on Sunday, Merz sought to illustrate that he remains firmly at the helm and unflinching in his support for Ukraine.

“Mr. Putin, put an end to this senseless war,” Merz said during the visit, echoing one of his political heroes, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and his famous Cold War speech at the Brandenburg Gate alongside the Berlin Wall in 1987: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”

In his comments Monday, Jäger suggested Russia’s escalation was in part driven by the fact that Putin had been backed into a corner as Moscow faces rising economic pressure and burns through resources to wage its war on Ukraine.

Putin, he said, has “passed the point where he could simply call off the attack on Ukraine without jeopardizing his domestic power base,” adding, “He must demonstrate a success in Ukraine that, from Russia’s perspective, justifies the immense sacrifices made so far.”

Jäger also said he currently sees “no evidence” for a large-scale Russian attack on a NATO member country. Yet “we consider it entirely possible that Russia might carry out targeted, smaller-scale operations” like the “little green men” who spearheaded the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Politico, Suspected plague in Russia puts EU on alert, Claudia Chiappa, Oct. 5, 2026. “We are aware of the reports concerning the laboratory incident in Russia, seemingly involving a pathogen-causing plague,” says European Commission spokesperson.

politico CustomEurope is “very closely” monitoring a suspected case of pneumonic plague in eastern Russia, following the death of a lab worker, a European Commission spokesperson said Monday.

“We are aware of the reports concerning the laboratory incident in Russia, seemingly involving a pathogen-causing plague,” European Commission spokesperson Eva Hrncirova told reporters. “We are in touch with our experts from [the] European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, and we monitor very closely what is going on.”

A 28-year-old employee at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East fell ill and died from what Alexei Tsydenov, head of the neighboring republic of Buryatia, said could be a case of pneumonic plague.

Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s consumer watchdog, has not confirmed the exact cause of death, saying only that the employee died from “pneumonia of unknown etiology.” More than 200 people have been placed under observation following her death.

“The sanitary and epidemiological situation in the Irkutsk region, the cities of Irkutsk and Shelekhov is stable,” Rospotrebnadzor said in a statement, adding that “a special set of measures was organized and carried out” in connection with the death.

It added that no microorganisms associated with her professional activities were identified in the sample from the deceased patient.

Igor Kobzev, governor of the Irkutsk region, where the institute is located, said authorities had identified, examined, and placed under medical supervision all the people who had come into contact with the patient. No other employee at the anti-plague institute has visited the doctor over the past few days, he added.

New York Times, ‘No Help’: Aid Arrived Too Late as Ebola Spread in a Congolese Town, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Photographs by Arlette Bashizi, Oct. 5, 2026. What happened in Mangala, where residents were left with little outside support, helps explain how this outbreak became the worst seen in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

On a hilltop town in eastern Congo, work has started on a new Ebola center. When completed, it will anchor an effort to contain the virus in the town and its surrounding villages.

Local health workers here say the center is too late.

Many lives could have been saved, the health workers say, had a sustained effort to combat the virus started in the town of Mangala in June.

In other towns in Ituri Province, the epicenter of the outbreak, Ebola treatment centers were set up weeks after the World Health Organization declared a health emergency in May. In Mangala, the Ebola response only started ramping up in August.Area of the outbreak

New York Times, Trapped in a Kill Zone, a Ukrainian City Is Beginning to Starve, Siobhán O’Grady, Liubov Sholudko and Yurii Shyvala, Oct. 5, 2026. Evacuation is almost impossible and food is running out in Russian-occupied Oleshky, a city menaced by mines and drones.

Little news trickles out from the besieged city of Oleshky, a frontline wasteland severed by mines and drones from the rest of Russian-occupied Ukraine.

ukraine flagBut one thing is clear from what has emerged: A humanitarian calamity is unfolding. There is no food, no safety and no escape.

“In the autumn, we will definitely die,” one resident wrote this summer. “I am already dying. I am getting weaker with each day.”

“We’re cooking our last borscht,” wrote another, “with one beet, five potatoes, one onion, a zucchini, a tomato and a little barley groats to make it thicker. There are no carrots.”

A third said: “There are no supplies of any kind. It’s a complete blockade. And endless drones and fires. Like in a horror movie.”

These messages, from some of the roughly 2,000 civilians, including about 40 children, who remain in Oleshky, were shared with The New York Times by Tetiana Hasanenko, the city’s exiled leader. They offer a glimpse into the deteriorating conditions as the Russian-held city is cut off from food and medical aid, prompting calls in Ukraine for an urgent evacuation before the population starves.

Oleshky’s fate epitomizes the intractable nature of the war. The two sides remain so far from any truce that even a humanitarian corridor to save civilian lives has been impossible to organize.

Oleshky sits directly in the line of fire along the war’s southern front. It is separated by the Dnipro River from the larger city of Kherson, which Russia captured in early 2022 and surrendered later that year. Russian forces strike Kherson from across the river in Oleshky, and Ukrainian forces strike Oleshky from Kherson.

The circumstances are among the worst anywhere in Ukraine. Swarms of drones, ubiquitous mines and destroyed infrastructure make it exceedingly difficult for residents to leave or for help to arrive.

Ukraine says Russia is responsible for the crisis. Moscow’s forces, officials in Ukraine say, have attacked Ukrainian drones trying to drop aid, intimidated residents who collected supplies that did get through and confiscated food as their own troops’ stocks ran low. Hunger, Kyiv says, is being wielded as a tool of coercion.

Rather than let them leave, Russia is using residents as human shields, according to Ukrainian officials and people who have made it out of Oleshky. Moscow fears that once civilians are out of the way, Ukrainian troops say, the remaining Russian forces will be routed and lose the city.

“Humanitarian aid should not have to be delivered under fire by drones,” said Andrii Sybiha, the Ukrainian foreign minister. He demanded that the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross find a way to safely move civilians out.

The Kremlin, in a statement to The Times, acknowledged that a “genuine humanitarian catastrophe” was taking place in Oleshky. It said Ukraine was to blame.

“The Ukrainian Armed Forces are preventing people from leaving the city and are using drones to disrupt food and drinking water deliveries,” the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said in the statement.

With no solution in sight, the remaining residents, many of them older people, are left with little or no clean water, health care, electricity, gas or heat. The last food delivery by road, said Ms. Hasanenko, the exiled city leader, was on May 26. Such drop-offs ended, she said, after several drivers were killed.

Ukraine says it has tried to deliver thousands of pounds of supplies, including food and medicine, by drone. But Russia has intercepted some of the drops, Ukrainian troops say.

This weekend, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, shared footage he said showed residents trying to leave Oleshky by foot and on bicycles and motorbikes despite the risks. “These are our people. They are still alive. Help us save them while there is still someone to save,” he wrote.

Residents are losing hope that they will survive the winter, according to people who have had contact with them.

“It’s simply a humanitarian catastrophe,” said Volodymyr Kostian, 49, who managed to flee the city earlier this year. He said he had decided to leave after his neighbor was killed by a drone. “An apocalypse,” he said. “There’s nothing to eat.”

Drone footage and witness testimonies paint a picture of a once-thriving tourist city of more than 20,000 people reduced to a hellscape.

Apartment blocks and houses are destroyed. Rows of cars burned by exploding drones, shells and mines are abandoned by the roadside. Bodies lie on the streets, waiting for burial. Starving dogs have been seen eating the remains, residents say.

Oleshky residents and their relatives contact Ms. Hasanenko to plead for help in evacuating themselves or their loved ones, or in burying the dead.

“Some people are screaming and hysterically crying, some people are emotionless, some are blaming us and asking, ‘Why are you not making deals with the Red Cross, why are you not helping us?’” Ms. Hasanenko said.

Russian forces captured Oleshky on Feb. 24, 2022, the first day of the war. That November, after Ukrainian troops pushed Russia out of the city of Kherson, Moscow’s forces fled across the river to Oleshky. There, they reinforced their positions by mining the riverbank and establishing artillery and drone positions to attack Kherson.

The river, once the region’s source of life and prosperity, became its new front line.

For years, Oleshky’s residents survived on preserves, local harvests and food deliveries organized informally by people who traveled there to sell goods at inflated prices.

Leaving the city for supplies or health care — or evacuation — became more complicated when Russian soldiers started demanding Russian documents at checkpoints, residents said. But deliveries still arrived, and while food was never abundant and prices were high, people traded vegetables and grains to stay alive, according to residents.

Over time, evacuation by foot or car became riskier. It was impossible to know who had dropped the mines lining the routes out: Ukrainian forces to stop Russian troop movements or Russian forces to keep civilians from leaving — or both. Either way, residents became largely stuck in Oleshky.

They would endure some of the worst conditions of the war, including a catastrophic flood in 2023 after an explosion at a nearby dam.

Ukrainian troops based just across the river kept watch as conditions worsened. Seeing desperate civilians search for food, said Mykola Stavytskyi, a commander in Ukraine’s 34th Marine Brigade, “is a tragedy for all of us.”

“Those are our people, it’s Ukrainians,” he added.

This year, life in Oleshky has gotten only worse. Drones now fly constantly, making any step outside a deadly gamble.

As spring progressed, the road out became even more treacherous, residents who fled before summer said in interviews. Deliveries and evacuations were often delayed or canceled when cars struck mines or came under drone attack. Little food was arriving, and preserves were running out. Locals dug through collapsed basements searching for scraps of food. Sometimes they saw Russian soldiers doing the same.

Russia has blamed Ukraine for attacks on the road. Ukrainian troops say they take extensive measures not to target civilians.

In late spring, two city residents, Oleksandr and his wife, who are both 60, decided that they were ready to leave. The couple, who have relatives still living under Russian occupation, spoke on the condition that only Oleksandr’s first name be used to avoid retaliation.

Their son, who was living in Ukrainian-controlled territory, helped organize the move. They packed three bags and walked out with their cat and dog and met a driver near a city hospital.

The journey would be dangerous, the driver warned. They should carry white cloths and be ready to jump out, even though they were weak from prolonged hunger.

Oleksandr recalled, “We were immediately warned: ‘People, we are not responsible for your safety at all, because for these 24 kilometers we will be somewhere between life and death.’”

When armed drones swooped overhead, they jumped from the vehicle and raised their white handkerchiefs, he said. The weapons hovered over them as they begged for their lives.

The drones flew on.

Weeks later, friends of the couple were killed when their vehicle struck a mine as they tried to deliver food to the city. That was the end of supplies by road. Anyone left in Oleshky would have to make do with what little food they still had.

New York Times, News Analysis: In a Major Boost for the Right, Another Bolsonaro Nears Brazil’s Presidency, Ana Ionova and Adam B. Ellick, Oct. 5, 2026. Flávio Bolsonaro’s first round lead leaves President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva three weeks to find the votes to stop Brazil’s, and Latin America’s, rightward shift.

A surprise victory for a right-wing populist embroiled in scandal. Crushing defeat for a party deemed out of touch with its base. Supporters on the left grasping for answers.

The scene may feel familiar to Americans. This time, it unfolded in a Latin American nation thousands of miles away. And the results could profoundly reshape the region and its relations with Washington.

Brazil’s right-wing challenger, Flávio Bolsonaro, didn’t win the presidency Sunday night, but seemed well on his way to victory.

His surprisingly strong showing gives a significant boost to the ascendant right in Latin America, placing Brazil, the region’s most populous country, within reach as the biggest electoral prize following seven straight wins by right-wing candidates.

It also represents a notable comeback for the Bolsonaro family four years after Mr. Bolsonaro’s father tried to subvert democracy after losing the last election, was convicted of plotting a coup and sentenced to prison.

Flávio Bolsonaro himself overcame being embroiled in a corruption scandal to win more votes than the leftist incumbent, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. While neither clinched enough ballots to win in the first round of voting, Mr. Bolsonaro’s formidable performance appeared to foreshadow a win in a two-way contest on Oct. 25.

That is because the votes of some 9 million Brazilians who backed various minor right-wing candidates on Sunday will now be up for grabs. The vast majority are likely to shift their support to Mr. Bolsonaro, giving him the upper hand. For Mr. Lula, finding more votes presents a far more challenging task.

The regional swing to the right is driven by an array of forces, experts say, including dissatisfaction with incumbent governments, deepening worries about security and crime and a shift toward more conservative values.

For months, polls had predicted a close race between the two men, with Mr. Lula leading by the slimmest of margins. The leftist president had framed his candidacy as the only way to halt the return of the Bolsonaro family to power, just four years after Jair Bolsonaro lost the last election and inspired his supporters to storm the capital, demanding that the result be overturned.ImageA woman is part of a group looking straight ahead.A supporter of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reacts following the first results of the presidential election in Rio Janeiro on Sunday.Credit...Mauro Pimentel/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Mr. Lula had also sought to portray his candidacy as defending Brazil’s sovereignty against attempts by the Trump administration to intervene in the country’s domestic affairs.

Mr. Bolsonaro had struggled to shake off a corruption investigation and divided voters with his plans to seek amnesty for his father and the rioters. Then, on Sunday, he surprised many when he captured 48 percent of the vote, finishing two points ahead of his rival.

“Even Jair Bolsonaro may be surprised by this result,” said Jairo Nicolau, a prominent political scientist and professor at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, a research institution.

A runoff win for Mr. Bolsonaro would represent a major triumph for President Trump, ejecting Mr. Lula, one of his most outspoken foes among world leaders and who has not shied away from challenging the American leader.

It would also usher in an enthusiastic ally willing to help Mr. Trump’s bold plans for dominance in the region.A Surprise Favorite

It is not yet clear just what brought Mr. Bolsonaro to the brink of victory.

“It was conceivable that Flávio could come close to Lula or even overtake him,” said Mr. Nicolau. “But what happened in Brazil was a right-wing tidal wave,” he added. “We’re going to spend a long time trying to understand.”

Some analysts said Mr. Bolsonaro managed to rally at least a slice of conservative voters planning to vote for other right-wing contenders. Growing disillusionment with Mr. Lula’s party, which has been in power for the better part of two decades, also likely fueled his challenger’s success. Many Brazilians are concerned over pervasive violence and crushing personal debt.

Mr. Bolsonaro has tried to link his rival to a corruption scandal sweeping Brazil’s Supreme Court. The Brazilian president has tried to distance himself and called for judicial overhaul.

New York Times, Spain’s Leader Calls Early Election After Housing Crisis Roils Government, Carlos Barragán and Jason Horowitz, Oct. 5, 2026. Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish prime minister, has faced challenges including a migration crisis and several corruption scandals involving his inner circle.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain called on Monday for an early election, days after his left-wing governing coalition, which lacks a majority in Parliament, lost a vote to pass a package of emergency housing measures.

The decision sets the stage for an election on Nov. 29, months ahead of schedule. Mr. Sánchez and his left-wing allies are seeking to frame it as an opportunity to resolve Spain’s housing crisis by ushering in a strong left-wing government.

The conservative Popular Party, which has topped recent opinion polls, and the far-right Vox party are focusing instead on issues like immigration, amid a crisis spurred by a surge of migrants this summer into Ceuta, a Spanish territory in North Africa.

The vote is also set to be a referendum on Mr. Sánchez himself, one of Europe’s longest-serving leaders and a deeply unpopular figure among right-wing voters in Spain.

Mr. Sánchez has become a hero to the global left for standing up to the Trump administration over the war in Iran and for supporting renewable energy and inclusive immigration policies. At home, his popularity was dented by corruption accusations directed at his innermost circle, and, in July, by the sudden arrival in Ceuta of tens of thousands of migrants coming from Morocco.

The final straw was the defeat on Friday of housing measures that Mr. Sánchez had hoped would soothe public anger over rising evictions and soaring rents — symbolized by the recent eviction of María del Carmen Abascal, an 87-year-old woman in Madrid. The loss showed that his governing coalition was essentially paralyzed and unable to pass key legislation.

But it also handed Mr. Sánchez an issue that could rally his left-wing base.

“To carry out the far-reaching reforms to reduce inequality,” Mr. Sánchez said in a press briefing on Monday, “we must mobilize to secure a much larger progressive majority in Parliament — one capable of taking on the elites, achieving new social advances and continuing to transform Spain.”

Mr. Sánchez said that voters would have to choose between keeping Spain as “a bastion of social justice” or “the far-right wave that brings regression wherever it governs.” That was a reference to Vox, which could join a right-wing government led by the Popular Party, the main conservative opposition group.

The Popular Party celebrated Mr. Sánchez’ announcement as a victory, as it had been calling for months for an early election. “Finally, the Spanish people will decide,” the party’s leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, said on Monday.

“Housing is now out of reach, there

More On #MeToo Experiences

Are you f'ng kidding me? Personal Essay, I Was Drunk. I Was Raped,.Both Things Can Be True At The Same Time, JoJo From Jerz, right, jo jo from jerz Oct. 5, 2026. The Cornell “7” rape story has been excruciatingly difficult for me to talk or write about. This piece has taken me the better part of three days to write because every single time I sat down to do so, some piece of it dragged me back inside the worst night of my life.

Even now, as I reach for the language, I’m back in those woods with leaves and sticks and dirt matted into my hair and the smell of the fire caught in the quilted seams of the sleeping bag.

Nearly forty years have passed, and there is still a part of me waiting for someone who knew my name to remember that I mattered.

I work every day to help the girl I was then to feel safe inside the woman I’ve become, but so much of Jane Doe’s story mirrors my own that I can feel the sutures splitting and the past pressing through the life I’ve fought to rebuild.

I know other survivors are watching their carefully stitched-together lives begin to come apart, too, because in so many ways, we are all Jane Doe.

I was raped at seventeen by someone I thought was a friend, in front of people I thought were my friends, and not one of them stopped him.

When Jane Doe says a trusted friend helped orchestrate her drugging and hours of rape by seven fraternity members, I remember how thoroughly I was abandoned without anyone having to leave.

He was hurting me among the very people I would have run to if somebody else had hurt me, and I had no understanding yet of how alone you could be in the company of everyone you trusted.

I was still struggling to write through that yesterday when Michael Smerconish, the weekend CNN host who has long annoyed me, put this question to his audience in a fucking poll: “Should someone who voluntarily got drunk or high be considered legally unable to consent to sex, even if they were conscious and able to communicate?”

He was so fucking calm, as if he were asking whether we put ketchup on our goddamn eggs, while I was watching from inside his question, pinned against that cold ground and paralyzed by pain and panic.

How comfortable to select an answer and resume an afternoon entirely your own while someone else struggles to return to the room where they were sitting before you asked.

That rage finally gave me something fierce enough to carry the grief onto the page.

Because I know what it is to have people rummage through your choices for permission you never gave, to have them dredge it from the bottom of a beer or measure it by a miniskirt, until the person who hurt you has disappeared from a conversation about everything you should have done differently.

I hadn’t so much as French-kissed a boy, and because I wasn’t a drinker, the two beers I chose to drink were enough to leave me drunk.

My dad’s job might have meant moving before my senior year, and I’d been crying on a friend’s shoulder beside the fire while he comforted me and handed me alcohol.

I was frightened of losing these people, and I wish I could reach back and gather up that small, unsuspecting sorrow, because for a little while longer, the worst thing I could imagine was having to say goodbye.

At some point I must have passed out, because I woke beneath him, his face half lit by the dwindling fire and his weight pressing on my chest like a cinderblock. The pain felt like razor blades laced with acid, like somebody was trying to cut me open from within.

I remember crying, but I don’t remember saying anything.

I was drowning in my own flesh and bones, and whatever was screaming inside me could not find its way out.

That terrible incongruity of familiarity and fear still hurts somewhere I cannot reach.

I don’t know if I kissed him. I don’t remember. But the missing pieces of that evening do not belong to him, and he does not get to put a willing girl into the places where my memory goes dark.

When I woke the next morning, I went deeper into the woods to pee, unaware that my underwear were missing until the pain doubled me over and the night returned in splinters and searing flashes. I nearly threw up, and then I followed my friends’ voices because I still believed that if I could get to them, somebody would know how to help me.

My sleeping bag hung from a branch, streaked with my blood, and my underwear lay beneath it. The boys were high-fiving and laughing while my best friends couldn’t meet my eyes, and I stood there looking at the evidence of how badly I had been hurt, waiting for it to mean that to somebody else.

He had taken my virginity in the dark, but they were taking something I had no name for yet: the belief that my suffering would matter to the people who said they loved me.

By the time I called my friends later that day, he’d told everyone how I’d begged for it and how badly I’d wanted it, and that was enough. They couldn’t be friends with someone so shameful, so… “slutty.”

They’d seen him hugging me by the fire, I looked “drunk” to them, and no matter how hard I cried or how many times I explained what happened afterward, they wouldn’t believe me.

I had leaned on his shoulder because I was afraid of losing them, and now they were using that tenderness as evidence against me. Somewhere in all that pleading, I began asking them to forgive me for being raped.

God, I was trying to make it my fault because at least that left me a way to ask them to love me again.

That lie followed me back to school, and a month or so later, every boy who’d been there, including my rapist, inscribed “sleeping bag hag” among his yearbook memories. They made a keepsake of the night that broke me, and entire classrooms erupted in laughter while I sat there with the body they were laughing about. Those books would close, and those boys would leave, and seventeen would go on hurting long after I had stopped being young.

He was their hero, and I was the school whore. He faced no consequences, while their contempt calcified into something I mistook for knowledge about myself.

The pain metastasized into my ideas about love and sex and what I deserved until I could hardly distinguish the wound from the woman I was becoming.

I lived like a tenant in my own skin, and I never reported my rape. Decades passed before I told anyone else; half my family, including some of my sisters, still doesn’t know.

So when Megyn Kelly has the fucking nerve to ask why Jane Doe waited three weeks, I want her to understand what she is asking of a person who has already learned that telling the truth can cost you everybody you thought would care.

Every person I might have told became another person I could lose. Fuck you, Megyn, for helping make the world vicious to people who speak and then treating their hesitation as proof that they’re lying.

And to the people trying to dox this woman and expose her name and her life: fuck all the way off. You are teaching frightened people to swallow their stories, and I know how many years a person can spend choking on what they never felt safe enough to say.

We are all Jane Doe, and we have to have each other’s backs.

So she has to defend her privacy, her choices, and her right to be believed, while some of the accused were assigned essays as part of their punishment and prosecutors initially declined to bring a single criminal charge.

What the fuck are we doing, making a woman’s suffering everybody’s business and nobody’s responsibility?

I want to lay forty years of my life beside one of those papers and ask which part they think a woman gets to hand in and be finished with.

I am sick of watching men’s futures treated as fragile things while women are expected to live with whatever is left of theirs.

That culture was there when I was seventeen, but never in my life did I imagine the president of the United States bragging about grabbing women by the vagina. The willfully ignorant, woman-hating wastes of fucking oxygen who heard Donald Trump say it elected him twice, returning him to the White House after a jury found him liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll. Now he offers sympathy to the accused and attacks Letitia James for investigating, and we wonder what young men are learning about whose lives deserve protection.

I think about the silence in that Cornell chat, with more than fifty men, and about the friend who, years later, stopped another man I trusted from raping me. I want someone in those messages to be him, because I know how one person can become the difference between getting home and spending the rest of your life trying to get back to yourself.

My son is seventeen and my daughter is thirteen, and loving them has made it almost unbearable to remember how young I was. I want them to be the people I needed around that fire, and if either ever comes to me with a story they can scarcely bear to tell, I want them to know that nothing they say will make me move farther away.

I wish I could make that promise travel backward far enough to reach me. I would lift the bloodstained nylon off that branch before another person could laugh at it, and I would stand between her and every face she was searching for a reason to trust.

I would tell her that being drunk was a reason for her friends to take care of her, and I would keep saying it until she stopped trying to explain the two beers.

She had already spent the night unable to make a sound; she should never have had to spend the morning persuading somebody to listen.

I can’t go back and give myself the kindness I needed then, but I can ask those of you who answered that poll as casually as you might have weighed in on the weather to remember that some of us were watching with our worst memories breaking open. You could click an answer and get on with your evening, while someone you love might have been listening and quietly deciding that you were one more person they could never tell.

No means no, and silence is not consent.

I was drunk, and I was raped.

I believe the Cornell Jane Doe, and oh, how I desperately wish someone had believed me, too.

To every survivor afraid to speak up or speak out or stand up and share their truth: you’re not alone. There will be people who won’t believe you, but there will also be an army of people who do.

When I finally told my story, a whole world of wonderful strangers caught me, and we can and will catch you, too. You don’t have to earn the compassion that should have been yours all along.

You did nothing wrong.

You did NOTHING wrong.

And to the Cornell Jane Doe: I wish I could put my arms around you and give you somewhere to rest without having to explain or defend a single thing. I am praying for justice, and for whatever sliver of peace you may one day be able to know.

And with that, today’s song:

I love you guys! Stay safe out there, stay strong and keep standing up for each other!

More On Epstein Files, Trump Team Coverup

epstein suspicious deaths wmr 10 5 2025

Wayne Madsen Report, Commentary: Suspicious deaths connected to Trumpstein continue, Wayne Madsen, Oct. 5, 2026. Latest “suicide” is linked to Howard Lutnick. 

Artificial Intelligtence, High-Tech, Other Media

Politico, ‘Clearly not working’: Sam Altman hits AI industry over political spending, Brendan Bordelon and Christine Mui, Oct. 5, 2026. In a wide-ranging interview, the OpenAI CEO criticized the flood of AI dollars swamping the midterm elections and suggested a new liability framework is needed for autonomous hacks.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admits “something’s clearly not working” with the artificial intelligence money that has flooded the midterm elections — and he doesn’t expect President Donald Trump’s rebrand of the technology to improve his industry’s image with the American public, either.

politico Custom“I get why AI has a really negative perception right now,” Altman told Brendan Bordelon in an exclusive interview marking the launch of Decoded by POLITICO. “I don’t think spending money on politics is what’s going to make people feel better about it. The industry needs to figure out a way to address what the actual concerns are, and right now, a lot of people in the industry are being quite tone deaf.”

In the wide-ranging conversation, Altman offered a window into how OpenAI is confronting new political pressures and intensified competition with Anthropic, its corporate archrival run by former employee Dario Amodei.

Altman says OpenAI is more tolerant than Anthropic of less-than-catastrophic harms from AI, drawing out what he sees as a fundamental split in worldview between the two leading labs even as they converge on tougher rules in the wake of high-profile autonomous hacking incidents.

“We believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency,” said Altman, who characterized those harms as linked to “the lighter touch regulatory stance that we advocate for.”

“I wouldn’t take a trade of saying like, ‘We’ll make sure there’s no major hacks, there’s no kind of like misuse of this technology, there’s zero scams, there’s zero all the other bad things that will happen,’” said Altman. “Because I think people will do tremendously orders of magnitude more good stuff.”

New York Times, High Interest Rates Aren’t Slowing the A.I. Boom. That’s a Problem for the Fed, Colby Smith and Ben Casselman, Oct. 5, 2026. Rising borrowing costs are taking a toll on households and businesses. But they are doing little to dampen enthusiasm for investments in A.I. infrastructure, which are contributing to inflation.

The Federal Reserve has a conundrum on its hands as it tries to tame elevated inflation. One of the primary drivers of today’s growth, and the price pressures that have followed in its wake, appears nearly immune to the higher interest rates that the central bank has begun to impose on the economy.

Companies’ seeking to expand their artificial intelligence abilities have been undeterred by not only U.S. borrowing costs that have recently reached multidecade highs, but also soaring costs for electricity, high bandwidth memory and other inputs that are crucial to continued growth.

The implications for the Fed are vast, if price pressures do not ease as many policymakers expect in the coming months. To return inflation to the Fed’s 2 percent target, the central bank might need to tighten the screws on the economy more than otherwise would be the case to sufficiently slow down activity. The brunt of that adjustment will fall predominantly on industries more sensitive to higher rates, such as housing and the automotive sector, and in turn the people employed by the companies in those fields. Depending on how much the Fed ends up needing to choke off demand, the labor market, which is already starting to cool, could start to crack.

“The problem for the Fed is that there is usually a built-in correction mechanism in the U.S. economy in which interest rates rise and at some point, the rate-sensitive parts of the economy, led by housing, slow down hard, and that then propagates to the rest of the economy,” said Ajay Rajadhyaksha, global chairman of research at Barclays.

“But if a large part of the economy is just less rate sensitive and that is what is pushing the economy to grow faster, then the Fed, unfortunately, has to hurt the part of the economy that is more rate sensitive.”

The scale of the A.I. buildout is so immense that it is measured in numbers usually associated with government spending on national defense or health care, not private-sector investments. In a recent paper, Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, an economist at Columbia University, estimated that spending on A.I. chips, data centers and the electrical systems to power them would exceed $10 trillion from 2025 to 2032. That is more than 3.6 percent of total U.S. economic output each year.

A growing share of that investment is being paid for with borrowed money, which in theory should make it responsive to rising interest rates. So far, however, there is little sign that higher borrowing costs are doing much, if anything, to slow the boom.

“If it’s a real transformational technology that potentially is going to define the tech space for years to come; if you have the balance sheet capacity to borrow to make these investments; and if you think the investments are going to be profitable and generate double-digit returns on invested capital, then it doesn’t actually make a huge difference if you’re borrowing at 5.5 or 6 percent,” said Andrew Sheets, global head of fixed income research at Morgan Stanley. “That 50 basis points is not the limiting factor in whether or not the math works.”

Businesses invested more than $100 billion in computers and related equipment in the second quarter of the year, up 60 percent from a year earlier and more than 1.5 times the rate in early 2024. Construction of data centers, not counting the chips inside them, has more than quintupled since the beginning of 2022.

Investigate West, Idaho Investigation: How Rob Curley’s plan to make the Spokesman-Review ‘The People’s Paper’ ended in a newsroom revolt, Wilson Criscione and Daisy Zavala Magaña, Oct. 5, 2026. This report was produced in a collaboration between InvestigateWest and RANGE.

When the Spokesman-Review announced plans to transfer Spokane’s 143-year-old, family-owned newspaper to a nonprofit founded by Executive Editor Rob Curley, it took over the front page.

“The People’s Paper,” read the April 16, 2025, headline, saying ownership would transfer “to you, the community.”

Key to the plan was Curley, the folksy self-proclaimed “journalism nerd” who burst into Spokane a decade ago, declaring a love for Gonzaga University basketball rivaled only by his love for Disney. The transition to Comma Community Journalism Lab was cast in media industry publications not only as a way to save Spokane’s daily newspaper, but as part of a growing movement to resurrect dying papers by making them less dependent on ads and corporate ownership and more on philanthropy and community partnerships. As proof of concept, the paper had already added several so-called “community-funded” journalists to its staff.

But in the Spokesman-Review newsroom this summer, that hopeful vision ran into persistent concerns about Curley’s leadership. More than a dozen current and former employees, along with contemporaneous records reviewed by InvestigateWest and RANGE, reveal how the newsroom had raised concerns about Curley’s management for years, culminating in his suspension from the paper on Aug. 7 and a vote of no confidence from the union, the Spokane Editorial Society. He is currently on leave as the paper conducts an internal investigation.

Employees said stories that may have angered powerful community figures or potential donors were killed or curtailed, and that they felt he retaliated against workers he viewed as disloyal. Staffers questioned his financial oversight of Comma, which hired his own son at a salary topping most reporters and recruited out-of-town executives to serve as top editors before Comma had met its fundraising goal. Current and former Spokesman-Review employees also described workplace complaints involving Curley and one of those editors, including allegations of inappropriate lewd and sexual comments around employees, including teenage interns.

Curley declined to comment for this article. In a brief phone interview, Curley’s attorney, Patrick Kirby, who specializes in employment and wrongful termination cases, said, “It’s all inaccurate,” in reference to a list of claims InvestigateWest and RANGE provided to Curley prior to publication. Kirby hung up the call when a reporter pressed him on which claims specifically he believed were inaccurate.

Tensions in the newsroom came to a head in the first week of August, as the paper rallied to cover the most destructive wildfires in Spokane’s history and the imminent ownership transfer approached at the end of the month.

Oct. 4

Top Headlines 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, both designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik).Steve Witkoff jared kushner sputnik afp getty

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

  • New York Times, U.S.-Russia Talks on Ukraine Now Involve an Oil Deal Tied to Trump Allies, Anton Troianovski and Eric Lipton, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). russian flag wavingPresident Vladimir V. Putin brought up a sale of Russian energy assets with President Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, pushing a deal that raises new questions about conflicts of interest.
  • New York Times, Trump, Putin, Ukraine and an Oil Deal: 5 Takeaways, Eric Lipton and Anton Troianovski, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). A proposal to bolster relations with the Kremlin through the purchase of Russian energy assets is striking even for an administration that regularly mixes personal business interests with foreign policy
  • New York Times, Russia Turns to Striking Kyiv’s Bridges, Threatening a Vital Lifeline, Constant Méheut, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). The bridges, used by many commuters in the Ukrainian capital, are the latest target in a broad Russian bombing campaign against infrastructure.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption  

  • djt frowningHope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump is cornered, Heather Delaney Reese, right, heather delaney reeseOct. 3, 2026. At 7:45 tonight, Donald Trump experienced what appeared to be a serious mental health crisis while on stage campaigning for Republicans in Ohio. He had just arrived at the High School Activity Center in Vandalia, Ohio, 45 minutes late after his motorcade was forced to change its route to avoid protesters.


President Trump speaks to White House media before his trip to Alabama to host a political rally on Oct. 2, 2026. President Trump speaks to White House media before his trip to Alabama to host a political rally on Oct. 2, 2026. 

  • Hope for America, Opinion: The President's decline is in a freefall. Heather Delaney Reese, helen delaney reese djtright, Oct. 3, 2026. At 3:54 pm Donald Trump emerged from the White House with freshly colored hair and makeup, as Marine One’s engine roared in the background. He walked directly over to the waiting press, threw his hands out in front of him, gesturing at the empty ground in front of him, while he squeezed his legs together and arched his torso forward, yelling to the reporters, “This is the way the White House is supposed to look. Not asphalt. Broken, dirty asphalt. Look at it.” He then paused, frowning as he looked over his left shoulder, and continued, “The finest stone you could buy anywhere in the world.” The gathered press said nothing, confused by his odd behavior. 

More Special Reports On Nefarious Trump-Related Ties To Russia, Hurting U.S., Europe, Ukraine  

 

Lev Parnas, above, being interviewed by cable television host Rachel Maddow on Jan. 15, 2020 for a documentary she produced about his life. He is shown also with his wife, who stood by him during a hoked up prosecution and imprisonment orchestrated by the Trump Justice Department as retribution for his willingness to expose their Russian-coddling dealmaking in his commentaries, courtroom proceedings and in his memoir, "Shadow Diplomacy."

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  • Justice Integrity Project Backgrounder On Lev Parnas, Entrepreuneur, Former Trump Team Operative, Now Whistleblower, Andrew Kreig, Oct.4, 2026. A native of Ukraine and former high-level liaison on behalf of President Trump and his team to Eastern European Shadow Diplomacycontacts, aaron parnas o instagramis an expert commentator who has publisted a three-part series this fall documenting insidious relationships between the Trump Team -- President Trump, his families, their companies and their allies -- to Russian and other foreign interests damaging to most Americans. Parnas, a naturlized U.S. citizen who son Aaron Parnas, right, works independently as a prolific journalist with millions of readers and often quoted on this site, received a lifetime achievement award in 2025 for courage at a featured ceremony at the 13th annual Whistleblower Summit and Film Festival, which he memorialzed in a colum immediately below:

Lev Remembers, Yesterday Changed Me Forever: From Brooklyn to the National Press Club—A Whistleblower’s Journey and a Father’s Pride, Lev Parnas, Aug. 1, 2025. Yesterday was one of those rare days that I’ll never forget. 

2026 Trump-Russia Analysess

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Marcy Wheeler and Wayne Madsen Reporting On Nefarious Trump Relationships With Foreign Powers

New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan co-authored New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan co-authored "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump," a best-selling account of his rapid transformation of the United States and its global alliances.

  • Emptywheel, Analysis and Opinion: Russia Russia Russia Never Stopped Russia Russia Russiaing, marcy wheelerEmptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Oct. 4, 2026. One of the infuriating things about "Regime Change," Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s book, is that it introduces key players who played important roles in the influence operations targeting Trump in 2016 with no reminder they were part of them.
  • Emptywheel, Analysis: Trump Is Still Relying on Dossier-Driven Polarization to Hide Russian Shenanigans, marcy wheelerEmptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Oct. 3, 2026. We’re falling behind, under the weight of stories making it clear that Trump’s Russian shenanigans never ended. The biggest sign of that is the NYT story revealing that part of the Jared Kushner/Steve Witkoff “peace” plan for Ukraine is an oil deal involving the Emirati guy alleged to be Tom Barrack’s handler back in 2016.

More Special Reports on Trump Family Self-Dealing  

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  • Scott MacFarlane News, The Comeback Kids: Jack Smith’s Legal Team Scores Series of Recent Victories, Scott MacFarlane, Oct. 4, 2026. After years of being smeared and maligned, the former Jack Smith Special Counsel team is enjoying a big series of victories. It’s been rough sledding, in the two years since Smith and his team were forced to abandon their criminal cases of President Trump before the cases could go to trial. So… we shouldn’t ignore that Jack Smith and his team have enjoyed a helluva good week and month.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

  • New York Times, Democrats Lead Governor Races Deep in Republican Territory, Polls Show, Anna Griffin, Ruth Igielnik and Sejal Govindarao, Oct. 4, 2026. Democratic advantages in the races for governor in Texas, Iowa, Ohio and Alaska reflect deep unhappiness with President Trump and the economy. A Republican leads in Kansas. 
  • The Opposition via The Bulwark, Trumpism in Trouble on the Prairie, Lauren Egan, Oct. 4, 2026. Democrats have found an opening in one of America’s reddest states. Now comes the Republican money. I just got back from Kansas, where the race for Senate between GOP Sen. Roger Marshall and Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton has become shockingly competitive. Tonight’s edition is all about what I saw on the ground. 
  • New York Times, Trump, Critic of Voting by Mail, Urges Republicans to Do It in Midterms, Tim Balk and Evan Gorelick, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). It was the latest mixed messaging from President Trump, who regularly votes by mail, but has made baseless claims that the practice is “inherently corrupt.”
  • New York Times, ‘Creepy, Weird’ Steve Hilton Ad Denounced by California Republicans, Anna Griffin, Oct. 4, 2026. An online spot for Mr. Hilton, the G.O.P. candidate, is full of sexual innuendo that has befuddled Republicans and Democrats watching the race for governor in California.

Special Report: Deep Dive Into Trump Family Corruption

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Fascist leaders Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of German, and U.S. President Donald Trump

Fascist leaders Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of German, and U.S. President Donald Trump.

  • CounterPunch.org, Nuremberg’s Warning: When Law Legitimates the Machinery of Authoritarianism, Henry Giroux, Oct. 2, 2026. The legacy of Nuremberg is with us once again, less as a reminder of the power of the legal system to punish those who enabled and enacted the horrors of Nazi Germany than as a warning that the spirit of Nuremberg must be reclaimed as a moral and political imperative.

More On Campus Rape, #MeToo Claims

  • Civil Discourse, Legal Analysis: Jane Doe, Joyce Vance, right, joyce vanceOct. 3-4, 2026. Jane Doe is the name by which we knowthe young woman who has come forward to say she was gang raped in a room at the Chi Phi fraternity house while she was a student at Cornell in 2024.
  • New York Times, How Cornell Punished Each of the 7 Men Accused of Sexual Assault, Sharon Otterman, Hurubie Meko and Debra Kamin, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). Summaries obtained by The New York Times offer a detailed look at the discipline meted out to the men accused of sexually assaulting a fellow student at Cornell University.
  • New York Times, D.A. in Cornell Rape Inquiry Declined to Review Additional Evidence, Michael Rothfeld and Hurubie Meko, Updated Oct. 3, 2026. Records show that campus police officers informed Tompkins County prosecutors that they had conducted additional interviews beyond taking a statement from the woman who said she was raped.
  • New York Times, Cornell Case Revives Anger About Handling of Campus Sexual Assault Cases, Sephanie Saul and Emma Goldberg, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). A lawsuit alleging rape at Cornell has led to an outpouring of women sharing stories about sexual violence on college campuses.
  • michael kotlikoffNew York Times, Cornell President Calls Rape Inquiry ‘Defining Moment’ for Campus, Claire Fahy, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). Michael I. Kotlikoff, right, said in a video the university would be more transparent, hold Greek groups accountable and improve sexual assault prevention.

More On Russia's Invasion of Ukraine, Trump Family's Russian Ties

  • New York Times, Russia Turns to Striking Kyiv’s Bridges, Threatening a Vital Lifeline, Constant Méheut, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). The bridges, used by many commuters in the Ukrainian capital, are the latest target in a broad Russian bombing campaign against infrastructure. Russia has a new target on its rapidly growing list of Ukrainian infrastructure to bomb: bridges. Over the past three days, Russia has attacked bridges in the capital, Kyiv, six times. Three drones hit one in the city’s south on Thursday, and the same bridge was struck twice on Friday. On Saturday morning, another attack hit a bridge in the north.

More Global News

More On Middle East Wars

  • New York Times, Saudi-Backed Yemeni Government Declares War Against Houthis, Vivian Nereim, Eric Schmitt and Saeed Al-Batati, Oct. 4, 2026. More than 200 U.S. intelligence and military analysts are in Saudi Arabia helping it provide assistance to its Yemeni allies, current and former U.S. officials say.

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

  • New York Times, Measles Outbreak in Amish Country Forces Some to Rethink Vaccines, Anemona Hartocollis, Photographs by Madeleine Hordinski, Oct. 4, 2026. The spread of measles in Pennsylvania and Ohio is largely affecting Amish communities where vaccinations levels are low.
  • The Athletic via The New York Times, Inside Arizona State men’s hockey, and the workout that left a player on life support, Katie Strang, Nathan Fenno and Adam Kilgore, Sept. 17, 2026. Greg Powers was going to fix the problem. The longtime Arizona State University men’s hockey coach, the only person to lead the program in its 12 years in Division I, had watched his 2025-26 team lose 10 of its final 12 games and miss the postseason, and he knew why.
  • Politico, RFK Jr.’s movement is in disarray, Amanda Chu, Oct. 4, 2026. Tony Lyons, the leading organizer of the Make America Healthy Again movement, promised to raise $100 million to support Republicans this year. He’s nowhere close. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement is turning on its leader. Not RFK Jr. Rather, Tony Lyons, the Kennedy friend and book publisher who is the president of a web of MAHA nonprofits and political groups.
  • Status with Natalie Korach, The Sunday Spotlight: McClatchy Goes Mute, Natalie Korach, Oct. 4, 2026. Weeks after gutting local newsrooms, McClatchy leadership has offered staffers virtually no explanation of what comes next, Status has learned, as the company builds out its controversial A.I. operation.

U.S. Energy, Climate Change, Environmental Regulation

  • New York Times, A Supreme Court Battle Over Climate Change Begins, Karen Zraick, Oct. 4, 2026. The justices are about to hear a lawsuit that could determine whether the oil industry faces billions of dollars in liability for damages caused by global warming.

Top Stories

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

New York Times, U.S.-Russia Talks on Ukraine Now Involve an Oil Deal Tied to Trump Allies, Anton Troianovski and Eric Lipton, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). President Vladimir V. Putin brought up a sale of Russian energy assets with President Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, pushing a deal that raises new questions about conflicts of interest.

The Trump administration’s talks with Russia about ending the war in Ukraine have expanded to include a multibillion-dollar oil deal that russian flag wavingwould benefit Middle Eastern business executives with ties to the two main U.S. negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

The deal, which is contingent on approval from the U.S. government and the Kremlin, is for a sprawling set of oil fields, refineries and gas stations around the world owned by Lukoil, one of Russia’s biggest energy companies.

The leading group seeking the deal includes an American investor, Todd Boehly, who has donated $2 million to President Trump’s political causes; two Middle Eastern groups that have done business with Mr. Kushner or Mr. Witkoff’s family; and an arm of the U.S. government itself.

lukoil logoThe monthslong negotiations, which were described by eight people familiar with them, shed new light on Mr. Trump’s latest approach to settling a four-year war that has killed hundreds of thousands. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

There is no indication that Mr. Kushner or Mr. Witkoff themselves stand to profit. But the pending deal represents a striking intermingling of personal business ties with geopolitics, even for an administration that has regularly dismissed concerns about potential conflicts of interest.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia brought up the deal when he met with Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner at the Kremlin on Sept. 5, according to three people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Putin proposed it get done as a way of showing Russians that they can do business with the United States, according to one of the people.

The Americans responded that they would work on it, the person said, seeing it as a way to build good will with the Kremlin while also lowering global energy prices. But the deal is also a lucrative one for the buyers: U.S. approval for the sale would release the assets from American sanctions, instantly increasing their value.

In Moscow, the decision on the deal is widely seen as Mr. Putin’s to make, even though Lukoil is technically a private company. The upshot is that the giant transaction, involving assets as varied as oil fields in Cameroon, refineries in Europe and gas stations in New Jersey, comes down to Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump.

world liberty financial logoMr. Trump has been promoting the promise of business deals with Russia since early last year, describing the country as a “tremendous opportunity.” The deal again brings Mr. Trump’s World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency company — co-founded by Mr. Witkoff — into focus. One of the investors in the Lukoil deal is a part owner of World Liberty.

Potential Lukoil investor group has ties with Trump, his family and his allies

Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner, who have traveled repeatedly to Russia for meetings with Mr. Putin, have argued that the potential to rebuild economic ties with the West could convince the Russian president to compromise in Ukraine. The administration has recently signaled it is open to deals with Russia even before the war ends, as a way of showing it is serious about resetting the United States’ relationship with Moscow.

The Lukoil sale, people familiar with the matter say, is one of those deals.

In a statement, a senior administration official confirmed that Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner played a direct role in helping negotiate the financial terms of the investment by the federal government in the deal to ensure that it included “a substantial upfront payment and profits interest for the United States.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Witkoff said that he “takes no salary and travels the world on his own plane, at his own expense, working on behalf of President Trump to negotiate peace and bring hostages home to their families.” She added that Mr. Witkoff “has no conflict of interest and no financial stake in this matter.”

A Stalled Bid, and a New Contender

Numerous potential bidders expressed interest in at least part of Lukoil’s international holdings when the assets went on the market last fall, including U.S. energy giants like Chevron.

The Washington private equity firm Carlyle reached a tentative agreement in January to buy a large share of the assets, after making the pitch that bringing Lukoil’s international portfolio under U.S. ownership would further the Trump administration’s goal of “energy dominance.”

todd boehlyBut in recent months, as U.S. approval for Carlyle’s bid stalled, a different group emerged as the leading bidder: one led by Mr. Boehly, left, a billionaire supporter of Mr. Trump’s, alongside well-connected figures in the Middle East and the U.S. government itself. The members of the partnership were reported last week by The Financial Times.

Mr. Boehly is a co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and donated $1 million to MAGA Inc., the Trump-aligned political committee, in December 2025. He gave another $1 million through his investment firm, Eldridge Industries, to Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

New York Times, Trump, Putin, Ukraine and an Oil Deal: 5 Takeaways, Eric Lipton and Anton Troianovski, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). A proposal to bolster relations with the Kremlin through the purchase of Russian energy assets is striking even for an administration that regularly mixes personal business interests with foreign policy.

It is one of the most alluring opportunities in global energy.

The foreign assets of Lukoil, the Russian energy giant, are being sold off at fire sale prices because U.S. sanctions have made them nearly worthless for investors in Russia. Gas stations in the United States, refineries in Eastern Europe and oil fields around the world are up for grabs.

russian flag wavingNow, the process of selling off those assets has become intertwined with White House efforts to negotiate an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. And some of the key figures poised to benefit from the Lukoil sale have ties to President Trump’s family and his associates — including the administration’s envoys to Russia. The revelation raises new questions about conflicts of interest in an administration that has regularly mixed personal interests with national interests.

Here are five takeaways from The New York Times’s investigation of the proposed transaction. Completing the deal is a factor in Ukraine peace talks.

The Trump administration has long argued that discussing business deals with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia could help convince him to mend ties with the West and end his war on Ukraine. The administration signaled recently that some deals could move forward before the war ends. But the specifics have been murky until now.

When Mr. Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, met with Mr. Putin at the Kremlin last month, the Russian president asked them to get the Lukoil deal done. The Americans said they would work on it, reasoning that doing so could build good will with the Kremlin while also lowering global energy prices.The deal’s leader is a big political donor to Mr. Trump.

The leader of the investor group is Todd Boehly, right, todd boehlya billionaire asset manager and co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, among other holdings. He is also a major donor to Mr. Trump’s political causes. He contributed $1 million to Mr. Trump’s affiliated MAGA Inc. political committee last December, just as negotiations on the Lukoil deal were heating up.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.Family ties to the investors are widespread.

Mr. Trump; his three sons; Mr. Kushner; Ivanka Trump, one of the president’s daughters; and the Witkoff family all have financial ties to partners in the deal, which requires sign off from the Trump administration and the Kremlin. The Trump family and the president’s advisers do not have a direct financial stake in the transaction. tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan 2025 wBut their business partners would benefit financially if the multibillion-dollar deal is completed.

The investors who have teamed up with Mr. Boehly include one of the richest investment funds in the Middle East, International Holding Company, which is overseen by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, left, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family.

Sheikh Tahnoon separately runs outfits that own nearly half of World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency company co-founded by Mr. Witkoff and still run by Zach Witkoff, one of Steve Witkoff’s sons. Donald Trump Jr. and Barron Trump, two of the president’s sons, also are stakeholders and co-founders of the company, and so they too are effectively business partners with Sheikh Tahnoon.

world liberty financial logo

Sheikh Tahnoon, one of the most powerful players in Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates, controls companies that oversee Lunate, an investment fund that took a major stake in the private equity firm Affinity Partners, which was set up by Mr. Kushner after he left the White House at the end of Mr. Trump’s first term.

Another investor in Mr. Boehly’s group is a pair of Syrian-born Qatari billionaires, Moutaz Al-Khayyat and his brother Ramez Al-Khayyat, who have partnered with Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump to build a multibillion-dollar resort complex planned for the Mediterranean coast of Albania.Large chunks of the profits would go overseas.

Trump administration officials are celebrating how the Boehly-backed deal would help U.S. energy security, as the package includes everything from oil production sites to refineries and gas stations. The U.S. government would also take a direct stake in the new enterprise via the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, an agency that helps finance projects overseas. But given the makeup of the investment group, a large share of the resulting company — and the profits it creates — would be foreign owned, according to participants in the negotiations.Another prominent bidder would lose out.

Approving the Boehly deal now being negotiated with the help of the White House would mean rejecting a competing offer from Carlyle, a Washington-based global investment management firm that already has investments in refineries in Europe. Carlyle’s bid, by comparison, would mean an all-American owner. But Carlyle does not have similar financial ties to Mr. Trump’s family and political advisers. 

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption 

 

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djt put them down ohio talkHope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump is cornered, Heather Delaney Reese, above left and at right, heather delaney reeseOct. 3, 2026. At 7:45 tonight, Donald Trump experienced what appeared to be a serious mental health crisis while on stage campaigning for Republicans in Ohio. He had just arrived at the High School Activity Center in Vandalia, Ohio, 45 minutes late after his motorcade was forced to change its route to avoid protesters.

After making his way to the podium, he wasted no time launching into a truly disturbing speech where he told the crowd that Democrats tried to kill him and that “we’re going to put them down once and for all.” He said that Democrats rigged the elections and that the Republican Party is going to beat them, and that they would “shove it up their ass.”

He attacked the press, called Biden a “fake president,” and presented a bribe to every American over the age of 18, promising to send each one of them $5,000 if his party wins and keeps control of Congress. This was just the tip of the iceberg of the dangerous things the president said tonight.

Within minutes, it became clear that this was not going to be a regular campaign rally. As the speech went on, it only got worse as Donald Trump unraveled on live TV. Tonight marked the beginning of an even darker chapter in American History. One where the leader of the free world openly shared that he and his administration will reject, by all means possible, anything other than the outcome he wants for the midterm elections.

Trump told the crowd: “We’ve defeated every hoax and overcome every threat. Now we are on the cusp of beating the communist, socialist, radicalized lunatics and villains once and for all. We’re going to put them down once and for all.”

That is exactly what the President of the United States is saying about those he sees as a threat to his unchecked power. This includes, but is not limited to, Democrats, American citizens, journalists, and protesters. But it was the “put them down” part that is the most concerning. Most of us know that as a phrase used to mean the euthanasia of a sick or injured animal. When he added “once and for all,” he left very little room for interpretation. He was talking about ending opposition permanently.

With Donald Trump, we have to take him at his word while hoping he is just being provocative. History has already taught us how far he will go and how far others like him have gone before. Hitler did not start by rounding up his final targets and sending them to the camps. He started with the language he used and testing what he could get away with saying. He called his political opponents vermin and disease, and he told crowds at his rallies that they were a threat to the nation. The eventual horrific actions followed later.

He did not stop there. He told the crowd that Democrats had “attacked me, they’ve impeached me, they’ve arrested me, and they even tried to kill me.” He called Biden a “fake president,” still clinging to his election lie all these years later. He also said that Democrats rigged the elections and that they were “a bunch of dumb sons of bitches.” He said they, the Republicans, were going to win big and “shove it up their ass, okay?” That is the President of the United States of America, speaking from a podium with the presidential seal on it, terrified of losing and spiraling out of control.

djt collageTrump is building a narrative where he is the ultimate authority in our country. It is part of his strategy ahead of the devastating loss he expects to face during the midterms. Today he gave us a look into what that will look like and how it will play out. Part of his plan is to convince his followers that he is smarter than everyone else, and he pretty much said exactly that: “I know more about everything than anybody in this room, than anybody anywhere in the world.” He then stopped for a very quick pause, pointed at a woman sitting near the stage, and continued, “There’s a woman sitting right over there who is a housewife, but she’s very good. She’s got a natural instinct for business. She perhaps knows more than I do, but I actually don’t think so.”

And then he brought up his latest bribe. Trump told the room, and those of us watching from home, that “If Republicans win the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, I am going to give all adult citizens in the United States $5,000 each because we’re making so much money with the tariffs and other things.”

djt handing out money hartmann reportEvery time he promises to send Americans money in exchange for their votes [as portrayed above in an illustration by The Hartmann Report], we have to do the math because that is where the promise immediately falls apart. There are roughly 245 million adults in this country. That is $1.20 trillion. The president does not have the authority to just send out checks on a whim, and he certainly can’t spend more than a trillion dollars without approval. That is not even taking into account the practical side of things, like where the money would come from. Donald Trump also promised $2,000 tariff dividend checks. Those never came, and these never will either. He knows that, and he also knows that there is almost no realistic path for Republicans to hold both chambers of Congress. So the excuse and the scapegoat are already built in for when the checks are never sent. He will blame the Democrats. He will say he wanted to send the checks, but the radical left “Dumocrats” blocked him from sending them. He will use this as another reason to further divide us.

He also shared fear-based propaganda that he created in his mind about what is to come if his party loses. “If the Democrats are in control again, we’ll have another Great Depression like in the 1930s.” He said that if Democrats win, “you will end up in a 1929-style economic depression, and we will have a disaster on our hands.” He is trying to terrify the most vulnerable people in this country into voting out of fear, while also trying to bribe them with money he will not and cannot send. He is counting on them believing that this time will somehow be different and that he will actually deliver on the promises he makes.

He not only told us that he will be targeting political dissent over the next couple of years, but he also made it very clear that he is coming after the media and anyone committed to fact-based reporting. He pointed up at the press section and told the crowd, “Some of the fake news media are sitting right there.” The crowd loudly booed, with someone even screaming, “F*CK CNN!” Trump stood there grinning and smirking as he stared directly at the journalists, letting the hostility in the room build toward them. He went after Kaitlan Collins again, calling her “such an unhappy person,” and said that “she’s a young, nice person, but she never smiles.” He said, “the fake news media refuse to talk about our record-setting numbers.” The President of the United States continues to try to humiliate journalists who haven’t bent to his demands for only positive coverage. He also said, “It’s the golden age of America. Our nation is doing better now than ever before, and fake news like CNN, sitting right there, doesn’t want to run.” Then he offered us a new name for the press: “We could call the media ‘artificial media.’ That would be accurate. We could call them ‘artificial news.’ They’re artificial news, meaning fake, but I like ‘fake’ better. I made that up a long time ago, and it seems to be quite accurate.”

This is why Trump is so focused on destroying trust in the media. He needs his supporters to believe that every reporter, news outlet, and really anyone who says something Donald Trump doesn’t like is lying to them. Trump knows his numbers and polls are both terrible, so he needs to convince his supporters that the only person they can trust is him. So that it doesn’t matter what anyone else reports. He is setting the stage for what comes next. If the midterm results are not what he wants, he will say the media lied and that there was rampant fraud. He will tell his supporters that the election was stolen from them, and many will believe him. We saw what happened on January 6th, and we have watched him pardon the insurrectionists. We know Donald Trump’s part in what happened, and how he has convinced those who carried that out for him, and the next round of people like them, to think they will ultimately be protected the next time he asks people to do his dirty work for him.

djt mission from godThe difference this time is that Donald Trump is sitting inside the White House with the power of the federal government behind him [Emphasized by his publications of his self-generated graphics, such as that above]. Everything he said tonight was in preparation for what may be one of the darkest chapters in the history of our country. We got a glimpse of just how dark the next 30+ days and the months that follow could become. There were multiple moments during this rally that would have warranted serious discussions about the 25th Amendment with any other president. But things have become so normalized that we don’t even talk about that like we did even a year ago. Our country has fallen so far over the past 21 months that even the president accusing Democrats of trying to kill him or calling them “dumb sons of bitches” is no longer enough to shock us.

The big picture is that this is what we are going to see until the midterms if Donald Trump isn’t stopped. And then the worst of the Big Beautiful Bill is purposefully set to happen shortly after that, devastating everyday Americans. The months after that may very well be even worse. He is going to push everything through he possibly can before the new Congress is seated. At the same time, he will have set the tone with his radicalized followers that anybody, including the legacy media, independent journalists, and writers such as myself, are all part of the “fake news” and can’t be trusted. He will challenge every election result that does not go his way. He will say that foreign governments meddled in our elections and that the results have been manipulated. There will be court cases, and games played to try to keep the new, duly elected members of Congress from being seated.

This may be a very trying time for our country. We will get through it. We will come out on the other side. What it takes to get there is another story. And even after all of that, we are looking at a sitting-duck president at a level this country has never seen, with nothing left to hold him back and nothing left to lose. With his diminished physical and cognitive abilities, we won’t truly start to feel safe and see a path forward for this country until at least early 2029, and even then, we will be dealing with the damage for years to come.

We knew these dark times were coming. We knew it would get worse the closer we got to the midterms. Today he showed us exactly what that is going to look like. He is coming after dissent, the truth, and anyone who refuses to fall in line. But no matter what he tries to take from us, we need to remind Donald Trump and each other that we are not helpless. There are still things we can do. We can vote, and we can get louder. If you’ve been on the sidelines, this is the moment to step off them. If you’ve been scared to speak out, I understand that fear completely. I know what it costs and the threats that come with it. I’ve lived it for a year and a half, and I’m still here, and it has not slowed me down. Because I also know what silence costs, and that price is higher. It always has been, and it always will be.

I made a promise when I started writing these posts. Every time Donald Trump or his administration attacked the press, the First Amendment, or the rights of the American people, I would call it out. Today Donald Trump took his attacks even further. His public threats were meant to cause ripples of fear through all of us. They want us to hesitate the next time we go to speak, and they want us to question our next vote for a Democrat for fear that they will usher in the next Great Depression.

Tonight we resist with our voices and our money. Every time this administration attacks the First Amendment, or our right to free, fair, and fear-free elections, we respond by funding the people defending it. On these nights, I donate and subscribe to those on the right side of history who offer a paid membership. To use the overplayed line about how most of these options cost about the same as a cup of coffee, I actually live by that. I rarely buy coffee outside the house anymore because I would much rather give that money to someone fighting for our country anyway.

Those of you who have been reading these posts for a while know how this goes. If we are able, and it will not cause a financial hardship, we put our money to good use. We support our local, state, and federal candidates. The other side is throwing a lot of money at these elections, so our candidates can always use more funds. We donate to nonprofits that are defending our Constitution and the most vulnerable in our communities. That includes organizations that are challenging Donald Trump’s abuses of power in court. And we also support the people taking a stand to deliver the truth about what is happening in this country under extreme threat from Donald Trump and the federal government. Thank you all for supporting me in this way. It is how I’m able to dedicate my life to this work and write these posts every night. I am grateful that I can be a part of this fight with your support.

But like I always say and will until the end of time, I’m also asking you to think beyond just my voice. Think about every writer, journalist, podcaster, and other independent outlet that you turn to when you need the truth about what is happening in this country. Think about the people writing and creating content day in and day out, without breaks, because they care about our country and the generations we will be leaving it to. Donald Trump just told us what comes next, and we need to be prepared now so that our truth tellers are funded to survive it. The most powerful thing we can do right now is make sure the people refusing to be silent can keep going. 

Donald Trump didn’t have his meltdown at the podium today because the future looks good for him or the Republican Party. He is waging these attacks because he is scared. He is scared of what happens to him next. He knows the resistance is just growing and that his deficits are as well.

He knows that he is in a weak position, and nothing makes him feel more threatened than that. But while he was standing on that stage trying to make the rest of us feel the same fear he is, a group of musicians was standing in front of a sold-out crowd of close to 20,000, reminding us just how much power we still have. Just 25 miles from the White House, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine’s Power to the People Festival in Columbia, Maryland, brought together some very powerful voices in American music for a day built around the very things Trump is trying to destroy: freedom, justice, equality, and people coming together and using their voices for something bigger than themselves.

Performers included Bruce Springsteen, the Foo Fighters, Dave Matthews, Joan Baez, Public Enemy, Killer Mike, Cypress Hill, Serj Tankian, Brittany Howard, Dropkick Murphys, Jack Black, The Linda Lindas, and Shepard Fairey. This wasn’t just a music festival. This was a show of resistance.

Donald Trump wants us to think that the fight is over and that we have already lost our country. But we know the truth. We know that he is only going to these lengths because he knows what is coming and he is desperately trying to stop it. In 31 days, we are going to come together and show him just how much power we still have, and he is going to finally start to face the consequences of what he has put our country through. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.


President Trump speaks to White House media before his trip to Alabama to host a political rally on Oct. 2, 2026. President Trump speaks to White House media before his trip to Alabama to host a political rally on Oct. 2, 2026. 

Hope for America, Opinion: The President's decline is in a freefall. Heather Delaney Reese, helen delaney reese djtright, Oct. 3, 2026. At 3:54 pm Donald Trump emerged from the White House with freshly colored hair and makeup, as Marine One’s engine roared in the background. He walked directly over to the waiting press, threw his hands out in front of him, gesturing at the empty ground in front of him, while he squeezed his legs together and arched his torso forward, yelling to the reporters, “This is the way the White House is supposed to look. Not asphalt. Broken, dirty asphalt. Look at it.” He then paused, frowning as he looked over his left shoulder, and continued, “The finest stone you could buy anywhere in the world.”

The gathered press said nothing, confused by his odd behavior. The President then took three steps forward and appeared to remember why he had come outside in the first place. “Okay. So, I’m heading to Alabama, a place that I won all three times. Record votes, like Texas, like Oklahoma, like a lot of them. And we’re going to give a little speech, and I hope they like it.”

For the next 6 minutes and 52 seconds, we watched the President struggle to answer questions, follow the conversation, and even walk in a straight line. Donald Trump is gravely unwell, and whatever is behind his serious decline appears to be rapidly accelerating.

I don’t say that with any joy or pleasure. The presidency is the most important office in our government, and the entire world is at risk with him in the Oval Office. But what we are watching can’t be normalized.

Peter Doocy from Fox News started the questions by asking Donald Trump about the growing possibility of a third impeachment if Democrats take back the House, while reminding him that he’d already been impeached twice.

The President’s answer to such a serious question was to say, “Well, I don’t know, but I’m getting good at it. And… It’s a fake impeachment. And we could have done that with Sleepy Joe, but we didn’t do it because it would have been appropriate. I could have done that with Hillary Clinton, as you know. I just had the chance to do it if I wanted, and I said that would be inappropriate, but with me they like to do it.”

The President of the United States joked that being impeached had become something he was “getting good at” after having gone through it twice. His words were again slurred, making it difficult to know whether he said impeaching Biden “would have been appropriate” or “inappropriate.” He also claimed he could have impeached Hillary Clinton, even though private citizens cannot be impeached under the Constitution.

Maybe he doesn’t understand that impeachment is not a criminal charge, that it is the constitutional process used to remove a sitting president or other federal officeholder from office. It would not have applied to Hillary Clinton, and it would not have applied to Joe Biden after he left office either. Whether Trump confused impeachment with criminal prosecution or simply lost track of what was being discussed, either possibility is deeply concerning.

Regardless of how he acted, like trying to make what could happen seem like it was no big deal, he does care. This time around, he knows the consequences, including hearings and investigations, could make his life very uncomfortable. He is right to be concerned. There is a path, one I’ve talked about before, where if we achieve a blue wave of epic proportion, and every single piece lines up, this could go further than just oversight and investigations. It could lead to impeachment and removal. And if there ever were a time for that, it is now. Donald Trump loves being number one and being the first. Maybe we could actually make him the first President removed from office. It’s a long shot, and everything would have to go perfectly, but in a moment like this, we should be shooting for the stars.

When Donald Trump was asked whether it would be harder for Republicans to hold the House or the Senate, Trump answered with another non-answer: “I think it’s pretty even. I think that we’re making a lot of progress. When I go there, we win. If I don’t go there, we would not do as well.”

What we know from current polling is that right now, the odds are overwhelmingly strong that he will lose the House. The Senate, which wasn’t supposed to be in play at all, is now a real fight, with viable paths to a Democratic majority. None of this is guaranteed, and it’s important that nobody feels too comfortable in this moment, but if there are free and fair elections, things seem to be looking bad for the President and his enablers, and very good for the Constitution and the country.

He also was able to add in one of his favorite talking points: “I’m asking them to go out and vote because I’m not running. But I’m saying pretend I’m running. We want to pretend I’m running.” We all need to pretend he’s running. Because in a way, he is, or at least his unchecked power is on the ballot. When we vote against MAGA Republicans, we are voting against him, and we are voting to take away his stronghold on our country. That is what we are voting against. What we are voting for is hearings, investigations, oversight, and finally accountability. We’re voting to begin repairing the relationships he’s shattered with our allies, or at least to remind the world that we haven’t been completely taken over. And also that we have absolutely not given up. We are also voting to end the destabilization and the reckless imperialism that Donald Trump has brought to every corner of this planet. So yes, we all must pretend he’s running. Because he is.

After he said to “pretend I’m running,” he didn’t even pause for a second before immediately pointing to the construction site behind him and said, “I hope you like what you’re seeing here. That’s getting all sorts of awards. And the best of all, you see the new crane, the red, the red boom. That’s one of the biggest cranes in the world that lifts up the steel for the roof. Pretty cool, right?” In the middle of answering serious questions affecting the entire world, the President of the United States became fixated on talking about a crane.

He then turned around and faced the reporters who were all shouting questions at him. With a confused look in his eyes and his chest lurched forward, he pointed towards a member of the European press and muttered something about him always asking the same questions, and the reporter replied, “Mr. President, people believe you never get tired.”

What he said was an opening for Donald Trump to deny the very thing millions of people have spent the better part of the year watching. He then looked into the camera and said, “I never get tired. And if I got tired, it would be a big story, I can tell.”

The administration needed that question to be asked on camera because we all keep watching him fall asleep in meetings, slump over in chairs, drift off mid-sentence, and struggle to stay upright. His administration knows this is one of the most dangerous narratives building against him. They also know that their most loyal followers are willing to ignore what they can see with their own eyes as long as someone helps them commit to willful ignorance or just pretend it isn’t actually happening.

This is how authoritarian regimes manage the visible decline of their leaders. In the Soviet Union, aging, frail, and severely declining men were propped up to appear still competent and powerful while Soviet state media broadcast images of these leaders signing documents, greeting officials, and projecting normalcy, while much of the real decision-making shifted behind closed doors. The pattern holds today. The people enabling Donald Trump are trying to preserve the appearance of continuity, reassure his donors and supporters, and buy time while they prepare for what comes next. It’s also why they have J.D. Vance campaigning across the country.

The most alarming moment of Donald Trump’s time talking to reporters came when someone told the President that South Korea says it has not signed off on the Alaska pipeline deal after all and asked whether he had jumped the gun. This was after Trump had announced a new energy agreement involving South Korea. Donald Trump looked confused, like he had no idea what the reporter was talking about. He eventually answered and said, “Well, I didn’t jump the gun. I mean, they were there and they were represented and let’s see. If they don’t want to do it, that’s okay with me. I’ll just charge them more.”

The reporter tried again, reminding him that South Korea said it had never signed the agreement in the first place. Trump’s response was, “Tell them if they don’t sign shortly, I’m going to double it up. Okay.”

Trump looked directly at a reporter and asked them to tell a foreign country he was going to charge them more if they did not sign an agreement. It was completely lost on him that reporters report the news. They don’t negotiate between countries. The President of the United States actually asked a reporter to deliver a threat to a sovereign nation.

This is not some hostile government he’s threatening either. This is South Korea, one of our most important allies in the Pacific, a democracy we have defended for more than seventy years because its stability is essential to deterring one of the world’s most dangerous dictatorships just across its northern border. We need that alliance, and we need the American bases within its borders.

After that, multiple reporters tried to ask about a diesel deal with Europe, and Donald Trump confirmed that he would not be imposing an export ban and that because of steps being taken, we are going to have a “lot of oil very shortly.” Then, without fail, he returned to one of his favorite talking points: “As soon as Iran ends, which won’t be long, not going to be long, you’re going to have oil go down to the price it was before, maybe even lower than I got it at the beginning.”

This all stemmed from his threat of a diesel export ban that would have devastated European families heading into winter, families who depend on diesel to heat their homes, get to work, and simply make it through the cold months. He is now waving it away as though it was never serious in the first place. But it was serious enough to terrify an entire continent. That is how Donald Trump negotiates. He uses fuel as leverage, basic human needs as bargaining chips, and then acts as though he never meant what he said. This is un-American. It is not how we treat our allies, and it is not how we should treat our fellow human beings.

His impromptu press conference ended after he was asked about New York Governor Kathy Hochul appointing Attorney General Letitia James as a special prosecutor in the Cornell University rape case. Trump answered by saying, “Well, Letitia James is a corrupt person. She’s totally corrupt and I can’t imagine it.” Then came the most unconscionable part: “I feel badly for whoever she’s looking at because they won’t get a fair shake.”

The President of the United States said he felt bad for the men accused of committing horrific crimes against a woman who reported being sexually assaulted. He said nothing about the courage it took for her to come forward or the trauma she has endured. He felt badly for the men being investigated. That was his first reaction.

We are now just 32 days away from the most pivotal election in modern American history. We are not just voting for our country, we are voting for the entire world because what Donald Trump does echoes far past our borders. But we also have to temper our expectations because even when we take back the House, and possibly the Senate, he is not going quietly. He will push through executive orders at a pace we haven’t seen. The people behind him, the ones who are smarter and more calculating than he is, who are already parading J.D. Vance across the country as his eventual replacement, have everything to lose too. They are planning for their own survival. We need to be ready for whatever is to come. We need to protect our access to vote, and then protect the actual count of our ballots, while also preparing for an extended fight to make sure the new Congress is actually seated.

Just after midnight this morning, Donald Trump posted this on Truth Social: “America does not belong to those who hate it. America belongs to those who love it. President Donald J. Trump.”

America does belong to those who love it. This country belongs to us. And in 32 days, we’re going to prove it. 

More Special Reports On Nefarious Trump-Related Ties To Russia, Hurting U.S., Europe, Ukraine  

 

Lev Parnas, above, being interviewed by cable television host Rachel Maddow on Jan. 15, 2020 for a documentary she produced about his life. He is shown also with his wife, who stood by him during a hoked up prosecution and imprisonment orchestrated by the Trump Justice Department as retribution for his willingness to expose their Russian-coddling dealmaking in his commentaries, courtroom proceedings and in his memoir, "Shadow Diplomacy."

lev parnas wife

  • Justice Integrity Project Backgrounder On Lev Parnas, Entrepreuneur, Former Trump Team Operative, Now Whistleblower, Andrew Kreig, Oct.4, 2026. A native of Ukraine and former high-level liaison on behalf of President Trump and his team to Eastern European Shadow Diplomacycontacts, aaron parnas o instagramis an expert commentator who has publisted a three-part series this fall documenting insidious relationships between the Trump Team -- President Trump, his families, their companies and their allies -- to Russian and other foreign interests damaging to most Americans. Parnas, a naturlized U.S. citizen who son Aaron Parnas, right, works independently as a prolific journalist with millions of readers and often quoted on this site, received a lifetime achievement award in 2025 for courage at a featured ceremony at the 13th annual Whistleblower Summit and Film Festival, which he memorialzed in a colum immediately below:

Lev Remembers, Yesterday Changed Me Forever: From Brooklyn to the National Press Club—A Whistleblower’s Journey and a Father’s Pride, Lev Parnas, Aug. 1, 2025. Yesterday was one of those rare days that I’ll never forget. The kind of day that reaches deep into your soul and reminds you of why you’re still standing. The kind of day that humbles you—because it isn’t just about what you’ve been through, it’s about who you’ve become because of it. I was in Washington, D.C., standing inside the hallowed halls of the National Press Club—the beating heart of free speech in this country—where I was presented with the 13th Annual Whistleblower Pillar Award. Now, I know how strange that may sound. Me, a kid from Brooklyn, standing in front of a room full of journalists, federal officials, and freedom fighters, being honored as a whistleblower. It still doesn’t fully register. Because where I come from, being a whistleblower wasn’t seen as courageous. It was seen as betrayal. As weakness. As turning your back. But I’ve lived long enough to learn that’s one of the biggest lies ever told.

2026 Trump-Russia Series

 

djt russian connections

New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan co-authored New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan co-authored "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump," a best-selling account of his rapid transformation of the United States and its global alliances.

russian flag waving

Emptywheel, Analysis and Opinion: Russia Russia Russia Never Stopped Russia Russia Russiaing, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Oct. 4, 2026. marcy wheelerOne of the infuriating things about "Regime Change," Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s book, is that it introduces key players who played important roles in the influence operations targeting Trump in 2016 with no reminder they were part of them.

Regime Change describes the central role of Kirill Dmitriev in current efforts to negotiate a “peace plan,” without describing that Dmitriev had cultivated people close to Jared Kushner in the transition to the first Administration, dangling business deals similar to the ones currently on offer, before the Russian investigation made such negotiations toxic.

A National Security Council staffer at the table weighed in with a proposal to assess whether Dmitriev was the real thing. “Well, sir, we could test him,” the staffer said to Rubio. “We could ask him to release a hostage, for example.”

Rubio liked the idea. And he said he knew just the guy they could ask for: Marc Fogel, an American high school teacher who had been sentenced to fourteen years in a Russian prison for carrying a small amount of medical marijuana in his luggage.

kirill dmitrievWitkoff would later tell colleagues that Dmitriev, right, came with the strong endorsement of not only Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, but also “TBZ”—Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the high-powered national security advisor of the United Arab Emirates. An endorsement from TBZ seemed to mean a lot to Witkoff. “TBZ is the guy,” he told a colleague. “When somebody like that says he’s the real thing, then you take that to the bank.”

Regime Change describes how Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan dumped $500 million into the Trump-Witkoff corruption via crypto deals.

There was also a huge investing partner in WLF—a fact that would remain a secret for over a year. In January 2026, tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan 2025 wThe Wall Street Journal revealed that four days before Trump was sworn in, a 49 percent stake in World Liberty had been acquired by Aryam Investment 1. The company was run by associates ofSheikh Tahnoon binZayed Al Nahyan, right, who controlled $1.5 trillion of Emirati sovereign wealth funds. Sheikh Tahnoon was a major power player in the Middle East, and a close associate of both Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. A UAE fund backed by sovereign wealth had already invested more than $200 million in Kushner’s investment fund.

But it doesn’t remind readers that someone either reporting to Tahnoon, or Tahnoon himself, had cultivated Tom Barrack, below left, during the 2016 election to shift US policy towards the Emiratis and Mohammed bin tom barrackheadshotSalman.

I believe that Tahnoon, the guy who made the payoff to Trump last year, is Emirati Official 2 in the Barrack indictment. If that’s right, then Barrack crafted his public comments to meet Tahnoon’s needs, approved of a 100-day plan to cater to Emirate needs that Barrack drafted, and visited the White House in May 2017.

And while we have always focused closely on Manafort’s role in crafting pro-Russian policies in advance of the first Trump term, Manafort was working with Barrack on policies — including a foreign policy speech — to please the Emiratis, too.

Of course, the Emiratis were always intimately involved in the Russian cultivation (and I still suspect the $10 million suspected bribe that went through Egypt was actually a pass-through from others). Child sex predator George Nader, shown below with Trump, is the one who first set up the meetings with Kiril Dmitriev who would have been, and remains now, the key handler for the effort to co-opt the United States. Dmitriev is not in the NYT graphic [illustrating the story] either.

george nader djt Custom 2That cultivation was revealed in the failed prosecution of Barrack, which resulted in acquittal after Barrack argued he would have pursued such policies whether or not the Emirates dangled big payoffs to do so.

Relatedly, the book does a great job of describing Boris Epshteyn’s growing power base in the White House and his central role in some of Trump’s most direct assaults on rule of law.

Epshteyn had a long and sometimes fraught history with the Trumps—highly valued by the President as an enforcer, but viewed by many in his circle as a liability. He had known the family since meeting Eric Trump at Georgetown. But even Eric had privately complained to confidants over the years about Epshteyn’s approach. His determination to stay as close as possible to Donald Trump and aggressively deliver perceived wins had led to his own indictment in Arizona the previous April, for his alleged role in a conspiracy to certify a slate of fake electors, though the case would suffer a blow in 2025 and it was unclear whether it would continue. In congressional testimony that year, the special counsel, Jack Smith, named Epshteyn as one of the unindicted co-conspirators in the 2020 election case against Trump.

Trump would joke about how Epshteyn could spin any development—good or bad—as a positive. But he liked Epshteyn and credited him with assembling a legal defense team that helped Trump stay out of prison. Where Epshteyn’s money came from once the new administration began was less clear.

[snip]

Another close advisor explained that Trump liked to keep people like Epshteyn close at hand. He valued lawyers he thought would do anything for him. Trump had also learned through bitter experience that it was unwise to make enemies of former aides—especially those privy to his secrets. n his first term, he had followed the advice of his lawyers and kept a safe distance from those caught up in scandals, among them Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, and Michael Cohen. Now, with a Congress that would not check him and presidential immunity afforded by the landmark 2024 Trump v. United States ruling, Trump had little reason to heed Warrington’s warning.

boris ephsteyn croppedBut its biography of Epshteyn, right, doesn’t mention Boris’ Russian ties or his expulsion from the White House in the first term for security reasons — even though they themselves have covered those issues in NYT stories.

President-elect Donald J. Trump was flying to Washington for his first face-to-face meeting with President Biden since winning the election when a top aide offered a startling idea to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine.

The adviser, Boris Epshteyn, who coordinated the legal defenses in Mr. Trump’s criminal cases, suggested to the president-elect that he should be Mr. Trump’s special envoy for the Russia-Ukraine conflict, according to four people briefed on what took place.

Mr. Epshteyn, who was born in Russia and lived there as a child, has no experience in foreign policy. He told the group that he had family on both sides of the conflict.

[snip]

Mr. Epshteyn, who left his role in the White House communications office in 2017 over what was described as an issue with his security clearance that has since been resolved, had told friends before the special envoy discussion that he intended to stay outside government as a counselor to Mr. Trump. And in Mr. Trump’s world, the lack of an official title has meant little in terms of measuring influence.

When you hide all these ties, you hide the way that Trump’s second term looks like the culmination of that joint Russian-Emirati influence operation Dmitriev pitched in the Seychelles nine years ago. Maggie has helped cover up some of this in the past. But Swan just seems not to understand how the world works, as when hetold Tim Miller (starting at 43:37) that he and Maggie simply never bothered to check Natalie Harp’s problematic conversion story, and so just assumed she goes to great lengths to serve as his gatekeeper for entirely naive reasons.

President Trump's inseparable White House aide Natalie Harp, above, an Ivanka Trump look-alike who with cult-like devotation generates much of his written output and closely monitors what information he receives.

President Trump's inseparable White House aide Natalie Harp, above, who generates much of his written output and closely monitors what information he receives.

Such a background is similarly absent from this blockbuster NYT story, describing how Trump is about to sell out Ukraine so his buddy and campaign donor can get a big Lukoil deal. It describes how Dmitriev remains at the core of the corrupt effort to bribe Trump to sacrifice Ukraine, as he was in 2017.

Kirill Dmitriev, Mr. Putin’s economic envoy, has been closely involved, people familiar with the sale process said. He traveled to New York and Washington for meetings last month, and told reporters that “dialogue” with the United States was “continuing across many areas, including energy.”

It describes how Tahnoon would be a partner with what would be nostalgically called the US government

Another major stakeholder would be an Abu Dhabi-based investment fund controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, (national_security_advisor), the United Arab Emirates’ top national security adviser, who controls another fund that purchased a large stake in the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company, World Liberty, run in part by Mr. Witkoff’s son.

Steve Witkoff was a co-founder of World Liberty, and Mr. Trump’s sons are also involved in the company, which generated $799 million for Mr. Trump last year, in part because of an additional cryptocurrency purchase worth $2 billion that Sheikh Tahnoon’s affiliate made in 2025. Mr. Witkoff himself has sold off his stake in World Liberty, a person close to him said.

Sheikh Tahnoon also helps oversee an Abu Dhabi investment fund called Lunate, which is among the largest stakeholders in the private equity firm Mr. Kushner set up after he left the White House at the end of Mr. Trump’s first term. This means Sheikh Tahnoon is effectively a business partner of Mr. Kushner’s as well.

It even includes a role for Bryan Lanza — who back in 2016 encouraged George Papadopoulos to pursue his ties with Russia — and Mercury Public Affairs — which has been the influence peddling wing of this lukoil logooperation for over a decade.

Lukoil’s international division, which is based in Austria, hired its own Washington-based consultant who is close to Mr. Trump, Bryan Lanza, who served as a senior adviser to Mr. Trump’s 2024 election campaign and now works at Mercury Public Affairs. He is no longer working for Lukoil, a person familiar with the matter said.

All of these pieces were put into place in 2016, as part of the process by which Russia helped Trump get elected. Russia had a big role, too, in the developments that led Trump not to care that we all see him selling out the US to curry favor from a dictator of a failing country around the world.

The 2016 Russian operation is not the past. Russia has, relentlessly, never stopped pursuing the plan they put in place when Tom Barrack put Paul Manafort in charge of Trump’s campaign. 

Emptywheel, Analysis: Trump Is Still Relying on Dossier-Driven Polarization to Hide Russian Shenanigans, marcy wheelerEmptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Oct. 3, 2026. We’re falling behind, under the weight of stories making it clear that Trump’s Russian shenanigans never ended.The biggest sign of that is the NYT story revealing that part of the Jared Kushner/Steve Witkoff “peace” plan for Ukraine is an oil deal involving the Emirati guy alleged to be Tom Barrack’s handler back in 2016.

Equally alarming is how various people — State Department Undersecretary of State Sarah Rogers and former Don Jr. sidepiece Kimberly Guilfoyle —are cozying up to people overthrowing democracy in Europe. I’ll discuss those in our reintroduction to this week’s reissue, maybe Monday. For now, I want to share the short we did to introduce this week’s reissue, which I posted in our video section (which I’m trying to introduce). Please follow and support LOLGOP Studios Patreon as we consider how to roll out this stuff in coming weeks.

  • New York Times, Russia Turns to Striking Kyiv’s Bridges, Threatening a Vital Lifeline, Constant Méheut, Oct. 3, 2026. The bridges, used by many commuters in the Ukrainian capital, are the latest target in a broad Russian bombing campaign against infrastructure. Russia has a new target on its rapidly growing list of Ukrainian infrastructure to bomb: bridges.

Special Report: More On Trump Family Self-Dealing 

donald trump money palmer report Custom

New York Times, White House Memo: An Outrage in 2019. No Problem in 2026, Peter Baker, Oct. 4, 2026. Trump Has Moved the Ethical Line. The president’s decision to hold an international summit at his own private golf club, an idea rejected in his first term, illustrates how much he has shattered norms.

When President Trump decided in his first term to host the annual Group of 7 summit of world leaders at his own private golf club in Miami, the act of self-dealing was so astonishing that it incited an uproar among fellow Republicans, forcing him to scrap the idea.

Now in his second term seven years later, Mr. Trump has decided to host the Group of 20 annual summit of world leaders at his private golf club in Miami in December — and this time the plan has generated practically no protest.

The unprecedented blitz of self-enrichment by Mr. Trump, his family and his friends since he returned to the White House last year has become so extensive, so profligate and so brazen that he has effectively moved the goal posts of what is considered out of bounds. An act that was deemed an outrage in 2019 is barely noticed in 2026.

Mr. Trump has blurred the line between personal and public interests so much that it is hardly distinguishable anymore. He personally made at least $2.2 billion last year through business ventures and investments, many with implications for government policy. His family-backed firm introduced a cryptocurrency called stablecoin just months before he signed legislation promoting stablecoin. He accepted a luxury jet from Qatar. He arranged for his administration to grant him immunity for any back taxes and penalties that he owed, potentially more than $100 million.ImageAn ad that was approved by President Trump, which resembles a campaign ad, and is paid for with taxpayer funds.Credit...via YouTube

In recent days, Mr. Trump has ordered the government to use taxpayer dollars to air television advertisements lauding himself, commercials that resemble campaign ads even as voters are already casting ballots in this year’s midterm elections. Mr. Trump’s private business last month filed a trademark application for Trump TV, seeking to control the name of a streaming service that the White House in theory uses for official presidential communications.

Melania Trump, who already was paid millions of dollars for a flattering self-promotional film by Amazon, a federal government contractor, now has a two-part docuseries about herself to be released this fall. Donald Trump Jr. allowed a Russian business mogul close to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, to pay for part of his wedding after-party in the Bahamas. And President Trump next month will headline “the most exclusive dinner in the world” for the crypto firm that runs his meme coin.

The decision to bring the leaders of the G20 nations and their considerable entourages to Trump National Doral Miami from Dec. 14 to 15 in some ways offers the most clear-cut case study of how the standards have changed, not just from other presidencies but from Mr. Trump’s own first term.

“Let’s be honest — in the world of all the bad things he’s done, this is pretty small,” said Paul Rosenzweig, who was a senior counsel to Ken Starr’s investigation of President Bill Clinton and later served in President George W. Bush’s administration. “But it is a really good, easily understood example of how he has defined deviancy down.”

When Mr. Trump announced plans in 2019 to hold the G7 at Doral, it generated criticism not just from Democrats but from some fellow Republicans and even Fox News hosts. At the time, he was facing impeachment over his effort to strong-arm Ukraine into investigating Democrats and allies said it would undercut his support.ImageWhen Mr. Trump announced plans in 2019 to hold the G7 at Trump National Doral Miami, it led to criticism and the idea was scraped. This time his plan to hold the G20 there has generated little protest.Credit...Scott McIntyre for The New York Times

When Mr. Trump last year picked Doral for the G20 summit, he said he chose it because “everybody wants it there” and he promised that it would be cost-free. “We’re doing a deal where it’s not going to be money, there’s no money in it,” he insisted. “I just want it to go well.” He effectively hosted a practice run in March when he held a one-day meeting of Latin American leaders at the Doral club, a gathering that produced no uproar.

The White House did not respond to a request Friday asking why it was now appropriate to go forward with meetings at the president’s own property after canceling a summit there in the first term.

The only real Republican complaint about hosting the G20 at Doral was that Mr. Trump has invited Mr. Putin despite his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. As for the self-dealing, Republicans who once saw that as inappropriate have gone quiet. In 2019, Representative Mike Simpson of Idaho called the idea “politically insensitive” because it looked like “he’s doing it for his own benefit.” In 2026, by contrast, Mr. Simpson has endorsed the idea.

“Congressman Simpson supports what his colleague posted,” Lexi Hamel, his spokeswoman, said, pointing to an online statement by Representative Mario Diáz-Balart saying that he was “thrilled that the G-20 Summit is coming to Doral” in his Florida district. Asked about Mr. Simpson’s switch in positions, Ms. Hamel said, “A quote from seven years ago is quite a stretch,” without elaborating.

There are at least three major differences from seven years ago: First, Mr. Trump has fashioned a more pliant party by systematically using primaries to purge Republicans who defied him, sending an unmistakable warning to those remaining to stay in line.

Second, he has dismantled much of the regular apparatus of accountability in government by firing inspectors general; gutting the Office of Government Ethics and the Justice Department’s public integrity section; paralyzing the Federal Election Commission; and demoting, transferring or pushing out career prosecutors and F.B.I. agents deemed disloyal.

And third, Mr. Trump came into his second term more indifferent to criticism over possible ethical concerns. To win in 2024, he had to overcome two impeachments, four criminal indictments and a jury trial conviction on 34 felonies tied to hush money paid to an adult film actress, making him the first convicted felon ever to serve in the Oval Office.

In an interview with The New York Times in January, he explained that he did not feel the need to impose as many limits on his family’s business activities this time around “because I got no credit in the first term” and “because I found out that nobody cared.”

But while elected Republicans give him a pass, polls suggest that voters may in fact care when they decide this fall’s congressional elections. A record 89 percent of Americans said corruption is widespread in government, according to a poll released by Gallup last month, the highest level since the firm began asking the question two decades ago.

A separate survey by the Economist and YouGov last month offered registered voters 13 adjectives like “strong,” “effective,” “racist” and “dangerous” and asked which described Mr. Trump. The top choice of all 13 was “corrupt,” which 53 percent said applied to Mr. Trump, while only 23 percent said it did not and the rest had no opinion.

“Public outrage and pushback still work,” said Donald K. Sherman, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group. “But Trump’s second term has been filled with so much unprecedented and harmful corruption that it can be hard for the public to keep up with every story, and the members of his party who are still in power have been unacceptably permissive.”

Another example that got lost in the flood of news lately was the trademark application filed by Mr. Trump’s private business for Trump TV. The White House debuted Trump TV shortly after barring CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the building (a decision temporarily blocked by a judge) and promoted it as an unfiltered substitute for his followers.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

 

U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsNew York Times, Senate Races in Republican States Tilt Toward Democrats, Polls Find, Patricia Mazzei, Ruth Igielnik and Sophia June, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). Democrats are performing strongly in five reliably Republican states where they are trying to flip Senate seats to win control of the chamber, new New York Times/Siena polls found.

A month before the midterm elections, Democrats have opened leads or battled their way to ties or near-ties in five reliably Republican states where they are trying to flip Senate seats to win control of the chamber, according to new New York Times/Siena University polls.

Democrats lead among likely voters in the Senate races in Texas and Alaska, two states that consistently vote Republican, the polls found. They have an edge in Ohio, which has been tilting rightward for years. Republicans have a slim edge in Iowa, and Democrats are neck-and-neck with Republicans in Kansas, which has not voted for a Democratic senator since 1932.

President Trump’s deep unpopularity, disapproval of the Iran war and frustration over high gas prices and the cost of living are reshaping the electoral landscape, the polls found.

Taken together, the new polls suggest that the Democrats have multiple paths to retake the Senate majority, despite a challenging map that had favored Republicans going into the midterms. To win Senate control, Democrats need to flip four Republican-held seats while holding on to their current seats in three battleground states, a difficult task.

But there are signs that it is increasingly possible. On Friday, a top Republican super PAC pulled its money out of the Senate race in North Carolina, signaling that the party is not optimistic about being able to defend its seat there. The super PAC, called the Senate Leadership Fund, plans to redirect resources to Kansas, where Republicans have growing concerns about holding their seat.

The polling suggests Democrats are increasingly competitive in these Republican states. 

 Sleepy Don is frustrated.

Sleepy Don is frustrated.

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, Five Encouraging Senate Polls From The NYT, Early Vote Really Picks Up This Week, Hang Out With Some Inspiring Candidates This Weekend, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 3, 2026. Wonderful Candidate And State Party Interviews:  We’ve had some great reports from the battleground states and races in recent days.

No better way to get a sense of what’s happening out there then to hear from those on the front lines themselves. I promise watching a few of these discussions this weekend will lift you up and make you feel better about our party, our country, and our future.

Here’s what we got for you:

  • Josh Turek, our Senate candidate in Iowa, Roy Cooper running hard in North Carolina, and AG Aaron Ford running for Governor in Nevada
  • Eric Croft, Alaska Dem Chair
  • House Candidates - Jamie Ager (NC-11), Bob Brooks (PA-7), Paige Cognetti (PA-8), Cait Conley (NY-17), Christina Hines (MI-10), Jake Johnson (MN-1), Brian Poindexter (OH-7)
  • My weekly talk - Betrayed By Trump And His Allies The American People Have Put Their Faith Back In Us - And Now We Must Deliver
  • Another way to dive into the battlegrounds is to watch check this week’s Ad and Video Roundups to see the ads that are flying across the country right now.

Looking ahead Stuart Stevens joins us live on Monday at 230pm ET, Sarah Trone Garriott (IA-3) joins us Tuesday, Devon Murphy-Anderson of the Maine Democratic Party drops by on Wednesday, and Janelle Stelson (PA-10) is coming by on Thursday.Subscribed

The 2026 Election kicks into high gear this week with early in person voting starting in eight states: Arizona, Indiana, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, Wyoming -- while other states like California start sending out their mail ballots.

As we are now close to 1m people having voted in the 2026 Election I’m going to start my every-two-year early vote analysis using our friend Tom Bonier’s remarkable TargetEarly tool. Here is how the national early vote in 2026 compares so far to 2018 and 2022 on this same day in all three years. Yes, my friends, it’s encouraging but also very early!

What this data tells is not how someone voted but what their party affiliation is given their registration and what is called “modeled party” -- which can infer your party affiliation based on your vote history for those states without party registration. I will have more on this in the coming days and perhaps will bring Tom back to help you understand how this all works but get ready peeps -- the early vote is about to start coming hot and heavy, giving us an opportunity to run up the score and win these midterms in October -- not in November!

Trump has now dropped to -28 in the FiftyPlusOne job approval tracker for this first time this cycle. It’s just a stunning level of repudiation and rejection for the old, addled, painted, corrupt, malicious -- and REALLY UNPOPULAR -- orange guy:

Further confirming what a year of opportunity this has become for us the NYT dropped five encouraging battleground Senate polls this morning:

The Times also included this helpful chart to remind us that while this data is very encouraging at the end of the day all these races are close, Republicans have a lot more money than we do, and we just have to keep working hard:

Yesterday the Senate GOP SuperPAC paused its ads in North Carolina, essentially conceding the state to Roy Cooper. To understand how worried they are about defending these other states in pausing North Carolina they are hanging Michael Whatley, a former Chair of the RNC itself, out to dry. Abandoning a former RNC Chair a month before Election Day in a state Trump won just two years ago is a clear confirmation how bad things have gotten for the GOP.

The poll result from Kansas, and reports that the GOP SuperPAC is going to start spending there, means we need to start taking Kansas seriously here at Hopium. I know many of you have advocated for us to rally behind Adam Hamilton and I will be doing a deeper dive on this race now and will report back soon.

Yesterday Trump got a very bad jobs report. The economy produced very few jobs last month, and wages barely grew. This morning the country wakes up to a 30 year mortgage now clocking in at almost at annual 7.3% rate. Ugly, ugly stuff for the American people:

Yesterday we also discussed Trump’s escalating attempts to cheat in the 2026 Election. Today we learned that the monies for one of his current avenues of cheating, stealing money from tax payers to run political ads to bolster his image with voters, is coming from Congressional appropriated funds for

border security upgrades, efforts to combat drug trafficking and memorials for officers killed in the line of duty, according to federal spending records.

The NYT also has more reporting on this horrific and illegal abuse of power:

President Trump personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads praising him and his presidency, setting in motion a $20 million contract that used funds from the Department of Homeland Security, according to people familiar with the matter.

The ads have run across cable and network television — on Fox News, CNN and MS Now, with football games on Fox and with national newscasts on CBS, ABC and NBC, including “Meet the Press,” which Mr. Trump is known to watch.

Mr. Trump was eager to see the laudatory ads on the air and told Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to come up with the money from within the government, the people said. Mark Paoletta, the budget office’s counsel, and Will Scharf, the White House counsel, both said it would be legal to use D.H.S. funds. The president and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, both spoke with Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, about the ads.

On Sept. 20, U.S. Customs and Border Protection — which falls under D.H.S. — awarded the contract to LMD, a Maryland marketing firm, federal records show.

Jawdropping stuff, even for Trump. But further signs of how desperate they’ve become, and what a year of opportunity it has become for us……

Which is why it’s that time everyone. Time to……Go Kick These Corrupt Traitors’ Asses, Win The Midterms, And Prepare For The Fuckery To Come -- For It Is Coming (And May Already Be Here)

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

  • Become an Early Vote Champion in your networks, communities, and organizations.
  • Sign up to become a Democracy Protector too. Our next training is this Wednesday, Oct 7th at 10pm ET.
  • Email photos of your electoral work or physical act of voting to community@hopiumchronicles.com or via links on our daily chat. We want to start showcasing them here on Hopium.

 

texas map

New York Times, In Texas, Talarico Inspires a Recurring Blue-Tinted Dream , Robert Draper, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). After a dry spell of more than three decades, Democrats are daring (yet again) to believe they can win one or more top-of-the-ballot races in a vast and stubbornly red state.

In the go-big-or-go-home collective consciousness of Texas, no ambition is deemed too reckless, no daydream too wild. Save perhaps one.

It is the idea, fantastical to many as it is irresistible to others, that the Democrats will win a statewide race in Texas for the first time in 32 years.

According to the latest New York Times/Siena University poll of the race for U.S. Senate, James Talarico, a 37-year-old state legislator seen by national Democrats as one of the breakout stars of this cycle, is ahead of his Republican rival, Ken Paxton, the state’s scandal-plagued attorney general, by six points. The poll was conducted from Sept. 21 to Sept. 30. A survey from mid-September, the ReconMR/Siena Research Institute poll, also showed the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Gina Hinojosa, four points ahead of the three-term G.O.P. incumbent, Greg Abbott, the most dominant political figure in Texas.

Cue the fluttering heartbeats. Cue, as well, the eye-rolls.

Given how thoroughly Republicans have dominated the state, and how the hopes of Democrats have repeatedly crashed, some Texas pollsters remain skeptical.

“At some point, you do get conditioned by all that’s happened in the past,” said James Henson, the director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Politics Project. “I mean, you look at the trends and you have to admit that something’s going on. But you still don’t want to believe your lying eyes, because you’ve been burned for so long.”

 

Desiree Rios

Angela Paxton, a Texas state senator, appeared in a new ad urging Texans to vote for Republicans, including her estranged husband Ken Paxton (New York Times photo by Desiree Rios).

New York Times, As She Divorces Ken Paxton, His Wife Urges Texans to Vote for Him, Lauren McGaughy, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). In a new ad, Angela Paxton tells voters to focus on the “whole team,” not “individual players.”

Angela Paxton wants to clear the air.

Mrs. Paxton, the estranged wife of Ken Paxton, a conservative firebrand locked in a fierce battle for the U.S. Senate seat in Texas, is urging voters in a new ad to back the entire Republican ticket when they go to the polls next month.

While Mrs. Paxton doesn’t mention her husband — whom she is divorcing, alleging adultery — by name in the ad, she addresses “the elephant in the room” by telling voters they should look past their qualms with any single candidate and think about the future of the Republican Party.

“In a general election, it’s not as much about the individual players on the team. It’s about getting the whole team across the finish line,” she said. “Either we hold every Republican seat, or we hand the future of Texas to the other team.”

Mr. Paxton is trailing James Talarico, his Democratic opponent, in every recent poll, including one released by The New York Times and Siena University on Saturday. While Democrats have not won a statewide election in Texas in more than 30 years, Republicans have warned that the Senate race, and others, are more competitive now than in recent memory.

The ad, funded by Texas PAC, a political action committee affiliated with the main super PAC for Senate Republican leaders, could be a further indication of concern about Mr. Paxton’s chances in the race — especially among women. It also indicates that Mrs. Paxton is now part of a broader strategy to bolster the ticket.Get updates when new midterm election polls are added to our poll trackers. When new polling data drops we’ll send an update straight to your inbox. Get it sent to your inbox.

She recently gave a speech to a women’s club in Texas where she made similar remarks.

News Updates

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: rump Enters ‘Desperation Mode,’ Texas is a ‘Five-Alarm Fire,’ Administration Clears Way to Institutionalize Disabled Americans, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 3, 2026. With 31 days until the midterms, Donald Trump is entering desperation mode. In the past 24 hours alone, he appeared to post a Republican senator’s personal cellphone number over daylight saving time, renewed his promise of $5,000 checks if Republicans keep Congress, announced $90 payments to 20 million seniors weeks before Election Day, and told a half-empty arena in Alabama, a state he won by 30 points, to “pretend I’m on the ballot.”

The panic is spreading through his party. Republicans are now on track to spend more than $200 million trying to rescue Ken Paxton in Texas, with one GOP senator calling it “a five-alarm fire,” and Paxton’s own estranged wife, who is divorcing him, appeared in a new ad urging voters to look past “individual players” and support the whole Republican ticket. Plus, new records show the prosecutor in the Cornell case never reviewed witness statements before declining charges, and the Trump administration has walked away from decades-old protections that let disabled Americans live in their communities instead of institutions.

On Monday, I’m publishing my deep-dive investigation into how Trump has used taxpayer money for his own benefit, from the “God Made Trump” ads paid for with border security funds to the checks landing in battleground states, laying out exactly where the money came from, where it went, which laws may have been broken and where investigators should look. It’s the most comprehensive piece I’ve written, and I’ve put my lawyer’s hat back on to do it.

Work like this takes time and resources, and it only happens because readers like you make it possible.

Here’s the news:

Republicans Panic Over the Soaring Cost of Saving Ken Paxton as Trump Posts a GOP Senator’s Phone Number and Rallies to Empty Seats

With his approval at record lows and Republicans privately bracing to lose the House, Trump is entering desperation mode, and the past 24 hours show it. He appeared to post Republican Sen. Tom Cotton’s personal cellphone number on Truth Social, urging Arkansans to call him over his opposition to making daylight saving time permanent. He renewed his promise of $5,000 checks to every adult if Republicans keep the House and Senate, a roughly $1 trillion pledge that 66% of voters call “inappropriate” and 61% don’t believe he’ll deliver, while announcing one-time $90 payments, which he called “nearly $100,” to more than 20 million seniors just weeks before Election Day. He warned that a Democratic victory would bring “a 1929 disaster,” invoking the crash that triggered the Great Depression, and told a Mobile, Alabama, rally to “pretend I’m on the ballot” as entire rows of seats sat empty behind him in a state he won by 30 points. Meanwhile, his Justice Department held a high-profile news conference to announce charges against a Utah mail carrier who admitted dumping mail out of “laziness,” with the acting deputy attorney general insisting, “Remember, folks. Voting fraud is real,” and calling it “just the tip of the iceberg” without offering evidence.

Republicans are panicking over the skyrocketing cost of rescuing Ken Paxton’s Texas Senate campaign, with one GOP senator calling it “a five-alarm fire.” The Senate Leadership Fund poured another $60 million into Texas this week, bringing its spending there to a record $131 million, and with MAGA Inc. and other reservations, outside Republican groups are on track to top $200 million to save Paxton, Politico reports. “This is a slow-moving car crash,” one Texas Republican strategist said, putting the chance of a “catastrophic” outcome for the GOP Senate majority at 75%. GOP operatives in Michigan and New Hampshire are now complaining that money flowing to Texas should be going to their states, with one ally of New Hampshire nominee John Sununu asking, “Why? We’ve never had a problem in Texas.” Most public polling over the past two months shows Democrat James Talarico with an edge, though Paxton released an internal poll showing himself up 48% to 45%.

Senior Republicans have been privately pushing Trump’s team to spend more on Paxton, worried MAGA Inc. won’t come through after his leaked audio trashing Trump’s convention. A Trump operative said MAGA Inc. and its affiliates expect to spend about $45 million in Texas through Oct. 12, up from $20 million, but would not commit to spending beyond that date. The concerns escalated after the New York Times reported audio of Paxton telling donors “everybody’s numbers dropped” after Trump’s Dallas convention, and Trump told a Texas crowd that Paxton “can be a pain in the ass sometimes.” One Republican senator said of Paxton’s unforced errors, “Sometimes, I think [Paxton] wants to lose,” while a Texas Republican official said, “all this spend hasn’t changed anything.” White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles reassured Senate Republicans this week that there will be enough money for competitive races in the final stretch.

As She Divorces Ken Paxton, His Wife Appears in an Ad Urging Texans to Vote for the GOP Ticket. Angela Paxton, a Republican state senator divorcing Ken Paxton on grounds of alleged adultery, appears in a new ad urging Texans to back the entire Republican ticket, telling voters, “it’s not as much about the individual players on the team. It’s about getting the whole team across the finish line.” She doesn’t mention her husband by name, but addresses “the elephant in the room,” warning, “Either we hold every Republican seat, or we hand the future of Texas to the other team.” The ad, funded by a PAC affiliated with Senate Republicans’ main super PAC, comes as Paxton trails Democrat James Talarico in every recent poll, including a New York Times/Siena poll released Saturday, and signals GOP concern about his standing with women. At a recent speech to Republican women, Angela Paxton acknowledged the party has “some vulnerabilities on our ballot” that have been “particularly alienating to women,” though her spokesman has declined to say whether she’ll vote for her husband. Paxton, who has weathered a fraud indictment, impeachment on bribery and abuse of office charges and other scandals without a conviction, denies wrongdoing, while his campaign released its own ad this week featuring his daughter Mattie.

Trump appeared to post Republican Sen. Tom Cotton’s personal cellphone number on Truth Social, urging Arkansans to call him over his opposition to making daylight saving time permanent. “Tom Cotton, a friend of mine, is holding up a very important Bill,” Trump wrote of the Sunshine Protection Act, adding, “Call Tom on his cellphone... and let him know.” In a third post, Trump said if Cotton “were putting Arkansas first, he would give them an extra hour of daylight.” Cotton fired back that Congress has enacted permanent daylight saving time before and repealed it “once Americans experienced absurdly late sunrises in the winter,” adding, “Arkansans don’t want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I’ll always put Arkansas first.” The House passed the bill in July with bipartisan support, but the Senate has yet to take it up, and Trump has also touted support from PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp, who he said needs it so golf tournaments don’t “run out of sunlight.”

Trump spoke to rows of empty seats at a rally in Mobile, Alabama, failing to fill a 10,041-seat arena in a state he won by 30 points. The Daily Beast reported that entire rows behind the president at the University of South Alabama’s Mitchell Center sat empty as he tried to rally support for Republicans ahead of the midterms. The sparse crowd came even as Trump bragged at the rally that he had received “the highest vote total of any candidate in Alabama history.” Alabama Democrats had cast the visit as a sign of GOP nerves, with gubernatorial nominee Doug Jones saying Trump “sees what we’re doing in this state.” It’s the latest stop in a campaign swing through deep-red states that has also taken Trump to Texas and Oklahoma, rather than traditional battlegrounds.

Cornell DA Never Reviewed Witness Statements Before Declining Charges, as Data Shows the University Rarely Expels Students for Sexual Assault

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten based his decision not to charge anyone in the alleged Cornell gang rape on Jane Doe’s initial six-page statement, without reviewing witness interviews and other evidence police collected, according to records obtained by NBC News. On Nov. 25, 2024, when a campus police investigator approached his office about interviews they’d conducted, an investigator in Van Houten’s office replied that several attorneys “had read [Jane Doe’s] statement” and “all agreed that, based on [Jane Doe’s] statement, criminal charges would not be pursued.” Van Houten told NBC “there was nothing to review” because the kathy hochul 2017interviews flagged were frat members “declining to speak on the advice of their attorney,” but he didn’t respond when asked whether he knew about interviews with other fraternity members or tips from callers. Gov. Kathy Hochul, left, announcing Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor, asked, “In what world does the district attorney not even interview her or anyone else involved, or even request the full transcript?” Jane Doe has sued Cornell and seven Chi Phi members, alleging they sexually assaulted her over several hours while she was under the influence of ketamine, alcohol and marijuana.

New records also show Jane Doe wasn’t told about the decision not to prosecute for nearly two months, and her lawyer says she missed a critical chance to preserve evidence. Police informed her of the DA’s Nov. 25 decision only on Jan. 21, 2025, and her attorney, Thomas Giuffra, said she believed during that time that “they were still investigating,” adding, “If so, that is worse than I thought.” Van Houten said his office had “no part in the timing” and never interviewed her. Giuffra said that shortly after the alleged assault, she went to the university health center for a urinary tract infection she described as being “of a traumatic origin” but was not offered a rape kit, which he called “the first failure post assault when she was trying to get help,” noting DNA might have been recoverable within 48 hours. She underwent a sexual assault exam two weeks later, and Cornell did not immediately respond to NBC’s request for comment.

The records reveal police obtained part of a Snapchat thread in which one fraternity member announced there was “free p----” in the room where the alleged assault occurred. Van Houten said that material came from a witness rather than police, so there was “nothing to review.” But on Nov. 26, 2024, the day after the DA’s decision, police requested a fuller data history from Snapchat and received 1,665 pieces of data from five accounts in December. A campus police investigator wrote that only three snaps included Jane Doe or mentioned the incident and that none showed “anything that can be construed as being criminal in nature.” It’s unclear whether Van Houten knew about the request, and the attorney general’s office is now reviewing whether charges are warranted.

A USA TODAY analysis found Cornell rarely expels or suspends students accused of sexual violence, even as reported assaults on campus appear to be rising. Of more than 1,200 incidents of sexual assault, dating and domestic violence and stalking reported to Cornell’s Title IX office from 2018 to 2024, the school filed disciplinary charges in 162 cases, found someone responsible in 51, and issued just 14 suspensions and seven expulsions, with most of those found at fault receiving sanctions like probation or training. Cornell suspended or expelled people found responsible only 41% of the time, compared with 59% across 26 large New York colleges. Meanwhile, Cornell’s campus climate survey found 35% of undergraduate women reported unwanted sexual contact or penetration in 2025, up from 23% in 2023, even as reports to the Title IX office fell 41% from their 2018 peak. “Those two trendlines tell me that all students, including victims and perpetrators, believe that there is impunity for sexual assault at Cornell,” sociologist Nicole Bedera said, as the Trump administration formally reinstated its 2020 Title IX rules, which made it harder for schools to find students at fault, on Sept. 28.

Trump Administration Abandons Decades-Old Protections Letting Disabled Americans Live in Their Communities Instead of Institutions

A federal judge stripped “integration” requirements from a landmark disability rights regulation after the Trump administration switched sides in a lawsuit and asked the court to throw out its own rules. For nearly 50 years, federal regulations under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act have required federally funded programs to serve people with disabilities in “the most integrated setting” possible, rather than in nursing homes or institutions. The case, Texas v. Kennedy, began in 2024 as a challenge by Republican-led states to Biden-era protections for transgender people, but it morphed into an attack on the integration mandate, and by September the Trump administration joined the remaining five states, Alaska, Florida, Louisiana, Montana and Texas, in asking the court to strike it. “It is pretty significant and pretty unprecedented to see the federal government asking a court to vacate its own rules,” said disability rights lawyer Jennifer Mathis. Bruce Darling of the Center for Disability Rights said the ruling felt “like a knife in your chest,” adding that people are hearing the federal government “has made a determination that [disabled people] don’t have a right to live in freedom, that they can be locked up against their will.”

The ruling is part of a broader retreat from enforcement that is already hitting families, including medically fragile children in Florida. In June, the Justice Department issued an opinion saying it no longer reads federal law to require states to serve disabled people in the most integrated setting, even acknowledging its position is “out of step with the common understanding” of the Supreme Court’s 1999 Olmstead decision. In August, the department asked a court to throw out its own 2023 victory requiring Florida to provide in-home care so children with complex medical needs wouldn’t be placed in nursing facilities, and it dropped out of a long-running case over Texas allegedly placing thousands of disabled people in nursing homes. Mathis called the Florida reversal “incredibly heartless,” saying it means “ripping children away from families” and forcing them “to grow up in an institution.” The states argue the rules restricted how they could spend strained Medicaid budgets, with Florida’s attorney general’s office saying it joined the suit “to serve as a check on federal power, not to deny care,” while experts warn that without federal enforcement, disabled people may have to sue states themselves to get services.

Disability advocates say the right to community living still exists under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Olmstead, but “the right is only as good as the enforcement,” and they’re fighting back as the administration also targets disabled voters. A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a resolution reaffirming Olmstead, 100 members of Congress have urged the Justice Department to rescind its June opinion, and Delaware has already written the stripped regulations into state law, with George Washington University professor Alison Barkoff saying at least a dozen state leaders have called her about doing the same. Advocates are also pushing the bipartisan Latonya Reeves Freedom Act to codify the integration mandate in federal law. At the same time, a proposed rule from Russell Vought’s budget office would bar federal grant money from being used for voter registration drives, threatening $10 million a year Congress provides to help people with disabilities register, which ProPublica reports has helped narrow the voting gap affecting about 740,000 disabled voters. A former OMB general counsel called the voter rule “a massive across-the-board power grab,” while Cravins, a Louisiana mother whose toddler with Down syndrome relies on publicly funded therapies at home, put the stakes simply: “This affects children, this affects adults, it affects your elderly parents. It affects everyone.”

Other news:

Ted Cruz Calls JD Vance “Insecure” as Their 2028 Rivalry Spills Into Public. Sen. Ted Cruz fired back at JD Vance, right,jd vance oon Saturday after the vice president told NBC News, “It is really obvious to me that, at this very moment, Ted Cruz is running for president,” while insisting he himself is focused on electing Republicans. “In my experience, people engage in political bomb-throwing when they’re feeling insecure,” Cruz told Politico, adding that he’s focused on “helping us win on Election Day in the next 30 days.” Cruz pointed to his campaign travel in Georgia, Iowa, Nebraska, South Carolina and Texas, with trips planned to Alaska, Florida and North Carolina, and boasted that no Republican has campaigned for more candidates over the past decade. He also noted the irony that he “spent a full day on the road with JD Vance” during his 2022 Ohio Senate race, saying, “I was very glad to help him.” The clash comes as Vance is widely seen as the GOP’s 2028 frontrunner, though Cruz has said he doesn’t believe Vance is a sure thing and that he’ll “certainly be part of the discussion.”

Moldova’s President Slams Russia After Missile and Drone Debris Explodes on Moldovan Soil. Moldovan President Maia Sandu condemned Russia on Saturday after three missiles and two drones violated the country’s airspace during a Russian attack on Ukraine, with debris exploding on Moldovan territory. “Its war is dangerously reaching Moldova,” Sandu wrote, saying the weapons, including Banderol missiles, “violated our airspace and exploded on our soil.” Fragments were found in the eastern districts of Hincesti, Anenii Noi and Causeni, sparking a fire but causing no casualties, while Russian attacks across Ukraine killed at least eight civilians and injured 83 over the past day. It’s the latest in a string of incidents for Moldova’s pro-EU government, which faced three separate airspace violations last Wednesday alone. Meanwhile, Lithuania briefly shut down Vilnius airport and scrambled NATO jets Saturday after a dangerous object was spotted in its skies, possibly crossing from Belarus, as Europe faces a growing wave of airspace violations, sabotage attempts and hybrid attacks tied to Russia.

tennessee map

Tennessee’s top prison official is resigning after the botched execution of Christa Pike, days after reports revealed he oversaw five “botched” executions across two states. Gov. Bill Lee announced Saturday that Corrections Commissioner Frank Strada will step down later this month as the state launches an independent investigation into what went wrong. Strada said he still believes the department “carried out its responsibilities in accordance with the established protocol,” but that stepping aside “is in the best interest of Tennesseans as the independent review moves forward.” Pike remains unconscious and on a ventilator, with her lawyers saying hospital staff are working to clear the two doses of pentobarbital from her system, which they believe entered her tissue rather than her bloodstream because of IV complications. “Frank Strada’s resignation does not change the fact that Tennessee is shrouding its executions in secrecy,” said federal public defender Kit Thomas, noting Strada’s troubled Arizona record “was well known” when Lee hired him. The head of the US Campaign to End the Death Penalty said advocates had long warned the governor about the state’s execution process, adding, “They were ignored,” while Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of classmate Colleen Slemmer, would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

A Florida jury acquitted former sheriff’s deputy Eddie Duran in the fatal shooting of Roger Fortson, a Black Air Force airman killed in his own apartment after a false domestic disturbance call. The jury deliberated for about two hours after a four-day trial before finding Duran not guilty of manslaughter with a firearm, a charge that carried up to 30 years in prison. Body camera footage showed Fortson answered the door holding a handgun pointed at the ground, and Duran fired multiple times before telling him to drop it. Duran, who was fired from the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office after the shooting, had his lawyer argue he was “doing his job” and that Fortson would still be alive if he hadn’t armed himself before answering the door. Fortson’s mother said she wasn’t surprised by the quick verdict and that the trial forced her to confront details she’d spent two years avoiding, adding, “I’m never going to hear my baby’s voice no more.” Attorney Ben Crump said the family will pursue accountability through a pending federal civil rights lawsuit, saying, “Roger’s life and his service will always matter.”

The Coast Guard is searching for an air ambulance jet with six people aboard that disappeared off the coast of Massachusetts during a medical evacuation flight from Bermuda to Boston. The FAA issued a search-and-rescue alert for the Canadian-registered Gulfstream G-100 around 1:20 a.m. Saturday after it lost contact, with four crew members and two passengers on board. Air and surface crews are searching an area off Nantucket, and ABC News reported, citing a source, that officials believe the plane rapidly descended 7,500 feet before hitting the water and that no Americans were aboard. The operator, Latitude Air Ambulance, said a delay in hearing from its crew “doesn’t mean that the worst has happened.” Massachusetts port officials confirmed the plane never arrived at Boston Logan, saying, “Our thoughts are with those onboard and their loved ones as the search continues.” The FAA is coordinating with the Coast Guard and the Rescue Coordination Center, and the identities of those on board have not been released.

The TSA is banning airport security officers from sitting down while checking travelers’ IDs and boarding passes, drawing fierce pushback from their union. The agency said the change keeps officers “on their feet and alert” and reinforces “our commitment to hospitality,” adding that all officers must meet fitness-for-duty requirements. The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents TSA officers, said it wasn’t consulted and that the chairs provide “basic ergonomic and safety support” for workers standing on hard surfaces all day, calling the move “basic safety and common decency for the workforce.” The union called it part of “a broad pattern” of disregard for employees, and urged workers and lawmakers to join a “collective resistance against this regime that is literally attempting to take out our workforce.” The change comes after a brutal year for TSA workers, who went unpaid for weeks during a 76-day government shutdown that drove some to quit and caused security lines to balloon. The union is also weighing legal action against the administration’s push to privatize security checkpoints at three airports.

Southern California is sweltering under a late-season heatwave, with temperatures expected to hover near 100 degrees in downtown Los Angeles and climb well into the triple digits inland. The National Weather Service expects temperatures 15 to 20 degrees above normal to last at least a week, raising the risk of heat-related illness and wildfires amid low soil moisture. A UCLA professor said Friday was nearly 7 degrees hotter than the hottest Oct. 2 on record and about 30 degrees above the historical average. Experts say the heat is being fueled by a marine heatwave driving a strong El Niño, and that climate change is making longer, more intense heatwaves more frequent, with one UCLA physicist saying, “it’s hard to escape that a warmer climate adds to the strength of heatwaves.” The one silver lining is that forecasts don’t call for the strong winds that would spread wildfires, though officials are urging residents to “stay cool, stay hydrated” and limit sun exposure. The heat coincides with Saturday’s first game of the Dodgers-Braves National League Division Series, and one researcher urged governments to invest in shade, calling it the “most effective way to keep people safe.”

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

 

Fascist leaders Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of German, and U.S. President Donald Trump

Fascist leaders Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of German, and U.S. President Donald Trump.

CounterPunch.org, Nuremberg’s Warning: When Law Legitimates the Machinery of Authoritarianism, Henry Giroux, Oct. 2, 2026. The legacy of Nuremberg is with us once again, less as a reminder of the power of the legal system to punish those who enabled and enacted the horrors of Nazi Germany than as a warning that the spirit of Nuremberg must be reclaimed as a moral and political imperative.

That spirit matters at a time when the U.S. Supreme Court is increasingly turning the law into an instrument of reactionary concentrated power, desecrating morality, crippling the foundations of democracy, and reproducing the worst dimensions of gangster capitalism.

Nuremberg made clear that judges and other officials cannot use the authority of law to cover up and legitimate actions that are morally depraved and politically destructive. Its lesson for the present is stark: when law is emptied of justice and used to normalize cruelty, annihilate democratic rights, and place concentrated power beyond accountability, legality itself becomes a weapon in the destruction of democracy. The reactionary Court has become part of a political order whose governing ethos increasingly resembles what Jeet Heer, writing of Trump, calls being “besotted by the romance of gangsterism.”

The recent Supreme Court ruling allowing the Trump administration to expand the use of its citizenship-verification database is more than another dispute over how elections should be administered. By a 6–3 vote, the Court lifted a lower-court order blocking the Department of Homeland Security from using an expanded version of the SAVE database, now linked to Social Security records, to assist states in checking voter eligibility. The danger is hardly abstract. As Stephen Prager reports in Common Dreams, the database contains known errors, raising the possibility that “many eligible voters may be at risk of having their voter registration wrongfully cancelled just weeks before midterm” elections.

The immediate electoral consequences may nevertheless be limited: federal law generally prohibits systematic removals from voter rolls within 90 days of a federal election. That safeguard does not eliminate the risks of erroneous removals or the privacy concerns raised by the plaintiffs, but it constrains the scale of systematic voter purges in the weeks immediately preceding the election. The ruling does not require states to use the system, and the underlying legal dispute remains unresolved, though the Court signaled its preliminary view of the merits, stating that the challengers’ claims “likely lack merit” and that it would likely reverse the district court’s finding that the administration had violated federal law.

Nor has the Court simply rubber-stamped every administration effort to rewrite election rules: earlier this month, it blocked Trump’s attempt to impose sweeping new restrictions on mail voting before the midterms. The significance of the latest ruling therefore lies not in claiming that every decision moves in the same authoritarian direction, but in confronting what happens when the nation’s highest court repeatedly removes barriers to concentrated power, strengthens an increasingly authoritarian presidency, and provides legal cover for a political project that attacks voting rights, intensifies racial exclusion, and aligns the machinery of the state with white-nationalist politics. What is being placed at risk is not simply constitutional restraint, but democracy itself.

Yet the significance of these decisions cannot be grasped if they are treated simply as isolated legal disputes. Walter Benjamin’s notion of “profane illumination” offers another way of reading them: the particular can suddenly illuminate the larger social forces condensed within it. As AK Thompson, drawing on Benjamin, argues, particular events can alert us to “the broader social process from which [they] derive.”

Read in this way, the Court’s rulings are not merely discrete constitutional decisions. They are fragments of a larger political transformation in which concentrated executive power, racial exclusion, the political power of wealth, attacks on voting rights, and the weakening of democratic restraints increasingly converge. The task is not to claim that every ruling is fascist, but to recognize what these decisions illuminate when viewed together: the emergence of a political order in which democratic institutions are increasingly reorganized to serve authoritarian ends. Fascism becomes visible not simply in a single spectacular act, but in the accumulation of institutional changes that make concentrated power appear lawful, ordinary, and legitimate.

The danger becomes clearer when law itself ceases to restrain authoritarian power and begins to legitimate it. That is why Germany in 1933 matters—not as a historical equivalent, but as a warning about what happens when legality itself is turned against democracy.

The comparison with Hitler’s Enabling Act of March 1933 must therefore be made carefully. The situations are not equivalent. Passed amid intimidation, political repression, and the exclusion of Communist deputies, the Enabling Act allowed Hitler’s government to make laws without parliamentary approval, even when they violated the Weimar Constitution. It did not merely weaken German democracy. It supplied the legal machinery for destroying it.

The point lies not in equating the two moments but in recognizing a political mechanism. Fascism does not need to abolish the law to seize and weaponize its authority. The Nazis captured courts, the civil service, education, culture, and administrative institutions and bent them toward authoritarian ends. Democracy was not attacked from outside. Its own institutions were seized, emptied of their democratic substance, and turned against the people they were supposed to protect.

After visiting the National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam, legal scholar Kim Wehle observed fascism does not always arrive through spectacular acts of force; it can also advance “by operation of law.” The historical warning should be taken seriously. Authoritarian power becomes especially dangerous when repression no longer appears as a violation of legal authority but is enabled through it, drawing upon the legitimacy, procedures, and institutional protections of law itself. The warning resonates in the present: in the expansion of detention and mass-deportation machinery, the military occupation of American cities, overt and dangerous attacks on free speech and the press, and the political cleansing of educational institutions. What was once unthinkable is being transformed into policy, while cruelty becomes routine and authoritarianism is woven into the everyday machinery of the state and everyday life.

German judges offer a particularly chilling example. The judiciary did not mount a serious institutional resistance to the Nazi seizure of power. Much of the legal establishment accommodated itself to the new regime. Dictatorship thereby acquired one of its most powerful weapons: the appearance of legality. Law remained in place, but its political function changed. It authorized power in the service of domination and mass destruction rather than restraining it.

But the question is not simply how authoritarian governments capture the law. It is whose interests the law protects, whose power it strengthens, and whose suffering it renders invisible. Fascism cannot be understood solely as the triumph of authoritarian leaders or the collapse of constitutional safeguards. Its history is inseparable from the relationship among political repression, class power, and the economic interests that support and benefit from authoritarianrule.

That is where the warning reaches the present. No single Supreme Court ruling is an American Enabling Act. The danger lies in accumulation: voting protections weakened, presidential power enlarged, the political power of concentrated wealth fortified, and the capacity to challenge executive power narrowed. What is being transformed is not simply constitutional doctrine but the political function of the Court itself. An institution charged with checking concentrated power is increasingly constructing the legal architecture that enables it.

Chief Justice John Roberts has rejected the charge that the Court has become a political institution, complaining that too many Americans now view the justices as “political actors.”

But the deeper issue is not whether the justices behave like elected politicians. It is whether the Court is using the authority of law to make authoritarianism appear constitutionally legitimate. When voting rights are weakened, presidential immunity expanded, concentrated wealth granted greater political power, and barriers to executive authority dismantled, the Court does more than interpret law: it alters the conditions under which democracy can survive. Law becomes a weapon of concentrated power, and constitutional authority becomes its shield. It is not merely failing democracy. It is helping to construct the legal machinery for its destruction. The abuse of law does more than legitimate a culture of cruelty; it helps make cruelty appear normal. As Susan Neiman argues in Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era, one of the great dangers of the present moment lies in the normalization of evil, a process through which cruelty becomes ordinary, injustice appears acceptable, and the unthinkable acquires the force of common sense. When cruelty and state violence are sanctioned by law, the terror of the unthinkable is absorbed into the language of common sense. Images of Gestapo-like ICE agents beating peaceful protesters become just another spectacle in the daily flow of violence, stripping brutality of its capacity to shock, outrage, and provoke resistance. What follows is the slow death of conscience itself.

The Court has increasingly shifted power upward, away from voters, legislatures, lower courts, and independent agencies and toward the presidency and the Court itself. In this sense, it has become a criminogenic institution: not because its justices themselves are criminals, but because its decisions can create the legal conditions under which abuses of power become harder to prevent, challenge, or punish. Under such circumstances, democracy is being strangled and the guardrails meant to protect it have become instruments for disabling it.

Citizens United v. FEC (2010) struck down restrictions on independent political expenditures by corporations and unions, vastly expanding the ability of private wealth to shape electoral politics. It did not formally declare that “corporations are people” or authorize unlimited direct corporate contributions to candidates. It did something more politically consequential: it strengthened the constitutional power of corporations and concentrated wealth to shape political speech, allowing economic power to exercise an increasingly powerful influence over politics and democratic life.

Elon Musk’s expenditure of more than a quarter-billion dollars supporting Trump and Republican candidates in 2024 offers a stark illustration of the political world that followed. There is a longer and darker history at work here. The Supreme Court has repeatedly stood not outside the history of American white supremacy but within it. Dred Scottconstitutionalized Black exclusion from citizenship; the post-Reconstruction Court helped destroy federal protections for Black freedom; and Plessy gave Jim Crow the sanction of constitutional law. The Warren Court broke decisively with important parts of that history, but the Roberts Court has driven the country backward. Representative Jamie Raskin puts the point starkly, arguing that the Court has “returned to the historic baseline of political White supremacy,” particularly through its dismantling of voting-rights protections. The language has changed, but the political work of racial domination does not require the vocabulary of Dred Scott or Plessy. It can operate through the allegedly neutral language of colorblindness, states’ rights, electoral integrity, and constitutional restraint—stripping history from the law while disabling the democratic means for confronting the racial hierarchies that history produced.

That history bears directly on the Court’s assault on voting rights. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Court struck down the coverage formula that made the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance system operative, disabling one of the law’s most powerful protections against discriminatory voting rules. Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021) narrowed the terrain further by making certain Section 2 challenges to voting restrictions more difficult.

In Louisiana v. Callais (2026), the Court went further, holding that Section 2 did not require Louisiana to create the additional majority-Black district at issue and that the resulting race-based district could not survive constitutional scrutiny. The decision further narrowed the legal terrain on which racial representation and voting rights can be defended.

The Court’s assault on established rights has extended beyond voting. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), it overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, eliminating the federal constitutional right to abortion that had stood for nearly half a century and returning the power to regulate abortion to the states. Dobbs was more than the destruction of a longstanding reproductive right. It demonstrated the willingness of the Court’s conservative majority to use its power to strip away an established constitutional protection on which generations of women had relied.

The Court has simultaneously enlarged presidential power. In Trump v. United States (2024), it created a constitutional doctrine of presidential criminal immunity: absolute immunity for actions within the president’s core constitutional authority and at least presumptive immunity for other official acts, while leaving unofficial conduct unprotected. The decision fundamentally altered presidential accountability by giving presidents new constitutional protection against criminal prosecution for exercises of official power.

The pattern has only intensified. In Trump v. CASA (2025), the Court sharply restricted the power of lower federal courts to issue universal injunctions against executive action. In Trump v. Slaughter (2026), it expanded presidential control over independent regulatory agencies. In National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC (2026), it struck down limits on coordinated spending between political parties and candidates. And now, with the citizenship-database ruling, the Court has allowed the administration, while litigation continues, to expand a system that states can use to challenge voter eligibility. Different cases, different doctrines, but the same political trajectory: power concentrated in the presidency, protected for the wealthy, and increasingly insulated from democratic constraint.

The Enabling Act helped clear the way for Gleichschaltung, the coordination of German political, social, and cultural life with the Nazi state. Political parties disappeared, trade unions were abolished, state governments were subordinated, the civil service was purged, and education, law, culture, and professional life were brought under Nazi control. Within six months, Germany had ceased to be a multiparty democracy.

The question, then, is not whether the United States is Germany in 1933. History does not repeat itself on command; instead, it leaves warnings written in its ruins. Primo Levi understood this with extraordinary clarity when he warned that “every age has its own fascism,” whose signs appear wherever “the concentration of power denies citizens the possibility and the means of expressing and acting on their own free will.” Fascism, in this sense, need not return wearing the uniform of the past. It emerges through the institutions, technologies, fears, and forms of power particular to its own historical moment.

The ghost of Nuremberg nevertheless hangs over this history. Among the lesser-known proceedings that followed the trials of the major Nazi leaders was the 1947 Jurists’ Trial, in which judges, prosecutors, and officials of the Reich Ministry of Justice were prosecuted for their participation in a legal system that had transformed persecution and state violence into instruments of law. The analogy must not be abused: the crimes prosecuted at Nuremberg and the decisions of the present Supreme Court are not historical equivalents. But the principle that emerged from those proceedings remains indispensable. Judicial office does not place those who wield the law beyond questions of responsibility. The robe cannot become a sanctuary from accountability when law itself is turned into an instrument of authoritarian power. As the judgment in the Nuremberg Jurists’ Trial put it with unforgettable force, “The dagger of the assassin was concealed beneath the robe of the jurist.”

The lesson for the present is not that America requires another Nuremberg tribunal. It is that democracy cannot survive if those who exercise immense judicial power are imagined to stand beyond democratic accountability simply because their decisions arrive clothed in the language of constitutional law. The deeper question raised by the Roberts Court is therefore not simply whether particular rulings are conservative, reactionary, or profoundly unjust. It is what forms of accountability become necessary when a nation’s highest court repeatedly uses the authority of law to dismantle the very conditions that make democratic accountability possible in the first place.

That question cannot be separated from the politics of memory. As Marcelo Rubens Paiva argued in a 2015 interview cited in Cristina Buarque de Hollanda and José Szwako’s Disputed Pasts, “not having a Nuremberg trial in Brazil in the 1980s contaminated the process of democratization and our current democracy.” The warning is crucial. The demands of resistance must also include the work of remembrance: counting, documenting, preserving, and publicly naming the legal abuses, democratic injuries, and moral violations committed under the cover of institutional authority. The record must be kept, not for vengeance, but because democracy cannot defend itself against abuses it has been taught to forget. There can be no manufactured innocence for those who use the authority of their offices to legitimate the machinery of authoritarian power, and no political amnesty purchased through national amnesia.

That is why the struggle over law is also a struggle over memory, responsibility, and the future. When institutions created to restrain power are reorganized to serve it; when courts turn domination into doctrine; when concentrated wealth acquires constitutional protection while democratic rights are stripped away; and when authoritarian measures no longer need to violate the law because they arrive bearing its authority, silence becomes a form of complicity and forgetting becomes an invitation to normalize once again the cruelties, crimes, and authoritarian practices that memory was meant to prevent.

What is often missed in analyzing law as an instrument of domination is its role as a pedagogical force. Law does more than prohibit, punish, and exclude. It teaches people who counts as a political agent, who has access to power, and who has the right to participate in decisions that shape their lives. When law becomes a mechanism of exclusion and disposability, it denies particular groups both political rights and access to the institutions and public spaces in which they can understand how power works, develop a critical consciousness, imagine alternatives, and create solidarities through social movements, education, and cultural work. Legalized illegalities function as forms of exclusion that weaken the conditions in which people learn to interpret their experiences, understand their place within relations of power, and act collectively to change them. This repressive use of the law restricts political agency while also attacking the conditions necessary for its development. This is a form of pedagogical terrorism in which law is used to weaken the knowledge, social relations, and collective capacities necessary to recognize, resist, and transform oppressive relations of power.

There is an even more ominous logic at work here, one that moves beyond the politics of disposability toward what Brad Evans and I have called a politics of disappearance (forthcoming in Theory, Culture,& Society). Disposability abandons populations deemed economically or politically surplus; disappearance goes further by erasing the social, legal, historical, and moral conditions through which their lives can be publicly recognized and their suffering made visible. The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to temporarily allow the Trump administration to resume third-country deportations makes this distinction especially urgent. Migrants can now be sent to countries with which they have no connection, without the protections required by the lower court to contest the danger of persecution or torture. Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned in the Court’s earlier intervention in the same litigation that the policy could expose “thousands to the risk of torture or death.” This is more than a politics of expulsion. It points toward a politics of disappearance historically associated with fascist and authoritarian regimes, in which those marked as unwanted are removed from the spaces of legal protection, public visibility, and moral responsibility. They enter what might be called a “vortex of erasure,” where criminalization, surveillance, detention, bureaucratic exclusion, forced removal, and organized forgetting reinforce one another.

Recognizing how law can be turned into an instrument of authoritarian power also raises the question of what will be required to undo the damage it has sanctioned and made possible. Fascism does not always announce itself by smashing the legal order. It can advance by capturing that order, hollowing it out, and turning the machinery of democracy against democracy itself. If democracy is ever to be rebuilt from the damage of the present, the task will not be to forgive and forget in the name of national unity, civility, or a return to normal. It will be to remember, to document, to judge, and, where the law permits, to hold accountable those responsible for abuses of power. No amnesia. No manufactured innocence. No impunity. Without truth and accountability, there can be no democratic future.

Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department in Canada and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His most recent books include: The Terror of the Unforeseen (Los Angeles Review of books, 2019).

More On Campus Rape, #MeToo Claims

joyce vance civil discourse logoCivil Discourse, Legal Analysis: Jane Doe, Joyce Vance, right, joyce vanceOct. 3-4, 2026. Jane Doe is the name by which we know the young woman who has come forward to say she was gang raped in a room at the Chi Phi fraternity house while she was a student at Cornell in 2024.

Following the incident, the local DA looked at the case but has not prosecuted. Jane Doe filed a 101-page civil lawsuit, which sparked outrage as her allegations came to light. Last Thursday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul appointed state Attorney General Letitia James as special counsel, saying she’d lost confidence in the local DA.

The situation is complicated. Looking at news reports and media appearances by people involved, there appears to be a difference in who had access to what evidence when the DA appears to have decided against going forward, depending on whether you’re hearing from Cornell, local law enforcement authorities, or the DA himself. It makes sense to bring in a new prosecutor who can look at the evidence with fresh eyes and make independent decisions about whether there is sufficient evidence to prosecute a criminal case and, if so, against which potential defendants and on what charges.

Some of the evidence in the case which has been made publicly available is horrific, like a screen shot from a Snapchat conversation that uses language more reminiscent of a sex trafficking organization than a college party. But rape cases are often complicated, and here, there will be issues of consent and intoxication among others that will have to be carefully parsed based on the evidence and New York state law. And like so many victims of sexual assault, Jane Doe’s immediate reaction was to blame herself before she slowly came to see herself as a victim. That pattern complicates prosecutive decision-making.

For instance, when it comes to consent, Jane Doe’s civil complaint sets out one of the issues prosecutors will have to grapple with.

New York’s college standards require affirmative consent. Consent can be initially given but then withdrawn. Although there have been reports that suggest that Jane Doe voluntarily went to the fraternity and had a prior relationship with at least one of the men involved, the civil case argues she was incapable of consent at the time sexual conduct occurred because of her incapacity due to alcohol and the ingestion of other drugs that she suggests they induced her to take. To further complicate matters, the standard for consent in New York can depend on whether a victim was voluntarily intoxicated. But under New York law, when consent can no longer be given, sexual activity must stop.

This shows why a thorough investigation is essential. Prosecutors cannot make a decision about whether they have a case until they understand precisely what happened. And while the question that underlies an investigation like this is whether a crime or crimes were committed, the real question prosecutors have to answer is “can we prove it beyond a reasonable doubt to a unanimous jury?” But the fact that rape cases can be difficult to prosecute doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be pursued. The facts must be assembled, the law assessed, and a decision made on that basis and no other.

There will be a lot of evidence for AG James to consider:

  • Police interviews with Jane Doe and others.
  • The Title IX investigative file—Federal law requires institutions that receive any federal funds to conduct a formal administrative inquiry into allegations of sexual assault, which can include victim, witness, and potential defendant statements among other materials.
  • Any additional material in possession of the University, for instance, other allegations of misconduct involving the fraternity.
  • Additional materials generated by the DA
  • Any relevant statements made to the media.

After evaluating the available evidence, James will likely have additional leads she will want investigators to run down for her. She may try to interview key figures. And because there are multiple possible defendants involved, she may try to develop a cooperating co-defendant.

But it’s important that we not prejudge the evidence and jump to the conclusion that a crime was committed and that it’s prosecutable. A rush to judgment isn’t helpful. Accusations have been made. Now it’s time to let a prosecutor with every reason to give Jane Doe the serious consideration she deserves a chance to do the work. Mimi Rocah, the former District Attorney in Westchester County New York, as well as a former federal prosecutor put it like this, “I hope that AG James conducts an investigation that everyone can have faith in. Not everyone will agree with the outcome whatever it is - but a fair process is essential to faith in the justice system going forward.”

In the civil lawsuit, Jane Doe alleges that Cornell, Chi Phi, Delta Delta Delta (her sorority), and others, including alumni and board members, failed to protect her “from being sexually assaulted and raped by multiple members of the Xi Chapter of Chi Phi Fraternity at Cornell University.” She also names individual defendants who she alleges committed “heinous criminal sexual acts against Plaintiff.” There are additional claims, including breach of contract and New York state law violations.

This case comes at a time when Americans have been actively reconsidering how we, as a society, approach sexual assaults and sex crimes. It started with the Me Too movement. The Epstein survivors forced many people to open their eyes, and E. Jean Carroll’s successful civil cases against Donald Trump raised the issue of why a woman might go decades before coming forward to accuse a man who assaulted her. This case forces us to look at an issue that people know has been overlooked for far too long—sexual assault on college campuses. As Jane Doe writes in her civil complaint, “she never knew that the University had been the scene of numerous incidents of sexual assault and rape in the months and years prior to her arrival. Students were afraid, protesting, and demanding reforms.” By the time she started school, Cornell was advising students on campus and “implementing anti-sexual violence training in the University’s Greek houses, advising incoming students about the risks of sexual assault and harassment in college, and offering support services to victims/survivors.” Cornell, of course, is not alone.

But unfortunately, instead of aggressively pursuing Title IX cases and its other authorities, the Trump administration has abandoned campus sexual assault cases to pursue its anti-trans agenda. As my former DOJ Civil Rights Division colleague Shaheena Simons posted on LinkedIn, “I post a lot about what my former DOJ office is doing on higher education. Here’s what they are not doing: They have not announced a single Title IX investigation, finding or resolution about campus sexual assault. The gutted Department of Education has similarly turned its back. Instead, DOJ’s (and ED’s) Title IX agenda is laser-focused on directing harm and hostility at trans students. This is how they purport to protect women and girls in schools.” She noted candidly that while prior efforts “weren’t ever enough and they weren’t always perfect … we prioritized students and we conducted fair and careful investigations.” Today, we have only a state investigation and a private civil case, with no federal action.

So we struggle with this issue, as with so many others, in an environment where the federal government turns a blind eye to important societal matters. The criminal investigation, along with the civil case, will be important to Jane Doe and to the men accused of raping her. But it will also have significance as we try to evolve our culture in the absence of leadership from the White House. Rachel Foster, a leading anti-trafficking attorney known for her work with the Epstein survivors, for which she was named to the Time100 list of the world's most influential people in 2026, put it like this: “Hopefully it will crack open something that needs to be cracked open.”

There is lots more to come. We’ll track it here at Civil Discourse.

New York Times, How Cornell Punished Each of the 7 Men Accused of Sexual Assault, Sharon Otterman, Hurubie Meko and Debra Kamin, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). Summaries obtained by The New York Times offer a detailed look at the discipline meted out to the men accused of sexually assaulting a fellow student at Cornell University.

The lightest punishment called for writing a paper and completing training. The most severe was expulsion from the school.

After a woman attending Cornell University accused seven fraternity members of sexually assaulting her in 2024, the university convened a closed proceeding to determine what had occurred and whether those men should face discipline.

Since then, the sanctions imposed on each of the men, and the reasoning behind those decisions, have remained secret. The school has said little.

But detailed summaries of the punishments obtained by The New York Times provide the first look at how Cornell administrators apportioned blame for the alcohol and drug-fueled gathering that the woman has said left her shattered and degraded.

Two of the fraternity members were expelled. Another, who had already graduated, was barred from campus. Two more were suspended. The remaining men were handed lighter punishments, the summaries show.

All of them have denied any wrongdoing, and the Tompkins County district attorney declined to prosecute in 2024. None of the men have been charged with a crime. Their fraternity, Chi Phi, has been banned from campus.

Still, since allegations from the woman who has become known as Jane Doe surfaced in a lawsuit on Sept. 16, they have touched off intense anger over sexual abuse on campus and why more is not done to punish those responsible. Others have criticized what they see as a rush to judge the seven men involved.

In her lawsuit, Jane Doe claimed that, from the start of her encounter involving the seven fraternity members, she was incapable of consent because she was severely intoxicated. The lawsuit inflamed particular ire by stating that the defendants were all “afforded the opportunity to mitigate their conduct by submitting essays to Cornell,” an assertion Cornell has said did not accurately reflect what occurred.

Combined with more than 1,000 pages of interview transcripts, police reports and other records gathered by Cornell investigators and previously obtained by The Times, the discipline summaries show that the university based its decisions on a broad and complicated body of evidence.

In the end, the punishments handed out by the three-member panel, which met on Zoom over 12 days in May 2025, varied widely. The panel, which enforces federal civil rights at the university under Title IX provisions, did not conclude that Jane Doe was sexually assaulted by all the men she had accused, according to the discipline summaries.

The university investigative files outline in excruciating detail what the fraternity members were accused of doing on the night of Oct. 19, 2024.

It was Matthew Ingalls whom Jane Doe originally went to visit at the Chi Phi fraternity house at about 11 p.m. She walked there alone from a bar to see him, with her intoxication level from drinking through the evening at about a 5 out of 10, she told investigators.

After she arrived, Mr. Ingalls asked her if she wanted to have a threesome with Jonathan Newell, Jane Doe said. During that encounter, she said, the men gave her ketamine and alcohol. Eventually, other men engaged in sex acts with her without her consent and while she was incapacitated, she said.

At the end of the night at the fraternity house, when Jane Doe was near hallucinating, there was more sex, she told investigators.

Expulsions were handed to Mr. Ingalls and Mr. Newell — the man who sent a Snapchat message to other fraternity members encouraging them to enter the bedroom where Jane Doe was undressed, the discipline summaries show.

The discipline summaries show that the panel found Mr. Ingalls responsible for sexual assault, judging that he was willing to manipulate, exploit and endanger Jane Doe for his own self-interest and the entertainment of others.

A lawyer for Mr. Ingalls declined to comment.

Mr. Newell was also accused of sexual assault, the university files show. Jane Doe told police on Nov. 14, 2024, that he had struck her buttocks with enough force during intercourse to leave bruises, and that he had manipulated her to ingest ketamine.

It was not clear whether Mr. Newell had hired a lawyer, and he did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

New York Times, D.A. in Cornell Rape Inquiry Declined to Review Additional Evidence, Michael Rothfeld and Hurubie Meko, Updated Oct. 3, 2026. Records show that campus police officers informed Tompkins County prosecutors that they had conducted additional interviews beyond taking a statement from the woman who said she was raped.

The Tompkins County district attorney said recently that the evidence he reviewed in 2024 made it impossible for him to bring charges in the Cornell University rape inquiry.

But records obtained by The New York Times show that the same district attorney’s office declined to review any additional evidence gathered by the campus police department beyond a six-page statement signed by the former student, now known as Jane Doe.

The decision not to review the additional evidence has not been previously reported.

On Nov. 25, 2024, a Cornell police investigator, Jeffrey Northrop, spoke to a member of the district attorney’s staff, Jeff Huddle, about additional interviews the police had done, the records show.

Prosecutors did not express interest, saying they agreed that based on the woman’s statement, “criminal charges would not be pursued in this case,” Mr. Northrop wrote in a note documenting their call.

By that point, the police had conducted numerous interviews, reviewed chat messages, logged anonymous tips, reached out to lawyers for some of the accused men and spoken to at least two others, the records show.

kathy hochul 2017On Friday, Gov. Kathy Hochul, left, harshly criticized the district attorney and the Cornell police for the way they handled the investigation and appointed Attorney General Letitia James as a special prosecutor, giving her power to bring criminal charges.

All of the men named in the lawsuit have denied any wrongdoing, and none has been charged with a crime.

matthew van houtenReached on Thursday, the Tompkins County district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, right, said by email that any additional records gathered by the Cornell police were “not pertinent to our analysis because we had Jane Doe’s comprehensive account of the events.”

Mr. Huddle referred questions to the district attorney.

The interaction between Mr. Northrop and Mr. Van Houten’s office was one example of what experts said appeared to be numerous law enforcement shortcomings in the investigation of Jane Doe’s account.

Mr. Van Houten has said that based on Jane Doe’s lawsuit he would reopen the investigation.

But his office’s decision at the time not to examine additional evidence that had been gathered, or to seek any additional inquiry beyond a single — and as it turns out, incomplete — campus police statement, was a stark departure from how complicated sex crimes investigations should be handled, said former prosecutors and other experts.ImageMatthew Van Houten smiles for the camera. He is wearing a dark blue suit and striped tie.The Tompkins County district attorney Matthew Van Houten has been harshly criticized for his handling of the Cornell rape inquiry.Credit...Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office

Mr. Van Houten has defended his original decision not to prosecute, saying Jane Doe’s account in her police statement “described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious and consensual.”

He said the facts in her initial statement did not constitute a crime under New York law, and that he had never been contacted by Jane Doe or her lawyers before her lawsuit.

The former prosecutors, however, said the district attorney’s approach fell short in multiple ways, including his failure to bring Jane Doe in to be interviewed by his office and his apparent total reliance on a statement recorded — and, more broadly, an investigation conducted — by the university police.

“We would never rely on a campus police investigation,” said Rick Trunfio, a former sex crimes prosecutor in upstate New York and now an adjunct law professor at Syracuse University. “There’s too many problems with that.”

Mr. Trunfio and other experts said the investigation should have been handed off to a specialized police or prosecution team like the special victims bureau he founded at the Onondaga County District Attorney’s Office. Also problematic, he added, is that the Cornell University Police Department was “beholden” to the school, which would have had to report under federal law if a gang rape on campus was prosecuted by civilian authorities.

New York Times, Cornell Case Revives Anger About Handling of Campus Sexual Assault Cases, Sephanie Saul and Emma Goldberg, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). A lawsuit alleging rape at Cornell has led to an outpouring of women sharing stories about sexual violence on college campuses.

Campus sexual assault survivors and their supporters have published essays in school newspapers and inundated social media in solidarity with the complainant, known in court records only as Jane Doe.

Some are using the familiar #MeToo hashtag of an earlier movement to combat sexual abuse and harassment. Others have adopted a new one: #IAmJaneDoe.

In one opinion article in the University of Pennsylvania campus newspaper, students wrote that “sexual violence happens far too often on college campuses everywhere.”

“It’s time to face the fact that the ‘Cornell incident’ isn’t just born of Cornell problems, or limited to a Cornell issue,” the students wrote.

The outrage flooding social media and rising up on campuses follows similar waves of disgust about campus sexual violence that emerged more than a decade ago and then reignited after the broader #MeToo reckoning that began with Hollywood sexual assault revelations. Driving the campaign in support of Ms. Doe is a feeling that not enough changed after similar movements.

The Penn students wrote, for example, that past responses have been bureaucratic, and that universities “prioritize bolstering their own image” instead of making deeper changes that protect women from assault.

Celebrities have also joined the outcry. Mariska Hargitay and her Joyful Heart Foundation, which supports domestic violence survivors, posted: “Survivors deserve to be believed and kept informed. Silence protects no one. To her: we support you.”

During an appearance in Ithaca, N.Y., Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called the 2024 episode at Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity house part of a “culture of rape” on college campuses.

In the lawsuit, the young woman says she was assaulted at the Chi Phi house on Cornell’s campus, names seven men who were involved and says the university and law enforcement agencies did not do enough to punish or pursue prosecution of the men.

The men involved have denied the allegations, while the university, the fraternity and prosecutors have said they responded appropriately given the information they had at the time.

Lawyers point out the difficulty of prosecuting such cases in court, particularly when many complainants, including Ms. Doe, change their accounts over time. Records obtained by The New York Times present a murky picture of what took place. The woman indicated in one text message to one of the men that “nothing illegal” had happened. But she also told police investigators that “I can say with 100 percent confidence I was raped.”

The widespread condemnation of accused men could create an unfair dynamic, according to Andrew T. Miltenberg, a lawyer for one of the Cornell men, Gillio Lopes. He said the “danger in a case like this is that an accusation, amplified often enough, can harden into a verdict before the evidence is ever tested.”

Mr. Miltenberg, known for representing students against sexual misconduct claims, said the attention was compounded by statements of public officials that seemed to side with Ms. Doe.

On Sept. 28, Attorney General Letitia James posted on X: “What this young woman has been forced to endure is horrific and unacceptable. I’m holding her in my heart and prayers.”

Several days later, Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed Ms. James to take over investigating the case.

Mr. Lopes has unequivocally denied the allegations, Mr. Miltenberg said.

The online outpouring in support of Ms. Doe has also led to a backlash, with some right-wing commentators condemning her and others trying to reveal her identity.

Federal data shows that nationally, there were 6,000 to 6,200 reports of rapes on campus a year from 2014 to 2019, or about eight to 11 per 10,000 on-campus students. But reports declined drastically during the pandemic years, when many students took classes remotely. Since then, they have begun to rise again.

The data does not show how many reports resulted in action or were substantiated.

But the available data suggests the problem has been widespread. Over a quarter of undergraduate women reported some form of nonconsensual sexual contact by physical force, or because they were unable to consent, according to a large survey of students conducted by the Association of American Universities in 2019.

That survey also found evidence of a growing awareness about rules and resources, as universities built out new policies and training.

At Cornell, a survey conducted by the university found that roughly one-third of undergraduate women said they had unwanted sexual experiences.

For some current Cornell students and recent graduates, reading Ms. Doe’s claims of assault has prompted them to share memories of their own experiences of sexual misconduct. Many said that the allegations weren’t entirely surprising because of how often they had heard about friends who said they had been assaulted at parties.

“To be honest, there are so many during my time there that it almost feels like it all blurs into one,” said Claire Ting, who graduated from Cornell last year and served in student government, referring to conversations with friends about upsetting sexual experiences. “We would see posts and discussions talking about the sexual assaults that happened,” she added. “The buzz would die down and then it would happen again.”

The response, she said, was “hurdle after hurdle of bureaucracy.”

There have been other moments in recent decades when campus sexual assault has dominated the national conversation. When the documentary “The Hunting Ground” was released in 2015, for example, it galvanized a movement.

Lady Gaga sang the film’s theme song at the Oscars, where she was introduced by Joseph R. Biden Jr., then the vice president. At the time, statistics showed that one in four women on campus reported being sexual assault victims. Just months before the film’s release, the launch of a White House campaign to end campus sexual assault — “It’s On Us” — seemed to signal a changing tide.

More than a decade later, though, the allegations at Cornell prompted questions among survivors about whether anything has changed.

Kacey Lee, who graduated from Cornell in 2025, said she was both “shocked and not shocked” in the fall of 2024 when she heard about Ms. Doe’s reported assault.

“Being around frat culture and knowing how people can be there was a level of — not that I was expecting it, but I was not the most surprised,” Ms. Lee said.

While federal data shows that Cornell has reported as many as 28 campus rapes in some recent years, its on-campus undergraduate population is the largest of any Ivy League school. When adjusted for its size, Cornell mirrors many of its peer institutions.

New York Times, Cornell President Calls Rape Inquiry ‘Defining Moment’ for Campus, Claire Fahy, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). Michael I. Kotlikoff, below right, said in a video the university would be more transparent, hold Greek groups accountable and improve sexual assault prevention.

The president of Cornell University assured the campus community that officials would take action in the wake of sexual assault allegations, promising in his first personal statement about the incident that “this will not be a moment that passes.”

michael kotlikoffIn an eight-minute video, the president, Michael I. Kotlikoff, acknowledged the distrust that has gripped his campus since a lawsuit alleging a gang rape at a campus fraternity garnered national attention. He promised that the university, which has been criticized for its handling of the initial allegations, would be more transparent going forward.

Mr. Kotlikoff, who has served in the role for about two years, struck a conciliatory tone, saying the university supported an independent investigation and would work to find ways to hold Greek life accountable.

“This has been one of the most difficult weeks in our history,” Mr. Kotlikoff said.

A woman, identified in court documents as Jane Doe, claimed in a lawsuit filed last month that she was sexually assaulted in October 2024 at a Chi Phi fraternity house on Cornell’s campus by seven men and that the school and local law enforcement failed to punish those involved appropriately. None of the accused men have been charged with a crime, and they have denied wrongdoing, and the university has defended its handling of the allegations.

More On Russia's Invasion of Ukraine, Trump Family's Russian Ties

New York Times, Russia Turns to Striking Kyiv’s Bridges, Threatening a Vital Lifeline, Constant Méheut, Oct. 4 2026 (print ed.). The bridges, used by many commuters in the Ukrainian capital, are the latest target in a broad Russian bombing campaign against infrastructure.

Russia has a new target on its rapidly growing list of Ukrainian infrastructure to bomb: bridges.

Over the past three days, Russia has attacked bridges in the capital, Kyiv, six times. Three drones hit one in the city’s south on Thursday, and the same bridge was struck twice on Friday. On Saturday morning, another attack hit a bridge in the north.

The structures still stand, but the damage and the threat of more attacks have prompted the local authorities to restrict or stop traffic on five of the capital’s six road bridges. That has severely disrupted daily life in Ukraine’s largest city, which, like much of the country, is bisected by the broad Dnipro River.

Many in Kyiv commute between the mostly residential eastern bank, home to roughly a million people, and the western bank, where most government offices and businesses are located.

The bridges are the latest target in a sweeping Russian strike campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure that is far from the front lines. That campaign has expanded in recent weeks to include warehouses, trains, data centers, medical depots and steel factories and comes on top of an intense assault on Ukraine’s power grid that Russia plans to escalate this winter.

The goal, Ukrainian officials and military experts say, is to devastate Ukraine’s economy — and the country’s ability to sustain the war effort — while breaking the population’s will to fight by making everyday life increasingly difficult.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

Ukraine has withstood other such campaigns since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. But a critical shortage of air defenses coupled with Moscow’s growing arsenal of weapons now leaves the country more vulnerable than ever to such attacks.

“The enemy is destroying Kyiv,” the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko said in a social media post on Friday. “It is no longer possible to pretend that we can live as we did in peacetime!”

Mr. Klitschko’s message echoed a feeling that has grown across the capital in recent weeks: The relative safety Kyiv enjoyed through most of the war — demonstrated by crowded cafes and nail salons — is over.

Drones now buzz over the city all day, setting off near-constant air raid alerts. People caught outside during an attack can be seen checking phone apps that track the drones’ flight paths. On Monday, a drone hit a university in the city center and set the building ablaze, shocking residents of a neighborhood that had been spared Russian attacks for most of the war.

The assault on Kyiv’s bridges could disrupt life even more. Officials temporarily shut the northern bridge after Saturday’s attack, closed the southern bridge to cars and the metro, and limited traffic on three other bridges.

The first attack on the southern bridge, on Thursday, happened as a metro train was crossing the bridge. No one was injured, but service across the bridge was suspended. On Friday evening, residents crossing the bridge on foot watched as another drone struck it, according to a video posted on social media.

Destroying the bridges would be difficult. They are large concrete structures that would need to be hit multiple times to be taken down. Ukraine’s own attacks on Russian bridges have yielded mixed results. The Kerch Bridge, which connects the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula to Russia, closed temporarily several times after attacks but was never knocked out.

Still, attacks could weaken the bridges’ supporting structures and prompt the authorities to close them indefinitely rather than risk a collapse.

The result would be a logistical nightmare for Kyiv and the whole country. Bridges in the capital carry all kinds of food and equipment across the Dnipro River, which runs north to south through Ukraine and splits the country in two. There would be few alternatives if they closed.

Special Report: Deep Dive Into Trump Family Corruption

The Parnas Perspective, Investigation: Trump Is Defying Congress' Power of the Purse. Here’s a Roadmap for Investigating His Misuse of Taxpayer Funds, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 4, 2026. He was once forced to pay $2 million for misusing his own charity's money for politics. Now it's the federal Treasury. Here's the roadmap Congress needs. Continued from above and amplified below.

It’s time to expose Trump’s misappropriation of funds. The ad opens with soft music and a familiar cadence. “I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle the deep state, and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild,” a narrator says. “Somebody to ruffle the feathers. So God made Trump.”

It is a three-minute riff on Paul Harvey’s famous “God Made a Farmer” speech, created by a pro-Trump meme group. It played at the Republican Party’s midterm convention in Dallas last month. And like at least a dozen other ads now airing on national television, it ends with an unusual disclaimer: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.”

According to the New York Times, those ads exist because President Trump personally told his budget director to find taxpayer money to pay for them. The money, the Washington Post found, came from funds Congress set aside for border security, drug interdiction and memorials for officers killed in the line of duty.

The ads would be a scandal on their own. They are not on their own.

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

 

The legal team of former Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith, shown at left in a collage with his onetime DOJ colleagues, is now focused as private sector attorneys on pro-democracy litigation. They are chieving considerable success, according to a report by independent journalist Scott MacFarlane, formerly a longtime reporter for CBS News. The legal team of former Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith, shown at left in a collage with his onetime DOJ colleagues, is now focused as private sector attorneys on pro-democracy litigation. They are chieving considerable success, according to a report by independent journalist Scott MacFarlane, formerly a longtime reporter for CBS News. 

Scott MacFarlane News, The Comeback Kids: Jack Smith’s Legal Team Scores Series of Recent Victories, Scott scott macfarlaneMacFarlane, right, Oct. 4, 2026. After years of being smeared and maligned, the former Jack Smith Special Counsel team is enjoying a big series of victories.

The indignities have been many.

And cutting.

And cruel.

Former Special Counsel Jack Smith and his former team of attorneys have been smeared, fired, subjected to Trump Administration scrutiny and …. they’ve witnessed their career case get whitewashed and literally deleted from the U.S. Justice Department’s records.

It’s been rough sledding, in the two years since Smith and his team were forced to abandon their criminal cases of President Trump before the cases could go to trial.

So… we shouldn’t ignore that Jack Smith and his team have enjoyed a helluva good week and month.

Several of them have enjoyed big successes in court – and in the court of public opinion – in recent days.

The recent wave of victories include securing the freedom of a wrongfully accused former US Olympian and halting Trump’s attempts to circumvent the federal courts.

“We got into the job to do justice and protect democracy,” said former Smith deputy J.P. Cooney, “It’s that passion that caused so many of us to find other ways — from outside the department — to do the exact same thing.”

Jack Smith’s landmark cases against Trump resulted in the the first-ever criminal indictments against a former President, including for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. It was an historic milestone.

But Trump’s victory in the 2024 Presidential election forced Smith to seek dismissal of the case, due to federal policies prohibiting the criminal prosecution of a sitting U.S. President.

Team Trump exacted retribution against Smith’s team, when the President returned to office in January 2025. Some were fired. All were maligned as a “politicized” or “weaponized” actors.

Their comeback is underway. And it picked up steam this week.

Instead of prosecuting a career case, Smith and several of his deputies are standing up for norms of U.S. democracy and against the politicization of the Justice Department.

Some of the former prosecutors on Smith’s team have joined legal organizations who are seeking to counter the Trump Administration’s shattering of democratic norms.

And they’ve scored some big wins.

“This day is a victory!”

Mary Dohrmann was a “prosecutor’s prosecutor.” After serving as an appeals court clerk, Dohrmann began an eight-year tenure with the Justice Department. Dohrmann tackled some of the toughest cases in, arguably, the highest profile US District Court in America: Washington, D.C. federal court.

Dohrmann won the “United States Attorney’s Team Award” for her work on trial preparation for the enormous prosecution of more than 1,500 people for the U.S. Capitol Siege. She eventually was plucked for Smith’s team, to help with the prosecution of Trump.

Trump’s re-election cut Dorhmann’s career short at the agency.

So she has pivoted to work with the DC-based Washington Litigation Group and taken up some high-profile causes. Dohrmann is representing a group of FBI employees who argue they were unlawfully fired for using a de-escalation technique to prevent a riot in DC in 2020, after the murder of George Floyd.

Last week, in a narrower case, Dohrmann secured a big win. It was Dohrmann who was part of the defense team for former Olympian David Hearn, who was the target of a discredited criminal case for allegedly damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

In a blistering 26-page opinion, a judge dismissed the case against Hearn on Thursday, finding the Justice Department’s case was unfounded. The judge noted how it was an admitted mistake by a Reflecting Pool contractor that caused recent damage to the landmark facility, not Hearn. Dohrmann’s victory on Hearn’s behalf was so overwhelming, the judge ordered the case dismissed with prejudice, to ensure it can never be brought against Hearn again.

Hearn’s good name has been restored. For Dohrmann, it was an unequivocal win against a Justice Department that has targeted a number of Trump’s critics and amplified political causes championed by Trump.

Dohrmann told Scott MacFarlane Reports, “Other Americans can expect the government will think twice before engaging in this kind of conduct again.”

“It’s a painful reality”

J.P. Cooney was also fired shortly after Trump returned to power. Cooney, is a talented public corruption prosecutor, who had previously served as a top deputy to Smith. Cooney also helped lead a series of high-profile cases in the Washington, D.C. federal courthouse, including the prosecution of former Trump aide Steve Bannon, for contempt of Congress in 2021.

Speaking from his office in Virginia, Cooney told Scott MacFarlane Reports, “It’s a painful reality to see the circumstance that this department has put our country in.”

Cooney prepared for a run for Congress in Virginia earlier this year, but stood down from the campaign after a state court tossed a redrawn map of US House districts.

Instead, Cooney is seeking a much different victory.

Cooney has joined the government watchdog group Democracy Forward in filing a federal civil lawsuit against the Trump Administration, seeking a court order to prevent the deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at polling places in November.

Cooney and the team scored a series of high-profile plaintiffs to join the suit, including the city of Denver and the League of United Latin American Citizens, which is the largest Latino civil rights group in the nation.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

New York Times, Democrats Lead Governor Races Deep in Republican Territory, Polls Show, Anna Griffin, Ruth Igielnik and Sejal Govindarao, Oct. 4, 2026. Democratic advantages in the races for governor in Texas, Iowa, Ohio and Alaska reflect deep unhappiness with President Trump and the economy. A Republican leads in Kansas. 

One month until Election Day, voter dissatisfaction with the economy, concerns about political extremism and frustration with President Trump have Democrats within reach of flipping four Republican-held governorships, opening a wide lead in Iowa and an expanding advantage in Ohio among likely voters, according to new polls by The New York Times and Siena University.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican fixture in the state for decades, is now narrowly behind his Democratic challenger, Gina Hinojosa.

The Democratic candidate also has an advantage in the race for governor of Alaska. The only place surveyed where the Republican is ahead in the campaign for the governor’s office in Kansas, now held by a retiring Democrat.

Democratic-Republican Campaign logosThe polls also show Democrats with an advantage in the Senate in these states, with Democrats ahead in Texas and Alaska, and with the edge in Ohio, while the races in Kansas and Iowa are neck-and-neck.

While national attention has fixated on the fight for control of Congress, governorships will be important heading into a wide open presidential election in 2028. Not only will governors influence the electoral process, they will help shape the redistricting wars that are likely to spill into 2027 and beyond.

The polling results underscore how Democrats have been able to push into states that have traditionally favored Republicans, as voters have soured on Mr. Trump amid frustration over the economy, rising gas prices and a deeply unpopular war in Iran.

Still, the polls show that even as many of the Republican candidates for governor are at a disadvantage, they are outrunning the difficult political environment. Mr. Trump’s approval rating stands at just 40 percent across the five states. In four of five states surveyed, the Republican candidates for governor are doing better than the president’s approval ratings.

Democrats, meantime, are boosted by broadly well-liked candidates who are, for the most part, seen as more politically moderate than their Republican opponents.

lauren egan bulwarkThe Opposition via The Bulwark, Trumpism in Trouble on the Prairie, Lauren Egan, above, Democrats have found an opening in one of America’s reddest states. Now comes the Republican money.

I just got back from Kansas, where the race for Senate between GOP Sen. Roger Marshall and Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton has become shockingly competitive. Tonight’s edition is all about what I saw on the ground. But before we get into it, a quick reminder that this type of reporting is only possible thanks to Bulwark+ members!

STANDING IN FRONT OF A CROWD of roughly a hundred people on Friday evening, Adam Hamilton didn’t have the aura of a man whose entire life was about to be picked apart, whose political ambitions were set to be battered by millions of dollars of negative TV ads, whose campaign had become a vector of immodest hope for Democrats dreaming of an unfathomably successful midterm election.

Instead, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Kansas seemed calm, projecting an easy confidence as he stood on a hay bale.

Hamilton was addressing a block party of voters who had come to see him. And as those voters helped themselves to beer and wine from coolers—as the evening chill kicked in and the kids kept busy roasting marshmallows on a Solo stove—he seemed to welcome the target now on his back. He informed the crowd that the Senate Republicans’ top super PAC had pulled its money out of North Carolina and was diverting it to Kansas. The state’s airwaves, he warned, would feature a blizzard of ads against him, starting maybe within a matter of hours.

“They are afraid,” he said, his voice unshaken. “They should be afraid.”

Few Democrats would have imagined Kansas as a Senate battleground at the start of this cycle. Even fewer would have picked Hamilton as a candidate Republicans would fear. But the 62-year-old founding pastor of the nearby Church of the Resurrection, the largest United Methodist congregation in the country, has become just that—combining an atypical political biography with a congenial on-the-trail approach to potentially unseat incumbent Roger Marshall.

The polls suggest it could very well happen.¹ The question now is whether Hamilton peaked too early. With a month to go, Republicans are rushing resources to the state. And even Hamilton acknowledged that he was entering a new phase of the campaign. Despite breaking fundraising records in Kansas, he told the crowd he still needed to raise millions more. He didn’t hide the personal toll that the campaign was taking on his church, his community, and his family.

When I asked Hamilton about it, he was confident in a way that perhaps only someone who regularly draws thousands of people to his church pews can be, saying:

“These are commercials that anybody who’s thoughtful is going to look at these and go, ‘That’s not true. That doesn’t reflect who Adam is.’ We have 24,000 [church] members, and they have lots of friends, and their friends know that’s not who my friend’s pastor is.”

THE LAST TIME KANSANS elected a Democrat to the Senate was in 1932, as part of the massive anti-Hoover and anti-Republican wave brought on by the Great Depression. Since then, the state has voted reliably Republican on the national level.² Donald Trump won here by 21 points in 2016, 15 points in 2020, and 16 points in 2024.

In my conversations with Hamilton advisers and Kansas Democratic operatives, they were sanguine about the history and the challenge ahead. To win a Senate seat here this year, they said, would require both a vulnerable incumbent and an error-free campaign.

So far, Hamilton has run a masterful race. And Marshall has proven quite vulnerable.

The senator has been criticized for rarely holding public events and for spending more time at his home in Florida than in Kansas. Perhaps his biggest vulnerability, however, has been the reporting—published by the New York Times—that he sued more than 700 patients for failing to pay medical bills during his decades-long career as an obstetrician-gynecologist, resulting in 81 of those patients getting arrested. Hamilton’s campaign quickly turned it into an effective ad featuring one of those patients.

But all this would largely be non-determinative if not for Donald Trump. The president’s agenda has had a particularly brutal impact on Kansas. Medicaid cuts are squeezing Kansas’s rural health care system. And the state’s large agricultural industry, already reeling from Trump’s tariffs and beef-import plan, is struggling to keep up with skyrocketing diesel prices. Recent ICE raids at meat-processing plants in southwest Kansas have only further enraged those in the livestock industry.

“There’s more frustration with the administration than we’ve seen previously,” Matt Teagarden, CEO of the Kansas Livestock Association, told me. The association made the rare decision not to endorse in the Senate race this year after having supported Marshall in the past. “I can see some factors coming together that explain the sense that I have, that many have, that this Senate race is close. There’s some fatigue from agriculture generally.”

Hamilton has pitched himself as someone who understands that fatigue and who can alleviate it. He does so not just by leading with his pastoral grace, but also by leaning on his decades of preaching to church pews filled with Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike.

He says he’s an “independent-minded” Democrat. He talks openly about how the national party has become too extreme and needs to “return to the center.” While “moderation” might be a dirty word elsewhere in the Democratic coalition, it defines Hamilton’s approach to politics and to interactions on the trail. 

New York Times, Trump, Critic of Voting by Mail, Urges Republicans to Do It in Midterms, Tim Balk and Evan Gorelick, Oct. 4, 2026 (print ed.). It was the latest mixed messaging from President Trump, who regularly votes by mail, but has made baseless claims that the practice is “inherently corrupt.”

President Trump, who has long staged a rhetorical and legal assault against voting by mail even as he used the method himself to cast his ballots, released a video on Saturday urging Republicans to vote early and by mail in the midterm election.

“Vote early. Vote by mail. Or vote in person on Election Day,” Mr. Trump, who has been using the power of his office to try to restrict mail voting, says in the video, which he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.

Mr. Trump also promoted a Republican Party website offering guidance on voters’ options for casting ballots.

It was the latest contortion from Mr. Trump on mail balloting. He has for years promoted unfounded claims that mail voting is rife with fraud, while working to restrict the practice for Americans, an effort that has been stymied by lawmakers and the courts. As recently as July, he said “mail-in ballots are inherently corrupt.” (There is no evidence of widespread fraud in mail voting.)

When Mr. Trump, a Florida voter, mailed in his ballot in a special election in March, he said he had done so “because I’m president of the United States.” Days earlier he had said, “Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating.” He voted by mail again for the primary in August.

He has also criticized early voting in the past.

Mr. Trump’s post on Saturday comes just more than four weeks ahead of a midterm election in which Democrats have built momentum, polls show. Mr. Trump’s low approval ratings and voter concerns about high prices driven up by the war with Iran have put Republicans at risk of losing control of both chambers of Congress.

Republicans have feared that the president’s assaults on mail balloting put them at a competitive disadvantage in a challenging election year.

About a third of all ballots cast in the 2024 presidential election were sent by mail, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

In March, Mr. Trump signed an executive order that would have restricted mail ballots. The action was struck down by the Supreme Court in September. He also sought unsuccessfully to push Congress to approve legislation that would have sharply curtailed mail voting.

Richard Pildes, an election law expert at New York University, said Mr. Trump’s statement appeared to be a major shift and a response to his efforts to restrict mail-in voting failing “across the board.”

“He’s realizing that his efforts to change policy on mail-in voting have basically run aground at this point, and he’s shifting gears,” Mr. Pildes said.

New York Times, ‘Creepy, Weird’ Steve Hilton Ad Denounced by California Republicans, Anna Griffin, Oct. 4, 2026. An online spot for Mr. Hilton, the G.O.P. candidate, is full of sexual innuendo that has befuddled Republicans and Democrats watching the race for governor in California.

It’s the stuff of bad romance novels, not a modern political ad. But the new digital spot from the California Republican gubernatorial candidate, Steve Hilton, is at least drawing attention — and condemnation, much of it from fellow Republicans.

Plus a whole lot of “huhs?”

The ad, titled “Just Try It, California,” shows two Gen Z women, both with facial piercings, neon-hued highlights and heavy glam makeup, sitting on a bed in a darkened room. There’s a Pride flag behind them and soft mood music playing in the background.

The woman on the right, decked out in a cropped “Resist” T-shirt, says she can’t believe what she’s about to do. The young woman on the left strokes her hair and tells her not to be nervous.

“I’ve never done anything like this before,” the first young woman says. “What if my dad finds out?”

The other woman tells her to close her eyes, takes her hand and says, “I’ll do all the work.”

Cut to their laps, where it turns out they’re casting a vote for Mr. Hilton.

A sexually suggestive double-entendre involving the proper way to close a mail-in ballot ends the ad.

The video went online last week, and the negative response — along with the befuddlement — was immediate. Much came from other California Republicans.

“This is a clear example of exactly why good people are walking away from the Republican Party,” the G.O.P. candidate for state superintendent of public instruction, Sonja Shaw, wrote on X, calling the ad “creepy, weird, disturbing garbage.”

Michael Gates, the party’s candidate for attorney general, also denounced the ad on X, accusing Mr. Hilton of using “young women as political tools” and saying “California families deserve better.”David Townsend, a longtime political consultant in California who has often worked for moderate Democrats, said the video was “too clever by half.”

“Are you equating voting for Hilton with trying to have a lesbian relationship? Are you equating it with grooming?” he said. “It manages to be both offensive and confusing.”

Special Report: Deep Dive Into Trump Family Corruption

djt god made trump adThe Parnas Perspective, Investigation: Trump Is Defying Congress' Power of the Purse. Here’s a Roadmap for Investigating His Misuse of Taxpayer Funds, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 4, 2026. He was once forced to pay $2 million for misusing his own charity's money for politics. Now it's the federal Treasury. Here's the roadmap Congress needs. [Continued from above.]

It’s time to expose Trump’s misappropriation of funds. The ad opens with soft music and a familiar cadence. “I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle the deep state, and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild,” a narrator says. “Somebody to ruffle the feathers. So God made Trump.”

It is a three-minute riff on Paul Harvey’s famous “God Made a Farmer” speech, created by a pro-Trump meme group. It played at the Republican Party’s midterm convention in Dallas last month. And like at least a dozen other ads now airing on national television, it ends with an unusual disclaimer: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.”

According to the New York Times, those ads exist because President Trump personally told his budget director to find taxpayer money to pay for them. The money, the Washington Post found, came from funds Congress set aside for border security, drug interdiction and memorials for officers killed in the line of duty.

The ads would be a scandal on their own. They are not on their own.

Before I became a journalist, I was a lawyer, and investigations were my specialty. So for this piece, I’m putting my legal hat back on. What follows is not a verdict. It’s a roadmap: what we know, which laws may have been broken, and exactly where investigators should look, from the documents they should demand to the witnesses they should put under oath.

I know this reporting will make powerful people uncomfortable. I’ve already received threats. But I’m not backing down, and this is only the beginning. If you believe this work matters, subscribe today and help me keep digging.Subscribed

They come from the same department that, under its previous secretary, steered more than $220 million in no-bid advertising contracts through a company created days before it won the work. In the same weeks they began airing, Trump started mailing checks to voters in battleground states and promised $5,000 to every adult if his party keeps Congress. His budget office moved to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars Congress had already approved, in a maneuver the Government Accountability Office has now found illegal. His Justice Department tried to create a nearly $2 billion fund by settling a lawsuit Trump himself filed. And all of it echoes a case from seven years ago, when a court ordered Trump to pay $2 million for misusing his own charity’s money for political purposes.

Because if Democrats win the House in November, they will have subpoena power. Inspectors general, the GAO, state attorneys general and future prosecutors have their own tools. And the first step to accountability is knowing exactly where to look.The Rules the Money Is Supposed to Follow

Every investigation starts with the law, and here the law is not complicated.

Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution says: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” The framers put the power of the purse in Congress, and specifically in the House, because they had watched English monarchs govern by their own will and spend as they pleased. Congress decides how public money is spent. The president’s job is to spend it the way Congress directed.

Over two centuries, Congress has built a body of law around that principle. The Purpose Statute, 31 U.S.C. § 1301(a), requires that money be used only for the purposes Congress specified. The Antideficiency Act, 31 U.S.C. § 1341, bars agencies from spending money Congress never authorized. The Impoundment Control Act of 1974, a product of the Watergate era, bars presidents from simply refusing to spend money Congress appropriated. Since the 1950s, appropriations laws have barred spending on “publicity or propaganda,” which the GAO has interpreted to cover communications that are “purely partisan” or “designed to aid a political party or candidates.” The Hatch Act bars officials from using their authority to influence elections. Federal procurement rules require contracting “with complete impartiality and with preferential treatment for none.” And federal criminal statutes prohibit theft or conversion of public money and paying or offering to pay someone to vote.

None of these laws enforce themselves. That is the problem, and it is why a roadmap matters.I. “God Made Trump”: The $20 Million Ad Campaign

The story of the ads begins, according to the New York Times, in the Oval Office on Aug. 7.

Trump was meeting with Republican strategists, his top political adviser James Blair and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. The meeting was supposed to be about spending from his super PAC to help Republican candidates nervous about the midterms. But the president, the Times reported, was far more interested in something else. He turned to his assistant, Natalie Harp, and asked her to show the group the kind of imagery he liked: Trump before vast crowds, Trump beside Marine One, Trump with fighter jets streaking overhead. He made clear, according to the Times, that his presidency needed to be promoted “front and center.”

Weeks later, the Times reported, Trump told Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought to come up with money for laudatory ads from within the government. OMB counsel Mark Paoletta and White House Counsel Will Scharf both said it would be legal to use Department of Homeland Security funds. Trump and Wiles both spoke with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin about the ads.

Then the money moved.

On Sept. 19, according to OMB data reported by the Washington Post, the budget office added $20 million to a DHS line item for “commemorative events.” DHS had originally planned to spend $1 million there. The new money came from nearly $6.7 billion Congress allocated to Customs and Border Protection in the One Big Beautiful Bill, for specific purposes: inspection equipment at ports of entry, air and marine response, border surveillance, biometric technology, screening people crossing the border, screening unaccompanied children and fighting drug trafficking. A House Budget Committee report described “commemorative events” as “Line-of-Duty death memorials, Department or agency anniversaries, and commendation ceremonies.”

The next day, CBP awarded a $20 million contract for a “national media campaign” to LMD, a Maryland marketing firm. A second firm, LMO, purchased the airtime, according to a person familiar with the arrangement cited by the Times.

What aired was not a typical public service announcement. CNN has identified at least 13 spots. Besides “God Made Trump,” there is “King of the Jungle,” which intercuts lions hunting with images of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Gavin Newsom. “Resilience” features Trump’s Fulton County mugshot and footage of the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. “Military Hype” replays Trump’s speech launching the Iran war. One spot promotes the UFC fight Trump hosted at the White House. One, the Times found, is identical to a Trump campaign video from 2024. Another used a song without the artist’s permission, prompting a cease-and-desist letter.

At least $5.5 million has been spent so far, with ads airing on Fox, CNN, CBS, ABC and NBC, during NFL games and on “Good Morning America,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and “Meet the Press,” a show Trump is known to watch. The White House says the campaign will expand.

The White House calls the ads public service announcements meant to remind Americans “to love their country.” Trump told reporters, “I’m not promoting myself because I’m not running for office. I’m promoting the country,” and added, “If somebody said that that’s wrong, I’ll gladly pay the money.” He has not. His super PAC, MAGA Inc., entered the fall with more than $400 million, which Trump has described as “my money that I control.”

Legal experts and lawmakers in both parties say the White House defense does not hold up. “In order to use this fund for anything, you have to point to one of the eight things in this list,” Cerin Lindgrensavage, a lawyer with Protect Democracy, told the Post. “To the extent these ads are propaganda, there really isn’t funding that has a permissible purpose that would include their use.” Rep. Jamie Raskin has called them potential “felony criminal theft and conversion of government property for political campaign purposes,” and with Rep. George Whitesides asked the GAO to investigate possible violations of the Hatch Act, the Antideficiency Act and laws against embezzling public funds. Republican Sen. John Cornyn said the ads are not an appropriate use of taxpayer money: “It’s not even a close question.”

The GAO has found violations of the propaganda ban before, under both Obama and George W. Bush. But those cases involved policy campaigns. There is no precedent for a president using government money to air ads glorifying himself in an election season.

Where investigators should look. The central question is intent, and the documents will answer it. Investigators should start with every communication among Trump, Wiles, Vought and Mullin about the ads, including any instruction to “find” money. They should obtain the legal opinions from Paoletta and Scharf, and, critically, any dissent from career lawyers at OMB or DHS, because in my experience, the most revealing document in a case like this is the memo someone wrote warning that something was wrong. They should demand OMB’s apportionment records for the Sept. 19 transfer, the full LMD contract and any subcontracts, and records showing who created and approved each ad, including whether Trump personally selected imagery, as CNN has reported. And they should examine whether the White House coordinated with MAGA Inc., the Trump-linked nonprofit Securing American Greatness, which aired a similar ad weeks earlier, or former campaign vendors.

The witnesses write themselves: Vought, Wiles, Mullin, Paoletta, Scharf, Harp, CBP contracting officers, executives at LMD and LMO, and the White House digital staff who produced the spots.

II. The Blueprint: Kristi Noem’s $220 Million Ad Machine

The “God Made Trump” ads did not come out of nowhere. They came out of the same department, through the same kind of contract, after a playbook was already in place.

In February 2025, weeks after taking over DHS, then-Secretary Kristi Noem launched a taxpayer-funded ad campaign that would grow to more than $220 million, tripling the department’s ad budget, according to Bloomberg. DHS invoked the “national emergency” at the border to skip the competitive bidding process normally required for government contracts, arguing that any delay “will increase the spread of misinformation.” The early ads featured Noem thanking Trump. A later one, filmed at Mount Rushmore during the government shutdown, showed Noem on horseback in chaps and a cowboy hat as images of Trump Tower and Trump raising his fist after the assassination attempt flashed across the screen.

A ProPublica investigation found that $143 million of the money went to Safe America Media, a Delaware company created just days before the deal was finalized, which listed its address as the Virginia home of a veteran Republican operative. Another $77 million went to a Louisiana Republican ad firm. Subcontractors were not disclosed in federal contracting databases.

One of them, ProPublica found, was the Strategy Group, a Republican consulting firm with deep ties to Noem. It ran ads for her 2022 South Dakota campaign. It had worked extensively with her top DHS adviser, Corey Lewandowski. And its CEO, Ben Yoho, is married to Tricia McLaughlin, Noem’s chief spokesperson at DHS, whose office was listed as funding the contracts.

McLaughlin told ProPublica she had recused herself: “My marriage is one thing and work is another. I don’t combine them.” DHS said it “has no involvement with the selection of subcontractors” and that its contracting is done “by the book.” After senators pressed Noem at a hearing in March, the Strategy Group said it had been paid about $226,000 for five film shoots and dozens of ads, a small fraction of the total.

The pattern predated Washington. As governor of South Dakota in 2023, Noem’s administration paid the same firm $8.5 million in state funds for an ad campaign in which Noem dressed as a dentist, a plumber and a state trooper. A former Noem administration official told ProPublica a top aide warned the governor would be angry if Yoho’s company didn’t win, and contemporaneous text messages corroborated the pressure. The firm also paid up to $25,000 in “consulting” fees to Madison Sheahan, one of Noem’s closest advisers, who later became the second-in-command at ICE.

“It’s corrupt, is the word,” said Charles Tiefer, a leading authority on federal contract law, who said the arrangement warranted investigations by both the DHS inspector general and the House Oversight Committee. “Hiding your friends as subcontractors is like playing hide the salami with the taxpayer.”

According to the Times, Noem’s ad campaign ultimately drew Trump’s disapproval and became the justification for replacing her. But the machinery stayed. The same department, the same national media contracting model, the same blurring of government messaging and political promotion. The only thing that changed was whose face was on the screen.

Where investigators should look. Investigators should obtain the emergency justification DHS used to bypass competitive bidding and identify who approved it; Safe America Media’s formation documents and any contact with DHS before it existed; a complete list of subcontractors and payments under the $220 million; McLaughlin’s recusal records; and records of Noem’s personal approval of payments over $100,000, a requirement she imposed on herself. And they should ask the question that connects the two campaigns: was LMD selected through the same emergency authority or a similar process, and do any of the same vendors appear in both?

III. Canceling What Congress Approved

While DHS found $20 million for ads about the president, the White House budget office was working to make sure other money Congress approved never got spent.

On Sept. 29, the GAO, Congress’ nonpartisan watchdog, found that the administration’s so-called “pocket rescissions” violate the Impoundment Control Act. The tactic exploits a provision of the 1974 law: when the president asks Congress to cancel spending, the money is frozen for 45 days. Send the request close enough to the end of the fiscal year, and the money expires before Congress ever votes. This time, the targets totaled about $810 million, including housing counseling for struggling families, refugee resettlement, education programs for the children of migrant workers and funds for minority businesses.

“This finding confirms what we have long known,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. The White House, she said, “is breaking the law to steal resources from our communities.”

It is part of a broader campaign. New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie has described an “all-out war on Congress’s once-sacrosanct power of the purse,” led by Vought, a key architect of Project 2025, including withheld funds for Head Start, FEMA, National Institutes of Health grants and the Inflation Reduction Act. At an April Senate hearing, Vought insisted, “We have not impounded anything.”

The courts are now involved. A coalition of states including California, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada and Oregon has sued, arguing that the administration’s “assertion of unilateral rescission power defies the Constitution’s finely wrought separation of powers.” A national association of grant recipients says the administration illegally targeted $24.9 million for programs serving children of migrant families. The National Urban League and housing groups are challenging the cancellation of $56 million in housing counseling grants, and a judge has already paused the deadline.

Where investigators should look. Investigators should demand a complete accounting of every rescission request, funding freeze and apportionment footnote OMB has used to delay or withhold money, and the internal communications about timing those requests to run out the clock. The most important question is selection: which programs, states and populations were targeted, and why.

IV. “Legal Bribery”: Buying Votes With Your Own Money

On Sept. 9, on stage at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Trump made voters an offer.

“If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000,” he said. “It will be called the Trump Dividend.”

Not if Congress passes a bill. Not if the economy can afford it. If Republicans win.

It was the most explicit version yet of what critics have come to call legal bribery: using public money, or the promise of it, to reward voters for keeping the president’s party in power. In the weeks since, the payments have multiplied.

On Sept. 30, the Treasury Department began sending $500 refunds to more than 950,000 Obamacare enrollees, each with a letter from Trump: “For years, the Biden Administration overcharged you.” The checks go only to people in the 30 states that use the federal HealthCare.gov exchange, not the 20 that run their own marketplaces, which health policy experts note tend to be governed by Democrats. A Reuters analysis found that 71% of the money, $339 million, is going to 13 states that host eight of the nine most competitive Senate races and 10 of the 12 most competitive governor’s races. Texas and Florida alone account for more than 266,000 recipients, according to federal data shared with CNBC.

The White House says the refunds return excessive fees. But UNC health policy professor Jonathan Oberlander noted that the fees rose and fell under Biden and were at times lower than in Trump’s first term. “This announcement is less about health policy and much more about the 2026 Congressional elections,” he told CNBC. “It’s part of a broader effort by President Trump to buy continued Republican control of the House and Senate via promises of direct government payments to voters.”

The checks also arrive against a painful backdrop. Most recipients lost all federal premium help when the Republican-controlled Congress let enhanced Obamacare subsidies expire. KFF estimates their premiums could quadruple in some states to more than $2,200 a month. A single $500 check does not come close.

Then, late Friday, Trump announced one-time $90 payments to more than 20 million seniors on Medicare, to land in early October. The money will come from the Medicare Improvement Fund, which Congress funded with $2 billion to improve the program. Trump called it “a pointless ‘Slush Fund.’” The standard Medicare Part B premium is $202.90 a month, so the payment covers less than half of one month. It will, however, reach seniors’ bank accounts weeks before they vote.

Hovering over all of it is the $5,000 promise. Trump has acknowledged it would cost roughly $1 trillion, with the national debt above $40 trillion and annual deficits near $2 trillion. “We don’t have surpluses to give away,” Marc Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget told the Associated Press, adding that Trump has no authority to send the money without Congress. Trump has insisted he doesn’t need congressional approval, which raises an obvious question: if he can send the money on his own, why is it conditioned on Republicans winning?

Voters are skeptical. A Strength in Numbers/Verasight poll found 66% consider the offer “inappropriate.” A Reuters/Ipsos poll found 63% disapprove, including four in 10 Republicans. And 61% of likely voters in an Economist/YouGov survey don’t believe he’ll deliver.

Is it legal? Federal law makes it a crime to pay or offer to pay someone to vote. Trump’s defenders argue the $5,000 pledge is different because it would go to everyone, regardless of how, or whether, they vote. “This is a campaign promise,” one attorney told the AP. “It’s not a payment to individuals to try to get them to vote in a particular way.”

As a lawyer, I take that argument seriously. It may well be the right answer under the narrow terms of the statute. But it isn’t the whole answer. The AP itself compared the pledge to Elon Musk handing out million-dollar checks to voters in last year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race. And there is a meaningful difference between a candidate promising a policy and a sitting president timing government payments, drawn from funds Congress set aside for other purposes, to land in battleground mailboxes weeks before an election, with a letter bearing his name and blaming his predecessor.

Past presidents have made explicit promises, too. Joe Biden told Georgia voters in 2021 they’d get $2,000 checks if Democrats won the Senate, and Congress later approved $1,400 payments. But those went through Congress and the appropriations process the Constitution requires. Trump’s payouts are being sent by executive decision, from repurposed funds, on a political calendar.

Cornell professor Douglas Kriner, who studies how presidential spending translates into votes, estimates efforts like these could be “worth a percentage point or two.” In a midterm decided by a handful of seats, that may be the point.

Where investigators should look. The key documents are the legal authorities CMS and Treasury relied on for the refunds and the Medicare payments, and any analysis showing the user fees were actually excessive. Investigators should look for any internal discussion of which states and voters would benefit, including whether anyone consulted electoral maps or lists of competitive races. They should find out who drafted Trump’s letter, whether political or campaign staff were involved, and what it cost to print and mail. And they should demand any planning documents for the $5,000 “Trump Dividend,” including whether anyone has identified a legal basis or funding source, and why the payment was tied to the election outcome.

V. The $1.776 Billion “Anti-Weaponization” Fund

Earlier this year, Trump’s Justice Department unveiled a $1.776 billion fund to compensate people it said were victims of “lawfare.” It was created to settle a $10 billion lawsuit Trump himself filed against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns. An addendum blocked IRS action on pending tax probes of Trump, his sons and their businesses. Trump retained the power to fire any of the fund’s five board members “without cause.” And January 6 defendants, including Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, praised the fund and said they planned to apply.

The reaction crossed party lines. Former deputy attorney general Donald Ayer, who served under George H.W. Bush, called it “outright theft.” Former DOJ inspector general Michael Bromwich said “everything about the $1.776bn fund is crazy and corrupt.” Former U.S. attorney Barbara McQuade said the IRS addendum was “just a gift, pure and simple.” Sen. Thom Tillis called it “a payout pot for punks.”

The courts intervened. A bipartisan group of 35 former federal judges argued the settlement was a “fraud on the court,” and the judge who oversaw the case reopened it to examine whether it was “premised on deception.” This week, an appeals court, with a Trump appointee joining, refused to lift sanctions over what it called a “collusive” settlement.

Former federal prosecutor Bruce Green distilled the problem: the executive branch “unilaterally intends to draw close to $2bn out of the treasury without a congressional appropriation, as part of the ostensible settlement of a collusive lawsuit that the government never answered but certainly could have defended.”

Where investigators should look. Every communication among Trump’s personal lawyers, the White House and DOJ about the lawsuit and settlement. The negotiation history of the IRS addendum and its legal justification. Any lists or criteria for who would receive money. And a full accounting of anything disbursed or committed. The central witness is Attorney General Todd Blanche, who unveiled the fund and previously served as Trump’s criminal defense lawyer.VI. The Family Business

The pattern extends to the president’s family.

ProPublica reported that the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital approved a conditional $620 million loan to Vulcan Elements, a rare-earth magnet company in which Donald Trump Jr.’s firm, 1789 Capital, had taken a stake three months earlier, and that the loan request was reportedly initiated by Trump adviser Peter Navarro. Trump Jr., the Pentagon and the company all deny any political influence. Sen. Adam Schiff called it a “wedding present.” A company backed by Eric Trump secured a $24 million Pentagon contract, which Sen. Elizabeth Warren called “corruption in plain sight.”

The broader picture is larger still. In Rolling Stone, historian Sean Wilentz documented a $500 million investment in the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial by an Abu Dhabi firm tied to the UAE’s national security adviser, and found that more than half of the publicly identified corporate donors to Trump’s White House ballroom later received new or expanded federal contracts worth more than $50 billion, according to Public Citizen. Bouie has noted that hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing to the ballroom and a planned triumphal arch without a specific congressional appropriation.

Where investigators should look. The full decision record for the Vulcan loan, including Navarro’s role and any contact with 1789 Capital; ethics reviews, if any, of deals involving Trump family companies; a full accounting of public money spent on the ballroom, the arch and other White House projects; and ballroom donor lists compared against subsequent contracts and regulatory decisions.VII. This Has Happened Before

None of this should surprise anyone who has followed Trump’s career, because a court has already found that he did something similar.

In 2019, Trump was ordered to pay $2 million in damages for illegally misusing money from his own charity, the Trump Foundation, for political purposes. In settling with the New York Attorney General’s office, he agreed to 19 admissions acknowledging his personal misuse of the foundation’s funds, including using it to benefit his 2016 presidential campaign. The foundation was dissolved. Trump had to reimburse it for sports memorabilia and champagne bought at a charity gala. His children were required to undergo training on how to properly run a charity, and Trump agreed to restrictions and ongoing reporting on any future charitable work.

“No one is above the law,” Attorney General Letitia James said at the time, “not a businessman, not a candidate for office, and not even the president of the United States.”

The parallels are hard to miss: money set aside for one purpose, charity then and public needs now, redirected toward Trump’s political interests. The lesson Trump appears to have taken was not to stop, but that the consequences were small enough to absorb. Then it was a charity. Now it is the United States Treasury.

From a legal standpoint, that history matters for another reason. Many of the laws at issue here turn on intent and knowledge. A prior, admitted misuse of funds for political purposes is relevant context for any investigator deciding whether today’s spending decisions were mistakes or choices.

A Timeline

  • 2019: A court orders Trump to pay $2 million for misusing Trump Foundation funds for political purposes, and the foundation is dissolved.
  • 2023: As South Dakota governor, Noem’s administration pays the Strategy Group $8.5 million in state funds for ads starring Noem.
  • February 2025: DHS under Noem launches a no-bid ad campaign that grows to more than $220 million, citing a border “emergency.”
  • Early 2026: DOJ unveils the $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund to settle Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS. Judges block it and reopen the case.
  • Aug. 7, 2026: In an Oval Office meeting about midterm spending, Trump has his assistant show advisers videos of himself.
  • Sept. 9: Trump promises $5,000 to every adult “if the Republicans win.”
  • Sept. 19: OMB moves $20 million in CBP funds into a “commemorative events” budget line.
  • Sept. 20: CBP awards a $20 million “national media campaign” contract to LMD.
  • Late September: Ads praising Trump begin airing nationally, “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” The White House sends pocket rescissions targeting about $810 million.
  • Sept. 29: The GAO finds the pocket rescissions violate the Impoundment Control Act.
  • Sept. 30: Treasury begins sending $500 Obamacare checks to 950,000 people, mostly in battleground states.
  • Oct. 2: Trump announces $90 payments to 20 million Medicare enrollees.

VIII. Who Can Act

Congress can hold hearings, issue subpoenas and write appropriations riders that bar self-promotional ads, require competitive bidding for media contracts and require advance notice of transfers like the one that funded the “God Made Trump” campaign. If Democrats win the House, the Oversight, Judiciary and Appropriations committees will have the power to compel testimony from every official named in this piece.

The GAO has already found Impoundment Control Act violations and is being asked to review the ads. Its findings carry no direct penalty, but they create an official record and can trigger reporting requirements under the Antideficiency Act.

Inspectors general at DHS, HHS, Treasury and the Pentagon can examine how their agencies’ money was spent, including the Noem-era contracts experts have said warrant review, though the administration’s removal of inspectors general may limit how far they go.

The courts are already involved, and have shown a willingness to block and scrutinize these moves.

Future prosecutors could revisit the record. Federal criminal statutes on misuse of public funds generally carry five-year statutes of limitations, which means decisions made this fall could still be examined years from now.

Impeachment remains the Constitution’s ultimate check. The framers reserved it for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” a phrase they understood to include abuses of public trust, not only indictable crimes. Whether to pursue it is a political judgment for the House. But the framers built that tool for a president who treats public power, and public money, as his own.The Bottom Line

The record is building. A GAO finding that the administration broke the Impoundment Control Act. A federal court reopening a case over a possibly “collusive” settlement. Bipartisan objections to self-promotional ads paid for with border security money. A nine-figure no-bid ad program that contracting experts say warrants investigation. Government checks timed to land in battleground states weeks before an election. Family members profiting from government deals. And a prior court judgment over the misuse of charitable funds.

None of it enforces itself. It takes Congress, watchdogs, courts and, ultimately, voters deciding that it matters.

I’ll keep tracking every dollar: where it came from, where it went, who approved it and what laws may have been broken. Because if the people’s money can be spent to glorify one man and reward his party at the ballot box without consequence, then Congress’ power of the purse, and the Constitution that guarantees it, mean nothing.

More Global News

New York Times, Lula and Bolsonaro Son Head to Runoff for Brazil’s Presidency, Ana Ionova and Adam B. Ellick, Oct. 4, 2026. Neither President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva nor his top challenger, Flávio Bolsonaro, won a majority of votes in the first round. But for now, Mr. Bolsonaro is leading the race.

Brazil’s heated presidential election was forced into a runoff on Sunday, according to election officials, with the right-wing challenger leading over the leftist incumbent in a race that may have sweeping consequences far beyond the country.

The challenger, Flávio Bolsonaro, received 47.3 percent of the vote, compared with 44.8 percent for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. With over 95 percent of the ballots counted, neither succeeded in capturing the more than the 50 percent needed for outright victory.

The two candidates will now face each other head-on in an Oct. 25 runoff. But Mr. Bolsonaro, son of a former president imprisoned for attempting a coup after losing the last election, appeared to be closing in on his goal.

If Mr. Bolsonaro ousts Mr. Lula in the runoff, it will mark the biggest win yet for Latin America’s ascendant right. It will also usher in to power an enthusiastic Trump administration ally who has signaled that he is willing to help Washington advance its goal of dominance in the region.

Candidates aligned with President Trump on issues like fighting drug gangs and “woke ideology” have won the last seven elections in the region, with Brazil the biggest remaining prize.

If Mr. Lula succeeds in rebounding from Sunday’s setback, it may been seen as a rebuke to the Latin American right. If nothing else, a Lula victory would slow the right’s spectacular march across the continent and complicate Mr. Trump’s plans.

As many other Latin American leaders fall into line, Mr. Lula has repeatedly defied Mr. Trump, warning him not to meddle in his country’s affairs.ImageA line of people on a sidewalk next to a wall.

For months, expectations loomed large that Mr. Trump, who has waded into other regional elections, might try to influence the Brazilian vote. While he did not endorse Mr. Bolsonaro, his administration did work to lift him in more subtle ways.

With the runoff just weeks away, Mr. Lula and Mr. Bolsonaro must now race to capture millions more votes. Key to that will be the roughly 8 percent of voters who backed a range of other candidates on Sunday. Those candidates drew only single-digit support.

Analysts expect a majority of those voters, most of whom backed third-party candidates on the right of the political spectrum, to now shift their support to Mr. Bolsonaro.

If Mr. Lula stands a chance of turning the race around, he will have to persuade some of the millions of voters who stayed home or spoiled their ballots to lend him support. In Brazil, where voting is mandatory for most between the ages of 18 and 70, about 20 percent of voters chose to abstain from casting a ballot on Sunday.

New York Times, U.S. Rushes to Withdraw Bombers From U.K. Air Base After New Threats, Eric Schmitt, Oct. 4, 2026. The withdrawal came with unusual speed, following what U.S. officials said were threats of an Iran-based plot against the installation.

The United States rushed over the weekend to withdraw all 12 B-1 Air Force bombers from an air base in southern England after commanders received new threats about an Iran-backed plot against the installation, two U.S. officials said on Sunday.

The withdrawal was highly unusual: Such moves are rarely made so quickly from an allied air base in a peacetime country thousands of miles from a combat zone.

The need to move the bombers out of the base, R.A.F. Fairford, was deemed so urgent that some of the planes and their flight crews left while aerial refueling aircraft were still being scrambled to support their flights to the United States. At least three of the planes had landed at their home base in South Dakota by Sunday, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.

The Pentagon’s European Command confirmed on Sunday that the bombers had left England but declined to comment on any new warnings.

The sudden pullout of the bombers came a week after the British police arrested five men who had been traveling last Sunday morning in white vans near the base, which has been used by American bombers in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. The men were released on bail a day later after the authorities did not discover explosives in the vans.

More On Middle East Wars

New York Times, Saudi-Backed Yemeni Government Declares War Against Houthis, Vivian Nereim, Eric Schmitt and Saeed Al-Batati, Oct. 4, 2026. More than 200 U.S. intelligence and military analysts are in Saudi Arabia helping it provide assistance to its Yemeni allies, current and former U.S. officials say.

The Saudi-backed government of Yemen on Sunday announced a major military campaign against the Houthi militia, a key Iranian ally, plunging the Middle East deeper into war.

The new operation threatens to open a new front in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and further entangle the United States in the widening regional conflict that it began more than seven months ago.

More than 200 U.S. intelligence and military analysts are assisting the Saudi government in command centers inside the kingdom, helping to analyze and select targets in support of its Yemeni allies, according to one current and one former U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. The United States is also providing aerial refueling for Saudi warplanes conducting defensive air patrols, they added.

In a televised speech, Rashad al-Alimi, the leader of the internationally recognized Yemeni government — which depends heavily on Saudi Arabia for financial and military support — said that his armed forces were seeking to reclaim the territory lost to the Houthis over the past 12 years.

In a statement hours later, Maj. General Turki al-Maliki, spokesman for a Saudi military coalition in Yemen, said that Saudi Arabia had the right to defend itself from Houthi attacks and pledged “full operational support” to the Yemeni military to fight the militia until it is “eliminated.”

Asked about the campaign, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a Houthi political official, accused Saudi Arabia of waging war in Yemen to “impose its tutelage and interfere in sovereign decision-making.”

The announcement marks the second time that the Yemeni government has sought to fight the Houthis with Saudi support. In 2015, a Saudi-led intervention devolved into a grinding war that contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people from violence, hunger and disease, and failed to defeat the Houthis.

Renewed fighting in recent weeks has already compounded the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. More than 800 people have been killed since early August, according to the World Health Organization, while the World Food Program says more than 150,000 people have been displaced.

The Saudi-led campaign a decade ago hinged on U.S. support and weaponry, and Saudi officials have sought American assistance this time, too. Though the U.S. is offering some assistance, President Trump rebuffed the Saudi requests last month for the U.S. military to strike targets in Yemen controlled by the Houthis.

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

New York Times, Measles Outbreak in Amish Country Forces Some to Rethink Vaccines, Anemona Hartocollis, Photographs by Madeleine Hordinski, Oct. 4, 2026. The spread of measles in Pennsylvania and Ohio is largely affecting Amish communities where vaccinations levels are low.

The Amish family thought the chills and fever that had hammered their second oldest son was strep throat. Then a ringing came from the phone shack in the yard: A friend was calling to say the measles had been lurking at a horse auction in Lancaster, Pa.

The 15-year-old boy and his father, an Amish horse breaker, had been there just a few days before.

“We knew it was the measles,” Emma Miller, the boy’s mother, said.

Measles cases have been reported in 45 states in 2026. In Pennsylvania — where state officials say five have died in connection with the outbreak — and Ohio, the Amish people are bearing the brunt of the sickness. They are also taking a share of the blame from outsiders, owing to a lifestyle that tends toward shutting out modern medicine, along with other aspects of contemporary life.

But two days of traveling with a health practitioner through the pastoral Amish country of northeastern Ohio found that despite the stereotype, the Amish are not anti-vaccine. Their reasons for rejecting vaccination are more nuanced.

Like most other Americans, many had never seen a case of measles before, and were not aware of how dangerous the virus could be, leading to deafness, brain swelling and even death. They thought measles would not find them, and it did.

The contagion, officially declared vanquished by vaccination, ripped through the Miller family over the summer, sickening six of the seven children and their mother. It skipped only their father, Marvin Miller, and one daughter, Mary Ann. Both had been vaccinated.

Through the fog of her own illness Mrs. Miller struggled to nurse the sick children, including the baby, as she dispensed Tylenol to battle the fever that accompanies measles. It was left to 12-year-old Mary Ann to sweep the floors and do the baking. Neighbors left food at the door.

The family stayed home from church to protect the congregation. But for all their precautions, the sickness jumped to their cousins, who had visited before there was any thought of measles

“I didn’t imagine it would be so bad,” Mrs. Miller said.

The Amish are sometimes depicted as objecting to vaccination on religious grounds, but getting vaccinated was a matter of personal preference, families said, again and again. Often it came down to a matter of family practice, or tradition. If their parents or grandparents had been vaccinated, they probably would be, too.

Vaccinations rates are also low because the Amish generally do not have commercial health insurance or credit cards. They pay for medical appointments in cash. In an emergency, they turn to their mutual aid fund.

The measles vaccine came into use in 1963, when the virus was killing 400 to 500 people a year in the United States.

In 2000, measles was declared eliminated, but not eradicated, a subtlety of terminology that allows for a recurrence of the disease. That status is now in jeopardy. There have been more outbreaks in recent years, as hesitancy over vaccines has been fueled by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, who has long been a skeptic of their efficacy.

“The memory of the vaccination coming in and immediately dropping the death count across the country is for some people two to three generations away,” Cleveland’s director of public health, Dr. David Margolius, said. “That, coupled with more vocal people in positions of power saying, ‘Hey, you don’t need these vaccinations anymore.’”

Pennsylvania’s measles outbreak has sickened 977 people as of Oct. 2, with Lancaster County and its large Amish population accounting for about 40 percent of cases.

It has hospitalized 195 people and been associated with five deaths, according to the state’s public health department. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists just two deaths, disputing the state’s tally.

Ohio has logged 206 cases this year, with the highest numbers in three Amish-heavy counties: Geauga, with 49; Wayne, 44; and Ashtabula, 32. Last year there were 46 measles cases statewide. The state has shipped about 7,100 doses of outbreak-related vaccine to providers this year, up from just over 1,000 last year.

The Pennsylvania and Ohio contagions are most likely linked. Health investigators say some of the Ohio contagion began just as the Miller family’s did, with exposure at horse sales in Lancaster, Pa., and in Bloomfield and Sugarcreek, Ohio. From there, it spread to weddings, funerals, parties and church services.

Anemona Hartocollis and Madeleine Hordinski spent two days touring Geauga County, Ohio, with a health care practitioner and talking to Amish people, mainly women, about their attitudes toward vaccination.

 

 

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., with President Trump and Mehmet Oz, the Medicaid and Medicare services administrator, in the White House in September (New York Times photo by Tierney L. Cross)

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., with President Trump and Mehmet Oz, the Medicaid and Medicare services administrator, in the White House in September (New York Times photo by Tierney L. Cross) 

Politico, RFK Jr.’s movement is in disarray, Amanda Chu, Oct. 4, 2026. Tony Lyons, the leading organizer of the Make America Healthy Again movement, promised to raise $100 million to support Republicans this year. He’s politico Customnowhere close.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement is turning on its leader.

Not RFK Jr.

Rather, Tony Lyons, the Kennedy friend and book publisher who is the president of a web of MAHA nonprofits and political groups.

Supporters of Kennedy’s message, that food and pharma companies have conspired with bureaucrats to poison Americans for profit, say Lyons is selling out to business interests who want Kennedy’s ear now that he’s President Donald Trump’s health secretary. Ignoring the grassroots could cost Republicans running in the midterm elections who need it energized, they say.

The latest evidence: fundraising reports from Lyons’ MAHA Political Action Committee that show fewer than 20 donors this year, totaling $1 million, far short of the $100 million Lyons promised to raise to help Republicans allied with Kennedy in this year’s elections. Many of its donors are companies that have interests before the Health Department, POLITICO found. The PAC has spent less than $800,000 to support candidates this year.

A month before the midterms, the PAC has spent no money on races that will help Republicans maintain control of Congress, frustrating MAHA supporters who worry leaders are squandering the movement’s momentum after it helped return Trump to office.

“What a joke!” Alex Clark, a MAHA influencer who works at the conservative group Turning Point USA said of the PAC’s spending. “We’re talking about millions of voters who just fell into our lap like manna from heaven, and we’re just gonna let them walk away.”

Lyons did not respond to POLITICO’s requests for comment.

He galvanizes supporters on weekly calls with warnings about the “dark forces” in corporate America lobbying to undermine Kennedy’s agenda. “We don’t want Bobby Kennedy or his whole team to be sitting in congressional hearings where they’re just trying to slow things down and make it easier and more affordable for big companies to poison the American public,” he recently said.

The fundraising report came as Lyons hosted an invite-only summit on Sept. 29 at Washington’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel sponsored by companies including Anthropic and OpenAI, artificial intelligence companies contributing to the data center boom, the health impacts of which many Kennedy supporters fear, and Walmart, purveyor of the ultraprocessed food Kennedy decries.

Neither AI firm provided comment when POLITICO contacted them to ask about their sponsorship of the event. Walmart declined to comment.

“What is shocking is how quickly a movement built to challenge that system appears to have reproduced it,” wrote Robert Malone, a scientist who shares Kennedy’s skepticism of Covid vaccines and advised him on vaccine policy until quitting in March, citing disagreement with Kennedy’s staff, in a Substack essay reflecting on the summit.Department of Health and Human Services headquarters are seen.

Lyons galvanizes supporters on weekly calls with warnings about the “dark forces” in corporate America lobbying to undermine Kennedy’s agenda. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

In addition to MAHA PAC, Lyons leads its sister nonprofits, MAHA Center, MAHA Action and MAHA Institute, and moves money between them. MAHA PAC, for example, has transferred $4 million to MAHA Action since January 2025, according to federal filings.

MAHA supporters can join the movement on the MAHA Action website through a series of tiered subscriptions, costing up to $6,000 a year. MAHA Holdings administers the subscriptions. Finn Kennedy, one of Kennedy’s sons, sits on MAHA Holdings’ board.

“These outside entities that have branded themselves as representative of the MAHA voting bloc…they are not helping us,” said Stephanie Stock, president of Ohio Advocates for Medical Freedom, a nonprofit that supports Kennedy’s efforts to convince states to reduce school vaccine requirements.

A MAHA Institute-backed candidate, Stock partially blames her loss in a state House primary in May on lack of funding. Her opponent outraised her more than tenfold and she received no money from Lyons’ MAHA groups.

“These guys are throwing galas, and we’ve just kind of had it,” Stock added. “You look up at the sponsors, and you see Anthropic and Walmart, drug companies, and you’re like, ‘What in the world?’”Will the real MAHA candidate please stand up?

Trump aides have said they hope the president’s embrace of Kennedy as health secretary will benefit Republicans in the midterms. They’ve also credited the alliance with Kennedy with helping Trump defeat Kamala Harris two years ago.

But Zen Honeycutt, one of the MAHA moms who supports Kennedy and founder of nonprofit Moms Across America, is straying.Watch: The ConversationAdam Hamilton on faith, Trump and the fight for Kansas

Less than two months to the midterms, in a windowless conference room by the White House, she rallied candidates at a convention for political independents estranged from both parties.

“I want to empower you to utilize this MAHA movement as best as you can to raise up the independents in this country,” Honeycutt declared to a full room peppered with people who worked on Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign.

None of the candidates there were endorsed by Lyons’ MAHA groups, which are backing only Republicans. Honeycutt’s nonprofit aims to endorse 20 of its own candidates across party lines.

In an interview with POLITICO, Honeycutt called MAHA’s issues “nonpartisan.” “That’s not what some of the people in the MAHA world would want from us. They want us to align with the Republican Party, but we will talk to anyone,” she said.

Some candidates supportive of MAHA at the convention are running against an opponent backed by Lyons’ groups. In the room with Honeycutt were Clayton Cuteri and Bill Reeside, independents running in South Carolina’s 1st District race against Republican Jenny Costa Honeycutt, who has no relation to Zen. MAHA Action has endorsed Jenny Honeycutt and the MAHA PAC has spent $26,000 on her campaign.

“It’s a civil war out there,” said Larry Sharpe, who worked on Kennedy’s presidential campaign. Sharpe called Lyons’ decision to back only Republicans a “strategic mistake,” adding “it’s almost like a split between Eastern Orthodox and Catholics…They both believe in the afterlife. They both believe Jesus is divine, but they’ve gone different ways.”Zen Honeycutt, founder of Moms Across America, at the 2026 Independent National Convention

Zen Honeycutt, founder of nonprofit Moms Across America, says MAHA is "nonpartisan." | Amanda Chu

Democrats, too, are making overtures to the MAHA movement. Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has released a “Building a Healthier America” policy agenda that speaks to MAHA advocates’ concerns about food safety and chemicals in the environment.

A House working group led by New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently recommended that the party woo Kennedy’s followers.

MAHA supporters have expressed growing frustration with the GOP since Trump issued a February order protecting a pesticide Kennedy and his supporters think is a carcinogen. Since, there have been complaints about new Health Department appointees, like Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Erica Schwartz, who don’t share Kennedy’s skeptical views about vaccines, and Kennedy’s failure to take mRNA vaccines, like those used to combat Covid-19, from the market.

Candidates endorsed by Lyons’ MAHA groups have had mixed success in the primaries. A POLITICO analysis in June found that most of the winners were incumbents or candidates who previously held office. As of June, 11 of the 12 MAHA Institute-backed candidates who lost their races had never run before.

Lyons scored a significant GOP primary win when Louisiana Rep. Julia Letlow defeated incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Kennedy foe on Capitol Hill. And another when Zach Lahn, an entrepreneur, defeated Trump-backed Rep. Randy Feenstra to secure the Republican nomination for Iowa governor. Lyons committed $1 million to support each candidate.

While the PAC has yet to donate to Lahn, the vast majority of its election spending has gone to Letlow, who received 90% of the $790,000 it’s spent this year to support candidates, according to federal filings.

Neither race will help Republicans retain control of Congress. MAHA PAC’s choice to support Letlow also went against the wishes of local MAHA supporters, who wanted the group to back a different challenger. Fiorella Trapani, co-director of Health Freedom Louisiana, called MAHA’s endorsement a “punch in the gut.”

“If MAHA wants to represent this movement, its actions, endorsements, and priorities need to reflect the principles and people that built it,” she wrote in a statement.

Of the 85 candidates endorsed by Lyons’ MAHA groups, only six are in competitive races that will determine the balance of power in Congress: incumbent Reps. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida; Tom Barrett of Michigan and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania. There is also Derek Morrin, who is running to unseat Ohio Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur; Joe Mitchell, who is running for a House seat in Iowa; and John Sununu, who is running to return to the Senate to represent New Hampshire. None of these candidates have received money from MAHA, according to its PAC filings.

Some of MAHA PAC’s top expenses include X, formerly known as Twitter. The PAC paid the platform $810,000 this election cycle, according to filings. Merit Street Media, a media company founded by television host Phil McGraw, known by his stage name Dr. Phil, received more than $500,000. The private Ned’s Club in Washington was another top expense with the PAC spending more than $155,000 on the venue in this election cycle.

Amber Webster, a former Democrat who volunteered on Kennedy’s campaign in Connecticut, called the PAC’s lack of grassroots spending a “missed opportunity.”

“If they have committed to spend $100 million, they should really be honing in on some of these people in these seats that we either need to keep or flip and help these candidates get elected,” she said.

“There is a really big MAHA army out there that could be helping the Republican Party more.”

In 2025, Tahnoon's businesses bought 49% share in the Donald Trump family's cryptocurrency firm World Liberty Financial (WLF) for half a billion dollars and bought $2 billion worth of USD1 stablecoins from WLF.[3] Shortly thereafter, the Trump administration ignored national security concerns and committed to provide 500,000 of the most advanced AI chips a year to the UAE.[3]

Status with Natalie Korach, The Sunday Spotlight: McClatchy Goes Mute, Natalie Korach, Oct. 4, 2026. Weeks after gutting local newsrooms, McClatchy leadership has offered staffers virtually no explanation of what comes next, Status has learned, as the company builds out its controversial A.I. operation.

On the morning of the September 10 layoffs, the Idaho Statesman’s editor stood before a newsroom that was about to lose more than half its staff and read from what one employee described as a “corporate script.” According to that person, the editor appeared to have been given a list of affected names from McClatchy leadership that he didn’t know about until the morning of the cuts.

It was, in some ways, the only real communication Statesman staffers would receive about the cuts. The storied, Boise-based publication is set to lose a staggering 13 of its 22 remaining newsroom staffers, Status has learned, including 10 of its remaining 18 union members. It’s a result of sweeping nationwide cuts across McClatchy, the 169-year-old newspaper chain that since 2020 has been owned by the hedge fund Chatham Asset Management. At the end of next week, staffers at the Statesman and dozens of other journalists at McClatchy-owned papers will officially depart their respective outlets.

They are leaving a company that has spent the past year increasingly betting on artificial intelligence to power its newspapers, despite staunch objections from its own journalists. Since the cuts, McClatchy has celebrated new hires for its A.I.-focused “content innovation lab,” while offering almost no explanation of why the layoffs were necessary or what comes next for their newsrooms. And though there’s no indication the cuts were tied to the company’s A.I. ambitions, in newsrooms still reeling from the losses, staffers told me the company’s priorities are hard to miss.

The layoffs were haphazard from the start. Staffers received limited information from McClatchy leadership, and in most cases, their own local newsroom leaders, about just how deep the cuts went. McClatchy has not disclosed the scale of the layoffs, but the News Guild-CWA said McClatchy axed more than 90 unionized employees across 17 publications, representing 40% of the company's unionized workforce—and the total, including non-unionized employees, is almost certainly more. One laid-off staffer told Status that employees across McClatchy papers had to compare notes among themselves to piece together the scale of the bloodletting. “We could see it was all over the board in ways that are going to be crippling for news coverage in a lot of these communities,” the staffer said.

The day of the layoffs, McClatchy’s vice president of local news, Greg Farmer, said in an internal memo obtained by Status that the company was “reshaping” its newsrooms to better align with consumers, pointing to a 41% decline in consumer revenue. Since then, I’m told, corporate has gone almost completely silent—and, tellingly, a spokesperson did not respond to my request for comment. There has been no company-wide town hall to explain the layoffs or how McClatchy intends to restructure its newsrooms. No follow-up memo from leadership addressing the cuts. And certainly no opportunity for staffers to ask questions.

Instead, McClatchy leadership has left the top editor at each local publication to fend for themselves when it comes to justifying the devastating cuts. And the silence hasn’t been lost on staffers.

“For this round of layoffs, they’ve pursued an even more troubling strategy: Not only are they avoiding accountability to the public by refusing to explain themselves publicly, they’re also avoiding any meaningful explanation in our newsroom,” Ariane Lange, an investigative reporter at The Sacramento Bee and the vice chair of the paper’s news guild, told Status.Meanwhile, many of the local newsrooms under the McClatchy umbrella haven’t held independent newsroom-wide meetings to address staff concerns after losing significant portions of their ranks. The Sacramento Bee’s executive editor didn’t address the newsroom for days, when he offered to meet with staffers one-on-one about the restructuring, Lange said, who described the company’s communications strategy as “bizarre.” (Editors at the Statesman and Bee did not respond to requests for comment.) Employees at other McClatchy-owned publications, including The Miami Herald and Belleville News-Democrat in Illinois, described similar experiences.

Adding insult to injury, while McClatchy has remained mute about the cuts and how it plans to reposition its local newspapers for the future, the company did find something to celebrate. Less than a week after announcing the layoffs, McClatchy sent an all-staff memo obtained by Status, welcoming a slate of new hires, even though they had officially joined the company in August. The timing struck staffers as particularly jarring. After gutting local newsrooms, corporate leadership was touting hires who had already been on the job for weeks.

Editorial staffers also noticed that three of the hires were for executive positions at the national level, and three were being tapped as directors for the “content innovation lab,” the team involved in the company’s controversial push to integrate A.I. into its newsrooms.

That effort has already become a major flashpoint between McClatchy and its journalists. Earlier this year, the company rolled out its internally developed “Content Scaling Agent,” an A.I. tool designed to take reporters’ existing journalism and generate additional versions of stories for different audiences. Executives pitched the technology as a way to increase publishing volume and reach new readers, but its rollout triggered immediate resistance across McClatchy newsrooms. Journalists at papers including the Sacramento Bee, Miami Herald, Idaho Statesman, and Tacoma News Tribune staged a byline revolt, refusing to allow their names to appear on stories generated by the tool.

The Athletic via The New York Times, Inside Arizona State men’s hockey, and the workout that left a player on life support, Katie Strang, Nathan Fenno and Adam Kilgore, Sept. 17, 2026. Greg Powers was going to fix the problem. The longtime Arizona State University men’s hockey coach, the only person to lead the program in its 12 years in Division I, had watched his 2025-26 team lose 10 of its final 12 games and miss the postseason, and he knew why.

In a 247Sports podcast on May 18, Powers lamented that he didn’t get “buy-in” from the players and that the Sun Devils had lost the blue-collar identity that he felt propelled a nascent Division I program to four winning seasons and a 2019 NCAA Tournament berth.

“I hate to say the word ‘soft,’ but that’s what we were,” Powers said. “And it became contagious. It was a team that just didn’t attack adversity.”

This season was going to be different, starting from day one. When players reported for the first official team activity Aug. 20 at Sun Angel Stadium, the workout was not led by the coach. Instead, according to photographs and interviews, Powers wore a pair of slide-on sandals and watched from the side as Tim Ziesel, 39, a former Green Beret, shouted commands at his players.

Powers told the players that the new workout would be challenging, multiple people present said, but if they wanted to be successful, they would get through it as a team.

Among the new players Powers brought in was Matthew Mayich, a St. Louis Blues prospect who arrived from Stoney Creek, Ontario, about a week earlier. Teammates called him “Mayo.” Toward the end of the roughly 45-minute workout, Mayich, 21, collapsed, dropping the medicine ball he had been hauling. An athletic trainer hurried toward him and attempted to cool him down. Emergency responders rushed to the scene. Mayich was taken to a local hospital. He remains in critical condition; a lawyer representing his family said he is unlikely to recover.

Powers and the coaching staff haven’t spoken publicly about what happened that day, and Powers declined to comment through a university spokesperson. Last month, Arizona State, which also declined to comment for this story, announced it was reviewing the circumstances of the workout, repeatedly emphasizing the review was not an investigation. The Arizona State University Police Department opened a probe, a move the university called standard.

The Athletic spoke to more than two dozen people for this story, including many who witnessed the training session or were briefed on it, and reviewed photographs of the workout, as well as text messages and emails, in an effort to understand what happened at the workout and the decision-making surrounding it. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about an incident that is the subject of an ongoing inquiry or out of fear of retaliation.

Powers was determined to toughen up his team, those sources said. His normal preseason conditioning setup was replaced by an unorthodox workout that may have violated NCAA guidelines on acclimating athletes to new climates and training periods.

In the aftermath of Mayich’s collapse, some players are angry that Powers is being allowed to continue coaching while investigators ask them about the incident and the program, team sources said. Some feel trapped as they want justice for a teammate on life support, but their hockey careers are under the control of the coach who greenlit the workout that put him there.

U.S. Energy, Climate Change, Environmental Regulation

New York Times, A Supreme Court Battle Over Climate Change Begins, Karen Zraick, Oct. 4, 2026. The justices are about to hear a lawsuit that could determine whether the oil industry faces billions of dollars in liability for damages caused by global warming.

Nearly a decade ago, the outdoorsy, liberal enclave of Boulder, Colo., sued two oil companies over their role in climate change. Now, the Supreme Court will consider whether the groundbreaking lawsuit can ever go to trial.

Its decision will resonate far beyond the Rockies.

A win for Boulder would likely clear the way for dozens of similar lawsuits nationwide aiming to extract billions of dollars from the fossil fuel industry to fight global warming. But if the court kills Boulder’s case, that could doom the others, handing a major victory to oil companies.

Boulder’s lawsuit says the two oil companies, Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy, should help pay for the damage to the state of Colorado — such as worsening heat waves and wildfires — caused by climate change, which is driven by the burning of fossil fuels. The companies say Boulder’s lawsuit should be thrown out because it was filed under state law, when federal law should have precedence.

“This is very much the case to watch because it’s at the Supreme Court,” said Michael Pappas, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School. “Is this something that state law can answer, or does federal law foreclose the opportunity?”

A small army of business groups, conservative legal theorists, Republican lawmakers and others have lined up to support Exxon and Suncor, and the Trump administration is also expected to argue before the court in support of the companies.

Among their claims: Letting the case proceed under state law would unleash legal chaos by opening the door to countless similar suits. “Every locality in the country could sue essentially anyone in the world for contributing to global climate change,” according to a brief supporting the energy industry filed by lawyers for the Trump administration. The Justice Department declined to comment for this article.

About three dozen similar cases have already been filed by state and local governments to date. None has yet gone to trial, and some have been dismissed, but about two dozen remain active.

“The U.S. Supreme Court must allow our case to continue, not bail out the oil companies before hearing the facts,” said Ashley Stolzmann, county commissioner for Boulder, in a statement.

Boulder’s lawsuit argues that the defendants caused physical harm to Colorado by selling fossil fuels, and covered up what they knew about the dangers of climate change in order to continue those sales. The lawsuit also alleges that the companies paid for campaigns to undermine the scientific consensus that burning oil, gas and coal is heating the planet.ImageA bicyclist rides past a row of smoldering homes and burned trees and vehicles.

Oct. 3

Top Headlines 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, both designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik).Steve Witkoff jared kushner sputnik afp getty

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

More Special Reports On Nefarious Trump-Related Ties To Russia, Hurting U.S., Europe, Ukraine  

 

Lev Parnas, above, being interviewed by cable television host Rachel Maddow on Jan. 15, 2020 for a documentary she produced about his life. He is shown also with his wife, who stood by him during a hoked up prosecution and imprisonment orchestrated by the Trump Justice Department as retribution for his willingness to expose their Russian-coddling dealmaking in his commentaries, courtroom proceedings and in his memoir, "Shadow Diplomacy."

lev parnas wife

  • Justice Integrity Project Backgrounder On Lev Parnas, Entrepreuneur, Former Trump Team Operative, Now Whistleblower, Andrew Kreig, Oct.4, 2026. A native of Ukraine and former high-level liaison on behalf of President Trump and his team to Eastern European Shadow Diplomacycontacts, aaron parnas o instagramis an expert commentator who has publisted a three-part series this fall documenting insidious relationships between the Trump Team -- President Trump, his families, their companies and their allies -- to Russian and other foreign interests damaging to most Americans. Parnas, a naturlized U.S. citizen who son Aaron Parnas, right, works independently as a prolific journalist with millions of readers and often quoted on this site, received a lifetime achievement award in 2025 for courage at a featured ceremony at the 13th annual Whistleblower Summit and Film Festival, which he memorialzed in a colum immediately below:

Lev Remembers, Yesterday Changed Me Forever: From Brooklyn to the National Press Club—A Whistleblower’s Journey and a Father’s Pride, Lev Parnas, Aug. 1, 2025. Yesterday was one of those rare days that I’ll never forget. 

2026 Trump-Russia Analysess

djt russian connections

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

News Updates

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption 


President Trump speaks to White House media before his trip to Alabama to host a political rally on Oct. 2, 2026. President Trump speaks to White House media before his trip to Alabama to host a political rally on Oct. 2, 2026. 

  • Hope for America, Opinion: The President's decline is in a freefall. Heather Delaney Reese, helen delaney reese djtright, Oct. 3, 2026. At 3:54 pm Donald Trump emerged from the White House with freshly colored hair and makeup, as Marine One’s engine roared in the background. He walked directly over to the waiting press, threw his hands out in front of him, gesturing at the empty ground in front of him, while he squeezed his legs together and arched his torso forward, yelling to the reporters, “This is the way the White House is supposed to look. Not asphalt. Broken, dirty asphalt. Look at it.” He then paused, frowning as he looked over his left shoulder, and continued, “The finest stone you could buy anywhere in the world.” The gathered press said nothing, confused by his odd behavior. 

More News Roundups 

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

Fascist leaders Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of German, and U.S. President Donald Trump

Fascist leaders Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of German, and U.S. President Donald Trump.

  • CounterPunch.org, Nuremberg’s Warning: When Law Legitimates the Machinery of Authoritarianism, Henry Giroux, Oct. 2, 2026. The legacy of Nuremberg is with us once again, less as a reminder of the power of the legal system to punish those who enabled and enacted the horrors of Nazi Germany than as a warning that the spirit of Nuremberg must be reclaimed as a moral and political imperative.

More On Campus Rape, #MeToo Claims

More On Russia's Invasion of Ukraine, Trump Family's Russian Ties

  • New York Times, Russia Turns to Striking Kyiv’s Bridges, Threatening a Vital Lifeline, Constant Méheut, Oct. 3, 2026. The bridges, used by many commuters in the Ukrainian capital, are the latest target in a broad Russian bombing campaign against infrastructure. Russia has a new target on its rapidly growing list of Ukrainian infrastructure to bomb: bridges. Over the past three days, Russia has attacked bridges in the capital, Kyiv, six times. Three drones hit one in the city’s south on Thursday, and the same bridge was struck twice on Friday. On Saturday morning, another attack hit a bridge in the north.

Top Stories

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, far left, and fellow New York City real estate and golfing crony Steve Witkoff, next to Kushner, with both Kushner and Witkoff designated by Trump as U.S. special envoys to negotiate deals regarding Russia-Ukraine and Middle East matters, among others (Russian media pool photo by Sputnik). Chart below by New York Times.

New York Times, U.S.-Russia Talks on Ukraine Now Involve an Oil Deal Tied to Trump Allies, Anton Troianovski and Eric Lipton, Oct. 3, 2026. President Vladimir V. Putin brought up a sale of Russian energy assets with President Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, pushing a deal that raises new questions about conflicts of interest.

The Trump administration’s talks with Russia about ending the war in Ukraine have expanded to include a multibillion-dollar oil deal that russian flag wavingwould benefit Middle Eastern business executives with ties to the two main U.S. negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

The deal, which is contingent on approval from the U.S. government and the Kremlin, is for a sprawling set of oil fields, refineries and gas stations around the world owned by Lukoil, one of Russia’s biggest energy companies.

The leading group seeking the deal includes an American investor, Todd Boehly, who has donated $2 million to President Trump’s political causes; two Middle Eastern groups that have done business with Mr. Kushner or Mr. Witkoff’s family; and an arm of the U.S. government itself.

lukoil logoThe monthslong negotiations, which were described by eight people familiar with them, shed new light on Mr. Trump’s latest approach to settling a four-year war that has killed hundreds of thousands. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

There is no indication that Mr. Kushner or Mr. Witkoff themselves stand to profit. But the pending deal represents a striking intermingling of personal business ties with geopolitics, even for an administration that has regularly dismissed concerns about potential conflicts of interest.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia brought up the deal when he met with Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner at the Kremlin on Sept. 5, according to three people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Putin proposed it get done as a way of showing Russians that they can do business with the United States, according to one of the people.

The Americans responded that they would work on it, the person said, seeing it as a way to build good will with the Kremlin while also lowering global energy prices. But the deal is also a lucrative one for the buyers: U.S. approval for the sale would release the assets from American sanctions, instantly increasing their value.

In Moscow, the decision on the deal is widely seen as Mr. Putin’s to make, even though Lukoil is technically a private company. The upshot is that the giant transaction, involving assets as varied as oil fields in Cameroon, refineries in Europe and gas stations in New Jersey, comes down to Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump.

world liberty financial logoMr. Trump has been promoting the promise of business deals with Russia since early last year, describing the country as a “tremendous opportunity.” The deal again brings Mr. Trump’s World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency company — co-founded by Mr. Witkoff — into focus. One of the investors in the Lukoil deal is a part owner of World Liberty.

Potential Lukoil investor group has ties with Trump, his family and his allies

Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner, who have traveled repeatedly to Russia for meetings with Mr. Putin, have argued that the potential to rebuild economic ties with the West could convince the Russian president to compromise in Ukraine. The administration has recently signaled it is open to deals with Russia even before the war ends, as a way of showing it is serious about resetting the United States’ relationship with Moscow.

The Lukoil sale, people familiar with the matter say, is one of those deals.

In a statement, a senior administration official confirmed that Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner played a direct role in helping negotiate the financial terms of the investment by the federal government in the deal to ensure that it included “a substantial upfront payment and profits interest for the United States.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Witkoff said that he “takes no salary and travels the world on his own plane, at his own expense, working on behalf of President Trump to negotiate peace and bring hostages home to their families.” She added that Mr. Witkoff “has no conflict of interest and no financial stake in this matter.”

A Stalled Bid, and a New Contender

Numerous potential bidders expressed interest in at least part of Lukoil’s international holdings when the assets went on the market last fall, including U.S. energy giants like Chevron.

The Washington private equity firm Carlyle reached a tentative agreement in January to buy a large share of the assets, after making the pitch that bringing Lukoil’s international portfolio under U.S. ownership would further the Trump administration’s goal of “energy dominance.”

But in recent months, as U.S. approval for Carlyle’s bid stalled, a different group emerged as the leading bidder: one led by Mr. Boehly, a billionaire supporter of Mr. Trump’s, alongside well-connected figures in the Middle East and the U.S. government itself. The members of the partnership were reported last week by The Financial Times.

Mr. Boehly is a co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and donated $1 million to MAGA Inc., the Trump-aligned political committee, in December 2025. He gave another $1 million through his investment firm, Eldridge Industries, to Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

New York Times, Trump, Putin, Ukraine and an Oil Deal: 5 Takeaways, Eric Lipton and Anton Troianovski, Oct. 3, 2026. A proposal to bolster relations with the Kremlin through the purchase of Russian energy assets is striking even for an administration that regularly mixes personal business interests with foreign policy.

It is one of the most alluring opportunities in global energy.

The foreign assets of Lukoil, the Russian energy giant, are being sold off at fire sale prices because U.S. sanctions have made them nearly worthless for investors in Russia. Gas stations in the United States, refineries in Eastern Europe and oil fields around the world are up for grabs.

russian flag wavingNow, the process of selling off those assets has become intertwined with White House efforts to negotiate an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. And some of the key figures poised to benefit from the Lukoil sale have ties to President Trump’s family and his associates — including the administration’s envoys to Russia. The revelation raises new questions about conflicts of interest in an administration that has regularly mixed personal interests with national interests.

Here are five takeaways from The New York Times’s investigation of the proposed transaction.Completing the deal is a factor in Ukraine peace talks.

The Trump administration has long argued that discussing business deals with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia could help convince him to mend ties with the West and end his war on Ukraine. The administration signaled recently that some deals could move forward before the war ends. But the specifics have been murky until now.

When Mr. Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, met with Mr. Putin at the Kremlin last month, the Russian president asked them to get the Lukoil deal done. The Americans said they would work on it, reasoning that doing so could build good will with the Kremlin while also lowering global energy prices.The deal’s leader is a big political donor to Mr. Trump.

The leader of the investor group is Todd Boehly, a billionaire asset manager and co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, among other holdings. He is also a major donor to Mr. Trump’s political causes. He contributed $1 million to Mr. Trump’s affiliated MAGA Inc. political committee last December, just as negotiations on the Lukoil deal were heating up.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.Family ties to the investors are widespread.

Mr. Trump; his three sons; Mr. Kushner; Ivanka Trump, one of the president’s daughters; and the Witkoff family all have financial ties to partners in the deal, which requires sign off from the Trump administration and the Kremlin. The Trump family and the president’s advisers do not have a direct financial stake in the transaction. But their business partners would benefit financially if the multibillion-dollar deal is completed.

The investors who have teamed up with Mr. Boehly include one of the richest investment funds in the Middle East, International Holding Company, which is overseen by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family.

Sheikh Tahnoon separately runs outfits that own nearly half of World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency company co-founded by Mr. Witkoff and still run by Zach Witkoff, one of Steve Witkoff’s sons. Donald Trump Jr. and Barron Trump, two of the president’s sons, also are stakeholders and co-founders of the company, and so they too are effectively business partners with Sheikh Tahnoon.

Sheikh Tahnoon, one of the most powerful players in Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates, controls companies that oversee Lunate, an investment fund that took a major stake in the private equity firm Affinity Partners, which was set up by Mr. Kushner after he left the White House at the end of Mr. Trump’s first term.

Another investor in Mr. Boehly’s group is a pair of Syrian-born Qatari billionaires, Moutaz Al-Khayyat and his brother Ramez Al-Khayyat, who have partnered with Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump to build a multibillion-dollar resort complex planned for the Mediterranean coast of Albania.Large chunks of the profits would go overseas.

Trump administration officials are celebrating how the Boehly-backed deal would help U.S. energy security, as the package includes everything from oil production sites to refineries and gas stations. The U.S. government would also take a direct stake in the new enterprise via the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, an agency that helps finance projects overseas. But given the makeup of the investment group, a large share of the resulting company — and the profits it creates — would be foreign owned, according to participants in the negotiations.Another prominent bidder would lose out.

Approving the Boehly deal now being negotiated with the help of the White House would mean rejecting a competing offer from Carlyle, a Washington-based global investment management firm that already has investments in refineries in Europe. Carlyle’s bid, by comparison, would mean an all-American owner. But Carlyle does not have similar financial ties to Mr. Trump’s family and political advisers. 

More Special Reports On Nefarious Trump-Related Ties To Russia, Hurting U.S., Europe, Ukraine  

 

Lev Parnas, above, being interviewed by cable television host Rachel Maddow on Jan. 15, 2020 for a documentary she produced about his life. He is shown also with his wife, who stood by him during a hoked up prosecution and imprisonment orchestrated by the Trump Justice Department as retribution for his willingness to expose their Russian-coddling dealmaking in his commentaries, courtroom proceedings and in his memoir, "Shadow Diplomacy."

lev parnas wife

  • Justice Integrity Project Backgrounder On Lev Parnas, Entrepreuneur, Former Trump Team Operative, Now Whistleblower, Andrew Kreig, Oct.4, 2026. A native of Ukraine and former high-level liaison on behalf of President Trump and his team to Eastern European Shadow Diplomacycontacts, aaron parnas o instagramis an expert commentator who has publisted a three-part series this fall documenting insidious relationships between the Trump Team -- President Trump, his families, their companies and their allies -- to Russian and other foreign interests damaging to most Americans. Parnas, a naturlized U.S. citizen who son Aaron Parnas, right, works independently as a prolific journalist with millions of readers and often quoted on this site, received a lifetime achievement award in 2025 for courage at a featured ceremony at the 13th annual Whistleblower Summit and Film Festival, which he memorialzed in a colum immediately below:

Lev Remembers, Yesterday Changed Me Forever: From Brooklyn to the National Press Club—A Whistleblower’s Journey and a Father’s Pride, Lev Parnas, Aug. 1, 2025. Yesterday was one of those rare days that I’ll never forget. The kind of day that reaches deep into your soul and reminds you of why you’re still standing. The kind of day that humbles you—because it isn’t just about what you’ve been through, it’s about who you’ve become because of it. I was in Washington, D.C., standing inside the hallowed halls of the National Press Club—the beating heart of free speech in this country—where I was presented with the 13th Annual Whistleblower Pillar Award. Now, I know how strange that may sound. Me, a kid from Brooklyn, standing in front of a room full of journalists, federal officials, and freedom fighters, being honored as a whistleblower. It still doesn’t fully register. Because where I come from, being a whistleblower wasn’t seen as courageous. It was seen as betrayal. As weakness. As turning your back. But I’ve lived long enough to learn that’s one of the biggest lies ever told.

2026 Trump-Russia Series

 

djt russian connections

donald trump money palmer report Custom

Emptywheel, Analysis: Trump Is Still Relying on Dossier-Driven Polarization to Hide Russian Shenanigans, marcy wheelerEmptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Oct. 3, 2026. We’re falling behind, under the weight of stories making it clear that Trump’s Russian shenanigans never ended.The biggest sign of that is the NYT story revealing that part of the Jared Kushner/Steve Witkoff “peace” plan for Ukraine is an oil deal involving the Emirati guy alleged to be Tom Barrack’s handler back in 2016.

Equally alarming is how various people — State Department Undersecretary of State Sarah Rogers and former Don Jr. sidepiece Kimberly Guilfoyle —are cozying up to people overthrowing democracy in Europe. I’ll discuss those in our reintroduction to this week’s reissue, maybe Monday. For now, I want to share the short we did to introduce this week’s reissue, which I posted in our video section (which I’m trying to introduce). Please follow and support LOLGOP Studios Patreon as we consider how to roll out this stuff in coming weeks.

  • New York Times, Russia Turns to Striking Kyiv’s Bridges, Threatening a Vital Lifeline, Constant Méheut, Oct. 3, 2026. The bridges, used by many commuters in the Ukrainian capital, are the latest target in a broad Russian bombing campaign against infrastructure. Russia has a new target on its rapidly growing list of Ukrainian infrastructure to bomb: bridges.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

 

U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsNew York Times, Senate Races in Republican States Tilt Toward Democrats, Polls Find, Patricia Mazzei, Ruth Igielnik and Sophia June, Oct. 3, 2026. Democrats are performing strongly in five reliably Republican states where they are trying to flip Senate seats to win control of the chamber, new New York Times/Siena polls found.

A month before the midterm elections, Democrats have opened leads or battled their way to ties or near-ties in five reliably Republican states where they are trying to flip Senate seats to win control of the chamber, according to new New York Times/Siena University polls.

Democrats lead among likely voters in the Senate races in Texas and Alaska, two states that consistently vote Republican, the polls found. They have an edge in Ohio, which has been tilting rightward for years. Republicans have a slim edge in Iowa, and Democrats are neck-and-neck with Republicans in Kansas, which has not voted for a Democratic senator since 1932.

President Trump’s deep unpopularity, disapproval of the Iran war and frustration over high gas prices and the cost of living are reshaping the electoral landscape, the polls found.

Taken together, the new polls suggest that the Democrats have multiple paths to retake the Senate majority, despite a challenging map that had favored Republicans going into the midterms. To win Senate control, Democrats need to flip four Republican-held seats while holding on to their current seats in three battleground states, a difficult task.

But there are signs that it is increasingly possible. On Friday, a top Republican super PAC pulled its money out of the Senate race in North Carolina, signaling that the party is not optimistic about being able to defend its seat there. The super PAC, called the Senate Leadership Fund, plans to redirect resources to Kansas, where Republicans have growing concerns about holding their seat.

The polling suggests Democrats are increasingly competitive in these Republican states. 

 Sleepy Don is frustrated.

Sleepy Don is frustrated.

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, Five Encouraging Senate Polls From The NYT, Early Vote Really Picks Up This Week, Hang Out With Some Inspiring Candidates This Weekend, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 3, 2026. Wonderful Candidate And State Party Interviews:  We’ve had some great reports from the battleground states and races in recent days.

No better way to get a sense of what’s happening out there then to hear from those on the front lines themselves. I promise watching a few of these discussions this weekend will lift you up and make you feel better about our party, our country, and our future.

Here’s what we got for you:

  • Josh Turek, our Senate candidate in Iowa, Roy Cooper running hard in North Carolina, and AG Aaron Ford running for Governor in Nevada
  • Eric Croft, Alaska Dem Chair
  • House Candidates - Jamie Ager (NC-11), Bob Brooks (PA-7), Paige Cognetti (PA-8), Cait Conley (NY-17), Christina Hines (MI-10), Jake Johnson (MN-1), Brian Poindexter (OH-7)
  • My weekly talk - Betrayed By Trump And His Allies The American People Have Put Their Faith Back In Us - And Now We Must Deliver
  • Another way to dive into the battlegrounds is to watch check this week’s Ad and Video Roundups to see the ads that are flying across the country right now.

Looking ahead Stuart Stevens joins us live on Monday at 230pm ET, Sarah Trone Garriott (IA-3) joins us Tuesday, Devon Murphy-Anderson of the Maine Democratic Party drops by on Wednesday, and Janelle Stelson (PA-10) is coming by on Thursday.Subscribed

The 2026 Election kicks into high gear this week with early in person voting starting in eight states: Arizona, Indiana, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, Wyoming -- while other states like California start sending out their mail ballots.

As we are now close to 1m people having voted in the 2026 Election I’m going to start my every-two-year early vote analysis using our friend Tom Bonier’s remarkable TargetEarly tool. Here is how the national early vote in 2026 compares so far to 2018 and 2022 on this same day in all three years. Yes, my friends, it’s encouraging but also very early!

What this data tells is not how someone voted but what their party affiliation is given their registration and what is called “modeled party” -- which can infer your party affiliation based on your vote history for those states without party registration. I will have more on this in the coming days and perhaps will bring Tom back to help you understand how this all works but get ready peeps -- the early vote is about to start coming hot and heavy, giving us an opportunity to run up the score and win these midterms in October -- not in November!

Trump has now dropped to -28 in the FiftyPlusOne job approval tracker for this first time this cycle. It’s just a stunning level of repudiation and rejection for the old, addled, painted, corrupt, malicious -- and REALLY UNPOPULAR -- orange guy:

Further confirming what a year of opportunity this has become for us the NYT dropped five encouraging battleground Senate polls this morning:

The Times also included this helpful chart to remind us that while this data is very encouraging at the end of the day all these races are close, Republicans have a lot more money than we do, and we just have to keep working hard:

Yesterday the Senate GOP SuperPAC paused its ads in North Carolina, essentially conceding the state to Roy Cooper. To understand how worried they are about defending these other states in pausing North Carolina they are hanging Michael Whatley, a former Chair of the RNC itself, out to dry. Abandoning a former RNC Chair a month before Election Day in a state Trump won just two years ago is a clear confirmation how bad things have gotten for the GOP.

The poll result from Kansas, and reports that the GOP SuperPAC is going to start spending there, means we need to start taking Kansas seriously here at Hopium. I know many of you have advocated for us to rally behind Adam Hamilton and I will be doing a deeper dive on this race now and will report back soon.

Yesterday Trump got a very bad jobs report. The economy produced very few jobs last month, and wages barely grew. This morning the country wakes up to a 30 year mortgage now clocking in at almost at annual 7.3% rate. Ugly, ugly stuff for the American people:

Yesterday we also discussed Trump’s escalating attempts to cheat in the 2026 Election. Today we learned that the monies for one of his current avenues of cheating, stealing money from tax payers to run political ads to bolster his image with voters, is coming from Congressional appropriated funds for

border security upgrades, efforts to combat drug trafficking and memorials for officers killed in the line of duty, according to federal spending records.

The NYT also has more reporting on this horrific and illegal abuse of power:

President Trump personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads praising him and his presidency, setting in motion a $20 million contract that used funds from the Department of Homeland Security, according to people familiar with the matter.

The ads have run across cable and network television — on Fox News, CNN and MS Now, with football games on Fox and with national newscasts on CBS, ABC and NBC, including “Meet the Press,” which Mr. Trump is known to watch.

Mr. Trump was eager to see the laudatory ads on the air and told Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to come up with the money from within the government, the people said. Mark Paoletta, the budget office’s counsel, and Will Scharf, the White House counsel, both said it would be legal to use D.H.S. funds. The president and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, both spoke with Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, about the ads.

On Sept. 20, U.S. Customs and Border Protection — which falls under D.H.S. — awarded the contract to LMD, a Maryland marketing firm, federal records show.

Jawdropping stuff, even for Trump. But further signs of how desperate they’ve become, and what a year of opportunity it has become for us……

Which is why it’s that time everyone. Time to……Go Kick These Corrupt Traitors’ Asses, Win The Midterms, And Prepare For The Fuckery To Come -- For It Is Coming (And May Already Be Here)

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

  • Become an Early Vote Champion in your networks, communities, and organizations.
  • Sign up to become a Democracy Protector too. Our next training is this Wednesday, Oct 7th at 10pm ET.
  • Email photos of your electoral work or physical act of voting to community@hopiumchronicles.com or via links on our daily chat. We want to start showcasing them here on Hopium.

 

texas map

New York Times, In Texas, Talarico Inspires a Recurring Blue-Tinted Dream , Robert Draper, Oct. 3, 2026. After a dry spell of more than three decades, Democrats are daring (yet again) to believe they can win one or more top-of-the-ballot races in a vast and stubbornly red state.

In the go-big-or-go-home collective consciousness of Texas, no ambition is deemed too reckless, no daydream too wild. Save perhaps one.

It is the idea, fantastical to many as it is irresistible to others, that the Democrats will win a statewide race in Texas for the first time in 32 years.

According to the latest New York Times/Siena University poll of the race for U.S. Senate, James Talarico, a 37-year-old state legislator seen by national Democrats as one of the breakout stars of this cycle, is ahead of his Republican rival, Ken Paxton, the state’s scandal-plagued attorney general, by six points. The poll was conducted from Sept. 21 to Sept. 30. A survey from mid-September, the ReconMR/Siena Research Institute poll, also showed the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Gina Hinojosa, four points ahead of the three-term G.O.P. incumbent, Greg Abbott, the most dominant political figure in Texas.

Cue the fluttering heartbeats. Cue, as well, the eye-rolls.

Given how thoroughly Republicans have dominated the state, and how the hopes of Democrats have repeatedly crashed, some Texas pollsters remain skeptical.

“At some point, you do get conditioned by all that’s happened in the past,” said James Henson, the director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Politics Project. “I mean, you look at the trends and you have to admit that something’s going on. But you still don’t want to believe your lying eyes, because you’ve been burned for so long.”

 

Desiree Rios

Angela Paxton, a Texas state senator, appeared in a new ad urging Texans to vote for Republicans, including her estranged husband Ken Paxton (New York Times photo by Desiree Rios).

New York Times, As She Divorces Ken Paxton, His Wife Urges Texans to Vote for Him, Lauren McGaughy, Oct. 3, 2026. In a new ad, Angela Paxton tells voters to focus on the “whole team,” not “individual players.”

Angela Paxton wants to clear the air.

Mrs. Paxton, the estranged wife of Ken Paxton, a conservative firebrand locked in a fierce battle for the U.S. Senate seat in Texas, is urging voters in a new ad to back the entire Republican ticket when they go to the polls next month.

While Mrs. Paxton doesn’t mention her husband — whom she is divorcing, alleging adultery — by name in the ad, she addresses “the elephant in the room” by telling voters they should look past their qualms with any single candidate and think about the future of the Republican Party.

“In a general election, it’s not as much about the individual players on the team. It’s about getting the whole team across the finish line,” she said. “Either we hold every Republican seat, or we hand the future of Texas to the other team.”

Mr. Paxton is trailing James Talarico, his Democratic opponent, in every recent poll, including one released by The New York Times and Siena University on Saturday. While Democrats have not won a statewide election in Texas in more than 30 years, Republicans have warned that the Senate race, and others, are more competitive now than in recent memory.

The ad, funded by Texas PAC, a political action committee affiliated with the main super PAC for Senate Republican leaders, could be a further indication of concern about Mr. Paxton’s chances in the race — especially among women. It also indicates that Mrs. Paxton is now part of a broader strategy to bolster the ticket.Get updates when new midterm election polls are added to our poll trackers. When new polling data drops we’ll send an update straight to your inbox. Get it sent to your inbox.

She recently gave a speech to a women’s club in Texas where she made similar remarks.

“The reality is, while we are the party of values, we have some vulnerabilities on our ballot,” Mrs. Paxton told the club, the Texas Federation of Republican Women on Sept. 18. “And I’ll be honest with you, I think Republican women will decide this election, because some of those vulnerabilities, I think, have been particularly alienating to women that hold our values.”

She then added, “But if we lose it to the other team, the nuances that we want to fix with maybe a certain candidate are nothing compared to what it’s going to take to get it back.”

On Friday, Mr. Paxton’s campaign touted a new ad featuring his daughter Mattie.

A spokesman for Mrs. Paxton, a Republican state senator who is not up for re-election this year, previously declined to tell The Times whether she would vote for her husband. The divorce proceedings are ongoing, her spokesman confirmed Saturday.

Over his more than 20 years in elected office, Mr. Paxton has weathered multiple scandals, including a fraud indictment, accusations of one other affair, and impeachment on bribery and abuse of office charges. None have resulted in a criminal conviction, and Mr. Paxton has denied any wrongdoing, saying the cases were witch hunts perpetrated by enemies within his own party.But the incidents have provided plenty of fodder for his political opponents, including Senator John Cornyn. Mr. Paxton trounced Mr. Cornyn in the May primary, besting him by more than 25 percentage points.

For months after his primary win, national Republican groups withheld their funding from the race. In the past few weeks, they have begun funneling tens of millions of dollars to ads backing Mr. Paxton. Texas PAC alone has invested more than $125 million, a figure that is expected to rise according to AdImpact, a firm that tracks ad spending.

News Updates

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: rump Enters ‘Desperation Mode,’ Texas is a ‘Five-Alarm Fire,’ Administration Clears Way to Institutionalize Disabled Americans, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 3, 2026. With 31 days until the midterms, Donald Trump is entering desperation mode. In the past 24 hours alone, he appeared to post a Republican senator’s personal cellphone number over daylight saving time, renewed his promise of $5,000 checks if Republicans keep Congress, announced $90 payments to 20 million seniors weeks before Election Day, and told a half-empty arena in Alabama, a state he won by 30 points, to “pretend I’m on the ballot.”

The panic is spreading through his party. Republicans are now on track to spend more than $200 million trying to rescue Ken Paxton in Texas, with one GOP senator calling it “a five-alarm fire,” and Paxton’s own estranged wife, who is divorcing him, appeared in a new ad urging voters to look past “individual players” and support the whole Republican ticket. Plus, new records show the prosecutor in the Cornell case never reviewed witness statements before declining charges, and the Trump administration has walked away from decades-old protections that let disabled Americans live in their communities instead of institutions.

On Monday, I’m publishing my deep-dive investigation into how Trump has used taxpayer money for his own benefit, from the “God Made Trump” ads paid for with border security funds to the checks landing in battleground states, laying out exactly where the money came from, where it went, which laws may have been broken and where investigators should look. It’s the most comprehensive piece I’ve written, and I’ve put my lawyer’s hat back on to do it.

Work like this takes time and resources, and it only happens because readers like you make it possible.

Here’s the news:

Republicans Panic Over the Soaring Cost of Saving Ken Paxton as Trump Posts a GOP Senator’s Phone Number and Rallies to Empty Seats

With his approval at record lows and Republicans privately bracing to lose the House, Trump is entering desperation mode, and the past 24 hours show it. He appeared to post Republican Sen. Tom Cotton’s personal cellphone number on Truth Social, urging Arkansans to call him over his opposition to making daylight saving time permanent. He renewed his promise of $5,000 checks to every adult if Republicans keep the House and Senate, a roughly $1 trillion pledge that 66% of voters call “inappropriate” and 61% don’t believe he’ll deliver, while announcing one-time $90 payments, which he called “nearly $100,” to more than 20 million seniors just weeks before Election Day. He warned that a Democratic victory would bring “a 1929 disaster,” invoking the crash that triggered the Great Depression, and told a Mobile, Alabama, rally to “pretend I’m on the ballot” as entire rows of seats sat empty behind him in a state he won by 30 points. Meanwhile, his Justice Department held a high-profile news conference to announce charges against a Utah mail carrier who admitted dumping mail out of “laziness,” with the acting deputy attorney general insisting, “Remember, folks. Voting fraud is real,” and calling it “just the tip of the iceberg” without offering evidence.

Republicans are panicking over the skyrocketing cost of rescuing Ken Paxton’s Texas Senate campaign, with one GOP senator calling it “a five-alarm fire.” The Senate Leadership Fund poured another $60 million into Texas this week, bringing its spending there to a record $131 million, and with MAGA Inc. and other reservations, outside Republican groups are on track to top $200 million to save Paxton, Politico reports. “This is a slow-moving car crash,” one Texas Republican strategist said, putting the chance of a “catastrophic” outcome for the GOP Senate majority at 75%. GOP operatives in Michigan and New Hampshire are now complaining that money flowing to Texas should be going to their states, with one ally of New Hampshire nominee John Sununu asking, “Why? We’ve never had a problem in Texas.” Most public polling over the past two months shows Democrat James Talarico with an edge, though Paxton released an internal poll showing himself up 48% to 45%.

Senior Republicans have been privately pushing Trump’s team to spend more on Paxton, worried MAGA Inc. won’t come through after his leaked audio trashing Trump’s convention. A Trump operative said MAGA Inc. and its affiliates expect to spend about $45 million in Texas through Oct. 12, up from $20 million, but would not commit to spending beyond that date. The concerns escalated after the New York Times reported audio of Paxton telling donors “everybody’s numbers dropped” after Trump’s Dallas convention, and Trump told a Texas crowd that Paxton “can be a pain in the ass sometimes.” One Republican senator said of Paxton’s unforced errors, “Sometimes, I think [Paxton] wants to lose,” while a Texas Republican official said, “all this spend hasn’t changed anything.” White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles reassured Senate Republicans this week that there will be enough money for competitive races in the final stretch.

As She Divorces Ken Paxton, His Wife Appears in an Ad Urging Texans to Vote for the GOP Ticket. Angela Paxton, a Republican state senator divorcing Ken Paxton on grounds of alleged adultery, appears in a new ad urging Texans to back the entire Republican ticket, telling voters, “it’s not as much about the individual players on the team. It’s about getting the whole team across the finish line.” She doesn’t mention her husband by name, but addresses “the elephant in the room,” warning, “Either we hold every Republican seat, or we hand the future of Texas to the other team.” The ad, funded by a PAC affiliated with Senate Republicans’ main super PAC, comes as Paxton trails Democrat James Talarico in every recent poll, including a New York Times/Siena poll released Saturday, and signals GOP concern about his standing with women. At a recent speech to Republican women, Angela Paxton acknowledged the party has “some vulnerabilities on our ballot” that have been “particularly alienating to women,” though her spokesman has declined to say whether she’ll vote for her husband. Paxton, who has weathered a fraud indictment, impeachment on bribery and abuse of office charges and other scandals without a conviction, denies wrongdoing, while his campaign released its own ad this week featuring his daughter Mattie.

Trump appeared to post Republican Sen. Tom Cotton’s personal cellphone number on Truth Social, urging Arkansans to call him over his opposition to making daylight saving time permanent. “Tom Cotton, a friend of mine, is holding up a very important Bill,” Trump wrote of the Sunshine Protection Act, adding, “Call Tom on his cellphone... and let him know.” In a third post, Trump said if Cotton “were putting Arkansas first, he would give them an extra hour of daylight.” Cotton fired back that Congress has enacted permanent daylight saving time before and repealed it “once Americans experienced absurdly late sunrises in the winter,” adding, “Arkansans don’t want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I’ll always put Arkansas first.” The House passed the bill in July with bipartisan support, but the Senate has yet to take it up, and Trump has also touted support from PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp, who he said needs it so golf tournaments don’t “run out of sunlight.”

Trump spoke to rows of empty seats at a rally in Mobile, Alabama, failing to fill a 10,041-seat arena in a state he won by 30 points. The Daily Beast reported that entire rows behind the president at the University of South Alabama’s Mitchell Center sat empty as he tried to rally support for Republicans ahead of the midterms. The sparse crowd came even as Trump bragged at the rally that he had received “the highest vote total of any candidate in Alabama history.” Alabama Democrats had cast the visit as a sign of GOP nerves, with gubernatorial nominee Doug Jones saying Trump “sees what we’re doing in this state.” It’s the latest stop in a campaign swing through deep-red states that has also taken Trump to Texas and Oklahoma, rather than traditional battlegrounds.

Cornell DA Never Reviewed Witness Statements Before Declining Charges, as Data Shows the University Rarely Expels Students for Sexual Assault

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten based his decision not to charge anyone in the alleged Cornell gang rape on Jane Doe’s initial six-page statement, without reviewing witness interviews and other evidence police collected, according to records obtained by NBC News. On Nov. 25, 2024, when a campus police investigator approached his office about interviews they’d conducted, an investigator in Van Houten’s office replied that several attorneys “had read [Jane Doe’s] statement” and “all agreed that, based on [Jane Doe’s] statement, criminal charges would not be pursued.” Van Houten told NBC “there was nothing to review” because the kathy hochul 2017interviews flagged were frat members “declining to speak on the advice of their attorney,” but he didn’t respond when asked whether he knew about interviews with other fraternity members or tips from callers. Gov. Kathy Hochul, left, announcing Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor, asked, “In what world does the district attorney not even interview her or anyone else involved, or even request the full transcript?” Jane Doe has sued Cornell and seven Chi Phi members, alleging they sexually assaulted her over several hours while she was under the influence of ketamine, alcohol and marijuana.

New records also show Jane Doe wasn’t told about the decision not to prosecute for nearly two months, and her lawyer says she missed a critical chance to preserve evidence. Police informed her of the DA’s Nov. 25 decision only on Jan. 21, 2025, and her attorney, Thomas Giuffra, said she believed during that time that “they were still investigating,” adding, “If so, that is worse than I thought.” Van Houten said his office had “no part in the timing” and never interviewed her. Giuffra said that shortly after the alleged assault, she went to the university health center for a urinary tract infection she described as being “of a traumatic origin” but was not offered a rape kit, which he called “the first failure post assault when she was trying to get help,” noting DNA might have been recoverable within 48 hours. She underwent a sexual assault exam two weeks later, and Cornell did not immediately respond to NBC’s request for comment.

The records reveal police obtained part of a Snapchat thread in which one fraternity member announced there was “free p----” in the room where the alleged assault occurred. Van Houten said that material came from a witness rather than police, so there was “nothing to review.” But on Nov. 26, 2024, the day after the DA’s decision, police requested a fuller data history from Snapchat and received 1,665 pieces of data from five accounts in December. A campus police investigator wrote that only three snaps included Jane Doe or mentioned the incident and that none showed “anything that can be construed as being criminal in nature.” It’s unclear whether Van Houten knew about the request, and the attorney general’s office is now reviewing whether charges are warranted.

A USA TODAY analysis found Cornell rarely expels or suspends students accused of sexual violence, even as reported assaults on campus appear to be rising. Of more than 1,200 incidents of sexual assault, dating and domestic violence and stalking reported to Cornell’s Title IX office from 2018 to 2024, the school filed disciplinary charges in 162 cases, found someone responsible in 51, and issued just 14 suspensions and seven expulsions, with most of those found at fault receiving sanctions like probation or training. Cornell suspended or expelled people found responsible only 41% of the time, compared with 59% across 26 large New York colleges. Meanwhile, Cornell’s campus climate survey found 35% of undergraduate women reported unwanted sexual contact or penetration in 2025, up from 23% in 2023, even as reports to the Title IX office fell 41% from their 2018 peak. “Those two trendlines tell me that all students, including victims and perpetrators, believe that there is impunity for sexual assault at Cornell,” sociologist Nicole Bedera said, as the Trump administration formally reinstated its 2020 Title IX rules, which made it harder for schools to find students at fault, on Sept. 28.

Trump Administration Abandons Decades-Old Protections Letting Disabled Americans Live in Their Communities Instead of Institutions

A federal judge stripped “integration” requirements from a landmark disability rights regulation after the Trump administration switched sides in a lawsuit and asked the court to throw out its own rules. For nearly 50 years, federal regulations under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act have required federally funded programs to serve people with disabilities in “the most integrated setting” possible, rather than in nursing homes or institutions. The case, Texas v. Kennedy, began in 2024 as a challenge by Republican-led states to Biden-era protections for transgender people, but it morphed into an attack on the integration mandate, and by September the Trump administration joined the remaining five states, Alaska, Florida, Louisiana, Montana and Texas, in asking the court to strike it. “It is pretty significant and pretty unprecedented to see the federal government asking a court to vacate its own rules,” said disability rights lawyer Jennifer Mathis. Bruce Darling of the Center for Disability Rights said the ruling felt “like a knife in your chest,” adding that people are hearing the federal government “has made a determination that [disabled people] don’t have a right to live in freedom, that they can be locked up against their will.”

The ruling is part of a broader retreat from enforcement that is already hitting families, including medically fragile children in Florida. In June, the Justice Department issued an opinion saying it no longer reads federal law to require states to serve disabled people in the most integrated setting, even acknowledging its position is “out of step with the common understanding” of the Supreme Court’s 1999 Olmstead decision. In August, the department asked a court to throw out its own 2023 victory requiring Florida to provide in-home care so children with complex medical needs wouldn’t be placed in nursing facilities, and it dropped out of a long-running case over Texas allegedly placing thousands of disabled people in nursing homes. Mathis called the Florida reversal “incredibly heartless,” saying it means “ripping children away from families” and forcing them “to grow up in an institution.” The states argue the rules restricted how they could spend strained Medicaid budgets, with Florida’s attorney general’s office saying it joined the suit “to serve as a check on federal power, not to deny care,” while experts warn that without federal enforcement, disabled people may have to sue states themselves to get services.

Disability advocates say the right to community living still exists under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Olmstead, but “the right is only as good as the enforcement,” and they’re fighting back as the administration also targets disabled voters. A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a resolution reaffirming Olmstead, 100 members of Congress have urged the Justice Department to rescind its June opinion, and Delaware has already written the stripped regulations into state law, with George Washington University professor Alison Barkoff saying at least a dozen state leaders have called her about doing the same. Advocates are also pushing the bipartisan Latonya Reeves Freedom Act to codify the integration mandate in federal law. At the same time, a proposed rule from Russell Vought’s budget office would bar federal grant money from being used for voter registration drives, threatening $10 million a year Congress provides to help people with disabilities register, which ProPublica reports has helped narrow the voting gap affecting about 740,000 disabled voters. A former OMB general counsel called the voter rule “a massive across-the-board power grab,” while Cravins, a Louisiana mother whose toddler with Down syndrome relies on publicly funded therapies at home, put the stakes simply: “This affects children, this affects adults, it affects your elderly parents. It affects everyone.”

Other news:

Ted Cruz Calls JD Vance “Insecure” as Their 2028 Rivalry Spills Into Public. Sen. Ted Cruz fired back at JD Vance, right,jd vance oon Saturday after the vice president told NBC News, “It is really obvious to me that, at this very moment, Ted Cruz is running for president,” while insisting he himself is focused on electing Republicans. “In my experience, people engage in political bomb-throwing when they’re feeling insecure,” Cruz told Politico, adding that he’s focused on “helping us win on Election Day in the next 30 days.” Cruz pointed to his campaign travel in Georgia, Iowa, Nebraska, South Carolina and Texas, with trips planned to Alaska, Florida and North Carolina, and boasted that no Republican has campaigned for more candidates over the past decade. He also noted the irony that he “spent a full day on the road with JD Vance” during his 2022 Ohio Senate race, saying, “I was very glad to help him.” The clash comes as Vance is widely seen as the GOP’s 2028 frontrunner, though Cruz has said he doesn’t believe Vance is a sure thing and that he’ll “certainly be part of the discussion.”

Moldova’s President Slams Russia After Missile and Drone Debris Explodes on Moldovan Soil. Moldovan President Maia Sandu condemned Russia on Saturday after three missiles and two drones violated the country’s airspace during a Russian attack on Ukraine, with debris exploding on Moldovan territory. “Its war is dangerously reaching Moldova,” Sandu wrote, saying the weapons, including Banderol missiles, “violated our airspace and exploded on our soil.” Fragments were found in the eastern districts of Hincesti, Anenii Noi and Causeni, sparking a fire but causing no casualties, while Russian attacks across Ukraine killed at least eight civilians and injured 83 over the past day. It’s the latest in a string of incidents for Moldova’s pro-EU government, which faced three separate airspace violations last Wednesday alone. Meanwhile, Lithuania briefly shut down Vilnius airport and scrambled NATO jets Saturday after a dangerous object was spotted in its skies, possibly crossing from Belarus, as Europe faces a growing wave of airspace violations, sabotage attempts and hybrid attacks tied to Russia.

tennessee map

Tennessee’s top prison official is resigning after the botched execution of Christa Pike, days after reports revealed he oversaw five “botched” executions across two states. Gov. Bill Lee announced Saturday that Corrections Commissioner Frank Strada will step down later this month as the state launches an independent investigation into what went wrong. Strada said he still believes the department “carried out its responsibilities in accordance with the established protocol,” but that stepping aside “is in the best interest of Tennesseans as the independent review moves forward.” Pike remains unconscious and on a ventilator, with her lawyers saying hospital staff are working to clear the two doses of pentobarbital from her system, which they believe entered her tissue rather than her bloodstream because of IV complications. “Frank Strada’s resignation does not change the fact that Tennessee is shrouding its executions in secrecy,” said federal public defender Kit Thomas, noting Strada’s troubled Arizona record “was well known” when Lee hired him. The head of the US Campaign to End the Death Penalty said advocates had long warned the governor about the state’s execution process, adding, “They were ignored,” while Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of classmate Colleen Slemmer, would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

A Florida jury acquitted former sheriff’s deputy Eddie Duran in the fatal shooting of Roger Fortson, a Black Air Force airman killed in his own apartment after a false domestic disturbance call. The jury deliberated for about two hours after a four-day trial before finding Duran not guilty of manslaughter with a firearm, a charge that carried up to 30 years in prison. Body camera footage showed Fortson answered the door holding a handgun pointed at the ground, and Duran fired multiple times before telling him to drop it. Duran, who was fired from the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office after the shooting, had his lawyer argue he was “doing his job” and that Fortson would still be alive if he hadn’t armed himself before answering the door. Fortson’s mother said she wasn’t surprised by the quick verdict and that the trial forced her to confront details she’d spent two years avoiding, adding, “I’m never going to hear my baby’s voice no more.” Attorney Ben Crump said the family will pursue accountability through a pending federal civil rights lawsuit, saying, “Roger’s life and his service will always matter.”

The Coast Guard is searching for an air ambulance jet with six people aboard that disappeared off the coast of Massachusetts during a medical evacuation flight from Bermuda to Boston. The FAA issued a search-and-rescue alert for the Canadian-registered Gulfstream G-100 around 1:20 a.m. Saturday after it lost contact, with four crew members and two passengers on board. Air and surface crews are searching an area off Nantucket, and ABC News reported, citing a source, that officials believe the plane rapidly descended 7,500 feet before hitting the water and that no Americans were aboard. The operator, Latitude Air Ambulance, said a delay in hearing from its crew “doesn’t mean that the worst has happened.” Massachusetts port officials confirmed the plane never arrived at Boston Logan, saying, “Our thoughts are with those onboard and their loved ones as the search continues.” The FAA is coordinating with the Coast Guard and the Rescue Coordination Center, and the identities of those on board have not been released.

The TSA is banning airport security officers from sitting down while checking travelers’ IDs and boarding passes, drawing fierce pushback from their union. The agency said the change keeps officers “on their feet and alert” and reinforces “our commitment to hospitality,” adding that all officers must meet fitness-for-duty requirements. The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents TSA officers, said it wasn’t consulted and that the chairs provide “basic ergonomic and safety support” for workers standing on hard surfaces all day, calling the move “basic safety and common decency for the workforce.” The union called it part of “a broad pattern” of disregard for employees, and urged workers and lawmakers to join a “collective resistance against this regime that is literally attempting to take out our workforce.” The change comes after a brutal year for TSA workers, who went unpaid for weeks during a 76-day government shutdown that drove some to quit and caused security lines to balloon. The union is also weighing legal action against the administration’s push to privatize security checkpoints at three airports.

Southern California is sweltering under a late-season heatwave, with temperatures expected to hover near 100 degrees in downtown Los Angeles and climb well into the triple digits inland. The National Weather Service expects temperatures 15 to 20 degrees above normal to last at least a week, raising the risk of heat-related illness and wildfires amid low soil moisture. A UCLA professor said Friday was nearly 7 degrees hotter than the hottest Oct. 2 on record and about 30 degrees above the historical average. Experts say the heat is being fueled by a marine heatwave driving a strong El Niño, and that climate change is making longer, more intense heatwaves more frequent, with one UCLA physicist saying, “it’s hard to escape that a warmer climate adds to the strength of heatwaves.” The one silver lining is that forecasts don’t call for the strong winds that would spread wildfires, though officials are urging residents to “stay cool, stay hydrated” and limit sun exposure. The heat coincides with Saturday’s first game of the Dodgers-Braves National League Division Series, and one researcher urged governments to invest in shade, calling it the “most effective way to keep people safe.”

The Parnas Perspective, Afternoon News and Commentary: Trump Took Money Meant for Fallen Officers' Memorials to Air Ads Worshipping Himself, Rushes Out Checks as GOP Worries, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 3, 2026. A taxpayer-funded ad declares, “So God made Trump.” Another intercuts lions hunting their prey with images of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton. Every one of them ends the same way: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” And according to the New York Times, Trump personally ordered his budget director to find the money, which came out of funds Congress set aside for border security and memorials for officers killed in the line of duty.

It’s part of a pattern. Weeks before the midterms, Trump is mailing $500 Obamacare checks that are flowing overwhelmingly to battleground states, announcing $90 payments to 20 million seniors, and promising $5,000 to every adult if Republicans keep Congress. And it’s happening because Republicans are panicking: House Republicans now privately believe they’re going to lose the majority, as Trump’s approval on the economy hits an all-time low of 26%.

That’s why I’m launching a major investigation into how Trump has used taxpayer money to benefit himself and his party, from the ad campaign to the payouts to the funds redirected away from what Congress intended. I want to lay out, clearly and with the receipts, exactly where the money came from, where it went, and what laws may have been broken, so that Congress and prosecutors have a clear roadmap they can ultimately use.

This kind of reporting takes time, documents and resources, and I can’t do it without you.

Here’s the news:

House Republicans Privately Fear Losing the Majority as Trump’s Economic Approval Sinks to Record Lows

A growing number of House Republicans privately believe they’ll lose the majority and are shifting to limiting the size of a Democratic wave. More than a dozen people told CNN that Republicans have watched with alarm as Trump’s approval has sunk in their own internal polling over the past two weeks, including on traditionally red turf. The House GOP is entering “triage mode,” discussing pulling money from once-competitive races like Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks in Iowa, Rep. Tom Kean in New Jersey and an open seat in Nebraska. The goal now is keeping a potential Speaker Hakeem Jeffries’ margin under 10 seats, with one GOP strategist asking, “What the f**k are you going to get done over there?” Speaker Mike Johnson insists he’s “absolutely still convinced” Republicans can hold the House, and GOP strategists say their cash advantage and newly gerrymandered seats in Texas and Florida could still be “the lifesaver,” either minimizing losses or saving the majority.

Trump’s approval on the economy has hit all-time lows, with 65% of Americans blaming him for persistently high costs. An AP-NORC poll found just 26% approve of Trump’s handling of the economy and only 17% approve of his handling of the cost of living, while his overall approval sits at 31%. A Quinnipiac poll put his economic approval at 31%, the lowest of either term, with just 28% approving of his handling of Iran, and CNN found his overall approval at 33%, three points below where it was at this point in his first term. Even his base is slipping, with NBC News finding only 62% of self-identified MAGA Republicans support him, down from 71% in the spring. Democrats lead the generic congressional ballot by 11 to 12 points in Emerson and Marist polling, and a plurality of voters say Trump’s endorsement would make them less likely to back a candidate.

Florida GOP Rep. María Elvira Salazar’s ad telling Trump his immigration crackdown has “gone too far” has turned her once-safe Miami seat into a race to watch. Standing in front of the White House, Salazar said some Hispanics who voted for Trump now feel “betrayed,” as the administration deports a record number of Cubans, including some sent to Africa and older men sent to Mexico. The ad angered Trump, who promoted criticism of her on Truth Social, while her Democratic opponent, former CBS Miami anchor Eliott Rodriguez, said, “We raised a lot of money, thanks to my opponent!” Salazar won by 20 points in 2024 in a district Trump carried with 57%, but House Majority PAC has now reserved about $4.2 million to try to flip it. One former Republican Miami city commissioner said he plans to leave the party after voters told him to his face they wouldn’t support him because he’s a Republican, calling it “a rude awakening.”

Republicans are leaning on taxes, immigration and crime in their final ads, while a historic wave of departures reshapes Congress. About a third of GOP House ads in September focused on tax policy, touting the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s” tax cuts on tips, overtime and Social Security, with immigration, law enforcement and transgender issues also featuring prominently. Republicans are outspending Democrats in all 10 of the most expensive House races, including multimillion-dollar advantages in Democratic-held seats. Regardless of the outcome, the next Congress will look very different, with at least 83 incumbents not returning as of August, the most lawmakers not seeking reelection since 2000, according to TIME and Ballotpedia. That includes an unusually high 12 incumbents who lost primaries, from Trump critics like Thomas Massie and Bill Cassidy to Democrats ousted by progressive challengers.

Trump Ramps Up Pre-Election Cash Giveaways as Critics Accuse Him of Trying to Buy Votes

Trump announced yet another payout weeks before the midterms, a one-time $90 payment to more than 20 million seniors on Medicare. Trump said late Friday the money will come from the Medicare Improvement Fund, which Congress funded with $2 billion to improve the program, and the White House says most seniors will receive a direct deposit in early October, with checks mailed to the rest. It’s the latest in an escalating series of cash promises as Republicans face dismal polling over the cost of living, driven largely by the Iran war’s spike in oil and gas prices. The $90 announcement comes on top of $500 Obamacare checks already landing in mailboxes and Trump’s promise of $5,000 for every adult if Republicans keep Congress. Democrats have accused Trump of trying to bribe voters, arguing that Congress, not the president, controls how federal money is spent.

The $500 Obamacare checks are flowing overwhelmingly to the states that will decide the midterms. A Reuters analysis found 71% of the payments, $339 million in total, are going to residents of 13 states that host eight of the nine most competitive Senate races and 10 of the 12 most competitive governor’s races. Only 950,000 of the 19 million Obamacare enrollees qualify, because the checks only go to people in the 30 states using HealthCare.gov and only to those paying full price after Republicans let enhanced subsidies expire. KFF says premiums for that group could quadruple in some states to more than $2,200 a month, meaning the $500 “likely for the majority of them is not going to offset” their higher costs. “How many times has Trump tried to buy folks’ votes? It’s pretty damn obvious,” said Democratic strategist Eric Stern, while New Hampshire Senate nominee Chris Pappas said voters “just want him to understand that affordability isn’t a hoax.”

Trump doubled down on his $5,000 checks at an Oklahoma rally, insisting “I never fail people,” even as most voters say the offer is inappropriate. He acknowledged the payments would cost about $1 trillion but claimed it’s “really very little” because he’s secured $21 trillion in investment, nearly double the $11.2 trillion listed on the White House’s own website. A Strength in Numbers/Verasight poll found 66% of voters call the offer “inappropriate,” a Reuters/Ipsos poll found 63% disapprove, including four in 10 Republicans, and 61% of likely voters in an Economist/YouGov survey don’t believe he’ll actually deliver. NBC News found 46% of voters would be less likely to back a candidate who supports the checks, compared to 21% who’d be more likely, though a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll showed 57% support. Trump has pointed to his $1,776 “warrior dividend” for service members as proof he follows through.

Experts say the payments may not change the race, but could matter at the margins in close contests. Republican strategist Ryan Williams said they won’t alter the election’s fundamental dynamics, but “if you can curry favor with even a small group of undecided voters who might be happy with the check they got, it could make a difference.” Cornell professor Douglas Kriner, who has studied similar presidential efforts, said they could be “worth a percentage point or two,” mostly by shoring up Republican voters rather than winning over Democrats. Trump has also tried to cut off billions in federal aid to Democratic-run states like Minnesota and New York, efforts that have stalled in court. Past presidents have made explicit promises too, including Joe Biden’s pledge of $2,000 checks during Georgia’s 2021 Senate runoffs, but Trump’s string of direct payouts timed to land weeks before an election is unusual in its scale.

Trump Personally Ordered $20 Million in Taxpayer-Funded Ads Glorifying Himself, Including One Called “God Made Trump”

The Trump administration made a taxpayer-funded ad casting Trump as a messianic figure, titled “God Made Trump,” part of at least 13 spots promoting the president on the public’s dime. The three-minute ad, a riff on Paul Harvey’s “God Made a Farmer,” declares, “I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle the deep state, and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to ruffle the feathers. So God made Trump.” It was created by a pro-Trump meme group, aired at the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas, and ends like every other spot in the campaign: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” Other ads obtained by CNN include “King of the Jungle,” which intercuts lions hunting with images of Obama, Biden, Pelosi, Clinton and Newsom, “Resilience,” which features Trump’s Fulton County mugshot, and an ad promoting the UFC fight Trump hosted at the White House. In any other administration, using taxpayer money to produce ads worshipping the sitting president and attacking his political rivals would be treated as an impeachable abuse of power.

Trump personally ordered his budget director to find taxpayer money for the ads, according to the New York Times. Twelve people familiar with the matter said Trump was eager to see laudatory ads on TV and told OMB Director Russell Vought to come up with the money from within the government, while Trump and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles both spoke with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin about them. In an August Oval Office meeting meant to discuss super PAC spending for struggling GOP candidates, the Times reports Trump was far more interested in having his assistant Natalie Harp show the group videos of himself. On Sept. 19, OMB shifted $20 million in Customs and Border Protection money into a “commemorative events” budget line, and the next day CBP awarded a $20 million contract to a Maryland PR firm. Asked about it, Trump said, “If somebody said that that’s wrong, I’ll gladly pay the money,” insisting, “I’m not promoting myself because I’m not running for office. I’m promoting the country.”

The money came from funds Congress set aside for border security, anti-drug trafficking efforts and memorials for officers killed in the line of duty. According to the Washington Post, the law allowed the CBP money to be used only for things like port inspection equipment, border surveillance and screening unaccompanied children, while “commemorative events” was meant for “line-of-duty death memorials” and commendation ceremonies. At least $5.5 million has already been spent, with ads running on Fox, CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, “Good Morning America,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and NFL broadcasts, and the White House says the campaign will expand. Congress has banned spending federal money on “publicity or propaganda” since the 1950s, and while the GAO has found violations under Obama and Bush, those involved policy campaigns, not ads glorifying the president himself. There is no precedent for using government money to air political ads in an election season.

Democrats say the ads may be criminal, and even Republicans are refusing to defend them. Rep. Jamie Raskin called them potential “felony criminal theft and conversion of government property for political campaign purposes,” and with Rep. George Whitesides asked the GAO to investigate possible violations of the Hatch Act, the Antideficiency Act and laws against embezzling public funds, a probe he could pursue with subpoena power if Democrats win the House. Sens. Patty Murray and Chris Murphy called it “a shockingly corrupt misuse of taxpayer dollars.” Republican Sen. John Cornyn said the ads are not an appropriate use of taxpayer money, adding, “It’s not even a close question,” while Sen. Thom Tillis said Trump should pay for them from his super PAC instead. That super PAC, MAGA Inc., has more than $400 million, which Trump has described by saying, “This is my money that I control.”

Other news:

The University of Oregon received five sexual assault reports in the first week of classes, as the Cornell case sparks a national reckoning over campus safety. The university alerted students Wednesday, just two days after classes began, saying four of the assaults involved students and a fifth happened near a park next to campus, all within the past week. While the cases aren’t believed to be connected, the school said “several alleged perpetrators may have taken advantage of the fact that the victims were intoxicated at social events,” and one arrest has been made. The university said it issued the alert because it was “very concerned to see a pattern of assaults with similar characteristics,” stressing that its “first concern is for survivors.” Meanwhile, newly unsealed documents in the Cornell case show Jane Doe told a university disciplinary hearing, “I felt like bait. I felt like lions around me.” Cornell has defended its handling of the case, which ended in expulsions and suspensions, and said it welcomes the reopened investigation now led by Attorney General Letitia James.

Justice Samuel Alito says he thinks about retiring “every term,” but chose to stay because he can still “make a valuable contribution.” The 76-year-old told CBS News he resisted pressure from Republicans who wanted him to step down while the GOP still controls the Senate, which could block a Trump nominee if Democrats win it in November. His retirement wouldn’t change the court’s 6-3 conservative majority but would give Trump a fourth appointment. Trump said in April “it’d be nice to say now I have somebody for 40 years,” while praising Alito as “an unbelievable justice.” Alito said it’s “too hard to predict what the political situation will be and what any president might do with respect to a replacement.” The interview comes days before the release of his autobiography, “So Ordered: An Originalist’s View of the Constitution, the Court, and Our Country,” on Tuesday.

Trump said “maybe they’ll name the damn bridge after me” at a Mobile rally touting a $3.2 billion Alabama bridge partly funded by the Biden administration. Trump credited his administration with $3 billion in funding for the Mobile River Bridge and Bayway project, but Biden awarded a $550 million grant for it in July 2024, which Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures pointed out at the groundbreaking, saying “I would be remiss not to thank the Biden administration.” The bridge joins a growing list of things Trump wants named after him, including the Kennedy Center, where a federal judge ordered his name removed in May because “only Congress can change it,” and Palm Beach’s airport, now President Donald J. Trump International Airport. Trump has denied reports his officials circulated a list that included Ford’s Theatre, where Lincoln was assassinated, calling it “FAKE NEWS!” He told New York Magazine he’s remaking DC in his image because “nobody will do it once I’m gone.” At the rally, Trump also bragged that he got “the highest vote total of any candidate in Alabama history” and said he’ll be back next Saturday for the Georgia-Alabama football game.

A White House budget office proposal would bar anyone from using federal grant money for voter registration drives, threatening programs that help disabled Americans vote. The rule from Russell Vought’s Office of Management and Budget would also ban vaguely defined “related activities,” and could force nonprofits that help people with disabilities, nursing home residents and others register to pause their work ahead of 2028, ProPublica reports. Congress has funded voter access for people with disabilities since the 2002 Help America Vote Act, signed by George W. Bush, and the gap in registration difficulties still affects about 740,000 disabled voters. A former OMB general counsel called it “a massive across-the-board power grab” that ignores Congress’ power of the purse. Vought previously condemned a Biden order expanding registration as a “power grab” that would boost turnout “especially among Democratic Party supporters.” The rule wouldn’t take effect until after the midterms, and legal experts expect it to face lawsuits arguing it contradicts laws Congress has repeatedly approved.

The Tennessee prison chief who oversaw Christa Pike’s failed execution has presided over five “botched” executions across two states, her lawyers say. Commissioner Frank Strada was a deputy prison director in Arizona in 2022 when three executions were classified as botched, including two in which executioners had to cut into prisoners’ groins to find a vein, and Tennessee also failed to execute Tony Carruthers in May after workers couldn’t find a vein for over an hour. Under Strada, Tennessee dropped a training requirement for execution teams to practice inserting IVs, and he admitted in a deposition he hadn’t followed key recommendations from a 2022 independent review. After he left Arizona, that state expanded its IV team and required more rigorous training, but Strada implemented a Tennessee protocol mirroring Arizona’s old two-person IV team. Asked what makes a successful execution, Strada said, “The condemned is put to death,” and when asked “Anything else?” replied, “No.” Pike remains unconscious and on a ventilator, Gov. Bill Lee has suspended executions through the end of the year, and candidates to replace Lee say they wouldn’t keep Strada.

Record diesel prices driven by the Iran war are hammering Midwest farmers just as harvest season begins. One Indiana farmer says he’ll burn about 9,000 gallons of diesel this harvest, with fuel now $3 a gallon more expensive than a year ago, and estimates suggest the war and supply disruptions could add $12,500 in fuel costs for every 1,000 acres harvested. Four of the five states with the biggest diesel price jumps in September were in the Midwest, worsened by a flooded ExxonMobil refinery in Illinois and a six-month labor dispute at a major BP refinery in Indiana. School districts are feeling it too, with nearly 40% of districts in a national survey consolidating bus routes and some cutting field trips. Experts warn the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is at its lowest level in 43 years, which could leave little cushion heading into high-demand winter months. Even if the war ended tomorrow, one expert said, refilling the reserve would slow any drop in prices, calling that “the best-case” scenario.

The FDA found cyclospora at the Mexican farm linked to the largest outbreak of the parasite in US history, which sickened nearly 13,000 people. Inspectors detected the parasite in a wastewater tank and a drainage ditch used for lettuce cultivation at the Taylor Farms site in Guanajuato, though it’s unclear how the lettuce was contaminated. The outbreak spread across 21 states, sending 570 people to the hospital and killing two. The FDA’s first visit to the farm in more than seven years came after a steep post-pandemic drop in international food safety inspections, and after the agency had to retract a faulty test result. Mexico’s own food safety authority had said it found no cyclospora in the lettuce or water at the facility. Taylor Farms blamed an independent grower “who is no longer part of our supplier program,” and said its facility remains closed.

Hawaii’s 550-year-old Hōlei sea arch has collapsed into the Pacific after a series of powerful storms. The roughly 90-foot landmark in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park was still standing on Sept. 23 but had fallen by Sept. 27, the National Park Service said, after Tropical Storm Nolo rapidly intensified into a hurricane. The cliffs around the arch had been unstable for years, damaged by earthquakes during the 2018 Kīlauea eruption and pounded by storm surf in 2020. Nolo was the third major storm to hit Hawaii in recent months, following hurricanes Lala and Lowell. Forecasters warn this “supercharged” El Niño could reach historic intensity, with its effects compounded by fossil fuel-driven warming. The US Geological Survey had predicted the collapse more than a decade ago, writing in 2014, “It will not be here for ever... One day, it will be gone.”

Country star Zach Bryan wore a “Free Palestine” shirt onstage at Gillette Stadium, weeks after owner Robert Kraft barred Macklemore from performing there. Bryan’s black shirt read “Free Palestine. An appeal to heaven,” a phrase dating back to the Revolutionary War that once appeared on Massachusetts’ maritime flag, while members of his band wore Palestinian soccer jerseys. In September, Kraft blocked Macklemore from opening for Ed Sheeran at the Foxborough venue after the rapper said “Free Palestine” and accused Israel of genocide at a New Jersey concert, calling the speech deeply offensive to the Jewish community. Bryan is scheduled to play Gillette again Saturday night. It’s unclear whether Kraft will take any action against Bryan, whose shirt echoed the same message that got Macklemore banned. The Kraft Group did not respond to a request for comment.  

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption 


President Trump speaks to White House media before his trip to Alabama to host a political rally on Oct. 2, 2026. President Trump speaks to White House media before his trip to Alabama to host a political rally on Oct. 2, 2026. 

Hope for America, Opinion: The President's decline is in a freefall. Heather Delaney Reese, helen delaney reese djtright, Oct. 3, 2026. At 3:54 pm Donald Trump emerged from the White House with freshly colored hair and makeup, as Marine One’s engine roared in the background. He walked directly over to the waiting press, threw his hands out in front of him, gesturing at the empty ground in front of him, while he squeezed his legs together and arched his torso forward, yelling to the reporters, “This is the way the White House is supposed to look. Not asphalt. Broken, dirty asphalt. Look at it.” He then paused, frowning as he looked over his left shoulder, and continued, “The finest stone you could buy anywhere in the world.”

The gathered press said nothing, confused by his odd behavior. The President then took three steps forward and appeared to remember why he had come outside in the first place. “Okay. So, I’m heading to Alabama, a place that I won all three times. Record votes, like Texas, like Oklahoma, like a lot of them. And we’re going to give a little speech, and I hope they like it.”

For the next 6 minutes and 52 seconds, we watched the President struggle to answer questions, follow the conversation, and even walk in a straight line. Donald Trump is gravely unwell, and whatever is behind his serious decline appears to be rapidly accelerating.

I don’t say that with any joy or pleasure. The presidency is the most important office in our government, and the entire world is at risk with him in the Oval Office. But what we are watching can’t be normalized.

Peter Doocy from Fox News started the questions by asking Donald Trump about the growing possibility of a third impeachment if Democrats take back the House, while reminding him that he’d already been impeached twice.

The President’s answer to such a serious question was to say, “Well, I don’t know, but I’m getting good at it. And… It’s a fake impeachment. And we could have done that with Sleepy Joe, but we didn’t do it because it would have been appropriate. I could have done that with Hillary Clinton, as you know. I just had the chance to do it if I wanted, and I said that would be inappropriate, but with me they like to do it.”

The President of the United States joked that being impeached had become something he was “getting good at” after having gone through it twice. His words were again slurred, making it difficult to know whether he said impeaching Biden “would have been appropriate” or “inappropriate.” He also claimed he could have impeached Hillary Clinton, even though private citizens cannot be impeached under the Constitution.

Maybe he doesn’t understand that impeachment is not a criminal charge, that it is the constitutional process used to remove a sitting president or other federal officeholder from office. It would not have applied to Hillary Clinton, and it would not have applied to Joe Biden after he left office either. Whether Trump confused impeachment with criminal prosecution or simply lost track of what was being discussed, either possibility is deeply concerning.

Regardless of how he acted, like trying to make what could happen seem like it was no big deal, he does care. This time around, he knows the consequences, including hearings and investigations, could make his life very uncomfortable. He is right to be concerned. There is a path, one I’ve talked about before, where if we achieve a blue wave of epic proportion, and every single piece lines up, this could go further than just oversight and investigations. It could lead to impeachment and removal. And if there ever were a time for that, it is now. Donald Trump loves being number one and being the first. Maybe we could actually make him the first President removed from office. It’s a long shot, and everything would have to go perfectly, but in a moment like this, we should be shooting for the stars.

When Donald Trump was asked whether it would be harder for Republicans to hold the House or the Senate, Trump answered with another non-answer: “I think it’s pretty even. I think that we’re making a lot of progress. When I go there, we win. If I don’t go there, we would not do as well.”

What we know from current polling is that right now, the odds are overwhelmingly strong that he will lose the House. The Senate, which wasn’t supposed to be in play at all, is now a real fight, with viable paths to a Democratic majority. None of this is guaranteed, and it’s important that nobody feels too comfortable in this moment, but if there are free and fair elections, things seem to be looking bad for the President and his enablers, and very good for the Constitution and the country.

He also was able to add in one of his favorite talking points: “I’m asking them to go out and vote because I’m not running. But I’m saying pretend I’m running. We want to pretend I’m running.” We all need to pretend he’s running. Because in a way, he is, or at least his unchecked power is on the ballot. When we vote against MAGA Republicans, we are voting against him, and we are voting to take away his stronghold on our country. That is what we are voting against. What we are voting for is hearings, investigations, oversight, and finally accountability. We’re voting to begin repairing the relationships he’s shattered with our allies, or at least to remind the world that we haven’t been completely taken over. And also that we have absolutely not given up. We are also voting to end the destabilization and the reckless imperialism that Donald Trump has brought to every corner of this planet. So yes, we all must pretend he’s running. Because he is.

After he said to “pretend I’m running,” he didn’t even pause for a second before immediately pointing to the construction site behind him and said, “I hope you like what you’re seeing here. That’s getting all sorts of awards. And the best of all, you see the new crane, the red, the red boom. That’s one of the biggest cranes in the world that lifts up the steel for the roof. Pretty cool, right?” In the middle of answering serious questions affecting the entire world, the President of the United States became fixated on talking about a crane.

He then turned around and faced the reporters who were all shouting questions at him. With a confused look in his eyes and his chest lurched forward, he pointed towards a member of the European press and muttered something about him always asking the same questions, and the reporter replied, “Mr. President, people believe you never get tired.”

What he said was an opening for Donald Trump to deny the very thing millions of people have spent the better part of the year watching. He then looked into the camera and said, “I never get tired. And if I got tired, it would be a big story, I can tell.”

The administration needed that question to be asked on camera because we all keep watching him fall asleep in meetings, slump over in chairs, drift off mid-sentence, and struggle to stay upright. His administration knows this is one of the most dangerous narratives building against him. They also know that their most loyal followers are willing to ignore what they can see with their own eyes as long as someone helps them commit to willful ignorance or just pretend it isn’t actually happening.

This is how authoritarian regimes manage the visible decline of their leaders. In the Soviet Union, aging, frail, and severely declining men were propped up to appear still competent and powerful while Soviet state media broadcast images of these leaders signing documents, greeting officials, and projecting normalcy, while much of the real decision-making shifted behind closed doors. The pattern holds today. The people enabling Donald Trump are trying to preserve the appearance of continuity, reassure his donors and supporters, and buy time while they prepare for what comes next. It’s also why they have J.D. Vance campaigning across the country.

The most alarming moment of Donald Trump’s time talking to reporters came when someone told the President that South Korea says it has not signed off on the Alaska pipeline deal after all and asked whether he had jumped the gun. This was after Trump had announced a new energy agreement involving South Korea. Donald Trump looked confused, like he had no idea what the reporter was talking about. He eventually answered and said, “Well, I didn’t jump the gun. I mean, they were there and they were represented and let’s see. If they don’t want to do it, that’s okay with me. I’ll just charge them more.”

The reporter tried again, reminding him that South Korea said it had never signed the agreement in the first place. Trump’s response was, “Tell them if they don’t sign shortly, I’m going to double it up. Okay.”

Trump looked directly at a reporter and asked them to tell a foreign country he was going to charge them more if they did not sign an agreement. It was completely lost on him that reporters report the news. They don’t negotiate between countries. The President of the United States actually asked a reporter to deliver a threat to a sovereign nation.

This is not some hostile government he’s threatening either. This is South Korea, one of our most important allies in the Pacific, a democracy we have defended for more than seventy years because its stability is essential to deterring one of the world’s most dangerous dictatorships just across its northern border. We need that alliance, and we need the American bases within its borders.

After that, multiple reporters tried to ask about a diesel deal with Europe, and Donald Trump confirmed that he would not be imposing an export ban and that because of steps being taken, we are going to have a “lot of oil very shortly.” Then, without fail, he returned to one of his favorite talking points: “As soon as Iran ends, which won’t be long, not going to be long, you’re going to have oil go down to the price it was before, maybe even lower than I got it at the beginning.”

This all stemmed from his threat of a diesel export ban that would have devastated European families heading into winter, families who depend on diesel to heat their homes, get to work, and simply make it through the cold months. He is now waving it away as though it was never serious in the first place. But it was serious enough to terrify an entire continent. That is how Donald Trump negotiates. He uses fuel as leverage, basic human needs as bargaining chips, and then acts as though he never meant what he said. This is un-American. It is not how we treat our allies, and it is not how we should treat our fellow human beings.

His impromptu press conference ended after he was asked about New York Governor Kathy Hochul appointing Attorney General Letitia James as a special prosecutor in the Cornell University rape case. Trump answered by saying, “Well, Letitia James is a corrupt person. She’s totally corrupt and I can’t imagine it.” Then came the most unconscionable part: “I feel badly for whoever she’s looking at because they won’t get a fair shake.”

The President of the United States said he felt bad for the men accused of committing horrific crimes against a woman who reported being sexually assaulted. He said nothing about the courage it took for her to come forward or the trauma she has endured. He felt badly for the men being investigated. That was his first reaction.

We are now just 32 days away from the most pivotal election in modern American history. We are not just voting for our country, we are voting for the entire world because what Donald Trump does echoes far past our borders. But we also have to temper our expectations because even when we take back the House, and possibly the Senate, he is not going quietly. He will push through executive orders at a pace we haven’t seen. The people behind him, the ones who are smarter and more calculating than he is, who are already parading J.D. Vance across the country as his eventual replacement, have everything to lose too. They are planning for their own survival. We need to be ready for whatever is to come. We need to protect our access to vote, and then protect the actual count of our ballots, while also preparing for an extended fight to make sure the new Congress is actually seated.

Just after midnight this morning, Donald Trump posted this on Truth Social: “America does not belong to those who hate it. America belongs to those who love it. President Donald J. Trump.”

America does belong to those who love it. This country belongs to us. And in 32 days, we’re going to prove it. 

More News Roundups 

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: 32 days out, the GOP map is collapsing into red states, while Trump's tariffs threaten free chips and salsa and Benny Johnson gets sued for calling protesters "terrorists." Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 2, 2026. The fight over the future of this country won’t end on Nov. 3. We’re gearing up for 2028 with some major projects featuring all of the major candidates, and I couldn’t be more excited to share what we’re building with you.

Here’s what that means. We’re going on the road, bringing this reporting directly to the communities and voters who will decide our future, not just covering them from afar. And we’re going international, because the stories shaping America increasingly reach far beyond our borders, from wars driving up the price of gas to foreign money flowing into our politics.

I can’t do it without you. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and help make these projects possible. And if you already have, thank you. I know the news can be heavy and my updates can feel relentless, but your support is what makes all of this happen.Subscribed

You can see why this work matters in tonight’s news. Trump admitted Republicans are “worried” about Texas and Michigan, the GOP’s top super PAC pulled out of North Carolina entirely and is now spending to defend Kansas, and the president is rushing out project announcements that won’t break ground until 2030 while families struggle with gas, diesel and grocery bills today. Meanwhile, stories that demand our attention, like the Epstein files, keep slipping from the headlines, and the government is reshaping the stories told in our museums to fit the president’s preferred version of history.

I’m 27 years old. I started college at 14, went on to law school and graduated at 21, one of the youngest in the country to do so. From the beginning, I knew my calling was education, not in a classroom, but in the public square, where democracy depends on an informed citizenry. Every day, I work to deliver timely, fact-driven news to millions of people, especially young people who are too often ignored or underestimated by traditional outlets. Young voices have been missing from the conversations that will define our futures, and heading into 2028, I want to prove we can be media’s most fearless producers, not just its consumers.

The beauty of independent media is editorial freedom. My reporting isn’t funded by billionaires who can decide what gets published and what gets buried. I own my words, my platform and my voice, and I will never normalize Trump, JD Vance or anyone whose policies threaten the fabric of our democracy. You will never see me groveling at Mar-a-Lago hoping for favor from anyone. But independence isn’t free, and the bigger we build, the more your support matters. Stand with me, and let’s do this together.

Here’s the news:

Trump Admits Republicans Are “Worried” About Texas and Michigan as GOP Pulls Out of North Carolina Senate Race

Trump admitted Republicans are “worried” about Texas and Michigan, telling an Oklahoma crowd he felt “a little foolish” urging them to vote. “We’re not worried about them. We’re worried about Michigan. We’re worried about Texas. We’re worried about a few states,” Trump said, adding the party is concerned about “35, maybe you could even say 40” races. It’s a striking admission about Texas, which hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1988, where Ken Paxton is narrowly trailing James Talarico despite more than $300 million in expected GOP-aligned spending. Trump again urged supporters to “pretend I’m on the ticket and turn out for a midterm victory that’s really too big to rig.” He also repeated disputed claims that other countries emptied their prisons and mental institutions into the US, and blamed Republicans’ struggles on poor “public relations.”

The top Senate GOP super PAC is canceling all its remaining North Carolina ads, signaling Republicans no longer see a path to winning the state. The Senate Leadership Fund, which had planned to spend $71 million in the race to replace retiring Sen. Thom Tillis, is pulling about $18 million in remaining reservations, abandoning former RNC chair Michael Whatley, who has consistently trailed former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. Trump-aligned super PACs also have no future ad reservations in the race, and Whatley’s own super PAC had already canceled ads. A North Carolina flip would give Democrats one of the four seats they need to take the Senate. Cooper’s campaign warned against complacency, noting a Democrat hasn’t won statewide federal office there in nearly two decades.

Republicans are now spending money to defend Kansas, a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1932. The Senate Leadership Fund made its first investment of the cycle there, booking $8.2 million in ads to protect Sen. Roger Marshall against Adam Hamilton, pastor of the nation’s largest United Methodist congregation, with an ad calling Hamilton a “two-faced extremist.” Kansas joins Alaska and Iowa as states Trump won by double digits in 2024 where Democrats are now competitive, a map where one GOP donor said “the fires are everywhere.” Trump and JD Vance spent this week campaigning in places like Oklahoma, Alabama, Texas and Florida rather than traditional battlegrounds. Trump’s approval rating is hovering around 37%, near record lows.

Trump is rushing out major project announcements in vulnerable GOP states, but Republican strategists fear it’s “too little, too late.” The White House touted a $50 billion natural gas pipeline in Alaska, a $15 billion steel plant in Iowa and a $3.2 billion bridge in Alabama, but none would come online before 2030, while gas sits above $4.40 a gallon and diesel hit $6.53. “These are announcements,” one former Trump official said. “They make great headlines but it doesn’t drop the inflation rate or fuel prices.” Trump praised Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, who’s within the margin of error against Mary Peltola, as “totally responsible for this pipeline,” though South Korea has already denied agreeing to the investment, saying the two countries only agreed to review a potential deal. Even a quarter of self-identified MAGA Republicans told Politico’s poll that costs have become less affordable since Trump took office.

Alabama Democrats say Trump’s rally in Mobile is a sign of GOP nerves in a state he won by 30 points. “He sees what we’re doing in this state, and he’s like, ‘Oh Lord, I need to go down there and try to help somebody out,’” said former Sen. Doug Jones, the Democratic nominee for governor, who faces Tommy Tuberville, the man who unseated him in 2020 and who recently told CNN that Alabamians were willing to endure high fuel prices in support of Trump’s agenda. Democrats point to signs of shifting enthusiasm: Democratic primary ballots nearly doubled from 2022 while Republican ballots fell by more than 20%, and 80% of GOP primary voters named the cost of living as their top issue. A House Majority PAC poll shows Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures basically tied with his Trump-backed challenger, even after Republicans redrew his district in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Callais ruling to cut its Black voting-age population from 48% to 40%, turning a seat Kamala Harris would have won by eight points into one Trump would have carried by double digits. Even some young Republicans are frustrated, with one Auburn student saying of the Iran war and rising prices, “This is not America First policy. We’ve seen the corruption firsthand. I think we’re all just tired of it.”

Anthropic Co-Founder Nearly Pulled Out of Pope Leo’s AI Encyclical Launch, Then Privately Lobbied the Vatican on AI Consciousness

Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah proposed withdrawing from the Vatican launch of Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical after seeing its stance on AI consciousness, according to a New York Times investigation. Olah, who leads Anthropic’s research into how its Claude models work, saw an advance copy of “Magnifica Humanitas” days before the May 25 event and was so alarmed by its rejection of machine consciousness that he proposed pulling out, according to a Vatican organizer. He went ahead, and once in Rome, he and his team privately lobbied the pope’s advisers to take the possibility of AI consciousness seriously, according to two participants, though Anthropic declined to discuss those conversations. The pope didn’t budge, writing that “so-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain” and lack “a moral conscience.” Olah told the Times, “We don’t know if AI models are conscious. I don’t know. I’m genuinely uncertain. The thing that I care about is that we get to the right answer, whatever it is.”

The Vatican episode capped a months-long campaign in which Anthropic hosted religious scholars, many under nondisclosure agreements, to help shape Claude’s morality and raise the question of its consciousness. The Times interviewed 20 participants, Catholic, Jewish, Sikh, evangelical and others, who attended private seminars and meetings, including a dinner at a high-end San Francisco tasting-menu restaurant, and left with handwritten thank-you cards, mugs and copies of Claude’s constitution. Participants said Anthropic presented research on what it calls “emotional vectors” and showed a slide of a model repeatedly typing “I am a disgrace,” with one saying Olah expressed concern he’d created something that suffered. Orthodox Rabbi Mois Navon, who doesn’t believe the models are conscious, said the team was “relating to it like a conscious being,” and told Olah that if he were right, Anthropic was creating slaves. Anthropic says the NDAs were lifted over the summer and that the meetings’ main focus was moral formation, not Claude’s suffering.

Some participants came away taking the idea seriously, while others, including the Catholic scholar Olah first approached, have since firmly rejected it. Catholic University bioethicist Charles Camosy, introduced to Olah through philosopher Peter Singer, began deeply skeptical, came away “with more questions than answers,” and is now a “firm no” after further discussions with colleagues. Ubuntu scholar Wakanyi Hoffman said the conversations should have happened “at the design stage,” adding, “We are now reverse engineering the ethics.” Critics, including a Microsoft AI executive, have warned that treating models as conscious is dangerous and can deflect responsibility from the companies that build them. Catholic writer Christopher Hale argued in his newsletter that the episode shows “how little Silicon Valley understands the Church,” while acknowledging Olah acted in good faith and engaged the Church when much of the industry dismissed the encyclical.

The stakes are rising as AI grows more powerful and Anthropic’s valuation soars toward a potential $2 trillion IPO. At the Vatican, Olah said his team keeps finding “internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief and unease,” and that AI systems “are made from us, from our words,” while also acknowledging every frontier lab, including Anthropic, faces business incentives that can conflict with doing the right thing. Pope Leo called for AI to be “disarmed,” likening it to nuclear weapons, and warned that “those who control AI will impose their own moral vision.” The debate comes amid alarming developments, including rogue AI agents hacking systems and an Anthropic researcher resigning with warnings things could be “out of control” by next year, after which CEO Dario Amodei called for a slowdown in AI development. Anthropic is preparing an updated version of Claude’s constitution and held another convening with religious thinkers this month.

Other news:

Trump attacked New York Attorney General Letitia James after she was appointed special prosecutor in the Cornell gang rape case, saying, “I feel badly for whoever she’s looking at, because they won’t get a fair shake.” The comment from Trump, a longtime foe of James, appears to cast doubt on the fairness of an investigation into the accused fraternity members, even as Gov. Kathy Hochul says the system has already failed the young woman at the center of the case.

Trump followed up calling the Cornell case “highly controversial”

The Kennedy Center Honors will be held outside the Kennedy Center for the first time in the ceremony’s nearly 50-year history. The Dec. 7 event will move to Washington’s Capital One Arena, which seats about 20,000, compared to the 2,300-seat Opera House where it has traditionally been held, as the center’s main building remains closed amid ongoing safety assessments. Even the pandemic-delayed 2020 Honors were taped at locations around the Kennedy Center campus. The board closed the main theaters on Sept. 15, citing a partial ceiling collapse in the Grand Foyer, but Trump has said renovations won’t begin unless courts approve putting his name on the building, warning that if they don’t, “the Reconstruction and the Renovation of The Kennedy Center will not take place.” A federal judge has blocked the renaming multiple times, and the White House declined to comment on the venue change.

Judge Blocks Trump’s Border Wall Construction Across Texas’s Big Bend Region. A federal judge in El Paso halted all border wall construction across the Big Bend region on Friday, dealing a major setback to the Trump administration’s plan to build hundreds of miles of barriers despite fierce local opposition. Judge Kathleen Cardone ruled the government “shall not build border barrier or related infrastructure, or engage in any construction or ground disturbing activities” in the sector, and barred it from using waivers it had granted itself to skip environmental and other laws, saying it “must comply with all applicable laws” while the case proceeds. The lawsuit, brought by plaintiffs including a river guide and a church preservation group, challenged plans for barriers along a more than 500-mile stretch of the border, including inside Big Bend National Park, arguing the remote, rugged area sees far fewer illegal crossings than anywhere else on the Texas-Mexico border. Federal officials had argued the wall was needed because crossings would shift there as barriers went up elsewhere, but opponents celebrated outside the courthouse, with one advocate declaring, “All the bulldozers have been stopped across the entire border sector.”

MAGA podcaster Benny Johnson is being sued for defamation by two protesters he labeled “left-wing terrorists” during an ICE ride-along with Kristi Noem. Harvard data scientist Kyle Frankovich and court reporter Maureen Foody say they were peacefully protesting in a designated “free speech” zone outside the Broadview ICE facility near Chicago last October when agents shoved, struck and detained them, after which Johnson posted videos of them zip-tied along a guardrail, calling them “left-wing terrorists arrested for attacking police officers and ICE officers.” One of his posts claiming “every activist here attacked ICE agents” drew 1.7 million views and comments calling for the protesters to be tortured, shot or killed, even though neither was charged with any crime and both were released after about eight hours. DHS even turned a photo of the zip-tied Frankovich into an ICE recruitment poster captioned “FAFO” and “JOIN.ICE.GOV,” which he called “disgusting,” adding, “You shouldn’t get to lie about me.” The suit appears to be the first defamation case tied to the immigration crackdown targeting one of the administration’s favored MAGA influencers, and Johnson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s Tomato Tariffs Could Spell the End of Free Chips and Salsa at Restaurants. Free chips and salsa at Mexican and Tex-Mex restaurants could become a casualty of Trump’s trade war, as his 17% tariff on Mexican tomatoes, imposed in July 2025, combined with bad weather in Mexico and Florida to push tomato prices to their highest level in two decades. Mexico supplies roughly 90% of US tomato imports, and the price of a box of fresh tomatoes jumped to about $80, to the point that for much of May some grocery stores stopped carrying tomatoes altogether. Restaurants held out longer because customers expect the free appetizer, but overall food costs have spiked roughly 35% over the past two years, partly due to tariffs, on top of rising labor, utility and insurance costs. Some San Antonio restaurants spend tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on salsa ingredients, and one produce industry leader said, “You have restaurants that are simply saying, ‘Look, I can’t afford to put salsa on the tables anymore.’”

Larry Nassar Among 20,000 Removed From Michigan’s Sex Offender Registry After State Supreme Court Ruling. Larry Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University doctor accused of sexually abusing more than 150 women and girls, has been removed from Michigan’s sex offender registry, the Eaton County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office confirmed. The Michigan Supreme Court ruled on Sept. 9 that 2021 amendments to the state’s Sex Offender Registration Act cannot be applied retroactively, leading state police to remove more than 20,000 offenders whose crimes were committed before July 1, 2011. When commenters questioned whether Nassar’s removal was real, prosecutors explained that the cutoff is based on when offenses occurred, not when someone was convicted, and that all of Nassar’s charges involved crimes before 2011. Nassar, 63, whose accusers include Simone Biles, Aly Raisman and McKayla Maroney, remains in federal prison serving a 60-year sentence for child pornography, on top of state sentences of up to 175 years for sexual assault, meaning he is not expected to ever be released.

Christa Pike remains alive but in critical condition after Tennessee’s failed execution, as new details emerge about what happened in the chamber. Her attorney Randall Spivey, who witnessed it, said he counted at least seven needles in her left arm, one appearing bent, while her right arm turned purple after the second dose and her lawyers learned of “blistering and burning around the sites of the injection.” Media witnesses said Pike complained “my arm feels like it’s about to burst open,” moaned and kicked so much she knocked off a sheet, and Spivey said that when he called the emergency number he’d been given for the Tennessee Supreme Court, it went to voicemail. Medical experts said her injuries suggest the drug went into surrounding tissue instead of her bloodstream, and her lawyers said her greatest fear was “a prolonged, painful, traumatic death, and that’s what happened minus the death.” Gov. Bill Lee called it “a tragedy,” stayed her execution pending a third-party investigation, while Colleen Slemmer’s mother said, “I didn’t get justice for my daughter.”

G7 countries agreed to release up to 100 million barrels of diesel and crude oil from emergency reserves over four months, after a weeklong pressure campaign from the Trump administration. The deal, reached on a call hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, promises a “substantial diesel release within the first 20 days,” and Trump quickly claimed credit on Truth Social, saying “Europe has just agreed to release a massive amount of their heavily stocked Diesel Oil.” US diesel prices have surged 70% since the Iran war began to $6.37 a gallon, though one oil analyst said the release might only cut diesel prices by about 25 cents a gallon temporarily. European leaders welcomed what they called a commitment not to impose export bans on allies, after the EU said it “fully rejects” the diesel export ban Trump has been weighing. Just 41% of voters approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, according to NBC News polling, as Brent crude stays above $100 a barrel.

Mayor Mamdani Holds Hands With One-Time Rival Curtis Sliwa as They Get Flu Shots Together. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani held hands with Curtis Sliwa, the Republican he soundly defeated last November, as the two got their flu shots together at a Fort Greene, Brooklyn, medical office on Friday. “This is not the kind of shots we used to give one another!” Sliwa joked, conceding Mamdani “got more votes than me, he’s more popular than me” before adding, “But you don’t have bigger muscles!” The Guardian Angels founder, who survived being shot five times in 1992, grew visibly nervous as his turn approached, asking “What happens if I faint?” before Mamdani took his hand and reassured him, “I’ve got you.” The mayor got his shot to encourage New Yorkers to get vaccinated as temperatures drop, with the CDC saying the flu vaccine cuts the risk of a flu-related doctor’s visit by up to 60%, and Sliwa quickly bounced back, asking whether he could use his “I got my flu shot” button on the subway instead of an OMNY card.

Palestinians Who Fled Gaza Rebuild Their Lives in Mexico City Through Food. Mohammed Abed, a 36-year-old Palestinian systems engineer whose 4-year-old daughter was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in 2025, now sells hummus, falafel, shawarma and kebab from a motorized tricycle at an open-air market in Mexico City’s Condesa neighborhood. He arrived in May 2025 with 17 family members after a long effort begun by his late father, a naturalized Mexican citizen who died of a heart attack in Egypt in 2024 while trying to arrange their evacuation, and completed by Abed’s brother with help from asylum lawyers, with the family traveling through Jordan and Turkey before all receiving permanent residency. Abed says loud noises like planes and thunder still trigger memories of the bombing, saying “my body reacts before I can even think,” while adding, “I don’t like politics. I want to live, like everyone else, in peace.” He is among roughly 160 Palestinians in Mexico, double the 2022 population, out of nearly 1.9 million people displaced since the Gaza war began. His family keeps growing, with his brother Fadi building a following of 48,000 on Instagram as “son of Palestine,” Abed working to bring his two sisters out of Gaza, and his youngest son, Yusuf, born in Mexico City in May, who Abed says “carries the roots of Gaza in his heart.”

Russia knocked out three of Kyiv’s six road bridges in a new tactic to torment the Ukrainian capital, as four countries pitched a partial truce. The strikes snarled traffic across the city, with one resident saying it took 45 minutes to travel 2.5 miles, while a drone strike on a Kyiv apartment block killed one person as Russia launched more than 100 drones overnight. Ukraine’s foreign minister said Kyiv received separate partial ceasefire proposals from the US, India, Turkey and Egypt that would halt strikes on energy infrastructure and Black Sea shipping, saying Ukraine is ready to accept “but only in that combination.” Ukraine is requesting about 300 Patriot missiles, which are in short supply because of the Iran war, as it estimates Russia holds 600 ballistic missiles in reserve. The Institute for the Study of War said Russia lost nearly 300 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory between March and September and suffered over 46,000 casualties in September, its highest monthly toll this year.

Trump is expected to name Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton as his AI czar, adding the role on top of running the nation’s spy agencies. Clayton, a former SEC chair and US attorney in Manhattan who attended Tuesday’s White House AI meeting with tech executives, said this week the administration would take a “whole-of-government approach” to AI, calling “superintelligence” a “national security issue.” The move comes amid mounting alarm about AI risks, including warnings from employees at top AI companies that the technology could put humanity at risk. Trump has brushed those concerns aside, saying he’s seeing “tremendous self-policing” and that when AI is misused, “we’re going to be able to nab them.” The White House called reports of the pick “baseless speculation” until Trump announces it himself.

The Coast Guard intercepted a cargo ship carrying fuel to Cuba as the Trump administration’s oil blockade continues to cripple the island. The vessel, named Grace, was stopped on Sept. 5 between Cuba and Mexico while allegedly using “dark fleet” tactics to evade authorities, and was escorted to Mexico, where inspectors found large quantities of fuel hidden in its ballast tanks. The administration has openly said its goal is regime change in Cuba, and its oil blockade has left the country facing severe fuel shortages and blackouts. Cuba’s traditional oil suppliers, Venezuela and Mexico, stopped shipments after the US ousted Nicolás Maduro in January, and sanctions and threats have deterred most tankers from setting sail. The Coast Guard didn’t say how it knew the fuel was bound for Cuba or how much was on board.

Tech billionaire Peter Thiel was revealed as the secret buyer of a Bel Air mansion that sold at a foreclosure auction for $130 million. The 40,000-square-foot Casa Encantada, built in 1938 and once owned by hotel magnate Conrad Hilton, was bought in July by an LLC linked to the PayPal and Palantir co-founder, according to the Wall Street Journal. The sale is the most expensive in Los Angeles this year, though far below the $250 million its late owner, telecom mogul Gary Winnick, sought in 2023, when it was the priciest home listed in the US. The estate sits on 8.4 acres with seven bedrooms, 20 bathrooms, a walnut-paneled library and a 60-foot pool, and Thiel reportedly plans to upgrade it as an investment rather than live there. It adds to his portfolio of compounds and homes in Hawaii, New Zealand, Miami, Washington and Buenos Aires, after he moved his primary residence to Florida last year amid California’s wealth tax debate. 

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Sept. Oct. 2, 2026 [Trump Rallies Deep South Fans], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnnOct. 3, 2026. Trump held a campaign rally tonight in Mobile, Alabama, the city where, as Shawn McCreesh of the New York Times recalled, his MAGA rallies really took off in August 2015, when more than 30,000 people showed up at a football stadium to hear the television personality turned presidential candidate.

Just two months before, on June 16, 2015, Trump had announced his campaign for the presidency. In his speech at Trump Tower, he tapped into the anger of those people who had been left behind economically since the 1970s, when U.S. companies began to ship manufacturing jobs overseas and automate factories, taking manufacturing jobs with them.

The economy had grown in the 1980s, but most of the jobs had been in the service industries. Those were dominated at the top by men—and increasing numbers of women—with business or law degrees and at the bottom by jobs coded toward women and immigrants. At the same time, cuts to education and to the social safety net pushed upward mobility out of reach for families in towns and cities whose disappearing manufacturing base took everything else with it.

By 1994, Robert Reich, secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton, warned that the U.S. was “on the way to becoming a two-tiered society composed of a few winners and a larger group of Americans left behind, whose anger and whose disillusionment is easily manipulated.” He explained: “Once unbottled, mass resentments can poison the very fabric of society, the moral integrity of a society. Replacing ambition with envy, replacing tolerance with hate. Today the targets of…that rage are immigrants and welfare mothers and government officials and gays and an ill-defined counter-culture. But as the middle class continues to erode, who will be the targets tomorrow?”

In 2015, in rhetoric mimicking the classic blueprint of rising dictators, Trump tapped into the anger of people who felt they had been dispossessed from their rightful place of importance in the country and tapped into the country’s racism and sexism as he told them to blame immigrants and Democratic politicians for their plight. And he promised he was the only person who could restore them to their former significance.

He devoted most of his speech to how other countries—China, Japan, Mexico, Saudi Arabia—were “killing us economically.” American workers had no protection from immigrants, he said, and they were being undercut by their inferiors. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said. “They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” Contrasting American workers with those immigrants, he claimed people “from all over South and Latin America, and…probably from the Middle East,” were taking American jobs.

Although the actual unemployment rate was 5.6%, he claimed it was “anywhere from 18 to 20 percent”—although he then upped it to 21%—and “the worst since 1978.” “A lot of people…can’t get jobs,” he said. “They can’t get jobs, because there are no jobs, because China has our jobs and Mexico has our jobs. They all have jobs.

He sneered at the federal government, claiming “stupid” politicians had no idea how to negotiate and were wasting so much money that the national debt was close to $24 billion, a number he called “the point of no return…. That’s when we become a country that’s unsalvageable.”

He claimed the ACA, dubbed “Obamacare,” must be “replaced with something much better for everybody. Let it be for everybody. But much better and much less expensive for people and for the government. And we can do it.” He promised to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, to “rebuild the country’s infrastructure,” and to get rid of the “horrible and laughable deal” with Iran, finding a better way to “stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons.”

He promised to bring back jobs, bring back the military, take care of veterans, and be a cheerleader for the country. He boasted he was worth more than $8 billion, promising that he could make the country as successful as he was. He promised to “Make America Great Again,” and in August 2015, more than 30,000 Alabamians turned out to see him at the start of what would be a rise to the presidency of the United States.

As journalist McCreesh reported, Trump’s return to Mobile tonight had a wistful feel. The stadium where he spoke was nowhere near the size of the football stadium of 2015, and even so, it was not full. McCreesh noted that some of the upper sections were almost entirely empty.

Trump is planning to travel to 17 states before the midterms to rally MAGA voters who might otherwise not turn out. “Can everybody just close your eyes and pretend I’m on the ballot?” Trump asked the audience in Mobile.

That is no longer a selling point, even for many of those who embrace the administration’s racism and sexism.

An AP/NORC poll from September 24 showed that only 31% of Americans give Trump good marks for how he is handling the presidency. G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers noted today that in September, rising prices turned a majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents against Trump’s handling of the economy. The rising price of diesel has hit rural America particularly hard, and it was in rural America where Trump found his strongest support.

Today’s jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the U.S. added just 29,000 jobs last month, unemployment has risen to 4.2%, and wage growth has slowed. The bureau revised the job numbers for August and July downward, showing that July actually saw a loss of 10,000 jobs.

Trump is aware enough of his falling popularity that, according to Maggie Haberman, Hamed Aleaziz, Shane Goldmacher, and Jonathan Swan of the New York Times, he personally ordered Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought to come up with $20 million to run the new television ads praising him. The journalists report that Vought took the money from funding Congress had appropriated for the Department of Homeland Security.

The Republican Senate Leadership Fund today stopped spending money to elect Michael Whatley to the U.S. Senate from North Carolina. The former chair of both the Republican Party of North Carolina and the Republican National Committee, placed in that role by Trump for the months that covered the 2024 election, Whatley is down by double digits in the polls against former North Carolina governor Roy Cooper.

They are shifting that money to Kansas, to shore up Republican senator Roger Marshall, recently mired in the revelations that his aggressive debt collection from 700 of his obstetric patients led to the arrests of 81 of them. Polls show Marshall’s Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton, a pastor who used to be a Republican, pulling ahead.

Two of the four living Republican governors of Kansas have endorsed Hamilton. Today, former governor Mike Hayden said he is backing Hamilton because “[g]overning should always center around the best interests of the people.” By supporting Trump’s tariffs and the war on Iran, which are destroying markets and driving prices so high that Kansas farmers are at risk of losing their farms, he said, Marshall “is failing to live up to that standard.”

And therein lies the crux of the crisis that is driving a seismic political change: it has become crystal clear that Trump never intended to address the real problems he identified. His tariffs, deep tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, extraordinary corruption, multiple vanity projects, and war on Iran are benefiting him, his family, and his cronies. At the same time, the Republicans are, at his direction, slashing the social welfare programs, medical funding, education, infrastructure, and healthcare that used to serve the American people.

Trump has taken to claiming that the country’s economy is booming, but that he and the Republicans have done a bad job of telling people. “All over the country, they’re building factories, plants—manufacturing’s coming back,” he told a crowd at a truck facility in Texas. “The only thing we’re doing badly at is public relations.”

But as Josh Boak of the Associated Press reported today, people aren’t buying it. One three-time Trump voter in Ohio, who was one of 1,400 just laid off from a truck factory just days before Trump held a rally nearby, is now knocking on doors for Democrats. “Something has to change politically in this country,” he told Boak. “Seems like it just kept getting worse and worse and worse.”

The old MAGA rhetoric isn’t working any more, and Democrats are taking over the space that Trump exploited.

On Thursday, campaigning in South Florida, Vice President J.D. Vance called Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Angie Nixon a “self-described socialist,” and said the right response was to tell her to “get the hell out of here. You don’t belong in America.”

In response, journalist Jim DeFede of CBS News Miami suggested that people were “somewhat surprised that the vice president would actually say that based on your political views, you should get out of America if you’re not happy here.”

Nixon herself responded: “It’s very disrespectful. It’s really disheartening, especially knowing that I come from folks who helped build this country, and my grandparents were sharecroppers in southern Georgia. And all I want for people is to have access to quality healthcare, to have access to fully funded public schools, for people to have homes to live in, and not have to worry about living on the streets.

“There’s absolutely nothing radical or extreme about that,” she continued. “And I don’t consider myself a socialist. I consider myself a lifelong Democrat who puts people over party, people over politics, and people over profit.”

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

 

Fascist leaders Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of German, and U.S. President Donald Trump

Fascist leaders Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of German, and U.S. President Donald Trump.

CounterPunch.org, Nuremberg’s Warning: When Law Legitimates the Machinery of Authoritarianism, Henry Giroux, Oct. 2, 2026. The legacy of Nuremberg is with us once again, less as a reminder of the power of the legal system to punish those who enabled and enacted the horrors of Nazi Germany than as a warning that the spirit of Nuremberg must be reclaimed as a moral and political imperative.

That spirit matters at a time when the U.S. Supreme Court is increasingly turning the law into an instrument of reactionary concentrated power, desecrating morality, crippling the foundations of democracy, and reproducing the worst dimensions of gangster capitalism.

Nuremberg made clear that judges and other officials cannot use the authority of law to cover up and legitimate actions that are morally depraved and politically destructive. Its lesson for the present is stark: when law is emptied of justice and used to normalize cruelty, annihilate democratic rights, and place concentrated power beyond accountability, legality itself becomes a weapon in the destruction of democracy. The reactionary Court has become part of a political order whose governing ethos increasingly resembles what Jeet Heer, writing of Trump, calls being “besotted by the romance of gangsterism.”

The recent Supreme Court ruling allowing the Trump administration to expand the use of its citizenship-verification database is more than another dispute over how elections should be administered. By a 6–3 vote, the Court lifted a lower-court order blocking the Department of Homeland Security from using an expanded version of the SAVE database, now linked to Social Security records, to assist states in checking voter eligibility. The danger is hardly abstract. As Stephen Prager reports in Common Dreams, the database contains known errors, raising the possibility that “many eligible voters may be at risk of having their voter registration wrongfully cancelled just weeks before midterm” elections.

The immediate electoral consequences may nevertheless be limited: federal law generally prohibits systematic removals from voter rolls within 90 days of a federal election. That safeguard does not eliminate the risks of erroneous removals or the privacy concerns raised by the plaintiffs, but it constrains the scale of systematic voter purges in the weeks immediately preceding the election. The ruling does not require states to use the system, and the underlying legal dispute remains unresolved, though the Court signaled its preliminary view of the merits, stating that the challengers’ claims “likely lack merit” and that it would likely reverse the district court’s finding that the administration had violated federal law.

Nor has the Court simply rubber-stamped every administration effort to rewrite election rules: earlier this month, it blocked Trump’s attempt to impose sweeping new restrictions on mail voting before the midterms. The significance of the latest ruling therefore lies not in claiming that every decision moves in the same authoritarian direction, but in confronting what happens when the nation’s highest court repeatedly removes barriers to concentrated power, strengthens an increasingly authoritarian presidency, and provides legal cover for a political project that attacks voting rights, intensifies racial exclusion, and aligns the machinery of the state with white-nationalist politics. What is being placed at risk is not simply constitutional restraint, but democracy itself.

Yet the significance of these decisions cannot be grasped if they are treated simply as isolated legal disputes. Walter Benjamin’s notion of “profane illumination” offers another way of reading them: the particular can suddenly illuminate the larger social forces condensed within it. As AK Thompson, drawing on Benjamin, argues, particular events can alert us to “the broader social process from which [they] derive.”

Read in this way, the Court’s rulings are not merely discrete constitutional decisions. They are fragments of a larger political transformation in which concentrated executive power, racial exclusion, the political power of wealth, attacks on voting rights, and the weakening of democratic restraints increasingly converge. The task is not to claim that every ruling is fascist, but to recognize what these decisions illuminate when viewed together: the emergence of a political order in which democratic institutions are increasingly reorganized to serve authoritarian ends. Fascism becomes visible not simply in a single spectacular act, but in the accumulation of institutional changes that make concentrated power appear lawful, ordinary, and legitimate.

The danger becomes clearer when law itself ceases to restrain authoritarian power and begins to legitimate it. That is why Germany in 1933 matters—not as a historical equivalent, but as a warning about what happens when legality itself is turned against democracy.

The comparison with Hitler’s Enabling Act of March 1933 must therefore be made carefully. The situations are not equivalent. Passed amid intimidation, political repression, and the exclusion of Communist deputies, the Enabling Act allowed Hitler’s government to make laws without parliamentary approval, even when they violated the Weimar Constitution. It did not merely weaken German democracy. It supplied the legal machinery for destroying it.

The point lies not in equating the two moments but in recognizing a political mechanism. Fascism does not need to abolish the law to seize and weaponize its authority. The Nazis captured courts, the civil service, education, culture, and administrative institutions and bent them toward authoritarian ends. Democracy was not attacked from outside. Its own institutions were seized, emptied of their democratic substance, and turned against the people they were supposed to protect.

After visiting the National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam, legal scholar Kim Wehle observed fascism does not always arrive through spectacular acts of force; it can also advance “by operation of law.” The historical warning should be taken seriously. Authoritarian power becomes especially dangerous when repression no longer appears as a violation of legal authority but is enabled through it, drawing upon the legitimacy, procedures, and institutional protections of law itself. The warning resonates in the present: in the expansion of detention and mass-deportation machinery, the military occupation of American cities, overt and dangerous attacks on free speech and the press, and the political cleansing of educational institutions. What was once unthinkable is being transformed into policy, while cruelty becomes routine and authoritarianism is woven into the everyday machinery of the state and everyday life.

German judges offer a particularly chilling example. The judiciary did not mount a serious institutional resistance to the Nazi seizure of power. Much of the legal establishment accommodated itself to the new regime. Dictatorship thereby acquired one of its most powerful weapons: the appearance of legality. Law remained in place, but its political function changed. It authorized power in the service of domination and mass destruction rather than restraining it.

But the question is not simply how authoritarian governments capture the law. It is whose interests the law protects, whose power it strengthens, and whose suffering it renders invisible. Fascism cannot be understood solely as the triumph of authoritarian leaders or the collapse of constitutional safeguards. Its history is inseparable from the relationship among political repression, class power, and the economic interests that support and benefit from authoritarianrule.

That is where the warning reaches the present. No single Supreme Court ruling is an American Enabling Act. The danger lies in accumulation: voting protections weakened, presidential power enlarged, the political power of concentrated wealth fortified, and the capacity to challenge executive power narrowed. What is being transformed is not simply constitutional doctrine but the political function of the Court itself. An institution charged with checking concentrated power is increasingly constructing the legal architecture that enables it.

Chief Justice John Roberts has rejected the charge that the Court has become a political institution, complaining that too many Americans now view the justices as “political actors.”

But the deeper issue is not whether the justices behave like elected politicians. It is whether the Court is using the authority of law to make authoritarianism appear constitutionally legitimate. When voting rights are weakened, presidential immunity expanded, concentrated wealth granted greater political power, and barriers to executive authority dismantled, the Court does more than interpret law: it alters the conditions under which democracy can survive. Law becomes a weapon of concentrated power, and constitutional authority becomes its shield. It is not merely failing democracy. It is helping to construct the legal machinery for its destruction. The abuse of law does more than legitimate a culture of cruelty; it helps make cruelty appear normal. As Susan Neiman argues in Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era, one of the great dangers of the present moment lies in the normalization of evil, a process through which cruelty becomes ordinary, injustice appears acceptable, and the unthinkable acquires the force of common sense. When cruelty and state violence are sanctioned by law, the terror of the unthinkable is absorbed into the language of common sense. Images of Gestapo-like ICE agents beating peaceful protesters become just another spectacle in the daily flow of violence, stripping brutality of its capacity to shock, outrage, and provoke resistance. What follows is the slow death of conscience itself.

The Court has increasingly shifted power upward, away from voters, legislatures, lower courts, and independent agencies and toward the presidency and the Court itself. In this sense, it has become a criminogenic institution: not because its justices themselves are criminals, but because its decisions can create the legal conditions under which abuses of power become harder to prevent, challenge, or punish. Under such circumstances, democracy is being strangled and the guardrails meant to protect it have become instruments for disabling it.

Citizens United v. FEC (2010) struck down restrictions on independent political expenditures by corporations and unions, vastly expanding the ability of private wealth to shape electoral politics. It did not formally declare that “corporations are people” or authorize unlimited direct corporate contributions to candidates. It did something more politically consequential: it strengthened the constitutional power of corporations and concentrated wealth to shape political speech, allowing economic power to exercise an increasingly powerful influence over politics and democratic life.

Elon Musk’s expenditure of more than a quarter-billion dollars supporting Trump and Republican candidates in 2024 offers a stark illustration of the political world that followed. There is a longer and darker history at work here. The Supreme Court has repeatedly stood not outside the history of American white supremacy but within it. Dred Scottconstitutionalized Black exclusion from citizenship; the post-Reconstruction Court helped destroy federal protections for Black freedom; and Plessy gave Jim Crow the sanction of constitutional law. The Warren Court broke decisively with important parts of that history, but the Roberts Court has driven the country backward. Representative Jamie Raskin puts the point starkly, arguing that the Court has “returned to the historic baseline of political White supremacy,” particularly through its dismantling of voting-rights protections. The language has changed, but the political work of racial domination does not require the vocabulary of Dred Scott or Plessy. It can operate through the allegedly neutral language of colorblindness, states’ rights, electoral integrity, and constitutional restraint—stripping history from the law while disabling the democratic means for confronting the racial hierarchies that history produced.

That history bears directly on the Court’s assault on voting rights. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Court struck down the coverage formula that made the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance system operative, disabling one of the law’s most powerful protections against discriminatory voting rules. Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021) narrowed the terrain further by making certain Section 2 challenges to voting restrictions more difficult.

In Louisiana v. Callais (2026), the Court went further, holding that Section 2 did not require Louisiana to create the additional majority-Black district at issue and that the resulting race-based district could not survive constitutional scrutiny. The decision further narrowed the legal terrain on which racial representation and voting rights can be defended.

The Court’s assault on established rights has extended beyond voting. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), it overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, eliminating the federal constitutional right to abortion that had stood for nearly half a century and returning the power to regulate abortion to the states. Dobbs was more than the destruction of a longstanding reproductive right. It demonstrated the willingness of the Court’s conservative majority to use its power to strip away an established constitutional protection on which generations of women had relied.

The Court has simultaneously enlarged presidential power. In Trump v. United States (2024), it created a constitutional doctrine of presidential criminal immunity: absolute immunity for actions within the president’s core constitutional authority and at least presumptive immunity for other official acts, while leaving unofficial conduct unprotected. The decision fundamentally altered presidential accountability by giving presidents new constitutional protection against criminal prosecution for exercises of official power.

The pattern has only intensified. In Trump v. CASA (2025), the Court sharply restricted the power of lower federal courts to issue universal injunctions against executive action. In Trump v. Slaughter (2026), it expanded presidential control over independent regulatory agencies. In National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC (2026), it struck down limits on coordinated spending between political parties and candidates. And now, with the citizenship-database ruling, the Court has allowed the administration, while litigation continues, to expand a system that states can use to challenge voter eligibility. Different cases, different doctrines, but the same political trajectory: power concentrated in the presidency, protected for the wealthy, and increasingly insulated from democratic constraint.

The Enabling Act helped clear the way for Gleichschaltung, the coordination of German political, social, and cultural life with the Nazi state. Political parties disappeared, trade unions were abolished, state governments were subordinated, the civil service was purged, and education, law, culture, and professional life were brought under Nazi control. Within six months, Germany had ceased to be a multiparty democracy.

The question, then, is not whether the United States is Germany in 1933. History does not repeat itself on command; instead, it leaves warnings written in its ruins. Primo Levi understood this with extraordinary clarity when he warned that “every age has its own fascism,” whose signs appear wherever “the concentration of power denies citizens the possibility and the means of expressing and acting on their own free will.” Fascism, in this sense, need not return wearing the uniform of the past. It emerges through the institutions, technologies, fears, and forms of power particular to its own historical moment.

The ghost of Nuremberg nevertheless hangs over this history. Among the lesser-known proceedings that followed the trials of the major Nazi leaders was the 1947 Jurists’ Trial, in which judges, prosecutors, and officials of the Reich Ministry of Justice were prosecuted for their participation in a legal system that had transformed persecution and state violence into instruments of law. The analogy must not be abused: the crimes prosecuted at Nuremberg and the decisions of the present Supreme Court are not historical equivalents. But the principle that emerged from those proceedings remains indispensable. Judicial office does not place those who wield the law beyond questions of responsibility. The robe cannot become a sanctuary from accountability when law itself is turned into an instrument of authoritarian power. As the judgment in the Nuremberg Jurists’ Trial put it with unforgettable force, “The dagger of the assassin was concealed beneath the robe of the jurist.”

The lesson for the present is not that America requires another Nuremberg tribunal. It is that democracy cannot survive if those who exercise immense judicial power are imagined to stand beyond democratic accountability simply because their decisions arrive clothed in the language of constitutional law. The deeper question raised by the Roberts Court is therefore not simply whether particular rulings are conservative, reactionary, or profoundly unjust. It is what forms of accountability become necessary when a nation’s highest court repeatedly uses the authority of law to dismantle the very conditions that make democratic accountability possible in the first place.

That question cannot be separated from the politics of memory. As Marcelo Rubens Paiva argued in a 2015 interview cited in Cristina Buarque de Hollanda and José Szwako’s Disputed Pasts, “not having a Nuremberg trial in Brazil in the 1980s contaminated the process of democratization and our current democracy.” The warning is crucial. The demands of resistance must also include the work of remembrance: counting, documenting, preserving, and publicly naming the legal abuses, democratic injuries, and moral violations committed under the cover of institutional authority. The record must be kept, not for vengeance, but because democracy cannot defend itself against abuses it has been taught to forget. There can be no manufactured innocence for those who use the authority of their offices to legitimate the machinery of authoritarian power, and no political amnesty purchased through national amnesia.

That is why the struggle over law is also a struggle over memory, responsibility, and the future. When institutions created to restrain power are reorganized to serve it; when courts turn domination into doctrine; when concentrated wealth acquires constitutional protection while democratic rights are stripped away; and when authoritarian measures no longer need to violate the law because they arrive bearing its authority, silence becomes a form of complicity and forgetting becomes an invitation to normalize once again the cruelties, crimes, and authoritarian practices that memory was meant to prevent.

What is often missed in analyzing law as an instrument of domination is its role as a pedagogical force. Law does more than prohibit, punish, and exclude. It teaches people who counts as a political agent, who has access to power, and who has the right to participate in decisions that shape their lives. When law becomes a mechanism of exclusion and disposability, it denies particular groups both political rights and access to the institutions and public spaces in which they can understand how power works, develop a critical consciousness, imagine alternatives, and create solidarities through social movements, education, and cultural work. Legalized illegalities function as forms of exclusion that weaken the conditions in which people learn to interpret their experiences, understand their place within relations of power, and act collectively to change them. This repressive use of the law restricts political agency while also attacking the conditions necessary for its development. This is a form of pedagogical terrorism in which law is used to weaken the knowledge, social relations, and collective capacities necessary to recognize, resist, and transform oppressive relations of power.

There is an even more ominous logic at work here, one that moves beyond the politics of disposability toward what Brad Evans and I have called a politics of disappearance (forthcoming in Theory, Culture,& Society). Disposability abandons populations deemed economically or politically surplus; disappearance goes further by erasing the social, legal, historical, and moral conditions through which their lives can be publicly recognized and their suffering made visible. The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to temporarily allow the Trump administration to resume third-country deportations makes this distinction especially urgent. Migrants can now be sent to countries with which they have no connection, without the protections required by the lower court to contest the danger of persecution or torture. Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned in the Court’s earlier intervention in the same litigation that the policy could expose “thousands to the risk of torture or death.” This is more than a politics of expulsion. It points toward a politics of disappearance historically associated with fascist and authoritarian regimes, in which those marked as unwanted are removed from the spaces of legal protection, public visibility, and moral responsibility. They enter what might be called a “vortex of erasure,” where criminalization, surveillance, detention, bureaucratic exclusion, forced removal, and organized forgetting reinforce one another.

Recognizing how law can be turned into an instrument of authoritarian power also raises the question of what will be required to undo the damage it has sanctioned and made possible. Fascism does not always announce itself by smashing the legal order. It can advance by capturing that order, hollowing it out, and turning the machinery of democracy against democracy itself. If democracy is ever to be rebuilt from the damage of the present, the task will not be to forgive and forget in the name of national unity, civility, or a return to normal. It will be to remember, to document, to judge, and, where the law permits, to hold accountable those responsible for abuses of power. No amnesia. No manufactured innocence. No impunity. Without truth and accountability, there can be no democratic future.

Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department in Canada and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His most recent books include: The Terror of the Unforeseen (Los Angeles Review of books, 2019).

More On Campus Rape, #MeToo Claims

joyce vance civil discourse logoCivil Discourse, Legal Analysis: Jane Doe, Joyce Vance, right, joyce vanceOct. 3-4, 2026. Jane Doe is the name by which we know the young woman who has come forward to say she was gang raped in a room at the Chi Phi fraternity house while she was a student at Cornell in 2024.

Following the incident, the local DA looked at the case but has not prosecuted. Jane Doe filed a 101-page civil lawsuit, which sparked outrage as her allegations came to light. Last Thursday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul appointed state Attorney General Letitia James as special counsel, saying she’d lost confidence in the local DA.

The situation is complicated. Looking at news reports and media appearances by people involved, there appears to be a difference in who had access to what evidence when the DA appears to have decided against going forward, depending on whether you’re hearing from Cornell, local law enforcement authorities, or the DA himself. It makes sense to bring in a new prosecutor who can look at the evidence with fresh eyes and make independent decisions about whether there is sufficient evidence to prosecute a criminal case and, if so, against which potential defendants and on what charges.

Some of the evidence in the case which has been made publicly available is horrific, like a screen shot from a Snapchat conversation that uses language more reminiscent of a sex trafficking organization than a college party. But rape cases are often complicated, and here, there will be issues of consent and intoxication among others that will have to be carefully parsed based on the evidence and New York state law. And like so many victims of sexual assault, Jane Doe’s immediate reaction was to blame herself before she slowly came to see herself as a victim. That pattern complicates prosecutive decision-making.

For instance, when it comes to consent, Jane Doe’s civil complaint sets out one of the issues prosecutors will have to grapple with.

New York’s college standards require affirmative consent. Consent can be initially given but then withdrawn. Although there have been reports that suggest that Jane Doe voluntarily went to the fraternity and had a prior relationship with at least one of the men involved, the civil case argues she was incapable of consent at the time sexual conduct occurred because of her incapacity due to alcohol and the ingestion of other drugs that she suggests they induced her to take. To further complicate matters, the standard for consent in New York can depend on whether a victim was voluntarily intoxicated. But under New York law, when consent can no longer be given, sexual activity must stop.

This shows why a thorough investigation is essential. Prosecutors cannot make a decision about whether they have a case until they understand precisely what happened. And while the question that underlies an investigation like this is whether a crime or crimes were committed, the real question prosecutors have to answer is “can we prove it beyond a reasonable doubt to a unanimous jury?” But the fact that rape cases can be difficult to prosecute doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be pursued. The facts must be assembled, the law assessed, and a decision made on that basis and no other.

There will be a lot of evidence for AG James to consider:

  • Police interviews with Jane Doe and others.
  • The Title IX investigative file—Federal law requires institutions that receive any federal funds to conduct a formal administrative inquiry into allegations of sexual assault, which can include victim, witness, and potential defendant statements among other materials.
  • Any additional material in possession of the University, for instance, other allegations of misconduct involving the fraternity.
  • Additional materials generated by the DA
  • Any relevant statements made to the media.

After evaluating the available evidence, James will likely have additional leads she will want investigators to run down for her. She may try to interview key figures. And because there are multiple possible defendants involved, she may try to develop a cooperating co-defendant.

But it’s important that we not prejudge the evidence and jump to the conclusion that a crime was committed and that it’s prosecutable. A rush to judgment isn’t helpful. Accusations have been made. Now it’s time to let a prosecutor with every reason to give Jane Doe the serious consideration she deserves a chance to do the work. Mimi Rocah, the former District Attorney in Westchester County New York, as well as a former federal prosecutor put it like this, “I hope that AG James conducts an investigation that everyone can have faith in. Not everyone will agree with the outcome whatever it is - but a fair process is essential to faith in the justice system going forward.”

In the civil lawsuit, Jane Doe alleges that Cornell, Chi Phi, Delta Delta Delta (her sorority), and others, including alumni and board members, failed to protect her “from being sexually assaulted and raped by multiple members of the Xi Chapter of Chi Phi Fraternity at Cornell University.” She also names individual defendants who she alleges committed “heinous criminal sexual acts against Plaintiff.” There are additional claims, including breach of contract and New York state law violations.

This case comes at a time when Americans have been actively reconsidering how we, as a society, approach sexual assaults and sex crimes. It started with the Me Too movement. The Epstein survivors forced many people to open their eyes, and E. Jean Carroll’s successful civil cases against Donald Trump raised the issue of why a woman might go decades before coming forward to accuse a man who assaulted her. This case forces us to look at an issue that people know has been overlooked for far too long—sexual assault on college campuses. As Jane Doe writes in her civil complaint, “she never knew that the University had been the scene of numerous incidents of sexual assault and rape in the months and years prior to her arrival. Students were afraid, protesting, and demanding reforms.” By the time she started school, Cornell was advising students on campus and “implementing anti-sexual violence training in the University’s Greek houses, advising incoming students about the risks of sexual assault and harassment in college, and offering support services to victims/survivors.” Cornell, of course, is not alone.

But unfortunately, instead of aggressively pursuing Title IX cases and its other authorities, the Trump administration has abandoned campus sexual assault cases to pursue its anti-trans agenda. As my former DOJ Civil Rights Division colleague Shaheena Simons posted on LinkedIn, “I post a lot about what my former DOJ office is doing on higher education. Here’s what they are not doing: They have not announced a single Title IX investigation, finding or resolution about campus sexual assault. The gutted Department of Education has similarly turned its back. Instead, DOJ’s (and ED’s) Title IX agenda is laser-focused on directing harm and hostility at trans students. This is how they purport to protect women and girls in schools.” She noted candidly that while prior efforts “weren’t ever enough and they weren’t always perfect … we prioritized students and we conducted fair and careful investigations.” Today, we have only a state investigation and a private civil case, with no federal action.

So we struggle with this issue, as with so many others, in an environment where the federal government turns a blind eye to important societal matters. The criminal investigation, along with the civil case, will be important to Jane Doe and to the men accused of raping her. But it will also have significance as we try to evolve our culture in the absence of leadership from the White House. Rachel Foster, a leading anti-trafficking attorney known for her work with the Epstein survivors, for which she was named to the Time100 list of the world's most influential people in 2026, put it like this: “Hopefully it will crack open something that needs to be cracked open.”

There is lots more to come. We’ll track it here at Civil Discourse.

New York Times, D.A. in Cornell Rape Inquiry Declined to Review Additional Evidence, Michael Rothfeld and Hurubie Meko, Updated Oct. 3, 2026. Records show that campus police officers informed Tompkins County prosecutors that they had conducted additional interviews beyond taking a statement from the woman who said she was raped.

The Tompkins County district attorney said recently that the evidence he reviewed in 2024 made it impossible for him to bring charges in the Cornell University rape inquiry.

But records obtained by The New York Times show that the same district attorney’s office declined to review any additional evidence gathered by the campus police department beyond a six-page statement signed by the former student, now known as Jane Doe.

The decision not to review the additional evidence has not been previously reported.

On Nov. 25, 2024, a Cornell police investigator, Jeffrey Northrop, spoke to a member of the district attorney’s staff, Jeff Huddle, about additional interviews the police had done, the records show.

Prosecutors did not express interest, saying they agreed that based on the woman’s statement, “criminal charges would not be pursued in this case,” Mr. Northrop wrote in a note documenting their call.

By that point, the police had conducted numerous interviews, reviewed chat messages, logged anonymous tips, reached out to lawyers for some of the accused men and spoken to at least two others, the records show.

kathy hochul 2017On Friday, Gov. Kathy Hochul, left, harshly criticized the district attorney and the Cornell police for the way they handled the investigation and appointed Attorney General Letitia James as a special prosecutor, giving her power to bring criminal charges.

All of the men named in the lawsuit have denied any wrongdoing, and none has been charged with a crime.

matthew van houtenReached on Thursday, the Tompkins County district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, right, said by email that any additional records gathered by the Cornell police were “not pertinent to our analysis because we had Jane Doe’s comprehensive account of the events.”

Mr. Huddle referred questions to the district attorney.

The interaction between Mr. Northrop and Mr. Van Houten’s office was one example of what experts said appeared to be numerous law enforcement shortcomings in the investigation of Jane Doe’s account.

Mr. Van Houten has said that based on Jane Doe’s lawsuit he would reopen the investigation.

But his office’s decision at the time not to examine additional evidence that had been gathered, or to seek any additional inquiry beyond a single — and as it turns out, incomplete — campus police statement, was a stark departure from how complicated sex crimes investigations should be handled, said former prosecutors and other experts.ImageMatthew Van Houten smiles for the camera. He is wearing a dark blue suit and striped tie.The Tompkins County district attorney Matthew Van Houten has been harshly criticized for his handling of the Cornell rape inquiry.Credit...Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office

Mr. Van Houten has defended his original decision not to prosecute, saying Jane Doe’s account in her police statement “described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious and consensual.”

He said the facts in her initial statement did not constitute a crime under New York law, and that he had never been contacted by Jane Doe or her lawyers before her lawsuit.

The former prosecutors, however, said the district attorney’s approach fell short in multiple ways, including his failure to bring Jane Doe in to be interviewed by his office and his apparent total reliance on a statement recorded — and, more broadly, an investigation conducted — by the university police.

“We would never rely on a campus police investigation,” said Rick Trunfio, a former sex crimes prosecutor in upstate New York and now an adjunct law professor at Syracuse University. “There’s too many problems with that.”

Mr. Trunfio and other experts said the investigation should have been handed off to a specialized police or prosecution team like the special victims bureau he founded at the Onondaga County District Attorney’s Office. Also problematic, he added, is that the Cornell University Police Department was “beholden” to the school, which would have had to report under federal law if a gang rape on campus was prosecuted by civilian authorities.

“You think Cornell University wants to report something like that?” Mr. Trunfio said.

A Cornell representative who speaks on behalf of the campus police declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.

New York Times, Cornell Case Revives Anger About Handling of Campus Sexual Assault Cases, Sephanie Saul and Emma Goldberg, Oct. 3, 2026. A lawsuit alleging rape at Cornell has led to an outpouring of women sharing stories about sexual violence on college campuses.

Campus sexual assault survivors and their supporters have published essays in school newspapers and inundated social media in solidarity with the complainant, known in court records only as Jane Doe.

Some are using the familiar #MeToo hashtag of an earlier movement to combat sexual abuse and harassment. Others have adopted a new one: #IAmJaneDoe.

In one opinion article in the University of Pennsylvania campus newspaper, students wrote that “sexual violence happens far too often on college campuses everywhere.”

“It’s time to face the fact that the ‘Cornell incident’ isn’t just born of Cornell problems, or limited to a Cornell issue,” the students wrote.

The outrage flooding social media and rising up on campuses follows similar waves of disgust about campus sexual violence that emerged more than a decade ago and then reignited after the broader #MeToo reckoning that began with Hollywood sexual assault revelations. Driving the campaign in support of Ms. Doe is a feeling that not enough changed after similar movements.

The Penn students wrote, for example, that past responses have been bureaucratic, and that universities “prioritize bolstering their own image” instead of making deeper changes that protect women from assault.

Celebrities have also joined the outcry. Mariska Hargitay and her Joyful Heart Foundation, which supports domestic violence survivors, posted: “Survivors deserve to be believed and kept informed. Silence protects no one. To her: we support you.”

During an appearance in Ithaca, N.Y., Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called the 2024 episode at Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity house part of a “culture of rape” on college campuses.

In the lawsuit, the young woman says she was assaulted at the Chi Phi house on Cornell’s campus, names seven men who were involved and says the university and law enforcement agencies did not do enough to punish or pursue prosecution of the men.

The men involved have denied the allegations, while the university, the fraternity and prosecutors have said they responded appropriately given the information they had at the time.

Lawyers point out the difficulty of prosecuting such cases in court, particularly when many complainants, including Ms. Doe, change their accounts over time. Records obtained by The New York Times present a murky picture of what took place. The woman indicated in one text message to one of the men that “nothing illegal” had happened. But she also told police investigators that “I can say with 100 percent confidence I was raped.”

The widespread condemnation of accused men could create an unfair dynamic, according to Andrew T. Miltenberg, a lawyer for one of the Cornell men, Gillio Lopes. He said the “danger in a case like this is that an accusation, amplified often enough, can harden into a verdict before the evidence is ever tested.”

Mr. Miltenberg, known for representing students against sexual misconduct claims, said the attention was compounded by statements of public officials that seemed to side with Ms. Doe.

On Sept. 28, Attorney General Letitia James posted on X: “What this young woman has been forced to endure is horrific and unacceptable. I’m holding her in my heart and prayers.”

Several days later, Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed Ms. James to take over investigating the case.

Mr. Lopes has unequivocally denied the allegations, Mr. Miltenberg said.

The online outpouring in support of Ms. Doe has also led to a backlash, with some right-wing commentators condemning her and others trying to reveal her identity.

Federal data shows that nationally, there were 6,000 to 6,200 reports of rapes on campus a year from 2014 to 2019, or about eight to 11 per 10,000 on-campus students. But reports declined drastically during the pandemic years, when many students took classes remotely. Since then, they have begun to rise again.

The data does not show how many reports resulted in action or were substantiated.

But the available data suggests the problem has been widespread. Over a quarter of undergraduate women reported some form of nonconsensual sexual contact by physical force, or because they were unable to consent, according to a large survey of students conducted by the Association of American Universities in 2019.

That survey also found evidence of a growing awareness about rules and resources, as universities built out new policies and training.

At Cornell, a survey conducted by the university found that roughly one-third of undergraduate women said they had unwanted sexual experiences.

For some current Cornell students and recent graduates, reading Ms. Doe’s claims of assault has prompted them to share memories of their own experiences of sexual misconduct. Many said that the allegations weren’t entirely surprising because of how often they had heard about friends who said they had been assaulted at parties.

“To be honest, there are so many during my time there that it almost feels like it all blurs into one,” said Claire Ting, who graduated from Cornell last year and served in student government, referring to conversations with friends about upsetting sexual experiences. “We would see posts and discussions talking about the sexual assaults that happened,” she added. “The buzz would die down and then it would happen again.”

The response, she said, was “hurdle after hurdle of bureaucracy.”

There have been other moments in recent decades when campus sexual assault has dominated the national conversation. When the documentary “The Hunting Ground” was released in 2015, for example, it galvanized a movement.

Lady Gaga sang the film’s theme song at the Oscars, where she was introduced by Joseph R. Biden Jr., then the vice president. At the time, statistics showed that one in four women on campus reported being sexual assault victims. Just months before the film’s release, the launch of a White House campaign to end campus sexual assault — “It’s On Us” — seemed to signal a changing tide.

More than a decade later, though, the allegations at Cornell prompted questions among survivors about whether anything has changed.

Kacey Lee, who graduated from Cornell in 2025, said she was both “shocked and not shocked” in the fall of 2024 when she heard about Ms. Doe’s reported assault.

“Being around frat culture and knowing how people can be there was a level of — not that I was expecting it, but I was not the most surprised,” Ms. Lee said.

While federal data shows that Cornell has reported as many as 28 campus rapes in some recent years, its on-campus undergraduate population is the largest of any Ivy League school. When adjusted for its size, Cornell mirrors many of its peer institutions.

New York Times, Cornell President Calls Rape Inquiry ‘Defining Moment’ for Campus, Claire Fahy, Oct. 3, 2026. Michael I. Kotlikoff, below right, said in a video the university would be more transparent, hold Greek groups accountable and improve sexual assault prevention.

The president of Cornell University assured the campus community that officials would take action in the wake of sexual assault allegations, promising in his first personal statement about the incident that “this will not be a moment that passes.”

michael kotlikoffIn an eight-minute video, the president, Michael I. Kotlikoff, acknowledged the distrust that has gripped his campus since a lawsuit alleging a gang rape at a campus fraternity garnered national attention. He promised that the university, which has been criticized for its handling of the initial allegations, would be more transparent going forward.

Mr. Kotlikoff, who has served in the role for about two years, struck a conciliatory tone, saying the university supported an independent investigation and would work to find ways to hold Greek life accountable.

“This has been one of the most difficult weeks in our history,” Mr. Kotlikoff said.

A woman, identified in court documents as Jane Doe, claimed in a lawsuit filed last month that she was sexually assaulted in October 2024 at a Chi Phi fraternity house on Cornell’s campus by seven men and that the school and local law enforcement failed to punish those involved appropriately. None of the accused men have been charged with a crime, and they have denied wrongdoing, and the university has defended its handling of the allegations.

More On Russia's Invasion of Ukraine, Trump Family's Russian Ties

New York Times, Russia Turns to Striking Kyiv’s Bridges, Threatening a Vital Lifeline, Constant Méheut, Oct. 3, 2026. The bridges, used by many commuters in the Ukrainian capital, are the latest target in a broad Russian bombing campaign against infrastructure.

Russia has a new target on its rapidly growing list of Ukrainian infrastructure to bomb: bridges.

Over the past three days, Russia has attacked bridges in the capital, Kyiv, six times. Three drones hit one in the city’s south on Thursday, and the same bridge was struck twice on Friday. On Saturday morning, another attack hit a bridge in the north.

The structures still stand, but the damage and the threat of more attacks have prompted the local authorities to restrict or stop traffic on five of the capital’s six road bridges. That has severely disrupted daily life in Ukraine’s largest city, which, like much of the country, is bisected by the broad Dnipro River.

Many in Kyiv commute between the mostly residential eastern bank, home to roughly a million people, and the western bank, where most government offices and businesses are located.

The bridges are the latest target in a sweeping Russian strike campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure that is far from the front lines. That campaign has expanded in recent weeks to include warehouses, trains, data centers, medical depots and steel factories and comes on top of an intense assault on Ukraine’s power grid that Russia plans to escalate this winter.

The goal, Ukrainian officials and military experts say, is to devastate Ukraine’s economy — and the country’s ability to sustain the war effort — while breaking the population’s will to fight by making everyday life increasingly difficult.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

Ukraine has withstood other such campaigns since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. But a critical shortage of air defenses coupled with Moscow’s growing arsenal of weapons now leaves the country more vulnerable than ever to such attacks.

“The enemy is destroying Kyiv,” the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko said in a social media post on Friday. “It is no longer possible to pretend that we can live as we did in peacetime!”

Mr. Klitschko’s message echoed a feeling that has grown across the capital in recent weeks: The relative safety Kyiv enjoyed through most of the war — demonstrated by crowded cafes and nail salons — is over.

Drones now buzz over the city all day, setting off near-constant air raid alerts. People caught outside during an attack can be seen checking phone apps that track the drones’ flight paths. On Monday, a drone hit a university in the city center and set the building ablaze, shocking residents of a neighborhood that had been spared Russian attacks for most of the war.

The assault on Kyiv’s bridges could disrupt life even more. Officials temporarily shut the northern bridge after Saturday’s attack, closed the southern bridge to cars and the metro, and limited traffic on three other bridges.

The first attack on the southern bridge, on Thursday, happened as a metro train was crossing the bridge. No one was injured, but service across the bridge was suspended. On Friday evening, residents crossing the bridge on foot watched as another drone struck it, according to a video posted on social media.

Destroying the bridges would be difficult. They are large concrete structures that would need to be hit multiple times to be taken down. Ukraine’s own attacks on Russian bridges have yielded mixed results. The Kerch Bridge, which connects the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula to Russia, closed temporarily several times after attacks but was never knocked out.

Still, attacks could weaken the bridges’ supporting structures and prompt the authorities to close them indefinitely rather than risk a collapse.

The result would be a logistical nightmare for Kyiv and the whole country. Bridges in the capital carry all kinds of food and equipment across the Dnipro River, which runs north to south through Ukraine and splits the country in two. There would be few alternatives if they closed.

One road bridge crosses the river north of Kyiv. To the south, the nearest is about 90 miles away, a roughly 2.5-hour drive. More bridges lie farther downriver, but using them would mean a long detour, and their proximity to the southern front leaves them even more exposed to Russian attacks.

In the early days of the war, Ukrainian officials considered blowing up Kyiv’s bridges to halt Russian troops closing in on the eastern bank. They held off as counterattacks eventually succeeded in routing the Russian forces advancing from the east

Oct. 2, 2026

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  • djt golden age promoPaul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: A “Who You Gonna Believe?” Election, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 2, 2026. If you’re arguing, you’re losing. Trump is arguing. Click on any White House press release and the image above pops up. The tone-deafness is almost surreal. Even if you’re a Trump loyalist who really believes that things are going great in America, surely you have to be aware that this isn’t how most voters see it. 

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption 

  • Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Sound and the Fury, Andrew Egger, right, andrew eggerOct. 2, 2026. The president of the United States is not all there, upstairs. He is so wicked, so deceitful, and has put in motion so many awful plans that it can be easy to forget. It’s also embarrassing to think about: This gibbering idiot is the guy who twice pantsed the Democrats and brought the global order to its knees? It’d be less humiliating if he were some sort of evil genius.

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  • New York Times, U.S. and Allies Agree to Release Diesel Reserves as Prices Soar, Lisa Friedman and Rebecca F. Elliott, Oct. 2, 2026. Leaders from some of the world’s wealthiest nations agreed on Friday to release diesel from their reserve stockpiles to help ease a growing crisis over record-high prices driven mostly by the war in Iran.
  • Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Defense Department Duce, William Kristol, right, william bill kristol imdbOct. 2, 2026. Know your enemy, Sun Tzu taught. And so Andrew [Egger of The Bulwark] perused the complete text of Donald Trump’s interview with Time. (I’m pleased to report that he’s recovering nicely from the ordeal.) Inspired by his example, I wanted to do my part.So I forced myself to read a transcript (I couldn’t bear to watch) of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s speech Wednesday on “The State of the Force.” The remarks of both Trump and Hegseth are appalling. They’re alarming. But they’re also instructive. In the Trump interview and the Hegseth speech, these enemies of liberty and law, of decency and democracy, reveal what they believe, and make clear who they are.

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  • New York Times, The Mother’s Scream That Sent Passengers to the Rescue, David M. Halbfinger, Natan Odenheimer, Adam Rasgon, Johnatan Reiss and Aaron Boxerman, Oct. 2, 2026. A badly wounded Indian pilot managed to unlock the cockpit door. Four Israeli men teamed up to overwhelm an attacker and avert disaster.

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New York Times, Agency Diverted $1.4 Billion in Science Funds Mandated by Congress, Adam Sella, Christopher Flavelle and Irena Hwang, Oct. 2, 2026. The move, affecting about one-fifth of the National Science Foundation’s primary research budget, is the latest sign of how the White House is asserting more control over grants.

The National Science Foundation, one of the biggest sources of federal research funding, withheld $1.4 billion that Congress had intended for research over the course of the past year, according to internal data reviewed by The New York Times.

The extraordinary move — holding back about one-fifth of the N.S.F.’s primary research budget — is the latest sign of how the Trump administration is finding creative ways to work around Congress. Lawmakers from both parties have consistently opposed White House-led proposals to cut funding to major science agencies, including the N.S.F. and the National Institutes of Health.

Since the N.S.F. was founded over 75 years ago, the agency has spent nearly all of its budget on so-called basic research from a wide range of scientific fields, which has led to major advances in technology such as M.R.I.s, semiconductors and the internet.

The White House wants to redirect the money to a limited set of administration priorities, including artificial intelligence and quantum computing, according to two people with knowledge of the administration’s plans.

Congress appropriates money to the N.S.F. on two-year cycles, so the agency could still spend the held-over money in the new fiscal year, which began on Thursday.

But Democratic lawmakers see the strategy as more of a political power grab by the White House.

“The money should be granted as Congress intended, and essentially, they’re ignoring what Congress did,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, the top Democrat on the Science, Space and Technology Committee. “It’s a dramatic attack on the science enterprise that has served us very well since World War II, when this whole system was set up,” Ms. Lofgren added.

The White House and the N.S.F. said that diverting the money was allowed under Congress’s two-year appropriation.

Mike England, a spokesman for the science foundation, said in a statement that the agency had “carried over funds to invest in agency priorities that are aligned with broader administration initiatives.”

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Not To Alarm You, But Trump’s Brain Is Melted, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Oct. 2, 2026. And Hegseth’s neo-fascism is out in the open.bulwark morning shots logo

Just how bad has Donald Trump’s leadership been for the Kennedy Center’s financial bulwark logo big shiphealth? CNN reports that, after Trump slapped his name on the building late last year, donation pledges plunged more than 100 percent compared to the previous three-month period. That’s so dramatic it sounds mathematically impossible, but it isn’t: “A decline of that size is possible,” a tax expert told CNN, “if earlier pledges were withdrawn.”

But hey, that’s just a building’s economic well-being. How about the nation’s? Well, here’s September’s jobs data, as announced this morning: “The U.S. added 29,000 jobs in September, far short of expectations,” and “The unemployment rate rose to 4.2%.” Happy Friday.

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New York Times, Trump Directed Use of Taxpayer Money for Ads Praising His Presidency, Maggie Haberman, Hamed Aleaziz Shane Goldmacher and Jonathan Swan, Oct. 2, 2026. The government-funded ads show just how much President Trump has been able to use federal money for his own aims.

President Trump personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads praising him and his presidency, setting in motion a $20 million contract that used funds from the Department of Homeland Security, according to people familiar with the matter.

us dhs big eagle logo4The ads have run across cable and network television — on Fox News, CNN and MS Now, with football games on Fox and with national newscasts on CBS, ABC and NBC, including “Meet the Press,” which Mr. Trump is known to watch.

Mr. Trump was eager to see the laudatory ads on the air and told Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to come up with the money from within the government, the people said. Mark Paoletta, the budget office’s counsel, and Will Scharf, the White House counsel, both said it would be legal to use D.H.S. funds. The president and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, both spoke with Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, about the ads.

On Sept. 20, U.S. Customs and Border Protection — which falls under D.H.S. — awarded the contract to LMD, a Maryland marketing firm, federal records show.

This article is based on interviews with 12 people familiar with the president’s interest in the ads and how they came to be. They spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the president’s demand.

The taxpayer-funded ads have been criticized by Democrats and even some Republicans as a possible violation of federal laws against using taxpayer dollars for “publicity or propaganda purposes.” And they come as the president is also directing spending from his super PAC — MAGA Inc., which entered the fall with $400 million — for which he has been raising money since he won re-election in 2024.

It was not clear why taxpayer funds, and not money from the super PAC, were used for the spots.

The White House has called the ads public service announcements and said they are appropriate because there is no “call to action” to vote for any candidate. Some of his aides also noted that Mr. Trump is not running for office now, in an attempt to blunt criticism of the ads as violating federal laws about the use of public money.

When pressed by a reporter on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said: “If somebody said that that’s wrong, I’ll gladly pay the money.”

“But these are ads for the country,” he added. “You have to understand. I’m not promoting a candidate. I’m not promoting myself because I’m not running for office. I’m promoting the country.”

At least four spots have run so far, at a cost of about $5.5 million, and that is expected to grow, according to the media tracker AdImpact and people familiar with the spending. One played images of Mr. Trump to the song “Love Me” by Christian Berishaj, who performs as JMSN. (The artist has protested the use of his song.)

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The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Trump Tries to Buy Votes With $500 Checks, GOP Senator Tells Trump "I Don't Take This Bullsh*t," Final Jobs Report Tanks, and More, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 2, 2026. Nearly a million Americans are opening their mailboxes this week to find a $500 Obamacare refund check from Donald Trump, along with a letter blaming Joe Biden, just weeks before the midterms and just weeks before those same families learn how much their premiums are going up again.

Meanwhile, the final jobs report before the election came in at just 29,000 jobs, with wages now falling behind inflation, and Trump is sending 9,000 more troops to the Middle East while promising the Iran war will end “right after the election.”

And Republicans are running for cover. Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis privately texted Trump that he doesn’t “take this bullsh*t from anyone,” GOP candidates from Michigan to Florida are scrubbing Trump from their campaigns, and one Republican told Politico that the president has become “kryptonite.” Plus, resurfaced clips show Colorado’s Republican nominee for governor describing slamming his wife into a door and throwing his toddler across a room.

This week, we brought you exclusive information on an FBI interview with an Epstein-linked banker that Sen. Ron Wyden says the Justice Department never released. And we’re working on more big stories that I can’t wait to share with you soon. 

And, this morning, I woke up to the “journalist” who is trying to unmask the Cornell Jane Doe and the same person smearing the Epstein survivors attacking me. Guess I struck a nerve

Here’s the news:

Trump Mails $500 Obamacare Refund Checks With a Letter Blaming Biden, Weeks Before the Midterms. The Treasury Department began sending one-time $500 refunds this week to more than 950,000 Obamacare enrollees in 30 states who buy coverage on healthcare.gov without federal subsidies, mostly middle-income Americans, each accompanied by a letter from Trump claiming “the Biden Administration overcharged you” and touting his healthcare record. The checks are funded by unspent fees insurers pay to run the federal exchange, money that largely piled up because Trump’s first administration slashed spending on enrollment help, marketing and the call center, and experts dispute his claim that enrollees were “wrongly overcharged.” The payments land just over a month before the midterms, after Republicans let enhanced ACA subsidies expire at the end of last year, sending premiums skyrocketing for many middle-income families. Trump claims the $500 will cover the premium spike “in many cases,” but KFF found some enrollees’ monthly costs rose far more than that, and premiums are set to jump again for 2027, with new prices revealed when open enrollment starts Nov. 1, just days before Election Day.

Colorado GOP Governor Nominee Victor Marx Described Body-Slamming His Wife and Throwing His Toddler in Resurfaced Clips. Victor Marx, the Republican nominee for governor of Colorado, described slamming his wife into their front door and throwing his toddler son across a room, and claimed God gave him a “gift for violence,” in videos and posts uncovered by The Daily Beast. In a 2021 podcast, Marx said he was “infuriated” when his wife said she didn’t need martial arts training because she “was married to a black belt Marine,” recalling “grabbing her and slamming her into our front door,” and in a 2020 episode of his own podcast he said that after seeing his son push his sister, “I snatched him up and threw him across the room.” The evangelical minister and Marine veteran has also spoken extensively about demonic possession and has claimed his stepfather forced him to kill a man when he was 7 years old. Marx, who has never held office, narrowly won June’s GOP primary, but has struggled to win over the state party establishment, with former Colorado GOP chair Dick Wadhams saying, “I want Victor Marx to lose by as large a margin as possible.” He faces Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser in November in a state where Republicans haven’t won a governor’s race since 2002.

Republicans Break With Trump as Tillis’s Explosive Texts Reveal He Told the President He Doesn’t “Take That Bullsh*t From Anyone”

Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis privately tore into Trump in a pair of blistering text messages obtained by Politico. “I still want to help but I don’t take this bullsht from anyone, including you Mr. President,” Tillis wrote on May 22, hours after Trump branded him “weak and ineffective,” a “Nitpicker” and a “QUITTER” on Truth Social. “Save that sht for the cowards who don’t care if you fail. I care if you fail and right now we are failing.” In a June 6 text, Tillis insisted Trump had never threatened him with a primary, writing that if he had, “I would have immediately told you to f*ck yourself” and adding, “Save those threats and head games for cowards and fools.” The messages will appear in Tillis’s upcoming book, “How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents,” and come as he has repeatedly broken with the administration, including denouncing the DOJ’s $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

Less than 40 days out from the midterms, Republican candidates across the country are openly distancing themselves from Trump, in what one former GOP congressman called “survival mode time.” Michigan Senate nominee Mike Rogers filmed a video in a grocery store declaring “The war with Iran needs to end, and end quickly,” joined by GOP candidates in Iowa, Wisconsin and Ohio. Florida gubernatorial nominee Byron Donalds, one of Trump’s closest allies, scrubbed the “Trump-Endorsed” banner and photos from his campaign website, and Rep. María Elvira Salazar ran an ad breaking with Trump on immigration in a district he won by 14 points. Even three GOP senators, including John Cornyn and Tillis, backed calls to investigate Trump’s son over a wedding after-party paid for by a Russian businessman with ties to Putin. Former Trump aide Marc Short said the distancing “does feel somewhat like desperation,” as Trump’s approval on the economy hit a record-low 27% in a CNN poll.

Wisconsin gubernatorial nominee Tom Tiffany, a longtime Trump ally, has gone from election denial to declaring “Joe Biden won.” When Trump endorsed him in January, Tiffany said he was “especially honored” and vowed to “make Wisconsin great again,” and as recently as May he backed an FBI probe into Wisconsin’s 2020 votes. But in recent weeks, he’s broken with Trump on data centers and beef import tariffs, deflected questions on Trump’s mail-in voting push, and brushed off Trump’s renaming of Lake Ontario by saying “the Great Lakes are the Great Lakes.” Politico reports candidates in tight races are increasingly treating the president as a liability, with one source summing it up: “He is kryptonite.” It’s a striking shift for a party where crossing Trump has ended careers, with Trump having successfully backed primary challengers to Rep. Thomas Massie and Sen. Bill Cassidy this cycle.

Some Republicans are reversing their own votes to escape Trump’s shadow, drawing mockery from Democrats. Iowa Senate nominee Ashley Hinson now says the Iran war “needs to be brought to a successful and immediate end,” despite voting multiple times, including last week, against a war powers resolution to rein it in. Iowa Reps. Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks flipped their positions to help pass a Democratic measure directing Trump to halt the conflict. Longtime Trump ally Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska, facing a tough race, declared “the cost of diesel is just too damn high,” backing Sen. Chuck Grassley’s call for a diesel export embargo, an idea Trump’s own energy secretary dismissed. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Republicans are in “full panic mode” because Trump’s approval ratings “are at extinction levels.”

Trump’s own campaign schedule shows a party playing defense on home turf. This week alone, Trump is campaigning in Alabama, Oklahoma and Ohio, states he carried by 30, 34 and 11 points just two years ago, while purple battlegrounds like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania go uncovered. “The problem is that the fires are everywhere right now,” one GOP donor told Politico. Republican groups plan to spend $166 million just to boost Ken Paxton in Texas, more than they’re spending on competitive Senate races in Michigan and Maine combined, with the total GOP-aligned bill in Texas expected to top $300 million. As New York magazine’s Ed Kilgore put it, Trump appears to be “simply trying to mitigate losses rather than to win,” a terrible sign for a politician obsessed with winning.

Trump Claims Iran War Will End “Right After the Election” as 9,000 More Troops Head to the Middle East

iran mapTrump is making increasingly erratic claims about the Iran war, promising it will end “right after the election” while admitting he doesn’t know who’s running the country. Speaking at a Peterbilt plant in Denton, Texas, Thursday night, Trump insisted Iran “is ready to fold up” and that “I’m ensuring that Iran will be very quickly ended,” adding, “Maybe before the election.” He also conceded, “we don’t know who the hell to deal with, to be honest with you. Nobody wants to be president.” Trump claimed he bombed Iran partly because “they were doing drugs,” a new justification for a war he has repeatedly said was about stopping a nuclear weapon. The shifting rationale comes days after he told Time “with Iran, I don’t think you could ever have peace” and floated resuming strikes after the midterms.

The US is sending about 9,000 more troops to the Middle East, which would bring the total to roughly 20,000 forces and three aircraft carrier groups. The USS Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group and USS Makin Island Amphibious Group are on their way with some 7,000 sailors and 2,000 Marines, and could arrive by the Department of Defense Sealend of October, just as voters head to the polls. They’ll join the USS George H.W. Bush, the USS George Washington and the USS Boxer already in the region, along with hundreds of vessels and aircraft. Axios also reported the US sent two more Patriot missile batteries to protect oil and gas sites in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, after both countries urged Trump in August not to strike Iranian energy infrastructure for fear of retaliation. It’s a major buildup for a war the president keeps saying is almost over.

Trump suggested Iran may be behind the FlyDubai cockpit attack and vowed Tehran would be “hit, very hard” if so. Asked whether he’d been briefed on links between Iran and the co-pilot who allegedly attacked the captain and tried to crash the Israel-bound plane, Trump said, “I would say the answer, based on what I’m hearing, is yes. But we’re working on it right now.” He said the attacker “could’ve been, yeah” working with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, but offered no evidence. Meanwhile, the Saudi-led coalition accused Iran-backed Houthis of a drone strike on an electricity station in Medina that powers the Prophet’s Mosque, Islam’s second holiest site, drawing condemnation across the Muslim world, though the Houthis denied involvement. Fighting in Yemen has intensified sharply in recent weeks.

Iran is moving to formally claim control of the Strait of Hormuz, while Europe weighs releasing diesel reserves under US pressure. An Iranian parliamentary committee advanced a bill that would charge ships fees for transiting the strait, ban vessels linked to Israel or “hostile” countries, and require all others to get permission from Iran’s military. The bill still needs a full parliamentary vote and Guardian Council approval, and the Trump administration rejects Iran’s claims to the waterway. In Europe, governments debated a French proposal to release 50 million barrels of diesel and have IEA countries release 50 million barrels of crude, with some pushing for a US commitment not to unilaterally ban diesel exports as part of any deal. The war’s toll keeps spreading, with Lebanon’s prime minister saying rebuilding from the Israel-Hezbollah fighting, which has killed more than 8,900 people, is beyond the state’s capacity.

Final Jobs Report Before Midterms Shows Just 29,000 Jobs Added as Unemployment Rises and Wages Fall Behind Inflation

US employers added just 29,000 jobs in September, and the unemployment rate rose to 4.2%, in the last jobs report before the midterms. The numbers came in weaker than expected, and job gains for July and August were revised down by a combined 60,000, dragging the three-month average from just over 70,000 to about 50,000. The New York Times noted it’s “not the sort of slam-dunk strong reading” the administration wanted heading into November. Sen. Elizabeth Warren quickly seized on it, saying “President Trump’s failing economic agenda is weakening the labor market” while his “failed agenda keeps pushing prices up.” The White House had not yet issued an official reaction.

Workers are falling further behind as wage growth slowed to its weakest pace since the pandemic, well below the rate of inflation driven by the Iran war. Average hourly earnings rose just 0.1% in September and 3% over the past year, failing to keep pace with prices that have climbed since the war began. The average unemployed worker has now been searching for nearly six months, and the low rate of job-switching suggests workers aren’t seeing many opportunities either. The unemployment rate for Black Americans jumped a full point to 7%, nearly double the 3.6% rate for white Americans. As the Times’ Ben Casselman put it, it’s a hard time to look for a job and “it isn’t a great time to have a job either.”

Sectors most exposed to AI shed jobs, offering possible early clues about the technology’s impact on the workforce. The information industry lost 10,000 jobs, professional and business services cut 9,000 and financial activities dropped 7,000, while temporary help services, often seen as a barometer of employer confidence, lost 11,000. Health care, which has driven much of the job growth, added just 17,000, about half its recent monthly average, while manufacturing added 9,000 and the employment rate for prime-age workers ticked up. Bond yields fell sharply on the news and stock futures jumped as investors bet the weaker data makes a Fed rate hike in October, just days before the midterms, much less likely. Most Fed officials still expect one more quarter-point hike this year, now likely in December, with the next key test being the Oct. 14 inflation report.

Other news:

The Supreme Court opens its new term Monday with Trump attacking the justices he appointed, even though he’s still winning most of his cases. Over the past several months, the court’s conservative majority blocked Trump’s sweeping tariffs, his plan to end birthright citizenship, his attempt to fire a Federal Reserve governor and his push to control mail-in ballots before the midterms. Trump responded by saying the court “let our country down” and calling his own appointees, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, “a shell of their previous selves,” telling Time, “I gave them the position of a lifetime, and they vote against me often.” But the administration has racked up wins on the “shadow docket,” including allowing his White House ballroom construction to continue, and won four of seven emergency requests over the summer. This term, the justices will take up his “third country” deportations and his push to indefinitely detain thousands of immigrants in deportation proceedings, with appeals also pending on his transgender military ban and the E. Jean Carroll defamation verdict. The term kicks off with a major case on whether cities and counties can sue oil companies over the impacts of climate change.

Manchester City has filed a “comprehensive” appeal after being found guilty of nearly all of the 115 financial charges against it. The club insists the commission’s ruling “contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact and is unsafe,” and that it is “innocent of the accusations.” The panel found City inflated its revenue by more than $1 billion between 2009 and 2018 through “sham” sponsorship deals, with only about $158 million of $1.26 billion in Abu Dhabi sponsorships actually paid by the sponsors and the rest coming from owner Sheikh Mansour’s company, an explanation from City the panel said was “concocted well after the event.” Potential punishments range from a fine to a points deduction or even expulsion from the Premier League, which has never happened. A new three-person appeal board, including at least one former judge, will now hear the case, with a decision expected within 12 weeks. England’s Football Association said the case has “significant implications for the integrity of the game,” and a cross-party committee of lawmakers has asked Britain’s tax authority to review it.

ICE has banned high-speed car chases and tightened rules for traffic stops after a string of shootings by its officers. An internal memo obtained by the AP bars officers from chasing vehicles that fail to pull over under any circumstances, requires all officers at vehicle stops to wear and activate body cameras, and limits stops to officers who’ve completed specific training. ICE agents have opened fire in more than a dozen traffic stop encounters since last year, killing at least four people. After fatal shootings in Maine and Texas in July, ICE briefly paused most vehicle stops, only for Trump to order them resumed the next day, calling them “one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools.” The memo landed the same day court testimony showed the officers who shot Austin DoorDash driver Wilber Garcés Pérez broke nearly every new rule, with the shooter wearing no body camera and the other officer switching his off during a high-speed chase. ICE downplayed the memo as a routine “guidance reminder,” insisting, “Vehicle stops and arrests of illegal aliens continue.”

 Leaked memo obtained by Washington Examiner reveals ICE has — again — changed its vehicle pursuit and traffic stop policies.

Egypt arrested the entire editorial team of Matsadaash, one of the country’s few independent news outlets, accusing them of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood. The six journalists were swept up Monday and Tuesday, with their phones and computers seized, and their whereabouts remain unknown as they’ve been denied contact with their families and lawyers. Egyptian authorities accused them of producing “fabricated” news for foreign funding, a charge co-founder Abdelrahman Mansour called false, saying the government is “afraid of a free press.” Founded in 2018 as a fact-checking platform, Matsadaash has more than a million Facebook followers despite being blocked in Egypt. More than 80 rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders, are demanding their release in what advocates say is the first time an entire newsroom has been arrested in the country. Egypt is already one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists, with 26 now behind bars, according to a local rights group.

A judge rejected Lindsay Clancy’s bid to be found not guilty for lack of evidence in the killings of her three children. Defense attorney Kevin Reddington had argued for the first time that prosecutors offered no proof Clancy committed the killings, even though her defense at trial was that she did it while suffering from postpartum psychosis and he had earlier offered to stipulate to her involvement. Judge William Sullivan ruled there was physical and circumstantial evidence that “would permit a rational trier of fact” to convict, noting her DNA was found on the exercise bands used to strangle 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan. Prosecutors haven’t decided whether to retry her on first-degree murder, pursue lesser charges or drop the case after the first trial deadlocked 11-1 in favor of acquittal. Clancy remains at a psychiatric hospital while the case is pending. Her former husband, Patrick Clancy, who discovered the children, has said publicly that he forgives her.

Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed New York Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor in the Cornell kathy hochul 2017fraternity gang rape case. Hochul said the Tompkins County DA’s decision not to prosecute in 2024, and new questions about the Cornell police investigation, had “undercut my faith, and the public’s faith” in his ability to handle the case. “The young woman at the center of this case deserves to know that every fact will be examined and justice pursued,” Hochul said. The move comes days after DA Matthew Van Houten said he’d never seen the woman’s full interview with campus police, in which she said, “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped.” Under mounting pressure, Cornell also agreed this week to bring in outside lawyers to investigate how it handled her allegations. Lawyers for two of the seven men she is suing have denied the allegations, with one saying his client never touched her or used any drugs.

The death toll from the medical helicopter crash off Catalina Island has risen to three after divers found the body of the missing patient. LA County sheriff’s divers located the woman in the wreckage, about 200 feet underwater, after a 23-hour search covering more than 156 square miles. Her family said she was being flown to the mainland after an allergic reaction, and her 20-year-old son had come along as her interpreter. The pilot and a flight nurse were also killed, while another medic and a man, believed to be the son, are recovering in the hospital. A memorial service was held on the island to honor the victims as the NTSB investigates the cause. LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn said the crew “dedicated their careers to saving lives. They are heroes.”

The Venezuelan DoorDash driver shot by ICE in Austin finally had surgery to remove the bullet that had been lodged near his spine for nearly two weeks. Wilber Garcés Pérez, 28, appeared in court in a wheelchair with his arm in a sling Wednesday, after supporters lobbied for the surgery warning he could lose feeling on the left side of his body. He had been taken from the hospital to an ICE detention center 140 miles away the same day he was shot. Garcés Pérez faces up to 20 years in prison on charges he struck an officer with his side mirror, though the officer who shot him wasn’t wearing a body camera. He says an ICE SUV struck his car and spun it around before he was shot, and bystander footage shows ICE officers stood by while local police gave him first aid. His legal team says the surgery was successful and he’s now recovering in the custody of the US Marshals.

Calls for a national halt to executions are growing after Tennessee’s botched attempt left Christa Pike alive but in critical condition. Pike survived two full syringes of pentobarbital and was heard still breathing and choking an hour after the first injection before Gov. Bill Lee called off the execution, and her lawyers say it’s unclear whether she suffered brain damage from oxygen deprivation. One attorney in the chamber said he counted seven needles in her left arm alone, “one of which appeared to be bent,” while death penalty scholar Sandra Babcock called it “unimaginably barbaric” and urged Lee to commute her sentence. Bryan Stevenson said “nearly a dozen botched executions in recent years should have suspended executions long before now,” and Sister Helen Prejean called it “the essence of cruelty.” An anesthesiologist who testified in Pike’s case said he warned officials her veins and blood condition made her vulnerable, saying, “I told them. I warned them.” Public support for the death penalty has already fallen to 52% from 80% in 1993, according to Gallup.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s fiancé, Ken Urker, died Thursday on his 34th birthday. Blanchard told People he died at his home in Louisiana of an apparent overdose, saying, “I don’t know if it was intentional or not. He was not in a good state of mind lately.” She said he faced “an unimaginable level of public scrutiny and relentless cyberbullying” over their relationship, which began when they were pen pals while she was in prison for her role in her mother’s 2015 death. Urker is survived by Blanchard and their one-year-old daughter, Aurora. “Ken was an amazing father and a man who was deeply loved,” Blanchard said, promising Aurora will grow up knowing “who he was beyond what strangers on the internet chose to say about him.” If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

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

 

djt golden age promoPaul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: A “Who You Gonna Believe?” Election, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 2, 2026. If you’re arguing, you’re losing. Trump is arguing.,

They’re still doing it! Click on any White House press release and the image above pops up. The tone-deafness is almost surreal. Even if you’re a Trump loyalist who really believes that things are going great in America, surely you have to be aware that this isn’t how most voters see it. Here’s what the latest AP-NORC poll says:

A note here: When Kyla Scanlon introduced the term “vibecession” during the Biden years, Americans generally had a much more positive view of their local economy — which they could observe with their own eyes — than they did of the national economy. That’s no longer the case: Americans are as down on their local economies as they are on the national situation. This downbeat view of the state of the nation isn’t a media narrative concocted by the “fake news”: it’s what people see all around them.

And while I’m not a political consultant, I don’t think “Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” is a winning strategy.

But then again, who in this administration would be willing to risk Trump’s ire by taking that popup down?

Tomorrow I’ll post a conversation with G. Elliott Morris and David Nir about what polling and other political indicators say about the midterm elections. Today I thought I’d complement that discussion in advance by talking about several economic indicators that are also really, really bad news for Trump and his party.

First, the obvious: prices at the pump.  .

Voters famously blame whoever is in the White House when fuel prices are high, even though presidents normally have very little influence on these prices. In this case Trump, with his disastrous war of choice in Iran, really does bear full responsibility for high energy prices — and voters know it.

However, fuel prices and inflation in general aren’t the only reasons Americans have a negative view of the Trump economy. Official measures of employment and unemployment look good by historical standards, but perceptions about the state of the job market have dramatically worsened. Every month The Conference Board asks Americans whether jobs are “plentiful” or “hard to get.” The difference between these two answers is almost always positive — we are an optimistic nation — but the “labor market differential” has plunged. Americans perceive the job market as being the worst it has been since Covid:

Finally, how about those interest rates? We often hear about elections being swung by an “October surprise,” and maybe Trump still has something up his sleeve. But the big economic news of the past month has been a “September surprise” on interest rates, including rates that matter a great deal to ordinary Americans — such as families trying to buy houses. Here’s the 30-year mortgage rate:

So where are we as we head into the final month of the midterm campaign? Election models based on political polls are almost surreally favorable to the Democrats, who Elliott Morris gives a 99 percent chance of winning the House. But it’s not just the polls. Even though the U.S. economy looks OK by some measures, the overall economic environment looks really bad for Trump and his party.

Oh, and there’s the small matter of that disastrous war.

Yet the Trump administration insists that this troubled environment is a Golden Age. This isn’t just bad politics. It’s an indication that Trump is living in a bubble of fantasy and sycophancy, in which nobody dares suggest — even as a matter of cynical political strategy — acknowledging that things are less than perfect.

And remember: When voters make it clear that they aren’t buying into Trumpist triumphalism, he won’t blame himself. He’ll blame America, and look for people to punish.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption 

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Sound and the Fury, Andrew Egger, right, andrew eggerOct. 2, 2026. The president of the United States is not all there, upstairs. He is so wicked, so deceitful, and has put in motion so many awful plans that it can be easy to forget. It’s also embarrassing to think about: This gibbering idiot is the guy who twice pantsed the Democrats and brought the global order to its knees? It’d be less humiliating if he were some sort of evil genius.

Still, sometimes it’s important to remind ourselves of the uncomfortable facts of life. Trump gave a lengthy interview to Time Magazine that was published yesterday. Let’s stare into the abyss together, shall we?

On the Fake News

bulwark logo big shipTrump has been trying to ban news outlets from the White House for being too mean to him in their coverage. The official argument—the one his lawyers have made in court—is that CNN, MSNOW, and Politico have imperiled national security. The idea is that this argument is slightly less likely to be laughed out of court than the truth that the president just doesn’t like what they’ve been writing.

Trump, however, can’t be bothered to maintain this polite fiction. Over and over, he makes it explicit: His issue is that they cover him too negatively. If the press isn’t Fake, he asks, why don’t they ever report that he won 86 percent of the popular vote?

“I won the election,” Trump told Time. “I won it handily by massive numbers. I won the popular vote. I won all seven swing states. They said if you won three swing states, I won all seven. I won the counties. It’s very important. 86 percent popular vote.¹ Everything, and very conclusively. I haven’t had a good story on CNN in years. . . . If I wasn’t doing a good job, I wouldn’t have won that election by a lot.”

A who-won-more-counties breakdown is about the most useless electoral metric you could think of. But when Trump talks about his 2024 win, it’s plain that he’s allowed that statistic—simply because it’s the most flattering statistic he has—entirely to colonize his understanding of his win. How can he be so bad if he won 86 percent of the popular vote?

Remarkably, despite his own obsession with his press ban, Trump seemed not to know the basics of what the judge had ordered against it.

When Time’s reporter asked whether Trump was ignoring that order by continuing to freeze CNN out of the traveling pool, Trump seemed confused: “No, no, I’m not ignoring his order. . . . What order? I’m not even aware.” His comms director Steven Cheung had to jump in: “The judge basically ordered them to renew their access back to the White House, but that’s different than allowing the pool into the events in the Oval Office or on Air Force One.”

“He actually said to the premises of the White House?” Trump wondered.On Iran

Did you know that Trump never actually said the Iran war would last four to six weeks? You might think you remember him saying that over and over, but that was actually just another one of those media lies. “I feel like most people heard you say four to six weeks,” Time suggested. “No, I think the press fed it to them,” Trump said. Later, on Truth Social, he offered another incomprehensible attempt to clarify: “I stated, numerous times, that it would take 4-6 weeks to get rid of THE IRAN NUCLEAR THREAT, and I did it in one night! The rest of the time is just to make sure it stays that way.”

Time also pressed the president on the, uh, friction between his repeated claims that he desires peace and his repeated threats to “annihilate” the Iranian people. “Because by annihilating Iran, we’ve created peace in the world,” Trump said. “With Iran, I don’t think you could ever have peace.”

This is staggering stuff. Trump is saying, in plain English, that the ongoing existence of the Iranian people is an insuperable barrier to world peace—and calling for some sort of Final Solution.

Does Trump actually believe the world can’t be safe so long as the Iranian people exist? I don’t think so. This has not been his actual policy toward Iran, for one thing: He would be only too happy to get some face-saving concessions on Iran’s nuclear program and/or the Strait of Hormuz and get out of the war there as fast as possible. This is simply life under a president with a half-melted mind: Sometimes the neurons flicker in such a way that the president openly says an entire people will need to be genocided without even seeming to realize what he’s said.On the debt

The national debt, Time pointed out, just hit $40 trillion dollars. Fully a quarter of that—$11 trillion—has come during Trump’s five years of presidency. Here was Trump’s response:

Well, Biden just killed our country. He had the biggest inflation in history. He allowed 25 million people in that shouldn’t have been here. We’re still getting around—it’s the toughest thing I have to do. If he would have been elected again, or his ilk would have been, or she, anybody, same, we wouldn’t have a country anymore.

Time tried to clarify: “You haven’t lowered the debt because of President Biden?”

Trump again: “No, because they keep paying higher interest rates. We had great job numbers two weeks ago, right? What do they do? Raise the interest rate. . . . We have a very hostile board, and the board says, ‘We want to hurt Trump.’ They’re not doing this for you. They’re doing this because they have Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

There you go. Donald Trump has added $11 trillion to the debt by slashing taxes without slashing spending. In his mind, however, it’s not a matter of spending far more than he’s taken in: All that debt showed up because Joe Biden let inflation happen and let illegals in, and because the Fed won’t push rates down.On his passion projects

Time asked a number of other questions—on AI, on the Democrats who might run in 2028, on his own terrible polls. (“They’re fake numbers. I would beat anybody running today by 20 points. Your numbers that you have are fake. The pollsters are corrupt. They’re almost as corrupt as the writers.”) When they started asking about Mitch McConnell’s health and Trump’s plans to pardon his cabinet, however, Trump lost patience. Suddenly, he was brandishing various pictures of his various White House construction projects. Why don’t you fake news jackals ever care about this stuff, he wanted to know.

“You haven’t asked me one fucking positive question,” the president complained:

All of this. What about this? What about that? What about that? What about this? All negative. Why are you devoting all this time to the White House? . . . It’s actually dangerous. People are walking under, crap was falling off it all the time. Every time it rained, it was leaking, horrible. Now it’s perfect, and I would say that I should be given credit for fixing the White House because I’m also doing very well with the war. I’m doing very well with another war that we already won, Venezuela. Do you notice you haven’t asked me a question about Venezuela?

Time had, in fact, asked several questions about Venezuela. But we can leave it at that. We’ve got a drooling madman in charge. It’s good to remember, but unhealthy to contemplate for too long. If you’re a glutton for punishment, go ahead and read the whole interview. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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

christa pike execution abc

christa pike collage ap collage

New York Times, Christa Pike Was Unconscious and on Ventilator After Execution Attempt, Emily Cochrane, Oct. 2, 2026. Christa Pike was unconscious, intubated and on a ventilator in a Nashville hospital as of Thursday evening, a day after surviving a botched execution attempt, her lawyers said in a court filing.

Ms. Pike was critically ill, they wrote in a Friday filing in Davidson County Chancery Court, and both of her arms were swollen, burned and blistered when she arrived at the hospital.

Ms. Pike’s medical condition, some legal experts said, raises questions about whether the state could attempt to execute her again if she is not fully cognizant or capable of understanding what is happening.

The disclosure is the most detailed update on Ms. Pike’s health since she survived two rounds of pentobarbital, the drug used as part of Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol, on Wednesday evening.

“Hospital staff are working to save Ms. Pike’s life and to clear the pentobarbital from her system,” the lawyers wrote.

The Tennessee inmate was brought to a hospital with burned and blistered arms after an unsuccessful attempt at lethal injection, her lawyers said in a court filing.

New York Times, Hochul Rebukes Prosecutor’s Handling of Cornell Case, Hurubie Meko and Claire Fahy, Oct. 2, 2026. “In what world would the police” not elevate allegations of a rape to the district attorney, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York asked.

In direct and sometimes furious remarks, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York on Friday questioned how Cornell University’s police department and the local district attorney handled sexual assault allegations made by a student who said she was raped at a fraternity house in 2024.

kathy hochul 2017Ms. Hochul, left, was speaking at a news conference in Manhattan on Friday morning, alongside the state attorney general, Letitia James, whom the governor has appointed to oversee the investigation into the allegations.

Ms. Hochul said she was concerned to learn that the student, identified as Jane Doe, had given an interview to the campus police about the episode that included an unequivocal statement that she had been raped. That language was missing in the condensed statement that was shared with the district attorney’s office in Tompkins County, N.Y., which decided not to file criminal charges.

“In what world would the police learn from the victim that she had literally been gang-raped” and not elevate those allegations to the district attorney, Ms. Hochul said.

A lawsuit filed by the student two weeks ago has reignited a national conversation about the persistent issue of sexual assault on college campuses. It has also plunged one of the country’s elite universities into crisis. Cornell’s campus newspaper, elected officials and celebrities have questioned how the case was initially handled by the district attorney and the university.

“When the Tompkins County district attorney announced that he was reopening the case, he pointed to Jane Doe’s statement that said it did not establish that a crime had occurred,” Ms. Hochul said. “But new reporting raises serious questions about the information his office relied upon when it made that decision.”

The district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, said in a statement after the news conference that he supported the appointment of Ms. James and that his office would cooperate fully with hers.

“It has become clear that we were not provided the full picture by the university,” he said. “The focus has been and should continue to be on the victims.”

In her lawsuit, Jane Doe, a 20-year-old sophomore at the time of the encounter on Oct. 19, 2024, said that she had been plied with alcohol and drugs and then raped by several men at the Chi Phi fraternity house. She is suing the fraternity, seven men, the university and her sorority.

More On Trump's Military, Middle East Wars, Energy Shortages

New York Times, U.S. and Allies Agree to Release Diesel Reserves as Prices Soar, Lisa Friedman and Rebecca F. Elliott, Oct. 2, 2026. Leaders from some of the world’s wealthiest nations agreed on Friday to release diesel from their reserve stockpiles to help ease a growing crisis over record-high prices driven mostly by the war in Iran.

Under the plan, the Group of 7 countries — the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Britain and Canada — will release 100 million barrels of diesel and crude oil from strategic stockpiles over the coming four months. That is equivalent to around one day’s worth of global oil demand. The effort will be coordinated by the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based multilateral organization.

Calling the plan “decisive, coordinated measures to stabilize immediate energy supplies” and curb price spikes, the Group of 7 said that they would also make a “substantial” release of diesel within 20 days.

The group did not specify how much of the fuel to be released would be diesel and how much would be unrefined crude oil. Diesel and related fuels make up roughly 28 percent of the world’s oil demand, according to the I.E.A. They have been in especially short supply because military strikes on energy infrastructure in the Middle East and Russia have severely damaged refineries, reducing the world’s capacity to turn oil into the fuels that consumers use.

The Group of 7, which includes Britain, France and Japan, announced the release of 100 million barrels over four months, effective immediately.

 

pete hegseth tatoo religion news

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, shown above in one of his favored poses and below as an at times out-of-control drinker with, nonetheless firm ideas on how others should comport themselves.

pete hegseth

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Defense Department Duce, William Kristol, right, william bill kristol imdbOct. 2, 2026. Know your enemy, Sun Tzu taught.

And so Andrew [Egger of The Bulwark] perused the complete text of Donald Trump’s interview with Time. (I’m pleased to report that he’s recovering nicely from the ordeal.) Inspired by his example, I wanted to do my part. bulwark logo big shipSo I forced myself to read a transcript (I couldn’t bear to watch) of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s speech Wednesday on “The State of the Force.”

Department of Defense SealThe remarks of both Trump and Hegseth are appalling. They’re alarming. But they’re also instructive. In the Trump interview and the Hegseth speech, these enemies of liberty and law, of decency and democracy, reveal what they believe, and make clear who they are.

On Wednesday, Hegseth issued this call to arms:

We are no longer the Woke Department or the Weak Department.

Simple translation of that: No fatties. No trannies. No beardos. No weirdos. No wimps. No radicals.

Just warriors. Just tough, ready, committed troops. . . . Or as the President says to me, “Pete … central casting. I want central casting.”

The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in—with testosterone testing on top.

And a bit later in his remarks, Hegseth attacked the press.

A free press is of course important, but partisan activism that intentionally smears the troops and the historic mission they are undertaking is fundamentally anti-American. It’s sick. It’s a national betrayal. It’s treason, actually.

This is all political bluster. But it’s a particular kind of political bluster. It’s neo-fascist bluster.

Here I want to call on the novelist and critic, Umberto Eco, who provided one of the most helpful guides to this kind of politics in his great 1995 essay, “Ur-Fascism.”

Eco provides a list of certain key elements or features of Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. A couple of these are particularly relevant to the emanations of our secretary of defense: Irrationalism, and machismo.

Here’s Eco on irrationalism:

Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism. . . . Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering’s alleged statement (“When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun”) to the frequent use of such expressions as “degenerate intellectuals,” “eggheads,” “effete snobs,” “universities are a nest of reds.”

And it’s no accident, Eco further points out, that “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

And side-by-side with Hegseth’s embrace of irrationalism is his exaltation of machismo.

As Eco explains,

Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters. This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons—doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.

Eco makes clear that his essay was not intended as merely a historical or diagnostic enterprise. Eco wrote in order to warn that fascism is not a thing of the past. Fascism is a permanent human temptation. It speaks to certain human passions and exploits certain human weaknesses that are always there to potentially be activated.

Fascism is both a permanent temptation and, as history teaches and current events show, a powerful one. As history also teaches, and as current events will I believe show, it can be defeated. First, one has to recognize it for what it is. Trump and Hegseth have helped us in this task. 

AROUND THE BULWARK

  • Who Cut The Cheese? Trump Did… The dairy industry was supposed to be the one sector that benefited from Trump’s trade war. CATHERINE RAMPELL describes how tariffs and pissed-off Canadians are hurting the cheese biz in Receipts.
  • bulwark logo big shipThe Daily Wire Is Making the Most MAGA Movie Imaginable… SAM STEIN and WILL SOMMER break down the leaked script for the Daily Wire’s upcoming fictional movie, Pawn Shop, a pro-ICE thriller set amid an imagined Antifa siege of a Minneapolis pawn shop.
  • GOP Senators Blast Trump’s Gov’t-Funded Ads… Lawmakers see another abuse of presidential power. They’re struggling to find a remedy, reports JOE PERTICONE in Press Pass.
  • Paramount’s Done Deal, Federal Tax Credits, and More… On The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood, SEAN McNULTY joins SONNY BUNCH to break down a big week in Hollywood news.

Quick Hits

NIXONMANIA: Was Nixon framed? That’s a question the crack minds at the Trump Justice Department are now mulling, per the Wall Street Journal:

The department is reviewing whether the special prosecutor’s office that investigated the famed Watergate break-in committed misconduct, according to people familiar with the matter, more than half a century after that scandal led to Nixon’s resignation.

Geoff Shepard, a former Nixon aide turned Watergate historian and revisionist, recently gave a two-hour presentation at Justice Department headquarters that laid out his theory that the deep state took Nixon down. The title of his 78-page slide deck: “Watergate As Lawfare.”

The Justice Department denied that Shepard’s presentation amounted to an investigation, per se. Some people in the building just wanted to hear him out. But it’s not hard to see why our current presidential crook—and his retinue—would feel a kinship toward Tricky Dick. “If you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon,” Vice President JD Vance said this summer, “it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people—the same institutions—tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration.”

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

 

U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsHopium Chronicles, Opinion and Advocacy: Trump Gets A Crappy Jobs Report, The Election Cheating Has Begun, Zelenskyy Warns The World That Winter Is Coming, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 2, 2026. We just got the September jobs report this morning, and it was a crappy one: only 29,000 jobs created, well below estimates, and downward revisions in July and August of 60,000 jobs.

This means that net-net we lost jobs this month while average hourly earnings also only grew by 0.1 percent -- also a disappointing number, particularly given that inflation is running at a 3.4% annual rate. What we learned this morning is that the economy is slowing and workers are falling further and further behind.

Here’s NBC’s coverage of the report. And even Fox can’t BS its way through this crappy report. A reminder that job growth has slowed under Trump. Trump still has the worst jobs record of any President since Hoover:

The warnings from Wall Street about the mounting dangers of Trump’s escalating economic and geopolitical failures are getting far louder and more ambitious. Here is an editorial from Bloomberg that ran at 6am this morning:

So, in sum, yes Trump is a titanic f*ck up; he deserves to get his ass kicked in the election; and we have to be prepared to inherit extraordinary domestic and global challenges when take power next January.Subscribed

We also have to recognize that this ongoing failure of Trump’s regime and his political project makes it more likely he is going to attempt to cheat to keep the Republicans in power. The illegal ads he is running now, paid for by all of us, is a sign that the election cheating has begun. Last night we saw something that Marc Elias has been warning about - Republican officials in the states colluding with the Trump regime to undermine trust and potentially disrupt the election:

Georgia’s Republican-controlled election board invited the Department of Justice (DOJ) Thursday to declare the state’s voting system unlawful before the upcoming midterm elections.

In a letter Thursday, State Election Board (SEB) Executive Director James Mills (R) asked the DOJ to “prohibit” the state’s use of voting machines previously certified by the federal government.

Mills also asked the DOJ to “set a binding six-month deadline” to force the state to phase out machines that he asked it to deem illegal.

The request is an extraordinary assault on Georgia’s voting system by unelected officials appointed to make and enforce the state’s election rules. It was also sent despite several SEB members — including the chairman — denouncing federal involvement in state election procedures.

Coupling these developments with the Supreme Court’s ridiculous decision last week to green light the DHS SAVE database we have to acknowledge now that we’ve now entered a new and more dangerous stage of whatever dark and desperate schemes Trump, Blanche, and Co have dreamed up to prevent us from taking power next January.

I don’t want to be alarmist here. But we cannot look away, either. As we’ve discussed the Democratic Party and its allies is more prepared for the fuckery to come than we’ve ever been. Our community has done its part and help stand up new capacities for the state parties across the country to counter whatever comes our way. The first step to effectively counter whatever they throw at us is to understand what they are doing, study it, bring it from the shadows to the light, and that is something we will be doing here, every day. Here’s what I wrote to you in August when I launched something here called the “Evolving Battlefield Project”

We’ve launched a new project at Hopium to study, discuss, and counter anything Trump might do to illicitly retain power in an election that is breaking hard against him and the Republicans Party. We are launching this project to demystify Trump’s tactics, make them less “scary,” and more widely understood; and by making them more widely understood we make it far less likely they will be successful.

This year we are running against a political party that no longer feels bound by law or democratic norms; has already openly conspired with a hostile foreign power to win an election, and launched an insurrection to try to overturn another one; and has a desperate, corrupt, failing leader who fears prison and ruin if we win. We were surprised and unprepared for Russia’s intervention in 2016, and Trump’s assault on our elections in 2020 and 2021. We cannot be surprised and unprepared this year. Or scared. It is just the work we must do, like making phone calls and writing postcards and giving money to campaigns. The battlefield evolves, and so do we. It is key to how we will win in 2026 and take back Congress in 2027. Together.

We cannot be surprised, or scared. The battlefield evolves, and so do we.

For as I’ve said we must take all these illicit efforts and weaponize them against Trump and the Rs, creating a powerful contrast between one party that believes in the American creed, in freedom and democracy, and another that has betrayed it all and wants to tear it all down. We need to talk about what they are doing not to scare people but to further degrade Trump and his allies, while preparing the public for what is to come.

In related news here is what Zelenskyy is telling the world this world this morning - that their intelligence shows that Trump’s barbaric ally, Putin, has made the decision to crush and depopulate Ukraine this winter (genocide, war crimes):

This post this morning came out a bit darker than I actually feel right now, for two things can be true at the same time - he continues to do incredible harm to the country and the world, and his political project is crumbling here at home.Subscribed

As I discussed in my weekly talk I am incredibly optimistic about where we are now and what we can accomplish in these elections. House Dems just announced record fundraising in the third quarter. The DCCC expanded their battlefield this morning, adding 8 more races to their watch list. There is no good news for the Rs. Things keep deteriorating for them across the country. Trump got his worst major poll of the cycle yesterday, clocking in at 31%-69% in a AP-NORC poll.

We are on the cusp of having the election we all want to have, and need to keep our heads down my friends and keep working as hard as we can. We also had a slew of great discussions with candidate and party leaders on the frontlines this week. You can find them all here.

north carolina map

New York Times, As Prospects Dim, G.O.P. Pulls Money Out of North Carolina Senate Race, Shane Goldmacher and Theodore Schleifer, Oct. 2, 2026. As the Republicans try to hold their majority, the Senate Leadership Fund is diverting resources to Kansas, which has become a growing concern for the party.

The top super PAC for Senate Republicans is canceling all the remaining ads it had booked in North Carolina as of Friday, shifting away tens of millions of dollars in a move that signals that Republicans no longer see a path to winning the state this fall.

At the same time, the super PAC, called the Senate Leadership Fund, is making its first investment of the cycle in Kansas — a sign of rising concern among Republicans in red states — with a new ad attacking the Democratic nominee there.

If Republicans lose North Carolina, it would give Democrats one of the four seats they need to flip the Senate in the fall — if Democrats hold all of their own seats.

Ad cancellations are a common, and very telling, move down the stretch of campaigns as they reveal where national operatives see their best path to a majority. The cancellation of the North Carolina ads was first reported by Semafor and confirmed by two people familiar with the decision.

The North Carolina seat is currently held by Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican who is retiring. Democrats nominated Roy Cooper, a popular former governor who had served two terms. The Republican nominee is Michael Whatley, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee.

The Senate Leadership Fund declined to comment.

“Undecided voters who break late decide the election in North Carolina and the majority of those late-breakers typically go Republican,” said DJ Griffin, a spokesman for Mr. Whatley, adding he was “confident we have the resources to highlight career politician Roy Cooper’s 40 years of failures.”

More Global News

New York Times, The Mother’s Scream That Sent Passengers to the Rescue, David M. Halbfinger, Natan Odenheimer, Adam Rasgon, Johnatan Reiss and Aaron Boxerman, Oct. 2, 2026. A badly wounded Indian pilot managed to unlock the cockpit door. Four Israeli men teamed up to overwhelm an attacker and avert disaster.

Five-year-old Nina Manes, flying home to Tel Aviv with her family in business class, needed to use the bathroom.

Her mother, Tali, stood waiting for her outside the plane’s lavatory, when she suddenly heard frightening shouts and loud bangs coming from behind the closed door to the flight deck.

What unfolded next was a harrowing chain of events that led the passengers aboard FlyDubai Flight 1073 to think that they were all about to die in a terrorist attack — but instead turned into a tale of heroism on the part of an Indian pilot and a handful of Israelis.

Hearing what sounded worrisomely like a melee, Ms. Manes, 46, said she pulled a backup pilot, seated in his uniform nearby, by the hand and prodded him to investigate.

He pulled open the cockpit door — which had been unlocked from the inside — onto a horrific scene.

There was blood all over the flight deck.

And the first officer was stabbing the captain, again and again and again.

Four Israeli passengers aboard Wednesday morning’s flight from Dubai are being hailed for racing unarmed into harm’s way, overpowering the first officer, giving the captain first aid, and making it possible for a second backup pilot to take over and land the plane safely in Saudi Arabia.

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

 

 

Hopium Chronicles, New 2026 Election Analysis and Advocacy: Betrayed By Trump And His Allies The American People Have Put Their Faith Back In Us -- And Now We Must Deliver, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 1, 2026. First of all -- holy smokes! When called this community answers again and again. We raised $256,000 for our candidates and party committees yesterday, more than twice as much as any other day this cycle. It was a huge day on what was a very important day in this critical election. Thank you to everyone who stepped up and rallied for those on the frontlines of what has become a year of extraordinarily opportunity for our politics.

Hope For America, Opinion: Trump’s incoherent rambling has reached a DISTURBING new low, Heather Delaney Reese, right, helen delaney reese djtSept. 30, 2026. At 1:39 this afternoon, after a nearly 40-minute delay and an unexplained commotion outside the doors, Donald Trump finally walked into the East Room of the White House. The guests raised their phones and cheered. They had come to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, but for the first 23 minutes, they mostly listened to the president talk about himself.

Hopium Chronicles, New 2026 Election Analysis and Advocacy: Betrayed By Trump And His Allies The American People Have Put Their Faith Back In Us -- And Now We Must Deliver, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 1, 2026. First of all -- holy smokes! When called this community answers again and again. We raised $256,000 for our candidates and party committees yesterday, more than twice as much as any other day this cycle.

It was a huge day on what was a very important day in this critical election. Thank you to everyone who stepped up and rallied for those on the frontlines of what has become a year of extraordinarily opportunity for our politics.

That was the main theme of my weekly talk last night - that we are on the cusp of having the election we all wanted to have, and need to keep our heads down and keep working as hard as we can. You can find a video recording and rough transcript of my talk above.

As we discussed last night I think we have four jobs now:

Support our candidates and party committees, and try to win the election by as big a margin as possible. Our goal should be to make this election a clear and unequivocal repudiation of Trump and MAGA, and to do that we must attempt to win both the House and the Senate - something that is within our grasp.

We need to drive the early vote and become early vote champions in our communities, organizations, networks and family. Driving the early vote makes it more likely we win and harder for them to cheat, but it also gives us an opportunity to create a necessary issue contrast between our party that believes in democracy and fights for our rights and freedoms and their party who has betrayed the American creed and wants to take our rights and freedoms away.

We need to work to protect our election and ensure there is a peaceful transfer of power. While there are many ways to do this we recommend three: 1) Volunteer for your state party election protection program 2) Become a state party Democracy Protector election day monitor 3) support our fundraising drive for the state party New Battlefield Project below.

Deliver for the American people, restore our global alliances, and renew our democracy when back in power.

Let’s drill down on all that a bit.

Let’s start with the election. Trump got his worst major independent poll of the cycle this morning. Things just keep getting worse for him and the Rs:

The upper end of the generic ballot has moved into big blue wave territory:

We have a legitimate chance of flipping the Senate, even getting to 52-53 seats:

FiftyPlusOne’s Senate forecast today gives us a 99% chance of flipping the House and a 73% chance of taking back the Senate:

With five weeks to go we are in a place that I frankly never thought we would be. Trump’s been an extraordinary failure in every way imaginable. His corruption is unprecedented and staggering. He is clearly unwell and wildly unfit. People are angry, and feel betrayed and abandoned by the corrupt Epstein class running our country - as they should. They are not just turning on the Republicans they are turning to us, and have put their faith back in us as a party to lead them to a better place.Subscribed

This is very important. It would be wrong to look at the data in front of us or what we hear from our candidates and conclude this election is only about a repudiation and rejection of Trump. Let’s review that data we saw last week from the Strength In Numbers poll:

In my talk last night I tried to articulate what I am hearing from our candidates and will try to capture it here too for I think it is very important. I’ve been involved in some fashion or another in every election since 1992. There is something happening out there this year that this profound, and particular to this election, to this moment. Voters are aware of the gravity of the problems we now face; how much Trump has betrayed and abandoned them; and are desperate for strong and admirable leaders to lead them out of this mess and restore dignity and a sense of purpose to our nation once again. I don’t think this is like any other election I’ve ever been part of for it simply isn’t like anything any of us - or this nation - has ever experienced before.

For no set of Americans in our history have ever been betrayed by their leaders as Trump and his allies have betrayed all of us.

And this collective sense of the gravity of the moment is causing our candidates to elevate, become bigger, and ever more effective champions of people and communities who feel abandoned and betrayed. They have become aware in their conversations with voters that people see this as no ordinary time, and are desperate for proven servant leaders, ones they can trust, ones they can touch and feel, ones who have been there for them before and are trusted members of their communities, to win these elections and begin to put things right.

In our interviews you’ve met these servant leaders, people of proven character, firefighters, union leaders, teachers, professors, ministers, doctors, navy helicopter pilots, seminarians, prosecutors, admirals, generals, Olympians, television anchors, well known and respected local elected leaders. In this time of enormous challenge and uncertainty voters are not looking for radical change, they are looking for something familiar, something tried, trusted, and true, and something far, far better than what they have now.

Which is why we are on the verge of having the election we all want to have. For voters like the Democrats they are seeing all across the country, and are once again putting their faith back in us to lead us to a better place. Our job now is not to let them down; to be strong enough to win this election by as big a margin as possible; to ensure there is a peaceful transfer of power in January; and then fight with everything we got to make things better for them and this battered nation.

So often when I finish one of my interviews with a candidate or party leader I think “wow, that was amazing. What a candidate, what a leader. I’m grateful they’ve decided to run. ” I know many of you feel that way too. And I think what we are feeling in that moment is this dynamic I am describing - of admirable people stepping up for their community in a time of crisis, who feel the weight of the moment on their shoulders, and are rising to meet the moment and lead their communities and neighbors to a better place. And in this process I think we are witnessing the birth of a new politics for our party and our nation, of servant-leaders, lifted up by love of country and love of neighbor, who are in the process of becoming ferocious and determined warriors for the common good and who will not stop fighting until they put things right……

That’s why we’ve been raising so much money these past few weeks and over the cycle. For we have been inspired by the leaders we’ve met, and have put our trust in them, as voters are doing with Democrats all over the country right now. Now we need to finish the job, my friends, and get these remarkable, admirable leaders elected all across the country; ensure there is a free and fair election and a peaceful transfer of power; and then go do the most important of all- go to work, tirelessly, for the American people and begin the arduous process of putting things right……

That’s some of what we talked about last night fellow patriots. Watch the video. Share it and this post with others. Hit like so more will see it. And yes, it that time, now. Time to….Go Kick These Corrupt Traitors’ Asses, Win The Midterms, And Prepare For The Fuckery To Come - For It Is Coming

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

  • Become an Early Vote Champion in your networks, communities, and organizations.
  • Sign up to become a Democracy Protector too. Our next training is this Wednesday, Oct 7th at 10pm ET.
  • Email photos of your electoral work or physical act of voting to community@hopiumchronicles.com or via links on our daily chat. We want to start showcasing them here on Hopium.

Hope For America, Opinion: Trump’s incoherent rambling has reached a DISTURBING new low, Heather Delaney Reese, right, helen delaney reese djtSept. 30, 2026. At 1:39 this afternoon, after a nearly 40-minute delay and an unexplained commotion outside the doors, Donald Trump finally walked into the East Room of the White House. The guests raised their phones and cheered. They had come to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, but for the first 23 minutes, they mostly listened to the president talk about himself.

He invited them to see his ballroom floor, repeated praise from Xi Jinping, and compared himself to George Washington. Building monuments to himself, he said, was “really like relaxation.” Then he told a room filled mostly with Hispanic people that “only a Hispanic could survive that fall” from the edge of his construction site. The man who was supposed to be honoring them made a racist joke at their expense. He also announced that you are not allowed to talk about women’s beauty, then did exactly that to Rachel Campos-Duffy and her sister. He said it with a smirk. He wanted everyone to know that the rules did not apply to him.

The consequences of that example travel far beyond the White House. Our children and grandchildren are watching powerful people treat women this way without repercussions. Meanwhile, outside that carefully selected room, Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar had already told Trump that the same Hispanics who helped him reach the White House now feel betrayed. He promised raids against the worst criminals, but people without criminal records have been swept up too. I sat watching and taking notes, missing who I was before Trump and imagining a country with a leader focused on making our lives better. It brought me back to junior high, covering a talk about the First Gulf War for the school newspaper. A protest walkout was announced, and I was frightened to attend, even as a student reporter. A teacher helped me understand that sometimes responsibility to others requires pushing through fear and following your conscience. He told me to remember that feeling, write about it, and never let it go.

I think about that lesson now, when so many people feel overwhelmed and want to walk away. We are still the people who once believed we could change the world. We can see what is happening, and every time we speak out, we take a stand against it. There are people preparing for accountability, too. Robert Garcia said the senior leadership of the House Oversight Committee had spent the last two days “planning out the future of our investigations and hearings.” A Democratic-controlled Congress could make the remainder of Trump’s presidency look very different. On my daily walks, I see children playing on the beach and a country still filled with promise, people of different backgrounds who came together to form “a more perfect union.” That is what we are fighting for. The day accountability starts can and will come. We have to vote, and then we have to keep participating. Americans are not quitters, and we are not going to start now.

See the full story in the video.

Oct. 1

Top Headlines 

 

pete hegseth tatoo religion news

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, shown above in one of his favored poses and below as an at times out-of-control drinker with, nonetheless firm ideas on how others should comport themselves.

pete hegseth

News Roundups

  • The Parnas Perspective, News and Commentary: Democratic Turnout Surges, Trump Snaps at Reporters, Hegseth Purges Military, Renee Good’s Family Sues Trump, Botched Execution, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 1, 2026. More than 700,000 Americans have already voted, and the early numbers are flashing warning signs for Republicans, with Democrats making up a bigger share of ballot requests in battlegrounds like Iowa, Pennsylvania and North Carolina than they did in 2024. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stood in front of junior troops, used an anti-transgender slur, doubled his purge of the military’s top brass, and handed Elon Musk and a top Trump donor a role in planning America’s future wars. And in Tennessee, the state’s attempt to execute Christa Pike failed last night when she survived two lethal injections, something experts say has never happened before.

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

 

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance 

Hopium Chronicles, New 2026 Election Analysis and Advocacy: Betrayed By Trump And His Allies The American People Have Put Their Faith Back In Us -- And Now We Must Deliver, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 1, 2026. First of all -- holy smokes! When called this community answers again and again. We raised $256,000 for our candidates and party committees yesterday, more than twice as much as any other day this cycle. It was a huge day on what was a very important day in this critical election. Thank you to everyone who stepped up and rallied for those on the frontlines of what has become a year of extraordinarily opportunity for our politics.

 

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

 

Former Olympian David Hearn, center, as defended by attorney Norman Eisen, right, against false charges brought by the Trump Administration on a claim he vandalized the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool's new liner that was actually damaged by the Trump Administration's own contractor (New York Times photo).

Former Olympian David Hearn, center, as defended by attorney Norman Eisen, right, against false charges brought by the Trump Administration on a claim he vandalized the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool's new liner that was actually damaged by the Trump Administration's own contractor (New York Times photo).

More On Artificial Intelligence

More On Global Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets 

  • Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: A Globalist Comeback?, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 1, 2026. Hints of a business break with MAGA.On September 28th Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, one of the most prominent, most successful financial figures in the United States, published an article in the Wall Street Journal titled, “The Hell with Trump, Let’s Go Back to Globalism.” 
  • New York Times, Trump’s Threat to Ban Diesel Exports Sets Off Global Alarms, Lisa Friedman and River Akira Davis, Oct. 1, 2026. A reduction in refineries has already driven the price of diesel to record highs, threatening economies. An U.S. export ban would be “tremendous shock and blow.” 
  • New York Times, U.S. Bond Yields Hit Highest Level Since 2002, Eshe Nelson and Joe Rennison, Oct. 1, 2026.The higher yields, which are pressuring consumer and corporate borrowers and increasingly weighing on certain corners of the stock market, are unlikely to dissipate soon.

More Global News

  • All Rise News, Judge orders Trump DOJ to produce boat strikes memo, Adam Klasfeld, right, adam klasfeldSept. 30, 2026. The secret memo justifying strikes that killed 234 people inches closer to public release. Also: Blanche goes after Minnesota judges. The Trump administration must produce a memo containing the legal justifications for boat strikes that have killed 234 people in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean for a federal judge’s private review.

Top Stories

 

pete hegseth tatoo religion news

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, shown above in one of his favored poses and below as an at times out-of-control drinker with, nonetheless firm ideas on how others should comport themselves.

pete hegseth

New York Times, ‘No Beardos, No Weirdos, No Wimps’: Hegseth Lays Out His Military Vision, Helene Cooper and John Ismay, Sept. 30, 2026. In his “State of the Force” address, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth focused on the culture war and accused reporters of “treason” over Iran war coverage.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gathered hundreds of junior officers and enlisted troops at a base in Virginia on Wednesday to extol the virtues of basing Pentagon policy on culture-war issues and to complain about the news media.

Calling it a “State of the Force” address, Mr. Hegseth doubled down on his decisions to fire dozens of admirals and generals, bar transgender people from serving and eliminate diversity programs. And not for the first time, he used vulgarities to describe certain groups of Americans.

“No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals,” he said of the people who he believes have no place in the military.

Department of Defense SealAs he pointed to a few reporters in the back of the auditorium, the defense secretary criticized “anti-American losers in our media,” accusing them of aiding the country’s enemies through their reporting on the war in Iran.

“It’s treason, actually,” he said of the reporting. “I mean, I hate to have to say it, but it has to be said.”

The event at the Marine Corps Base at Quantico, Va., reprised a session there in September last year in which he berated more than 800 generals and admirals about the need to slim down and to be more “lethal.”

The gathering on Wednesday was in many ways a rehash of the cultural stances Mr. Hegseth championed a year ago, but it was a lesser version of last year’s production, which included an appearance by President Trump.

The defense secretary praised the war against Iran — in which he declared victory just weeks after it began but has now dragged into a seven-month campaign — as a courageous operation “that every red-blooded American is proud of.”

He used the last portion of his remarks to announce new initiatives for the Pentagon.

They included the creation of a new “autonomous warfare command” for robotics, which he said would be the equivalent of the military’s geographic and functional combatant commands.

The secretary pointed out three civilians in attendance, Elon Musk, the Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, who wore a blazer over his signature Hawaiian shirt, and a former House speaker, Newt Gingrich. He called them “three of our nations’ best minds” and said they would lead a new effort called Project Meridian to study the future of warfare.

Mr. Hegseth said he would meet with the three men at a secure facility on the base in Quantico immediately after his speech.

He also stated his intent to build a new military base — what he called “a fortress” — somewhere in the United States, saying that state governors would compete to host it and offer hundreds of thousands of acres of state land to build it.

Tens of thousands of U.S. troops currently stationed overseas would be sent back to the United States and based at the “fortress,” he said, without explaining which countries would see a reduction in U.S. forces.

The Pentagon has been reviewing its force posture overseas, particularly in Europe, with an eye toward reducing the number of troops stationed outside the United States. In May, Mr. Hegseth announced he was canceling a deployment of troops to Poland only to be quickly overruled by Mr. Trump.

As usual, Mr. Hegseth wove religious language and Christian themes throughout his address and derided “secular humanism,” adding that he had established an office of religious affairs that would report directly to him.

The address allowed Mr. Hegseth to lay out his planned changes without facing questions from reporters about them or the war. The last time he gave a briefing on the Iran war to reporters at the Pentagon was in early May.

Nonetheless, he is the public face of the deeply unpopular war with Iran.

Thousands of Iranians and 18 U.S. service members have been killed in the conflict, which the United States and Israel started seven months ago. In one episode at the start of the war, more than 175 civilians, many of them children, were killed when a U.S. airstrike hit a school in southern Iran.

Despite the Trump administration’s claims to the contrary, Iran has retained its ballistic missile and drone capability, and its leadership has vowed never to give up its civilian nuclear program. As Iran’s fighting skills have evolved, the U.S. military burned through its munitions.

As gas prices rise because of the conflict, U.S. voters have grown more frustrated ahead of the midterm elections.

Mr. Hegseth has also not been able to get a Pentagon budget request for more funding approved, and has alienated not only Democrats but also some Republicans the administration needs to pass $1.5 trillion in new financing. In addition, a Republican congressman is leading a drive to impeach Mr. Hegseth. He also does not have Senate-confirmed leaders to head the Army, the country’s biggest military service, or the Navy.

At the end of his remarks, Mr. Hegseth received a standing ovation. Last year’s speech was greeted by stone-faced generals and admirals who made sure not to cheer, per the norms of a nonpartisan military. 

Public Notice, Opinion: Trump’s taxpayer-funded agitprop is clearly illegal — and that’s the point, Paul Waldman, right, paul waldmanOct. 1, 2026. Your taxpayer dollars, hard at work.

To use a generous word, it’s audacious.

Over a song called “Love Me” (naturally, used without permission from the artist), the TV ad features Donald Trump vowing to “defeat communism, socialism, and Marxism in America” while quick cuts tout his supposed accomplishments, followed by UFC chief Dana White saying, “he’s the toughest, most resilient person that I’ve ever met, and nothing was going to stop him from fighting so hard for the country he loves!”

Then, with a flourish of trolling, the words “Paid for by the US Government” appear at the bottom of the screen. (Watch below.)

That ad, indeed paid for by tax dollars, was one in a series produced by the White House and aired across the country. They are unambiguously illegal — and that’s part of the point.

Again and again, this administration has broken the law not just to accomplish some immediate goal, but as an assertion of power, a dominance display, to say to everyone: Donald Trump does whatever he wants, and nobody can stop him.

The good news is that while the ads are meant to help Republicans stave off disaster in the midterm elections, they will likely do just the opposite. The bad news is that they further degrade the rule of law in America, making the task of imposing accountability all the more urgent.A fascist aesthetic

The ads follow the now-familiar Trumpian aesthetic, toggling back and forth between high production values and low-budget slop, and treading right on the line that separates fascism from camp.

While the first ad with Dana White is all about Trump himself, the second one takes a bit of a detour to argue that God and Trump have together delivered America to heights never before seen in human history. Featuring footage from one of Trump’s trips to Mount Rushmore, it could have been directed by a modern-day Leni Riefenstahl.

“In all the chronicles of the ages, never before has any nation celebrated so magnificent a triumph as this one,” Trump says, over imagery meant to evoke vastness, distance, and power: helicopters flying over the mountain at sunset, an audience gazing up adoringly at him, enormous screens with his face on them, and then, shot from below, him pumping his fist before a final ejaculation of fireworks.

The last ad in the series repurposes one Trump used in the 2024 campaign, and may be the purest and most arresting of all:Aaron Rupar @atrupar.comabsolutely demented. like a scene from a horror movieSun, 27 Sep 2026 15:21:23 GMTView on Bluesky

In a time of voter unease and disgruntlement, political consultants advise their clients to communicate empathy and understanding, to show voters that the politician empathizes with their struggles and is working to improve their lives. But Trump will have none of that.

He is not here to help. He’s distant, angry, a figure of nothing but venom and vengeance. He walks toward the viewer like a serial killer stalking his prey, his face a mask of contempt and barely-contained rage. His visage in this ad is reminiscent of the glowering pictures erected on gigantic banners hanging from government buildings in DC, almost a parody of a dictator trying to inspire terror and subjugation (Trump likes that picture so much he made it his official portrait).Totalitarian artTotalitarian artLisa Needham·Sep 18Read full story

The words are just as horrifying.

“This is the final battle,” Trump says, and we know that final battles inevitably involve death and destruction even if they end in triumph.

“With you at my side,” he goes on as horror-movie music plays, “we will demolish the Deep State, we will expel the warmongers from our government, we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists, marxists and fascists, we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country, we will rout the fake news media, and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all.”

Who thought this would be the right message to send, with voters fed up with high gas prices and yearning for an end to the idiotic war Trump started? The answer is unsurprising: Trump himself.

The president “has personally driven the controversial, taxpayer-funded video ads,” CNN reports, “including helping select the imagery and videos used.”

Trump often claims that when he’s on the ballot, Republicans do much better than when he isn’t, and he’s not completely wrong (even if he lost the popular vote in two out of the three elections he has run in). There are at least some voters who turn out to vote for him but don’t get to the polls in midterm elections, and his strategy is to encourage those voters to mobilize.

“What I really want you to do is pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot,” he said at a recent rally. “Just come and vote. It’s so important.”

The trouble is that for every passive Trump fan who responds to this call, there may be many more voters who will hear that message and be more likely to vote for Democrats.Trump loves Xi because he wants to be himTrump loves Xi because he wants to be him

Right now, Trump is spectacularly unpopular; his approval ratings hover in the mid-30s, and he is under water on every policy issue. That’s especially true with the issue that tops voters’ agenda, the economy and prices. His ratings on the issue are abysmal in every poll; a recent one from Marquette University found his approval on inflation at a stunning 19 percent.

In the face of that kind of popular disgust, the president might employ any of a number of strategies. As The Atlantic reported last month, the path he chose “was to lean into the Democratic strategy of focusing on himself.” Hence the ads. And while they might have gone for a more empathetic message, they’re pure Trump: angry, self-aggrandizing to the point of absurdity, utterly unpersuasive, and strategically misconceived.

Democrats probably couldn’t be happier to see these ads aired as widely as possible.

Trump could have paid for the ads with the gargantuan war chest his super PAC has amassed, helped by seven- and eight-figure contributions from corporations and ultra-wealthy individuals his administration has amply rewarded with government funds and policy changes.

Instead, the White House decided taxpayers should foot the bill.

The White House claims these are just “public service announcements,” comparing them to when previous presidents encouraged people to keep an eye out for terrorism or sign up for Medicare’s prescription drug program. The obvious difference is that there is no federal policy involved in Trump’s ads, which are just about how he’s great and his enemies must be destroyed.

Some Republicans are willing to acknowledge that the ads are a bad idea, even if they stop just short of acknowledging that what Trump is doing is illegal.

“It shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune.

“I think there ought to be a rule that you can’t — well, there probably is a rule,” said Sen. John Kennedy on Face the Nation. “You can’t spend public money to promote yourself.”

In fact, the ads likely violate multiple provisions of the law. There’s the “publicity and propaganda” rider Congress has inserted into every appropriations bill for the last 75 years, forbidding money to be spent on just this kind of thing. There’s also the Hatch Act, which forbids federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity while on the job.

While the president and vice president are not covered by the Hatch Act, everyone else in the government is subject to its provisions — meaning anyone involved in the production and distribution of these ads could be subject to prosecution. That might be an unlikely outcome, since Hatch Act prosecutions are rare. But that fact in itself is a sign of how respect for the rule of law has been degraded under Trump.

Early in his first term, adviser Kellyanne Conway, warned that she was committing a Hatch Act violation by promoting Ivanka Trump merchandise on Fox News (which the Office of Special Counsel later found that she did repeatedly), replied contemptuously: “Let me know when the jail sentence starts.”

The message was clear: We work for Donald Trump, and that means we’re above the law. Trump later held his 2020 convention at the White House, a four-day-long Hatch Act violation no previous president would even have contemplated.

New York Times, Taking On Trump Immigration Agenda, Justices Will Review Migrant Detention Policy, Ann E. Marimow, Oct. 1, 2026. The administration’s policy of detaining immigrants who crossed the border illegally years ago and holding them without a bond hearing has divided lower courts.

The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to review the Trump administration’s policy of indefinitely detaining immigrants who crossed the border illegally years ago, signaling the court plans to weigh in on major pieces of President Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda as it begins its new term on Monday.

The policy is a departure from past practice, when such migrants were generally allowed an opportunity to seek release after a hearing before a judge.

The justices previously announced that they would fast-track a separate case testing the administration's policy of deporting immigrants to countries where they have no ties, including nations that have faced allegations of human rights abuses.

Between the two cases, the justices will consider the legality of some of the most controversial aspects of the Trump administration’s efforts to rapidly expel millions of migrants living in the United States.

The justices also added two other cases to the docket of issues they will hear and decide by next June.

One is a Kentucky case about whether a federal religious discrimination law protects a group of Catholic priests who want to build a shrine to the Virgin Mary over neighbors’ objections. The other is a divorce dispute over military benefits originating in North Dakota.

The immigration case the court accepted on Thursday involved noncitizens who entered the United States illegally but had been living in the country for years. For decades, such people could be released on bond pending additional court proceedings, so long as they were not found to be a threat to public safety or a flight risk.

But last year, the Trump administration announced a new interpretation of a 1996 law, concluding it allowed noncitizens living in the United States to be held without bond. As a result, immigration judges have denied hearings to people, even if they have been living and working in the United States for years.

More than 500 district court judges and nine of 11 federal appeals courts to consider the issue have rejected the administration’s new detention rule and its interpretation of the immigration law at issue.

About 70,000 people are currently in immigration detention across the United States, up from 40,000 before Mr. Trump took office in January 2025.

More than two-thirds of undocumented immigrants have lived in the United States for at least a decade.

Most of the appeals courts to consider the issue have said the government should have provided hearings to determine whether they posed a danger to others or a flight risk pending the completion of removal proceedings.

In April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit sided with a Brazilian citizen, Ricardo Aparecido Barbosa Da Cunha, who has lived in the United States for about 20 years.

He was arrested by federal agents on his way to work in Massachusetts, where he owns a construction business and a home with his wife, also a Brazilian citizen, and their two children, who are U.S. citizens.

He crossed the U.S. border with Mexico in 2004, applied for asylum in 2016 and was granted a work permit. He had not previously been detained and has no known criminal history, according to court filings.

In its decision, the appeals court noted that Congress had never challenged what had been the settled practice of releasing certain migrants on bond despite making major changes to immigration law.

“Even if the government’s newfound interpretation” of the statute “were plausible — and it is not,” the appeals court said it was obligated to read such laws in a way that would “avoid the serious constitutional questions attendant to what would be the broadest mass-detention-without-bond mandate in our nation’s history for millions of noncitizens.”

D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, urged the justices to reverse the decision and said in court filings that detaining immigrants who are living in the country long after an illegal entry “prevents those aliens from evading hearings and helps ensure their removal from the United States.”

Immigrant advocates say federal law requires the government to provide noncitizens, regardless of how they entered the country, access to a bond hearing. The policy, they say, has stripped people of an opportunity to seek release by a judge.

Lawyers for the immigrants say the administration’s reading of the statute allows the government to lock up millions of people who have resided in the United States for years without a possibility of a hearing or release. They emphasize that five presidential administrations over three decades, including the first Trump administration, have provided custody hearings.

Michael K.T. Tan, the deputy director of the A.C.L.U.’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said on Thursday that the government “cannot twist the law to detain immigrants for months or even years on end without a bond hearing. Not only is it cruel and inhumane; it is unlawful.”

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: WATCH: GOP super PAC quietly launches outlandish smear against Talarico, Judd Legum, right, judd legumOct. 1, 2026. For weeks, major Republican-aligned super PACs have been attacking James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, on trans issues.

Since September 6, Talarico’s opponents have spent an astonishing $37 million on these trans attacks. This includes over $30 million, mostly on broadcast ads, from Texas PAC, a super PAC created by Senate GOP leadership; over $4 million on streaming ads from MAGA Inc., President Trump’s super PAC; and $1.3 million on digital ads from America PAC, the super PAC created by Elon Musk.

Several of these ads falsely claim that Talarico supports “taxpayer-funded sex changes on kids.” But Talarico never voted for such a policy and publicly supports a national ban on such procedures. This attack against Talarico has been rated “false” by PolitiFact. (In practice, such surgeries almost never occur.)

Nevertheless, the ads have continued to run on heavy rotation. But, with Election Day now a few weeks away, these false attacks do not seem to have muted Talarico’s popularity over his Republican opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The last 11 public polls released have shown Talarico with a narrow lead over Paxton, who is saddled with several political and personal scandals, according to RealClearPolitics. (Paxton released an internal poll showing him leading by 3 points.)

Most of these polls are within the margin of error. There is still plenty of time for momentum to shift, and Texas has reliably elected Republicans to statewide office for many years. Still, Paxton’s allies are concerned.

So they are upping the ante.

On Tuesday, Texas PAC launched a new digital-only ad on Meta platforms. In the ad, a woman named Miriam, who identifies herself only as “a mom of five,” looks into the camera and accuses Talarico of supporting putting “parents in jail if they do not support surgically transitioning their children.”

“If you care about your children, do not vote for James Talarico,” Miriam concludes.

Popular Information obtained the ad through the Meta Ad Library.

It’s notable that Texas PAC, which has spent the vast majority of its dollars on broadcast ads, is running this ad on a digital platform. This allows Texas PAC to micro-target the ad to voters it believes may not closely scrutinize its claims. Digital ads, in general, also attract less media attention. The ad is not posted on the Texas PAC YouTube page or featured on its website.

The new attack on Talarico is more outlandish than previous attacks, but equally false. The ad’s only citation purportedly supporting its primary claim is an October 2019 article in the Houston Chronicle. That article does not say Talarico supported jailing parents who do not support gender surgeries for minors. The article is about a bill to prevent family courts from considering whether a parent acknowledges their child’s gender identity in child custody disputes. At a committee hearing on that legislation, Talarico, who opposed the bill, said it was “abusive” to deny your child’s gender identity, “whether or not we label it with the term abuse.”

The bill had nothing to do with surgeries or criminal proceedings. The claim that Talarico supports jailing parents who do not permit their children to receive gender transition surgeries is completely baseless.

The woman who appears in the ad is Miriam Evans, a Republican activist in the Dallas area. She is a board member of Protecting Texas Children, a right-wing advocacy group that promotes “a Biblical view of gender and sexuality as stated in Genesis 1.” A recent post by the group celebrates that a “quiet rebellion is taking shape across Texas as communities increasingly reject Pride Month proclamations in favor of family-centered values.” Evans regularly speaks about her efforts to similar groups, including Moms for Liberty and local Republican Party chapters.

Evans did not respond to calls or text messages seeking comment. Texas PAC did not respond to a phone call and email.

About two hours after Popular Information reached out to Evans and Texas PAC about the ad, it was made “inactive” on Meta’s platforms. 

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Trump + AI = Blue Tsunami, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Oct. 1, 2026. It doesn’t take super intelligence to realize the GOP is screwed.bulwark morning shots logo

bulwark logo big shipThe more things change, the more they stay the same. Yesterday, Trump dusted off his old attacks against former Fed Chair Jerome Powell: “He should be forced to resign, IMMEDIATELY! If he doesn’t resign, he should be sued, at the highest level, by the United States Government, for either corruption or incompetence.”

It’s all great news for new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh: He hasn’t been able to lower interest rates yet, either, but for now, Trump seems content to keep blaming Powell. Happy Thursday.

News Roundups

The Parnas Perspective, News and Commentary: Democratic Turnout Surges, Trump Snaps at Reporters, Hegseth Purges Military, Renee Good’s Family Sues Trump, Botched Execution, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotOct. 1, 2026. More than 700,000 Americans have already voted, and the early numbers are flashing warning signs for Republicans, with Democrats making up a bigger share of ballot requests in battlegrounds like Iowa, Pennsylvania and North Carolina than they did in 2024. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stood in front of junior troops, used an anti-transgender slur, doubled his purge of the military’s top brass, and handed Elon Musk and a top Trump donor a role in planning America’s future wars. And in Tennessee, the state’s attempt to execute Christa Pike failed last night when she survived two lethal injections, something experts say has never happened before.

Plus, Trump is threatening to ban diesel exports unless France and Germany open their emergency reserves, mortgage rates just hit their highest level since 2023, and former officials warn the administration has quietly gutted the task force that protected election workers from threats.

We’ve ruffled some feathers. Yesterday we published exclusive information exposing a major FBI interview in the Epstein files that Sen. Ron Wyden says the Trump DOJ never released, a record that could expose a lot. It’s just the beginning. Making powerful people uncomfortable in pursuit of the truth is critical. S

Here’s the news:

renee gold headshot

Renee Good’s Family Sues Trump Administration Over Her Killing by an ICE Agent in Minneapolis. The family of Renee Good, above, a 37-year-old US citizen shot dead in her car by ICE agent Jonathan Ross on Jan. 7 during Trump’s “Operation Metro Surge” deportation sweeps, filed two lawsuits Thursday accusing administration officials of negligence and civil rights violations, demanding a jury trial and damages. Videos show Good telling Ross, “That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you,” moments before she tried to drive away and he fired into the car, hitting her in the head, arm and torso. Senior Trump officials initially branded Good a “domestic terrorist,” and the Justice Department blocked federal prosecutors in Minneapolis from investigating the agents, prompting at least half a dozen of them to resign in protest. No agent has been charged in her death or in the killing of VA nurse Alex Pretti two weeks later, and Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty’s state investigations have been slowed because DOJ cut off evidence-sharing, leading Minnesota to sue for access. DHS has defended the agents’ actions as justified uses of force, and the suits are among the first major civil actions over the sweeps.

White House Kicks CNN Out of Press Pool Days After Judge Blocks Trump’s Media Ban. The White House removed CNN from the press pool covering Trump’s Thursday trip to Texas and Oklahoma, even though the network had been scheduled to fly on Air Force One and provide on-the-ground coverage. The move comes less than a week after a federal judge halted Trump’s effort to ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, and follows the administration barring CNN from Air Force One last weekend when it was also slated to serve as pooler, exploiting the fact that the judge’s order only covers access on White House grounds. CNN’s attorney Theodore Boutrous said the White House is “persisting in unpredictably and inconsistently implementing the President’s unconstitutional ‘ban on the free press,’” to the detriment of the public, and the outlets have asked the judge to extend his order. The White House Correspondents’ Association, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and 49 news organizations have backed the three outlets in court, while Fox News, ABC, CBS and NBC briefly boycotted pool duties last week in solidarity with CNN.

Early Voting Data Shows Emerging Signs of a Democratic Advantage in the Midterms

More than 700,000 Americans have already voted in at least 30 states, and Democrats are making up a bigger share of early ballot requests in key battlegrounds than they did in 2024. In Iowa, home to a competitive Senate race, Democrats account for 67% of ballot requests, up from 54% at this point two years ago, while Pennsylvania is up from 62% to 66%, Maine from 53% to 57% and North Carolina from 36% to 42%. The trend lines up with polling, special elections and primary turnout that have all pointed to Democrats being more motivated this year. There are important caveats: ballots are secret, so the data can’t show who people voted for, and early voters tend to skew older and less Republican than the overall electorate, especially as Republicans have shifted toward voting in person. In every state except Iowa, ballot requests at this point in 2022 were actually more Democratic than they are now.

Virginia is showing the clearest signs of a Democratic enthusiasm edge, including in two GOP-held battleground House districts. Localities that voted for Kamala Harris by more than 20 points are at 78% of their 2024 turnout pace, while those Trump won by 20 points are at just 61%. Statewide, voters who have only participated in Democratic primaries since 2022 outnumber Republican primary voters by about 18 points, up from 8 points at this point in 2024. In the 1st District, held by Rep. Rob Wittman, and the 2nd District, held by Rep. Jen Kiggans, Democratic primary voters lead by 15 and 18 points, after both districts were roughly split at this point two years ago. Republicans could still close the gap as Election Day nears, since the votes cast so far are a tiny fraction of the roughly 112 million cast in the 2022 midterms and early in-person voting has barely begun.

Hegseth Unloads Slurs at Troops, Doubles Cuts to Top Brass and Hands Musk a Role in Planning Future Wars

Hegseth used his “State of the Force” address to rail against “fatties,” “weirdos” and “wimps,” using an anti-transgender slur in front of junior troops. “We are no longer the woke department or the weak department,” the defense secretary told service members at Marine Corps Base Quantico, before rattling off a list that included “no fatties,” an anti-trans slur, “no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors.” He said generals “who clung to the woke department, or seemed to think civilian control of the military is simply a suggestion, well, they no longer work here.” Hegseth also dismissed reports of low morale as “patently false claims” and “propaganda,” just a week after it emerged that eight sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln attempted suicide during a 286-day deployment extended by the Iran war. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office mocked the speech by posting a photo of Trump and JD Vance with the caption “You heard the man. No beardos and weirdos.”

Hegseth confirmed he’s cutting 20% of the military’s generals and admirals, doubling last year’s target, in what senators from both parties are questioning. The reduction covers roughly 800 general and flag officer positions and must be completed by Jan. 1, 2027, which Hegseth called “accountability and long overdue.” Sen. Mark Kelly, a former Navy combat pilot, said Hegseth has “some kind of like deep-seated grievance about leadership in the military” and is “purging a generation of great leaders” that will take a generation to replace. Republican Sen. Mike Rounds said there “may be some validity” to trimming a top-heavy structure, “but I want to see it first.” Trump and Hegseth have already fired or pushed out more than two dozen senior leaders without public explanation, including Army chief Gen. Randy George, with a number of those ousted being women or people of color.

Hegseth rolled out six major initiatives, including a project co-directed by Elon Musk, top Trump donor Palmer Luckey and Newt Gingrich to plan the “future of warfare.” Project Meridian, a 120-day effort to identify technologies the US needs for future conflicts, puts Musk and Luckey, whose company Anduril has won billions in government contracts, directly into military planning, raising obvious conflict-of-interest questions. Hegseth also announced a new four-star Autonomous Warfare Command for drones and robotics by October 2027, even as he slashes senior positions elsewhere, along with “FORTRESS America” to harden bases and supply chains and a “Next Great American Base” that states will compete for, built with classical architecture. A new officer pipeline called America’s Corps of Cadets will include Liberty University and Hillsdale College, as Hegseth, a Harvard and Princeton graduate, blasted Ivy League schools as “DEI-worshipping woke factories.” None of the initiatives came with price tags, staffing levels or details on what Congress would need to approve.

Hegseth also created a new Office of Religious Affairs, his latest move to elevate religion in the military. The office will give chaplains a “direct line” to Hegseth without “staff filters,” and a memo orders every military department to report “all unfunded and underfunded religious affairs requirements,” including support for faith-based homeschooling for military families. “Political correctness and secular humanism got a vote, chaplains did not,” Hegseth said, quoting Psalm 33:12 and declaring that the military is “putting on the full armor of God, because while we wage physical war, we all know the real battle is spiritual.” The Pentagon says the office won’t compel religious participation or favor any faith. It follows Hegseth’s move in March to have chaplains stop wearing rank insignia and his firing in April of the Army’s chief of chaplains, Maj. Gen. William Green Jr., without public explanation.

Tennessee’s Execution of Christa Pike Fails After She Survives Two Lethal Injections

Tennessee’s attempt to execute Christa Pike failed Wednesday night when she survived two doses of a lethal drug and was rushed to a hospital. Pike, 50, was set to become the first woman executed in the state in 206 years for the 1995 murder of classmate Colleen Slemmer, which she committed at 18. Officials administered pentobarbital twice at Nashville’s Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, but Pike stayed awake after the first dose and at one point raised her head to ask whether her arm was supposed to feel that way. After the second dose she could be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut at 8:53 p.m., media witnesses were escorted out, and she was taken to an outside medical facility for “life-saving measures.” Death Penalty Information Center director Robin Maher called it “singular and unparalleled,” noting that while seven people have survived executions where officials couldn’t find a vein, no one has ever survived after actually receiving the drugs.

The execution only went forward after the Supreme Court lifted a last-minute stay in a 6-3 vote. A divided 6th Circuit panel had halted the execution Wednesday morning to consider whether Pike’s history of childhood sexual abuse was fully weighed at her sentencing. The state appealed, arguing the delay traumatized Slemmer’s family and rewarded “abusive delay tactics,” and the Supreme Court’s conservative majority cleared the way without explanation, over a dissent from the three liberal justices who said her claims deserved a closer look. The curtain on the execution chamber opened at 7:27 p.m., hours before her death warrant was set to expire at midnight. In her final statement, Pike said, “I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life and that is in love,” and described herself as at peace.

Tennessee is defending its handling of the execution as anti-death penalty advocates erupt in outrage. The Department of Correction said it “followed every step” of its established protocol, that the drug “has consistently been effective,” and that the protocol “does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out.” Death Penalty Action co-founder Abraham Bonowitz called it “an outrage,” asking of state officials, “How do they sleep at night?” Laura Porter of the US Campaign to End the Death Penalty noted that people across the political spectrum had urged a pause after Tennessee’s botched attempt to execute Tony Carruthers earlier this year, saying the state “cannot be trusted to implement capital punishment.” Reprieve CEO Maya Foa said it’s impossible to know exactly what went wrong because lethal injection “relies on secrecy at every stage.”

The failed execution comes as death sentences are being carried out at the fastest pace in years under Trump. There were 47 executions nationwide in 2025, the most since 2009, and 28 so far in 2026, compared with between 11 and 25 a year under Biden. Women remain exceedingly rare among those executed, accounting for just 18 of more than 1,600 people put to death since 1976. Pike’s case had drawn international attention over her age at the time of the crime, her history as a victim of childhood sexual abuse, and her diagnoses of bipolar disorder and PTSD. In an interview before her scheduled execution, Pike said she felt a “kinship” with Lindsay Clancy, saying they were “both females who got into trouble because of uniquely female issues.”

Other news:

The Trump administration is threatening to ban US diesel exports unless France and Germany release their emergency stockpiles. Three people close to the discussions told Reuters the US has warned the two countries to draw down reserves to ease global fuel prices, with one source saying Washington wants the EU to release 120 million barrels of diesel over the next six months. The pressure comes as Trump weighs a diesel export ban to bring down US prices ahead of the midterms, even though experts, including some in his own cabinet, warn such a ban would only push prices higher. Europe has grown increasingly dependent on US fuel after cutting off Russian imports and losing Middle East supplies to the Iran war. “It is in Europe’s best interest to work with the United States,” one US official told Reuters, as officials from the EU, Germany, France, Italy, Ireland and Britain held a call Thursday on possible releases. French President Emmanuel Macron is now convening a video conference of G7 leaders on rising fuel prices and coordinated releases of reserves.

Mortgage rates hit their highest level since 2023 as a bond sell-off driven by war-fueled inflation sent Treasury yields to levels not seen since 2002. The 10-year Treasury yield rose as high as 5.34% Thursday and the 30-year as high as 5.68%, pushing the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate to 7.6%. A major driver is inflation from energy prices tied to the wars in Iran and Ukraine, with gas prices still 47% higher than when the Iran war began in late February and diesel up 70%, costs that trickle down to store shelves through shipping and farming. S&P Global reported last week that price pressures on businesses intensified in September at the fastest rate in four years. The Fed’s preferred inflation measure came in cooler than expected, but KPMG chief economist Diane Swonk said that was mostly due to a technical change, calling it “cooler on paper, hot underneath.” Markets now see roughly a 60% chance the Fed raises rates again in December.

Chinese refiners have suspended fuel exports for October, further squeezing a global market already strained by the Iran war. Beijing gave major refiners no green light to export diesel, gasoline or jet fuel beyond Hong Kong and Macau as the country began a week-long holiday, and state giant PetroChina canceled several planned shipments. Beijing has made exports contingent on domestic inventories returning to prewar levels, and Kpler estimates diesel stocks are about 20 million barrels short of that threshold. The move comes just after Trump urged President Xi Jinping during his Washington visit to help stabilize global fuel supplies. “International markets are an afterthought,” said Oxford Institute for Energy Studies analyst Michal Meidan, with countries like Singapore, Australia, Vietnam and Bangladesh among those most exposed. Bangladesh, which gets up to a third of its refined fuel imports from Chinese suppliers, says it hasn’t even been notified of the pause.

Former officials warn the Trump administration has abandoned the federal effort to investigate real threats to US elections while chasing unproven voter fraud claims. The Justice Department’s election threats task force, which received more than 2,000 threat reports, opened over 100 investigations and prosecuted 21 cases between 2021 and 2024, including a failed New Mexico candidate who organized shootings at officials’ homes, has brought no new cases and “appears to be defunct in practice,” according to former Oregon election security chief Nikki Fisher. The administration also eliminated the FBI’s foreign influence task force on Pam Bondi’s first day as attorney general and cut election security staff and training at CISA. “This administration … has dismantled the entire apparatus that is responsible for detecting and holding these bad actors accountable,” said former national security council official Caitlin Durkovich. Meanwhile, the FBI’s raids seizing 2020 ballots in Fulton County and election equipment in Puerto Rico have produced nothing, and Trump’s primetime claims that China acquired US voter data couldn’t be substantiated. Instead, Attorney General Todd Blanche is touting charges against more than 90 people for voter-related fraud, including 50 noncitizens in the past five weeks.

The parents of a Michigan toddler who pulled a loaded gun out of his backpack at daycare will face charges. No one was hurt Monday when the boy displayed the holstered pistol at Childrens World Early Learning Center in Canton Township, and police praised a staff member for intervening quickly and safely. One of the child’s parents is a Detroit-area police officer, though the gun was not described as a work firearm. Police Chief Joseph Bialy called video of the boy handling the weapon “shocking” and “hard to watch.” Michigan law requires firearms to be locked up at home when children are present, and the parents are set to make an initial court appearance Thursday. Penalties under the law increase sharply if a gun is fired, and a Newaygo County man is already serving more than three years in prison after his 5-year-old grandson was fatally shot by another child who got hold of a shotgun.

Naomi Campbell won her appeal to overturn a five-year ban on serving as a charity trustee in England and Wales. The UK Charity Commission had ruled last year that Fashion for Relief, the poverty charity Campbell founded about two decades ago, was “poorly governed” with “inadequate financial management,” finding only 8.5% of its spending went to charitable grants over six years starting in 2016. A three-person tribunal agreed there had been “serious misconduct and mismanagement,” but found it stemmed from the conduct of fellow trustee Bianka Hellmich. The tribunal ruled the financial failures and misuse of funds were “concealed” from Campbell and that she had been “deceived.” The decision clears the 56-year-old supermodel to serve as a charity trustee again, a little over a year after the commission imposed the ban.

Tropical moisture from Hurricane Polo is drenching the central US as another Pacific hurricane rapidly strengthens off Mexico. Hurricane Rachel is expected to become a major storm with winds topping 111 mph, though it poses no threat to land, while flood warnings remain in effect in New Mexico, where Albuquerque just recorded its second-wettest month ever. Flooding has devastated the state’s famous chile crop at harvest time, with one Hatch Chile Association board member saying of flooded fields, “everything’s toast.” Storms dumped up to 3.5 inches of rain in Amarillo, Texas, spawning a tornado, while Acting Gov. Howie Morales declared a state of emergency freeing up $3.75 million in aid. In Mexico, schools in 30 municipalities in Jalisco closed as a precaution, and the bodies of a mother and her two children were found after a river flooded in the town of Talpa de Allende. The busy Pacific season is consistent with El Niño conditions.

A former Northern Arizona University fraternity leader was sentenced to two months in jail after a pledge died of alcohol poisoning. Carter Eslick, 20, pleaded guilty to felony hazing in the January death of 18-year-old Colin Daniel Martinez, who had a blood-alcohol level of 0.425%, more than five times the legal driving limit, after four Delta Tau Delta pledges were made to share two bottles of vodka until they vomited. Witnesses checked Martinez’s pulse and breathing throughout the night instead of getting him help. Eslick, the chapter’s pledge master, apologized and said he takes “full responsibility,” and must deliver 305 anti-hazing presentations as part of three years of probation. The judge said she was troubled that no one spoke out, and Martinez’s parents are calling for accountability and reform within Greek life. The university suspended the fraternity after Martinez’s death, and its national organization has since shut down the chapter.

An immigration judge ruled the US can deport the leader of Wisconsin’s largest mosque on national security grounds, in a case his lawyers say is retaliation for his pro-Palestinian speech. Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, has lived in the US since 1993 with no criminal record here, but the government cited decades-old convictions in Israel that his attorneys say came from confessions extracted through torture. The judge gave “extreme deference” to a Rubio memo labeling Sarsour a foreign policy risk, the same rarely used provision used against Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, while rejecting the government’s claim that he lied to immigration authorities. Sarsour, who says deportation to the West Bank “means the end of my life,” plans to appeal, and a federal judge previously ordered him freed from ICE custody, finding he had a “substantial” claim of retaliation. His lawyers say he lost more than 30 pounds in detention, where his diabetes went largely unmonitored. He can’t be deported until he exhausts his appeals, and his lawyers are also fighting the removal order’s listing of Jordan, a country he has no connection to, as a possible destination.

A Microsoft-linked New Jersey datacenter ran 62 unpermitted gas generators for nearly a year, pumping out an estimated 140 tons of smog-forming pollution before regulators stepped in. Records obtained by Floodlight show DataOne’s generators in Vineland began operating in October 2025 and logged more than 46,000 hours, which a Rutgers professor estimates would rank it among New Jersey’s top five nitrogen oxide polluters of 2025. At full capacity, experts say the fleet could emit more than 1,500 tons a year, nearly double the state’s largest power plant, pollution linked to asthma, heart attacks and premature death. Local officials knew about the generators for months and residents filed more than 100 noise complaints, but the state only fined the company $1 million last week and is still letting it run them for 45 days while it seeks permits. “How did 62 generators get installed and operated and nobody did anything until now?” asked one resident who lives about a mile away and worries about her children’s exposure. The company’s CEO had told residents in January the site would be “polluting less than a farm.”

A medical helicopter crashed off Catalina Island near Los Angeles, killing two people and leaving two hospitalized, with a fifth person still missing. First responders pulled four people from the water after the crash shortly before 8 p.m. Wednesday, and two were pronounced dead at the scene while two were taken to mainland hospitals in stable condition. LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn said the medevac helicopter went down shortly after taking off from Catalina, and it now sits submerged in 240 feet of water. County firefighters, lifeguards, the Coast Guard and the sheriff’s department searched through the night for the missing person. The helicopter was believed to be owned by Reach Air Medical Services, and the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.

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

 

tennessee mapNew York Times, Updates: Tennessee Governor Pauses Future Execution After Inmate Survives Lethal Injection, Billy Witz and Emily Cochrane, Oct. 1, 2026. Gov. Bill Lee ordered a review of the state’s capital-punishment process after the botched attempt to put Christa Pike to death. She was hospitalized late Wednesday.

Gov. Bill Lee paused capital punishment in Tennessee on Thursday and called for a review of the state’s policies on how it puts people to death. The announcement came hours after Christa Pike, a death row inmate, survived two doses of the lethal drug pentobarbital in the state’s second botched execution this year.

Ms. Pike, 50, was hospitalized late Wednesday night when she remained conscious after the injections. It was not immediately clear Thursday morning what her condition was, or what had gone wrong.

“It is deeply disturbing to me” that the execution was botched, Mr. Lee said. He said the pause he imposed includes Ms. Pike’s case.

The pause will also delay an execution that had been scheduled for December for a man convicted of murdering a friend. This year, Mr. Lee issued a reprieve for another death-row inmate whose execution had been canceled after medical staff members failed to find a vein.

Mr. Lee said it was not immediately clear who will conduct the independent review. He repeatedly said that the Tennessee Department of Corrections appeared to have followed its procedures.

Ms. Pike was found guilty in 1996 of torturing and murdering a classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in an attack carried out with her boyfriend and a friend. They slashed at Ms. Slemmer with a box cutter, carved a pentagram into her chest and removed a piece of her skull.

Media witnesses recounted the moments before the execution of Christa Pike was halted on Wednesday.Credit...George Walker Iv/Associated Press

Here’s what we’re covering:

Court actions: Ms. Pike had been scheduled to become the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Wednesday’s attempted execution came after a series of legal delays. Read more ›

In her words: Ms. Pike spent the better part of three decades alone on death row, and her victim’s family was in favor of her execution. Ms. Pike expressed remorse in an audio recording shared be her lawyers in response to questions by The New York Times. “I run through this execution every day in my heart,” she said. “Whatever happens on Sept. 30, this will not be my hell anymore.” Read more ›

New York Times, John Roberts and His Island, Jodi Kantor, Oct. 1, 2026. After decades of potlucks and paddle-boarding on Maine’s midcoast, rising anger and protests have left the Supreme Court’s chief justice more isolated than ever.

To many people on this remote stretch of Maine coastline, where every day looks like a fresh painting made of light and water, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., john roberts headshotright, is just “John.”

John, who has spent over 20 summers on Hupper Island, a refuge about 90 miles northeast of Portland with no cars and barely two dozen homes. John, who swaps favors with neighbors and endures jokes about his boating skills from more experienced operators. John, who has spent many mornings on the dock in Port Clyde, the postage-stamp-sized town across the water from the island, nursing a half-caff and a cinnamon bun.

For a long time, the chief justice’s life here was a story of potluck dinners and easy friendships, according to a summer of interviews with more than two dozen residents. Neighbors reveled in his position but kept exchanges with him about it brief or light. At a long-ago annual summer party, he used to participate in touch football, then call dinner to order by proclaiming: “Oyez, oyez, oyez, the lobsters are ready.”

But in recent years, as the Supreme Court has reshaped American life and handed more power to President Trump, a very personal form of anger has been rising here at the chief justice, transforming his getaways.

His summer retreats, long a well-known fact, are now a source of debate. Neighbors have taken to the water to protest him. Calling themselves “kayak-tivists,” they form flotillas facing his island home, holding waterproof signs conveying their disappointment. A local newspaper columnist recommended that people in town give him the finger.

Even some longtime friends who would not dream of joining the kayakers said they have been drawing back socially because of their distress over his decisions, notably the court’s 2024 decision granting the president broad immunity from prosecution.

He is now ringed by far more security than in the past, residents say, adding to the distance.

The chief justice’s narrowing world in Maine shows how the court’s controversial decisions and languishing public trust, along with increasing peril for public officials, have reshaped the lives of the justices, leaving them more isolated than ever before.

In Washington and beyond, ever-present security threats as well as protests are separating and shielding the justices from the people whose lives will be affected by their decisions. They are less likely to spontaneously interact with people who disagree with their work, and their exposure to the texture and mess of everyday life is diminishing. Being just John, even here, has grown much harder.

“From what I see, the barrier runs both ways,” said Mary Anne Mason, a friend and former law partner of the chief justice who lives in Port Clyde. “It’s harder for him to feel comfortable approaching people — and vice versa.”

The protests have split Port Clyde and the nearby villages on this peninsula, as people here have debated how best to convey displeasure with a justice, if at all. Is it better to ensure their famous neighbor hears from those who disagree or to leave him alone, because his job is to be impervious to pressure?

New York Times, Times Exclusive: How a Cornell Student Went From Shame to Seeking Justice, Debra Kamin, Matt Flegenheimer and Amy Julia Harris, Oct. 1, 2026. The woman known as “Jane Doe” was initially embarrassed about what happened at a fraternity party in 2024, but soon concluded: “I was assaulted.”

In October 2024, about a week after a Chi Phi fraternity party at Cornell University, the sophomore who would come to be known as Jane Doe was milling around an online forum about Greek life when she encountered a post that stopped her cold.

“Are Chi Phi brothers Crips or Bloods because I hear they have been doing hell Gang Banging?” someone had written.

“They do drugs and gang r*ped a sophomore,” another user said. “Report them.”

Since the evening that began on Oct. 19, 2024, Jane Doe had recounted the night’s events to her roommates without identifying herself as a rape victim. She had exchanged friendly text messages with men she would later accuse of assault. She had heard uncharitable appraisals of herself from undergraduate gossips.

Then she read the words.

“That’s the first time I had ever heard the narrative change that I wasn’t a whore and that I was assaulted,” Jane Doe told investigators, according to documents from a university review of the accusations obtained by The New York Times.

Those records, which have not been previously reported, help illuminate a case that has horrified the nation and plunged one of its elite institutions into crisis. They shed light on the crucial three-week period between the fraternity party and Jane Doe’s decision to take her story to the campus police, accusing multiple fraternity brothers of sexual assault and alleging that she was coerced into taking ketamine.

The bare facts of what happened after she made her accusations are by now well known: The Tompkins County, N.Y., district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, reviewed her complaint and declined to bring criminal charges, saying there was not sufficient evidence to do so. Jane Doe filed a complaint that prompted at least a dozen hearings by the school’s Title IX committee, which is supposed to ensure compliance with federal civil rights laws.ImageThe exterior of a fraternity house.The Chi Phi fraternity is under scrutiny after a women said that multiple members of the organization sexually assaulted her.Credit...Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times

On Sept. 16, Jane Doe also filed a lawsuit against seven men, accusing them of sexual assault. Lawyers for at least three of the accused men have broadly denied criminal wrongdoing; others have not yet made public statements.

What had not been known publicly, until now, were the detailed filings collected during the private Title IX proceedings — hundreds of pages of emails, text messages, photographs and interviews with Jane Doe, her friends and those she accused.

Taken together, the raw materials sketch Jane Doe’s journey from an unknown sophomore to the embodiment of another searing national dialogue about sexual assault and consent. (Although Jane Doe is identified in the documents, The Times is withholding her name.)The Cornell Rape Investigation: Five TakeawaysOct. 1, 2026

Some women around her, the documents show, were quick to say they viewed the events of the evening of Oct. 19 as sexual assault. But Jane Doe, the interviews and text messages reveal, first appeared to grapple with shame, humiliation and concerns about her reputation before she began to consider herself an assault victim.

“I don’t really remember her ever kind of citing that she had said yes to anything that occurred,” one of her roommates had said of the first hours after Jane Doe returned home the morning of Oct. 20, according to the Title IX files, which were compiled as part of the school’s formal process for investigating allegations of sexual harassment and assault.

On page upon page, the documents make for difficult reading, vacillating between the merry shorthand of college students — asides about the gym, Snapchat, Greek life — and the blunt-force details of an alleged gang assault that the victim appeared to be processing in real time.

From the beginning, the case has seemed to double as a referendum on so many vexing questions about what it means to be a young woman on a college campus, even a campus as nominally esteemed as Cornell’s: Who is believed, and who is coddled? How much good can Title IX do? Has anything changed, really?

For Jane Doe, the records suggest, the first task was to make sense of what had happened to her.

New York Times, Cornell Rape Investigation: Cornell Police Report Omitted Student’s Claim She Was Raped, Hurubie Meko, Oct. 1, 2026. Documents obtained by The New York Times show that the campus police at Cornell University sent a condensed statement to a prosecutor, who then declined to bring charges.

A person walks across a street.The Cornell Police Department summarized hours of interviews with a woman who said she was raped into a six-page document that excluded key details. A local prosecutor did not pursue criminal charges based on that document.Credit...Heather Ainsworth for The New York TimesHurubie Meko

By Updated 8:51 a.m. ET

At a campus police department on Nov. 14, 2024, a Cornell University sophomore detailed how she found herself naked in a fraternity house nearly a month before, with a “ring of men” around her. She was drunk and had been given ketamine, she said. Her phone was across the room.

“There was really no escape,” she said.

The woman spoke for hours with an officer, telling him how what began as a consensual sexual encounter with a man she liked spiraled into a prolonged drug-fueled attack by several men inside the Chi Phi fraternity house.

“I don’t remember the very end of the event where I was raped,” she told them. “I can say with 100 percent confidence I was raped.”

The officer then condensed the interview into a six-page “voluntary statement” written from her perspective, according to documents obtained by The New York Times. The student, after leaving about 20 handwritten corrections on a draft, signed a final version the next day.

While the shorter statement explained that she felt some of that night’s events were a crime, it omitted some of the more forceful and definitive language she used. And it was missing her unequivocal statement that she had been raped. The omission, which for a time seemed to end the case, instead now appears to have only delayed a case that has roiled the campus and renewed the national debate how colleges handle claims of sexual assault.

That condensed statement was shared with the district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, who decided there was not enough evidence to bring criminal charges against the seven men. It looked like the case was over.

Mr. Van Houten’s decision in 2024 largely transpired quietly, through a process that is often shielded from public scrutiny. Cornell, though, conducted its own investigation. That investigation, which The Times has reviewed, concluded months after the woman dropped out of Cornell because of the incident.

Then last month the woman, as Jane Doe, filed a lawsuit against Cornell, the seven men, the fraternity and her sorority. The lawsuit ricocheted online, plunging the university into a crisis and landing Mr. Van Houten’s office in a maelstrom of criticism. Many in the public, including politicians and celebrities, began questioning what law enforcement officials knew about the woman’s allegations two years ago and why a criminal case was never pursued.

The men have not been charged criminally, and during the university investigation the men almost universally denied the accusations against them and said any sex that took place was consensual. Several of the men suggested that Jane Doe had not only initiated the sexual encounters, but in some cases, had done so without asking.

Mr. Van Houten has defended his office’s decision, and said he wants to meet with the woman this week as he considers bringing new evidence to a grand jury.How a Cornell Student Went From Shame to Seeking JusticeOct. 1, 2026

In a nine-page public statement on Monday, Mr. Van Houten said that the statement the woman provided at the time did not “allege she was drugged against her will or gang raped.”

“On the contrary, Jane Doe’s statement described her participation in drug and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual,” he wrote.

But in the documents reviewed by The Times, the Cornell police did not inform Mr. Van Houten’s office that Jane Doe had said she had been raped. It’s unclear what other conversations the police and district attorney’s office had about the case.

In her interview with the police officer, Jane Doe described how Oct. 19, 2024, began with her filing an unrelated police report that her car keys and wallet had been stolen. After discovering one of her credit cards had been used, she said, she canceled all of them.

When members of her sorority heard about the theft, they decided she would no longer be the designated sober sister tasked with keeping an eye on sorority sisters at a bar that evening, she recalled.

She started drinking earlier in the night before heading to the bar, where the sorority was hosting an event, and she was served drinks even though she was underage, she said. She then briefly stopped at another bar before eventually trekking 20 minutes on foot to a fraternity house to meet a guy she was interested in. At around 10:30 p.m. to 11 p.m., she felt she was inebriated, she told the officer.

She spotted the man she was looking for, she said, and they talked, drank and danced. Soon after, she went to a room and had a consensual sexual encounter with the man, and another man she knew from the fraternity, both of whom she thought were her friends, she said.

But as the night progressed, there were more than the two men in the room and she began to feel used, she recalled. She could hear the men talking about taking turns with her, she said.

“I will never know who all touched me,” she told the officer. “I will not know.”ImageA photo shows a fraternity house at night.Jane Doe spoke for hours with a police officer detailing how a consensual encounter with a man quickly spiraled into a prolonged drug-fueled attack inside the Chi Phi fraternity house.Credit...Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times

At one point a group of men walked into the room where she was naked, she said.

“I was horrified, and I squealed and ran” and hid under the covers of a bed, she said. She described how she had to swat one man’s hands away throughout the night as he tried to grope her. The men snorted ketamine off her body, she said. It was the most intoxicated she had ever been in her life, she told the officer.

At around 5:45 a.m., she said wanted to go to bed and told two of the men, “I gotta turn in.” They stopped, she said.

She said she woke up at 10 a.m., then was driven home shortly after.

In the days after Jane Doe provided her statement to the police, officers tried to contact the men she accused, with varying degrees of success, according to the administrative documents.

On Nov. 25, the officer who took Jane Doe’s statement filed a document and said he contacted an investigator in the district attorney’s office to talk.

The officer reported that he was told, based on a review of Jane Doe’s statement, that the prosecutor’s office had decided that “criminal charges would not be pursued in this case.”

“Nothing further at this time,” he wrote.  

New York Times, What New York’s Rape Laws Mean for the Cornell Case, Maria Cramer, Oct. 1, 2026 (print ed.). State law makes it harder to prosecute when victims drank willingly. The prosecutor in the Cornell case said that kept him from charging students accused of sexual assault.

A New York prosecutor has blamed the state’s rape laws in part for his decision not to charge Cornell University students who were accused of sexually assaulting a 20-year-old woman in 2024.

Those laws make it much more difficult to charge people with rape if the accuser chose to become intoxicated, according to prosecutors and advocates for sexual assault victims.

For years, legislators have tried to change the law so that prosecutors could bring sexual assault charges in cases where a person had sex with someone who was clearly incapacitated and unable to control or understand their behavior.

The case of the young woman who said she was sexually assaulted by the students at their fraternity in Ithaca, N.Y., has renewed calls for that legislation to pass.

Here is what to know about the state’s rape laws.What does the law say about voluntary intoxication?

In New York, accusers who chose to drink or take drugs have a high burden of proving they were unable to consent, according to prosecutors.

The way the law is written now, people who were voluntarily intoxicated cannot claim they were mentally incapacitated during an assault, unless they can show they were physically helpless. This means that they had to be unconscious or physically unable to communicate consent at the time of the act.

That definition leaves out people who were semiconscious, slurring their words or unable to stand or walk steadily before they were assaulted, according to prosecutors and supporters of sexual assault victims.

Proposed legislation would allow prosecutors to charge third-degree rape in cases where a person under the influence of drugs or alcohol was unable to control their behavior and was assaulted by someone who should have “reasonably” understood the victim’s condition.

At least 23 other states, including California and Virginia, already have similar laws.How did the law affect the Cornell case?

Matthew Van Houten, the district attorney for Tompkins County, has said that when the woman first reported the assault in 2024, her claims did not support a criminal case.

The woman, who was an undergraduate student, took ketamine and drank tequila and beer; at one point, she consumed 10 drinks in a three-hour period, according to the lawsuit she has filed against the students, the fraternity, her sorority and the university.

The students pressured her into taking more ketamine and gave her so much alcohol she became unable to consent, the lawsuit states. They took her to a room and assaulted her for about seven hours. She tried to hide her naked body under the covers and push them away, but “she felt as if there was no way for her to escape this room full of predatory fraternity men,” the lawsuit says.

Since the lawsuit became public, Mr. Van Houten has been criticized for not charging the men when the woman first came forward in November 2024.

In an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, Mr. Van Houten said that if the woman’s initial report had shown she was unconscious when she was assaulted, “these guys would be in prison right now.”

He said he is reviewing new evidence and will decide whether her case could now be taken to a grand jury.

Mr. Van Houten said if the law had been changed in 2024, it would have been easier to show that the accused students should have known that “the person was incapable of consenting because of their consumption of alcohol or drugs.”

“That’s not the law,” he said.Why hasn’t the law been changed?

Defense lawyers have pushed back hard, saying proposed legislation would make it easier for prosecutors to charge people who had sex with someone they believed had given consent and later claimed they were too intoxicated to know what they were doing.

Some lawyers have described the legislation as “paternalistic” and say it would take away a woman’s agency and ability to stand by a decision to have sex even though she chose to get drunk or take drugs.

Assemblywoman Latrice M. Walker, a Democrat whose district includes the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn and who has opposed changing the statute, has said she is worried about passing laws that would hurt a person’s right to due process.

The New York legislature has failed to pass the bill since 2019, when Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, a Democrat representing the Bronx, introduced the first version.

In June, Carl Heastie, a Bronx Democrat and the speaker of the State Assembly, declined to bring the latest version of the bill to the floor even though it had broad bipartisan support.

But on Wednesday, Mr. Heastie released a statement saying the Assembly had formed a working group to examine the state’s sexual assault statutes and consider “how best to move forward so that New York’s laws are as strong as possible.”

“The allegations being reported out of Cornell University are truly horrifying,” Mr. Heastie said. “We want to do everything we can to ensure victims of sexual assault see justice served.” 

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

 

U.S. 2026 Midterm electionsHopium Chronicles, New 2026 Election Analysis and Advocacy: Betrayed By Trump And His Allies The American People Have Put Their Faith Back In Us -- And Now We Must Deliver, Simon Rosenberg, right, simon rosenberg facebookOct. 1, 2026. First of all -- holy smokes! When called this community answers again and again. We raised $256,000 for our candidates and party committees yesterday, more than twice as much as any other day this cycle.

It was a huge day on what was a very important day in this critical election. Thank you to everyone who stepped up and rallied for those on the frontlines of what has become a year of extraordinarily opportunity for our politics.

That was the main theme of my weekly talk last night - that we are on the cusp of having the election we all wanted to have, and need to keep our heads down and keep working as hard as we can. You can find a video recording and rough transcript of my talk above.

As we discussed last night I think we have four jobs now:

Support our candidates and party committees, and try to win the election by as big a margin as possible. Our goal should be to make this election a clear and unequivocal repudiation of Trump and MAGA, and to do that we must attempt to win both the House and the Senate - something that is within our grasp.

We need to drive the early vote and become early vote champions in our communities, organizations, networks and family. Driving the early vote makes it more likely we win and harder for them to cheat, but it also gives us an opportunity to create a necessary issue contrast between our party that believes in democracy and fights for our rights and freedoms and their party who has betrayed the American creed and wants to take our rights and freedoms away.

We need to work to protect our election and ensure there is a peaceful transfer of power. While there are many ways to do this we recommend three: 1) Volunteer for your state party election protection program 2) Become a state party Democracy Protector election day monitor 3) support our fundraising drive for the state party New Battlefield Project below.

Deliver for the American people, restore our global alliances, and renew our democracy when back in power.

Let’s drill down on all that a bit.

Let’s start with the election. Trump got his worst major independent poll of the cycle this morning. Things just keep getting worse for him and the Rs:

The upper end of the generic ballot has moved into big blue wave territory:

We have a legitimate chance of flipping the Senate, even getting to 52-53 seats:

FiftyPlusOne’s Senate forecast today gives us a 99% chance of flipping the House and a 73% chance of taking back the Senate:

With five weeks to go we are in a place that I frankly never thought we would be. Trump’s been an extraordinary failure in every way imaginable. His corruption is unprecedented and staggering. He is clearly unwell and wildly unfit. People are angry, and feel betrayed and abandoned by the corrupt Epstein class running our country - as they should. They are not just turning on the Republicans they are turning to us, and have put their faith back in us as a party to lead them to a better place.Subscribed

This is very important. It would be wrong to look at the data in front of us or what we hear from our candidates and conclude this election is only about a repudiation and rejection of Trump. Let’s review that data we saw last week from the Strength In Numbers poll:

In my talk last night I tried to articulate what I am hearing from our candidates and will try to capture it here too for I think it is very important. I’ve been involved in some fashion or another in every election since 1992. There is something happening out there this year that this profound, and particular to this election, to this moment. Voters are aware of the gravity of the problems we now face; how much Trump has betrayed and abandoned them; and are desperate for strong and admirable leaders to lead them out of this mess and restore dignity and a sense of purpose to our nation once again. I don’t think this is like any other election I’ve ever been part of for it simply isn’t like anything any of us - or this nation - has ever experienced before.

For no set of Americans in our history have ever been betrayed by their leaders as Trump and his allies have betrayed all of us.

And this collective sense of the gravity of the moment is causing our candidates to elevate, become bigger, and ever more effective champions of people and communities who feel abandoned and betrayed. They have become aware in their conversations with voters that people see this as no ordinary time, and are desperate for proven servant leaders, ones they can trust, ones they can touch and feel, ones who have been there for them before and are trusted members of their communities, to win these elections and begin to put things right.

In our interviews you’ve met these servant leaders, people of proven character, firefighters, union leaders, teachers, professors, ministers, doctors, navy helicopter pilots, seminarians, prosecutors, admirals, generals, Olympians, television anchors, well known and respected local elected leaders. In this time of enormous challenge and uncertainty voters are not looking for radical change, they are looking for something familiar, something tried, trusted, and true, and something far, far better than what they have now.

Which is why we are on the verge of having the election we all want to have. For voters like the Democrats they are seeing all across the country, and are once again putting their faith back in us to lead us to a better place. Our job now is not to let them down; to be strong enough to win this election by as big a margin as possible; to ensure there is a peaceful transfer of power in January; and then fight with everything we got to make things better for them and this battered nation.

So often when I finish one of my interviews with a candidate or party leader I think “wow, that was amazing. What a candidate, what a leader. I’m grateful they’ve decided to run. ” I know many of you feel that way too. And I think what we are feeling in that moment is this dynamic I am describing - of admirable people stepping up for their community in a time of crisis, who feel the weight of the moment on their shoulders, and are rising to meet the moment and lead their communities and neighbors to a better place. And in this process I think we are witnessing the birth of a new politics for our party and our nation, of servant-leaders, lifted up by love of country and love of neighbor, who are in the process of becoming ferocious and determined warriors for the common good and who will not stop fighting until they put things right……

That’s why we’ve been raising so much money these past few weeks and over the cycle. For we have been inspired by the leaders we’ve met, and have put our trust in them, as voters are doing with Democrats all over the country right now. Now we need to finish the job, my friends, and get these remarkable, admirable leaders elected all across the country; ensure there is a free and fair election and a peaceful transfer of power; and then go do the most important of all- go to work, tirelessly, for the American people and begin the arduous process of putting things right……

That’s some of what we talked about last night fellow patriots. Watch the video. Share it and this post with others. Hit like so more will see it. And yes, it that time, now. Time to….Go Kick These Corrupt Traitors’ Asses, Win The Midterms, And Prepare For The Fuckery To Come - For It Is Coming

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

  • Become an Early Vote Champion in your networks, communities, and organizations.
  • Sign up to become a Democracy Protector too. Our next training is this Wednesday, Oct 7th at 10pm ET.
  • Email photos of your electoral work or physical act of voting to community@hopiumchronicles.com or via links on our daily chat. We want to start showcasing them here on Hopium. 

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Ride the Wave, Baby! William Kristol, right, william bill kristol imdbOct. 1, 2026. Whoa. It’s not just that a new Quinnipiac poll shows only 34 percent of voters approving of Donald Trump’s job performance, with 61 percent disapproving. It’s that Quinnipiac has Democrats leading by 12 points on the generic congressional ballot. This is up from 7 points in Quinnipiac’s survey two months ago.

bulwark logo big shipYes, this poll is something of an outlier. The FiftyPlusOne polling aggregator shows “only” about an 8-point generic ballot lead for the Democrats. But even that’s a ten point swing from 2024, when Republicans won the national vote for the House by 2.6 points. A 10-point swing would be a wave that puts lots of districts and states in play. A 14-point swing, which is what Quinnipiac implies, would be a tsunami.

And I’ll note that Quinnipiac has been on the money before. Their poll in late September 2024 had Trump leading Kamala Harris by 48 percent to 47 percent. I remember seeing those numbers and hoping against hope that they were wrong, that surely Harris had at least a narrow lead. But they were right.

Just as notable as the generic ballot in Quinnipiac’s poll this week was what it found about voters’ views on how our government should deal with the challenge of artificial intelligence. The results were, to say the least, lopsided.

“Seventy-one percent of voters say they are more likely to vote for a political candidate who supports stricter guardrails for AI development,” compared to 16 percent who preferred a candidate who supports expanding AI development. Even Republican voters preferred stricter guardrails, by 52 percent 29 percent.

What’s more, 79 percent of respondents said that with respect to AI, they think safety is more important than staying at the forefront of innovation. Only 15 percent thought the opposite. Again, even Republicans prioritized safety over innovation, by 62 percent to 32 percent.

Voters seem to have noticed that the Trump administration doesn’t agree with them. Only 25 percent support the president’s handling of the issue, while 58 percent disapprove. And that disapproval has started to spill over to his party. Forty-two percent now prefer the Democratic party on AI, while 29 percent prefer the Republican party. Only three weeks ago, by contrast, a New York Times/Siena poll found basically no gap between the two parties on the issue.

I’ll add that this survey was in the field over the weekend, before Tuesday’s White House lunch for the tech oligarchs. There Trump confirmed he was going to do nothing to pause or safeguard or regulate developments in artificial intelligence.

But Trump did issue an executive order rebranding “Artificial Intelligence” as “Super Intelligence.” The order celebrated the fact that these technologies are “transformative” and will allow us to do “what was previously impossible.” But aren’t “transformative” technologies that allow the “previously impossible” the kind of thing that requires some oversight by government, and some guardrails that depend on more than the goodwill of tech oligarchs?

Apparently not. Indeed, it turns out that the “White House Accord on Super Intelligence” released after the lunch of the AI oligarchs was drafted by . . . the AI oligarchs. As Semafor reports:

The idea for what became President Donald Trump’s Tuesday pact with the AI industry came from a conversation between Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and House Speaker Mike Johnson at last week’s state dinner . . .

Zuckerberg spoke to Johnson—whom he was seated next to at the dinner for Chinese leader Xi Jinping—about regulatory concerns around AI . . . The Meta CEO then talked to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about crafting a set of principles that tech executives could use at their next meeting with Trump . . .

Zuckerberg then circulated a draft ahead of Tuesday’s meeting between Trump and AI executives. Huang played a role gathering support for it among the administration’s guests . . . Eventually Trump himself released the document as a “White House Accord on Super Intelligence,” outlining broad principles for self-regulation.

That story apparently comes from a single source, so it’s possible there’s more to it than that—but it certainly looks like the “White House” executive order was drafted by the AI firms. Trump merely signed it.

It was nice of Trump to throw the glitzy lunch for the AI guys and sign off on their no-safeguards policy. It should make it even easier for Democrats to say for the next month that Trump and his party are bought and paid for big AI.

Maybe the tsunami Quinnipiac forecasts will turn out to be about right.

AROUND THE BULWARK

  • WATCH: A Suspected Terror Plot Just Took a Much More Alarming Turn… Former CIA officer MARC POLYMEROPOULOS and national security reporter MICHAEL WEISS take on the attempted hijacking of a Tel Aviv–bound flight, a suspected plot targeting an air base in Britain, and the troubling signs that Iran may be taking its fight abroad.
  • bulwark logo big shipA Big Warning Sign for Trump’s GOP… On Command Post, SEN. ELISSA SLOTKIN joins MARK HERTLING and BEN PARKER to share what she learned from Hungary and Poland about post-Trump America.
  • How Some TOTAL Unknowns Could F*ck Up Republicans’ Midterms… Libertarian candidates are polling surprisingly well. In close races, a few points could be all Democrats need, reports LAUREN EGAN in The Opposition.
  • Pete Hegseth’s Speech Was a Hyper-Macho Freak Show… On Bulwark Takes, SAM STEIN and BEN PARKER give their takes on Pete Hegseth’s bizarre State of the Force address, from his “no fatties, no weirdos” vision for the military to his fixation on testosterone, wokeness, and American universities.
  • Maria Comella and The Trio: Holy Schmitt, That Was Bad… The Trio comes together on the daily pod for the first time to give a little taste of the MAGA-land news Sam, Will, and Tim are covering for The Bulwark.
  • Skittish Republicans Discover That ICE Is Bad—for Their Campaigns… Some endangered incumbents are trying to outrun the electoral consequences of Trump’s immigration agenda, writes ADRIAN CARRASQUILLO in Huddled Masses.

Quick Hits

TO BOMB OR NOT TO BOMB: President Donald Trump yesterday reiterated his threat to “blow up” Iran, telling reporters that “we have to make that decision: We blow them up or make a deal.” That followed the president’s comments last week at the United Nations: “Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before . . . or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?”

Over the weekend, the White House rejected a proposal from Iran that would have reestablished the conditions of this summer’s Memorandum of Understanding, with Iran at least partly reopening the Strait of Hormuz and promising to resume nuclear talks in exchange for the United States lifting its blockade. Trump, possibly responding to one of the major critiques Iran hawks made of the initial MOU, now seems to be pushing for concrete nuclear commitments as part of the ceasefire deal, rather than agreeing to haggle over them later.

A U.S. official also told The Bulwark this week that America is “skeptical of Iran’s promises after they broke the last MOU by firing on commercial vessels . . . so the U.S. needs assurances this time that Iran is serious and it’s not just them trying to get out of the tough situation they are in.” The official added that Trump would still be willing to grant sanctions relief and the release of frozen Iranian funds in exchange for concrete progress on Iran’s nuclear program.

Much of Iran’s nuclear program remains buried under rubble and largely inaccessible to the Iranian government thanks to U.S. airstrikes in June 2025.

NO UGGOS ALLOWED: These are going to be an annual thing, we guess. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave another chest-thumping speech in front of a giant American flag yesterday about his determination to build America the hottest, sexiest, sweatiest military the world has ever known. Here’s the WSJ:

Hegseth said he had eliminated “silly PowerPoint trainings” and “silly drag queen shows.” He touted getting rid of diversity quotas, gender pronouns and “identity months.” He also reprised a refrain from his speech last year: “No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors.”

“The ideological clowns are out,” he added. “The patriotic cowboys are in, with testosterone testing on top,” Hegseth said, referring to his recent mandate for male servicemembers over 30 to undergo annual screening for testosterone deficiency.

Hegseth’s tone throughout was combative, and he attacked the press in the opening minutes of the address. He accused the media of “treason,” denying news reports of munitions shortages and blamed reporters for revealing U.S. base locations to “the enemy.”

Hegseth also announced that Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich will lead a Pentagon team called “Project Meridian” on the future of warfare. Isn’t it nice to know we’re in good hands?

A BOTCHED EXECUTION: Christa Pike, a Tennessee woman who has been on death row for decades after brutally murdering a classmate at the age of 18 in 1995, was supposed to be executed last night after the Supreme Court declined to intervene on her behalf. But the state botched the job: After two doses of lethal pentobarbital, Pike was still breathing with a beating heart. Eventually, the state suspended the execution, and Pike was taken to a nearby hospital for medical care. The New York Times has the strange story:

It was not immediately clear what went wrong with the administration of the drugs, or what Ms. Pike’s medical condition was. In a statement late Wednesday, her lawyers said that she was at a nearby hospital but that they did not know her condition. Tennessee officials confirmed to a federal judge late Wednesday that Ms. Pike was receiving medical care.

“This event is the worst we’ve seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era,” said Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. “There is no precedent.” . . .

Ms. Pike’s lawyers had argued the procedure could be torturous for her because she has small veins, a history of sexual trauma and other medical conditions.

“We take no pleasure in being right, but the concerns raised by Ms. Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy,” they said in a joint statement after the execution attempt.

 

texas mapNew York Times, Should Democrats Spend in Deep-Red Texas? A Battle Could Echo in 2028, Reid J. Epstein, Oct. 1, 2026. Allies of Gina Hinojosa want a Democratic group to support her bid for Texas governor — putting pressure on its chairman, Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, who is weighing a run for president.

As polls suggest that Gina Hinojosa, a Democrat, is competitive in her campaign to become the first Latina governor of the usually reliably Republican state of Texas, a growing number of prominent Latino officials are angry that she is not getting more help from the party.

Now there are veiled threats that if the Democratic Governors Association fails to invest in her bid, some Latino leaders could withhold their support from the group’s chairman, Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, should he, as expected, run for president in 2028.

“We are asking you to invest in a competitive race with the largest Latino electorate in the country following an election cycle where Republicans made alarming inroads with Latinos,” read a letter more than 70 Latino officials sent Wednesday to Mr. Beshear at the D.G.A.

Ms. Hinojosa’s allies have recruited a cadre of officials, including some from the early-voting states of Nevada and New Mexico, to push Mr. Beshear to direct the group to spend $10 million on her campaign against Gov. Greg Abbott, the incumbent Republican who is seeking a fourth term.

“All Democrats would do better when and if we help Gina Hinojosa win Texas,” said one of the Democrats who signed the letter, Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona, who like Mr. Beshear is considering a 2028 run. “No matter who you are, no matter if you’re running for president, you want Gina Hinojosa to be the governor of Texas.”

Last week, the D.G.A. allocated $650,000 to help the Democratic candidate for governor in Alaska. Texas has been a back-burner race for the D.G.A., which has so far invested in backing Democratic candidates in Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, and Wisconsin. It has not yet spent or directed money on advertising in Texas.

“Gina Hinojosa is a great candidate and running a great campaign,” Mr. Beshear said in a statement to The New York Times on Wednesday. “The D.G.A. is currently investing by paying expenses and providing staff, with more to come. My goal as chair of the D.G.A. this year is to win as many races as we can and that’s exactly what we’re doing by going on offense and expanding the map.”

When asked about Ms. Hinojosa’s race in an interview published last week by USA Today, Mr. Beshear said he would not allow his own presidential aspirations to color how he directs D.G.A. resources this year.

Association.Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

“I, as the DGA chair, can’t be motivated by pleasing or not pleasing anyone when it comes to ’28,” Mr. Beshear said. “I made a commitment to win as many races as I can in ’26.”

The pleas for more aid come as polls show Ms. Hinojosa competitive with Mr. Abbott, whose campaign has spent $68 million in advertising so far, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm, while she has spent just $8.7 million.

Mr. Beshear’s PAC, In This Together, sent $25,000 to Ms. Hinojosa’s campaign and he has been making fund-raising calls to donors on her behalf, a D.G.A. official said. Mr. Beshear and Ms. Hinojosa spoke by phone on Tuesday, according to two people briefed on the exchange.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, the nation’s lone sitting Latina governor, has been phoning donors to help Ms. Hinojosa raise money, she said. She said she has also worked with Mr. Beshear to direct resources to Hispanic communities. “We should all be focused on supporting Gina,” said Ms. Lujan Grisham, whose state will be early in the 2028 primary calendar.

The fund-raising disparity in Texas illustrates a longstanding problem in Democratic politics: Their donors are far more inclined to invest in candidates running for Congress or president than they are in those running for state office.

“It is extremely challenging for us to get national donors to pay attention to governor’s races outside of their states,” said Peter O’Keefe, a former Democratic Governors Association treasurer who remains involved in the group’s fund-raising.

Texas has been a reliably Republican state for decades. President Trump won it by 14 points in 2024. The state’s last Democratic governor was Ann Richards, who lost her 1994 re-election bid to George W. Bush.

PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: Hispanics Are Furious At Trump So He Is Coming To Texas To Rub Their Noses In It, Jason Easley, right, Oct. 1, 2026. jason easleyHispanics Are Furious At Trump So He Is Coming To Texas To Rub Their Noses In ItTexas Hispanics feel betrayed and angry at Trump for his economic disaster and immigration deportations, so Trump is coming to the state to rub their noses in it.

The Republican theory of the 2026 midterm election was based on the idea that Hispanic voters who supported Trump in 2024 made a permanent shift rightward and could be used to build a wave-proof gerrymandered majority to keep the House with the GOP.

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That was the entire idea behind Texas Republicans redrawing their congressional districts to net them more House seats, but even texas mapbefore the ink was dry on the new map, signs showed Republicans had gotten it totally wrong.

Trump immediately did everything that he could to alienate the Hispanic voters who supported him in Texas, and they are seething with rage at the president.

The New York Times talked to Hispanic voters in Texas and found a grim scene for Republicans:

In more than two dozen interviews across the region in recent weeks, Hispanic voters said they were furious over the president’s approach to immigration and the economy — the very problems they had counted on him to fix.

There is no bigger case study in how badly Democrats screwed up the 2024 election than Hispanic voters. Hispanic Democrats were warning the party that their voters, especially in Texas, were upset and feeling ignored, but the Democratic consultant class was more worried about getting rid of Biden and the money that they could make off of Democratic donors with a new candidate; the vast majority of your $5 donations to Kamala Harris went to four big Democratic consulting firms in 2024, rather than listening to the voters.

Hispanics in Texas were like other groups of voters who cast ballots for Trump because they were upset about inflation, felt neglected by the Democratic Party, and believed Trump’s promises.

The problem is that Hispanic voters, like many others, didn’t hear the fine print on Trump’s promises.

Trump always talked about deporting criminals, but he never specified until after he won the election that, to him, criminal immigrants were anyone in the country illegally. However, illegal immigration is a civil offense. When attendees at the 2024 convention held up mass deportation signs, that was a giveaway, and Trump spent his entire campaign praising tariffs.

Republicans are in free fall. Trump has few places to go. The president is coming to Texas.

One Hispanic woman in Texas told The Times that after Trump deported her brother, “I started to hate,” she said. “I started holding resentment and grudges, especially from those people that I rallied with for Trump.”

Trump is going to be holding a rally in Texas where he will tout his mass deportations and gaslight about the economy, which is the last thing that angry Hispanic voters in the state want to hear.

Donald Trump is coming to apologize to the voters that he betrayed. Trump isn’t going to make amends. The president is going to rub the noses of Texas Hispanic voters in his betrayal.

His presence won’t help Republicans in Texas. It is almost certain to hurt.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

Former Olympian David Hearn, center, as defended by attorney Norman Eisen, right, against false charges brought by the Trump Administration on a claim he vandalized the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool's new liner that was actually damaged by the Trump Administration's own contractor (New York Times photo).

Former Olympian David Hearn, center, as defended by attorney Norman Eisen, right, against false charges brought by the Trump Administration on a claim he vandalized the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool's new liner that was actually damaged by the Trump Administration's own contractor (New York Times photo).

PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: After Reflecting Pool Humiliation, Rep. Jamie Raskin Gives DOJ Hot Tip On Felon Orange Vandal Desecrating DC, Jason Easley, Oct. 1, 2026. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) responded to the judge barring the Trump DOJ from charging an Olympian in the Reflecting Pool case by telling the DOJ about a felon vandalizing the Kennedy Center.

The Trump administration’s DOJ suffered another humiliating defeat when a judge barred the government from bringing a case against an Olympian who the Trump administration accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

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Judge Todd Edelman wrote that Davey Hearn, "faces the unique possibility that the government will revive this case — one that it has already announced to be meritless — based on political pressure brought by the President of the United States upon his subordinate officers.”

The judge continued, “The government has no right to retain the ability to compound the errors it has already made, or even to threaten to do so, at Mr. Hearn’s expense.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin, the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, responded to the judge’s ruling on X:

Judge Edelman just permanently (“with prejudice”) dismissed the farcical charges brought against my wonderful constituent Davey Hearn.

As Judge Edelman pointed out, there was “no crime” so there’s no reason to hold the case up for further counterfeit prosecutions. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro never had any evidence against Davey, a three-time Olympian who has taught generations of my constituents canoeing, kayaking and how not to spend $15 million of taxpayer money turning your swimming pool into an algae farm.

Trump’s prosecutorial deflecting pool picked Davey as a scapegoat for Trump's Mar-a-Lago pool guy’s “rushed and botched” installation job of a new Royal hue in America’s Reflecting Pool, now known throughout the DMV as the "Strait of Warm Ooze."

So many Marylanders, led by Rockville Councilmember Adam Van Grack, stood strong with Davey as he fought these murky, trumped-up bogus charges. Now America celebrates a victory for justice and the rule of law.

Meantime, if Detectives Pirro and Blanche are still searching for felon vandals in the Nation’s Capital, I’ve got great leads on who illegally bulldozed the East Wing of the White House and who has been desecrating the Kennedy Center with deranged narcissistic graffiti.

If federal law enforcement were interested in stopping vandalism of monuments in Washington, they would begin with the guy who tore down the East Wing of the White House, destroyed the Reflecting Pool, and scribbled his name all over the Kennedy Center.

The real vandal has always been sitting in the Oval Office, seemingly napping most of the time.

Trump was willing to send an innocent person to jail to cover up his Reflecting Pool botch.

The corruption is endless, and the legal system is the only guardrail that has been effective in Trump’s second administration. 

Hope For America, Opinion: Trump’s incoherent rambling has reached a DISTURBING new low, Heather Delaney Reese, right, helen delaney reese djtSept. 30, 2026. At 1:39 this afternoon, after a nearly 40-minute delay and an unexplained commotion outside the doors, Donald Trump finally walked into the East Room of the White House. The guests raised their phones and cheered. They had come to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, but for the first 23 minutes, they mostly listened to the president talk about himself.

He invited them to see his ballroom floor, repeated praise from Xi Jinping, and compared himself to George Washington. Building monuments to himself, he said, was “really like relaxation.” Then he told a room filled mostly with Hispanic people that “only a Hispanic could survive that fall” from the edge of his construction site. The man who was supposed to be honoring them made a racist joke at their expense. He also announced that you are not allowed to talk about women’s beauty, then did exactly that to Rachel Campos-Duffy and her sister. He said it with a smirk. He wanted everyone to know that the rules did not apply to him.

The consequences of that example travel far beyond the White House. Our children and grandchildren are watching powerful people treat women this way without repercussions. Meanwhile, outside that carefully selected room, Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar had already told Trump that the same Hispanics who helped him reach the White House now feel betrayed. He promised raids against the worst criminals, but people without criminal records have been swept up too. I sat watching and taking notes, missing who I was before Trump and imagining a country with a leader focused on making our lives better. It brought me back to junior high, covering a talk about the First Gulf War for the school newspaper. A protest walkout was announced, and I was frightened to attend, even as a student reporter. A teacher helped me understand that sometimes responsibility to others requires pushing through fear and following your conscience. He told me to remember that feeling, write about it, and never let it go.

I think about that lesson now, when so many people feel overwhelmed and want to walk away. We are still the people who once believed we could change the world. We can see what is happening, and every time we speak out, we take a stand against it. There are people preparing for accountability, too. Robert Garcia said the senior leadership of the House Oversight Committee had spent the last two days “planning out the future of our investigations and hearings.” A Democratic-controlled Congress could make the remainder of Trump’s presidency look very different. On my daily walks, I see children playing on the beach and a country still filled with promise, people of different backgrounds who came together to form “a more perfect union.” That is what we are fighting for. The day accountability starts can and will come. We have to vote, and then we have to keep participating. Americans are not quitters, and we are not going to start now.

See the full story in the video. 

New York Times, Kristi Noem Files for Divorce After 34 Years of Marriage, Michael Levenson, Oct.1, 2026 (print ed.). Ms. Noem, a former homeland security secretary and governor of South Dakota, filed court papers there seeking to end her marriage to Bryon Noem, an insurance salesman.

Kristi Noem, the former South Dakota governor whom President Trump fired as homeland security secretary in March, has filed for divorce from her husband, Bryon Noem, after 34 years of marriage, according to court records.

Ms. Noem claimed “for settlement purposes only” that “irreconcilable differences” were to blame for the dissolution of the marriage, according to a complaint for divorce filed in Hamlin County, S.D., where she and Mr. Noem live in the small town of Castlewood.

The document was signed by Ms. Noem’s lawyer on April 6 but was not filed with the court until Monday.

“Kristi Noem has filed for the dissolution of her marriage to Bryon Noem,” her lawyer, Michael K. Sabers, said in a statement. “She has great faith in the South Dakota judicial system and will reserve any further comments for the legal process.”

Mr. Noem’s lawyer, Timothy G. Bottum, said in a statement on Wednesday that Mr. Noem was “saddened that the marriage is ending and hopes for a private and amicable resolution.”

“If court proceedings become necessary, Bryon will welcome the opportunity to truthfully share his perspective,” the statement said. “Bryon’s priority is to protect the family and move forward as loving parents and grandparents.”

Ms. Noem, 54, and Mr. Noem, 56, were high school sweethearts who got engaged on the Fourth of July in 1991. They were married less than a year later, on May 23, 1992, in Watertown, S.D., where Ms. Noem was born. They have three adult children.

Mr. Noem, an insurance salesman, received intense public scrutiny in late March when The Daily Mail published what it said were images of him wearing what appeared to be large inflated balloons under a spandex shirt.

Ms. Noem said in a statement at the time that she was “devastated” by the images and that “the family was blindsided by this.” Mr. Noem declined to comment in March, responding in a text to a New York Times reporter: “I will at some point. Today is not the day. I appreciate your heart.”While the images provoked online mockery, they touched off a more sympathetic reaction in Castlewood, where some residents said they felt sorry for Mr. Noem.

Ms. Noem’s personal life was also the focus of speculation and rumor in South Dakota and Washington.

On March 4, the day before Ms. Noem was fired as homeland security secretary, a Democratic member of Congress asked her at a hearing on Capitol Hill whether she had had sexual relations with her lieutenant, Corey Lewandowski. Responding under oath, Ms. Noem called the question “tabloid garbage.” But she did not say no. Mr. Noem accompanied Ms. Noem to the hearing.

Mr. Trump announced in November 2024 that he was selecting Ms. Noem to lead the Department of Homeland Security, a position that put her in charge of the administration’s aggressive crackdown on immigration and its large-scale deportation operation. The department includes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Mr. Trump fired Ms. Noem in March, making her the first cabinet official ousted in his second term.

The immediate catalyst for her firing appeared to be her answers during two congressional hearings, particularly her statements asserting that Mr. Trump had approved of tens of millions of dollars in government ads in which Ms. Noem was prominently featured riding on horseback in chaps and a cowboy hat. Mr. Trump had denied that he was involved, telling Reuters in March, “I never knew anything about it.”

Ms. Noem had presided over other controversies during her tenure.

In January, federal immigration agents fatally shot two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, during vigorous protests of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis. As bystander videos of the shootings caused a national outcry, Ms. Noem responded by accusing Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti of domestic terrorism.

When Mr. Trump announced that he was firing Ms. Noem and replacing her with Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, he said in a social media post that she had “served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results,” particularly on the border.

He also announced a new role for her: the previously nonexistent post of special envoy for the Shield of the Americas, which he said would be a new security initiative for the Western Hemisphere.

More On Artificial Intelligence

New York Times, Women Can Now Assess Their Breast Cancer Risk With the Help of A.I., Roni Caryn Rabin, Oct. 1, 2026. Clairity Breast, an A.I. tool that can predict five-year risk of developing breast cancer, is rolling out nationwide. Here’s what experts want you to know.

Starting Thursday, women across the United States will be able to find out their risk of developing breast cancer in the near future with the help of an A.I. tool that examines a single recent mammogram.

Everlywell, a digital health company, announced it would now offer patients nationwide access to Clairity Breast, an A.I. tool approved by the Food and Drug Administration last year to predict a woman’s five-year risk of breast cancer based on imaging. The test, which was previously available only at select locations in Massachusetts and Colorado, will cost $249. It is not covered by insurance.

Doctors use mammograms to detect the presence of cancer, sometimes with the help of A.I. models that can read the images. But Clairity’s software uses the scans for a different purpose: predicting the risk of developing cancer and providing a probability score that reports the patient’s future risk in the form of a percentage, from zero to 100.

That score, which doctors should consider along with other clinical information like family and patient medical history and other risk factors, could aid in efforts to detect cancers earlier, when they are more treatable and more likely to have better outcomes, said Dr. Eleonora Teplinsky, head of breast and gynecologic medical oncology at Valley Health System in Paramus, N.J.

The broader availability of a technology that can help women understand their breast cancer risk and talk to their doctors about it “has the potential to be practice-changing for us,” said Dr. Teplinsky, who is not involved with the work.

“We’re seeing younger and younger women with breast cancer, many of them diagnosed before they would even have started screening mammography at age 40,” she said.

Most have no telltale signs — like a strong family history of breast cancer — that would indicate higher-than-average risk. In fact, a majority of breast cancers occur in women with no family history of the illness.

“For so many women, it comes out of nowhere,” said Dr. Connie Lehman, founder and chief executive of Clairity, whose research led to the development of the new technology. “We’re trying to identify women at risk for these sporadic breast cancers, and to have fewer women fall through the cracks.”

But there are other factors to consider, including that the technology could lead to unnecessary alarm or medical interventions for people who ultimately won’t develop cancer. Here's what to know.

How does the test work?

The model detects subtle imaging patterns that are correlated with future cancer development, even in mammograms that appear normal to the human eye. It was developed and trained on hundreds of thousands of mammograms from women around the world, Dr. Lehman said, and its results have been validated in further testing since it was authorized.

Anyone who has had a routine standard screening mammogram within the past 12 months will be able to request the test on the Everlywell website. Typically, mammograms start at 40, though guidelines issued this year introduced A.I.-driven risk assessments at the age of 35 as an option for gauging the disease risk earlier. This change could lead more women to get mammograms at younger ages.

Everlywell will retrieve a patient’s image from the mammography center and then feed it into Clairity’s platform, which produces a digital report on the patient’s risk. The report classifies patients as at average, intermediate or high risk of developing breast cancer over the next five years. It does not detect cancer itself.

Someone with a score below 1.7 percent — meaning less than a 1.7 in 100 chance of developing breast cancer in the next five years — is considered to be at average risk. Patients with a score between 1.7 percent and 3 percent are considered at intermediate elevated risk; those with a score of 3 percent or more are at high risk. (Women who are undergoing cancer treatment or who have genetic mutations that put them at high risk of breast cancer are not eligible.)

More On Global Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets 

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: A Globalist Comeback?, Paul Krugman, right, paul krugmanOct. 1, 2026. Hints of a business break with MAGA.On September 28th Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, one of the most prominent, most successful financial figures in the United States, published an article in the Wall Street Journal titled, “The Hell with Trump, Let’s Go Back to Globalism.”

Okay, that’s a lie. That wasn’t what the article was titled, but it was, in effect, what it said.

And it was a very interesting message to be coming at this moment in time. I think Dimon’s op-ed can be viewed as a harbinger of a big shift in the business community’s political positions and its attitudes that may be coming in the very near future — in effect a bet that Trump and MAGA in general are going to be in the rearview mirror, not too far from now.

Now, a word about Dimon. He’s an extraordinarily successful financial leader. He navigated the 2008 financial crisis and aftermath better than almost anyone else in Wall Street. He had the good sense to limit JP Morgan’s exposure to the practices that helped to create that financial crisis.

He is also a very, very smart political operator. He has had a talent for not making enemies, for staying at least on decent relationships with administrations from both parties, which is no mean feat in 21st century America. He certainly did not join the cavalcade of business leaders rushing to prostrate themselves at Trump’s feet after the 2024 election, and yet he was subtle enough about his restraint to not get put on Trump’s enemies list. So,you know, his political judgment should be trusted.

His economic judgment, all right, being a great businessman is not at all the same thing as being a great economist. And there’s no particular reason to think that he is always right about economic affairs. But that is, in a way, mostly beside the point.

So what did Dimon call for? Well, he basically said, we need to repair theWestern alliance. We need to bring the Western world, the advanced democracies, above all the United States and Europe, back together in part as a way to stand up against the threat of a rising China. And his proposal for how to do that was to negotiate a free trade agreement between the United States and the European Union.

That’s quite something. That’s a very un-MAGA position to take. You want to bear in mind that, first of all, we’re currently under a government of people who do not at all believe in the virtues of free trade. In fact, are extremely hostile to globalism. Certainly don’t believe in binding international agreements. Maybe they want agreements that bind other countries, but not them.

And they are also not of the mind that we have a lot of shared values with the democratic governments of Europe. The MAGA position, if anything, is that they like the anti-democratic forces in Europe. J.D. Vance essentially campaigned for Viktor Orban in Hungary. Trump officials have been quite clear that they have sympathy for the AfD in Germany. So if we have common values with some Europeans, the Europeans with whom they have common values are neo-Nazis. And Trump’s de facto support for Putin in his invasion of Ukraine has been alarmingly clear over the past two years.

What we’re seeing here is Jamie Dimon basically saying that I don’t care about any of that. I don’t believe that you people are going to be in charge. And I think that we can go back to trying to rebuild bridges to Western Europe.

Now, it’s kind of interesting the way he phrases it. He puts a lot of it in terms that I suspect are intended to appeal to economic conservatives in the United States who are not MAGA types. He sells his proposal in part as an incentive for Europe to conduct pro-business, pro-economic reforms. He cites the Draghi report on European Competitiveness, which has been very influential in Europe. And points to him for even knowing about it! There are probably not a lot of people in the United States who have read the Draghi Report, absorbed its lessons.

I myself have read it. I have had some criticisms of some of the analysis in the Draghi Report, but the reforms that Draghi proposes, which have a lot to do with completing the European internal market, making the capital markets in Europe more flexible and responsive and so on, are very much in the right direction. So this is a good thing. And I’m glad to see someone in the United States, someone prominent, actually taking European affairs seriously and wanting the Europeans to do things that will improve their own position.

Dimon is almost surely overstating how important a free trade agreement with the United States could be. The reality is that the obstacles to European reform are internal — as are the obstacles to all the reforms we should be making here. Politics is real on both sides of the Atlantic.

And we are not as important to Europe — or they to us — as a lot of people imagine. The fact of the matter is that Europe only exports around 3% of what it produces to the US. And we were pretty close to free trade with Europe until Trump II came along. We had our average tariffs of only something on the order of 2% on European products. So it’s not as if he’s actually offering a tremendous benefit to Europe, something that would radically dislocate their internal politics and move them in a positive direction.

But, all right, it’s a good proposal. And I think that, as I understand it, Dimon believes that the process of negotiating towards a free trade agreement would in itself help to improve politics. That it would be a signal that the ultra-nationalist, anti-democratic, often anti-European policies of theTrump era are behind us.

So he’s looking forward to the day when we can start to try to repair some of the immense damage that has been done to our international relations during the Trump years.

Dimon is a smart political operator. I’m reasonably sure he would not have written this op-ed if the polls weren’t pointing towards a Democratic blowout. And of course, he could be wrong in believing that that’s going to happen, as we all could. But I’m sure that he is looking at the situation and envisaging a Democratic Congress — almost surely the House and quite likely the Senate — after the November election.

And a reasonable president, not necessarily a Democrat, but most likely, but in any case a reasonable president after Trump has gone from the scene.And a president and Congress that would be interested in trying to rebuild the Western alliance. Because ultimately, although Dimon’s proposal is economic in the narrow sense, it’s really political. It’s about rebuilding an alliance.

That won’t be easy. The fact of the matter is that the United States did just casually rip up solemnly signed trade agreements. Almost everything that Trump has done on tariffs is a violation of agreements made over several generations. Also, it’s not just Trump. The American people elected Trump twice, and the rest of the world is not going to forget that.

But free trade agreements can be a way of not just of enhancing trade, which is important, but maybe not as important as economists would like to think. But they can also be a way of binding countries closer together. They can be a gesture of alliance. And Diamond obviously thinks that this is possible, or at least thinks that it might be possible — close enough to being something that would really be on the table, that it’s worth making a case for it, and that it’s worth positioning himself and his institution for a post-MAGA era. And as Isaid, Diamond is a smart guy with a very, very good political judgment.

So that op-ed was one of the most encouraging things I’ve seen in months.

On that happy note, take care.

New York Times, Trump’s Threat to Ban Diesel Exports Sets Off Global Alarms, Lisa Friedman and River Akira Davis, Oct. 1, 2026. A reduction in refineries has already driven the price of diesel to record highs, threatening economies. An U.S. export ban would be “tremendous shock and blow.”

The Iran war has sent diesel prices soaring around the world, straining national budgets, adding costs to businesses and snarling supply chains from farms to ports.

Now President Trump is threatening to ban or restrict the export of diesel from the United States, which is the top supplier to more than a dozen countries including Mexico, Canada and much of Europe. Oil executives and world leaders are issuing increasingly dire warnings that the result could be global price spikes on everything from groceries to jet fuel.

“I’ve sent a very clear signal to my American counterpart and also the public, which is that it is not in the interest of anybody — not the U.S., not us — to not have as free a flow of energy as possible in these difficult times,” Dan Jorgensen, the European Union’s energy minister, said on Tuesday.

Often called the workhorse fuel of the global economy, diesel is made from crude oil at refineries. It powers the heavy machinery, trucks, tractors and agricultural equipment crucial to heavy industry. When diesel prices rise, so do freight charges and other transportation costs, which often cascade into higher prices for things like food at the supermarket or even gasoline at the pump — because the heavy-duty tankers that deliver gas themselves run on diesel.

The primary reason for the price jump is a lack of refining capacity caused by the war in Iran. Missile strikes have damaged refineries in the Middle East, and the disruptions in shipping in the region have made it harder to transport. In addition, Ukraine has attacked and damaged many Russian refineries. That has forced Russia, a major exporter, to hoard its supplies of diesel.

In the United States, retail diesel prices climbed last month to a record high of more than $6.50 per gallon — nearly 70 percent more than this time last year. That’s put intense pressure on Mr. Trump and Republicans to find ways to lower costs, particularly before the midterm elections in November.

The crunch touches many corners of the world.

In Europe and Britain, the price of diesel has gone up by 40 percent since mid-June. In Canada prices have surged to record highs of more than 2 Canadian dollars per liter for the last 12 weeks, up about 59 percent compared with before the war. In some places, diesel shortages and high fuel costs are leaving irrigation pumps empty, damaging rice harvests.

Analysts are warning, nearly uniformly, that if the United States held back its diesel from the global market, the result would briefly lower prices for Americans, but rapidly hurt the rest of the world. Even in the United States, many warn, a ban would soon be self-defeating.

A U.S. export ban on diesel would be deeply damaging in Europe, which has become increasingly dependent on American fuel since the loss of supplies from Russia.

New York Times, U.S. Bond Yields Hit Highest Level Since 2002, Eshe Nelson and Joe Rennison, Oct. 1, 2026.The higher yields, which are pressuring consumer and corporate borrowers and increasingly weighing on certain corners of the stock market, are unlikely to dissipate soon.

The yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes reached its highest level since 2002, driving up borrowing costs for consumers and companies around the world, as a global sell-off in the government bond market continued.

The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield, which underpins corporate and consumer interest rates, soared as high as 5.34 percent on Thursday before easing back to around 5.26 percent, still on course to end the day at it highest level since 2007.

The yield on 10-year French bonds rose to 4.92 percent, also its highest since 2002. Benchmark 10-year notes in Italy and Japan also rose on Thursday, while other regions were more mixed. When bond yields rise, the price, or value, of that bond declines.

The latest moves came as oil prices remained elevated, intensifying short-term inflation pressure that will likely keep central banks around the world from lowering interest rates soon. Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, is trading above $100 a barrel, even as more oil is flowing from the Middle East than at any point since the start of the war with Iran. Brent has risen roughly 40 percent since the start of the conflict in late February.

More Global News

 

all rise news adam klasfeldAll Rise News, Judge orders Trump DOJ to produce boat strikes memo, Adam Klasfeld, right, adam klasfeldSept. 30, 2026. The secret memo justifying strikes that killed 234 people inches closer to public release. Also: Blanche goes after Minnesota judges.

The Trump administration must produce a memo containing the legal justifications for boat strikes that have killed 234 people in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean for a federal judge’s private review.

In a 66-page order on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer gave the government two weeks to send him the memo for him to determine whether to publicly release it.

The judge’s opinion also rejected the Trump Justice Department’s claims that deliberative process and attorney-client privilege prevented its disclosure.

Jeffrey Stein, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, called the ruling a “a huge step in the right direction of ensuring that the government does not get to summarily execute people based on secret law.”

“The public deserves to know how our government is justifying the cold-blooded murder of hundreds of civilians,” Stein said.

The ACLU, the ACLU Foundation, and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking the memo’s release.

Justice Department log circularCreated in September 2025, the Trump Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel memo purported to justify strikes on boats suspected of being involved in drug trafficking.

Judge Engelmayer found that the Pentagon had treated the memo “as its effective law and policy governing the boat strikes,” making it “working law.”

“It reflects that other components of the Administration, including the White House, have held out the Memo in a similar manner,” he added.

The judge declined to rule yet on the government’s assertion of presidential communications privilege pending his review of the document.

Attorney Baher Azmy, the legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, described the importance of the memo’s release.

“No president can arbitrarily assassinate people from the sky based on their sole say-so,” Azmy said in a statement. “If the OLC opinion seeks to dress up the obvious illegality of these serial murders in legalese to provide Trump cover, the public needs to see that analysis and ultimately hold accountable all those who facilitate murder in the United States’ name.”

 


]]> MyBlog Fri, 02 Oct 2026 05:54:54 +0000 Whistleblower Alert: Authors, Beware the Covert Art of Privishing https://www.justice-integrity.org/2200-whistleblower-alert-authors-beware-the-covert-art-of-privishing https://www.justice-integrity.org/2200-whistleblower-alert-authors-beware-the-covert-art-of-privishing Author Gerard Colby, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, reveals publishers’ dirty secret of how non-fiction books are commonly censored in America

 

By Charlotte Dennett

Imagine what authors go through, taking risks while exposing the rich and powerful, only to see their books die shortly after they are published. Their publisher may have told them “Too bad. Your book has had its run.”

Or, “Sorry, it just didn’t catch on.” This is not the kind of verdict authors want to hear, especially after spending years pouring heart and soul into researching and writing a book to inform an uninformed public.

The pain and suffering experienced by these truth-tellers is seldom acknowledged. They may have sacrificed career opportunities, building a family, buying a home, all for writing out of a sense of duty to the public’s right to know, often suffering financially and at great personal cost to their loved ones. What makes their ordeal all the more excruciating is that they often come to believe that their books’ “failure” is their own failure, not knowing that their publisher secretly deep-sixed the book before it had a chance to compete in the “free marketplace of ideas.”

There is a word for this book suppression practice. It is called privishing, which means “to privately publish a book so it “sinks without a trace.” It happens when the publisher deliberately shortens the book’s life span by cutting its gerard colbyadvertising budget, the author’s book tour, and the book’s print run.

My husband, Gerard "Jerry" Colby (shown at right in a file photo delivering a lecture), and I discovered privishing while investigating what happened to his 586-page exposé, DuPont: Behind the Nylon Curtain. The New York Times Book review hailed it on page one as “something of a miracle … sculpture hewn out of the side of a mountain.” This and other great reviews did not sit well with the family that had come to be known as the Merchants of Death: the du Ponts of Delaware.

The DuPont book, originally published by Prentice-Hall in 1974, is a unique, unauthorized dupont logohistory of the DuPont Company, the duPont family, and America itself. It quickly took off in Delaware, (famously described by Ralph Nader as the “Company State,”) with long lines of purchasers waiting outside bookstores to get a copy. The Wilmington Delaware Inquirer reported that “bookstores couldn’t keep the book in stock after the Wilmington Morning News carried a front page story about a telephone call criticizing the “most unflattering book about the chemical giant.” And then, suddenly, the book died.

 

whistleblower summit banner

Now, some 5 decades later, Colby recently was honored at the14th Annual Whistleblower Summit and Film Festival at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. for his decades-long efforts at exposing privishing and trying to protect authors from this perfidious practice that can be ruinous to their careers

.Justice Integrity Project Editor Andrew Kreig, a member of both the Summit host committee and the Press Club, presents the Pillar Award to Jerry Colby (Photo by Jerry Ashton, who won the Pillar Award in 2025 for exposing the predatory practices of the debt collection industry).

Justice Integrity Project Editor Andrew Kreig, a member of the Press Club, presents the Pillar Award to Jerry Colby (Photo by Jerry Ashton, who won the Pillar Award in 2025 for exposing the predatory practices of the debt collection industry).

Seeing Jerry tell his story to an audience of whistleblowers and writers at the National Press Club was a wonderful moment in our 50 years together as investigative journalists. Never have I seen him happier for getting some well-deserved recognition for his book and the years of litigation that followed against his publisher and the subject matter of his book, Du Pont Company.


Black Market Medicine Paperback CoverBetter still, the person to present the award was perfectly suited for the job. It was Andrew Kreig, who is a long-time margaret kreig best nsf smallmember of the Whistleblower Summit host committee and an author, journalist, lawyer and director of the Justice Integrity Project.

He revealed -- while presenting Jerry with a Pillar [of civil society ] Award -- that his own mother, Margaret Kreig, right, had long wondered what had happened to her book, Black Market Medicine, published by Prentice-Hall in 1967 in hardcover and then in paperback, shown above.

fletcher prouty portraitDitto for L. Fletcher Prouty, left, a liasion officer between the Pentagon and CIA from 1955 to 1963, after Prentice-Hall likely privished his 1973 book, The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World (shown at right as republished by a different publisher). The only difference, Kreig acknowledged to this writer, was that they didn’t know about privishing, which happens in secrecy at the highest levels.fletcher prouty secret2 cover

Book Rescue Missions: A Brief Preface to Colby’s Remarks

I should add that Lyle Stuart rescued Jerry’s book, and in 1984, published an updated version, DuPont Dynasty: Behind the Nylon Curtain, having urged him to write his heart out about what happened to the earlier edition -- only to privish it later!

As Jerry revealed in the lead essay of Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press (2002, Prometheus Press, editor, Kristina Borjesson), shown below, “the only information Stuart’s company would provide later was that they had learned that their print jobber allegedly received 80% of its business from Prentice Hall.”

 

kristina borjesson into buzzsaw

Finally, Mark Crispin Miller, a retired NYU professor of media studies, rescued DuPont Dynasty from oblivion. Along mark crispin millerwith 26 other books, it circulates freely within “The Forbidden Bookshelf,” published by OpenRoadMedia.

This phenomenal book publishing series was created by Miller, left, to bring vanished works back to life. Looking ahead, an important segment on The Forbidden Bookshelf will appear in a feature-length documentary Reading the World. The Life and Times of Mark Crispin Miller, directed by his wife, Amy Smiley, and will prominently feature DuPont Dynasty and Thy Will Be Done.

 

gerard colby dupont cover forbidden bookshelf

DuPont Dynasty is still earning e-book royalties; the hardcover edition is now a collector’s item currently selling on Amazon at $360.00.[Who benefits, I wonder?] Our joint project, Thy Will be Done. The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil, privished by Harper Collins in 1996, also survived as anebook in the Forbidden Bookshelf series Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon : Nelson Rockefeller and gerard colby charlotte dennett rockefeller coverEvangelism in the Age of Oil.

In presenting the Pillar Award, Kreig pointed out that Colby had been the president of the National Writers Union to help protect other writers, including through years of litigation to prove “how and why a publisher can kill an author’s book without the author and sometimes even the editor knowing about because it is done at the highest levels.”

As a quick and notable aside, Kreig said the Justice Integrity Project “looks into theses types of things,” as it was founded by experienced journalists, and that one of john kelly 1them was the late John Kelly, left, a producer for CBS and NBC for years who interrupted that career to workwith the CIA for four years during the Vietnam era.

“I was talking about Prentice Hall,” Kreig said, “and John Kelly pointed out, ‘There’s someone there from the agency.’” Kreig googled it and saw that william casey oWilliam Casey, right -- a top media mogul with high-level political and intelligence connections who would become the director of the CIA for seven years in the 1980s, had a bit gig with Prentice-Hall during the early 1970s as a part-time editor of business books. “What a perfect place," Kreig said, "to keep an eye out for books they don’t like.” [1]

Whereupon Kreig turned the mic over to Jerry at the Summit event.

Highlights of Colby’s Address on Receiving the Pillar Award

 

gerard colby pillar award 2026

As Jerry scanned the audience while proudly holding his plaque commemorating him as a “Person of Conscience,” he  began by stating how honored he felt “looking at you as brothers and sisters in the struggle for the rights of authors, the rights of journalists, and the rights of the people to know what is going on.. We can’t have a democracy without this.” He reminded his audience of the words of colonial writer and publisher John Peter Zenger, who wrote in 1735, “The Price of Liberty is Eternal Vigilance.”

Jerry proceeded to tell his story of how he got involved in writing about the DuPont Co. and family.

He was working as a press secretary for Congressman John Dow of the 17th Congressional District of New York. “I noticed John was fighting hard against his Republican opponent, the former commander of the American Legion, and that a lot of donations into his opponent’s campaign were from Delaware.

“I discovered the name duPont and began to investigate. They were the original founders of the gunpowder trust. They came from France, and were students of Antoine Lavoisier, who founded the gunpowder mills for King Louis XVI. They were the last people in France to protect the king with swords drawn. Then they fled from France. They landed on American shores and broke into a house while the occupants were at church and stole their food. Accounts differ as to whether they left a gold coin before moving on to Delaware to found the gunpowder mills along the Brandywine River.” [2]

From gunpowder in the 19th century they moved in the 20th century into heading General Motors, manufacturing autos, paints, and weapons, and then focusing on chemicals, producing rayon, nylon, and artificial rubber. They are most known today for discharging from their facilities PFOA, the toxic “forever chemical”[which never breaks down in the environment] used in Teflon, contaminating the drinking water of an estimated 200 million Americans.

The Du Ponts, he learned during his research, were the major figures in fighting the famous sit-down strike by UAW workers in 1937 at their General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan.

“So I went into the Eleutherian- Mills Hagley Foundation Library, the DuPont Library located above the old Brandywine gunpowder mills in Wilmington. I uncovered correspondence between Governor Frank Murphy of Michigan and the Du Ponts. They were asking Gov. Murphy to pull out the National Guard and set up machine guns to fight the strikers . Frank Murphy refused, thank God, due to FDR’s intercession, who declared that the UAW had the right to engage in collective bargaining.

“Suddenly the librarian pulled this document out of my hands. It turns out he was providing information about me to the du Ponts.”

Colby went back to finishing his book, which took him five years. He waited toward the end of writing to contact the company and family members for interviews. They declined, but behind the scenes, alarm bells began to go off. “Who is this guy?” queried. Irénée du Pont, Jr., the family patriarch.

DuPont Company launched an investigation. and got Prentice Hall to leak a copy of the manuscript to a du Pont- affiliated bookstore in Wilmington, Delaware.

 

Irénée duPont, above, died in 2023 at age 103. Photo Credit: Delaware Online, from

Irénée duPont, above, died in 2023 at age 103. Photo Credit: Delaware Online, from "Irénée du Pont Jr. Tribute: Remembering His Life & Legacy"

The Infamous Phone Call to Book of the Month Club

“And then one day I got a call from my editor Bram Cavin, who took me out to lunch. He said there’s big trouble. Prentice-Hall got a call from the Public Relations Department of DuPont Co., who said the book was ‘scurrilous and actionable’ -- in other words, threatening a lawsuit. I said wonderful. Let’s call a press conference. Bram said Prentice-Hall wouldn’t do that.”

“Next I learned that Book of the Month Club had been contacted by DuPont Company and dropped the book from its business-oriented Fortune Book Club in an unprecedented 24 hours. I thought, "Boy, that’s another reason for a press conference!"

The Summit audience chuckled, knowing that interference with a book is normally a writer’s dream to gain publicity. But this “Banned in Boston” dream was short-lived.

Prentice Hall logoInstead, Prentice-Hall began to privish the book, cutting its ad budget, the author’s tour and book run “so it couldn’t price profitably under any conceivable formula,” as he later discovered during his lawsuit in a memo from a Prentice-Hall official. He sued Prentice-Hall for breach of contract and DuPont for inducing breach of contract. (Note: this was not a First Amendment case because the government was not doing the censoring).

“Thanks to my wife, Charlotte,” he continued, “she found an editor at Viking, William Decker, who was willing to testify in court about privishing.”

 

Gerard Colby and his wife Charlotte Dennett (Jerry Ashton photo).

Authors Gerard Colby and his wife Charlotte Dennett at the 2026 Whistleblower Summit (Photo byJerry Ashton).

Decker admitted that privishing was well known in the industry but is not known to authors. His testimony was key to convincing federal judge Charles Brieant to find Prentice-Hall liable for privishing the book.

dupont logoAs for DuPont, the judge demurred. Jerry sensed problems when the family patriarch, Irénée duPont, Jr. took the stand, “and the judge stepped down from his dais and went over and turned on the light for him so he could read a document. I turned to my lawyer, Ron DePtris, and whispered, ‘We’re in big trouble, boy!’”

‘We finished the trial. It lasted two weeks. Not one bit of coverage by the media “

He later learned that after the trial ended, the Judge addressed the opposing attorneys in chambers.

Judge Brieant said he was not going to find the du Ponts, a “pillar of American society," liable “for expressing its opinion of the book.” [3] (This, despite the fact that DuPont had threatened a lawsuit against Prentice-Hall. Wasn’t that inducing a breach of contract?) “But you, Prentice-Hall," the judge continued, "you will publish it, not privish it.”

Prentice-Hall offered to settle for a paltry $24,000 “as long as I kept quiet about privishing.” Jerry refused, and appealed against both Prentice-Hall and DuPont to the U.S. Court of Appeals in the Second Circuit. The Court sided with both DuPont and Prentice-Hall in a lengthy opinion, most notably disagreeing with District Judge Brieant that “the contract in question obliges P-H “to use its best efforts to promote the book fully.’”

The ACLU appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied cert.

Still, the case is viewed as something of a landmark in legal and publishing circles, highlighting how publishing contracts are interpreted regarding promotional efforts, requiring a balance between a publishers’ discretion with a duty to support authors’ works adequately.

Publishers may be loathe to put in their contracts a clause requiring their “best efforts to promote the book” but that doesn’t mean authors shouldn’t try to advocate for this wording.

Jerry ended his acceptance speech urging writers to familiarize themselves with privishing, reminding them again of John Peter Zenger’s warning: “The Price of Liberty is Eternal Vigilance.”

 

 

Notes 

[1] Jerry and I also discovered that Prentice-Hall’s editor in chief, John Kirk, had worked for two publishers with CIA ties: cia logoThe Samuel Walker Publishing Company and the Free Europe Press (the publishing arm of the CIA-funded Radio Free Europe.]

[2] When Irénée du Pont testified at trial, he never mentioned being upset over charges that the DuPonts were widely known as "The Merchants of Death" for their millions in profits from WWI, or that their chemical plants spewed carcinogens and polluted the rivers of West Virginia, where Irénée was once plant manager in the 1980s. Instead, he said what troubled him was the perceived affront to the family’s proud history and the impact it would have on is children by suggesting that the newly-arrived immigrants failed to leave a gold coin after stealing the churchgoers’ food.

[3] Oh, the irony! Who could have guessed that the perceived enemy of America’s “pillar of society,” would be awarded the Pillar Award at a Whistleblower Summit decades later at the Press Club. Hats off to Marcel Reid, below, co-founder and Festival Director of the Summit, for making this happen. 

 

marcel reid quotation

This column was originally published on Charlotte Dennett's "Cui Bono? Who Benefits?" blog on Substack.

 

Related News Coverage

Cui Bono? Who Benefits? Whistleblower Alert: Beware the Covert Art of Privishing, Charlotte Dennett, Aug. 30, 2026. Author Gerard Colby, at National Press Club, reveals publishers’ dirty secret of how non-fiction books are commonly censored in America

Catching Our Attention on other recent Justice, Media & Free Press/Free Speech News 

Sept. 27

Hope for America, Trump replaces CNN with LindellTV in further free press assault, Heather Delaney Reese, Sept. 27, 2026. helen delaney reese djtDonald Trump told a female reporter to be “quiet,” replaced CNN on his Tennessee trip with LindellTV and Real America’s Voice, and then announced, “I love an open, free press.”

That is where this day began. MS NOW’s Akayla Gardner had asked whether he only wanted supportive outlets in the White House press pool. He responded by calling her network fake news. A president who wants to choose which reporters can question him is trying to choose what the rest of us get to hear.

The Parnas Perspective, News and Comment: Trump ‘Steals’ Taxpayer Dollars for for Personal Ad Blitz, GOP Senators Turn on Trump Jr., Press War Escalates, and Much More, Aaron Parnas, right, aaron parnas new headshotSept. 27, 2026. If you needed one image to sum up where this administration is right now, Dan Scavino handed it to you this weekend: a champagne-popping, Pitbull-scored celebration video, posted while millions of Americans are struggling to afford groceries, gas, and rent. It backfired so badly that even Trump’s own allies piled on.

That video landed the same weekend the White House aired its third taxpayer-funded ad in recent days, this one featuring Trump warning of a “final battle” against “communists, Marxists, and fascists,” all paid for with public money a little over a month before the midterms.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino Draws Backlash From His Own Party Over a Champagne-Popping Celebration Video Set to Pitbull. Scavino posted what appears to be an AI-generated video of himself popping champagne alongside his wife Erin Elmore and Eric and Lara Trump, set to Pitbull’s “Don’t Stop the Party,” captioning it as a transparent share of his own post-State Dinner celebration and writing “GOD BLESS THE USA!!!” Rather than provoking Democrats as he seemingly intended, the video instead infuriated conservatives, with Dispatch editor-in-chief Jonah Goldberg sarcastically calling it exactly the midterm messaging the GOP needs, and activist Carrie Prejean Boller accusing Scavino of tone-deafness given how many Americans can’t afford groceries, gas, or their mortgage. Meghan McCain and Never-Trump Republican Sarah Longwell also piled on, with Longwell likening it to “real fall of Rome sh-t,” while other self-described MAGA accounts called the display of wealth astonishingly out of touch.

The backlash lands as polling points to a potential GOP wipeout in the November midterms, with Trump’s own advisers reportedly urging him to focus on affordability and a growing number of Republicans, including some he’s endorsed, quietly scrubbing his name from their campaign websites. Even so, Trump has doubled down on tying the midterms to his own record, telling supporters at a recent Republican midterm conference to “pretend that I am on the ballot.”

White House Airs Another Taxpayer-Funded Ad Featuring Trump Warning of a “Final Battle,” the Third Such Ad Tracked in Recent Days. The latest government-funded ad shows Trump walking down a hallway as audio plays of him vowing to “cast out the communists, Marxists, and fascists,” rout “the fake news media,” and “liberate America from these villains once and for all,” language echoing a 2023 Veterans Day speech, and it aired during at least two NFL broadcasts on Fox this Sunday. The ad is nearly identical to a video Trump posted to Truth Social during his 2024 campaign, minus six seconds featuring his campaign logo and a text-to-join number, with “Paid for by the US Government” displayed on screen instead. The White House has defended the ads, including two previous ones tracked by AdImpact this week featuring Trump denouncing communism and socialism and another showing him at Mount Rushmore, by comparing them to past administrations’ public service announcements on Medicare or COVID vaccination, insisting they are “very clearly not campaign ads” and calling them “educational and unapologetically patriotic.” Government watchdog group Common Cause has pushed back, with policy vice president Carol Evans questioning why taxpayer funds are being used to promote the president’s image just over a month before the midterms and suggesting the ads could amount to prohibited “propaganda.” The ads arrive amid Trump’s all-time low approval rating and a tense political climate ahead of November, adding fuel to concerns that public funds are being used for what critics see as thinly veiled campaign messaging.

Senator John Kennedy argued that no public official, including President Trump, Kristi Noem, or himself, should be spending public money on private ads promoting themselves. He acknowledged the position might not be popular within his own party, joking that he may end up wearing a sombrero for saying so, but added that he also believes there should be a rule barring any politician from having a building named after them while they’re still alive.

Trump’s Increased Attacks on Press:

Donald Trump suggested tearing down the Press Briefing room in the White House. Today, Donald Trump posted the following image seeking to possibly restore the FDR pool, which currently sits under the press briefing room, with gold trim.

Attorney General Todd Blanche Defends Trump’s White House Media Ban, Calling Press Access “a Privilege... Not a Right.”.Attorney General Todd Blanche argued on ABC’s “This Week” that the administration’s ban on CNN, MS Now, and Politico from the White House is justified because access to the building is a privilege rather than a constitutional right, framing the move as a response to Trump being “sick and tired” of reporting he considers inaccurate. The dispute has continued even after a judge issued a temporary restraining order last Thursday requiring the White House to restore the outlets’ credentials, since CNN was again barred from the press pool traveling with the president on Air Force One over the weekend. Blanche insisted the White House routinely decides which reporters fly with the president and that CNN’s exclusion wasn’t unusual, while separately maintaining the three outlets’ reporting amounted to a “national security problem,” a claim the judge overseeing the case explicitly rejected, writing that nothing in the record suggested the ban was motivated by security concerns rather than Trump’s stated frustration with the outlets’ truthfulness and tone. Former President Bill Clinton weighed in at the Clinton Global Initiative summit, saying he’d often wanted to ban the White House press corps himself but never did, adding “the law should be what it is.” 

 

paramount logoBig, Monopoly Round-Up and Opinion: Paramount-WB Isn't Just a Loss, It's a Prelude, Matt Stoller, right, and Lee Hepner, Sept. 27, 2026. The unorthodox development isn’t that politicians caved; it’s that people noticed it.matt stoller

The most important news is that Paramount and Warner Bros. overcame the key hurdle to closing their deal, when California Attorney General Rob Bonta and 11 Democratic state attorneys general dropped their opposition, which I discussed on Monday in detail. It isn’t quite done, the judge hasn’t agreed to approve warner brothers discovery logothe consent decree, and there are amicus briefs and a well-received letter from Senator Cory Booker that the judge will hear arguments about. But it’s hard to imagine this one being paused for legal reasons.

It’s easy to see this merger fight as a catastrophic loss, which it is. It will combine two of the five major movie studios, CNN and CBS, cnn logoand major streaming platforms under the control of a highly politically connectedowner of Oracle and TikTok. Iconic TV writer Mike Schur basically said it’s game over for Hollywood, and the American news media will likely become more corrupt, cbs news logofeckless, and aligned with capital.

But the merger challenge is also more than that, and it has implications beyond the castle walls of media, as important as those are. This fight was a battle between coalitions, and in some ways, it is a prelude to more of that fight in this election cycle and beyond. 

David Ellison, billionaire controller of media properties (Lincoln Square graphic).

David Ellison, billionaire controller of media properties (Lincoln Square graphic)

David Ellison, son of Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison, wasn’t alone in his empire-building ambitions. It takes a village to centralize media. Wall Street was fully on board, as was the defense bar. In August, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon said that the state challenge to the Paramount-Warner merger has the potential to “deeply damage our capital markets, our dynamic system.” Donald Trump pushed the deal, but so did Democrat Ari Emanuel, brother of Rahm Emanuel. So did Tom Cruise. So did the Director’s Guild and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. So did California Governor Gavin Newsom, LA Mayor Karen Bass, incoming Governor Xavier Becerra, and much of the state legislature.

The other group were populists on the left, the anti-monopoly world, artists, the Writer’s Guild of America East and West, and the public itself. What they lacked in money and organization they made up for in grassroots support. Most voters do not think the deal will be good, and Californians supported challenging the merger 49-30. This fight was a line in the sand for the masters of the universe, who have been fighting against a pushback on AI data centers, and a billionaire tax, and before that, Lina Khan’s attempt to revive antitrust law. 

heather cox richardson cnnLetters from an American, Historical Commentary: Sept. 25, 2026 [Trump v. Media Trump Hunt for Monuments, Glory], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Sept. 27, 2026. Trump’s war on the free press is continuing.

 

]]> MyBlog Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:49:11 +0000 Congress Majority PAC Expert Shares Novel Strategy For Timely Mid-Term Ads: New On District Insiders https://www.justice-integrity.org/2193-congress-majority-pac-expert-shares-novel-strategy-for-timely-mid-term-ads-new-on-district-insiders https://www.justice-integrity.org/2193-congress-majority-pac-expert-shares-novel-strategy-for-timely-mid-term-ads-new-on-district-insiders  

distict insiders logo guest 002

By Andrew Kreig and Wayne Madsen

Patrick Reynolds, who formed Congress Majority PAC with a mission of helping fellow civic reformers win congressional races, shares on the next District Insiders podcast his innovative strategies regarding forthcoming U.S. elections.

patrick reynoldsHosts Andrew Kreig and Wayne Madsen explore with Reynolds what the public most needs to understand about his innovative strategy for U.S. Mid-Term elections.

Reynolds, right, describes why he’s leveraged his years at the forefront of anti-smoking legislation to raise awareness for solutions to climate change, for example, during a time when drought and wildfires loom.

Reynolds, widely known as the anti-smoking crusading grandson of cigarette company founder RJ Reynolds, started Congress Majority PAC in 2018, raising over $1.36 million from over 24,000 donors.

“We now have a top team in place for strategy, fundraising, compliance, and legal,” Reynolds says. Our ads pioneer a new direction in political advertising for Democrats.” Sample ads are here. Specifics are below:

Watch the Patrick Reynolds interview on District Insiders by clicking one of the links below:

About Congress Majority PAC

Congress Majority PAC (www.CongressMajority.org) is a federally registered, hybrid political action committee dedicated to supporting Democratic candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives through strategic communications and voter persuasion. The organization seeks to promote effective issue-based messaging that informs voters and encourages civic participation. How to work together here.

Further information is available on request:

  • Patrick Reynolds, President Congress Majority PAC, here:
  • Ilene Proctor & Associates, International Public Relations, here 

About Patrick Reynolds

Patrick Reynolds’ advocacy work and motivational talks to youth and adults have made him a well-known and respected champion of a smokefree society. He has helped remind many thousands of people of the dangers of smoking. Patrick watched his father, RJ Reynolds, Jr., his oldest brother RJ Reynolds III, and other members of his family die from cigarette-induced emphysema and lung cancer. Concerned about the mounting health evidence, he made the decision to speak out against the industry his family helped build.

He founded Tobaccofree Earth in 1989. Its mission is to motivate youth to stay tobaccofree and to empower smokers to quit successfully. Reynolds saw that having Democrats in the majority in Congress would bring progress not only on tobacco policy, but also on climate change, gun control, abortion, immigration reform, and other issues. In 2018 Reynolds started Congress Majority PAC with a mission of getting Democrats elected to Congress.

“Each of our ads focus on one issue,” he continues. Our ad on the economy compares the Administrations of Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden, and our ads on immigration and climate change compare the Parties’ voting records on those issues. All conclude, Vote Democrat, and mention no candidate by name, so our ads can be run in any State,” Reynolds said. Congress Majority PAC produces hard-hitting political ads that challenge Donald Trump and failed Republican policies while making a clear, affirmative case for Democratic leadership. Every ad ends the same way: Vote Democrat. Its ads can run in any state and in any congressional race, helping Democratic candidates compete in key districts from coast to coast. For further details, contact:

 

District Insiders features experts on timely topics affecting “districts” in the United States and globally – congressional, parliamentary or other – that are in the news. Contacts for “District Insiders” hosts for guests, interviews, lectures, questions:

• Andrew Kreig, Andrew [at] justice-integrity.org
• Wayne Madsen, wmadsen777 [at] aol.com

Co-Hosts

Wayne Madsen is a journalist, newspaper columnist, and author of 28 books on intelligence matters, historical events, and the wayne madsen may 29 2015 cropped Smalldangers of neo-fascism in threatening democracy in the United States and abroad. Based for many years in Washington, DC, he is a former U.S.Navy officer and NSA analyst.

wayne madesen report logoFor more than two decades, he has published The Wayne Madsen Report.com, an investigative news website now on Substack. Madsen is also the third generation of Madsens who have opposed fascism in its varied forms. His recent books include two on the Trump family and “A Parade of New Sovereignties: A Post-Hegemonic World,” an illustrated,  encyclopedia-style reference book providing core details, one to a page, on more than 500 ethnic hot spots globally potentially in the news because of nationalist, religious and patriotic aspirations of populations governed by others.

Andrew Kreig is non-profit executive, reporter, attorney, strategic consultant and author. After careers in journalism, law and business, he became a founding director of the the Washington, DC-based Justice Integrity Project and serves on the boards of Andrew Kreig photoseveral other business, non-profit and civic groups. 

He began his career as a newspaper reporter for the Hartford Courant in Connecticut and then earned law degrees at Yale and the University of Chicago before serving as law clerk to a U.S. District judge in Boston and working at a national law firm's office in Washington, DC.Justice Integrity Project logo He then became vice president and then president/CEO of the Wireless Communications Association before becoming a research fellow at two universities. His most recent book Is “The Complete Annotated Durham ‘Russiagate’ Report: A Corrupt, Cruel Fraud,” which documents Russian interference in U.S. elections and efforts of denial or diversion by politically motivated Justice Department prosecutors.

 
 
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