Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Donald Trump, who’s very angry over the Iran war, just unleashed more crazed threats at a host of new targets. He vowed economic warfare against anyone that helps Iran, but news organizations are struggling to figure out what on earth this is supposed to accomplish. This comes as Marjorie Taylor Greene just issued a stark warning to Republicans, claiming that Trump’s coalition is imploding, portending a GOP disaster in the midterms.

These things are linked. Probably nothing is wrecking the MAGA coalition more than his inability to find a way out of the war. You can see other signs that MAGA media is completely lost on how to deal with Trump’s total impotence. None of this was supposed to happen. So we’re trying to parse where MAGA goes now with New Republic contributing editor Virginia Heffernan, who’s been writing really well on the MAGA crack-up. Virginia, thanks for coming on.

Virginia Heffernan: Thanks for having me, Greg.

Sargent: So Marjorie Taylor Greene is almost like a MAGA oracle at this point, or maybe like MAGA’s Greek chorus or something. She posted this video on TikTok about the midterms. Listen to this.

Marjorie Taylor Greene (voiceover): Let me explain to you guys how this is actually going to work. ‘26 midterms and the ‘28 presidential race is not going to be anything like 2024, where there was so much support for MAGA. The coalition came in. You want to know why ‘26 and ‘28 is going to be different? Because Donald Trump broke his big, big campaign promise of no more foreign wars, and actually has got us embroiled in a war with Iran, a war that should not be happening, and he’s not backing off of it. And it will probably get worse. So that has fed the affordability crisis. That’s why people can’t afford gasoline. That’s why people’s bills keep going up. Food prices are still going up. Beef is at all-time high. It’s ridiculous. You know what you should have done? You should have stuck to your campaign promises, and you should have delivered for the people that put you in office, not the ones writing you the big fat checks.

Sargent: When Marjorie Taylor Greene says the coalition is falling apart, all these voters feel betrayed by you, Mr. President—she isn’t just making a prediction. She’s essentially saying to these voters, you know, you shouldn’t show up for this guy because he fucked you, right? That’s what she’s really saying. And it’s true. She’s right about it.

Heffernan: She is absolutely right. And I think she also mentioned a tweet of Trump’s, where he said, sometime around the Epstein files, when she and Thomas Massie were agitating for the release of them—Trump is quoted as saying he doesn’t care about his old voters. And she and lots of people took that very personally.

And the way she describes those earlier voters, so his, like, diehard supporters in both 2020 and 2024—she says that they are basically the people that she’s often standing with. Women who care about affordability, but these are the women who may have been anti-vax, who may have been open to RFK, who may have even supported QAnon, the Marjorie Taylor Greene stuff. But then, on the more sane side of things, also really don’t want war.

War is never very popular with women, going back to times when women were worried about their sons being killed. They don’t like this idea of a deployment. They don’t like the idea that we don’t really know the number of American casualties in Iran. And women are keeping that issue top of mind, and connecting it to the Epstein class’s exploitation of children.

And then the affordability piece, which brings together household management and kind of feeding my children and how much do groceries cost. And when Marjorie Taylor Greene points out, when he called affordability a quote, “Democrat hoax,” when he called Epstein a Democrat hoax, that really touched a nerve with this population that she believes—and I think maybe rightly—is crucial to keeping Trump in power.

Sargent: Yes, and on Iran, Trump is utterly stuck. He raged wildly on Truth Social. Here’s what he said: “Today I am announcing the most crushing economic operation ever taken against any country. This will be economic warfare and isolation on an unprecedented scale.” Trump then also said that any country that acts in any way to interact economically with Iran will itself face “tremendous” economic consequences.

Now, Virginia, The New York Times pointed out aptly that he isn’t specifying which countries he’s actually willing to punish, which could be countries like China. And it also pointed out that this is going to be a really complex and time-consuming thing to enforce on other countries, even if he goes through with it.

It just seems like Trump is desperate at this point to create the mere perception that he’s acting. We’re, like, well beyond him having any actual plan. It’s all about just looking as if he’s doing something. What do you make of all that?

Heffernan: Part of what made the neocons for a time so effective is that they really looked like they had the inside line. When they were selling us on the fact of WMDs, and it was Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld—these people, like the architects of the war in Vietnam, they sort of had some kind of aura around them, like they had some kind of genius to them, like a sort of Elon Musk aura. That would give them clout way beyond what they were actually doing, which was incredibly destructive and misguided.

But Trump doesn’t—there is no genius halo around either Trump or Hegseth, or really anyone who is bringing us into this disaster. They just don’t get that pass from us. Nobody is, like, trying to sell this to us. He just does not care what the American people think of what the Pentagon is doing. And that has become very clear, and Americans on the right and left don’t like that.

Sargent: Well, I think you’re putting your finger on a really important irony here, because remember, Donald Trump rose to power in 2016 by making the case that the Bushes and the Rumsfelds and the Colin Powells were part of this corrupt elite that said that it was going to organize the world in an effective way, but ultimately lied to the American people and ended up costing the lives of thousands of Americans abroad, in that awful extended quagmire.

And so I think maybe the rebellion against Donald Trump now is partly rooted in that, right? In the sense that MAGA actually bought this idea that Trump was a different kind of elite.

Heffernan: And I think he actually was against the Iraq War, sort of, at the time. I mean, I think on Howard Stern he says, reluctantly, he supported it, but he really was against it.

I don’t think he was against it because he’s a peacenik at heart. I think he was against it because he thought it was spending a lot of money, right? Money that probably he thinks should be his.

Sargent: And they weren’t taking the oil.

Heffernan: And they weren’t taking the oil, like in Venezuela. Right, they weren’t taking the oil. People were being boneheaded and stupid and just spending money abroad. So in a weird way, he started to create this kind of manly opposition to war that was more about, like, waste, more about just overspending, more about, like, the world not being grateful to us or not paying us enough, or NATO, not kissing our palms enough or whatever. And also, like, keeping the money here, keeping the money in America.

Sargent: And we’re not going to waste young men. We’re not going to pour young men down the tubes, right?

Heffernan: I mean, I’m not sure that he cared much about our soldiers, but yes, that definitely would appeal to people. The other thing is, there are a lot of veterans in his base, and veterans had come back from Iraq and Afghanistan, often multiple tours, with PTSD, strongly anti-war.

I mean, you think, on the other side of the aisle, Graham Platner, right? Like, came back just with absolute contempt for the war machine. And so they also had this manly opposition to war. And it worked well with the kind of more feminine—I’m putting that in quotes—opposition to the war that Marjorie Taylor Greene articulates, which is, like, fear for our children, fear for people, fear for soldiers, and strong support for the military. And that combination of things had some nice heft to it.

Sargent: Yeah. So he’s, like, repeating the elite folly, but just telling everybody to suck it up, in a way that, like, no other previous president would have done. So Matt Gertz of Media Matters caught something interesting as well. Fox News’ Sean Hannity, who’s probably Trump’s most devoted propagandist, has largely gone silent about the Iran war in recent weeks. He only just broke his silence to say that Trump isn’t getting enough credit for his successes in Iran.

I think this goes to what we were talking about before, Virginia, which is that a lot of these propagandists just don’t know what to do right now, because Trump is so visibly stuck, and it’s all so unpopular, and their own audiences are turning against them over their support for the war. And so can you talk about that dynamic? It seems like the propaganda now has hit this wall where there’s no audience for it anymore.

Heffernan: I think Giuliani today said you have to give up everything you believe to work at Fox News. And that’s absolutely right, because you have to sync with the audience. They only want to hear what they want to hear, right? You’re not a propagandist leading the way. You’re following ratings.

So I don’t know what Hannity thinks of the actual war in Iran. I assume he’s in favor, but whatever. But he will not talk about it if he thinks the audience doesn’t want to hear about it, which is what he’s been doing.

The only thing he can talk about is an old refrain of Trump’s, the sort of, like, Rodney Dangerfield, “I don’t get no respect”—the, like, that Trump doesn’t get enough credit, or Trump’s always persecuted. This is something that does appeal to the MAGA base, because they, I think, identify with being—he’s sometimes described them as forgotten, overlooked.

They too are not getting credit. They too have run into a system that doesn’t respect them. And if Trump is not getting credit for something, people might be able to find in him the, like, persecuted Trump that they like.

Sargent: Yeah. And I think a lot of these Fox and MAGA figures are bumping up against another problem. They don’t know how to talk about Trump and the Iran war, because in their minds, Trump’s might and power and ability to impose his will on his enemies was always unquestioned.

And of course, the funny thing is, they’re required to treat it as fact that Trump’s defeat over Iran has been absolute, that it’s been one of the greatest military triumphs in world history. They’re required to repeat that, because Trump has said it. So now, how do they explain the fact that Trump can’t impose his will on Iran?

Heffernan: I do, by the way, think that figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene, and maybe wiser people, are kind of reevaluating everything through a different lens. I mean, you know, I don’t know if you see some people testifying to basically falling out with MAGA, or deconstructing their experience with MAGA. And they’re in shambles.

Like, their brains feel like they’re in their component parts all around them. And they’re just going through, I believed this, I believed this, I can’t believe I believed this. I can’t believe I thought I should shoot bleach into my veins. Like, the whole thing. It’s like being lost all at once.

And if we undo things like some of the language, like hoax or fake news, and understand that they were strategies by this very increasingly powerful person—until he’s the most powerful person in the world—to subjugate people, then you start to be able to, I don’t know, to, like, imagine how we could rebuild, you know, this broken country.

Sargent: Well, just to bring this back to the Republicans in the midterms, we had Mike Johnson talking about the war in a surprisingly candid way. He had this to say.

Mike Johnson (voiceover): The Iran conflict has been a cause, of course, of gas prices going up. It’s drug on.

Sargent: That kind of strips away the spell in a way doesn’t it?

Heffernan: I mean Trump has at times said we have to get used to inflation, inflation is a small price to pay for whatever he’s doing in Iran. So they don’t exactly, they don’t just lie and say that inflation will come down, but it’s not down yet, or gas prices, I mean, will come down. Yeah, for some reason they are not able to call inflation a hoax.

We have to get used to inflation. Inflation’s a small price to pay for whatever he’s doing in Iran. I don’t know why that one is where the rubber hits the road for them. I mean, you’d think that they would say—they’d have their own polls. They’d have, like, a Rasmussen gas prices, and be like, look, it’s three dollars a gallon for Rasmussen. So they’re just citing fake polls.

They don’t do that. Inflation—there’s something about inflation that it’s just such a populist issue. It really gets to someone: the Fed, the war machine, the elites, whatever, are raising prices to make my life unaffordable. And you just don’t mess with it as an issue, partly because Trump ran on the idea that Biden had created all this inflation, and that he was going to bring inflation down, and it would be, you know, to record lows in two weeks or whatever it was. And here we are.

So I think it’s interesting to see Mike Johnson have to wrestle with that, because we are getting down to where his constituents live, which is on affordability.

Sargent: Just presuming for now that there’s a pretty decisive Democratic win—next year, Donald Trump is a lame duck. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s prediction about MAGA cracking up and scattering and splintering will have come true. I don’t think we’re prepared for how weak and disorganized MAGA might look at that point. Can you talk about that?

Heffernan: I mean, yeah, right. What are they going to do when he’s impeached every day, as Ted Cruz once said would happen? I don’t know.

Sargent: Yeah, when he faces, like, serious oversight, and he’s just, like, this, you know, raging figure who’s kind of tied down by Democrats in Congress, at least to some degree. Obviously, he’s going to abuse his powers in all sorts of horrible ways, but it will be trench warfare more than mighty Trump ruling over his domain, right? And so he’ll look weak, and he’ll look constrained, and he’ll look like he’s struggling, and people will be talking about JD Vance and what’s next. And I think MAGA will look really kind of disorganized and shattered at that point, is my prediction.

Heffernan: I think so too. I mean, we will see the Game of Thrones happening, with maybe Tucker Carlson or whoever else trying to consolidate the America First side of things. We’re not in the clear. I mean, Democrats—or the country—is not in the clear, if Democrats win the midterms, or if they even impeach Trump. Because the America First side of things is like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Just because they oppose the war, just because they talk about affordability, does not mean they don’t want a lot of toxic, toxic things.

Sargent: Yeah. And so, you know, we talk about Marjorie Taylor Greene as this oracle now, but maybe we’ll regret it later.

Heffernan: That’s right.

Sargent: Virginia Heffernan, awesome to talk to you. Thank you so much for all this.

Heffernan: Thank you.

I know something about this particular job. I managed President Barack Obama’s partisan social media accounts over much of the first year of his presidency. It’s fair to say this was a more innocent age. The watchwords I took to the work were ones like “safeguards” and “restraint,” instead of “poop jet” and “what if we depicted the president as Jesus Christ.” A president’s statements, I knew, could move markets even if ventriloquized by twenty- and thirtysomethings working to channel the top guy’s voice. At every point, my colleagues and I took intentional steps to guard against loose words.

It hardly takes a genius to spot how the standards around Trump’s social media accounts have slipped, even against the low baseline of his first term. With The New York Times calling Harp, Trump’s omnipresent aide, the “sylphlike woman” who “supplies him with content she fishes out of the social media gutter (like the video he posted depicting the Obamas as apes),” we have a good idea of why those standards have tumbled—and strong reason to wonder what else the woman who “texts with world leaders on the president’s behalf” and operates “entirely outside the usual chain of command” is doing with her prized, rare access.

I never boarded any presidential jets, never mind a catering cart. I came into the role of managing Obama’s political accounts by happenstance: I joined the communications team of the Democratic National Committee to handle what people now might call influencer outreach. Insiders who knew my reputation across a few social media personae—such as the DNC’s new digital director, and the person who managed social for Obama’s 2008 campaign—learned of my arrival … and voilà: I got the keys.

Or more accurately, I didn’t get the keys. That was at my insistence; I felt adamant that no one person, myself included, should both write for those accounts and post. We tapped a new digital hire I trusted—they’d worked with the woman who’s now my spouse—to hold the account credentials, and I built a process to put multiple sets of eyes on every word intended for Obama’s accounts before publication.

In hindsight, I may have gone overboard with the approval steps we put into place, but I didn’t want anything approaching sole ownership over the digital personae of a president of the United States. More to the point, I thought no responsible person should want such a thing. Putting figures from disparate parts of the president’s teams in the decision loop—my boss in DNC communications, the digital director, the White House communications office—kept me accountable and ensured that what went out matched Obama’s voice and careful demeanor.

Sure, that cost us nimbleness in quick-moving moments. Some of my successors in running the DNC’s accounts, which I ran for a bit longer after handing off Obama’s, have taken up a freewheeling style that lets them move at the speed of the digital conversation—with fantastic results. Still, speaking for the political operation of a president demanded precision, especially when the president measured his words as famously as Obama does. Managing those accounts demanded a process with multiple circuit breakers between any individual and the ‘publish’ button—rather than, say, a Grima Wormtongue-style solo operator with the president’s ear and his passwords.

What could I have done in an environment free of safeguards, like the one surrounding this president? Kalshi and Polymarket were but glimmers in some preteen future techbros’ eyes when I did this work, but if I had sure knowledge of what a president’s accounts would post—because I stayed up late with Trump, as Harp reportedly does, to draft each line—I could earn a pretty penny by trading on that information before tapping some market-shifting words into Truth Social.

Not that people should say this administration is known for rampant profiteering on insider info, mind you. Far from it — it’s more apt to call it notorious for that.

How has Harp handled her touchscreen access to Trump’s private communications with world leaders? I can’t say. More worryingly, government agencies can’t say either; MS NOW reports that for a year, Harp repeatedly declined to seek the security clearance that West Wing staffers usually obtain. I also had no clearance—at the DNC, that wasn’t required—but that’s precisely why my colleagues and I built a process where people with clearances had visibility and could step in.

Maybe she’s on the up-and-up with her access to the president and his accounts. Maybe she sees devotion to Trump as its own reward, even if that means squeezing herself behind an SUV’s seats like a stowaway. But that Harp fights so hard for both proximity to the president and a free hand to post on his behalf is why I don’t trust her at all—and neither should you.

Water levels in Germany’s Rhine River—one of Europe’s busiest shipping routes—have been at record lows amid weeks of drought, forcing cargo carriers to cut shipments to as little as one-fifth of normal capacity. Those problems didn’t start this summer, either. Rising temperatures caused by climate change have meant less snow in the Alps during the winter, and so less meltwater draining into the Rhine in warmer months. ING, the Dutch banking giant, estimates that the halt of traffic on the Rhine ​will lower Germany’s GDP by 0.3 percentage points this year, which is especially bad news considering the country was on track to grow by just 0.8 percentage points all year. German insurer Allianz likewise estimates that the brutal two-week heatwave in June will cut all of Europe’s GDP by 0.3 percentage points. In May, Allianz analysts had already projected that the countries most exposed to extreme heat—France, Japan, Italy, Germany, and Spain—will see economic output that’s 5 to 7 percent lower than it would have been otherwise by 2030.

It’s not just Europe. The cost of shipping goods through the busiest lanes in the Panama Canal have jumped to record highs amid falling water levels and increased traffic from vessels redirected from routes disrupted by the Iran war. The Financial Times reports that transit slots on the canal’s most commonly used locks are being auctioned off for 16 times the average price for the same period last year. The ongoing El Niño—on track to be the strongest such event in 76 years—has seen wet season rainfalls slip below previous levels. Climate change has already made rainfall there much less predictable, meaning extreme droughts and floods both threaten to “push canal infrastructure past its operational limits,” The New York Times reported.

Influential environmental economists, including Nobel Prize winner William Nordhaus, have argued that spending heavily to respond to climate change in the present risks dinging economic growth down the line. The theory holds that by taking a more gradual approach—forgoing massive investments in adaptation and decarbonization, and continuing to reap the economic benefits of the fossil fuel economy for a while—continued robust growth will make our future selves rich enough to respond to climate change more easily (read: more cheaply) than we can today.

The problem is that our poorer, present selves are now paying for the ballooning costs of climate change in all sorts of nightmarish ways. Direct hits like hurricanes and wildfires dole out damages all at once, destroying homes, businesses, and infrastructure. Governments pay for emergency response, then to clean up damages and rebuild. Insurance companies pay out to policyholders, and then raise rates in ways that strain household budgets, making federally backed mortgages harder to get and pushing up rents as landlords pass those rising costs onto tenants. If major insurance companies opt not to offer coverage to riskier markets, as in Florida, states step in to create their own insurers of last resort and open the market up to smaller, sometimes sketchier firms that threaten to leave policyholders to foot the bill when disaster strikes again. Heat waves drain labor productivity and droughts push down agricultural yields as farmers harvest crops later. Wars, like Trump’s misadventure in Iran, exacerbate these costs in the Panama Canal and elsewhere; growers are paying more for fertilizers, or losing access to them, because maritime traffic has ground to a halt in the contested Strait of Hormuz.

Record-low water levels in the Danube have forced nuclear plants in Hungary and Romania to cut output and shut down without the river water needed to cool down reactors. Hungary’s MBH Bank reported a 0.1 percentage point hit to GDP for every week the country’s largest nuclear generator is offline. In France, three nuclear reactors were taken offline earlier this month as jellyfish—whose populations have been buoyed by warming waters, overfishing and plastic pollution—swarmed the seawater pumping stations used to cool them.

The models that experts use to assess the costs of climate change also have a tendency to understate risks and leave out things now proving to be extraordinarily costly. A study in Nature last year, Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer noted recently, found that “climate-driven smoke deaths” resulted in economic damages that “exceed existing estimates of climate-driven damages from all other causes combined in the U.S.A.”

It’d be unfair, of course, to blame governments’ failure to prepare for this moment on a handful of overly sanguine economic modelers; although their more prescient colleagues deserve credit for assessing climate risks more accurately, precious few economists have even bothered to consider the effects of rising temperatures. Climate change is a genuinely thorny problem to tackle given that our world still runs on the substances driving it, on fossil fuels in particular. In America, that fact has been ably exploited by Big Energy companies and the Republican politicians they fund, who’ve gone to great lengths to deny the problem and stop governments at every level from doing anything about it. Among the many hellish results of those efforts is that policymakers are essentially flying blind into a world that’s becoming increasingly expensive, and quite literally unnavigable.

Chibuike is a “Yahoo Boy,” a moniker for online fraudsters based in West Africa, especially Nigeria, who con foreigners out of their life savings. Named for the Yahoo email addresses they once used, they build intimate, often romantic relationships with their victims based on fake personas. With enough time and ingenuity, they extract money from “clients” in the United States, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere in the English-speaking world where digital manipulation, sextortion, or fake cryptocurrency investment opportunities can lure lucrative targets.

Chibuike is one of four young men at the center of Carlos Barragán’s riveting new book, The Yahoo Boys: Love, Deception, and the Real Lives of Nigeria’s Romance Scammers. Barragán, a reporter at The New York Times, was drawn into the subject when his own mother fell prey to a Nigerian scammer masquerading as a U.S. soldier. What began as a quest for her scammer became a more searching look into the real lives of Yahoo Boys, and how their crimes and aspirations offered a grim reflection of a modern world riddled with poverty, inequality, and transoceanic loneliness.

The “Nigerian prince” email is one of the best known online frauds: A deposed royal asks his unwitting recipients for help with a frozen bank account, promising a generous cut of his estate in exchange for a small advance payment. The fortune is, of course, nonexistent. The beguiling prince makes off with his ill-gotten gains, and the victim is left brooding over their depleted bank account and their naiveté.

Though “Nigerian prince” emails exploded in step with the expansion of the internet in the 2000s, versions of the scheme were prevalent long before the digital age, operating via the postal service and fax machines. 419 scams—named after Section 419 of the Nigerian Criminal Code—have their roots in the colonial and early postcolonial periods, which created ideal conditions for legally questionable get-rich-quick schemes. As the historian Stephen Ellis has observed, the British practice of colonial governance through indigenous elites, known as indirect rule, incentivized charlatanry and corruption among local officials with unchecked power. One commissioner in southeastern Nigeria deceived locals into thinking he possessed supernatural powers, while another officer used a glass eye to create the impression that he was always watching his subordinates. At times, ordinary people masqueraded as colonial officials to demand fines from their victims. “Some Nigerians realized they could exploit the terrifying power and reputation of the white man and his symbols of authority to extort their fellow Nigerians,” the historian Max Siollun has explained. Later impersonation scammers cast a wider net, such as when “Prince Bil Morrison,” who was really a 14-year-old schoolboy, began soliciting funds from American and Canadian “pen pals” in the 1940s.

Following the end of empire, economic opportunities abounded in Africa as the continent’s new political elites sought foreign capital to fund the costly work of nation-building. This created a class of well-connected intermediaries who profited off the position they straddled between foreign firms and domestic resources. One such middleman was Nigeria’s first Finance Minister Festus Okotie-Eboh, who, according to one American diplomat, “attracted much foreign investment to his country and was spurred to do so because he operated on a straight commission basis.”

The 1970s oil boom led to an influx of petrodollars even as it deepened economic inequality and corruption, leaving millions of educated youths in poverty. Eager to mimic the wealth flaunted by corrupt elites amid scarcity, many young people turned to fraud. The director of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Commission estimated in 2023 that seven out of 10 students were involved in cybercrimes, Barragán relates. A new generation of scammers would incorporate into their playbooks tales of payouts and windfalls that often drew inspiration from real headlines. Their fabricated offers to share funds embezzled from government accounts would gain credibility precisely because cases of embezzlement took place so regularly—such as when the former head of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation was arrested for fraud and money laundering in 2017.

This is the world Chibuike, Biggy, Richie, and Azeez grew up in. They are blessed with unbridled entrepreneurial spirit yet cursed with limited avenues along which to channel it. Throughout the book, Barragán makes clear the narrow horizon of choices on offer. The other jobs they hold at various points—Richie has worked as a cashier at a sports betting center and Azeez apprenticed at a neighborhood tailor—pay poorly and afford no real upward mobility. When Barragán asked Biggy where he saw himself in five years, he responded: “A rich-ass motherfucker.” In reality, Biggy was about to turn 30, still living at home, and perpetually on the verge of being broke. It was this disjuncture between their outsize economic ambitions and disappointing realities that fostered the allure of Yahooing. As Biggy explained, “I started doing it for a better life, because the country itself is fucked up.” A smartphone, which can be purchased for as little as five thousand naira (less than four dollars), becomes a golden ticket, promising at once deliverance and ruin.

The stories that Yahoo Boys tell themselves are varied. Some, like Biggy, see the wealth they scam out of foreigners as a form of reparations for slavery and colonialism. Others view successful scams as acts of empowerment. In a world in which negative stereotypes about African incompetence remain pervasive, they wear the ability to outcon unsuspecting white people as a badge of honor. At times, the reason for scamming is movingly simple: Azeez, the youngest scammer Barragán interviewed, turned to Yahooing just so he could dine at the local restaurant Foodcity again.

Many Yahoo Boys see themselves as Robin Hood characters, giving away significant portions of their earnings to schoolchildren, friends, and acquaintances. They’re also generous in sharing “formats,” pre-written documents with step-by-step instructions on how to approach romance scam victims. Neighborhood stores thrive on their earnings and spending habits. “We are brainers, not scammers,” one of them told Barragán proudly. “We’re bringing money to the country.” Miracle, a Yahoo Girl, has paintings of both Pablo Escobar and the Virgin Mary hanging in her room. Barragán observes that “when she needed money, she prayed to both.”

Richie, Azeez, and others may have embraced Yahooing for material reasons, but what keeps them in thrall to the hustle are the intangibles: dignity, status, purpose, community, a sense of self. Barragán shows how all four men had experienced the kind of invisibility that came with poverty. Chibuike, for instance, admitted to feeling “completely alone in the world for as long as he could remember, and spending money on people was his way of filling that void.” In Ikotun, a successful “cashout” could transform an anonymous teenager into a local celebrity, with new clothes, new friends, and a new place in the pecking order. In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2013 novel Americanah, one character reflects on his newly acquired status as a Big Man in Lagos: “People treat you differently … Suddenly you’re getting all of this sucking-up from people because they think you expect it, all this exaggerated politeness, exaggerated praise, even exaggerated respect that you haven’t earned at all, and it’s so fake and so garish, it’s like a bad overcolored painting, but sometimes you start believing a little bit of it yourself and sometimes you see yourself differently.”

The attempt to understand what, exactly, makes Yahoo Boys tick is the driving force of Barragán’s account. Unassuming and open-minded, Barragán has a knack for getting them to open up to him. Perhaps this is because Nigerian poverty and Western loneliness occupy two sides of the same coin. Both stem from the ravages of late-stage capitalism. The American or European retiree who spent decades working long hours while social bonds frayed, and the Nigerian teen whose wages fail to keep pace with inflation are both paying the price of upholding the global economic system, even as they remain on its margins.

Barragán’s story is set firmly in the late 2010s and early 2020s: the Covid-19 pandemic casts a long shadow, exacerbating economic volatility in the Global South and social isolation everywhere else. Lockdowns across the globe made surviving on honest wages in Lagos even harder, as many industries slowed, while “clients” in the West who were social distancing became all the more hungry for connection. The pathologies of our current moment—the yearning for genuine human connection, the ever-widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots, and, in Chibuike’s case, a parasocial celebrity culture in the social media era—play out in living color.

Especially memorable is Barragán’s description of the inner workings of the scam economy, which illustrates both the wonders and pitfalls of internet-driven globalization: The American or European victim purchases a U.S. gift card for their Nigerian scammer, who sells it to Chinese contacts, who then unload it on netizens eager to circumvent the “Great Firewall.” The scam economy thus functions as an illicit subsector of the global economy with its own supply chains and digital networks. “We live in a world that commodifies human connection,” Barragán writes. The application of market logic to relationships recasts them as economic opportunities, leaving little room for alternative ethical frameworks.

Interestingly, Barragán draws the worlds of the Yahoo Boys more vividly than those of their victims, whose appearances in the book are episodic and anticlimactic. Towards the end of the book, Barragán explains his decision to shift the narrative focus from victims to perpetrators: “I wanted to understand how these boys saw us, how they made sense of our isolation, and how that shaped their lives and community.” This turned out to be the right call. Scam victims are usually less clear-eyed than their scammers about what happened. “Imagine if you’ve been single for ten years,” Biggy, for instance, reflects at one point. “Then, all of a sudden, someone starts showing you attention? Would you want to let go of it so soon? You won’t.”

The Yahoo Boys is, in form, a tragic coming of age story. As Chibuike, Biggy, Richie, and Azeez move from adolescence to early adulthood, they undergo the same patterns of experimentation and reinvention as their more fortunate counterparts in wealthier countries. Unlike teenagers from more privileged backgrounds, who often have the means to recover from mistakes, the young men of Ikotun rarely get second chances. When Azeez appeared on the cusp of a more promising life, I couldn’t help but root for him, which makes his uncertain end all the more devastating. By the end of Barragán’s story, he has renounced Yahooing in hopes of going back to school. Yet his family’s inability to come up with the registration fees leaves him in a no man’s land between his past and his future.

At once bold and empathetic, The Yahoo Boys is a rare account of the subterranean world of our digital age and those who inhabit it. The book bears an epigraph from James Baldwin: “What you’ve got to remember is what you’re looking at is also you.” It’s an artful reminder that poverty and inequality in one place is poverty and inequality everywhere. Africa’s economic challenges—in part a legacy of colonialism—reverberate back to the West, a dark mirror of the insecure affluence and gamified isolation that define the lives of so many.

One of those pending petitions—a case involving police power, the Fifth Amendment, and a Los Angeles print shop—warrants a deep dive from the court. At issue is a particularly troubling vision of law enforcement’s role in American society by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Without the court’s intervention, it could have corrosive implications for American policing and its place in everyday life.

Pena v. City of Los Angeles began with the pursuit of an armed fugitive by law-enforcement officials in southern California in 2022. At one point, Carlos Pena heard noise outside his print shop. “He opened his door to investigate, and saw a man running towards him, pursued by United States Marshals with weapons drawn,” his lawyers told the justices in their petition for review. “The fugitive struck Pena on the shoulder, threw him out of the shop, and barricaded himself inside.”

During the ensuing standoff, the Marshals called for backup from the Los Angeles Police Department, which sent its SWAT team to take control of the scene. The SWAT team eventually used heavy amounts of tear gas and pepper spray in an attempt to force the fugitive out of the building. Thirteen hours later, after conducting a thorough search of the building and its attic, officers concluded that the fugitive had either “escaped or was ‘gone on arrival,’” according to a lower-court ruling, which appears to be a polite way to say that the LAPD may have spent half of a day gassing an empty building.

While both the fugitive and the police soon moved on, Pena did not. The consequences for the small business he had operated for thirteen years were immense. To access the building, officers had damaged the “walls, doors, roof, and windows” at multiple points, either to gain entry or deploy gas. The chemical munitions took their own toll. “In addition, the tear gas and pepper spray permeated the entire shop, which [Pena] claims caused additional damage to his shop, his printing equipment, and his inventory, and rendered his shop uninhabitable until [he] had it cleaned by a hazardous materials team,” the lower court recounted.

After the unexpected siege, Pena sought to rebuild his livelihood. He told the courts that his insurance company (unsurprisingly) refused to compensate him for the destruction inflicted upon his business. The police officers who caused the damage were “under the impression that the city would compensate Pena” when he spoke to them, he told the justices, but city officials “categorically refused to pay for the damage.”

In 2023, Pena sued the city in federal court, arguing that the intentional destruction of his property violated the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. That clause states that “private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation.” This language is most familiar to Americans in the context of eminent domain: When the government wants to build a railroad or highway through someone’s farm, it has to provide fair compensation for the value of the property that it seizes to do so.

Pena argued that the clause’s language applied to him as well. Government officials, he contended, intentionally inflicted $60,000 worth of property damage while carrying out their official duties, then declined to compensate him for it. According to court filings, city attorneys not only didn’t deny that the city was responsible for the damage, but they never even responded to his initial requests for compensation before he filed his lawsuit.

Two separate courts ruled against Pena for different reasons. First, Judge John Walter rejected his claim in the district court by reasoning that the LAPD’s actions “constituted a valid use of police power” and therefore “did not constitute a taking for purposes of the Fifth Amendment.” The Supreme Court has not directly ruled on whether a state’s police power is exempt from the Takings Clause, but some of its rulings lean that way.

In 1996, for example, the court ruled against a Detroit woman whose car was seized by the city after police found her husband “engaged in sexual activity with a prostitute” inside the car, which the couple jointly owned. William Rehnquist, the chief justice at the time, noted that the wife had made a Takings Clause claim, but dispensed with it by blithely noting that the city had “lawfully acquired” it through forfeiture.

Walter’s opinion ably cited precedents from other courts that rejected similar Fifth Amendment claims after people’s homes and livelihoods were destroyed in the course of police actions. One of them, from the Fifth Circuit, involved a family whose home was partially destroyed by SWAT team bulldozers after a gunman took refuge in their garage with a hostage. There, the city declined to compensate the family for the inadvertent loss of their home, and the courts held that the Constitution provided them no recourse.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals did not embrace Walter’s reasoning. The three-judge panel observed that the district court had gone too far by assuming that there was a categorical exception to the Takings Clause in this context. “We hold only that no taking occurs for the purposes of the Takings Clause when law enforcement officers destroy private property while acting reasonably in the necessary defense of public safety,” Judge Mark Bennett wrote for the panel majority.

From there, however, Bennett engaged in a history-and-tradition examination of the Takings Clause. It led him to a different rationale by which Pena’s claim could be denied. “In addition to the common law right to enter private property, the common law has long recognized a ‘necessity’ privilege for the destruction of private property,” Bennett explained.

This necessity defense has a long and well-established pedigree in some contexts. In 1788, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected a claim for compensation by a man named Sparhawk who lost 227 barrels of flour after patriot forces had removed them from a warehouse in 1777 as British forces approached Philadelphia, then lost them to the British anyway when they captured the barrels at the depot where they were moved. The court had denied Sparhawk’s claims, ruling that they were justified by wartime necessity.

“It is a rule, however, that it is better to suffer a private mischief, than a public inconvenience; and the rights of necessity, form a part of our law,” Chief Justice Thomas McKean, an influential founding-era statesman, wrote in his decision. That principle made its way into American constitutional law even after the Fifth Amendment’s ratification. The Supreme Court later invoked it to deny claims in cases where the military destroyed private property to prevent it from falling into enemy hands, including Southern railroads during the Civil War and petroleum refineries in the Philippines during World War II.

Bennett applied the same reasoning to civilian law-enforcement practices without hesitation. “We find Sparhawk particularly persuasive given that, as discussed further below, the Supreme Court has repeatedly cited Sparhawk for the principle that the government’s destruction of private property in wartime does not warrant just compensation,” the panel noted in a footnote. Though Pena’s shop was obviously not destroyed in the context of wartime, the panel concluded that the rules applied in the context of “governmental takings in the context of defending public safety.”

This is a deeply flawed view of the police power and law enforcement’s role in American society. Our constitutional order has always recognized a sharp and essential divide between civilian and military power, with the latter subordinated to the former at all times. Treating civilian law-enforcement officials as constitutionally equivalent to soldiers in an armed conflict logically places our free society under a permanent state of war—and radically reshapes the relationship between ordinary citizens and the police. It transmutes 330 million Americans into an occupied people subject to the arbitrary whims of whatever armed power determines to be a “necessity.”

Other members of the court recognized the problems with this reasoning. Judge Michelle Friedland wrote a separate opinion where she concurred only in the court’s judgment. She argued that Pena’s claim failed because it all within the search-and-arrest exception to the Fourth Amendment, which he would transpose to the Takings Clause. Friedland criticized the majority for expanding Sparhawk beyond the context it was written and the limits McKean himself had acknowledged.

The court in Sparhawk emphasized, however: “The transaction, it must be remembered, happened flagrante bello [during a state of war]; and many things are lawful in that season, which would not be permitted in a time of peace. The seizure of the property in question, can, indeed, only be justified under this distinction.” Sparhawk thus expressly relied on the fact that the country was in a state of war, and the government’s uncompensated seizure of private property was justified only by its need to protect the property from enemy forces.

That rationale, even on Bennett’s terms, cannot be fairly applied to the facts at hand in Pena’s case. Had British forces captured Sparhawk’s flour in Philadelphia, they might have used it to prolong the war against the early republic. The LAPD, by comparison, did not flood Pena’s print shop with chemical munitions because SWAT team members feared that the fugitive might produce obscene literature or reprint copyrighted texts without authorization. There was no direct “necessity” in destroying the print shop; it was merely how the LAPD chose to go about carrying their duties.

It is worth noting that Pena’s lawsuit is not hostile to law enforcement. He conceded that the LAPD SWAT team’s actions were “reasonable” and even acknowledged that, per court filings, “the public good required the destruction of his shop.” Similar cases cited by the district court had involved challenges where the plaintiffs had also alleged excessive force or other constitutional violations. Pena, on the other hand, did not even list the LAPD as a defendant. He simply argued that the city should compensate him for what they had to do.

A friend-of-the-court brief filed by Thomas Tiderington, a longtime police chief in Dallas, Jacksonville, and elsewhere, turned the policy justification for the necessity exception on his head. He argued that it would be more harmful for future police operations if officers had to consider the fate of innocent people’s livelihoods and property when making their decisions. “Officers have not asked for, do not expect, and are not motivated by this constitutional carveout” of the Takings Clause, he argued.

“Asking officers to execute raids or pursue fugitives knowing that their innocent neighbors or loved ones will foot the bill places an unfair burden on officers’ already heavy shoulders,” Tiderington told the court. “It asks officers to harm the people they are charged to protect—to act against the very mission of policing.” He emphasized that police officers “are not a separate caste,” and should not be asked to consider bankrupting their neighbors and friends as part of their job.

The Supreme Court may be interested in this case for its implications on the scope of the Takings Clause, which the conservative justices have expanded in some contexts in recent years. The lower courts are divided on when and how it applies in these situations, further justifying their intervention. More than anything else, Pena’s case warrants the court’s review because of the profound misapplication of wartime necessity exceptions to ordinary law-enforcement operations. Extending the wartime legal exceptions of military forces to more than 18,000 police departments around the country in everyday life is a mistake worth correcting by the Supreme Court.

In the past week, the FDA has discovered salmonella in granola, salad dressing, jalapenos, and animal food; glass in fruit popsicles; and metal in sourdough—just to name a few. 

Between August 14 and 20 in 2025, the FDA recalled only three products. In the same week in 2024, the FDA recalled only two, according to the FDA website. 

It’s not immediately clear whether the increase in recalls can be attributed to increased enforcement or more hazardous food—but the rapid recalls really make you wonder, is this what making America healthy again looks like? 

This week of many public health announcements follows a national cyclospora outbreak that has sickened more than 13,000 people and caused two deaths. Last week, the FDA finally dispatched investigators to the facilities linked to the outbreak—nearly a month after linking the parasite to Taylor Farms. Before any of this, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reportedly cut back on parasite monitoring.

CNBC’s Sara Eisen asked Bessent to comment on recent signs that the job market was cracking. Bessent downplayed the “noisy” numbers suggesting the job market was not stable.

“The jobs that we’re seeing are going to Americans,” Bessent. “After the deportations that we’ve seen during the President Trump administration and the closing of the border, that’s like this unfettered migration, we don’t need to produce as many jobs.”

Bessent on the latest bad jobs report: "After the deportations that we've seen and the closing of the border, we don't need to produce as many jobs" pic.twitter.com/kStWCiXAz5

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 20, 2026

In July, the U.S. labor market shed 23,000 jobs, a worrying sign when paired with high gas prices and tariff-based inflation. Notably, women accounted for 100 percent of that decline, losing 32,000 jobs while men gained 9,000. The report also revised down job growth numbers from the previous two months.

For several months, the Trump administration has been pushing Americans to lower their expectations for job growth to reflect a labor market that doesn’t rely on undocumented immigrants. Americans don’t need jobs, apparently! It’s a strange spin for the simple fact that the president’s sweeping deportations are hurting the economy.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration claims that more than 2 million immigrants have left the country since Trump reentered office—something that couldn’t possibly be true.

Four of those children will accompany their parents on the upcoming leg of their road trip to Boston, and before they leave Duffy has to have a heart-to-heart with Paloma, his 17-year-old daughter. The family will soon be visiting colleges and the Transportation Secretary is worried. “Let’s say you got into Harvard, would you be pushing us to actually have you go?” Duffy asks.

Paloma, sitting across a massive kitchen island from her father, answers yes as the first notes of foreboding music begin to play in the background. This conversation is not just about where Paloma will go to college. After years of raising their children as devout Catholics, the Duffys are worried about what a single semester at a liberal college could do to their daughter’s faith. This tension is stretched into a full-fledged storyline over the course of the six-part series, a twist on a coming-of-age tale. Paloma wants to grow and change; her parents have other plans.

The camera then cuts to Rachel Campos-Duffy in a jarring nod to the aggressive editing style that characterizes most reality TV. “We spent a lot of time nurturing and providing formation for our kids, giving them an environment where they’re steeped in faith and values,” a strangely barefoot Campos-Duffy says while curled up on the couch beside her husband. “And so the idea of dropping her off at a place that would undermine that, or try to undo all those things makes me worried.”

Speaking to Paloma, Duffy is less diplomatic about what he’s really worried about. “They have professionalized figuring out how they can take good young girls like you, and, I think, corrupt their minds,” he says. It’s a sinister, if vague, allegation that a Cabinet secretary may want to look into. But Duffy is speaking to his daughter as her father, not as the man who currently sits fourteenth in the line of succession.

Poor Paloma pushes back. “I went to an extremely conservative school in high school, and I’m part of an extremely conservative family. If I go to a liberal setting, that’s a way more rounded education than if I go to a conservative high school and then a conservative college,” she says.

A knowing look spreads across Duffy’s face—his daughter is still learning the ways of the world. She only sees Harvard as the nation’s preeminent private college, not as the sex and communism factory it really is. “They’re so good at it, you’ll see,” Duffy says. “Young people go to a conservative school with a conservative family, and they get perverted and contorted” when they stray too far afield—like, say, by attending a prestigious “liberal” university. Paloma is clearly smart, but Duffy seems not to think she’s smart enough to evade the perverts and contortionists at Harvard.

Unless you’re clamoring for a window into Paloma Campos-Duffy’s college plans for some reason, it’s not exactly compelling television. Still, it’s a conversation that gets at a tension that runs throughout the Great American Road Trip. Duffy and his family are ostensibly on a journey to “[explore] destinations, transportation, and all the people and places that make America unique.” There’s just one problem: Duffy isn’t actually interested in most of the country he spent months traveling across. In fact, he wants to protect himself and his family from much of it, just like he wants to keep Paloma away from Harvard.

The six-part show is part unscripted series and part illegal advertisement. For something so boring, it has always been controversial. Its announcement was greeted by an immediate and severe backlash—which should have been expected given that The Great American Road Trip was paid for by corporate sponsors like Boeing, Toyota, and Shell—companies the Secretary of Transportation is ostensibly supposed to oversee and regulate. Initially scheduled to drop as part of President Trump’s sketchy Freedom 250 celebration, it faded from view and was quietly dumped on the DOT’s official YouTube channel earlier this week. Millions of dollars were spent for a couple thousand views. The show is dreadfully boring. And the ethical problems that have dogged it from its inception haven’t gone away.

Federal employees are bound by a code of ethical standards that strictly prohibit them from using their public office for private gain and from endorsing any product, service, or enterprise while they serve. Of course, that rule has become more of a suggestion during the second Trump administration—which is how we got The Great American Road Trip.

Before each episode, a disclaimer clarifies that no taxpayer dollars were spent on the Duffys’ family vacations. But it does not clarify whether the family received compensation for their participation from The Great American Road Trip Inc., a nonprofit 501(c)(4). Duffy and Campos-Duffy have publicly insisted that they were not compensated for their appearances on the show, but the nonprofit has yet to disclose its beneficiaries. If they got paid, that would not only be a violation of ethical standards, but also could potentially amount to bribery.

In multiple episodes Duffy announces that he has to go to “work” for DOT, before visiting one of the medley of industry giants funding his family’s Road Trip.

In Charleston, South Carolina, the family visited a Boeing plant to gawk at the new Dreamliner. Boeing, one of the project’s main sponsors that has multiple contracts with the DOT. In Fort Worth, Texas, the secretary broke off to visit Cement Roadstone Holding, the country’s largest asphalt producer, which stands to earn big from the secretary’s slate of proposed highway expansions. In Scottsdale, Arizona, members of the Duffy family were treated to rides in Waymo’s autonomous vehicles that Dad calls “the future of transportation.”

Still, the disclaimers and quiet release of the series displays a level of self-consciousness that is uncharacteristic of the shameless Trump administration. Is it really possible that they got all the way through production before realizing how badly they’d broken the rules?

The numerous ethical violations aren’t the only reason the show should never have aired: The series’s central college storyline is a humiliating blow to the Trump administration’s war on American colleges and universities.

When the Duffy family visits Cambridge, they head to St. Paul’s Catholic Church to speak to Father Nathaniel Sanders, an undergraduate chaplain, about the Catholic culture at Harvard. Crammed together in a pew, the Duffys ask questions about whether a Catholic can possibly attend the Ivy League institution without becoming a godless heathen.

Campos-Duffy tells Sanders that after her eldest, Evita, had a bad experience at the University of Chicago, she’s nervous about one of her daughters attending a godless Ivy League. “Why are we giving our money to people who hate us, hate our values?” she asks.

“I don’t think there’s anything nefarious going on,” Sanders tells the family. “You come here because it’s the best opportunity. And if someone has a sense of themselves and a sense of God before coming here, that will only flower.” The Duffys’ tour of Harvard Catholic Center is the only footage of the school included in the show, which suggests a college visit without a visit to the college. There’s a palpable sense that showing too much of Harvard would give the game away and expose just how preposterous the Duffys’ fearmongering about the school really is.

Later, Duffy and Paloma sit down at Fenway Park to recap tours of Harvard and Boston College, and the secretary finally gives in. “I think a smart, good girl can completely navigate what is a really good school,” he says. After visiting the campus for himself, Duffy can no longer claim that Harvard brainwashes its students. This is what counts as narrative tension and character development on The Great American Road Trip.

It’s what many of us would call a “learning moment,” but amid the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to target the university as part of a larger war on “liberal” institutions of higher education, it feels even more hollow. The administration’s war on these schools is rooted in ignorance, fear, and culture war nonsense. Duffy backed down after visiting Harvard. What would it take for the rest of the administration to do the same?

Duffy may have had a Damascus moment in Cambridge, but the overarching lesson of The Great American Road Trip isn’t really that travel can serve as an engine for personal growth by putting us in touch with different people from diverse backgrounds. It’s that there isn’t much point to it at all. For Duffy, there’s really no point in encountering anyone or anything that contradicts his cosseted worldview. Actually, there’s one point: visiting the corporations that are footing the bill for your road trip.

In the series’s final episode, Paloma learns she’s been accepted to the University of Chicago while driving down historic Route 66. As her family speeds into the past, she looks toward the future. It’s a heartwarming, kitschy ending to a nothingburger show. It makes you wonder why the family couldn’t visit Chicago. Then you remember that the Trump administration launched a federal invasion there.

Inside Washington

This could be Dems’ best chance to flip a House seat in Iowa

Sarah Trone Garriott might be Democrats’ best chance to flip a House seat in Iowa this year. But to do that, she’ll have to get past a barrage of culture war attacks from the GOP.

This week, four Iowa races were among the ten total races that Inside Elections reclassified based on recent polling, shifting them toward Democrats. The nonpartisan group reclassified the governor’s race between GOP businessman Zach Lahn and Democratic state auditor Rob Sand from “Toss-up” to “Tilt Democratic,” and switched the Senate race between GOP Representative Ashley Hinson and State Representative Josh Turek from “Lean Republican” to “Tilt Republican.” The 2nd congressional district moved from “Likely Republican” to “Lean Republican,” and the 3rd congressional district, where Trone Garriott, a Lutheran pastor and member of the state Senate faces incumbent Representative Zach Nunn, is now considered a “Toss-up.”

These kinds of prospects for Democrats would have seemed unthinkable in the red state even a few years ago. And the excitement from polling alone—the reinvigorating effect it might have on the state’s Democrats—could help down-ballot candidates like Trone Garriott, said Karen Kedrowski, a professor of political science at Iowa State University. “If the Democrats are showing up to vote because it’s an exciting year and they think they can flip some steep seats, and the Republicans don’t share that same enthusiasm, I think that she has a real shot.”

To win, Trone Garriott will have to take on both Nunn and a flood of attack ads against her. Nunn is endorsed by President Trump, but his advertising has instead been emphasizing his track record of bipartisan cooperation on the campaign trail, Kedrowski explained, which could help him appeal to the district’s swingy voters. That strategy changed somewhat on Monday, when Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth joined Nunn at the Iowa State Fair, offering remarks wherein he justified the war in Iran and used an anti-trans slur.

Republicans have been attacking Trone Garriott over her support for trans people during her time in the state senate. As a lawmaker, she voted against a bill to prohibit elementary and secondary schools from letting someone use a bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity (the bill ultimately passed), and voted against a bill that based school and college sports eligibility on sex assigned at birth (that bill was signed into law in 2022).

Trone Garriott has also faced attacks claiming that she officiated a satanic wedding in 2006—despite the fact that she wasn’t an ordained minister at the time, and thus couldn’t actually officiate weddings. The attacks stem from a story she told publicly in 2023 with the Des Moines Register Storytellers Project. In 2006, she was an intern pastor at a Lutheran church in West Virginia, when the pastor training her officiated a wedding between a couple that identified as Satanists, and it fell to her to read a passage—she chose 1 Corinthians 13—for the ceremony. “I believe my calling as a minister is to share the word of God with everyone, even the most unlikely people,” she said at the storytelling event. “And I saw the power of scripture in that moment. And I do believe it made an impact on them. And it reminded me of my calling to love my neighbor, including the neighbor I don’t agree with and I don’t share the same values with, and I certainly did not have the same beliefs as these people.”

Though Trone Garriott’s campaign has been mostly positive, she’s found ways to hit Nunn. “She’s calling for mandatory town meetings. And with the exception of [Senator] Chuck Grassley, nobody has been holding town meetings because defending the Republican agenda right now is really pretty difficult,” Kedrowski said. In May, Trone Garriott held a town hall in each of the district’s 21 counties.

In recent weeks, she’s also criticized Nunn over his donations from Chinese-owned companies, arguing that he’s not “tough on China.” Between 2022 and 2026, Nunn’s campaign and leadership PAC accepted $18,750 from Syngenta Corporation and Smithfield Foods.

“I’m hearing from voters across the district who are very concerned about rising costs and the corruption in Washington. Zach Nunn is a career politician who has been in office since 2014. Instead of making Iowa more affordable during his time in Congress, he’s voted to increase costs for the rest of us. He’s desperate to distract from the fact that he has taken thousands of dollars from Chinese companies, and then voted to allow China to buy Iowa farmland,” she said in a statement to The New Republic.

Nunn’s campaign has been pushing back against her characterizations, citing legislation he’s supported “confronting” the Chinese Communist Party.

Electorally, Nunn has proved resilient, defeating a Democratic incumbent for the seat in 2022 and winning reelection in 2024. The district voted for Trump in all three of his elections. But Democrats are hopeful that Trone Garriott is the right person to unseat Nunn, and that 2026 is the right year. She won her elections to the state senate in 2020, ran in a new district in 2022 after redistricting, and won that seat again in 2024. In 2024, the district went for Trump, yet also reelected Trone Garriott.

“Nationally, we’re seeing a lot more enthusiasm on the part of Democratic voters in terms of turnout than Republican voters, and we’re seeing that in Iowa too,” Kedrowski said. “I think Iowa has a longer history of being a swing state than it has of being a solidly Republican state.”

Outside Washington

The backlash to data centers has been very bipartisan, but Democratic candidates have typically been more aggressive on the topic than Republicans. As Molly Beck notes in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Wisconsin governor’s race may prove an exception. Once upon a time, it looked like the Democratic nominee was going to be championing a full data center moratorium—but that was because a lot of people expected the Democratic nominee to be Francesca Hong. Then moderate David Crowley pulled off an eleventh-hour upset of Hong in the primary. Now, in the general election, while both Crowley and Republican Tom Tiffany are eager to portray themselves as tough on big tech, Crowley appears to be less aggressive than Tiffany on perhaps the biggest issue under debate, which is the state’s tax subsidies. Tiffany “is calling to end tax incentives outright,” Beck writes, “while Crowley said he would make it harder to get them”—specifically by requiring, in Crowley’s words, “100 percent clean power, no secret deals, real money back to the community, and no increase on consumer rates.” (Worth tossing into the conversation: Depending on how all this is measured, the benchmarks Crowley outlines may be tough for companies to meet, especially at the speed the industry is currently moving—so the difference between his position and outright canceling the subsidies may prove to be somewhat theoretical.)

In case you missed it: DeSmog recently published a striking piece about multiple speakers at the annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council—a powerful conservative lobbying group—openly saying how important the current conservative majority on the Supreme Court has been for the oil and gas industry. Paul Watkins—a lawyer famous for fighting environmentally conscious investing practices on behalf of a group backed by conservative court strategy mastermind Leonard Leo—even warned of “catastrophic outcomes” for the oil industry should this majority be disrupted, reports Sarah Hofmann. Watkins and others were reportedly speaking, in particular, about lawsuits seeking to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for climate change.

The Ideas Factory

Tamar Jacoby, director of the Progressive Policy Institute’s New Ukraine Project, pens a piece in the Washington Monthly about the use of “ground drones,” or unmanned ground vehicles known as UGVs, by Ukrainian forces against Russia. Late last year, Jacoby writes, one Ukrainian strike unit that “emerged early on as a pioneer of ground-based robotic systems … used a single cart mounted with a Browning machine gun to hold a stretch of the front line for 45 days.”

At Pew Research, Drew Desilver asks whether teen summer employment might finally be ticking upward after decades of slump. “A summer job—whether scooping ice cream, busing tables, or teaching campers to make lanyards—once was a rite of passage for American teens,” Desilver writes. “But far fewer teens are working such jobs now than two or three decades ago.” For the summer of 2026, Pew finds, analyzing federal employment data, that 35.5 percent of teens between the ages of 16 and 19 have held a paying job. Hispanic and Black teen employment numbers are significantly lower than white teen employment numbers.

Political Trivia Question of the Day

Wednesday was Bill Clinton’s 80th birthday. In what year was Clinton first elected governor of Arkansas, and how old was he? (Sign up for The Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

The Guardian reports that the organization is alarmed that the administration is getting rid of a buffer zone around the park, which is a world heritage site. “The world heritage committee has consistently considered extractive activities to be incompatible with world heritage status,” a UNESCO spokesperson told the paper.

The committee has also “emphasized that projects proposed outside world heritage properties should not adversely affect their outstanding universal value—which are the features of the site that justify its inscription, and should be subject to appropriate impact assessments before decisions are taken,” the spokesperson added.

The federal Bureau of Land Management has proposed getting rid of a 10-mile buffer zone protecting the area from any industrial activity, whether that’s uranium mining or fossil fuel drilling. Tribal leaders, environmental groups, and archaeologists have all warned that the site could be irreparably damaged from such activity. In a 12-day public comment period earlier this year, the government received close to 100,000 comments mostly opposed to ending the buffer zone.

“This park offers an incredible transportive experience where you essentially go back in time 1,000 years to experience what the ancient Pueblo people saw,” Maude Dinan, New Mexico program manager at the National Parks Conservation Association, told The Guardian. “The buffer zone is incredibly important and removing it would completely change this experience.”

The New Mexico park is one of 27 world heritage sites in the U.S., ranging from national parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone to landmarks like the Statue of Liberty. The lone American site on UNESCO’s list of heritage sites whose preservation is in danger is Everglades National Park in Florida, thanks to nearby development and pollution. Chaco and other sites where the administration has pushed for development, mining, and drilling, such as Big Bend National Park, could soon join that list.

“Our offices have been informed that the Department of Defense assigned an active-duty Public Affairs officer to serve as a ‘deputy’ to Stars and Stripes Publisher Max Lederer, reportedly without consultation with Mr. Lederer,” Senators Elizabeth Warren, Richard Blumenthal, and Jeanne Shaheen wrote in a Thursday letter to Hegseth. “On August 18, Mr. Lederer announced that he will retire after more than three decades at Stars and Stripes … citing fundamental differences between his understanding of the value and mission of Stars and Stripes and the Department’s plans for the organization.”

“The placement of an active-duty Public Affairs officer in the senior leadership of an organization whose credibility depends on its independence from the military chain of command raises serious questions.”

Stars and Stripes is partly funded by the Defense Department but has long had editorial independence. Installing an active-duty military officer in an editorial position at the newspaper in the midst of an extremely unpopular overhaul of Pentagon leadership—and an even more unpopular war on Iran—reeks of bias. The senators gave Hegseth a deadline of August 28 to offer a “detailed explanation” as to why he appointed the active-duty officer to oversee the outlet.

“For generations, American service members, particularly those stationed overseas and in combat zones, have relied on Stars and Stripes for credible and independent news,” the letter concluded. “At this critical moment of leadership transition, that independence must not be compromised. We urge you to preserve that independence and provide prompt answers regarding these latest developments.”

Hegseth has already demonstrated a desire for narrative control over what both civilians and service members know about his leadership. Earlier this year, the Pentagon fired the ombudsman responsible for guaranteeing the military paper’s editorial independence. Last year, he filled the Pentagon Press Corps with sycophants from the likes of ultraconservative organizations like Turning Point USA shortly after instituting a “pledge” for Pentagon reporters, requiring them to abstain from receiving any unauthorized material or publishing without approval. And the administration at large has fought with reporters covering troops’ low morale, low provisions, and severe injuries in the war on Iran.

Hegseth has yet to officially respond.

Speaking to the network’s Sara Eisen, Bessent admitted that he didn’t know when the Iran war would end, but that things were otherwise going well with the economy despite the soaring national debt and increasing deficit.

“This Iran conflict, we will get on the other side of this. We don’t know when,” Bessent said, failing to inspire much confidence.

Bessent was even less inspirational when it came to the national debt, telling Eisen, “There’s nothing magic about the 40 trillion number, and we can grow our way out of that,” before blaming tariff refunds for the poor GDP and rising deficit.

“One of things that’s temporary here that’s influencing the deficit has been these tariff refunds, and we won’t have to do that again,” Bessent said, adding that the administration was reinstituting tariffs. “I would expect that our 2026 tariff income is going to be roughly what it was in 2025.”

Bessent downplays the national debt: "There's nothing magic about the $40 trillion number. We can grow our way out of that." pic.twitter.com/ATQv5pMwid

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 20, 2026

When Eisen asked if “we have seen peak deficit during this administration,” Bessent replied, “I think there’s a very good chance we have.”

“We are going to be laser-focused, as I said. [Office of Management and Budget] Director Vought, myself, the president; that combined with the vice president’s fraud task force, where I think we could save several hundred billion dollars,” Bessent said.

Suggesting that the deficit isn’t going to increase beyond current levels doesn’t make sense with how President Trump is spending money on everything from the Iran war to his pet construction projects. There’s no guarantee that Trump’s new tariff approach will survive court challenges either. And Bessent couldn’t help but admit that the Iran war shows no sign of ending anytime soon, meaning that his positive forecast is just a lot of wishful thinking.

The DOJ filed a statement of interest this week arguing that the law goes too far, and is broader than federal law. 

Minnesota’s ban states that “a person who owns or controls a website, application, software, program, or other service must not: (1) allow a user to access, download, or use the website, application, software, program, or other service to nudify an image or video; or (2) nudify an image or video on behalf of a user.” Breaking the law carries a fine of up to $500,000.

The law defines “nudify” as “the process by which an image or video is altered or generated to depict an intimate part not depicted in an original unaltered image or video of an identifiable individual.” It also applies when “the altered or generated image or video is so realistic that a reasonable person would believe that the intimate part belongs to the identifiable individual.” 

The DOJ argued that the law “sweeps up constitutional and productive conduct not prohibited under federal law because of the way Minnesota drafted (and apparently will enforce) the statute.”

Musk’s xAi filed its lawsuit last month on First Amendment grounds after a temporary restraining order request was denied.

xAI’s attorneys argue that the law would hold the company unfairly liable for users nudifying images. They also argue that xAI has adequate moderation tactics in place to stop it from happening in the first place. 

“The state would punish xAI for allowing a user to nudify themselves,” attorney Robert Dunn said to Courthouse News. Minnesota disagrees.

“It’s certainly not surprising that xAI is not coming into federal court and saying, ‘We support these images,’” Minnesota Assistant Attorney General Janine Kimble said to Courthouse News. “They say, ‘Look at our terms of service; we tell people not to do this.’ … And yet, they still are reporting tens of thousands of users creating images.”

In January, Musk himself admitted that his Grok AI chatbot was posting nude images of children at the behest of some of his platform’s most perverted users. He blamed  “lapses in safeguards.” The chatbot also posted nude deepfake images of adult women without their consent—making Minnesota’s law seem all the more reasonable. 

Speaking on Fox News’s Sean Hannity Show Wednesday, Graham explained the shocking moment she admitted she was “not informed on national security,” when asked whether Taiwan and the South China Sea were national security issues for the United States.

“You know, I tripped up on one question last night regarding Taiwan. But you know I’ve said many times, I’m not a politician, certainly not a career politician, I don’t speak politician,” she said. “You know I was just honest, and I think that’s kind of a foreign concept.”

It’s true that a wise woman knows herself to be a fool—but Graham’s foolishness wasn’t finished.

“Of course Taiwan is our friend, but I think people in South Carolina are more worried about making ends meet, they’re concerned about boys in girls’ sports,” she added.

It would be surprising if people in South Carolina really felt that way—considering the state passed a law banning transgender students from playing on girls’ or women’s sports teams four years ago. The conservative-majority Supreme Court recently upheld similar rules in two other states, cementing the status of South Carolina’s transgender athlete ban.

She added that South Carolinians were more concerned about the second amendment, the SAVE America Act, and illegal immigration, “so they’re concerned about a lot of things other than Taiwan.”

Crucially, if Graham can’t answer simple questions about national security, she has no business being on that debate stage. She also has no business representing South Carolina, for in the same debate, Graham also claimed that there were 50 million people living in South Carolina. There are only 5.6 million.

The White House quickly lashed out after Ossoff mentioned Harp during an Atlanta rally on Sunday, and ever since then, Harp has been all over the news, with new details about her unusually close relationship with the president being revealed nearly every day. On Wednesday, Ossoff reveled in how he successfully rattled the Trump administration.

“It’s been amazing to watch this White House melt down over this all week. And about Natalie Harp, these White House staffers are adults, public officials paid by the taxpayer, with immense power in positions of public trust,” Ossoff told MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell. “And whether it’s Natalie Harp printing out Donald Trump’s daily dose of delusion and flattery, or Peter Navarro steering taxpayer-funded loans to Trump family investments, or Pete Hegseth deluding the president daily into deepening this quagmire in the Middle East, no one cares about their feelings.”

Ossoff: It’s been amazing to watch this White House melt down over this all week. And about Natalie Harp, these White House staffers are adults, public officials paid by the taxpayer, with immense power in positions of public trust. And whether it’s Natalie Harp printing out… pic.twitter.com/gxNNqlz2IL

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 20, 2026

Ossoff went on to attack Trump for being obsessed with building the White House ballroom and flying in a luxury jet gifted to him by Qatar while neglecting military personnel fighting his war, such as the sailors experiencing poor conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, accusing him of retreating “into this circle of sycophantic aides who tell him every day what he wants to hear, not what he needs to hear.”

On Sunday, Ossoff called out Trump, saying that “he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.” That touched a nerve, with Trump calling him a “Pee-Wee Herman lookalike” and White House communications director Steven Cheung calling him “Jon Jackoff” and “the biggest cuck loser in politics.”

Since then, details have emerged about Harp’s obsession with the president, from insisting on riding in the trunk of Trump’s SUV in 2023 to stay close to him to writing gushing letters where she says she forgets to eat and sleep. Her brother told CNN Tuesday that she has written letters to other presidents and has “an unhealthy obsession.”

Other longtime Trump staffers have been perfectly willing to (anonymously) dish about Harp and her unusually close relationship with the president for years now, with aides calling her the “human printer” for printing out drafts of suggested social media posts for him to review and articles for him to read. She’s seen as the source of his bizarre social media posting habits, too. The more she is seen at his side, the more the news stories driving Trump’s inner circle wild will continue.

“We’ll see,” he said to Politico regarding the potential pardon request. “Will I make that request down the road? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not.” He noted that “people may be interested to hear two individuals that were friends for a decade and a half who have not publicly spoken in eight years” discuss their history together. “What could they talk about?” he mused.

Trump will call into Cohen’s weekly talk radio program and podcast When You Know You Know Thursday evening.

“Beyond ridiculous. Cohen conned so many liberals,” commentator Medhi Hasan wrote on X. “I am glad I was one of the few cable hosts, when I was at MSNBC/Peacock, to have actually grilled him on air and not just uncritically accept his BS and fake conversion.”

It’s unclear what exactly brought Cohen back to Trump. Cohen worked as an attorney for Trump from 2006 to 2018, when he was sentenced to three years in federal prison on charges related to his role as the middleman in Trump’s hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. He wrote a book titled Disloyal in 2020 in which he called Trump “a cheat, a mobster, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man.” He testified against him in 2024 regarding the hush money as well. Now Trump and Cohen are apparently chummy again.

Cohen wrote in a Substack article titled “The Impossible Reunion” on Thursday that “forgiveness doesn’t have amnesia.”

“Sometimes the most extraordinary act of courage isn’t winning the fight. It’s deciding the fight doesn’t have to last forever. And sometimes, after everything has burned down, forgiveness is the only thing capable of building something again,” he wrote. “This evening, you’ll hear whether we can.”

Two people familiar with the matter told MS NOW that it was unclear why Harp had failed to obtain the proper security clearance received by all staff when they began working at the White House. Maybe she was too busy writing the president gushing love letters to finish filling out her SF-86 forms?

After concerns around Trump’s seemingly obsessed personal aide mounted among the White House counsel’s office and security officials, the president was forced to personally intervene, one of the people told MS NOW. In recent months, Harp filled out the forms to receive a background check and has since received her security clearance.

Harp’s missing security clearance is just one of several red flags raised by staff during Trump’s second administration that has spurred frustrations among West Wing staffers, four people told MS NOW.

Since joining the president’s posse ahead of the 2024 election, Harp has become a central gatekeeper to the president, allowing certain voices to be heard over others. Harp “plays into the less productive and more troublesome parts of his nature, putting things in front of him that aren’t vetted,” one of the four people told MS NOW.

One national security official voiced concerns that Harp’s unusually close proximity to Trump provided her access to more sensitive information than anyone else in the president’s orbit.

There had been “subtle moves,” to create space between Harp and Trump, another of the four people told MS NOW. “She is just persistent and not realizing that’s what they were trying to do,” they said.

Harp does seem persistent—she once reportedly rode in the trunk of Trump’s SUV when there weren’t enough seats for her up front.

The security clearance issue stems back to the early days ahead of Trump’s second term, when the president-elect’s team reportedly failed to submit security clearance requests for members of his second administration, in violation of the Presidential Transition Act, a federal law that coordinates and funds the transition of power from one administration to the next.

Harp’s security status is part of a broader trend of carelessness in Trump’s second administration. FBI Director Kash Patel also reportedly granted former deputy director Dan Bongino a waiver to bypass getting a key security clearance, but the deputy director was still given access to highly classified information, such as the president’s daily brief, which collates essential information from the intelligence community.

The Sarasota County School Board election, which was led by a co-founder of the conservative group Moms for Liberty, saw two Democrat-endorsed candidates, Megan Tennimon and Beth Mayberry, cruise to victory. A third Democratic candidate, Jimmy Glover, will face a run-off vote in November. If he is victorious, he will be the first person of color to ever sit on the five-person Sarasota County School Board.

“I really think at the end of the day, regardless of political affiliation, our community was just tired of the culture wars, the political theater and being the center of national attention for all the wrong reasons,” Tennimon, a former teacher, said.

“I think that they realized how destructive those divisive policies really were,” Mayberry, also a retired educator, added. “What they’ve seen in the last four years, with basically the tabloid happenings on the school board and a lot of the policies and resolutions that were being made, our general community did not agree with.”

Florida and Governor Ron DeSantis have very much led the charge against “woke” in schools. In 2023, the state banned Advanced Placement Psychology in all public schools because its teachings on sexual orientation and gender identity violated the state’s draconian “Don’t Say Gay” law. The state was responsible for 40 percent of all book bans across the country in the 2022–23 school year, banning 1,406 books like The Kite Runner, Little Rock Nine, and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. In the last year, the Sarasota School Board specifically removed race, sexuality, and disability from its anti-bullying rules and declared its loyalty to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Maybe people seem to be getting anti-woke fatigue at both the state and local level. But Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich doesn’t seem to think so.

“Every couple of years someone in the media writes our obituary, and every couple of years parents show up and prove them wrong,” Descovich told The Washington Post. “School boards are ground zero in the fight for parental rights, and last night Florida parents made that clear.”

Regardless, it’s clear that anti-wokeness isn’t a winning message anymore in Sarasota County, or even Florida at large—as Angie Nixon, a democratic socialist, also recently won the Democratic nomination for Senate.

Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green ruled Wednesday that the state could use the new map backed by President Trump without a statewide voter referendum. It’s a big boost to Republican efforts to hold on to the House, although the ruling will likely be appealed to the Supreme Court of Missouri.

The new districts were already used in the state’s congressional primaries earlier this month and on the same day, Missouri Secretary of State Deny Hoskins, a Republican, rejected a petition to put the map on the ballot this November, claiming such a move violated the Missouri Constitution.

Green agreed with Hoskins Wednesday, writing in his ruling that “The Missouri Constitution does not supply any statement—let alone a clear one—reallocating authority over congressional redistricting away from the General Assembly to a referendum process.”

Opponents in the state are already appealing.

“Everyone knows that Cole County is not the final decision here,” said Richard von Glahn, executive director of People Not Politicians and one of the people who sued to put the map to a vote. “After months of delay, we are pleased to be moving forward to the Missouri Supreme Court to enforce our constitutional rights.”

The new map seeks to get rid of Democratic Representative Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City, one of Missouri’s two Democrats in Congress. Under the new map, the city would be chopped up and absorbed into two nearby Republican districts, and Republicans hope this would increase their House delegation from six to seven members of Congress.

Trump and his fellow Republicans have sought to hastily redraw congressional maps across the country in order to prevent losing the House. They’ve taken advantage of a Supreme Court ruling gutting the Voting Rights Act and removing legal provisions for majority-Black districts. It remains to be seen if this will be enough to overcome the president’s record-low unpopularity.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Democrats appear to have flipped a state legislative district in western Pennsylvania that Donald Trump won less than two years ago by eighteen points. This has big implications for the midterms, and for hidden reasons, it’s really a reason for optimism. It’s no accident that this comes as Trump has hit yet another series of new lows in polling, and we have a bunch of new data that strongly suggests things are starting to trend in the Democrats’ direction in a new way.

We’re going to work through all of it with Michael Cohen, who has a good piece on his Substack, Truth and Consequences, arguing that the big story of this moment is GOP extremism. Michael, good to have you on.

Michael Cohen: Great to be here, Greg. Thanks for having me.

Sargent: So in this Pennsylvania state legislative district north of Pittsburgh in Butler County, Democrat Brandon Dukes is slightly ahead of Republican Scott Tempko. This district backed Trump by 18 in 2024. It’s voted reliably Republican for decades.

Note of caution here—the AP has not yet called the race, but either way, the fact that this district moved by this much is a big story for Democrats. Michael, your thoughts on that?

Cohen: It’s actually a continuation of a good story for Democrats, which is that in the vast majority of special elections since Trump took office in 2025, Democrats have dominated, and often by double digits. This is yet one more place where Democrats are overperforming. And look, the reality is that this kind of overperformance in special elections is usually a pretty good indication of where things are headed in the midterm elections.

You saw this in 2018—Democrats doing very well in special elections and then winning a House majority in November. I mean, that’s kind of where these things are leading. However, I gotta say that the level of overperformance is actually greater than we’ve seen before. I mean, again, you mentioned 19 points yesterday in Pennsylvania. This keeps happening, and it should tell us something about where the electorate is right now.

Sargent: Absolutely. And there’s actually an example from 2018 that applies very well. Recall that before the 2018 midterms, Democrat Conor Lamb won a House special election in southwestern Pennsylvania. Trump had carried that district two years earlier, in 2016, by like 20 points. And so this was a big shift, and it was a harbinger of the midterm blowout in 2018 that was to come.

Now, I think for a bunch of reasons, this midterm probably won’t match the huge pickup Dems made in House seats in 2018. But still, I think we should note that at least three very competitive House races are in Pennsylvania. And I see this as good news. Again, even though it hasn’t been called, the shift itself is good news, in a state that’s going to really help decide control of the House, right?

Cohen: Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting. You make a great observation, that you know, Democrats are unlikely to do as well as in 2018 just because there are fewer seats that are competitive. But when you look at the raw numbers and you look at where they are in the generic ballot, I actually think they might be in a better position, just with fewer seats that are available for them to win.

However, if the trend lines continue where they’re going, and Trump’s approval rating remains where it is, which is in the mid-30s at this point, you know, you could see a situation in which the bottom just falls out for Republicans, and you see a huge shift toward Democrats, which means that a lot of places we haven’t thought are competitive could be competitive.

Sargent: I will point out that the Fifty Plus One site has the generic House ballot matchup right now at Democrats plus six. That’s still not quite where we need it to be for Democrats to win the Senate. But it seems to be moving right now. It seems like Democrats are gaining in this generic House ballot matchup. And I think it’s worth focusing on this too. The electorate in midterms is different from the electorate in presidential years.

A new YouGov poll really gets at that. It has Dems up by seven points in the generic House ballot matchup, which is perfectly consistent with the averages showing it at six that we just mentioned. But the YouGov poll has Democrats leading by 23 points among those who are extremely enthusiastic about voting.

As you know, being a veteran of following politics, Michael, midterm election electorates tend to be highly educated, engaged voters. And so there are lots and lots of signs that Republicans could kind of sit out this election, especially without Trump on the ballot. Can you talk about that dynamic?

Cohen: I think that’s the biggest issue that we should be looking at between now and election day—these voters, Republican voters, who are not happy with Trump, but who are, as of now, still voting Republican. There’s this group, I guess called double haters, in which they don’t like the Democratic Party, but they’re not happy with Trump. And if those voters shift against the GOP, that’s when you see a real bloodbath.

But I mean, I think it’s important to point this out, that it’s still very hard for Democrats to do this. We’re still talking about a place like—take Alaska, right? Trump’s won all three of his elections there by double digits. Now you’re looking at a situation in which Democrats could potentially win a Senate seat. Right now they look like they’re pretty well positioned to do that. That’s a pretty crazy outcome.

In Texas, Democrats have generally done, you know, OK—I mean, OK at least in a red state. They haven’t lost by as big a margin as they’ve lost elsewhere. So you could see that begin to shift. But it’s really hard for any party, in so many places where they have done poorly, to all of a sudden overperform. And that’s what Democrats need to do. But again, the trend lines seem to be moving in that direction.

Sargent: You brought up the Alaska Senate race, so I will point out that in the nonpartisan primary that was just held in Alaska, the Democrat Mary Peltola got forty-eight percent of the vote. The leading Republican, Dan Sullivan, got forty-two percent of the vote. And so, God, that is a reason for optimism right there.

I mean, she’s beating the Republican right at this moment. Now, I don’t want to get too optimistic, but if you’re looking at Alaska really being in play, and now it looks like it’s really within reach for Democrats, you can start to see a path to the majority.

And so, I agree with you that Michigan heavily complicates the picture, but that is a real cause for optimism—Peltola being up.

Cohen: And it’s not just Peltola being up, it’s also Sullivan being, you know, in the low forties. An incumbent running for reelection—that’s usually a pretty bright red light that suggests you’re in serious trouble to win reelection. The thing with Peltola is that she’s won statewide before, right? She did this in, what, 2018, I believe—she won statewide, and she won again in 2020, and then she lost in 2022, in a bad environment for Democrats.

So I just think that she has a track record in Alaska. Sullivan appears to be an unpopular incumbent. The national environment is just terrible for Republicans. So yeah. And she’s leading every poll. So it does seem like she’s got a chance. But again, like I said a second ago, you have to remember, these are red states. And for Democrats—I mean, you could see Democrats win two or three Senate seats in red states.

I mean, I think we have to step back here and just realize for a second how unusual a situation we’re in right now, where you have this many Republican seats—places where Trump, again, won by double digits in many cases—competitive. This is just very unusual in our modern political environment. Keep in mind, right now, for example, there’s not a single Democratic senator in a state that Trump won three straight elections, right?

There’s one Republican senator in a state that Kamala Harris won in 2024, and that would be Maine, and that’s Susan Collins, and she looks like she might might lose. So, for Democrats to be competitive in Iowa, in Ohio, in Alaska, in Texas—states that again went for Trump all three times—is really unusual. And I think it speaks to just how deeply unpopular he is as president, and how much his unpopularity has hurt the Republican brand.

Sargent: Well, that brings us to Trump’s numbers. We had a new Reuters poll this week that has Trump’s approval rating down to a dismal 33 percent, 64 percent disapprove. Now, it’s possible that Donald Trump’s approval isn’t down at 33 percent. It isn’t quite that low, possibly.

But note this: Trump has just hit his lowest point ever in The New York Times average of polls, which has him at 37 percent approving, with 59 percent disapproving. The Times average is kind of conservative. It has a lot of data in it. For him to be twenty-two points underwater by those averages suggests maybe that the 33 percent that Reuters has might not be far from where he really is now. What do you think?

Cohen: I mean, it’s hard with polling these days, because you have a lot of lousy polling out there. I mean, if you look at, when the Times breaks it down to the select pollsters and their other pollsters—amongst the good pollsters, he’s doing rather poorly. What I think is most interesting about his numbers is, it’s not just that he is unpopular. It’s that he’s really unpopular.

You look at, like, his strong disapproval, it’s generally flirting around 50 percent, with the somewhat-disapprove, like, in the single digits. And people who don’t like Trump really don’t like Trump. And that, I think, is a little bit unusual. I mean, look, George Bush at the end of his second term was this unpopular—he was actually more unpopular, it was in the 20s, right?

But that was not before a midterm election. It was before a presidential election, 2008, in which Democrats did exceptionally well. So you know, I do think that the Trump factor here is what is driving all of this.

Sargent: But one other thing—I want to pick up on what you said about the strong disapproval of Trump, because I think people miss the importance of this. It’s not that unusual to see a poll in which 50 percent of the country strongly disapproves of Donald Trump. That is unbelievable.

And again, if you think about that in the context of the midterm electorate, then it becomes even more meaningful. Midterm electorates tend to favor the out party. They’re made up of more engaged voters. The voters who come out in a presidential race, maybe for a Donald Trump, don’t come out as much. And so the strong disapproval drives the turnout for the out party in a big way. I think those two things together, they really have synergy, and could mean a lot.

Cohen: You raise a really interesting point here, I think, that people won’t comment on, which is that when Trump’s not on the ballot, Republican candidates tend to underperform. So it’s not just that he’s unpopular. It’s that without him on the ballot, all those Trump voters who turn out for him are not going to turn out. I mean, traditionally they haven’t turned out.

And so if that happens again, it makes the Republican challenge that much greater.

Sargent: Maybe this is how we should think about it. To the people who approve of Trump, at least—you know, whoever’s left that still approves of him—Trump’s not on the ballot, right? But to the people who disapprove of Trump, Trump is on the ballot.

Cohen: Right. That’s right.

Sargent: They’re going out to vote against Donald Trump. He is on the ballot. They see this election as an opportunity to, A, register their profound disapproval of the president and their profound disapproval with the direction of the country, and B, put a check on Donald Trump. So you put all that together, and it starts to look like even more of a perfect storm, I think.

Cohen: I agree. I think it’s exactly right. I mean, look, I would have said to you a year ago that I thought this would be a bad midterm, because look, midterms are always bad for the party in power. Historically, they always lose seats. And you could say it would be worse for Republicans because Trump’s not on the ballot, you don’t have those occasional Trump voters.

So this was always going to be a rough cycle for Republicans. I think what’s made it potentially an historically bad cycle is just how unpopular Trump has become. And frankly, that Republicans keep shooting themselves in the foot with some of these really lousy nominees.

Sargent: Yeah. And just allowing for the point you raised earlier—which is that things could start shifting the other way if Republican voters come home, you know, that’s all very possible. There’s still a long way to go here. Anything can happen. But there are a lot of things falling into place right now.

CNN’s Harry Enten caught something really interesting, which is that Trump is absolutely bleeding Hispanic men. Enten pointed out that Trump won that demographic, Hispanic men, by ten points in 2024. But now, in CNN polling, his net approval among them is minus 41 points. And so I think this is significant, because it’s like another way in which the Trump coalition is falling apart.

Hispanic men were the big success story for the GOP in 2024. Reams and reams of punditry were produced that said that this shows that there was a major realignment underway. It’s all gone now. Hispanic men, according to Enten, favored the Democrats by twenty points, and Enten thinks this will have a, quote-unquote, “massive impact” on the midterms. In fact, he called the numbers bonkers, and they are bonkers. I mean, that’s just crazy stuff.

Cohen: No, they are. And if you look at—I mean, you could go back to last year, the off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia, some of the biggest overperformance by Democrats was in Hispanic districts, Hispanic areas, right? The drop-off in Hispanic support for Trump has been extraordinary.

And to your point—I mean, you said this Trump coalition. It was a coalition of convenience, right? The 2024 coalition that Trump won with, it was people who were upset with Biden, upset with Harris, upset with the state of the country. But those Hispanic voters have just, I think, more than any other demographic group, abandoned the Republican Party. And frankly, one of the reasons why I think Texas is—why I think Talarico has a good chance of winning—is because the drop-off in support among Hispanics in Texas has been extraordinary. And they’re a huge part of the electorate there. And that alone could be enough for Talarico to win.

So I agree with you. I mean, I think that is an underappreciated part of this. Look, Hispanic voters are localized in just a few states—Florida, California, Texas. But in the places where they are, where they vote in big numbers, they can make a big difference. And I think Texas is the most interesting place to see how much that bleeding of Hispanic support really hurts the Republican Party.

Sargent: Yes. And I think we should point out here as well that the successes that Republicans had in some of those South Texas counties that are very Hispanic-heavy were kind of seen as the locus of this realignment for Trump and Republicans.

And so for those Texas Hispanics to now be shifting back toward Democrats once again shows how absurd it was to read Trump’s one-point-five-point victory in 2024 as a major realignment moment, right?

Cohen: Don’t get me started on this topic. I mean, it just makes me crazy. All of the punditry about 2024, I think, just kind of missed the mark to a large extent. This was a 1.5-point victory, as you said—one of the lowest margins of victory in a presidential election in recent memory. And, it was really a backlash against the party in power.

And look, we’ve been going through this cycle every two years, right? 2016, you could say it was a backlash to Democrats. 2018, a backlash to Trump. 2020, a backlash against Trump again. 2022, backlash against Biden. 2024, backlash against Biden. 2026, a backlash against Trump. This is how these cycles go.

We were living in a period of extreme anti-incumbency, of anti-system politics. And, you know, it was not reasonable to believe that Trump would be able to hold this coalition—also because he’s, you know, he doesn’t seem to care about politics. He cares about going after his political enemies, and he cares about his little pet projects. He is not a politician who seems interested at all in growing the Republican Party, in helping it prosper. I don’t even think he cares. I really don’t think he cares at all.

And that is a problem for the party. And he has pushed them, the Republicans in the House and the Senate, to follow through on an agenda that is unpopular. And he has overreached, right? He acted as though he had this huge mandate, and that led him to pursue this policy on immigration enforcement that has created enormous backlash, not just among Hispanics, but among a whole host of Americans. He went forward with the tariff thinking that had broad support. Guess what? That’s creating a huge backlash.

And in a place like Iowa, it could actually cost Republicans the governorship, the Senate, and a couple of House seats. So I do think that, you know, we really do need to go back and look to 2024 and recognize that this was a response, a backlash, to Trump, to Harris, and to Biden. But it was not creating a new coalition, not by any means.

Sargent: So just to review all this very quickly: there’s been a huge shift in a Pennsylvania state legislative district toward Dems. Mary Peltola is looking very good in Alaska. Hispanics are abandoning Trump in enormous numbers. Trump’s approval is down at 33 percent in a new poll and down at 37 percent in the New York Times averages. And Democrats are plus six or plus seven in the generic ballot, and are winning by double digits among very, very engaged voters.

Those pieces all together, they paint a pretty good picture, I think, Michael.

Cohen: They do. I mean, look, again, we have two months to go until the election, and it’s easy, I think, for Democrats to get really excited about where things are going. But I think, as it stands, the trend lines point in one direction, and that is for Democrats to do well. I mean, at this point, I think—the chance Democrats take the House—I would be stunned if they did not end up taking the House. And the Senate, again, that it’s in play really says a lot about the direction American politics has gone.

But I think Democrats need to understand something, which is that if they do well in the midterms, it is not because they have convinced Americans they have the best plan for fixing the economy, or they have the best plan for health care, or they’re better on immigration. They will have won because they’re not Donald Trump and the Republican Party. That is the source of their success over the past year or so, and will, I believe, likely be the source of their success in November. But I think we have to be very clear as to what’s happening here. This is an anti-incumbent wave, OK? It’s not a pro-Democratic wave.

Sargent: Well, you know how politics is, man. The second things go your way, you think that it’s a realignment, just like they did.

Cohen: Right. Exactly. That’s exactly it. And I think both parties get into huge danger when they overanalyze or over-determine what happens in an election, right? I mean, a lot of what happens in November is going to have nothing to do with the campaigns Democrats won, right? I mean, some of it will. But it’ll have a lot more to do with the fact that Republicans are unpopular. That’s the biggest thing. And I think Democrats need to understand that.

And they need to have a plan for that when they go into 2028—to understand that, like, they haven’t made the case to Americans. Although, having said that, because, you know, how unpopular Trump is—this whole cycle feels like 2006, 2008 to me. 2006, Democrats had a huge victory in the second midterm for W. Then you go into ‘08, you have the Great Recession, you have the war, people are upset about that, Democrats got an even bigger victory in 2008. I think that’s kind of where things are going. But as you remember, in 2010, what happened to the Democrats? They got their butts kicked. So be careful. That’s what I said.

Sargent: All extremely well said. Folks, if you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to check out Michael Cohen’s Substack, Truth and Consequences. Michael, awesome to talk to you. Thanks for coming on.

Cohen: Always a pleasure. Thanks for having me, Greg.

Trump’s Iran war has shattered the once awestruck projection of him as the invulnerable alpha male. “There’s no one like that guy,” said Joe Rogan. “It’s the only reason why he survived all the shit they tried to put him through.” Now, symptomatic of the breakdown of Trump’s once seemingly granitic support along generational and ideological lines, Rogan calls the war “crazy,” “insane,” “nuts”; says Trump has “betrayed” his followers, and that Trump is blithering along with “no clear way to resolve this at all.” Trump has gone haywire. He is the arsonist igniting the bonfire of the manosphere.

The manosphere emerged in the 2024 campaign as an innovative component at the center of Trump’s political machine, a network of podcasters, influencers, and shock jocks serving as a pipeline to young men, exploiting their social and economic anxieties, particularly by targeting them with crude misogynist messages serving as vicarious defiance against an oppressive, woke feminist culture. 

The theory claiming a fundamental realignment of American politics in the 2024 election was based on the stunning statistic of 56 percent of young men in the 18 to 30-year-old demographic lurching rightward toward Trump—the exact percent that voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and had supposedly given the Democrats a secure advantage. The manosphere was credited for engineering the reversal. It became instant conventional wisdom that the bros’ allegiance to Trump would be a permanent factor in American politics for a generation or more to come.

Barron Trump, the youngest son and least likely to play a significant political role, managed to insert himself as a go-between. Cloistered and cosseted, overseen by Melania supposedly hovering as a helicopter mom, he was an odd, extraordinarily privileged exemplar of the socially isolated and awkward young men who became addicted listeners of the transgressive talkers blasting outrageous riffs on how to escape the domination of overbearing women. He was the target audience. His foray was his attempt to take on an identity without breaking out of his cocoon. He was in an upside-down fairy tale where he became a prince in the shadow of his distant father, venturing forth to promote his father and gain his approval. Barron was proving himself to be one of his brothers, the most exclusive bro culture, and getting a backstage pass to be with his Rat Pack. 

Barron initiated the formation of the Trump manosphere by reaching out to the most notorious operators of them all, the Tate Brothers. Their reputation preceded them. The Tates had attracted one of the sphere’s largest followings, numbering beyond 10 million. They were prominently in the headlines when Barron spoke with them, held for trial in Romania on charges of human trafficking, violent assault of a minor, rape, and money laundering. (The brothers deny all the charges.) The ideology, if it rose to that, supported the enterprise. Andrew Tate held forth that “women shouldn’t vote” and they “belong to men.” 

Through Barron, the Tates geared up their networks for Trump, galvanizing the pupils of their Hustlers University who matriculated for PhDs, “pimping hoes degrees,” and the Tates’ more elite $8,000 membership fee “War Room.” “I’m very close with the Trump family,” said Andrew Tate. 

Barron kickstarted the manosphere campaign in April 2024, hosting a dinner of influencers at Mar-a-Lago, including Tate’s business partner, Justin Waller, who calls himself “the third Tate brother.” Waller insinuated himself as Barron’s style consultant and dating coach, according to The New Yorker, and met numerous times with Donald Trump. He posted a photograph of himself with Barron with the caption: “History in the making.” 

Waller ran a centralized command structure with a military-style hierarchy of “generals” and “operators” coordinating a network of content creators to push the MAGA line. The Tates and the others transformed their operations using them to transmit digital Trump memes and messages hundreds of millions of times. Millions of campaign dollars were siphoned to the Nelk Boys, podcasters who were close allies of the Tates, granted repeated interviews with Trump and speaking at his rallies. They created a “Send the Vote” operation to mobilize the “bro vote,” which, according to Fox News, “reached more than 140 million people through influencers, nearly 1 million on streamed content, and nearly 7 million people through podcasts specifically.” 

The manosphere effort also brought in a Republican operative, Alex Bruesewitz, 28 years old, to work closely with Barron. Bruesewitz’s sterling credential was having been as a former organizer of the “Stop the Steal” group that sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and to help plan the January 6 rally in 2021. When Bruesewitz was questioned by the Congressional Committee on the January 6 Insurrection about his activities, he repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment on the advice of his counsel, Joseph McBride, who would go on to represent January 6 defendants and become the attorney for the Tate Brothers. 

After the campaign, Bruesewitz became a consultant to Trump’s personal political action committee, Never Surrender, Inc., which paid him to serve as the chief outside media advisor for the Trump White House, working hand-in-glove with the communications office to produce AI-generated videos depicting Trump as a strongman. 

Trump’s image has always been a centerpiece of the manosphere. He was idealized as the paragon of uber-masculinity, supreme domination, and physical strength: the alpha male. The “bulletproof badass” was “the best president in history,” and upon his election Andrew Tate declared that “THE PATRIARCHY IS BACK,” adding, “Trumps back fellas. Get on your A game.”

On election night, the blowhards of the manosphere were kings of the world. At his victory party, Trump turned the stage over to Dana White, CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship, who called the roll of the manosphere heroes to thank them. At Trump’s inauguration, they were accorded seats of honor alongside the tech lords, front and center as the new powers that be. The influencers were hailed as the ultimate realignment champions.

At the core of the manosphere, however, was an alleged transnational criminal syndicate, charged with human trafficking, sexual violence, and money laundering. The very same operations that were purposed for the Trump campaign were simultaneously fronts to coerce women into sex work, where women claimed they were beaten and even strangled to the point of unconsciousness during sex.   

The Romanian indictment of the Tates’ global crime racket was hardly a secret to the Trumps and their team when they sealed the bargain. Crime and politics had become entangled, the politics spreading the crime, the crime advancing the politics. For the Tates, it was also a get-out-of-jail card. The Trump connection was the path to immunity—and impunity. 

While the manosphere stars were being feted in Trump’s Washington, the Tates were being detained in a Romanian jail awaiting trial on longstanding charges of human trafficking and money laundering. Romania was in the grip of a constitutional crisis. The Tates were backers of a fringe candidate for president, Calin Georgescu, a pro-Putin ultra-nationalist, who had polled in the first round of the election in November at 23 percent, though only days earlier he’d polled at 5 percent.

Romanian state security discovered 85,000 cyberattacks on electoral infrastructure and coordinated digital amplification. “Stolen election-server credentials were found on Russian forums, and intelligence assessments linked the interference directly to Russian hybrid operations,” according to a report of the Institute of International and European Affairs. The Romanian Constitutional Court annulled the first-round results.

On February 15, 2025, new Vice President JD Vance attended the Munich Security Conference, where he denounced the Romanian court ruling: “But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.” On the sidelines of the conference, Ric Grenell, Trump’s special envoy, cornered the Romanian foreign minister Emil Hurezeanu. “Hey, how are the Tate boys?” Grinell pointedly asked. It was taken as an implicit threat and a signal that Trump wanted their release, as Hurezeanu explained to The New Yorker. By the next morning, the Tates were on a plane to Miami. Roger Stone, the Nixonian dirty trickster and convicted felon whose crimes were commuted by Trump, posted a photo of himself flanked by the Tate Brothers triumphantly smoking cigars, with the caption: “Richard Grenell secured the release of the Tates.” 

Dana White orchestrated their celebratory return, greeting them at a UFC match in Las Vegas. “Welcome to the States, boys!” he exclaimed. They were seated within a ringside entourage that included FBI Director Kash Patel.

Bruesewitz took on another task: to extend MAGA as an international movement, traveling as an unofficial envoy to the far-right in Europe. On November 5, 2025, he addressed a meeting of the Alternative for Germany Party, or AfD, in Berlin. The AfD is pro-Putin, anti-Ukraine, boasts leading figures who have promoted neo-Nazi rhetoric, and has been labeled “extremist” by the German intelligence agency. Bruesewitz told the AfD meeting that they were “brave visionaries.” “We are in this together,” he said.  

The first cracks in the manosphere edifice opened over the Epstein files. By May of this year, Rogan accused Trump of “trying to gaslight you on that.” Rogan railed on his show on June 16, “It’s like sometimes you just get fed up. Like, where the fuck are these Epstein files? The fuck is this? Why is this redacted? Where is it?”

For many of the manosphere performers, the war was the decisive event that shifted their tone from adulation to betrayal. Theo Von, a standup comedian turned podcaster, had been perhaps Barron’s favorite. “‘Dad, he’s such a big guy. You got to do an interview,’” Trump recalled his son telling him. Bruesewitz set up Trump’s appearance and inducted Von as the class clown into the manosphere. There he was at the inauguration, and few months later in May 2025 there he was again at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar where Trump introduced him to entertain the troops. “I want to influence you to clap for a man who’s a great influencer,” Trump said. Theo Von was supposed to be the manosphere’s Bob Hope. 

“I can’t believe we went to this war,” Von bemoaned after Trump launched it. “When we started bombing Iran, I was like, ‘This can’t be true.’” The jokester felt he had been pranked. By April, Von called Trump’s war “diabolical” and “insane.”

The Tate Brothers, meanwhile, set out as pilgrims to meet another strongman. On June 4, they landed in Moscow as Vladimir Putin’s guests to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, greeted upon their arrival with the red carpet ritual accorded to visiting heads of state, a chorus in folk dress singing “Motherland,” and traditional bread and salt. “We came to Russia because serious countries need to be taken seriously,” said Andrew Tate. While he was there, he visited a Russian tank training ground and fired weapons.

Andrew Tate had praised Putin for years for “competence and nationalism,” and said conservatives were disappointed he had not succeeded in “educating the American public on the insanity of the American system.” In 2022, Tate promoted a Russian video of Putin as Santa Claus saving a child from gay parents. “Russia believes the proxy war against NATO is necessary to preserve Christian values and fight satanism which controls the West,” Tate posted. Voice of America reported that the video and messaging had been created by the Russians.   

Upon the Tates’ return from Russia, Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service charged them on July 19 with 59 counts of human trafficking, rape, and child pornography. They were arrested in Miami and held for extradition. The White House went silent. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated there were no plans to intervene.

The Tates’ lawyer, Joe McBride, issued a warning to Trump. “Andrew Tate was a material participant in ensuring President Trump’s victory,” he said. “And if Trump doesn’t support him, and if the next people who are going to be running for office potentially are just like, yeah, down the river he goes, that young cohort of people will break with the Republican Party in the next election.”

If the Republicans lose the midterm elections, in part having alienated the constituency that returned Trump to the White House, the manosphere will become the subject of an intense congressional investigation. Democratic Representative Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, who sits on the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter to the Republican Chairman James Comer requesting a formal probe and specifically subpoenas of communications from the Department of Justice, the State Department, the White House—and, by name, Barron Trump. Comer has stonewalled her demand. Ansari told me that if and when the Democrats are the in majority, she would seek to systematically unravel the network that exercised influence, beginning with members of the Trump family, in order to shield the Tate Brothers. Barron Trump, the most protected son, is exposed as a midterm campaign issue and beyond that, perhaps one day as a witness under oath.

Trump, then, is at war with the world he has made. Alex Bruesewitz, working busily with the White House trolls, now churns out videos of Trump to prop up his image as the alpha male. Trump is the towering leader of “Guardians of the World” with jets and warships bombing Iran; Trump is the “Cosmic Commander: A New Era Begins Among the Stars”; Trump is a swashbuckler seizing an Iranian ship, crying, “It’s Our Oil Tanker Now!”; Trump is a superhero with a red Superman cape rescuing George Washington falling off Mount Rushmore; Trump is dignified standing next to John F. Kennedy in front of the White House; Trump is Vegas Elvis in a rhinestone jumpsuit unbuttoned to display his muscled chest. 

The Iranians, for their part, have produced viral, AI-generated videos to portray Trump as a petulant and impotent Lego character. The Iranian Trump figure naps at the Resolute Desk, frantically launches missiles to hide his name in the Epstein files, and sweats playing dice in a casino. The Iranian portrayal of the little plastic toy is far more realistic than the White House fantasies.

Trump’s response to his insoluble quandary is to launch a new crusade. His latest war is against an even more implacable adversary than Iran. His enemy now is time. He posts photos of himself with captions reading: “President Trump gets YOUNGER!” and “President Trump ages in reverse!”

Who’s your daddy?

There are all sorts of reasons the bond markets are going bonkers, not all of them having to do with Trump. Big Tech has decided it can’t sustain its enormous investment in Artificial Intelligence without borrowing, so it’s floated bonds this year totaling about half a trillion dollars. France, Canada, China, and the United Kingdom are all carrying government debt that’s almost as big a percentage of their Gross Domestic Product as in the United States, where it’s 123 percent of GDP; in Japan the percentage is much higher.

But a lot of the bond market trouble is caused by two problems that Trump isn’t going to fix anytime soon.

One of these problems is entirely his own invention: the Iran war, which shows no signs of ending and is driving up inflation, especially overseas. In the United States, the Consumer Price Index is 3.4 percent, and while that isn’t catastrophic, it does exceed wage gains. Should the new Federal Reserve Chair, Kevin Warsh, move to check inflation with an interest-rate hike, there’s a good chance Trump will turn on him as he did with his previous Fed pick, Jerome Powell.

Trump could ease pressure on the bond market by announcing that he intends to let the Fed operate independently, but that isn’t going to happen in this lifetime. Meanwhile, growing evidence of cognitive failure in Trump’s endless, contradictory, and often deranged public statements about the war is creating serious doubt that, even if a plausible path to peace presents itself, Trump will be mentally competent to take it.

The other problem is the United States budget deficit, which is out of control in large part because of Trump’s 2025 tax cut, which is expected to expand the budget deficit by $4.5 trillion by 2035. Conceivably, Trump may announce some sort of spending cuts to show he’s lowering the deficit, but as with Trump’s earlier tax cuts, they will come out of the domestic discretionary budget, which is too small for any cuts to make much difference. Trump’s own Treasury department shows spending under Trump has gone up, not down, to the tune of $309 billion. The only thing Trump’s cuts to federal staffing managed to do is screw the government up; they’ve saved perhaps $53 billion, while incurring costs, according to the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, of $71 billion. That nets out to a spending increase of $18 billion. That’s a high price to pay for a civil service less able to function.

Trump has taken cuts to Medicare and Social Security off the table, and he’s reduced somewhat the taxation of Social Security benefits. (He says he eliminated it, which is untrue.) The recent increase in Medicare and Social Security spending is driven pretty much entirely by demographic changes that can be undone only by lining elderly people up against a wall and shooting them dead. Politically, Trump has sworn off cuts to these programs, but even if he hadn’t, it’s hard to see how he could realize significant savings by cutting benefits A more practical approach would be to tax more of these benefits back by treating them the same as regular income, and also to eliminate the $184,000 income ceiling on Social Security tax. But that’s the opposite of Trump’s approach.

Both short-term and long-term, the only way to reduce the budget deficit is to tax our way out of it. Not even Democrats want to say that, but it’s true. The United States is an under-taxed country. Taxes on corporations, capital gains, and inheritance have fallen over time, and so has the top marginal income tax rate. In 1980, the top marginal income tax rate was 70 percent; today it’s 37 percent. As a percentage of GDP, federal tax revenues keep falling. At the start of the twenty-first century, federal tax revenues were 20 percent of GDP. Today they’re 17 percent. When Barack Obama was president, the effective tax rate on the 400 wealthiest Americans was 30 percent. That was a scandal because it was no higher than the effective tax rate for all Americans. Today, though, the effective tax rate on the 400 wealthiest Americans has dropped to 24 percent. I’m on record opposing a wealth tax, but if we can’t find a way to tax, for instance, the income rich people live on by borrowing against their assets, a wealth tax will become unavoidable.

American insolvency is self-perpetuating. The more out of control the deficit gets, the higher 10-year Treasury bond yields rise. The higher 10-year Treasury bond yields rise, the more expensive it becomes for the federal government to borrow money. And the more expensive it gets for the feds to borrow money, the more the deficit grows even more out of control. Nobody wants to believe this, but deficits go down under Democrats because Democrats increase taxes. They go up under Republicans because Republicans cut taxes. It truly is no more complicated than that. Democrats are the party of solvency, and Republicans are the party of insolvency.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has attempted a mini-TACO in recent months by shifting United States borrowing to shorter term debt (a gimmick Bessent criticized his predecessor, Janet Yellen, for resorting to). On Wednesday he announced that the federal government will double the size of its repurchases of long-term debt, from about $2 billion to about $4 billion. That’s another gimmick: Reduce the surplus of 10-year Treasury bonds and you bring down the yield rates at which Treasury must sell those bonds to get anybody to buy them. It briefly sent bond yields downward Wednesday, but within a few hours they were rising again.

Another false hope, discussed by Andrew Duehren in The New York Times, is that the AI boom will increase productivity so spectacularly that revenue will gush into federal coffers. But everybody agrees that it won’t be enough to address the deficit problem in any meaningful way—and besides, absent a substantial increase in taxation of capital, revenue collection will be impeded by the reduction in revenues from labor as workers get replaced by machines. Our best minds need to get working on how to get a Large Language Model to pay income tax.

The experts say bond yields haven’t yet reached the crisis point at which a meaningful government response would be the only way to coax them back down, as President Bill Clinton, for instance, did in 1993 by cancelling his economic stimulus plan and turning instead to deficit reduction. But if we reach that crisis point, don’t expect Trump to do anything, because TACO is dead.

Inside the DSA, opinions of Romer’s performance were more nuanced. Some said they were happy with how she portrayed socialism on camera. But the interview also concerned many inside a group desperate to keep itself unified amid explosive growth since 2024, when its own Zohran Mamdani launched his electrifying campaign for New York City mayor. “I do think she’s caused damage,” one DSA member in a position of leadership said. “People from all across the political left have been messaging me and some others, begging us to take her off the air.”

It wasn’t Romer’s first media stumble. Just weeks earlier, she went on Fox News and went viral for her one-word affirmative answers—“yes,” “absolutely”—to rapid-fire questions about abolishing everything from the presidency to borders to prisons. That could be shrugged off as a right-wing trap. But the optics of the New Yorker interview weren’t much better, as Romer’s bubbly energy and bright-red eyeglasses clashed with Remnick’s calm, paternalistic tone. The editor spoke at times like a bored scholar holding office hours with a pupil. After the interview, Romer expressed annoyance with Remnick on X, calling him a “debate bro.”

“Listening to a lot of David’s questions, I don’t necessarily think they were bad,” said City & State reporter Peter Sterne, who covers the DSA and is a former member of the organization. “But I do think that they were hostile.”

Romer, who did not respond to my request for comment, certainly made some eyebrow-raising statements in the interview, such as saying she “probably would have” attended the controversial pro-Palestinian rally held in New York City on October 8, 2023, if she’d been able to. The DSA did not organize the rally—which was criticized by many as condoning Hamas’s attack on Israel the day prior—but promoted it on social media at the time before backpedaling with a statement apologizing for the “confusion” and calling for “peace, equality, and freedom for all Palestinians and Israelis.”

NYC-DSA member Eric Blanc said he was disappointed to hear Romer endorse the rally three years on. “We need to be really consistent about not giving any possible impression that fighting against the crimes of the Israeli government means in any way condoning what Hamas has done,” he said. “Megan, to her credit, at some points tried to push back a little bit against that, but then contradicted herself by saying, basically, we should still go to this rally.”

The DSA is not a monolith; differences in ideology are encouraged. The organization contains everyone from FDR-style social Democrats to revolutionary Maoists, and includes caucuses that align with various beliefs. Romer is a member of Red Star, a Marxist-Leninist caucus on the left flank of the organization that’s even more committed to Palestine than she was willing to publicly admit; its post–October 7 statement was titled, “We Do Not Condemn Hamas, and Neither Should You.”

The differences between national DSA and the New York chapter are especially pronounced, as writer and professor Nathan Newman explained in an admittedly biased Substack post last month titled “The Sane NYC DSA vs the Crazy National DSA—A Guide for the Perplexed.” “It’s almost hard to believe they’re the same organization,” he wrote. “They aren’t, really. The pragmatic politics of the New York City chapter, with its broad neighborhood alliances and its block-by-block canvassing and its willingness to back candidates who can actually win and then govern, is radically at odds with the national leadership of the DSA, which is dominated by sectarian ideologues and has at points actively worked to undermine the very approach that makes New York succeed.”

So it’s no wonder that opinions of Romer’s performance in the New Yorker interview, and of Romer herself, vary widely within the DSA. “Megan is a very important leader to many in DSA, particularly those on the more left-wing side, and they’re not going to critique her publicly, nor would I expect them to,” said a source in regional leadership. This source added that the “most vocal opposition” to the interview was coming from Socialist Majority Caucus and Groundwork, two large caucuses on the right flank of the DSA.

Romer has history with both. SMC and Groundwork each pushed for an unconditional endorsement of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s reelection campaign in 2024. After internal debate, the national chapter instead offered a conditional endorsement, then withdrew it days later, citing an insufficient commitment to the Palestinian cause. Caucuses like Red Star were key in the decision to distance the DSA from the most prominent democratic socialist in America.

The most common criticism of Romer’s interview that I heard from DSA members concerned her unpreparedness for certain questions. When Remnick asked whether she believed there should be millionaires in this country, she said (not unwisely) that she was more concerned about billionaires. But she ran into trouble when she said she supported “taxing the hell out of millionaires,” and Remnick tried to pin her down on a number.

“Well, what does taxing the hell out of them mean?” he said with a huff. Romer dragged her feet. “Uh, yeah, you know, again,” she said, “I don’t have a solid—” Remnick cut her off. “But shouldn’t you?” he asked. “Um, that’s a good question,” she replied.

“If you’re the co-chair of DSA, shouldn’t you be more specific than just taxing the hell out of something?” Remnick asked. “What exactly do you mean?” Romer continued: “So, again, it’s democracy, right?” She never got around to answering the question.

This response, one of several from the interview to go viral, did not sit well with some in the DSA. “She couldn’t really answer some of the basic policy questions about taxing the rich, which is really our bread and butter,” said the first DSA leader. “I think that’s quite damning.”

Blanc said Romer wasn’t convincing enough for those on the outside. The interview “didn’t articulate socialist politics in a way that I think would bring people closer to DSA if you weren’t already on board,” he said. “There were multiple times where … Megan said things that were obviously going to give the enemies of socialism in the Democratic Party and the Republicans a field day.”

Romer doubled down on a wholly socialist America (“We’re not fighting for a kinder, gentler capitalism”), defended abolishing the Senate (a position TNR editor Michael Tomasky agrees with), and said she opposed providing weapons to Ukraine in their war with Russia. “We should be sending huge teams of diplomats,” Romer said. Remnick’s response: “Russia would get off of Ukraine’s back by us sending diplomats?”

While Romer’s answers accurately reflect the DSA’s stances, they’re easily mocked by the establishment when put forth so directly. “The circles of DSA members that I talked to and were texting about this were pretty upset, because they understand the stakes right now,” Blanc said. “You’re not really speaking to Remnick there. You’re not speaking to Fox News people. You’re trying to speak to the people who are potentially going to watch that.”

Sterne was more sympathetic. “There’s a tension between wanting to appear reasonable and trying to win people over without moving away from what DSA actually believes,” he said. “I’m not sure that there’s that much Megan could have done differently, because she does have to represent this large and sometimes unwieldy coalition of DSA’s internal politics.”

Despite the criticism of Romer within the DSA, there’s little chance she will be replaced as co-chair before her term ends next summer. Ousting her prematurely would require a two-thirds majority vote from the DSA’s National Political Committee, or NPC, and the right branch of the organization knows that even suggesting the idea would enrage the left flank.

“She got by far the most votes during the co-chair elections last year,” Sterne said. “There is a lot of support for her. Even if people feel she’s not the strongest spokesperson, I think people are generally happy with her overall leadership of the organization.” Sidney Carlson White, an NPC member representing the left-wing Marxist Unity Group, confirmed as much. “There’s been no outcry from any of the caucuses,” he said, adding that he thought the interview was “generally viewed positively by membership.”

But that doesn’t mean others aren’t hoping for a sea change. “I think everyone thought she was doing a bad job, but it was sort of a ‘wait and see’ approach to assess the extent of the damage,” said the first DSA leader, who wants Romer gone. “As time has gone by, it does seem to be a serious issue.” Added the regional leader: “I don’t think she has a strong vision for what DSA should be. On top of that, she doesn’t seem like a strong spokesperson either. So I do support replacing her.” The same source said they expected Romer to “pull back” from public appearances.

Grace Mausser, the co-chair of NYC-DSA and a member of SMC, said she empathized with Romer. Mausser has also acted as a de facto spokeswoman for the DSA, recently making appearances on CBS and Fox & Friends. “Until the last two years, almost none of us had big media experience or did a lot of press,” she said. “I may disagree with Megan on some things, but Megan … like all of us in DSA, is adjusting to a very sudden spotlight on our movement.”

It is perhaps not a coincidence, then, that just four days after the New Yorker interview, the DSA announced it was hiring a national press coordinator for the first time. “People feel that the co-chairs, both Megan and Ashik [Siddique], are doing their best,” Sterne said. “But there is a concern that they need better media training. Some people have also said maybe the co-chairs should not be the spokespeople.”

The level of discontent within the DSA is hard to discern; most regional and national members are reluctant to speak to the press. Requests for comment from Red Star and NPC members other than White went unanswered. Even those who are critical of Romer, or of the national chapter in general, are wary of giving fodder to the DSA’s bad-faith critics at a time when the organization is more politically successful than ever before. “We want people to understand that DSA is a nuanced organization that has its own internal political discussions and battles,” the regional leader explained, “but we also don’t wish to continue a media cycle that is always looking for divisions in the left.”

Photos of the preparation for the Indycar race this weekend show grandstands, finish lines, and signage all around the area in the nation’s capital.

It’s unusual to see corporate signage and bleachers near the Capitol building, but that’s how President Trump wants to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The roads around the Mall are normally devoted to cars and tour buses at this time of year as tourists visit its national landmarks, museums, and monuments. But the streets look eerily empty except for construction workers, vehicles, and the barriers that will turn the area into a racetrack.

The Mall has been through a lot in Trump’s second term, from the heavily botched renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to that sparsely attended flop known as the Great American State Fair. He damaged the grass with his Independence Day celebrations and blamed nonexistent vandals for it when it was his own fault, just like with the pool disaster.

Now, the capital of the United States of America is about to see its first ever auto race. Under any other president, this might be considered cool, but now, the public is wondering not only how he’ll mess it up, but the damage he could cause to important national landmarks.

Watson was detained on Tuesday, just one day after an exclusive CNN interview in which he said the president was “violating the Constitution, breaking the law, [and] engaged in rampant corruption.” Watson is currently in pretrial confinement in Maryland based on “allegations of continued misconduct” according to the Air Force. It did not identify the specific misconduct allegations, although his attorney believes that his recent CNN appearance is to blame.

“What is happening with President Trump is not normal. He has failed us,” Watson told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday. “And not only is he a failure as president, he is flagrantly violating the Constitution, breaking the law, engaged in rampant corruption, and is killing Americans. And that is unacceptable to me and it should be unacceptable to all of us.”

Air Force Maj. Jason Watson, who was arrested on the steps of the US Capitol after calling for Trump & Vance to be impeached and removed from office, speaks out to @ErinBurnett in his first interview after his arrest: “[Trump] is flagrantly violating the constitution, breaking… pic.twitter.com/fB1F2G3rDz

— Erin Burnett OutFront (@OutFrontCNN) August 18, 2026

Watson’s July arrest came during a news conference with the Removal Coalition in which he called for Trump and Vice President JD Vance to be “impeached, convicted, and removed,” over their feckless leadership in the war on Iran. He was arrested and escorted off the premises while in full uniform and holding an “Impeach. Convict. Remove” sign. He was placed under a gag order and could still be court-martialed or removed from the Air Force.

In an unprecedented act of dissent, active-duty USAF Major Jason Watson was arrested on the Capitol steps after calling for the impeachment & removal of Donald Trump. Risking his career to uphold his constitutional oath, his arrest marks a historic moment. ✊🏻✊🏿✊🏼✊🏾✊🏽#DemsUnited pic.twitter.com/quFmuxKxoQ

— TizzyWoman 🗽 ☮️ ~ Keep moving forward (@tizzywoman) July 1, 2026

Watson is an active duty service member who is placing his 17-year Air Force career on the line for exercising his First Amendment right—and his lawyers think he’s very well become a target for it.

“Nothing that is worth doing is something that you can do for free. Everything that is worthwhile is going to cost something. It’s going to be hard, it’s going to require sacrifice,” Watson told Burnett. “So all that I could do was ask myself: ‘What’s the highest price that I’m willing to pay?’ And this is what I ultimately came up with.”

Inside Washington

Dems are looking good in North Carolina—or are they?

If Democrats want to take back the Senate, they need North Carolina—their best chance to pick up a previously Republican-held seat, according to the Cook Political Report. So you think they’d be delighted: For months, polls have consistently put former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper ahead of his opponent, former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley. But Cooper’s campaign is on edge, and experts say it should be—Whatley could still win this race.

In early August, a Harper Polling survey of likely voters found Cooper up by 13 points against Whatley in the race to replace retiring GOP Senator Thom Tillis. A Change Research poll of likely voters from around the same time had Cooper up by seven points: 50 percent of respondents said they’d vote for Cooper, 43 percent for Whatley, and six percent were undecided. Those undecided voters could be where Whatley finds his margin of victory.

“I think that polls at this stage of the race, when we’re still a couple months out from an election in a race that will have very difficult-to-predict turnout, should be taken with a grain of salt,” said Jason Husser, a professor at Elon University and the director of the Elon Poll. “The race is far from over, and we have seen historical precedent of Republicans surging at the last couple weeks in the state.”

In the 2016 Senate race, for example, Republican candidate Richard Burr launched a barrage of effective attack ads against Democrat Deborah Ross toward the end of the campaign, and ultimately won. In the 2014 Senate election, Tillis was trailing Democrat Kay Hagan in the vast majority of polls, only to win by 1.5 percentage points. In Cooper’s run for governor in 2016, polls consistently showed him leading by at least two percentage points, but he won by only 10,000 votes.

The Cooper campaign is particularly concerned that a recent Supreme Court decision on campaign finance spending will help Whatley’s campaign. The decision says that political parties can now coordinate directly with campaigns and raise unlimited funds. Since the RNC has a major cash advantage over the Democratic National Committee (which is actually in the red financially), Republican candidates could get bigger infusions of cash this cycle.

“The RNC has been stockpiling their money because they knew their former chairman Michael Whatley would need to get bailed out,” Jeff Allen, Cooper for North Carolina campaign manager, said in a statement to The New Republic. “Whatley’s elite D.C. connections and party loyalty means he’s first in line for the RNC’s nearly $130 million war chest. The Supreme Court just guaranteed that this race will be among—if not the—most expensive races in the country.”

Despite that, Cooper remains ahead in direct campaign fundraising, having raised $35 million to Whatley’s $16 million. Outside group spending is in full force: In late July, the Senate Leadership Fund, a GOP super PAC, announced that it was spending $17 million on an ad buy attacking Cooper’s record on crime as governor. While Cooper’s campaign is focused on affordability—he’s been touring the state on a “Make Stuff Cost Less” tour—Whatley has been hammering on crime and public safety.

Big ad spends could help Whatley with undecided voters and voters who don’t know who he is. After serving in state government for 38 years, with eight years as governor, 92 percent of voters are familiar with Cooper, while just 69 percent are familiar with Whatley.

“If we just look at the subset of voters who have high levels of familiarity with Michael Whatley, the race looks pretty competitive,” said Husser, who polled this question earlier this summer. “And so instead of it being a 10-point Cooper blowout, it starts looking like a typical North Carolina nail-biter.”

Husser found that voters’ familiarity with Whatley increased by 15 points over the course of this summer. A July Public Policy Polling, or PPP, survey found the closest margins yet, with 48 percent saying they’d vote for Cooper and 44 saying they’d choose Whatley.

But that poll also found that “Democrats are almost completely lined up behind Cooper, while a lot of Republican voters remain undecided. That gives Whatley much more room for growth,” PPP noted in its press release. That’s exactly the kind of analysis that should worry Cooper’s campaign.

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz issued an executive order Tuesday blocking mining near the famous and fragile Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and boy are people worked up about it. Within hours, Republican Representative Tom Emmer had called Walz a “lame duck loser” who “let fraud run rampant while holding hardworking, tax-paying Minnesotans back from the opportunity for better lives,” while his fellow Republican Representative Pete Stauber called it a “spiteful and harmful attack against hardworking people.” The Minnesota Star Tribune’s liveblog of reactions to the news notes that Democratic Representative Betty McCollum, Democratic Senator Tina Smith, and Chair of the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa Carlos Hernandez praised the decision, although the Boundary Waters area’s Democratic State Representative Grant Hauschild registered his disapproval. Walz’s term is up in January, and state law dictates that executive orders expire 90 days after the governor leaves office. Democrat Amy Klobuchar currently leads Republican Lisa Demuth in the polls. (As of this writing, neither had weighed in on the decision yet.) This whole thing started when Congress voted last spring to lift a 20-year ban on mining in the area.

While votes are still being counted in Alaska, it’s already clear that Democrat Mary Peltola and Republican Dan Sullivan will advance in the state’s nonpartisan “top-four” primary. Just before Tuesday’s primary, a poll from Data for Progress tried to simulate a general election matchup using Alaska’s ranked-choice program, and found Peltola up six points (47–41) over Republican Sullivan. That would be for the first round of counting. Peltola also led by six (53–47) in its attempt to calculate how a second round might go. You can read The TNR Blue Book’s prior coverage of this race here.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

The Center for Strategic and International Studies holds an “emergency” podcast episode to discuss Trump’s withdrawal from joint military exercises with South Korea. Mark Lippert hosts Andrew Yeo, Sydney Seiler, and Victor Cha. “At a strategic level, I think there’s a lot that’s being risked and a lot that could be lost,” says Yeo. Watch or read the rest here.

Public Citizen accuses Todd Blanche of violating the Hatch Act by attending a campaign rally with Trump in support of Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman.

The Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups have released a statement cheering California’s “first-in-the-nation efficiency standards for replacement tires,” a development that “shows how practical climate policy can deliver meaningful benefits for Californians,” according to NRDC California climate and energy policy director Merrian Borgeson. The statement notes that, according to California Energy Commission calculations, the standards “will save drivers about $180 in gasoline costs over the lifetime of a set of replacement tires” and “will reduce nitrogen oxides and particulate matter pollution and cut annual greenhouse gas emissions by an amount equivalent to those from 400,000 gasoline cars.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Book of the Week: The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, by Jill Lepore

THE GIST: Emerging from an outstanding 2024 New Yorker piece about the rise of the algorithm and the decline of trust in the state, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State argues that liberal, democratic governance is increasingly being replaced by automation and artificial intelligence. The book covers everything from pesky robocalls and scammy fundraising to what it means to be political in a world run by machines.

PRAISE: It’s an eclectic mix of blurbs—from novelists George Saunders and Philip Pullman to technologist Jaron Lanier and Lepore’s New Yorker colleague Elizabeth Kolbert. Kolbert calls the book “dazzling in its range and totally on target.”

CRUISING THE INDEX: This is a Jill Lepore book, which means it’s a sweeping history, not a polemic—or at least not just a polemic. The Simulmatics Corporation, an early data company founded in the 1950s that promised to predict human behavior—and shape American politics—is one area of focus. Elon Musk’s grandfather Joshua Haldeman, a supporter of the “Technocracy Movement,” which aspired to replace politicians with scientists (and an avid backer of Apartheid), is another. Lepore’s references are, as always, pleasantly diverse: The introduction features excellent close readings of both Hannah Arendt and poet Richard Brautigan.

TNR’S QUICK CRITICAL ASSESSMENT: It’s hard to think of someone better to write a book like this—a history of humanity’s use of technology and data that doubles as a penetrating critique of artificial intelligence, automation, and the increasing tyranny of the algorithm in everyday life. As bleak as Lepore’s diagnosis is, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State is also a surprisingly hopeful book. “A wall of mirrors can be smashed with the slightest hammer, the nearest rock,” she writes. “That rock is the right of the people to elect a government by consent and not by automation.”

—Alex Shephard

Political Trivia Question of the Day

With Donald Trump now officially in the low 30s in approval ratings: In the modern history of polling, which president had the lowest ever approval ratings, and how low did he go? (Sign up for The Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

Trump told reporters to join him on the building’s South Lawn Wednesday where he excitedly revealed that he replaced the asphalt on the White House’s driveway with white granite mined from California, CNN reports.

“This was always asphalt, which is very basic, not appropriate for a great house—for a great place like the White House,” Trump said over loud construction noise while gesturing at the newly redone driveway, which he described as made with a “very special stone.”

Trump, clearly feeling low on attention today, is outside the White House ranting and raving like a lunatic about his various vanity projects around the White House pic.twitter.com/X7HzDGLUdA

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 19, 2026

Trump then went on and on about the new helipad under construction at the White House, detailing how he made workers redo weeks of work on the project because he didn’t like the helipad’s angle.

“I felt it was too much slope. It’s a slope for the rain, but I felt it was too much slope,” Trump said, adding that the helipad was now “dead flat.”

“Sorry to take an extra week and a half, but lifting it up was one of the best things we’ve ever done, lifting it up, right? I’m sure you didn’t like that,” Trump later told workers on the grounds.

Trump also bragged about new grass on the White House lawn, claiming that newly added topsoil has “a lot of good ingredients in that earth for grass. If you’re grass, you’re very happy.” Without any shame or worry about a conflict of interest, he then revealed the grass was “given free of charge by Scotts Miracle-Gro. Scotts. And Scotts is a great company. They actually contributed to my campaign, I must be honest, you’ll figure that one out.”

Trump: "It was given free of charge by Scotts Miracle-Gro. Scotts. A great company. They actually contributed to my campaign ... I want to thank Scotts." pic.twitter.com/MPFCyBlnvX

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 19, 2026

The president has spoken about his expensive pet construction projects, especially his White House ballroom, more than any other topic in 2026 except for the war in Iran, according to a Politifact analysis. It’s pretty obvious what Trump cares about more than anything else, and it comes at the expense of the American people.

This comes two days after the House Ethics Committee announced a probe into Gomez for reports of sexual misconduct—which Gomez claimed were “consensual” and “personal mistakes outside [his] marriage.” This most recent allegation contradicts that, and of course raises the seriousness of an already troubling allegation.

“We represent one of the women who was interviewed by the House Committee on Ethics about her experience of sexual harassment and assault by Representative Jimmy Gomez,” her attorneys wrote in a statement. “Contrary to Representative Gomez’s assertion in his statement, his actions were not ‘consensual in nature’ with respect to our client. We fully expect that the House Committee on Ethics will come to the same conclusion in its investigation.”

The initial ethics probe was triggered by a New York Post report that accused Gomez of kissing a young female congressional aide in 2023. Gomez was close personal friends with disgraced former California Representative Eric Swalwell, who himself resigned in April amidst multiple sexual assault allegations.

Gomez’s development adds him to the growing, bipartisan list of sitting congressmen who have either been accused, investigated for, or stepped down after sexual assault and/or misconduct allegations in the last two years. The list includes Representatives Cory Mills, Max Miller, Matt Gaetz, Tony Gonzales, Swalwell, and Gomez.

Gomez has yet to comment on the heightened accusations.

In a court filing Tuesday, federal prosecutors argued that “The Chief Executive directing his subordinates to exercise core Executive functions is a feature, not a bug, of our constitutional system,” claiming that the idea that the DOJ is independent from the president is “antithetical to the constitutional separation of powers,” and, “as a matter of historical analysis, it is a myth.”

At the same time, the DOJ tried to argue that the charging prosecutor in the case against Comey, U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle, acted independently from Trump without any pressure from his superiors.

“No one ordered or even suggested that Boyle pursue the ongoing investigation or seek an indictment,” the filing said, contending that Attorney General Todd Blanche didn’t discuss the case with Boyle until the day before the trial.

Comey is trying to have the case dismissed, filing a motion on the grounds that Trump was deeply involved in the case, pointing to Trump’s Truth Social post directing former Attorney General Pam Bondi to go after him as proof. Trump also requested that Secret Service agents questioning the former FBI director send their notes to him to review.

Comey is facing federal charges because the government is trying to argue that his 2025 social media post of seashell art reading “86 47” constituted a threat of violence against the president. Comey asserts that his indictment “effectuates a yearslong campaign by the President to use the criminal process to punish Mr. Comey for his protected speech and because of the President’s deep-seated animosity.”

The DOJ’s own actions seem to back up the claim that Trump is only trying to get revenge on Comey for trying to stay independent during his FBI tenure, instead of pledging unconditional loyalty to the president.

NOTUS reported Wednesday that seven of Trump’s 16 Senate-confirmed appointees have either been fired from or left the Treasury Department. Four of those seven left after specific disapproval of the Trump administration’s efforts to bend and/or break tax law—including attempts to use taxpayer data from the IRS to aid in deportations and to create the president’s $1.776 billion anti-weaponization slush fund.  

This comes as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has already had three different chiefs of staff.

“They’re asking them to do stuff that is well beyond the norm, and for some things that may or may not be legal,” Mark Mazur, a former high-ranking IRS employee who also served as acting assistant secretary for tax policy under former President Joe Biden, told NOTUS. “A lot of these people expect to have a career after this administration, and being disbarred would be a bad thing for them.”

Outside Treasury, an aide to Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Emily Underwood, is also leaving her post, according to Axios. She’ll be entering venture capital, and will be replaced by Caleb Orr, an adviser to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Leavitt will also be leaving her position as White House press secretary at the end of the month.

While high rates of turnover and sudden exits have always been a key feature of Trump’s administrations, the timing of these most recent departures should still raise alarm. Trump’s own appointees are leaving in the midst of a flailing, costly war on Iran, a general affordability crisis, horrid approval ratings for Trump, and an ominous slate of upcoming elections that threaten Republicans’ congressional majority. 

The Treasury Department has not officially commented on the departures. 

“I told Congressman Cory Mills of Florida, a friend of mine, to get out of the Race, but he wouldn’t listen,” Trump wrote Wednesday. “He thought he could win, so who can blame him?”

“We now have a great candidate, Ryan Elijah, running in his place! Ryan stands for EVERYTHING MAGA, and is respected by ALL. He has my Complete and Total Endorsement!” Trump added.

Trump announced his endorsement for Mills in February, and remained quiet as the numerous allegations against the Florida lawmaker stacked up in the ensuing months. Mills has been accused of sexual misconduct, harassment, campaign finance violations, financial disclosure violations, accepting inappropriate gifts, and multiple ethics violations. He has faced a months-long ethics probe and is reportedly under investigation by the Department of Justice.

In 2024, Trump carried Mills’s district by 12 points. When the outcome of Tuesday’s primary race was called, Mills trailed his opponent by the same margin. No wonder the president is suddenly interested in switching sides—only after the ballots have already been cast.

From late February until June, Iran launched extensive missile and drone strikes on Naval Support Activity Bahrain, causing devastating damage that was not acknowledged by the Pentagon.

The U.S. Navy was forced to evacuate most personnel, and move supply operations to a U.K. naval base on Diego Garcia, a tiny island in the Indian Ocean 2,200 miles from where two aircraft carrier groups have been operating in the Gulf of Oman.

Rhode also refuted Trump’s repeated claims that the Strait of Hormuz was open and under U.S. control. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Centre reported that a ship was attacked as recently as Tuesday, as it attempted to exit the strait. Rhode pointed to a separate incident in the Red Sea, where Iran-backed Houthis attacked a ship at the Bab el-Madeb Strait.

According to MS NOW, recent reports of horrific conditions aboard U.S. Navy ships showed that the U.S. Navy was clearly under “tremendous strain.” Family members of sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln have reported food shortages, and sanitation issues. During the Lincoln’s more than 200 days without a port call, there have been multiple instances where sailors have tried to jump overboard. And the problems experienced by U.S. Navy service members aren’t confined to just one ship.

Rhode criticized Trump’s repeated dismissal of family members’ concerns as an “unforced political error.”

Two of his picks in Florida’s Republican congressional primaries were defeated Tuesday night: Incumbent Representative Cory Mills, who is facing a multitude of scandals, fell short in the 7th district, and former Commerce Department adviser Catalina Lauf was unable to benefit from a late Trump endorsement in the crowded 19th district. On top of that, his choice for governor of Wyoming, Megan Degenfelder, lost by nearly 16 percentage points.

These losses make it 10 times in this election cycle that a Trump-backed candidate lost their Republican primary, the same amount that he lost in 2018, 2020, and 2024 combined. Trump’s worst year for endorsements was in 2022, and he’s one loss away from matching that.

Mills is facing a Department of Justice investigation over sexual misconduct, campaign finance violations, financial disclosure violations, accepting inappropriate gifts, and multiple ethics violations. Just days ago, Mills refused to deny reports that he dated a 19-year-old as a sitting member of Congress. He lost his race to former TV reporter Ryan Elijah by 13 points.

Trump waited until last week to endorse Lauf, who was running in a crowded and expensive primary against former Representatives Chris Collins and Madison Cawthorn, several former congressional candidates, a January 6 rioter, and many transplants to the state. In the end, one of the few local candidates, conservative radio host Jim Schwartzel, won the race to replace Representative Byron Donalds, who is running for Florida governor.

And Degenfelder, Wyoming’s superintendent of public instruction, lost handily to state Senator Eric Barlow in the deep red state by more than 20,000 votes, despite running a very conservative campaign. Barring some kind of crazy news, Barlow will likely be elected governor in November.

All of this suggests that Trump’s unpopularity is becoming too much even among Republicans. His approval rating has fallen to 33 percent, the lowest level of his presidency, according to a new Reuters poll. But Trump was still unrepentant Wednesday morning, bashing Mills before throwing his weight behind Elijah on Truth Social. It looks like he won’t change his ways before November.

CNN reported that in 2023, Harp got into a massive argument with the drivers of Trump’s motorcade after they told her there wasn’t enough room in Trump’s SUV for her as he headed to a New York City courthouse for more legal issues—leading her to hop in the trunk of the SUV and ride in there.

The New York Times also unearthed some of Harp’s gushing letters to Trump.

“I also am sorry if I was an embarrassment walking the course in Scotland,” she wrote after being caught running alongside Trump’s golf cart. “I want things to always be right between us. I also know I’ve been distracted all week (forgetting to eat throughout the days, and even forgetting to sleep, and only catching a couple hours at a time) ... With all my heart, Natalie.”

The phrasing of this letter—and the fact that it exists at all—does not feel appropriate for any working relationship, much less one between the president and his closest personal assistant. Harp’s estranged older brother added even more context to her fascination with Trump, and letter-writing.

“I’d say since she was, like, 16, she’s had an obsession with, um, gosh, how do I explain this? Um, she’s written letters to other presidents, let me put it that way,” he said on CNN Tuesday night. “It’s actually kind of sad. That’s obsession. It’s like an unhealthy obsession with someone if you’re gonna jump into the trunk of their car.”

Trump aide Natalie Harp’s brother reacts to new CNN reporting that she once jumped into the trunk of an SUV in Trump’s motorcade when she was told there were no seats left: “It’s actually kind of sad… that’s like an unhealthy obsession.” pic.twitter.com/EszkjlcC2h

— Erin Burnett OutFront (@OutFrontCNN) August 19, 2026

Harp’s relationship with the president has been scrutinized in the past, but it’s currently come under the national spotlight thanks to a comment from Senator Jon Ossoff that has sent the MAGA base into a rage.

“[Trump] doesn’t want to do the job,” he said at an Atlanta rally earlier this month. “He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.”

Ossoff was alluding to how Harp made it onto Trump’s secret flight out of Turkey last month, while journalists and Cabinet members like Secretary of State Marco Rubio remained aboard the Air Force One at risk of an Iranian strike.

Even as the entire MAGA sphere attempts to shrug this reporting off as targeted liberal fake news, It’s clear that this story isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

In a special election for the state House’s 12th District seat, Democrat Brandon Dukes is leading over Republican Scott Timko by less than 100 votes, 8,434 to 8,346, with 99 percent of votes counted.

Dukes told the local Cranberry Eagle Tuesday night, “I’m ecstatic. I’m shocked.”

“I’m still processing this. We just flipped a Trump plus-18 seat, and we flipped a red seat that’s been red for almost 30 years. We made history,” Dukes said.

Dukes, a commercial loan administrator at TD Bank, will face off again in the November general election against Timko, a retired Air Force captain, commercial pilot and former small business owner. For now, though, Democrats are declaring victory in a deep-red Pennsylvania county that also happens to be close to where a gunman tried to assassinate President Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign.

“Tonight’s result not only shows what can be accomplished when Democrats are willing to fight everywhere, but it sets the stage for this November’s midterm elections,” said Eugene DePasquale, chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, in a statement. “Pennsylvanians across the political spectrum are sick and tired of Republicans’ chaotic, corrupt, and cost-raising agenda—and they’re ready to reject them at the polls and elect Democrats up and down the ballot in historic fashion.”

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, also celebrated Dukes’s win.

“Pennsylvanians are rising up and using their power to combat the chaos, cruelty, and corruption—and we’re not slowing down. I was proud to back Brandon,” Shapiro posted Tuesday night. “Congratulations State Representative-Elect Dukes—I look forward to getting stuff done together.🇺🇲”

If Democrats can keep this momentum, it not only bodes well for the November midterms, but also for 2028.

Graham appeared on the debate stage Tuesday evening with her runoff election opponent, Representative Ralph Norman.

“Senator, are Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues for the United States?” a moderator asked Graham.

“Um, I’m sorry, could you repeat the question?” Graham asked. It was repeated. 

“I’m just gonna be honest here. I’m not on national security that—I’m not that informed on national security,” Graham said, suggesting that she has no idea what’s going on with Taiwan and the South China Sea. “But I do support the military. My brother was in the Air Force for 33 years, so I will do everything I can to support the military. My dad was in the Army, I’m not a polished politician up here. National security is not my thing, not my area of expertise. But I do support the military.”

Moderator: Senator, are Taiwan and the South China sea national security issues for the United States and if so, why?

Darline Graham: National security is not my thing, not my area of expertise but I support the military. pic.twitter.com/F0FEFmc6GW

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 19, 2026

The clip is genuinely a rough watch, and Graham was duly lambasted for it online. 

“I’ve seen politicians reveal their ignorance with terrible answers, but have never seen a Senate candidate openly admit they’re ‘not that informed on national security,’” journalist Ahmed Baba wrote on X. “An answer that should disqualify her from the nom. But who knows. We’re year 10 into American idiocracy.”

“This is painful to watch. ‘I’m not that informed on the economy, but I support people having money’ would be roughly the equivalent,” Billy Binion of the libertarian magazine Reason wrote. “I’m sincerely sorry for Darline Graham’s loss. But being related to a former lawmaker is not a qualification for the Senate.”

It’s entirely reasonable to expect someone running for Senate to have some kind of familiarity with Taiwan and China’s territorial conflict. Graham admitted she had none, while Norman offered up an actual answer.

“Taiwan’s a definite ally, and we have a trading relationship with them that is beneficial to the United States, chips being one of them—and others,” he said. “What the president is doing right is he’s enabling Taiwan to defend themselves against China. But it’s peace through strength that he’s showing.... They don’t wanna deal with America, and that’s why they haven’t attacked Taiwan. If they had some weak Democrat in office … [China] would take it over. But we can’t let them.” 

In the same debate, Graham also said that there were 50 million people living in South Carolina. There are only 5.6 million.  

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

MAGA and the White House are in a fury at Jon Ossoff. That’s because the Georgia senator dared to point out that Donald Trump has a bizarrely close relationship with his young aide, Natalie Harp. Yet it’s now being reported that this relationship actually does unnerve some inside the White House. And the truth is, Ossoff succeeded. There’s now a national debate underway about the ways Harp controls Trump’s access to information, which is a debate we really need to have.

This whole saga captures a lot about how Dems should be fighting the information wars right now. So we’re talking to Paul Waldman, who made a good argument along these lines at his Substack, The Cross Section. Paul, good to have you on.

Paul Waldman: Thanks.

Sargent: So here’s what Senator Jon Ossoff said about Natalie Harp, the very loyal aide to Trump. Listen.

Jon Ossoff (voiceover): While he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.

Sargent: Note that Ossoff said, kind of out of nowhere, that Trump wants to “travel with Natalie” on the plane that Qatar gifted to him. Paul, who is Natalie?

Waldman: Well, she is a young aide in the White House, and there is probably no one who spends as much time with the president of the United States as she does, which is, I think, an important reason why she is certainly worthy of some examination. She started off as a figure on the One America News Network, a small but perhaps somewhat influential far-right news network.

And she caught Trump’s attention and has now taken on this role as what is sometimes referred to as the human printer, because Trump likes to look at things on paper rather than on a phone or a computer. She follows him around with a battery-powered printer, printing out tweets that compliment him, articles that make him look good.

So she kind of constantly feeds him a steady diet of complimentary news and information. And she is always at his side wherever he goes, whether that’s in the Oval Office, at one of his clubs, foreign travel.

Sargent: Natalie Harp controls the information that Donald Trump gets. And it kind of matters what information the president of the United States gets, especially one who’s not curious about the world, or about pretty much anything other than himself, right?

Waldman: Yeah, and I think that is important, because a lot of his decision-making is driven by how he perceives the world as perceiving him. And you know, when he’s out there always saying, like, everybody loves what I’m doing, you know, my polls are through the roof, and things like that—you can look at it as just his sort of ham-handed attempts at propaganda, but I think it also does reflect some of the bubble in which he is existing.

And for somebody as kind of mercurial and emotionally needy as he is, that is going to affect the decisions that he makes. And I think that’s maybe the real function that she serves. You know, there’s all this speculation about, you know, is there something untoward about the relationship? Who knows? But the truth is that she is serving a kind of emotional need for him.

One of the things I say in that piece I wrote at The Cross Section—you know, we’ve all seen those Cabinet meetings where they go around the table and everybody has to say the most kind of over-the-top, embarrassingly complimentary thing to Trump. But you know, those don’t happen every day. He needs that kind of emotional sustenance constantly. And that’s what Natalie Harp provides him.

Sargent: Natalie Harp has a tremendous amount of influence over global affairs. That’s what I think I hear you saying. And so the White House is in a rage over what Jon Ossoff did. Steven Cheung, assistant to the president, called him “Jon Jackoff” and the “biggest cuck loser in politics.” White House spokesman Davis Ingle called Ossoff cringeworthy and feminine and a lightweight loser. Richard Grenell, one of the most slavishly devoted propagandists Trump has ever had, called Ossoff a “fraud,” “scripted,” and “inauthentic.”

So, Paul, this is all childish garbage. But what’s interesting is that they all knew they needed to rush out there and be seen as fighting on behalf of the audience of one, which all but certainly means that it directly triggered Trump, because that’s how this works. If Trump gets angry about something, everybody’s got to go out there and fight for him, right?

Waldman: Yeah. And you immediately saw this wave of conservative commentators, Republicans, White House figures, all taking to social media to condemn this and say they’re so angry. And a lot of it was in this kind of fake feminist ally thing, like, how dare you talk this way about a professional woman and denigrate her accomplishments.

And, the funny thing about that is that if you look at what Ossoff said, all it was is that rather than doing the work that he’s supposed to be doing, Trump is, you know, traveling with Natalie. Those are the only words that referenced her. And immediately all of the Republicans say, well, you’re obviously saying they’re having an affair. Is he, though? Why is it that they are all jumping to that conclusion?

And it’s not as though Ossoff is ignoring her important substantive contributions to American policymaking. You know, her whole role there is to basically be his kind of security blanket. And I think that’s how Ossoff referred to her in a subsequent interview, when he was asked to sort of elaborate on this—that that really is what she is. She’s there to provide him kind of some emotional reassurance.

But all of these Republicans are immediately going straight to the idea that she’s being accused of having an affair with the president. And all of that rhetoric about how Ossoff is a cuck and he’s feminine—this whole movement, but especially the people in the White House, like, their entire worldview is colored by this kind of desperate sexual insecurity.

And every time they have a disagreement with somebody, especially a man, they have to do this kind of, like, you know, seventh-grade insults that are all about, you know, really reflecting more, I think, on themselves than on Jon Ossoff, who, if you have looked at him lately, is looking pretty jacked. So I don’t think that stuff is going to land.

Sargent: Yeah, I would think not. I want to flag another thing that some of these MAGA figures did here, to your point about their bad-faith umbrage. People like Katie Pavlich and Laura Loomer cited the fact that Natalie Harp survived bone cancer to paint Ossoff’s broadside as a cheap shot.

Now, yes, Natalie Harp suffered through some very challenging personal travails. No one would take that away from her. But why this makes bringing up Harp off-limits remains kind of unexplained.

As far as I can tell, Ossoff’s entire point, as you said, was to highlight the fact that he spends a great amount of time with this person who has a great amount of influence over the president, and that this is completely ludicrous and terrible for our country. Ossoff, in the subsequent interview that you’re talking about, essentially said, this woman is part of the information bubble around the president. That’s a hundred percent correct. I mean, of course we’re going to talk about that, right?

Waldman: Yeah, and it’s absolutely legitimate. You know, the people who have the ear of the most powerful person in the world are important to know about. This is one of the most important people in the United States government. So we’ve got to know what the nature of her influence is.

Sargent: Right. And it’s being reported by Semafor that Trump’s proximity to Harp, or Harp’s proximity to Trump, has actually unnerved some of his aides. The people around Trump himself understand that there’s something wrong here.

And again, it doesn’t have to do with sexual stuff or anything like that. It has to do with the fact that the president of the United States has someone who’s controlling information in a way that is actually bad for the country and leading Trump to make some very bad decisions.

Waldman: Yeah, and there have been some reports about that kind of unease among other Trump aides, not just about their closeness, but about what it is that she’s feeding him, whether or not it’s stuff that he should be seeing. Apparently she gets a lot of information from Gateway Pundit, which is this conspiratorial website. And if she’s giving Trump, kind of crazy stuff from the depths of the right-wing internet, then that’s a real problem. But he obviously is very devoted to her.

There’s a passage in Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s book, Regime Change, where he says to some other aides something like, you all are going to go and try to make money, but Natalie’s never going to leave me. And there was a report in The New York Times in 2024 about some letters that the Times got, that Natalie Harp wrote to Trump, that really—I call this a kind of romantic, not necessarily sexual, but just, it’s a kind of ecstatic devotion that she has to him. She writes in these letters, you’re all that matters to me, I want to bring you joy—like, stuff that, I don’t know, I’ve never said to any of my bosses.

So there is something, you know, so worshipful, obviously, in that relationship that she has with him. And it’s OK, maybe, that she’s not going to say no to him, because that’s not her job. But if she’s feeding him just kind of the craziest stuff that she comes across on the internet, and that is then influencing the decisions that he makes, then that makes the things that are already problematic even worse.

Sargent: Well, and then there’s the negative flip side to that as well. If she just wants to bring him joy at every turn, she’s obviously not going to allow criticism of Donald Trump to get to him. And we’re talking about criticism here that might be coming from members of his own party, or maybe leaks from inside the administration from people who are trying to alert the president to a policy thing that’s going really wrong.

Like, right now, we’re in the middle of a major fiasco, a global fiasco in Iran, and you do see leaks coming out of the administration from people saying things like, we’ve really lost this thing, and Donald Trump isn’t kind of getting that message, and that’s a real problem, and we’ve got to do something different here.

And so I don’t really know exactly what the nature of their informational relationship is, but if she wants to bring him ecstatic joy all the time—we all know that Trump doesn’t take criticism well, and you know, she doesn’t brook dissent at all. So she’s not going to let any of that information get to him. And that’s a problem for us.

Waldman: And I do wonder if people even within the conservative movement, within the administration itself, are trying to figure out what her daily media diet is, so they can channel their own views through her to him. We’ve heard about that before with Trump. We heard about it in his first term, how people even in his administration would try to get his ear, and they couldn’t do it through kind of regular channels of going through the White House chief of staff. And so they would book themselves on Fox News to make an argument about, whatever policy it was, because they knew that he’s watching Fox News for hour after hour every day.

And that’s the way they could get in front of the president, rather than, like, an Oval Office briefing. And it does make you wonder if people are now trying to determine, you know, exactly what is Natalie looking at every day? What websites is she visiting? Can I try to seed something and get it to him through her? And that’s the way I’ll make my case for, you know, whatever I think the next policy ought to be. It’s a whole new kind of backroom machination that we haven’t had to think about before.

Sargent: Yeah. And I suspect that this has forced the discussion of what we’re talking about here, and that’s really why MAGA squealed so loud, which brings us to the question of what Democrats can learn from this. Jon Ossoff said three words, poked the bear, and as a result, he’s getting viciously abused across the internet and across the airwaves, but he forced a conversation over what we’re talking about. And that strikes me as something Democrats should learn from.

I have this sort of formula in my head where Democrats spend a little too much time denying the false things that are said about them, and not enough time kind of forcing Trump and Republicans to deny true things about themselves. Does that make sense, Paul?

In other words, what we see here is what happens when a Democrat speaks plain truths about the president. It forces the discussion in a direction that puts Trump on the defensive and reveals things about Trump and the MAGA movement. I think Democrats can learn from that.

Waldman: The fact that there is that gossipy aspect to it no doubt made a lot of people want to retweet the story and things like that, because people just like that kind of stuff. If it has that kind of juicy element to it, it’s going to get more news coverage. Everybody likes gossip, right?

So Democrats can certainly think about that as a way to frame even substantive things that they want to talk about. And too often Democrats think that their 10-point plan for Medicaid reform is going to grab people’s attention when it won’t, even if it’s great. And also, as you say, all too often they are defending themselves rather than going on the attack in ways that have some spice to them. And you can do that at the same time as you’re bringing up legitimate issues.

But I think that it was incredibly revealing, the way that the White House and basically the entire conservative movement just kind of exploded in anger at this. That really shows that you’ve struck a nerve. And so I think Democrats should think about, you know, what other nerves they want to strike.

Republicans have always been really good at forcing issues onto the news agenda. And part of that is because they have this structural advantage. They have all these tools that Democrats don’t really have—a whole network of media organizations with big reach that can all sing in harmony and immediately get other mainstream news organizations to pick up on the stories that they’re trying to push. They have that apparatus that Democrats don’t really have in the same kind of way. But they also just have a real instinct for the jugular that Democrats don’t have. And maybe this is an example of how you can kind of cultivate that.

Sargent: The other big context to this is the debate among Democrats over how hard to go at Donald Trump, over whether to talk about Donald Trump or not, over whether talking about Donald Trump is somehow a distraction from talking about costs. I just want to point out that Jon Ossoff goes after Trump constantly with really, really barbed rhetoric. And he really goes hard at Trump’s pathologies and his essentially scoundrel-like nature, the degree to which he’s just a piece of shit, really, right? Morally.

And I think we should note here that Jon Ossoff is running for reelection in a very difficult state, Georgia, and he’s significantly up. So I wouldn’t want to say that the fact that Jon Ossoff goes after Trump so aggressively is the reason he’s leading. But I do think that it’s getting the base very energized, and it’s getting the base to pay attention to him, which is something that he’s going to need to win reelection. And there’s no sense in which constantly going after Donald Trump is holding him back politically. Can you talk about that, Paul? I think we can learn from that too.

Waldman: Yeah, Ossoff talks a lot about corruption. He has a broad critique that is not just about Trump, but is always incorporating Trump. And as you say, he is really aggressive in making these arguments, is not afraid to speak the truth about who Trump is. And you know, oftentimes Democrats really, really overthink things. You know, they’re always talking about, we need to, like, figure out how to just put the focus on kitchen-table issues. You have a president who, in a couple of polls I’ve seen just recently, is at, like, 33 percent. The country is so angry at him—and they think, well, we have to offer a positive vision. Like, here’s the truth: you actually don’t.

This is a midterm election. It’s about the president of the United States. Republicans didn’t have a positive vision when they were running against Bill Clinton in 1994, or Barack Obama in 2010, or any of the years where they had big, huge victories. You don’t actually need that. People are pissed off at the president.

And if you just keep reminding them that they don’t like him, that’s going to be enough to win a midterm election. Now, it may not be enough to govern once you have power again, as Democrats hope to in 2029. But for now, you know, they don’t actually need anything but to sort of really zero in on what’s wrong with this president, why people are mad at him and should be mad at him.

That is more than enough to get themselves over the finish line this year. And I think that someone like Ossoff actually does a really good job of telling a story that makes people understand what’s happening and why. And that’s why I think his focus on corruption is really something that a lot of Democrats should be talking about, because it really gets to the heart of what has people so angry about the whole system, not just what’s going on right at this moment. And this stuff is often not as complicated as it seems.

Sargent: You know, they can also go after Republicans for essentially being a rubber stamp for this widely despised president as well. So it doesn’t just have to be about Trump. It’s about Trump and the fact that Republicans have completely rolled over and allowed him to gut our country.

Paul Waldman, it’s always great to talk to you. By the way, I should point out, folks, that when Paul said that Democrats don’t have to have a positive vision in the midterms and that they can just go after Trump, that is pure heresy in Democratic circles. But on The Daily Blast, you get the real dope, man. Paul, thanks for coming on.

Waldman: Thanks a lot, Greg.

The language deployed by HHS reflects a new wave of anti-abortion rhetoric that converges with the Make America Healthy Again camp to increasingly demonize hormonal birth control and reproductive health care as “unnatural” and a symbol of moral bankruptcy. As Planned Parenthood is in its fifth year of Title X’s five-year funding cycle, the funding shift puts millions of Americans at risk.

Trump’s MAGA administration has repeatedly attempted to undermine and defund reproductive health care, with roughly 200 Planned Parenthood Centers at risk of closure amid abortion bans and widespread funding cuts. The lawsuit alleges the administration is “misusing the Title X program for an overtly political and ideological agenda,” and that reproductive health care organizations that continue to offer full-service reproductive health care (like Planned Parenthood) will be unjustly penalized. Now the 1.3 million low-income, uninsured, and underinsured Americans who receive Planned Parenthood care through Title X funding every year—with contraceptive counseling, STD screenings and treatment, and cancer screenings being some of the most popular services—are at risk of losing access to vital health care. However, if successful, the lawsuit would force the Trump administration to walk back the politicization of Title X for all reproductive health care providers across America.

“[This announcement] is a piece of a long string of attacks on Planned Parenthood and providers of reproductive health care generally,” says Carrie Flaxman, a senior legal advisor at Democracy Forward. The current administration has reinstated an abortion ban for veterans across the country, blocked Planned Parenthood clinics from receiving Medicaid, and defunded the Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Program. (Much of what conservatives refer to as a “fertility crisis” is driven by historic lows in teenage pregnancy, which one might imagine is a good thing, not an emergency.) The lawsuit notes that the shifts in funding criteria puts Planned Parenthood Associations at a “competitive disadvantage,” with the “inability to compete on a fair footing.”

Title X came into effect as a bipartisan program in 1970 with the purpose of “making comprehensive voluntary family planning services readily available to all persons desiring such services.” Republican President Richard Nixon, in a 1969 speech, stated that “no American woman should be denied access to family planning assistance because of her economic condition.” Flaxman notes that several of the proposed changes are contrary to existing regulations that bind HHS to Title X. “Those are things that the agency can’t do and they can’t change the law through a funding announcement. That’s the basis for the lawsuit—that they can’t make these changes.”

Existing regulations instruct HHS to consider things like health equity, client-centered and inclusive care (that includes transgender patients), and a “broad range of medically-approved services,” including contraceptives, fertility tracking, and STI testing. It is unclear to experts like Flaxman how Planned Parenthood associations and other reproductive health care providers are meant to comply with HHS’s shifted values, while still providing evidence-backed care, as outlined in existing Title X regulations.

Shortly after Trump’s second election, the administration faced stark pushback from the anti-abortion movement for allowing Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health care providers to remain funded through Title X. White House spokesman Kush Desai told The Daily Wire in March that HHS would be “realigning the Title X program with the President’s pro-life and pro-family agenda going forward.” The July Notice of Funding Opportunity appears to be a concrete step in a far-reaching attack against Planned Parenthood.

Utah is one of the many states that have already been used as a testing ground for a defunded Planned Parenthood. In March 2025, nine state affiliates of Planned Parenthood—including Utah, where Planned Parenthood is the sole recipient of Title X funding in the state—were informed that their Title X funding would be “temporarily withheld” due to “possible violations” of civil rights laws and Trump’s 2025 executive order that sought to end all federally-funded programming related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and the “taxpayer subsidization of open borders.” In the notice, Politico reported that the administration cited Planned Parenthood’s “commitment to Black communities” as evidence of a “DEI” effort that failed to comply with executive orders.

Over the course of nine months without Title X funding, Planned Parenthood Association of Utah, or PPAU, was forced to close two clinics, both of which were situated in “health care deprivation areas,” servicing over 30,000 people annually. PPAU also reduced clinical and education staff and had to increase their sliding-fee scale for patients paying out of pocket. In the first few months of losing funding, “a few people just turned around and walked out,” Shireen Ghorbani, president of PPAU, says. In January, PPAU’s Title X funding was restored. However, the devastation of nine months without Title X was merely a glimpse at the broader aim of the Trump administration: to restrict accessible reproductive health care across the country.

Shireen Ghorbani, the president and CEO of PPAU, is no stranger to Title X. Raised without health insurance in North Dakota, her mother helped her find a Title X-funded clinic shortly after high school to get on birth control in 1999. “That set the trajectory of my life, to be able to control when and how I wanted to have a family,” she says. Currently, 240 Planned Parenthood clinics participate in Title X, servicing over 1,300,000 patients every year.

For reproductive health care providers and advocates like Ghorbani, the MAHA movement has created a false dichotomy between “natural” family planning methods and comprehensive reproductive health care. “To be crystal clear, we are very happy to counsel people on natural family planning or whatever form of birth control they believe is right for them,” says Ghorbani, reiterating that Planned Parenthood clinics across the country “meet patients where they’re at,” regularly providing information on cycle tracking and treatments for STIs that might otherwise cause infertility and limit the ability of Americans to have large families, if they choose to. For Ghorbani, the funding shifts undermine the principle of choice at the heart of reproductive care: “It feels like a disrespect to our patients. Our patients know what circumstances are best for them to bring children into this world.”

The attempts to defund Planned Parenthood aren’t just a matter of cutting off resources: It’s a potential redirection of Title X funds to anti-choice, unregulated organizations. “We want to make sure patients have fact-based information, they have medically-accurate information from medical providers, and that these dollars are not just being syphoned over to unregulated pregnancy centers where they don’t have the same health care standards, requirements, or health care professionals that are giving people fact-based, science-based, best practice-based information.”

What Ghorbani is referring to are the over 2600 anti-abortion and anti-contraception organizations in the United States that position themselves as “crisis pregnancy centers” and redirect pregnant patients away from abortion and family planning through misinformation around the dangers of abortion and risks of infertility, religious rhetoric and value-laden language around “preborn babies,” and flat-out fearmongering.

“There’s a fundamental ground shift happening in how this administration thinks about the role of women in this country, the way that they think about reproduction in this country,” says Ghorbani. “They would prefer that people have lower access to information and lower access to high quality care. That’s the only way I can interpret what they’re doing around the cuts to health care.”

The lawsuit also alleges that the Trump administration did not follow the Administrative Procedures Act, which requires that the federal government post a public notice of new rule changes, allowing for a feedback period, and must take this feedback into account before moving forward with a rule change. For Planned Parenthood workers, like Ghorbani, the lawsuit represents both a challenge to anti-choice rhetoric, and to the twisting of democratic procedure to appease anti-choice voters. “Process still matters,” says Ghorbani.

This lawsuit is underpinned by an understanding that Title X-funded programs, for millions of Americans, are the last point of access to equitable and evidence-based reproductive care at clinics like Planned Parenthood. As Ghorbani puts it, the recent attacks reflect the growing “pro-birth, pro-natalist agenda that in no way takes into account the realities of working families in this country”—along with a pompous bypassing of due process. The victims of this ideological warfare are millions of working-class Americans. The politicization of Title X funding and the targeting of Planned Parenthood threatens this access, potentially isolating low-income, uninsured, and under-insured Americans from evidence-backed reproductive and sexual health care.

And yet, there exists in the United States no single great temple to all this rumbustious genius. Genres have their halls of fame, as with country music. And speaking of Nashville, there does exist in that city a Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum, which expands its purview beyond country music and seemed to me outstanding on my visit there a few years ago. But still, it doesn’t claim to be exhaustive. And, obviously, there’s the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, but it is, of necessity, international in scope.

The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music is not that great temple, as executive director Bob Santelli will readily acknowledge. With exhibition space totaling roughly 8,600 square feet, it couldn’t possibly be. But what the center lacks in comprehension, it more than makes up for in—well, the word, as The Beatles put it, is love. The center, which opened its doors on June 13 on the campus of Monmouth University in the Boss’s lifelong Jersey stomping grounds, is a down-to-earth and heartfelt bear hug of every imaginable genre, and of the country that produced it; of the “old, weird America,” in Greil Marcus’s indelible phrase; the America where everything didn’t have a price and where ample room was made for the iconoclasts and misfits and insubordinates who wove us this glorious aural tapestry.

The museum is the product of Santelli’s deft execution, but it reflects Springsteen’s heart and vision. Santelli, along with architect Rick Cook and director Eileen Chapman, who spearheaded the job of collecting the Springsteen archives that are such an important part of the museum, showed me around the center on a late July Friday. Santelli was a longtime Rolling Stone rock critic until he turned toward museum curation in the 1990s, first in Cleveland, and then hither and yon. He has known Springsteen since they were teenagers. He first saw Bruce play in around 1968 (“He was so good, and so far ahead of everyone else”). When Woodstock came around, they both skipped it, because Led Zeppelin was playing the Asbury Park Convention Hall that weekend, and they went to that instead.

Nine years ago, Santelli went to Jon Landau, Springsteen’s famed producer, with an idea for a museum and archives built around Springsteen’s life and corpus. Landau agreed and said, sure, go to the man himself. “I brought it to Bruce,” Santelli said. “And he listened, like he does, paying attention. And he finally said, ‘You know, Bob, I am honored, humbled that you would think this.’ But he says, ‘I’m just a chapter in the ongoing story of rock and roll. I’m a link of a long chain. And if you would make it bigger, the story bigger, and I’m a part of it, then I’d be interested.’ And that’s how basically we became the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music.”

With that blessing, Santelli went out and raised the $53 million needed for the project. He didn’t ask Springsteen for a dime because “I didn’t want him to think, or anyone to think, this was in any way a vanity project.”

Santelli and team enlisted architect Rick Cook of CookFox Architects of New York in 2019. Cook first saw Springsteen live at Albany’s Palace Theater in 1977, but he wasn’t one of those Boss concertgoers screaming out every word of “Backstreets.” Music, Cook told me, “just wasn’t my thing.” He admitted to having been a little intimidated at first: “I thought, my goodness, how do you find a physical way to express the story of American music and Bruce’s place in it? We make things in space, and music is this magic act that happens in time.”

For someone who wasn’t immersed in the Springsteen legend, Cook certainly offered up a design that captured the man’s aesthetic well. The exterior of the long, low-slung two-story building consists of rows of what are called “weathering steel rainscreen panels”; they’re as rusted as the mills where some of Springsteen’s protagonists used to work. As Cook walked me through the place, he explained the care that was taken to reinforce the proletarian ethos: the “end-grain block flooring” in the 240-seat Powell Soundstage that “recalls the old factory floors, the nineteenth-century factory floors”; the seats themselves, clad in workingman’s denim.

It’s in the Powell theater where the visitor’s journey begins (a general admission ticket is $22), with a 25-minute film by Thom Zimny, the director who has worked with Springsteen on many projects over the years. It’s a bracing 25-minute tour d’horizon of American music, with some mind-blowing footage (a teenage Aretha Franklin belting one out in a church) and narration from Springsteen himself, who alternates between talking about some of the legendary figures we see in the film and his own relentless youthful hunger for success. “I wanted to hear all that screaming again,” he said of watching The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. “But I wanted it to be for me.”

The whole place is just a joyous visual (and very virtual) celebration of American music. There’s a wall of album covers of all sorts: Nat King Cole, Chet Atkins, the Bye Bye Birdie Soundtrack, The Beastie Boys, Connie Francis (“I had kids pick out album covers that they thought were cool,” Santelli told me).

The exhibition halls aren’t large, so the amount of ground covered is all the more impressive. The gallery surveying the history of American music is a mere 2,200 square feet, but it packs in sections devoted to 11 different music genres (American classics, pop, soul, jazz, Native American, etc.) and six themes (race, gender, technology, geography, and more). There are display cases housing some of the earliest electric guitars, from the 1920s and 30s. A suit of Frank Sinatra’s. Louis Armstrong’s and Dizzy Gillespie’s trumpets. A Chuck Berry guitar. An Elvis Presley jacket. Odetta’s guitar from the 1963 March on Washington. A Michael Jackson glove. Lady Gaga’s space helmet.

The ground floor also holds a space for temporary exhibitions. When I visited, the installation was “Chimes of Freedom: Protest, Patriotism, and the Power of Song.” It briskly tells the story of American political songs from “Yankee Doodle Dandy” to Springsteen’s own “The Streets of Minneapolis,” which he wrote in the wake of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. There was a Woody Guthrie guitar, and a handwritten set of lyrics to “This Land Is Your Land.” My heart jumped for a moment because I thought I was going to see, in Guthrie’s own hand, the famous samizdat lyrics, the verses about the relief office and the “No Trespassing” sign—but lo and behold, they were a completely different set of lyrics.

You go upstairs, and it’s all about Bruce. Well, not all: The E Street Band is given its due here, as are Bruce’s pre-fame bands (The Castiles, Child, Steel Mill). It’s interesting to be reminded of what a racially diverse assemblage The E Street Band was in its early days. There was Clarence Clemons, obviously; but at different times the band included David Sancious, the brilliant keyboard player whose stamp is so clear on 1973’s The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle; Vini Lopez, who played drums on that record; and Ernest “Boom” Carter, who laid down the drum track on “Born to Run” before leaving with Sancious to form a jazz fusion group. But it’s a testament to Springsteen’s unpretentious decency and Jersey guy-ness that they all remained friends over the years. The last time I saw him live, he even played a song he’d written as a tribute to George Theiss, The Castiles’s founder, who had been diagnosed with cancer at the time, and to whom Springsteen remained close until he died in 2025.

There’s a little “recording studio” where you can listen to Max Weinberg or Gary Tallent explain a drum or bass guitar part. There’s a partial recreation of Springsteen’s old home library in Rumson, where the autodidact college dropout devoured volumes like Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.

And there’s the archives room, which is Chapman’s domain. Springsteen wrote his lyrics in Walgreens spiral-bound notebooks, many of which he held onto. Visitors can’t handle those directly, but many have been scanned so that you can see the composer’s scribblings. Chapman estimates the center has 45,000 to 50,000 documents. “His mom had scrapbooks,” Chapman says. “So we were gifted his mom’s scrapbooks, about six of them, plus other newspapers and correspondence.” You can sit at computers and browse through them—lyrics, old posters—while listening to Steel Mill play live from 1970.

But the Mona Lisa of this Louvre, so to speak, is The Guitar. You know the one. The Fender Telecaster, natural finish with black pickguard, that was strapped across Springsteen’s back in the famous Born to Run cover shot by Eric Meola. It’s badly gashed in at least two places, and as you look at it, you can practically smell the flat beer spilled on it and the tobacco smoke blown in its direction over the years. I, and nearly every other visitor I observed the morning of my visit, lingered over it. “That’s probably worth about $12 million,” Santelli said. “That was the last thing we put in.”

Someday, the mandarins of the Smithsonian will decide that American music needs its proper home somewhere on the National Mall, assuming Donald Trump hasn’t gobbled up all the remaining space with monuments to himself. But until that day, we have this—this modest, but big-hearted and imaginative and meticulously curated, tribute to the America that has earned our love. Within these walls you might believe that our America will win, and that the old, weird America is the America that matters. You might believe, for an hour or two, in the promised land.

Nevada, which has extensive experience with gambling regulation, had appeared to strike a bargain with Kalshi earlier this year by getting it to agree to a geofencing restriction. In exchange for blocking people within the Silver State from accessing its markets, the state agreed to drop its ongoing case against the company. That agreement fell apart last week after investigators for the Nevada Gaming Control Board were able to circumvent the geofencing services used by Kalshi.

Under the terms of the agreement, Kalshi agreed to pay the state $120,000 per day if it failed to implement a geofence by August 12. The company instead lashed out at Nevada regulators by accusing them of providing “falsified information (breaking federal law) to hunt for a loophole and manufacture another legal grievance” against Kalshi. “This is not the behavior of a regulator trying to protect consumers—it is a vindictive waste of taxpayer dollars at the bidding of casinos,” Rick Heaslip, Kalshi’s general counsel, claimed on Twitter last week.

The Nevada Gaming Control Board was unamused, to say the least. “Kalshi’s accusations are baseless, and they cannot obscure the fact that Kalshi missed its agreed-upon deadline to comply with Nevada law,” the board said in a statement. “Kalshi’s consistent failures to comply with the court orders left the board with no other choice but to advise the court of Kalshi’s noncompliance.” That could open the door to more punitive sanctions against the company.

An even greater legal threat emerged in New York after state officials filed a lawsuit against Kalshi on July 31 for allegedly violating the state’s gambling laws. State law requires sports-betting companies to obtain a license from the state gaming commission and pay taxes on their winnings. New York also alleged that Kalshi violated the state’s age limit for sports betting by allowing 18, 19, and 20-year-olds to place bets on its marketplaces.

“No matter what they call themselves, prediction markets like Kalshi are gambling platforms, plain and simple,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “By ignoring our laws, Kalshi is running an illegal operation and harming New Yorkers in the process. We are taking them to court to uphold our laws and protect New Yorkers.”

Kalshi first announced that it would take bets on sports events in January 2025, the New York lawsuit noted, and advertised its product as allowing users to “view live sports (and bet).” In practical terms, a Kalshi “sports contract” is functionally no different than a bet to the average consumer. A customer places a wager in the form of purchasing sports contracts on a binary outcome, ranging from whether the Los Angeles Dodgers will win the 2026 World Series to whether Shohei Ohtani will hit a home run during a specific game. If the wager is correct, the bettor receives a larger sum payment.

The principal difference between a prediction market and a traditional sportsbook is that the counterparty for the wager isn’t the company itself, but other bettors who are buying and selling “event contracts.” While sportsbooks derive their profit from losing bets by their customers, Kalshi and other prediction markets instead get their revenue from transaction fees for each wager placed.

New York state officials first instructed Kalshi to cease and desist its unlicensed sports gambling operation in October 2025. Three days later, Kalshi sued the state to obtain a preliminary injunction that would block New York from enforcing its demands. A federal district court in Manhattan denied those motions last month. On July 31, the state escalated its war by filing its own lawsuit that seeks to recoup all profits from the allegedly unlawful sports betting operation as well as damages, for a total of $36 billion in penalties, which would exceed Kalshi’s current market capitalization.

Leaping to the rescue of Kalshi, Polymarket, and similar enterprises is the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a federal agency charged with overseeing the nation’s derivatives markets. Under its commissioner Michael Selig, the CFTC has argued that it has the exclusive authority to regulate prediction markets via federal law. It filed a separate lawsuit against New York in April that also sought to stop the state from punishing Kalshi and other prediction markets for offering sports-related bets. Earlier lawsuits sought to stop gambling regulators in Arizona, Connecticut, and Illinois from enforcing their own laws against sports prediction markets.

How can the CFTC intervene on behalf of prediction markets? Federal law exclusively allows the agency to regulate derivatives contracts and the markets where they can be bought and sold. Prediction market companies have argued that their sports-related products are equivalent to derivatives, even though their functional practice is to facilitate sports betting. Traditional sportsbooks have to operate on a state-by-state basis, obtaining licenses and complying with intensive gambling regulatory regimes. Prediction markets can instead seek refuge under the friendly auspices of the CFTC and operate nationwide with limited oversight.

In addition to lawsuits like the one in Minnesota earlier this year, the agency can intervene on behalf of prediction markets is by invoking Section 8a(9) of the Commodity Exchange Act. That provision, which was designed to address a “market emergency,” allows the CFTC to “direct” a commodity or derivatives market to “take such action as in the Commission’s judgment is necessary to maintain or restore orderly trading in or liquidation of any futures contract.” This power is rarely invoked, with only four previous instances between the years of 1976 and 1980.

After laying moribund for the last 46 years, the CFTC has invoked those powers three times in 2026 to direct prediction markets to ignore state regulators and even the courts. Earlier this month, it issued an order instructing Kalshi to continue normal operations in New York—that is, to keep offering sports-betting products on its markets—despite the legal actions taken by New York gambling regulators.

“If New York can ban event contracts, it logically could ban any derivatives product that the Commission regulates, including basic futures contracts, on the erroneous basis that trading in these products contravenes New York’s gambling laws,” the agency claimed. “In that case, New York would wield existential control over every entity that offers derivatives products and is headquartered in New York—the financial capital of the world.”

A federal district court in Connecticut, for example, ruled earlier this month that Kalshi’s sports betting contracts do not fall under the CEA, meaning that the CFTC can’t override state gambling regulators. When Kalshi notified the court of the CFTC’s order to keep operating in New York, Judge Vernon Oliver found it to be “not compelling” because the court had already ruled that such contracts are outside the CFTC’s jurisdiction—a conclusion also reached by a federal trial judge in New York.

“The Court ‘must exercise independent judgment in determining the meaning of statutory provisions,’” Oliver wrote, quoting from the Supreme Court’s landmark decision that overturned Chevron deference two years ago. “It has done so here in finding that Connecticut’s gambling laws do not conflict with the CEA. Nothing in the CEA takes away statutory interpretation from the Courts, and as an administrative agency, the CFTC lacks the authority to dictate an order that conflicts with this Court’s decision.”

This legal battle is existential for the prediction market industry. While prediction markets offer a wide range of event contracts, taking wagers on major sports events is an integral part of their business strategy. By one estimate, sports betting accounted for between 85 and 90 percent of trading volume on U.S. prediction markets. Bloomberg reported last week that more than one in four Gen Z investors consider sports betting to be part of their long-term financial strategy—a disturbing finding on its own terms. Prediction markets hope to siphon off as much of that potential revenue as possible from traditional sportsbooks.

Selig, the CFTC chair, has touted his agency’s role in protecting and nurturing prediction markets, which he says can “produce a lot of useful information” by “forecasting” future events. “We are making sure that we don’t let these markets languish or that we don’t push them offshore,” he said at an industry event earlier this month, “but we develop the right rules and regulations to develop investor protections and make sure that the markets are flourishing here in the United States.”

According to one litigation tracker, the CFTC alone has sued nine states over their efforts to regulate prediction markets, while legal battles between states and prediction markets themselves over sports betting in some form are underway in roughly half of the Union. At stake is a vast market that seeks to extract billions of dollars from younger Americans under the guise of gamified investments. Its ultimate fate—and the scope of the CFTC’s authority over sports-event contracts—will likely be decided by the institution that kicked off the sports betting craze eight years ago: the Supreme Court of the United States.

We just learned about the broad outlines of this domestic surveillance from newly released court papers related to the ongoing prosecution of a handful of protesters. As The New York Times reported, the papers show that DHS began surveilling left-leaning groups—including a union, a climate change group, and others—after ICE killed Alex Pretti in January. This has entailed seeking financial records and infiltrating protest meetings that are protected by the First Amendment.

But you can get a far more vivid picture of these undercover surveillance operations—and how brazenly they were conducted against American citizens—if you read deep into the court papers. The documents—which are attached as exhibits to a motion filed by lawyers for one of the protesters facing prosecution and are available on Pacer—include investigative reports that were transmitted by the undercover agents themselves about meetings they infiltrated.

It’s jarring, revealing stuff. The reports show that covert agents surreptitiously attended well over a dozen protest meetings organized by groups like the Sunrise Movement and various small socialist organizations. In some cases the agents secretly recorded the gatherings.

What’s more, in at least one case, an undercover agent may have tried to influence the conduct of meeting organizers. One report from an agent describes a meeting in late January of the Sunrise Movement at a Minneapolis public library. While spying on the proceedings, the agent seems to have learned that the organization’s intention was nonviolent: As the agent notes in his own investigative report, “it was made clear” at the meeting that the organization is “focused on peaceful protests.”

Yet after this discovery, the agent then approached a meeting organizer and made a surprising proposition. The agent told the organizer “he works in construction” and is willing to build things to assist “with more direct action protests,” the report reads, adding that the agent stressed “that going to jail did not bother him.”

That sounds like the agent may have signaled a willingness to engage in something illegal, to bait the group into moving in that direction, argues Kevin Riach, the lawyer for one of the protesters who is being prosecuted, Isaac Sant.

“This is an effort to entice someone who’s shown no inclination to commit a crime into committing one,” Riach told me. “What this tells us is that there wasn’t actual criminal activity to be investigated. They had to invent it. That’s not how this is supposed to work—not in this country, anyway.”

In other cases, undercover agents infiltrated these meetings only to find that the protesters turned out to be awfully innocuous. One agent covertly attended a meeting in February and found that it “was more of a panel discussion,” where there was “no discussion, or call for, violence toward law enforcement.”

Similarly, another agent’s report described infiltrating a meeting in Ann Arbor, Michigan, of organizers who said they sympathized with the Minneapolis anti-ICE resistance. (The papers show that DHS’s surveillance reached into other states beyond Minnesota.) This agent reported initiating a conversation with a married churchgoing couple, and the woman told the agent she’d traveled to Uganda to assist “in the construction of a hospital.”

In short, we’re not exactly talking about the Weather Underground bombers here.

Indeed, as Substacker Brian Kaylor notes, a number of these undercover operations were even conducted in churches where protesters had organized. Several of the pastors were kept entirely in the dark about law enforcement’s infiltration of their houses of worship.

The absurdity of all this is overwhelming. In some cases, the Keystone Kops vibe is strong: One agent attended a May meeting in Minneapolis, only to report that his “concealed body-worn audio recorder erroneously fell to the floor of the gymnasium.” The agent left without the device and had to return later to retrieve it.

Interestingly, the investigative reports also offer a glimpse of culture clashes between protesters and the agents who spied on them. One agent attended a Minneapolis meeting in February and reported, perhaps with distaste, on a female protester “with they/them pronouns” and “bright green short hair” and a “nose ring.”

As writer John Ganz has noted, Trump’s secret police force is made up of the MAGA “demimonde” and the “Trumpenproletarian mob.” And indeed, Trump’s political project has long been all about turning loose “his” people—law enforcement, biker gangs, coal miners, Ultimate Fighting enthusiasts—against the leftist enemy that inhabits blue America. The centrality of violence to all this is not disguised in the least. ICE recruitment targets MAGA-adjacent UFC fanbases and people who show an interest in paramilitary tactical equipment or military recruitment. ICE messaging openly glorifies military-style operations in urban areas—that is, in blue America’s diverse, cosmopolitan strongholds. Trump talks about Minneapolis as akin to an enemy country populated with undesirables who must be purged by MAGA patriots.

Now we’re learning that this war on blue America also includes extensive undercover surveillance. Many of these agents appear to have been drawn largely from Homeland Security Investigations, the arm of ICE that’s supposed to be focused on serious, complex, transnational crimes. They’ve now been reduced to standing around in parking lots writing down protesters’ license plate numbers and using sleazy deception tactics to spy on fellow Americans whose only crime is sympathy with immigrants.

Violence is precisely what spawned this undercover spying operation, but the real culprit was the violence of the government, not of the protesters. As Lisa Needham writes at Public Notice, we shouldn’t lose sight of how quickly ICE’s invasion of Minneapolis devolved into lethal state violence against Americans. It was just after ICE’s arrival in the city that an agent gunned down Renee Good in her car, with Pretti’s killing by federal agents following around two weeks later.

The outpouring of public protest in the face of this invasion apparently helped prompt DHS to launch its massive undercover surveillance operation directed at Americans, on the theory that the protests were being organized by larger, more sinister forces. The government dubbed this “Operation Puppet Master.”

But it’s unclear what all this surreptitious spying is even turning up. The Times notes that none of the groups targeted by it have been charged. And while the surveillance supposedly helped produce that aforementioned indictment of a handful of protesters, in reality the spying has swept far, far beyond those targets. The main result has been a discovery process that has now exposed the depth and breadth of the government’s massive spying operation for all to see.

There’s one other big unknown here. The document declaring the opening of Operation Puppet Master contains another vague reference: It says this effort has also been sanctioned under something called “Operation Keyhole.” Yet it’s unclear what this even is. As Kevin Riach, the lawyer, told me: “This suggests there’s some broader surveillance operation underway that we have yet to learn about.”

When I asked DHS what the phrase “Operation Keyhole” describes, the agency declined to comment.

Trump’s mass deportations have become akin to a Forever War. The expansion of ICE has poured tens of billions of dollars into the growth of Trump’s very own paramilitary army. This has included the stockpiling of enormous amounts of heavy military-style tactical equipment and weaponry, furnished by private contractors who resemble war profiteers.

And so, just as we saw under George W. Bush’s Forever Wars, we’re witnessing the growth of a massive public-private bureaucracy that’s metastasizing in unnerving new directions. It now appears to entail extensive domestic surveillance operations as well. We’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of it all. As always seems to happen with Forever Wars, we may never even learn all that much about many of the darkest atrocities perpetrated in its name.

“Islamophobia is a problem among both Democrats and Republicans,” Tlaib posted on X Monday night. “The silence in Michigan among state leaders while one of the largest cities in the state is being terrorized by Islamophobes is shameful.”

The march is being led by extremist and provocateur Jake Lang, a January 6 rioter pardoned by President Trump who keeps returning to the city to harass its large Muslim and Arab community. In November, he tried to lead another march and got punched in the face. He was also arrested in June for “terroristic threats” in Texas and in February in Minnesota for destroying an anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement ice sculpture. 

Senator Elissa Slotkin stepped up following Tlaib’s post, saying Tuesday morning that “The people of Dearborn are once again under attack from an out-of-state influencer looking for controversy.

“The Mayor [Abdullah Hammoud], the Police Chief, and religious leaders of all faiths are again showing leadership and demonstrating that Michigan is united against hate and Islamophobia,” Slotkin posted. “Dearborn is as Michigan as it gets, and as Police Chief Issa Shahin said, these individuals are coming for one reason and one reason alone: To provoke a reaction. The most powerful thing this community can do is give them an audience. Don’t give them the satisfaction.” 

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who is the Democratic nominee for governor, also spoke up for Dearborn, saying Tuesday afternoon that “It’s a city full of hardworking, proud, patriotic Michiganders—and hard as they might try, these out-of-state agitators cannot change that. And we will not let their hate drive us apart.”

Whitmer issued a statement Tuesday calling Lang and his supporters “a group of agitators” who are “traveling to Dearborn for the sole purpose of intimidating that community and provoking a reaction,” urging local residents not to engage with them.  

Attorney General Dana Nessel hasn’t issued a statement over the march. On Monday, Hammoud responded to a reporter’s question by calling on Nessel to consider hate crimes charges against Lang. 

“I would take that question and actually channel it towards our attorney general to see what she may do with her hate crimes unit to see if there’s anything that can be levied against these agitators and provocateurs that come to Dearborn time and time again,” Hammoud said.

Outside of Michigan, national Democratic figures such as House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are silent. Meanwhile, Dearborn’s Christian and Muslim faith leaders are uniting against the hatred directed at their city. 

As the president’s close relationship with his female aide has come under scrutiny, a litany of MAGA social media accounts have jumped to her defense. Notably, numerous accounts have claimed their relationship is nothing if not honorable—after all, Harp credits Trump’s 2018 Right to Try Act with saving her life.

In an emotional address at the 2020 Republican National Convention, Harp claimed that after she was diagnosed with stage 2 bone cancer, she was a beneficiary of Trump’s policy intended to give patients access to experimental medical treatments.

“When I failed the chemotherapies that were on the market, no one wanted me in their clinical trials,” Harp said. “They didn’t give me the right to try experimental treatments, Mr. President. You did, and without you, I’d have died waiting for them to be approved.”

But experts have long cast doubt on Harp’s supposedly heartwrenching story.

Harp claimed she received “an FDA-approved immunotherapy drug for an unapproved use,” but Trump’s Right to Try law only applies to drugs that have not been approved by the FDA. Healthcare providers were already allowed to prescribe FDA-approved drugs for off-label uses long before Trump ever entered office.

In reality, Trump’s Right to Try was a massive failure—a repackaging of the expanded access that patients already had with decreased federal oversight. The president’s claims that the program has saved thousands of lives couldn’t be further from the truth. The most recent report shows the policy supported access to only six drugs in 2025.

Years after helping him sell his lame duck policy, Harp is still glued to Trump’s side. After the president tapped his “human binkie” to join him on his secret flight out of Turkey last month, people are starting to suggest there may be more to the story—and the White House’s wild reaction did little to ease concerns.

“At the Department of War, we do training, not trannies,” he said at a Salute to the Troops military fundraiser at the fair, the Iowa Capital Dispatch reported. The event was initially supposed to be in March, but was delayed when two Iowa service members were killed in an Iranian airstrike that Hegseth downplayed at the time

“It is a day and night difference,” he continued. “Training, lethality, accountability, discipline, readiness—the bedrock of what it means to be an American warrior—is the only focus of our department. Colorblind, gender-neutral, merit-based. That’s it.”

Transgender people have become a constant target of the right’s outrage machine. The Trump administration has made them the focus of many of its cultural attacks in the war on “woke,” casting trans people as an imminent threat to Western values even as they make up less than 1 percent of the U.S. adult population. That political disdain is embodied in perhaps no one more than Hegseth, who casually tosses out slurs and recently introduced mandatory testosterone screening for older soldiers.

Last year, President Trump signed an executive order banning transgender and nonbinary people from the military, calling them purveyors of “radical gender” ideologies that were “not honorable,” “truthful,” or “disciplined.” The Supreme Court upheld the order in May, though legal challenges continue in the lower courts.

“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” the order read—equating gender dysphoria with mental illness and moral deficiency, and assuming that your assigned gender at birth has something to do with how well you can fight a war.

Castro was arrested in Cameron County, Texas, in May for his involvement in the January 14 shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis. Minneapolis prosecutors allege that Castro shot at the front door of a home, hitting Sosa-Celis in the leg and lodging a bullet in a child’s bedroom wall, before giving false information to an officer about it. 

Castro was arrested in Texas in May, but under Texas law, he could be released next week as he can only be held for 90 days. He could then potentially leave the U.S. since he’s being held near the Mexican border.  

“Christian Castro has been charged with breaking the law in Minnesota,” Ellison said at a news conference Tuesday. “He must face justice in Minnesota. Governor Abbott should have granted Governor Walz’s extradition request long ago and is required to do so now.”

“Christian Castro is not above the law and Greg Abbott isn’t either,” Ellison added. “We have to take the position that they are refusing to honor the extradition request.”

This “should be a completely unnecessary lawsuit,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said at the press conference, noting that local prosecutors and officials at the jail were “very cooperative” and that Texas has extradited three unrelated criminal defendants to Minnesota at the state’s request.

Abbott, a Republican, is a staunch supporter of President Trump and the administration’s mass deportation agenda. He could very well be holding off on the extradition because the White House doesn’t want ICE agents to face prosecution, no matter what crimes they commit. 

Ethiopians first received TPS designation in 2022—in the midst of a war between the Ethiopian government and the people of the northern Tigray region. Any Ethiopians under TPS must now leave the country in 60 days or risk being deported. 

The decision follows a 6–3 June Supreme Court decision that federal courts do not have the ability to review TPS decisions made by the Department of Homeland Security.

U.S. District Court Judge Brian E. Murphy lifted the last remaining block on the Trump administration’s termination of TPS for Ethiopians. The case is expected to continue, however, as defendants try to prove DHS’s decision was motivated by racial or nation of origin animus.  

This is yet another attack on Black and African immigrants, as the Trump administration ended TPS for Haitians earlier this month, placing over 300,000 people at risk of being deported back to an untenable situation in Haiti. 

These people have been in the U.S. for years, have established lives, and have worked in their communities. Now they are being forced to return to a region the U.S. still advises its own citizens to “reconsider” traveling to.

People from Ethiopia, Haiti, South Sudan, Burma, Somalia, Cameroon, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Nepal, and Honduras have now all had their TPS protections revoked.

This follows close on the heels of his order to replace the Ford-class’s Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, or EMALS, catapults with older, outdated steam-powered catapults on future carriers of the class. He has been obsessed with this since 2017 when he heard a sailor gripe about the new EMALS. This change will require a massive redesign of the class, increasing costs by billions and delaying the launch of the USS Doris Miller, scheduled for 2034.

It will also make future carriers significantly more expensive to operate and will reduce the effectiveness of their catapults. EMALS has the advantages of greater launch precision, lighter system weight, less space required, faster recharge times, and reduced manpower and maintenance needs compared to older steam catapults.

In doing so, Trump has fallen into the folly of dictators throughout modern history of meddling in the technical details of new weapons systems, delaying their introduction, and damaging their own country’s military capabilities in the process.

Joseph Stalin heavily micromanaged Soviet military technology, personally tracking foreign hardware specs, green-lighting unorthodox experimental weapons, and directing massive defense industrialization while simultaneously purging key military theorists and engineers under the threat of terror. He was a politician and not an engineer. The bigger the project, the better.

Stalin championed a grand-fleet naval program focused on massive, traditional heavy surface ships that became white elephants. Rejecting the rising importance of aircraft carriers and modern fleet integration, he insisted on building obsolete Sovetsky Soyuz-class super-battleships and large gun-heavy cruisers that mismatched Soviet industrial capacity and strategic needs. When he died in 1953, the incomplete hulls of these ships were quietly sent to the breakers.

Adolf Hitler similarly meddled and micromanaged, but without even Stalin’s organizational skills and systematic approach. His mercurial obsessions led to delaying practical production of advanced weapons like the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter by insisting it be used as a bomber, canceling effective small arms programs, and demanding slow, resource-heavy “wunderwaffen” (wonder weapons) instead of prioritizing mass logistics and standardized production. In particular, he was obsessed with building super heavy tanks that were effectively useless. He also had distinct opinions on how weapons systems should look, and an insistence on neoclassical mega-projects.

Which leads to the discussion of Trump’s other naval project: resurrecting the battleship, but this time with nuclear propulsion and lots and lots of missiles. Virtually every independent military expert I know, including conservative ones, regards the 34,000-ton Trump-class as a phenomenally bad idea. Among the numerous issues are a lack of funding, unprecedented design, high development costs, survivability, role, and poor fit with the current naval doctrine of distributing firepower and sensors across smaller platforms. The fact that it was drawn up to satisfy the egotistical whims of a president intent on naming a mega-ship after himself without going through the usual study of requirements and industrial capacity is often lost in the broader debate of why this is a bad idea.

All of this meddling only serves to make the Navy’s existing problems worse. The Navy has not managed to produce a successful new surface combatant class of ships (e.g., frigates, destroyers, cruisers) since the introduction of the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers, or DDGs, in 1991. Since then, the Navy has attempted to build but then cancelled the Zumwalt-class of destroyers (three built), Constellation-class frigates (two under construction), CG(X) program (none built), and the Independence and Freedom-class Littoral Combat Ships, or LCS.

The LCS program was a complete fiasco, its ships derisively referred to as “Little Crappy Ships.” They were not capable enough in a modern combat environment, and their propulsion systems proved so unreliable that they are being retired after less than a decade or two in service, when most Navy ships are now expected to last 35 to 50 years.

To make matters worse, the oldest Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are coming up on retirement, and it is widely recognized that the class is insufficient to meet future needs of the Navy. The Burkes simply don’t have the hull space and electrical power necessary to support the next generation of weapons and sensors. Similarly, the last of the Ticonderoga-class cruisers will be retired by 2029, leaving the Navy with no anti-aircraft cruisers left in the fleet. The DDG(X) program was supposed to provide a replacement for both the Burke and Ticonderoga-classes. The design was well underway, but then Trump interfered.

The Trump-class battleship (BBG(X)) effectively sidelines the next-generation DDG(X) destroyer program. The Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan frames the massive battleship as a superior alternative that avoids the capability compromises of a smaller destroyer hull, forcing a pivot away from DDG(X). The Senate Armed Services Committee recognizes this isn’t a great idea and is trying to keep the DDG(X) development program funded. However, the senators aren’t willing to say no to Trump either, and $17 billion is slated for the white elephant in the 2028 budget to develop a ship that will almost certainly barely make it past the PowerPoint and conceptual art stage of development, much less touch water or be commissioned.

Similarly, some of the troubles with U.S. carriers in the war in Iran can be traced to the Navy drawing down its carrier fleet from 15 to 11 over the years since the Persian Gulf War. When Trump delays the procurement of the Doris Miller based on a poorly thought-out whim, it means that an older, more expensive, less capable, less deployable carrier (in this case, a Nimitz-class carrier, possibly the Eisenhower or Vinson) will have to remain in service past its planned decommissioning date to meet the congressionally mandated 11-carrier requirement. The Nimitz-class is nuclear powered, which means that refueling her and extending her life is not economically feasible.

A lot of people have asked when you can safely say that Trump is a dictator. The fact that his party is willing to spend $17 billion to fund a white elephant wunderwaffen that everyone knows is a boondoggle just to humor him and avoid his wrath, even as the country is losing a war, seems like all the proof we needed.

An analysis by Media Matters found that a debate between Candace Owens and Andrew Wilson that was moderated by Patrick Bet-David and that focused on conspiracy theories about Kirk’s murder earned at least 7.2 million views combined across those creators’ livestreams as of Monday.

Media Matters also found at least 58 other YouTube and Rumble channels that either aired or reacted live to the debate earned at least 3.9 million views.

Creators are able to make money through partnerships with platforms that grant them a cut of advertising revenue. On platforms like YouTube, viewers are able to send cash tips to creators during a livestream.

Owens’s YouTube stream received more than 4.7 million views, the most of any stream. For months, the right-wing podcaster has cashed in on pushing conspiracy theories about Kirk’s assassination. She was able to grow her platform by 80 percent between January 2025 and March 2026.

Wilson, a comparatively small-time conservative commentator, reportedly offered Owens $300,000 just to participate in the debate. By tying himself to Owens, the center of the conspiracy theory universe, Wilson is able to boost his still-growing platform.

Who won the debate? They both did. Who lost? Everyone else.

The alleged victim was one of his grandchildren, a boy under 12 years old. According to a probable cause affidavit, the alleged abuse began in 2024 and went on until at least 2025. Caruso is charged with five felonies: kidnapping, lewd or lascivious molestation, lewd or lascivious exhibition, luring or enticing a child, and child abuse (mental injury).

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier issued a statement announcing the arrest, with DeSantis suspending Caruso from public office shortly thereafter. Caruso is being held without bail in the Orange County Jail pending an appearance before a judge.

“Early this morning, with substantial assistance from FDLE and local law enforcement, Palm Beach County Clerk of Court Michael Caruso was arrested on charges related to child sexual abuse,” Uthmeier said. “The investigation is ongoing, and we will provide more information to the public at the appropriate time.”

Caruso’s son became aware of the abuse in October last year when he saw his son engaging in sexual activity with his younger brother, the affidavit states. After the father stopped the activity, the boy told him that his grandfather had showered with him on a cruise and performed a sex act. The child later told investigators that Caruso had molested him days before Thanksgiving the previous year.

Upon being confronted by his son, Caruso said he had showered with all of his own children, but not the alleged victim. Caruso asked his son if he had spoken with Caruso’s former wife, whom he called “evil” and said she could have “fabricated the allegations in an effort to poison the child against him,” according to the affidavit.

Caruso was appointed to his position by DeSantis in August last year, and was running for reelection in November before his arrest. He did not have any Republican challengers, and was running uncontested in Tuesday’s primary election. It’s not clear if he’ll be on the general election ballot in three months. DeSantis’s allies and supporters have a history of using the “groomer” slur against their opponents, accusing them of pedophilia. Now, one of his own appointees is facing criminal charges.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that mail-in voting is not secure. “Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating,” the president said in March. This is at least the third time Trump has voted by mail since he began railing against the practice.

In March, Trump voted by mail-in ballot during a special election in Palm Beach. When pressed on his decision to engage in the supposedly fraudulent act of mail-in voting, Trump claimed that it was important for him to stay in Washington D.C.—but the president had journeyed back to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach earlier that month. He’d also previously voted by mail in 2020.

Terrified of Republican losses in November’s midterm elections, Trump has spent months unsuccessfully lobbying his allies to pass the draconian SAVE Act, which promises to ban mail-in voting.

Last week, Trump mulled the possibility of declaring a national security emergency in order to place limits on mail-in ballots and impose a slate of other voting restrictions.

Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order requiring the U.S. Postal Service to bar any person not included on a massive federal voter list from receiving a mail-in or absentee ballot. Last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the Democratic lawsuit challenging the order was premature.

Inside Washington

Florida’s Senate primary isn’t what it seems

On the surface, Angie Nixon’s and Alex Vindman’s contest in Florida on Tuesday might look like another progressive-versus-moderate primary, as we’ve seen in other Democratic primaries this cycle. But neither candidate is eager to portray it that way. Instead, both seem focused on whether Dems might have a chance in this once-purple, increasingly-red state. Whichever one wins the primary will be facing an uphill battle against a Republican incumbent that few outside Florida have even heard of: Ashley Moody, who Governor Ron DeSantis appointed to fill the seat vacated when Marco Rubio became Secretary of State.

Angie Nixon, a member of the Florida House of Representatives since 2020, who recently joined the Democratic Socialists of America (the organization hasn’t endorsed her), is running on Medicare for All, a tax on billionaires, and free childcare. Alex Vindman—known for his role as a whistleblower during President Trump’s first term, as well as for being Representative Eugene Vindman of Virginia’s identical twin brother—has emphasized cost of living, corruption, and his military service. His testimony in 2019 ultimately helped lead to Trump’s first impeachment charge.

Though Vindman is the more moderate of the two candidates, he’s also framing himself as the anti-establishment choice, a different dynamic than other elections this cycle like the primary between Abdul El-Sayed and Haley Stevens in Michigan.

“If you want an outsider who is ready to take on the establishment and has the grassroots support to defeat Ashley Moody in November, I’m your guy,” Vindman said in a statement to The New Republic, touting his first-time run and rejection of corporate PAC money. He added that he wants to “lower costs for working Floridians and fight corruption in D.C., starting with lowering the cost of homeowners’ insurance, gas, and housing and banning Congressional stock trading.”

Nixon likewise rejects the framing of progressive versus moderate: “I think too much of politics today is about labels. People in Washington want to put candidates and voters into neat little boxes, but Florida is not that simple,” she wrote in a statement to The New Republic. “What I hear from people across this state is that they are worried about the things that actually affect their lives: Can I afford my groceries? Can I afford a home? Can I afford childcare? Can I keep a roof over my family’s head?” Like Vindman, she also cited the high cost of insurance in the state.

Polling so far is sparse, but a July poll of likely voters found Vindman ahead of Nixon by 15 points, though 36 percent of voters were undecided. A different poll from the University of North Florida found Moody ahead of both candidates in a general election matchup. In the poll, Moody has a 10-point lead on Vindman and an eight-point lead on Nixon. A survey of likely voters in mid-June had Moody and Vindman tied with 46 percent of the vote.

Since primary polling has been so limited, experts were careful not to make any predictions for Tuesday night. But in an expensive state like Florida, fundraising matters, said Kevin Wagner, a professor at Florida Atlantic University. So far, Vindman has massively outraised both Nixon and Moody. At the end of June, Vindman had raised over $14 million, compared to Moody’s nearly $11 million and Nixon’s $625,000. The Vindman campaign also noted that 13 percent of its donations have come from No Party Affiliation, or NPA, voters and seven percent from Republicans, which it hopes bodes well for a general election that will require the Democrat to win over a large chunk of NPA voters.

If Nixon pulls off a victory in the primary, said Aubrey Jewett, a professor at the University of Central Florida, it would likely be because of Black Floridians, who make up over 16 percent of the state’s population and are a crucial voting bloc for Democrats in the state. Nixon held a sit-in at the Governor’s office this year to protest against gerrymandering; four years ago, she joined other Black lawmakers in a similar sit-in on the floor of the state House to protest redistricting that they say disenfranchised Black voters.

The perennial question about leftist candidates in the U.S. is whether anyone tied to an organization with the word “socialist” in it can win in a general election. That question has a particular edge in Florida, though, where many voters or their family members have fled socialist countries like Cuba. Moody has already been campaigning against socialism, and is likely to peg whoever her Democratic opponent is with the label, even though Vindman himself fled the USSR as a child, a story he’s used to make inroads with Cuban voters.

No matter who wins tonight, the math will remain incredibly difficult for the Democratic contender: Florida Republicans hold a 1.5 million voter registration lead over Democrats. Even in traditionally Democratic parts of the state, like Miami-Dade County, voters have increasingly been voting for Republicans. The last time a Democrat won statewide in Florida was in 2018, in a race for Commissioner of Agriculture. Granted, Trump’s favorability in 2018 was +2, and now sits at -6, which Democrats think could give them an opening to pick up NPAs and some moderate Republicans.

Hispanic voters will also be crucial for a Democratic win in November, said Jewett. He pointed to Miami-Dade and Osceola counties, both of which have a large Hispanic population. Like other voters in Florida, Hispanic voters have leaned more Republican in recent years, but Jewett thinks there could be a pendulum swing back toward Democrats now that these voters have seen (and sometimes directly felt) the impacts of President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda in his second term.

“They have to basically get everything right to have a fighting chance,” Wagner said of Democrats on the ballot. That means turning out the Democratic base in South Florida, picking up NPA voters in the center of the state, and peeling away some Republicans in the state’s more rural northern region.

That said, “the way you can tell whether a Democrat has a chance in Florida is by the volume of the vote coming out of South Florida, because they have to overcome vote totals in other places,” Wagner said. He suggested comparing Democratic and Republican turnout numbers on Tuesday to get a sneak peek of what the general election might look like.

Outside Washington

Arkansas’s Medicaid expansion program covering over 200,000 people under the Affordable Care Act is set to expire at the end of this year, and it’s still unclear whether the Trump administration will approve a two-year extension request, after declining a similar request to renew through 2031. On Monday, the Arkansas Advocate published the somewhat discouraging results of its attempt to ask each of the 2026 gubernatorial candidates “how they would tackle this issue.” Libertarian Colt Shelby “said the governor should take a lead role in ensuring Arkansas’s version of Medicaid expansion is extended indefinitely,” but also “reform” the entire system and match people with full-time employment to avoid relying on Medicaid. Democratic State Senator Fred Love condemned Republicans for proposing “no serious alternative” to Medicaid expansion, and noted that Medicaid disruptions could shutter rural hospitals, but was pretty short on details about what he would do if elected. And current Republican Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders didn’t even offer a direct quote, but instead “referred the Advocate to a letter Department of Human Services Secretary Janet Mann sent to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services earlier this month,” which called the extension a “prudent step” and said that “helping capable individuals transition off the sidelines so we can focus resources on those truly in need remains a top priority.” There isn’t much polling on this race, but Sanders is heavily favored to win, having beaten Democrat Chris Jones in 2022 by almost 28 points.

The Guardian has published a useful report from Eric Berger on the current state of the increasingly strong right-to-repair movement—shorthand for a variety of policies to reduce corporations’ monopoly-like control over the repair of their products, so that it’s easier and cheaper for people to fix things like cell phones or tractors. The tractor tie-in has made right-to-repair a particularly hot issue in Iowa; Iowa’s House passed a right-to-repair bill this spring that went nowhere in the state Senate. Not mentioned, but worth noting: Both candidates in this year’s surprisingly tight gubernatorial race have claimed right-to-repair as a key component of their platforms, with Democrat Rob Sand calling right-to-repair a “no-brainer” and Republican Zach Lahn highlighting his running mate’s spearheading of the right-to-repair legislation in the House.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

On Wednesday at 10 a.m., Brookings will host an in-person and virtual event on “early assessment and open questions” regarding Donald Trump’s planned “Golden Dome for America,” a whole-country missile-defense system that he directed the Defense Department to start exploring in January 2025. Melanie W. Sisson will moderate a panel with Michael E. O’Hanlon, David Mosher, and Steve Fetter.

The Revolving Door Project issued a statement “condemn[ing]” Trump’s cryptocurrency and prediction markets roundtable this week. “On Wednesday, he’ll turn the White House into a hub for his crypto and prediction markets cronies to lean on independent agencies and a gridlocked Congress for a more permissive regulatory environment for these predatory corporations,” the organization’s Henry Burke said in the statement.

Data for Progress released a new poll finding that “voters think they are more likely to become homeless than a millionaire or billionaire, and reject the idea that billionaires obtain their wealth through innovation and hard work, instead seeing them as exploitative and a sign of a dysfunctional, anti-working-class economy.” There’s impressive cross-party agreement on that: Not just 67 percent of Democrats, but 65 percent of Republicans say they’re more likely to become homeless than become a billionaire—interestingly, only 54 percent of independents or third-party respondents agree with that. They’re more likely than either Democrats or Republicans to say they “don’t know” or are “more likely to become a billionaire.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Four Questions For: Jacob Rubashkin, Deputy Editor of Inside Elections

Interview by Grace Segers

Q: Who are you, and what are you working on right now?

A: At Inside Elections, I cover and analyze races for House, Senate, governor and president. Right now we’re ramping up our midterm coverage, so we’ve rolled out a new website, hired a new reporter, and are working hard to update the most competitive 100 or so races every issue.

Q: What is the most difficult thing about your line of work?

A: When Inside Elections (previously known as the Rothenberg Political Report) and the Cook Political Report got going in the 1980s, they were stepping into an information vacuum. Since then, there’s been a real democratization in the data and information available to cover races—and that’s largely a great thing! I use lots of tools that were simply not available back then, and it helps voters be much better informed. But it’s a double-edged sword, because not all data is created equal, and even good data can be used improperly. So a big part of my job these days is not only assessing the races on the merits, but also helping explain to the public why some pieces of information (prediction markets, certain polls, etc.) aren’t as valuable.

Q: What is a race that you believe isn’t getting enough attention this year?

A: I’ve got two on the opposite ends of the country. In Alaska, the open gubernatorial race is an unpredictable melee in a state known for its unorthodox politics. There are over a dozen credible Democratic, Republican, and independent candidates competing in Tuesday’s primary for four spots on the general election ballot and you really can’t rule out any outcome at this point. In Florida’s 12th District, which is north of Tampa, the GOP state legislature redrew longtime Representative Gus Bilirakis’s seat to be significantly less Republican. Bilirakis hasn’t had a tough race since his first election to Congress two decades ago and he’s got a real opponent in Air National Guard Col. Darren McAuley. The partisan lean is in Bilirakis’s favor but he can’t be caught sleeping if a wave develops.

Q: What keeps you going in these stressful times?

A: Family and loved ones, this summer’s abundance of fresh basil, John le Carré novels, and friends with a high tolerance for my kvetching.

Political Trivia Question of the Day

Florida holds its primaries today. Who was the Democratic Florida governor of the 1970s who pursued transparency and public disclosures, passed the state’s first corporate tax, and championed civil rights in the formerly segregated state?

(Sign up for The Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

Hampton Grocer has recalled its popular Lacnola Lactation Granola, after one of the ingredients, moringa powder, tested positive for the bacteria. It is primarily sold on Amazon, and any bag bought between October 21, 2025, and August 12, 2026—nearly one year—is at risk of being contaminated.

Salmonella poisoning can cause diarrhea, nausea and vomiting, and severe cramping. No cases have been confirmed yet.

This potential outbreak presents yet another food safety issue for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Health Department, just weeks after a parasitic cyclospora outbreak caused two deaths and national anxiety over getting explosive diarrhea from lettuce. Even if this latest outbreak is kept under control, public trust in food safety has been deeply damaged, even if RFK Jr. hasn’t made any sweeping, blockbuster changes to food regulations.

“I’d like to reiterate how difficult it is to have granola infected with salmonella. It’s even more difficult than chili peppers, and no, it’s not ‘foreign producers’ that are the problem,” Chef Joe Gera wrote on X. “It’s quality control and standards not being enforced.”

Aside from salmonella in granola, the FDA has also reported salmonella contamination in eggs and jalapeño this month.

“There are no talks or conversations going on, or scheduled, with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Trump wrote. “The Naval Blockade remains in full force and effect. The Hormuz Strait is open and operating. All water mines have been removed or detonated.”

NewsNation’s Kellie Meyer pointed out that Trump had suggested the day before that his administration was still in talks with Iran. “This is what makes it difficult to convey to the American people / our viewers what’s going on here,” she wrote on X.

On Monday, Trump urged Iran to wave the “white flag of surrender,” and threatened to “bomb the shit out of” Oman if it got in the way. Later, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that Iran was “not going to make the kind of a deal that I feel is necessary.”

Earlier this month, Trump told reporters that he was in talks to reopen the Strait of Hormuz “literally by tomorrow.” Meanwhile, Iran denied speaking to the United States.

Trump’s wildly conflicting statements come after the end of the 60-day ceasefire deadline established in the memorandum of understanding that was signed in June—which Trump scrapped less than a month later. Recently, Trump’s own Cabinet members haven’t been willing to back up his claims that the U.S. has total control of the strait. Trump’s claims have been so erratic that they have spurred speculation about  a mirage for market manipulation. Or maybe he’s just losing it.

A federal court in Manhattan last week ordered the public release of the files from Giuffre’s defamation lawsuit against the accomplice and partner of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein following eight years of litigation from the Miami Herald, reported Julie Brown, the investigative journalist for the newspaper best known for uncovering Epstein’s crimes.

Maxwell had been fighting to keep the lawsuit details under wraps, but her arguments were not enough to convince U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska, who ruled that the Epstein Files Transparency Act supersedes the grand jury arguments Maxwell cited to keep the records sealed.

Giuffre brought the lawsuit more than a decade ago after Maxwell accused her of lying about being abused by Epstein, Maxwell, Prince Andrew, Alan Dershowitz, and other powerful figures. The lawsuit’s discovery process yielded thousands of pages of documents, including depositions of Maxwell, Giuffre, and many others, and Brown was told that it contains more evidence against Epstein, Maxwell, and their accomplices.

The judge in the initial case, Robert Sweet, took the unusual step of sealing all of the documents because they contained “sensitive” and “private” information. He put a protective order on hearings and decisions made in the case as well as volumes of evidence reportedly proving that Epstein and Maxwell were running an underage sex trafficking ring.

Before any of this could come out in a trial, Maxwell settled the case in 2017, paying Giuffre somewhere between $3 million and $5 million. But now much of the information that could implicate powerful people will soon be made public, and there could be fallout in Washington D.C., New York, and beyond.

On July 24, the Benfold experienced an “engineering casualty involving its generator,” Commander Matthew Comer, spokesperson for the Seventh Fleet told USNI News. Sailors went days without galley services, toilets and air conditioning, and their potable water was also affected. Four days later, the ship was towed into port, and power was restored on July 30.

These reports come amid mounting scrutiny over the toll of Trump’s extended reliance on the Navy to execute his aggressive national security priorities in Latin America and the Middle East.

Family members of sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln have reported food shortages and sanitation issues. During the Lincoln’s more than 200 days without a port call, there have been multiple instances in which sailors have tried to jump overboard. Trump has repeatedly denied that sailors have experienced problems onboard the Lincoln. (The USS George Washington, deployed to replace the ship, appears to have its own mold problem.)

Now, other family members of sailors are coming forward. Sailors onboard the USS Carl Vinson, an aircraft carrier, also experienced a lack of water, with no warm water to shower and the water fountains were turned off, according to a series of texts a military spouse shared with Meidas Touch.

The Financial Times reports that the chair of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, Rodney Mims Cook Jr., was given a diplomatic passport before attending Russian President Vladimir Putin’s economic forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, in June. Cook, who is overseeing the White House ballroom construction, was assigned a diplomatic security detail.

While in Russia, Cook met with government officials on what he described as a “cultural visit” where he showed officials pictures of his “dacha” in Atlanta. However, Trump administration officials were hoping to make diplomatic inroads with the Russian government, and Cook met with Anton Koyakov, a senior aide to Putin.

The U.S. had boycotted the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum since 2019, following the arrest of an American businessman, and continued staying away after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Cook was the first U.S. official to attend since 2018. During his June visit, he witnessed a Ukrainian drone strike on a Russian oil refinery, telling the Financial Times it was “too close for comfort.”

Cook didn’t give the publication any details about his meetings with Russian officials, if he was there on Trump’s instructions, or whether he planned to visit Russia again, saying, “There are many requests. We’re working on that now.”

While on his visit, Cook took part in a “Russia-US: Dialogue of Cultures” panel, showing pictures of his Atlanta home that he said was built in the “Russian wooden vernacular, which has touched my heart over the decades.” He gave a presentation on Russian churches, public buildings, and homes he has helped to restore in the country, which he has been visiting since the 1990s. His fellow panelists were senior Russian officials and cultural dignitaries, some of whom are under U.S. sanctions.

“I know Russian culture, and I know most of the leadership of their cultural institutions,” Cook told the Financial Times. The panelists “included most of my old friends, which was really a great homecoming. The personal connection between all of us was very clear.”

Cook’s presentation didn’t mention the war in Ukraine until it was almost over, when he said, “My children don’t feel this anymore. We must educate them to understand this. But we must be at peace in order to achieve these goals.... Help us do this.”

He did hold a question-and-answer session with Putin the next day, where he relayed a “good hello from your friend, President Trump.”

“We have a lot of ideas to talk about between our two capital cities in the next week,” Cook said. Putin responded by thanking Cook and saying he “pushed the puck back” to Trump. Cook told the Financial Times that he got a hockey puck from a friend and put it on the Resolute Desk in the White House, “much to President Trump’s amusement.”

The whole visit, which Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in June he was “not aware” of, seems like it was designed to be under the radar to get around public criticism and scrutiny. The U.S. under Trump is still ostensibly backing Ukraine, although it isn’t funding any military aid, and it has temporarily eased some sanctions against Russia. Trump’s willingness to engage with Russia has been heavily criticized, and it’s not clear how much the administration was involved in Cook’s trip.

“Acting through the Federal Communications Commission, the Administration has waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason: it disapproves of what ABC broadcasts,” the lawsuit reads. “That campaign began in this Administration’s earliest days and has only intensified since.... Again and again, the administration ​has attacked ABC’s speech — the stories its journalists report and the viewpoints its network programs air.”

This FCC’s threat to strip the ABC channels of their broadcast licenses followed a joke from late-night television host Jimmy Kimmel last spring, in which he said First Lady Melania Trump glowed “like an expectant widow” two days before the failed White House Correspondents’ Dinner attack. The joke caused a massive uproar from MAGAworld, including the president himself, who called for Kimmel’s termination. The lawsuit specifically cites Trump’s Truth Social posts calling for Kimmel’s termination as proof of the administration’s bias against him.

“The Commission issued an unprecedented order requiring the Stations to file early applications to renew their licenses—years before any of their licenses would have come up for renewal in the ordinary course and allowing only thirty days to file applications which ordinarily take months to prepare,” the suit continued.

Kimmel was also attacked by the Trump administration for joking about how Republicans responded to the death of Charlie Kirk last year. Disney briefly pulled Kimmell off the air after pressure from FCC Chair Brendan Carr.

The FCC attack came amid a probe into the daytime talk show The View for being too woke.

The lawsuit from Disney—one of the biggest and most recognizable media companies ever—is an aggressive defense of media freedom, rather than another capitulation as we’ve seen from other networks.

This story has been updated.

“He golfs and trades stocks,” the Georgia senator said during a weekend rally in Atlanta. “See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.”

Harp, a former TV presenter at the far-right One America News, became an aide for Trump in 2024 and has been virtually inseparable from him since.

Semafor reported that the White House responded to Ossoff the way it did—calling him “Pee-Wee Herman,” “Jon Jackoff,” and a “feminine theatre kid cosplaying as Barack Obama”—because Harp’s closeness to President Trump is a sore subject internally. It has “unnerved” many staff members, who believe Harp “will ultimately jump the highest out of anyone in the room when [Trump] says jump,” according to an anonymous source. Another source close to the White House noted that “the first lady doesn’t like these types of things” and Trump gets “furious” when personal issues become the center of national attention.

The questioning of Harp and Trump’s close relationship is rooted in Harp’s own actions. She never leaves the president’s side, even making it onto his secret flight out of Turkey last month, while journalists and Cabinet members like Secretary of State Marco Rubio remained aboard the Air Force One gifted by Qatar that was reportedly the potential target of an Iranian strike. Harp’s estranged older brother told The Daily Mail that Harp and Trump’s relationship was “very unhealthy,” and New York Times writers Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reported in their book Regime Change that Harp in 2023 left Trump what amounted to love letters, with one even reading, “You are all that matters to me.”

Reporter: Ossoff said you'd rather travel with your aide Natalie Harp and build the ballroom than do your job as president. What is your response?

Trump: You mean Pee-Wee Herman? pic.twitter.com/M7nPFkEpQz

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 17, 2026

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

So the sixty-day deadline for Donald Trump and Iran to reach a deal has now expired, and Trump is plainly in a terrible mood over it. In an interview with Fox News, he raged over the Strait of Hormuz, claiming that he’ll “bomb the shit” out of the country of Oman if its talks with Iran concerning the strait get in his way. It’s not hard to see why Trump is so angry. In a series of leaks from inside the administration, officials basically admit that Trump has lost the war.

What’s really striking about this situation is that Trump seems absolutely convinced that time is on his side. Yet the opposite appears true. Literally every day that passes makes this situation worse for him, and he doesn’t seem capable of grasping this. So now what? We’re talking about all of it with Ariane Tabatabai, a former Defense Department official under Joe Biden, who’s now at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Ari, nice to have you on again.

Ariane Tabatabai: Thanks for having me on again.

Sargent: So the sixty-day deadline for Trump and Iran to reach this deal has expired, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, and there are these parallel talks between Iran and Oman about how to reopen the strait. Ari, can you just sum up where we are right now with all these moving parts?

Tabatabai: Yeah, we’re basically where we’ve been for quite a few months now, which is to say that there was this memorandum of understanding that was supposed to set the 60-day calendar for the United States and Iran to resolve a number of issues, among them the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and very importantly, the fate of Iran’s nuclear program. The 60 days came and went, and we do not have a resolution on either of those issues, and we do not have a resolution on anything else.

Sargent: So maybe you can just settle this right now. Trump keeps saying that we’re in control of the Strait of Hormuz. Who’s in control of the Strait of Hormuz?

Tabatabai: Well, we have assets in the area, but Iran has effectively found a way to control the Strait of Hormuz when it comes to what vessels are able to pass. It can hold various vessels, commercial and otherwise, at risk. It can do it from the shore, where it has missiles and drones.

And it has effectively installed this, again, tolling system that I think is not going anywhere anytime soon. That is why I think that, you know, it’s pretty clear that the Iranians have the upper hand on this one.

Sargent: Right. So the short version is that we have blockaded the strait, which means that we can prevent Iran from doing certain types of business. But beyond that, Iran controls it in the sense that it decides who gets out and who doesn’t.

Tabatabai: That’s right.

Sargent: OK, so it’s in this context that Trump spoke with Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst about the whole situation. Listen to what Yingst said about that conversation.

Trey Yingst (voiceover): Now, I asked the president about these parallel talks that are taking place between Iran and Oman about control of the Strait of Hormuz. And the president told Fox News, “if Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the s--- out of them.” We went on to talk about a variety of different regional topics, including the U.S. stockpiles of weapons that are currently stationed in the Middle East. The president says what we’ve used so far is “peanuts.”

Sargent: So let’s take this in two pieces. First, note that Trump threatened to “bomb the shit” out of Oman if it gets in the way of his efforts, as if those efforts are producing such spectacular successes. What is it that he doesn’t like about Oman’s conduct right now?

Tabatabai: Well, look, he’s not been particularly specific about what it is he does not like about Oman’s conduct. What he has indicated, and what we can kind of get from his statement, is that he believes that the Omanis, by virtue of being engaged in this diplomatic process with Iran, are making it difficult for the United States to win a decisive victory against Iran and to close out the war.

The reality is that that’s not the case, right? We are not winning the war—but not because of Oman, or because there are diplomatic processes going on. By the way, the president, as I indicated earlier on, has also sought to engage in said diplomatic processes. So presumably he likes that there is an ability to reach Iran and to have negotiations with them.

So I think he is just, you know, essentially taking Oman and lashing out at them because of the fact that he is unable to close out this war. He’s unable to get the victory that he desires. And none of that has anything to do with Oman. It has to do with the poor planning that has happened in the lead-up to the war, and the fact that we do not have any clear objectives when it comes to the war.

Sargent: This is very simple, I think, from Trump’s point of view. This can’t be his failure, so it’s got to be someone else’s failure, and so it must be Oman’s today and it’ll be someone else’s tomorrow. Is that the size of it?

Tabatabai: I think that’s pretty accurate.

Sargent: OK, well, there’s the second piece of that exchange that this Fox correspondent had with Trump. What do you make of that, where Trump says we’ve only used peanuts in terms of weaponry in this war?

Tabatabai: Well, that is just not accurate. We have spent billions of dollars in this war, and this is not me opining. This is according to Trump’s own officials at the Pentagon. Then there is the fact that there are all the costs that are not where you can put a dollar amount to it. And that includes things like military readiness, morale among our service members.

Just this past week, we’ve had multiple stories about service members who have been on very long deployments, where they’re, you know, missing things like prescriptions for their contacts, where they’re running out of sanitary supplies, and morale is low. And there have been incidents of sailors trying to take their lives, or just kind of harm themselves, because they are just tired, exhausted, frustrated. And that is a cost that’s not peanuts, right?

Those are real costs that are obviously, on a human level, just extremely disheartening to hear about. But on a military level, they hurt readiness. These are the kinds of things that hurt our ability to recruit into the services, that make it more difficult for us to retain people in the service. Because why would you sign up to continue serving when you know that this is the kind of future that might await you?

And down the line, it’s something that just overall hurts our ability to compete, to deter adversaries, and to win wars when we need to fight them for real—not in the case of, you know, the Iran war, when we just choose to go blow up some things because we seem to be bored.

Sargent: Politico’s Nahal Toosi had some very good reporting on all this, in which she says we’re facing a new kind of quagmire here that is unfathomable for a lot of people. She talked to people inside the administration, and the responses she got back were really interesting. As she put it, one of the first responses she gets when she asks current and former officials what has to be done to win is like a primal scream. And it translates into something like this: quote, “We never should have started this war,” or quote, “What do you mean by win?” And then one official says to her, quote, “I don’t see a way out of this.”

And then this official says that the Trump team fundamentally misunderstands Iran’s rulers, in the sense that Trump and his aides have, quote, “always felt like they can just keep applying pain and Iran will crumble, but the regime is not going to crumble,” close quote. That is quite a portrait. These officials are basically leaking word that it’s understood inside the administration that they’ve lost.

Tabatabai: Yeah, so much to say about this. One, I think that it’s been obvious to anyone who’s had eyes and ears and has sort of read the news every now and again that we have not won this war. That much is abundantly clear. The fact that folks inside the administration are now starting to recognize it—or perhaps have recognized it for a while and are just starting to admit it—I think is pretty significant.

The thing that was striking to me from this good piece was the point about the administration doesn’t understand Iran’s leaders. And I want to be very clear that that’s not because we don’t have the capability to understand Iran’s leaders. It’s because you’ve had an administration that, for a year and a half, has waged a war of attrition against the civil service, against the intelligence community, has sidelined anyone who had any real expertise in these areas, even as they have been, you know, very active in these policy spaces.

You’ve had DOGE, you have people who’ve been RIF’d, you have Laura Loomer determining personnel policy. It’s shocking but not surprising that all of this is happening. And we’re hearing about it the same week as my colleague Julia Curley writes an essay in The Atlantic talking about being pushed out of government for being trans. So, they found all kinds of excuses to push out people. So no, of course they don’t understand Iran’s leaders, because they’re not listening to the people who could help them understand Iran’s leaders.

Sargent: I think there’s a through line that connects the story you’re talking about here, which is the complete gutting of the civil service and diplomatic corps and all that, with the other stuff involving Trump’s constant threats of force. And it’s this.

It’s that Trump doesn’t think he needs to understand Iran’s rulers. He doesn’t think he needs a diplomatic corps to tell him how Iran’s rulers, and how Iran, understand the world. He can just use force, and because he’s infinitely strong and powerful, he will always get his way by definition. So why bother understanding anybody? Isn’t that sort of the story here?

Tabatabai: Yeah, and it’s not just about adversaries, right? I mean, I think you’re exactly right that he thinks that he can pick up the phone. I mean, just this week too, we had the story about how he’s talked to Kim Jong-un—or he thinks that he has a good relationship with Kim Jong-un, so we can just not do the joint exercises we typically do with one of our closest allies, South Korea. So yeah, he thinks that he can talk to people, and then he gets them, and then he can just, you know, make policy on his own.

But it’s not just about adversaries. It’s also about the fact that he doesn’t understand, as we would say in the Department of Defense, blue, right? The U.S. side of things. He thinks about readiness as something that can be replenished, right? It’s a video game. You go in, you fight a bunch of bosses, and then you can just press this button and you get your health back, you get your weapons back, everything gets replenished, and you can continue your quest. And that’s just not how the military works in the real world.

You need to have maintenance. You need to have exercises and training. You need to—you know, you have the morale things that we’ve been talking about. And so there is just this fundamental, I think, misunderstanding, and lack of interest in understanding trade-offs, understanding, the pros and cons of different courses of action, and then making decisions based on what you have in your toolkit, instead of what you wish you had in your toolkit. And the unfortunate thing, going back to the cost, is that we’re all paying it.

Sargent: Well, I will tell you, when I was a kid, you needed to have quarters to play video games. And so he’s kind of like the kid with an infinite number of quarters, being a rich kid.

Tabatabai: Yeah, I guess that’s true.

Sargent: Right. So just as an aside here, Trump lost his temper on another front. He lost his temper with reporters while facing hard questions about foreign policy. At one point he started rebuking one of the journalists, telling her to be quiet. Listen to this.

Donald Trump (voiceover): Quiet. Who’re you with?

First Reporter (voiceover): I’m with CNN.

Trump (voiceover): Fake News. You’re fake news. You’re a loud, boisterous person. You’re fake news. Be quiet. Be quiet. Be quiet! You’re a fake reporter, and you report fake news. Go ahead.

Second Reporter (voiceover): Mr. President, is there enough food on the USS Lincoln?

Trump (voiceover): Yeah. That was a CNN fake report.

Sargent: So note at the end there, a second reporter brings up the USS Lincoln, which has been in the news because of terrible conditions on it. Trump calls it just another fake report. So there’s the source of his anger for you right there. I mean, Trump threatens to incinerate ninety-one million people, meaning the whole population of Iran—threatens to wipe out their civilization.

That doesn’t force Iran to do his bidding, even though he’s had, like, a total triumph over them or whatever. But he can, you know, viciously abuse female reporters whenever he wants to. It’s kind of like that’s MAGA’s consolation prize or something. What did you make of all that?

Tabatabai: Yeah, again, I think, you know, when you start to kind of lash out at people and say the kind of things that he’s saying, it’s because you don’t have a good argument, right? If you have a strong argument and you’re sure of your argument, you don’t need to be telling people to be quiet and to sit down and that they’re fake news. You do those things when you have nothing of substance to say. And more than six months into this war, it’s clear that that’s exactly where we are.

There is nothing of substance to be said by this administration to defend what it is they’re doing. They just don’t have an off-ramp, and they have put themselves in this situation where they’re stuck in it politically, strategically, and policy-wise. And instead of trying to figure out how to get out of it, they’re just telling everyone that, you know, what they’re seeing is not correct—to not believe the evidence of their own eyes and ears.

Sargent: Just to wrap this up, he keeps saying that time is on his side, but it’s really not on his side, in the sense that every passing day without a deal, the midterms come closer. And I’ve got to think Iran is paying attention to our political clock. Can you talk about the way Iran views our political clock, the way Iran views Trump’s long-term vulnerability, and the way they’re thinking about it?

Tabatabai: Right. And this is not unique to Trump, right. Adversaries always know that we have a political clock. And often adversaries in authoritarian systems can wait out said political clock. And that’s the case for Iran. We are just a few months away from the elections. The picture that is emerging is not a good one for this administration, for the president, and for his allies. And so Iran can just kind of hang out and wait.

Look, they have a really terrible economy, and on that point, Trump is right—which means that at some point they need to think about how they’re going to do things differently. But they have a bit of time here, number one.

Number two, I think that actually there is a benefit that they get out of being in this situation of war. And by “they,” I mean purely the regime, not obviously the people who are stuck in this situation—and it’s really awful from the perspective of just, you know, the human costs of this conflict for the Iranian people. But the regime is watching this and thinking to itself, as long as this war continues, it doesn’t have to provide real solutions to people’s problems.

They don’t have to deal with the economic challenges that were creating the protests, the mass protests that we saw just a few months ago. The second the shooting stops, the second they have a ceasefire or some sort of agreement with the United States, they will need to govern. And this is not a regime that is particularly equipped to do that—they weren’t equipped to do it before this war killed off half of their leadership, who were actually experienced, and installed instead a bunch of people who don’t actually know what they’re doing in senior positions.

So I think they can wait this out a bit longer. And by the way, they have no choice, because from the perspective of this regime, this is a war of survival. And when you have to survive, you do anything you can to do that. It is not a war that they just chose to do on the side, on the way to Cuba. So this is very different for them than it is for the United States.

And unfortunately, again, that means that I think we’re stuck in the current space, where we’re doing this thing where we’re negotiating sometimes but shooting other days. And we have these threats on and off, with, again, the people of Iran, the people of the broader region, stuck in the middle of all of this, as well as our service members who are stuck in the middle of all of this.

Sargent: So does Iran have enough time to last through the midterms and beyond? And do you think they’re going to do that? You think they’ll hold out through the midterms?

Tabatabai: I think so. I think they can. And I think that they have seen that they have an administration that is ultimately going to fold, right? The administration folded a few months ago with the memorandum of understanding, front-loading a bunch of sanctions relief to Iran, telling Iran yeah, we’ll withdraw from the bases around your country, giving Iran things that no other administration would give them.

And so they know that if they just wait it out, they will probably get more concessions from this administration, at best. And at worst, they’re just continuing things as they are. They’ve already paid the price of it. It’s not like—they have really paid the price already. So it’s a sunk cost at this point for them.

Sargent: You know, the crowning irony to all this is that Trump doesn’t think he needs to understand his adversary, but Iran has really taken a lot of steps to understand theirs. Awesome to talk to you. Thank you so much for all that.

Tabatabai: Always good to be with you. Thanks so much.

There has been a great deal of discussion on the right in recent years about whether the United States is experiencing some kind of new religious revival. Church attendance remains historically low by many measures, most notably in the mainline churches that have historically fostered religious moderation and created communities of believers from across the political spectrum. That said, religious identity is also increasingly central to American political conflict. Christianity, particularly conservative Christianity, often functions as a marker of political and cultural belonging on the American right. The result is a society that may be becoming less religious overall while simultaneously becoming more religiously polarized. To understand this moment, it helps to revisit the Great Awakenings in U.S. history, when Americans renegotiated the meaning of freedom, morality, and identity on a national scale.

The First Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s challenged older religious hierarchies by emphasizing direct spiritual experience and personal conversion. Revivalist preachers like George Whitefield insisted that ordinary people could experience God directly without relying on established church authority. These ideas also intensified preachers’ use of emotionalism and encouraged suspicion toward institutional authority that would echo throughout American history. The emphasis on inward spiritual experience eventually fed into later forms of American individualism, including nineteenth-century Transcendentalism and the broader tendency to treat authenticity and inner conviction as sources of moral authority.

But it was the Second Great Awakening, stretching roughly from the 1790s through the 1830s, that most profoundly shaped American political culture. Massive revival meetings swept across the early republic, with Evangelical Protestantism rapidly expanding on the frontier and in growing northern cities. Preachers such as Charles Grandison Finney taught that both individuals and society itself could be morally transformed.

Critically, revivalists during this period did not generally understand freedom in the modern liberal sense of autonomy or self-expression. Instead, true freedom was liberation from sin. A truly free person was not simply someone left alone by the state or society, but someone morally regenerated and capable of living according to God’s order free from vice. This meant that many revivalists saw moral discipline not as a restriction on liberty but as its fulfillment. To these revivalists, the purpose of society and government was to guide people toward spiritual purity.

That outlook fueled some of the most important reform movements in American history. Evangelical activism contributed to abolitionism, prison reform, women’s rights, public education campaigns, and more. Many abolitionists viewed slavery not simply as an economic or political evil but as a profound moral sin incompatible with Christian teachings about the equal worth of souls before God.

Yet the same worldview also produced deeply coercive impulses. “Moral reform” often looked like regulating alcohol consumption, policing sexuality, suppressing vice, enforcing Sabbath observance, and attempting to discipline immigrants, Catholics, and the poor into a particular vision of respectable Protestant life. Temperance campaigns frequently blurred into broader efforts at social control and anti-Catholic nativism. Southern revivalists, meanwhile, adapted the language of Christian order and hierarchy into defenses of slavery itself.

The Second Great Awakening was a diffuse, leaderless movement, and was never ideologically uniform. It contained democratic and authoritarian tendencies simultaneously, with universal moral aspirations alongside intense paternalism and social discipline. But across the movement, its conception of freedom remained fundamentally different from today’s ideal of individual autonomy. Revivalists generally believed that liberty required moral formation because people “enslaved” to vice, sin, and temptation were not truly free at all.

That tension has never disappeared from American political culture, but MAGA politics have fueled a particularly revealing transformation. The modern religious right has enthusiastically embraced the coercive side of revivalism while weakening or abandoning many of the universal moral commitments that once accompanied it. What remains is a politics deeply concerned with order, hierarchy, discipline, punishment, and cultural conformity but detached from the expansive reform movements that once gave revivalist Christianity much of its moral force.

This helps explain the right’s growing hostility toward virtues that Christianity itself has historically treated as central moral obligations. Compassion for migrants, concern for the poor, humility, mercy, and care for strangers are now portrayed by segments of the right not as virtues but as civilizational liabilities in a global, moral war. The rise of phrases like “toxic empathy” is revealing here. In some right-wing circles, empathy itself is increasingly framed as a form of weakness that prevents societies from enforcing borders, punishing enemies, maintaining hierarchy, or defending national identity. But Christian teachings focus on mercy and compassion precisely because they transcend tribe, nationality, and worldly status. The obligation to care for the vulnerable is supposed to apply even to outsiders and enemies.

See Vice President JD Vance’s feud with Pope Leo XIV for an illuminating example. For Pope Leo, Christian ethics impose universal obligations to care for migrants and the poor as a core part of Christian moral teaching. To conservative Catholic convert Vance though, the Pope should “be careful when he talks about matters of theology” with which the right disagrees. For much of the nationalist right, Christianity is more of a civilizational identity tied to borders, social cohesion, and cultural inheritance that fits with their obsession with the supremacy of “the West.”

This is one reason contemporary right-wing Christianity often feels disconnected from the teachings it claims to defend. The language of sin, order, authority, and moral decline that would be familiar to a nineteenth-century revivalist remains central, but the moral obligations that inspired progress during the Second Great Awakening are instead seen as weaknesses.

This does not mean MAGA Christianity is somehow fake Christianity or entirely alien to American religious history. The coercive and exclusionary tendencies now visible on the right were always present within parts of American revivalism. The same religious culture that fueled abolitionism also fueled paternalistic moral regulation, anti-Catholicism, and defenses of hierarchy, but the balance has shifted. Earlier revival movements, for all their flaws, generally paired moral discipline with some broader universal vision of human redemption or social transformation. They sought not only to restore order but to redeem society. Contemporary religious nationalism is far narrower and more defensive, with its energy directed toward protecting an embattled cultural identity and recovering what it believes to be a lost social order.

This reflects a consequential reimagination of how freedom itself is understood. Earlier revivalists believed freedom required moral discipline because they understood liberty as liberation from sin. Modern liberalism, by contrast, tends to define freedom more as autonomy and self-determination. MAGA Christianity occupies an unstable position between these traditions that rejects liberal permissiveness and expressive individualism along with the universal moral obligations that accompanied older Christian visions of moral order.

This helps explain supposedly devout Christians in the Trump administration gleefully celebrating the U.S. military murdering fishermen in the Caribbean and leveling population centers in Iran. It also helps explain the administration’s embrace of mass deportation policies that treat migrants and asylum seekers not as human beings deserving dignity and compassion, but as threats to be expelled and punished. It shows why a Supreme Court dominated by right-wing Christians continuously finds freedom of religion grounds for overturning inclusive policies and essentially creating a Christian right to discriminate against people simply exercising their personal autonomy.

This shift may ultimately prove self-defeating even on religious terms. Historically, Christianity has often expanded when it presented itself as morally universal, capable of transcending tribe, nationality, and hierarchy. When religion becomes tightly fused to partisan identity and cultural resentment, it risks reducing itself to an instrument of political power rather than a source of moral authority. It is difficult to deny that this kind of identity and power politics is exactly what MAGA has embraced.

The American right increasingly speaks in the language of religious revival while simultaneously narrowing the moral scope of revivalist Christianity itself. Its version of Christianity centers cultural identity, hierarchy, discipline, and exclusion far more than moral obligation or social redemption. In this framework, conducting violent mass deportations, enforcing conformity, and legitimizing undemocratic political power are actually Christian virtues. And that may ultimately be the clearest sign that this is not a new Great Awakening at all, but the evolution of revivalist religion to support the country’s ongoing reversion to more explicitly authoritarian politics.

But Cromwell, a Democrat who ousted a 26-year Republican incumbent in a razor-thin race for county attorney in 2022, had never established such a policy. Nor had she received any direct communication from Knudsen.

The ostensible subject of the press release was a mundane question of bureaucratic procedure. In October, the Enforcement and Removal Operations division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement had requested confidential criminal justice information, or CCJI, on a Gallatin County resident. Because the request pertained to a deportation proceeding, which is a civil rather than criminal matter under federal law, the records department asked Cromwell’s office for guidance on whether to comply with the request. In response, a civil legal assistant in Cromwell’s office advised that a court order would be required to release the information.

Cromwell said her office heard nothing more until April 2, when the press release turned a routine exchange between federal and local government employees into a political powder keg—just a few months before the state’s June primaries. On April 30, after refusing multiple invitations from Cromwell to assume legal responsibility for future CCJI requests, Knudsen placed Cromwell’s office under “supervisory control,” a rarely used authority with undefined limits that allows the attorney general to oversee and overrule the actions of an elected county attorney.

As the nation speeds toward midterm elections in November, this red-state dustup over immigration enforcement offers a reminder that the most disruptive domestic policy change of Donald Trump’s second term isn’t confined to blue cities. The administration’s intolerance for disagreement and its provocative, publicity-heavy attacks on rivals are also roiling communities and shaping politics in conservative and rural states, where Trump allies are taking extraordinary measures to bring local government officials to heel.

During her first week on the job, in January 2023, Cromwell said she discovered three cardboard boxes of unprosecuted criminal cases in an office closet. Eventually, hundreds of other cases were discovered on shelves and in filing cabinets. Cromwell then expanded the number of attorneys in the chronically understaffed office from six to 46 and cleared over 600 backlogged cases—including 113 sexual assaults, 52 of which involved children—within a single year. When I visited her office in June, further evidence of a culture shift was on display. Cromwell had recently remodeled the office space, which now consisted of open doors, airy cubicles, and plenty of young attorneys.

She eagerly introduced me to each one (and several of their dogs) but turned serious as she discussed Knudsen’s decision to assume supervisory control over the office. “I was worried enough to take all my personal stuff home with me,” she said, gesturing from her desk toward the bare walls and windowsill.

Knudsen, a former county attorney and speaker of the Montana House (2015–2019), is known for his heavy hand. Elected as attorney general in 2020, he dispatched at least one Highway Patrol officer to St. Peter’s Health Hospital in Helena after a request from the family members of a Covid patient to prescribe ivermectin had been denied, among other complaints, and Cromwell wondered whether he would use similar tactics to intimidate her. (Knudsen did not respond to multiple requests for comment through the Montana Department of Justice website and to his communications director.)

Though her office’s routines have not been similarly disturbed, Cromwell petitioned the Montana Supreme Court for a declaratory judgment on the dispute over CCJI requests in May. Additionally, she requested relief from Knudsen’s supervisory control, which required her to relinquish control of CCJI requests, submit regular reports to Knudsen, and could have allowed him to impose more invasive regulations at any time.

Such confrontations between Knudsen and other elected officials, including judges, over where his power ends and others’ begins have become commonplace during his tenure. In December 2025, he was cleared of a 41-count charge by the state Office of Disciplinary Counsel that resulted from a series of disparaging statements he made about the judicial branch.

In February, he accused Helena, the capital city, of violating the state’s legislative ban on sanctuary cities when it passed a resolution that clarified existing standards for coordination with ICE and made a commitment not to sign a 287(g) agreement with the agency. A 287(g) is an optional agreement that allows ICE to deputize local law enforcement officers and utilize local facilities for detention and other purposes. Knudsen’s accusation was announced via press conference, with Governor Greg Gianforte standing by his side.

“There will be penalties,” Gianforte said. “In Montana, we don’t tolerate defiance, and we support our local law enforcement.”

The imperious tone was notable, and so was the heft of threatened penalties. Under Montana law, a local government can be fined $10,000 for every five days it remains out of compliance and can lose access to state funds for public infrastructure and other needs if it does not comply within 14 days after legal action is taken.

The Helena City Commission hired outside legal counsel to help the city attorney navigate the conflict and spent at least $17,000 on initial legal costs. Then, during a heated public meeting in March, commissioners voted to rescind the resolution, despite public affirmations of its legality by the city attorney and outside counsel.

“In a time like now, when so many people feel like their federal government is seeking influence over even the most household-level issues, it’s important for people to feel as if they have at least some control at the local level through resolutions like this,” said Melinda Reed, the only commissioner who voted both for the original resolution and against its rescission.

“To me, the risk of not standing up so far outweighs the risk of standing up,” she added. “I mean, today, it’s an immigration issue that some people may not feel is important to them. But what if next time it’s our water rights?”

Yet, the severe penalties in the anti-sanctuary cities law and Knudsen’s aggressively political brand of law enforcement both seem designed to preempt local governments from exercising the sort of self-determination that both Reed and Cromwell believe is necessary. Indeed, the goal of these penalties, which now exist in many states, may be political superiority rather than policy resolution.

“There is this culture shift within the Republican Party. This kind of aggressiveness is now equated with strength,” Rob Saldin, professor of political science and director of the Mansfield Ethics and Public Affairs Program at the University of Montana, told me. “There is almost a cruelty to it, and it’s off-putting, which is maybe the point.”

Montana isn’t the only red state where local officials have endured unprecedented threats, investigations, and lawsuits by state prosecutors to enforce Trump’s agenda and discourage judicial review. “Republican A.G.s are using state laws and public pressure campaigns to force local jurisdictions into cooperation with ICE,” said Cassandra Charles, senior staff attorney at the National Immigration Law Center. “They’re not waiting for the federal government to act—they’re making their threats loud enough that most jurisdictions cave before even getting into court.”

As evidence of this trend, she pointed to Texas, where Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is now a candidate for U.S. Senate, recently sent a letter demanding that Dallas County Sheriff Marian Brown enter into a 287(g) agreement with ICE. When Brown did not comply, citing her department’s existing collaborative relationship with the agency, Paxton immediately launched a formal investigation, compelling Brown’s office to spend time and money responding to questions and accusations that may have no legal standing in a court of law.

“Sometimes, A.G.s don’t have to do too much heavy lifting,” Charles added. “State legislatures are also handing them new enforcement tools to use.” In Georgia, a new law empowers private-property owners to sue local governments over perceived failures to remove immigrants and unsheltered people from public spaces, essentially deputizing individual citizens to do what the attorney general can’t always do directly.

While these unusual attempts to enforce Trump’s agenda are sometimes contested by public officials from across the partisan divide, it remains to be seen whether public concern over such policies transcends that divide, particularly in red states.

“There isn’t a clean narrative here,” Charles said. “The polls seem to indicate that red-state voters continue to support the enforcement agenda, but they’d also like to see specific aggressive tactics—like raids at schools or targeting people without criminal records—toned down. The data shows some fissures, but no explicit shift.”

That analysis accurately describes Montana, a 60–40 Republican state where 59 percent of residents want local law enforcement to work with ICE, but also where the sheriff of one politically conservative town recently rallied community members to support the family of a beloved mechanic after he was detained by ICE for over 100 days.

When Knudsen first threatened supervisory control over her office, Cromwell told me, she had taken the weekend to consider the hazards of an extended fight. “I had to do an ethical analysis,” she recalled. “The attorney general has prosecutorial powers, and he could charge me with the crime of official misconduct. So, was that a risk that I was willing to take?”

The Montana Supreme Court has yet to rule on Knudsen’s use of supervisory control, which means Cromwell is still waiting for clarity as to how her office should respond to future requests—or, for that matter, just how far the attorney general’s authority extends. The legal battle has taken a toll. The conflict and ensuing court case have required more than 80 hours of her professional time and cost taxpayers thousands of dollars.

Of course, there are political ramifications as well. In November, Gallatin County voters will decide whether to reelect Cromwell for a second four-year term or install her challenger, a Republican prosecutor who’s been endorsed by the Republican county sheriff. It was possible Knudsen had staged this act of political theater so that he could make immigration enforcement a more visible issue on Election Day. “It’s a show, in my opinion,” Cromwell told me, ahead of the primary on June 2.

“If the attorney general is willing to come after me in this way,” she added, “and I’m an elected official, an attorney, a privileged Montanan, then what is he willing to do to people who don’t have power?”

That question carries extra weight when one considers the coincidence of presidential and gubernatorial elections in 2028. Many have speculated that Knudsen will run for governor in two years, and in a state where Trump won the last three presidential elections by an average of 18.7 points, Knudsen’s path to victory likely ends with the primary rather than the general election.

If he does run for governor and wins, then he’ll almost certainly be working with a fellow partisan in the attorney general’s office, and together they might continue testing the limits of their legal authority, especially if the state’s nonpartisan Supreme Court tips further to the right between now and then. In that scenario, the possibility of the attorney general using supervisory control to make an elected county attorney do something they think is illegal would no longer represent a distant political or legal frontier.

“Both the attorney general and [county attorneys] are elected by voters,” Constance Van Kley, a constitutional law professor at the University of Montana, told me, “and what do you do when one elected official is allowed to use their powers to supersede the powers that are entrusted to a local elected official by the voters of that jurisdiction?”

Presently, that question lies at the center of constitutional conflicts in Montana and many other states across the country, and its resolution will ultimately determine whether federal and state elected officials can exercise new legal powers without judicial review or public consent.

This trend also informed Cromwell’s decision to stand her ground. In the end, however, the tipping point was a matter of principle rather than politics. “I always stand up to bullies, and I always have,” she told me. “In this position, I’m a voice for people who don’t have a voice, and I take that responsibility really seriously, and if that means putting myself on the line, then that’s OK.”

Perry Bacon: Good morning. This is Perry Bacon from Right Now on The New Republic. We have a great guest. It’s Deva Woodly. She’s a professor of politics at Brown University. She’s a fellow at the Kettering Foundation. And she’s the author of books on social movements and on Black Lives Matter. So Deva, welcome. Thanks for joining me.

Deva Woodly: Thank you. Wonderful to be here.

Bacon: So I want to ask you about the discourse of the last 10 days, which I think started off with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez being on an interview on one of the Sunday shows and talking about what she phrased Woke 1.0. Let me read what she says. I want you to react to it. Because we’re a week out from it, but I still think her actual quote was important to read in the context of what it was.

So there was some video played. They have autoplay these days. All right, so anyway, she was asked about Francesca Hong, who was running for governor of Wisconsin, as we know. “I have a local city councilman, has this saying, ‘Woke 1 was crazy.’ And I think what’s important is, we have to assess what a candidate is saying now. During this time, during COVID, there was a huge opening of the Overton window. We were shut down. There were some of the highest unemployment rates we’ve ever seen, because of those shutdowns. The doors were really open in trying to entertain any and every kind of policy that was going to get us to a better place. The discussions that we had at that time were quite fruitful. And then we talk about crime today, it’s fundamentally different than when we talked about crime and talked about bringing crime down, right? We all share the goal of having crime as low as possible. I think that during lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time was not rhetoric we would use today, and I’m grateful these candidates have the opportunity to present who they are to the electorate and who they’re campaigning for in this moment.”

So the totality of that is, there’s a Woke 1.0 thing—she’s quoting someone else saying it’s crazy, she’s referring to that quote—and then she’s saying lockdown introduced some kind of language we don’t use today. So the totality of that, what did you make of what is said there?

Woodly: OK, so there’s a world in which we can take AOC’s comments in, I think, the spirit that she meant them. But of course, that’s not appropriate for national television, right? In a hostile political environment, there’s a way in which sometimes people say things like crazy, right? That was crazy. It’s not necessarily an insult. It means that it was something unexpected, and that it was an experience.

I think that’s what she meant, but since she said it in a national forum that is hostile to what has been dubbed woke—which again is also a terminology that I think is misplaced and should not, honestly, be used to describe a period of multiple social movements that happened back to back for reasons of persistent inequality across several different sectors, a reasonable and rational response to that inequality which was not able to be addressed through institutional pathways. That’s why you have social movements.

Social movements are a normal democratic institutional check. They’ve existed as long as there have been democratic governments, and they’re not crazy. They’re a rational response to being unable to get redress through official channels.

In addition, the movements that I assume they’re referring to as Woke 1, right—the Black Lives Matter movement and Me Too, chief among them, but also probably Marjory Stoneman Douglas kids talking about gun control. All of these movements were, at the time, popular movements, and indeed the Black Lives Matter movement is the most popular movement that has existed in American history. So the idea of diminishing its impact as Woke 1 and calling it crazy is a misremembering of history, and also the significance of that movement.

It’s also, additionally, I think, politically quite silly for someone who is on the left and claims to be trying to make significant changes, because it also paints a politics where people are making, as she said, fruitful interventions to push the perspective of what is possible and necessary for a thriving society. It makes it so that any big swing in that direction could be termed crazy, which is antithetical to the kind of politics that I think that she’d like to advance.

Bacon: You led with the, let’s be charitable and let’s say crazy was just a word meaning a lot happened. And OK, so the charitable explanation is, like, she was saying that a lot happened in that moment that was unusual in that moment. That’s what she was—and then her comment that some of the things were fruitful is saying, she can’t quite say defund the police moved us toward—she doesn’t want to say defund the police moved us in the right direction. That’s the coded way to say that, right?

Woodly: Yeah. And I think, look, I think that generally speaking AOC is more short-sighted than this in her communications. So I was actually surprised to see this slip. And I interpret it in the more charitable way, because I feel like sometimes she talks casually—which is part of her appeal—and uses kind of colloquialisms to express herself. And in this context, it just does not advance the goals of people who are interested in making significant changes from the status quo. And I assume she’s in that camp.

Bacon: Let me—I’m going to lead with some more uncharitable explanations and see what you think about them. The first might be the phrase Woke 1.0 itself, or the phrase woke, and then 1.0. Woke, I often read from people on the right and the center left who want to make fun of Black Lives Matter went too far, DEI went too far—they are hostile to a lot of the things that happened during that period. Woke 1.0 is a phrase I’ve even seen from sort of people who are socialist and leftist, and what they would say is that there’s too much focus on, quote unquote, identity politics, not enough focus on class politics.

And so even that phrasing alone makes me think she’s not reading a lot of people like Deva Woodly, and she’s reading a lot of people on Twitter, white left. My first reaction was, is she not—if you’re invoking Woke 1.0 a lot, you’re not reading a diverse enough group of people. I know she quoted a Black city councilman, but in general, that phraseology is coming from a sector of people who are generally skeptical of what happened in 2020. Do you agree with that?

Woodly: Yes, I do think that’s true, but I also think that it is one of the coups of right-wing discourse to have made that phrasing something that is popularized. So now, even though it derives from a criticism from the right, it has been taken up by other people, who—some are criticizing it from the left, some are not criticizing it at all, but think of it as a descriptor. It’s very much like Democrat for the Democratic Party—people who use that in print as though it’s not incorrect, right? That’s because it’s been a successful discursive coup by the right wing.

So yes, I think that someone who is aware of the power of language and words, and is interested in shifting the Overton window, would be careful about using a phrase like Woke 1, which in the first instance is an appropriation of the term woke, which is actually a serious term that comes from African American vernacular English and means to be aware of systemic oppression, which is important given the times. But then, additionally, styling it as Woke 1 mashes together a lot of phenomena and makes them seem trivial, when they are significant political movements that are ongoing, and the reasons for them continue and continue to intensify.

Bacon: If she had said the Black Lives Matter movement was crazy, people would’ve been like, “What?” If she had said the protests against George Floyd were crazy, people—because the phrase ended up meaning—the most frustrating about it was, like, in theory, her job is to communicate clearly, but in reality, I’ve read 10 days of think pieces about Woke 1.0, because no one can agree about what that means, meaning it wasn’t a clear phrase, right?

Woodly: Yes. It’s a catch-all phrase, but it’s also a catch-all phrase that is meant to diminish. And so I think that anyone who not only respects the movements but respects the causes that deserve ongoing redress would not use that phrasing, should not use that phrasing.

So it’s my hope that not only she but also any other office holders or decision-makers on the left or the center left would not use that phrasing, because it’s a ceding to the right wing that social and political change that is significant can only be crazy, right? That, to me—that logic itself is a logic that I think should be avoided by people who want to push toward a more democratic and egalitarian society.

Bacon: Let me be uncharitable again and say—you said a couple times, people like AOC who we assume want to push. Did AOC used to be one of those people, and is AOC now a person concerned about winning the median voter in Wisconsin in 2028, and therefore—if Pete Buttigieg said Woke 1 was crazy, I might have been like, “Oh, Pete said something he didn’t mean to say,” but he said it inartfully, because I might assume his views about Woke 1.0 are somewhat close to that.

I did not think of someone like AOC, or like Bernie Sanders, or like Zohran, or someone who I think of as being with the movement. I don’t think they would describe the movement as crazy. But is AOC someone who was formerly with the movement, and is now more Hakeem Jeffries than the movement?

Woodly: Look, AOC and the whole sort of ilk of progressive politicians, they have a different job than organizers and activists. I think that right now she’s playing around with who she needs to present herself as, in order to be a national candidate. I don’t think that her fundamental commitments are changed. We don’t have evidence of that yet. But I do think that it’s worth watching. I also do think that it’s worth pointing out that, generally speaking, it is bad politics to betray your base.

Bacon: That’s, yeah.

Woodly: It’s just, like, bad politics to betray your base, and—

Bacon: Well, that’s interesting you said that, because Hakeem Jeffries was on TV yesterday attacking the DSA. So you and I might think attacking the base—or attacking, I guess DSA is not his base, but you and I might think attacking—

Woodly: I was going to say—

Bacon: I would argue that attacking people who are likely to vote for you is not smart.

Woodly: Agreed.

Bacon: The Democratic Party establishment’s view is, attacking the left to win centrist votes is the way to do it. Bill Clinton—like that. In other words, you might think that, but is it, if you’re becoming a more mainstream Democrat, is it part of your job to attack people who vote for you?

Woodly: I hope not, because then they’ll lose. I mean that very seriously and sincerely. The Democrats won in 2020 because of movement. The Democrats won in 2022 because of people organizing for them, because of small donors giving money to them. Now they’re in a situation where they’re using fundraising tactics that have turned off their small donors, and they don’t have large donors to replace them with, and they’ve really made upset a constituency that is most likely to vote for them.

The punching-left sort of truism in the Democratic Party comes from the 1990s. It is now 2026. We are in an entirely different political environment. And in any kind of democracy that is functioning, you have the people who are possibly voting for you, the people who you might win, and the people who you need, who will work for your campaign.

It is those workers—the people who would get out there, the people who would man the phone lines, the people who are going door to door. Those are the people who are alienated by this kind of talk. And those are the people that are really necessary for winning and keeping office, and for giving them the power that they will need to actually make the changes that will make a midterm win significant.

Because guess what—because of the institutional trouble that we are in right now, just winning the offices is not significant, will not save democracy. They need to be able to wield power. And in order to wield power, they have to have support. Alienating that support right now is very silly. And it doesn’t matter what DC consultants from the 1990s say about it.

The truth is, we are in a very different political environment, and the Democratic leadership has been really slow to adapt to it. But we see that the people who are winning all over the country are people who have adapted to the new conditions. It is very unfortunate that the leadership in Washington has been slow. And it’s not only unfortunate for their party, it’s unfortunate for the country. And I certainly do hope they catch up.

Bacon: I’m going to read a second quote from another progressive. This is a different kind of progressive, in a certain way. But let me see if I can find it here. So Zohran Mamdani, asked about this discussion—he was asked about Woke 1.0 sometimes, and the controversy—said, “Sometimes what you can believe in can change. I know there are, for some, for whom they still have a belief in that. I’ve made very clear that I do not believe in defunding the police, and that to me, delivering critical public safety also looks like working with police departments, along with many other partners.”

So I think his comment—and he goes on in that—is more specific. It’s not about this, was more about, defunding the police is something I do not agree with, police are a core part of public safety. What do you think about that comment?

Woodly: I think that the way he said it is something that makes sense for a politician in his position. He’s working in a situation where the police department in New York City is very large, very well-funded, and has proven itself hostile to mayors and mayor agendas before. It makes sense to me that he says, “I’m not for defunding the police. They are one of the core public safety institutions that need to be utilized.” To me, I think that’s descriptive. And also, it’s important that he puts them in the context of not the only, not the most critical, but one of the tools that a mayor, or we, should use for public safety.

I also think that is something that is evidence-based. We see in communities like Baltimore that police are one—not the most important and not to be overfunded—one of the pieces of creating a more safe community environment. I have to say that also, in terms of policy, defund means that you make police proportional to their actual role in creating public safety. They are not the most significant factor in creating public safety.

There are other factors that are equally important, like creating green space, social services, expanding healthcare, that are evidence-based ways that we know actually create safer communities, and those are often underfunded while police are overfunded. So defunding police departments that have large budgets that increase every year, in order to—that is, taking some of that funding in order to fund other programs that are underfunded and actually contribute to safety—is rational. Now, the phrase defund has become unpopular, but that actual set of policies is very popular. People understand that you need to fund other things besides police in order to create a safe community.

Bacon: So you’re saying a politician who says, I do not support defund the police, but then does all the policies around making public safety broader than just police, is doing something pretty smart. You’re saying Zohran is not necessarily constricting the movement. He’s doing good politics, basically.

Woodly: He’s doing his job as a politician. And movement has to do their job as movement, right? And I think that the movement—

Bacon: Should movement be criticizing what he said, or say we are for—what should their role be? To say, we are still for defund? Or?

Woodly: Yes. I think movements should say, defund the police is a rational position, and this is what it means. It means that we don’t raise the budget every year. It means that we invest in non-police response. It means that we create more green spaces. It means they roll out the policy positions. And then a politician like Zohran can say, I’m not for defunding the police, and yet be holding the police budget constant, not raising—

Bacon: And putting more officers—constant, I think he did.

Woodly: And at the same time, investing in green space, investing in increased access to healthcare, right? That is actually the policy agenda that creates safety. It’s evidence-based, right? Whatever you call it. But the truth is, the slogan, the demand, defund is what has created interest in these non-police responses that actually work.

Bacon: So Senator Sanders said something on TV. He said something to the effect of, “No serious politician believes in defunding the police.” So talk about that statement, because I think that one was troubling to me, but I’d be curious what you think about it.

Woodly: Again, right? So for me, I think that that notion of serious is to try to, again, make defund seem crazy, when defund is rational, right?

Bacon: But he may be accurately describing the reality, right? There may be very few politicians who you—

Woodly: So it’s a double meaning, right? On the one hand, what he may be saying, or what he may mean, is that if you are a politician who wishes to get elected and not get pilloried on this issue, you don’t say defund the police. That’s reasonable, right? On the other hand, his meaning could be, and could be taken to be, that, quote, Woke 1 is crazy, right?

Bacon: No serious person would be for defund the police is a diminishing message, right? In other words—yeah.

Woodly: Exactly. So I think that politicians who are aligned with movements—and really just politicians who are interested in justice, right, and politicians who are interested in actually reducing violence and creating economic opportunity and creating conditions for egalitarian democracy—should avoid diminishing left movements. I will note that right-wing politicians never diminish their right flanks.

Even when they move in different ways, even when they choose different words, the worst they do is pretend they don’t know about them, right? And that is strategic. It’s because they know that their movements are doing important work for the causes that they believe in, and also that they want to have the freedom to move around in terms of what policies they want to put forward, what things they take up from their right flanks, and what things that they don’t. And it shocks me that politicians on the left have not learned this quite obvious lesson.

Bacon: So the subtext of what I’m getting at, and I’ll just drive to it now, is my sense is that the sort of left progressive part of the Democratic Party—and I’ve quoted AOC, Zohran, and Bernie Sanders, who are leaders of that—has decided that to win primaries and to gain power, post-2024, if they talk about economics and, quote-unquote, affordability, and they shuck off all the controversial stuff—all the policing, the racism, talking about white supremacy, all the woke stuff—if they shuck off that part, that’s the part that the establishment has tagged them with. So we can win primaries, we can get power. Third Way will be nice to us as long as we throw the abolish and defund people under the bus. And that’s what I think is happening, and that’s very direct.

But I think AOC, Zohran, Bernie Sanders, the people around them, the sort of Jacobins, the sort of socialist wing of the left, Democratic Party, decided, if we throw the sort of policing and anti-racism—I would argue the Black left, in a certain sense—if we throw those people under the bus, ignore them, and just talk about populism and economics, then we will win primaries, the Democratic center will like us more, and we will inherit the earth. That’s what I think is going on. How do you do that analysis?

Woodly: I do think that’s what they think.

Bacon: Yes. OK.

Woodly: But all of American history is against that interpretation, unfortunately for them, and for me.

Bacon: Will they inherit the earth, or even the Democratic Party? Will they gain power within the Democratic Party? I think that might be more true.

Woodly: They will gain power in the Democratic Party temporarily, while the Democratic Party is able to have power.

Look, here’s the point, right? These issues of inequality, including affordability, are all intersectional issues, right? Meaning that people’s race and gender are relevant to their place in the economy. You cannot address differences, systematic differences in economic outcomes, without an analysis of race and gender. And if you’re not explicit about that in the way that you argue politically, then what happens is that counterarguments and stereotypes that are common, that circulate in the discourse and also in the background doxa of American politics, will be mobilized to fracture the coalition that you’re trying to bring together.

And in terms of economic democracy, socialism, left economic policies, this is always what happens in the American case. Historically, the reason that a more democratic socialist environment did not develop in the middle 20th century was because it fractured along racial lines, right? That is why the American polity had a uniquely neoliberal economy, compared to the developed economies in Europe and elsewhere in the world—it’s because it’s on this question of race that economic populism fractures. That’s the pattern in this country.

And these folks can try again to de-racialize economic policies, but they will fail again. Because the truth is that white supremacy has to be taken on straight on. It has to be taken on straight on, especially in these times when you have the frank avowal of these opinions all over American discourse, and promoted by the richest person in the world on the app that he owns. And the whole cadre of AI billionaires, right, who are interested in these white supremacist, eugenicist, feudalist, and fascist ways of being in the world. Not addressing those things explicitly allows them to circulate unchallenged as ideas in our discourse.

There’s no way to avoid actually confronting those things. And so my advice to Democratic politicians from the center to the left would be to develop a way to actually confront the ideas that are most detrimental to the American Republic. I understand that they may be afraid that that will be more difficult than the tried and true ‘90s playbook, but it also might be more successful.

Bacon: One thing I want to add is, I don’t think this progressive cohort that says affordability actually believes what they’re saying. With Zohran Mamdani, one of the first things he did was, like, he went to a protest when the ICE director was there, and went viral for that. He talked about the Israel-Gaza issue constantly. So did Abdul El-Sayed, talked about abolishing ICE regularly.

I’m not sure Abdul or Zohran win their primaries without, A, ICE being crazy, and B, the Gaza issue, which they both talked about extensively and which their base cared about a lot. So the idea they only talked about affordability, as their consultants claimed afterward, is not even true, as far as I can tell.

Woodly: No, it’s not true. And it’s also not true in the way, at least, that Mamdani has conducted his campaign. He’s been very careful to talk to many different constituencies, where he always brings up, obviously, affordability, because it is important generally, but also addresses it in a way that is specific to the group, right? So he talks about the racial wealth gap, and he talks about what faces small vendors who are often immigrants, right, or second generation immigrants in the city, right? And he has been very careful to talk to trans constituencies, and very careful to talk, right?

The way that they’re actually doing politics—at least Mamdani, and I hope that El-Sayed does this as well, because it is the way to do it, right—is not actually to deracialize politics. It’s to interracialize politics, right? However, the way that they talk about it in the popular press differs from the actual techniques that they are using, right? And so the way they talk about it in the popular press is, All we do is talk about affordability. That’s all we do. That’s all we do.

But that’s not actually how they’re conducting their politics. What they’re actually doing is making sure that they are touching and talking to every constituency, and in Mamdani’s case, in their language, right, as much as possible. Right, let me cut another ad in a different language to address specific concerns about how people are situated socially, economically, ethnically, and racially, and how that impacts their structural position, right? The way he’s actually doing politics is quite sensitive to the ways that race, gender, ethnicity, you know, sexuality all intersect with the ability to live a good life.

Bacon: This is a good way to put this, isn’t it? It’s a complicated thing. It’s, like, on some level, to be a Democratic candidate these days, you have to campaign to actual voters who care about their identities in the full scope. You also have to campaign through this media full of, like, white centrists who are very triggered by any discussion of race and trying to ban Ibram Kendi from living and so on. And so, like, what is—so there’s a dichotomy here where you are advantaged to say, I don’t do identity politics, while doing it, right? If you’re politically on the left, right?

Woodly: Absolutely, because there’s no way to win. There’s no way to win, but guess what? All politics, including class politics, are identity politics.

Partisanship is identity politics. It’s not actually based on policy it’s based on tribalism. So there is no politics that’s not identity politics. So in order to create a constituency, you have to be sensitive to people’s identities, and you have to interweave the concerns they have because of their lived experience into the campaign that you run, and into the policies that you adopt and implement. That’s a fact. So we’re in this sort of, like, kabuki theater where people pretend that there’s some way to have politics that’s stripped of identity, right, instead of addressing head-on the most vexing challenges that we have as a democratic republic.

Bacon: All right. So let’s come back to AOC now. You’re AOC, and you have to do these two things. The two things you have to do is, one, starting next February, you have to go to South Carolina and presumably win over a lot of Black people. But two, you also probably have to win over Ezra Klein, or get him, and that cohort, not to hate you—and that cohort is very focused on identity politics is dead and it divides, blah, blah, blah.

So how do you square—if you go to South Carolina and talk about the racial wealth gap, and it’s on video, it might help; or talk about some affordability issue, or some police killings, whatever issue you want to talk about that Black people might care about in South Carolina—if you do that, you’re going to hear from the cohort of columnists that you are ruining the chances of winning in Wisconsin, and average Black men don’t care about this racial issue that they were nodding their heads on while you were in the room. So what do you do then?

Woodly: I think that you have to just make the—

Bacon: That pundit class does matter.

Woodly: I’m sorry?

Bacon: That pundit class can make it hard for you to raise money, and hard for you to—

Woodly: No. The pundit class absolutely does matter, but I think that you have to go into those environments and make the argument that, again, all politics is identity politics, right? Because what you’re trying to do—

Bacon: Which environment, the on-the-ground or the pundit space?

Woodly: In the pundit space, right?

Bacon: Yes.

Woodly: Yeah. Because what’s happening is that these candidates are letting themselves be ruled by that space, right? And the fact is that they have to be willing to go into those spaces and engage on the actual fundamental idea, on the underlying premise. Because right now, they don’t engage on the underlying premise. They take the premise, right?

Perry Bacon: That whole 1.0 is a thing that exists because they have accepted that premise—

Deva Woodly: Yes, exactly. Instead of pushing back on it. And that is really what’s necessary, because it’s actually not that hard to push back on. We have a lot of empirical evidence that the movements of the 21st century have been really not only significant in their own right, but very important for Democratic wins. And so, none of these politicians point that out, right? Imagine a discursive environment where people like Bernie Sanders and AOC and El-Sayed and Mamdani and other progressive politicians said, “I’m here because I want to serve all the people. I want to make sure that we have a politics that is democratic and egalitarian.” And that’s what these movements were working for too, have been working for. And frankly, it’s not crazy to push for equality, right? That’s a fundamental American value. And it’s not crazy to be concerned about the ways that your life chances are advantaged or diminished because of the body you happen to be born into. It is a part of democratic politics, it is a part of believing in equality, to take that seriously in our politics, and that’s what I do.

Bacon: Let me ask one final question. This makes me have concern. If they were really honest, what really AOC and Zohran could say is, I wouldn’t be sitting in this chair on this program without those movements. Because I think that’s the reality. Are they unaware of that, which is worrisome, because it’s just, they have a bad political analysis? Or are they not humble enough to admit that, which is a different problem?

Because I’m not sure. Both are bad. Do you think they’re unaware of the political environment that created them, or do you think they are aware of it but think that they—I think about the Ella Baker quote, the movement make Martin—or, none of these were Martin Luther King’s, let’s not say that. But the movement making, versus them making a movement. It feels like these people at times act like they are an entity. Like, AOC will occasionally say, Justice Democrats, meh, I got here on my own. It’s like, eh, I don’t think you became famous just on your own. And so I’m just wondering if these people appreciate that there’s a movement that they’re—yeah, that’s kind of why it bothered me, is, Woke 1.0 kind of just helped you get where you are. Maybe you should not call it crap, and just admit it.

Woodly: Without MeToo, you wouldn’t be sitting in that chair.

Bacon: Yeah. And so do they get that, or are you—

Woodly: So yes, that’s true. I think that it is—I don’t know, like a lack of awareness or a lack of humility. I think that it might be a little bit of a combination. Sometimes we know things that are not present to the front of our minds, so I think that’s one thing. The other thing is, though, that of course, during the course of their sitting in those offices, there have been ups and downs with movement, right?

Maintaining those positions is not something that movement has helped them necessarily do, even though getting access to those positions is absolutely the reason. Like, the reason is because of movement. So it’s a complicated proposition, but you’re right. If they were really honest, they would say—they could use that also as a launch. Without these movements, I wouldn’t be sitting in this chair. However, sitting in this decision-making position has made me have more nuanced views. That could be the line. That should be the line.

Bacon: Zohran certainly should say that the mayor of New York is certainly more informed than random DSA members, obviously, right?

Woodly: Yes, exactly. That’s totally fine to say. Look, organized people with these concerns are the reason that I have had access here. They’re a part of the constituency that I serve. But sitting in this decision-making position has made my view more nuanced, and I realize, in order to get things done, that I have to engage with many different parties, right? I still have my values, and I’m still working for the same thing. But when you’re sitting in the decision-making position, you realize you have to work with a lot of different kinds of people.

To me, that seems like a super reasonable position for, and a true, accurate thing for a politician to say. There’s no reason to denigrate the movements that give you access to the opportunity to hold those positions of decision-making and service.

And also, I don’t know why they have this idea that it is effective. It’s literally like the Democratic Party is still sitting in the, quote, Sister Souljah moment of 1995 or whatever, of the sort of press. That’s why they keep asking James Carville questions. It’s bizarre to me that the Democratic leadership and consultancy has not moved on from that moment, even despite their many victories since that time, and how those victories have hinged on the organization of their left flank. I don’t understand. It’s really reality-resistant to me.

Bacon: Striking you said that, because I went back and read a piece about—we’re having this question about whether progressives can win swing states. But in the time in which they ran, Sherrod Brown, Tammy Baldwin, and Barack Obama were all quite progressive. But Barack Obama himself now is pretty skeptical of progressives. And so I think everybody who wins an election in the Democratic Party seems to then get Carville brain afterward, and I’m not really sure why that happens.

Woodly: I think it’s because their left constituency still demands things from them.

Bacon: And they find that annoying?

Woodly: Yes.

Bacon: OK.

Woodly: I think that’s what it is. I think that the culture of the party is not to actually try to deliver for their left flank, which is really asymmetrical to the culture of the Republican Party, which is to try to deliver for their right flank.

Bacon: I see. Deva, thank you for joining me. Tell people what you’re working on, and where they might find more of your brilliant thoughts.

Woodly: Right now I’m working on a project called The Politics of Futurity, and it’s all about how we break out of our notions about what is probable, and instead reach for evidence-based policy, institutions, and ways of arranging society that make new things possible, right? And you can read more about what I do in the blogs that I do for the Kettering Foundation, so look me up there.

Bacon: All right. Good to see you. Thanks for joining me. Bye-bye.

Woodly: Thank you.

You’ve probably heard of one crypto company that applied for a national trust bank charter earlier this year. It’s called World Liberty Financial, or WLF, and the Trump family owns a 38 percent stake in it and collects 75 percent of all of its crypto revenue. The Trumps invested not a penny in this venture, nor is any family member employed there. Yet last year President Donald Trump collected nearly $600 million from WLF, according to his financial statement.

Half a billion may seem like a lot to give a person, even a very famous one, for doing nothing, but on Friday Trump did WLF a solid.* The person Trump appointed Comptroller of the Currency, Jonathan Gould, granted conditional approval to WLF’s application to create a national trust bank. The bank’s name will be the World Liberty Trust Company. Really, though, it will be the First National Bank of Trump.

It says a lot about the routinization of Trumpian kleptocracy that a mind-bendingly corrupt transaction like this is no longer considered a political story. It’s a business story, covered in the business press. Under Trump, crypto companies have been encouraged to apply for national trust bank charters. Gould opened the door a crack with a regulatory letter he sent as OCC general counsel during Trump’s first term. Last year’s GENIUS Act opened that crack a bit wider, and so did a new OCC regulation in February. As a consequence, the number of applications to create any kind of national bank rose from no more than six per year under President Joe Biden to 18 last year and 22 this year under Trump.

Not every application passes muster. Of the 40 applications under Trump, about half have been approved. Approval for the First National Bank of Trump is not yet final, so maybe we can’t yet accuse the OCC of playing favorites. But do you doubt final approval, contingent mostly on raising sufficient capital (not a problem!) will arrive in short order?

A CNBC story carries a correction, demanded probably by some functionary at the OCC, that apologizes for initially understating the role in the selection process played by career civil servants. They are the only parties who review applications, the correction states. Well, maybe. But these career employees aren’t blind. They’ve had ample opportunity to observe what Trump and his chief enforcer, White House budget chief Russell Vought, do to civil servants who get in their way. The president wants a bank. Do you really want to be the schmuck who tells him that would violate the emoluments clauses of the United States Constitution? “If you follow the law,” Senator Elizabeth Warren warned Gould in February, “you will reject the president’s application.” Gould did not follow the law, and neither did the civil servants who approved this application.

There’s ample reason to question whether we should let any crypto firm charter a national trust bank. The banking industry is against it because it fears regulators will allow crypto’s national trust banks to so resemble commercial banks, with latitude to in effect take in deposits and make loans, that they will pose a competitive threat. Globally, stablecoins are projected to suck $1 trillion out of bank deposits during the next two years. Commercial banks point out that crypto-owned banks have lower capital requirements than they do, and in general are regulated more lightly, even as they traffic in a riskier form of currency. They have a point! Warren has said the new national trust banks will be “effectively crypto banks that want to evade the fundamental safeguards and obligations that come with being a bank.”

The OCC’s move to let Trump charter a crypto bank lowers this regulatory discussion to a level of squalor that CNBC is not well equipped to appreciate. This is a very sordid political scandal. Already WLF has been the venue for a pay-to-play scandal surrounding the sale of advanced AI chips to the United Arab Emirates two weeks after UAE purchased $2 billion in WLF stablecoin. That made Teapot Dome look like an anthill even before we learned further that the UAE was Trump’s business partner, having purchased a 49 percent stake in World Liberty Financial. Now Trump is giving himself a bank that he will, in effect, regulate himself.

Don’t tell me Trump will lack influence over the Comptroller of the Currency. Gould has a track record of playing Trump’s lackey. Gould called Trump Accounts—which Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, thinking he was bestowing a compliment, called “a back door for privatizing Social Security”—“one of the most impactful financial literacy tools in our country’s history.” Trump issued an executive order last year making clear that all independent agencies answer to Trump, and (excepting the Federal Reserve) the Supreme Court backed him up on that. You think Trump is going to let Gould tell him how to run his bank?

“President Trump is now the first President in history to approve, operate, and supervise his own bank,” Warren said Friday. “This is the most brazen act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen.” She used the occasion to introduce legislation prohibiting the president, vice president, or any child or spouse from owning or controlling a bank. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, a crypto bill that’s cleared the House and the Senate Banking Committees, may not reach final Senate passage unless Republicans concede on this point. If the GOP refuses to bar Trump from becoming a banker/president, it will hand a great gift to the Democrats in the midterms. First, though, we need to get this story off the financial pages.

* This piece originally misstated the amount.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez isn’t the only prominent progressive distancing herself from “Woke 1.0.” Senator Bernie Sanders and Mayor Zohran Mamdani have in recent days decried the idea of defunding police. In the latest edition of Right Now, Deva Woodly, a scholar of social movements who has extensively studied Black Lives Matter, argues that progressives and liberals who use the term “woke” and distance themselves from the activism of the early 2020s are making a mistake. Woodly says that they are using the language of the right and attacking allies who helped these politicians get elected in the first place. She also argues that the idea of ensuring public safety by spending money on policies other than policing is popular, even if the term “defund” is not. Woodly is a political science professor at Brown University and a fellow at the Kettering Foundation.

A failson of the fin-de-siècle, Morès moved to the Bad Lands of Dakota Territory at age 24 to start a cattle ranch. He poured money into a planned network of slaughterhouses and refrigerated railcars, only to be outmaneuvered by Chicago stockyard bosses and New York butchers. He had more success in achieving tabloid notoriety, by shooting a desperado and standing trial for his murder, but this did not improve his financial situation. He made another move across the world, to French colonial Indochina, and reinvented himself as the champion of a new rail system that he promised would penetrate the elusive Chinese market. This time, his grandiose ambitions fell victim to local unrest, bureaucratic foot-dragging, and sniping between political factions. He returned to France empty-handed.

It is not an inspiring tale, and might not even be an interesting one if Morès had not found a way to channel his humiliations into a political program. The politics of resentment was thriving in late nineteenth-century France, and Morès seized upon it when he stood as a candidate in the Paris municipal election of 1890. While this turned out to be another failure, the campaign cemented his habit of contrasting the goodness of the people with the corruption of the ruling class—an especially potent formula, he learned, when laced with a vicious and conspiratorial antisemitism. In the years that followed his electoral defeat, he fought two highly publicized duels—one by pistol and one by sword—against Jewish compatriots who found his insults intolerable. His relentless smear campaign against Jewish army officers played a part in the frenzied atmosphere of the Dreyfus affair which erupted in 1894.

In many ways, it is hard to imagine a more quintessentially nineteenth-century figure than Morès, the gentleman adventurer with a handlebar moustache and an unreconstructed code of honor. But in the new biography The First Fascist: The Sensational Life and Dark Legacy of the Marquis de Morès, historian Sergio Luzzatto portrays him less as an aristocratic holdover than as the progenitor of something new. The Marquis de Morès dreamed of forging the masses into a national community that would exclude only the Jews. He had at his disposal an entourage of hard men, mostly butchers, who flanked him when he made public appearances in Paris. He cast himself as the leader of a revolution destined to transcend divisions between capital and labor. He even proposed a classical Roman symbol, the bundle of rods known as the fasces, to represent the cohesive social order of the future. All this, Luzzatto argues, is enough to make Morès “a father of fascism.”

As Luzzatto acknowledges, previous historians have also glimpsed fascist origins in the dark underbelly of the belle époque. The best-known, if controversial, version of this argument was made by Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell, who found an ideology of “national socialism” taking shape from the 1880s among French thinkers equally disillusioned by bourgeois individualism and proletarian militancy. Luzzatto shifts the focus from ideas to practices—from the theoretical critique of liberal democracy to the political action aimed at bringing the system down—while defending the same contentious timeline as Sternhell. Is it really possible to speak of fascism before the abyss of World War I and its consequences: before the militarization of everyday life, the collapse of empires and monarchies, and the threat of revolutionary socialism?

How far into the past can we see fascism? This is the counterpart to a more familiar question today: Can (or should) we describe the ascendant right-wing politics of the present as “fascist”? Luzzatto, who embraces a capacious understanding of the concept, sees fascism traveling easily across time, and argues that Morès’s career anticipates “so much of the twentieth century, and even—unfortunately for us—more than a few developments of the twenty-first century.” Such bold leaps are unlikely to resolve debates about where to draw the boundaries, chronological or definitional, around fascism. Where The First Fascist does succeed, however, is in challenging the complacent assumption that fascism could only have emerged from an apocalyptic crisis. This is the uneasy lesson of the Morès saga: It didn’t take a world war for unscrupulous men to try amassing power by exploiting features of the mass democracy they claimed to despise. 

Even in the interwar period, which saw explicitly fascist movements seize control of governments in Europe, there was something amorphous about the ideology they proclaimed. Benito Mussolini, who led the first self-described fascist movement and the first fascist regime in power, unleashed a flood of verbiage over the course of decades while struggling to settle on a definition of the term. While Italian fascism had obvious affinities with the Nazi regime in Germany, there were differences too: south of the Alps, a greater emphasis on the corporatist model of state economic coordination, derived from the Catholic social doctrine that also inspired Morès; to the north, a far more ruthless institutionalization of state violence and racial fanaticism. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, fascist and anti-fascist sympathizers everywhere rallied to the side they saw as their own. Yet historians still debate whether Francisco Franco’s counterrevolution should be deemed fascist at all, given its distinctly anti-modern, clerical, and monarchist elements.

It is almost too easy to list the characteristics of fascism because its prolific ideologues claimed so many. There is the litany of “antis”: anti-liberalism, anti-parliamentarianism, anti-individualism, and anti-socialism, as well as antisemitism and (less consistently) anti-capitalism. Fascists borrowed elements from the leftist playbook of revolution—the mobilization of the masses, the regenerative promise of violence, the utopian reimagination of the future—then subordinated them all to the ideal of a racially unified nation. At the same time, they challenged the old conservative elite of church and king with the cult of the charismatic leader. But even more than a philosophical synthesis of left and right, fascist movements were always relentlessly oriented toward the acquisition of power. As they evolved from outsiders into insiders, fascists maintained a permanent state of militarized politics: from brutal vigilantism that challenged established authority; to the police states that enforced discipline and repressed enemies; and finally to the expansionist frenzy of war and conquest. How closely does Morès fit the bill?

The Marquis began with a politics of grievance but honed it into something distinctly sharper and nastier. As a series of corruption scandals tainted the legitimacy of the Third Republic in the 1880s, the standard of living for many French people worsened. In the cities, the capitalist consolidation of distribution networks and the rise of department stores threatened to put shopkeepers and artisans out of business. In the countryside, farmers were squeezed by a worldwide agricultural depression. General Georges Boulanger nearly succeeded in toppling the state in the late 1880s by fusing the diverse grievances of the moment into a quintessentially populist campaign. In Boulangist rhetoric, the “little people,” the modest and the ordinary, represented the true and virtuous nation; they had been betrayed by their rulers, a self-serving and parasitic elite.

Morès entered politics as the backer of a Boulangist candidate who ran unsuccessfully for the Chamber of Deputies in 1889. It was around the same time that he joined forces with one of the most prominent antisemitic campaigners in France, Édouard Drumont. Morès had always been quick to blame Jews for the fiascos of his early career; he claimed, implausibly, that they predominated among the retail butchers of New York and later fixated on a colonial engineering official in Indochina who was Jewish. But the roots of his antisemitism went deeper than these grudges. His education as a young man was dominated by Jesuits who updated the ancient, sectarian tradition of Christian anti-Judaism with a new brand of “social Catholicism” that stigmatized the most assimilated and successful Jews as the bearers of a destructive global capitalism. In the press and in rallies across northern France, Morès and Drumont warned that a Jewish “plutocracy” led by the Rothschilds was crushing the working class through control of the banking system.

In Morès, the lower-born Drumont saw a promisingly charismatic frontman for a movement and employed his skills as a publicist to burnish Morès’s image. Morès, aided by his commanding physique and noble birth, could be presented as “a soldier and a Catholic,” a protector of the nation and a defender of the faith. At the same time, Morès’s commercial and political failures allowed him to pose as a victim of the same malignant forces that he claimed were afflicting humbler Frenchmen. His overseas adventures as a gunslinger, hunter, and empire-builder, meanwhile, gave him a rugged mystique that helped to close the social distance between the aristocrat and the masses. Satirical cartoons portrayed him as a towering, broad-shouldered figure, in one case wrestling Alphonse de Rothschild to the ground while shaking his fist in righteous anger. And he honed his self-presentation as a rough-and-ready man of the people with his unconventional choice of headwear: a wide-brimmed hat that became known as the chapeau Morès, a subtle homage to his cowboy days and a conspicuous renunciation of the genteel top hat.

But the case for Morès as a harbinger of fascism goes beyond his artful image-making as a populist antisemite. He was determined to divert the grievances of artisans and laborers from class conflict to ethnonationalist solidarity. He embraced the nascent ideology of corporatism, urging the extension of public credit to cooperatively owned and operated “workingmen’s companies” while emphasizing his aim of eliminating dependence on Jewish capital. He bankrolled a major strike of coachmen, and tried to jump onto the bandwagon of other labor actions, before cementing an alliance with Parisian butchers through wild accusations that Jewish suppliers were selling tainted meat. Perhaps most significant, he chipped away at the legitimacy of republican institutions by alternating between electoralism and violence. Provoking Jewish army officers into duels by leveling libelous attacks in the press, Morès orchestrated a rising tide of chaos that strained the authority of the state. 

It’s notable that later French fascists claimed Morès as one of their own. In the dark years of the German occupation and the Vichy regime, the French collaborators who saw themselves as protagonists in a long-running ideological civil war held Morès up as a prophet and a warrior for the cause. In 1942, the municipal council of Cannes named a public garden after Morès, with a resolution that honored him as a determined foe of “Anglo-Saxon and Jewish hoarding, the coalition that runs the whole game of world politics.” That same year, as the murderous deportation of Jews from French territory was getting under way, a high-ranking Vichy official, Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, noted that France had been attacking “the Jewish problem” at least since the days of “that great lord of action who was the Marquis de Morès.”

While these continuities are undoubtedly striking, other elements of the fascist claim fall short. For one thing, Morès had no ambition to supplant his beloved church with an all-powerful state. For another, dueling is a far cry from the high-tech violence celebrated by fascist aesthetics, and even Luzzatto concedes that the blue-shirted butchers of La Villette in Paris did not amount to a paramilitary force. The biggest problem with casting Morès’s life as an origin story for fascism is that it risks exoticizing what were, in their time, fairly commonplace commitments. Caesarist mass movements with authoritarian potential—notably Bonapartism, the plebiscitary dictatorship established by Napoleon III in 1851, and later Boulangism—were commonplace in this period of French history. Where exactly these phenomena end and fascism begins is not spelled out in the book.

Morès’s influence peaked in the early 1890s after a Parisian jury refused to convict him for the killing of a Jewish officer. Capitalizing on discontent with the growing numbers of Jewish immigrants driven to France from pogroms in Eastern Europe, he spoke openly of his desire to emulate the tsar and “expel the Jews.” Adding to his influence, Morès had the leading politicians of the Third Republic on the ropes because of corruption charges associated with the collapse of a canal-building venture in Central America, the Compagnie du Panama. A trio of fixers revealed to have distributed bribes to legislators were all of Jewish descent—a fact that Morès and Drumont let no one forget.

But Morès overreached. In his zeal to implicate republican leaders, he joined forces with an amateurish forger and found himself embroiled in an embarrassing fraud case. Worse still, one of his political targets, the wily Georges Clemenceau, fought back with an extraordinary revelation: Morès himself, perpetually indebted, had sought and received a loan from one of the fixers at the heart of the scandal. In short: the would-be savior of the nation was tainted by the Jewish corruption he made a cause of condemning. His reputation never recovered.

Rather than accepting or rejecting the “first fascist” label wholesale, it might be more useful to ask: What is gained by casting Morès as a forefather of fascism? Like Hannah Arendt, who made the Dreyfus affair a pivotal event in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), Luzzatto reminds us that the preconditions for fascism’s emergence were deeply and widely rooted in European history. Though details of authorship remain murky, the urtext of antisemitic conspiracism, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, was also a product of 1890s Paris, emerging from a salon where Drumont rubbed shoulders with intelligence agents of the Russian Empire. Meanwhile, a few hundred miles away in Vienna, a figure not so different than Morès, Georg Ritter von Schönerer, blended charismatic authoritarianism and hostility to Jews to appeal to a mass electorate, and achieved far more success than Morès did. A young Adolf Hitler was among those watching closely.

Before World War I, freshly minted democratic electorates were at once empowered by the extension of the franchise, aggrieved by the consolidation of economic power, and buffeted by the sensationalism of popular media. This was the context in which radicalizing ideas and practices—corporatism, eugenics, leadership cults, cults of violence, and above all, antisemitism—traveled across borders and gained new adherents.  

One of the strengths of Luzzatto’s book is the attention it pays to another of those radicalizing forces: imperial expansionism. As Morès bounced from the North American frontier to India to Indochina and finally to Algeria, he achieved nothing of consequence. But he did cultivate a paranoid view of global plutocracy weaving webs around the world, which strengthened his belief in the urgency of conquest and settlement to stop it. Visiting Algiers in 1894, he absorbed a view circulating in pied noir circles that the way to thwart a supposedly imminent Anglo-Judeo takeover of Africa was for France to forge alliances with the Islamic peoples of the continent. Two years later, on a quixotic unofficial mission to do just that, he met his death in the Saharan interior of Tunisia, murdered in an ambush by Arab and Berber warriors.

This final chapter of the Morès story—the muscular adventurer seeking out new worlds for his people—underscores how much the fascism of the twentieth century drew on the imperialist hero worship of an earlier era. Both adulated the man of destiny who rewrote history by spilling blood and claiming territory. Even Morès’s fairly senseless demise added a sheen of martyrdom to his image that would figure in the Vichy-era revival. In death, as in life, Morès blended racism, violence, and egoism to dramatize the weakness of liberal democracy. As the fascist dictators who came later also knew, this was not an infallible combination. But it had the advantage of serving a double purpose: destabilizing the nation from within while pushing its boundaries outward.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told reporters Friday that he didn’t support Mills’s bid ahead of the state’s primary elections on Tuesday. Earlier this month, Florida Representatives Anna Paulina Luna and Mike Haridopolos endorsed Ryan Elijah, a former television anchor. While Donald Trump announced his endorsement for Mills in February, the president has remained quiet on the subject ever since.

An August survey found Mills only held a six-point lead over Elijah, and also revealed that a whopping 41 percent of Republican voters were still “undecided.”

Mills’s embattled bid for reelection may be coming to an end—in what would be a clear sign that President Donald Trump’s grip is loosening on Florida Republicans.

In the past year, the scrutiny has intensified on the numerous allegations against Mills. The Florida lawmaker has been accused of sexual misconduct, harassment, campaign finance violations, financial disclosure violations, accepting inappropriate gifts, and multiple ethics violations. He has faced a months-long ethics probe and is reportedly under investigation by the Department of Justice.

And then there’s his dating history. Asked by Mother Jones about reports that he had dated a 19-year-old while he was a sitting member of Congress, Mills had this to say:

“There’s nothing illegal about two consenting adults dating. The obsession over a man’s dating life is disturbing at best. I’ve been separated from my now ex-wife years prior to our divorce finalizing. Whether in office or as a private citizen, adults are entitled to date in their attempt to find their person. Sometimes you get lucky and find that immediately, but many are not so blessed. Feel free to run your new and slanderous hit piece.”

Still, Mills has resisted calls to resign. On Tuesday, Florida Republicans will make the decision to leave for him.

Trump had no problem ranting about his supposedly great relationship with Kim Jong Un during his photo-op with a teenage lifeguard—but had a major meltdown when CNN’s Kristen Holmes asked whether the North Korean leader had requested he scale back joint military exercises with South Korea.

“Quiet, quiet, quiet! You’re very disrespectful in front of this young man. Okay? Don’t you find her disrespectful? Heh. He understands. Quiet!” Trump said.

Trump scolds a reporter: Quiet! You’re very disrespectful in front of this young man. Don’t you find her disrespectful? He understands. Quiet! You’re fake news. BE QUIET! You’re a fake reporter. pic.twitter.com/AevIZXEaGp

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 17, 2026

His tantrum only got worse when the reporter revealed she was with CNN.

“Fake news. You’re fake news. You’re a loud—you’re a loud, boisterous person. You’re fake news. Be quiet. Be quiet. Be quiet!” Trump said. “You’re a fake reporter, and you report fake news.”

Trump’s shameful outburst is just the latest in a well-documented history of lashing out at female reporters. The president has called female reporters “the worst” and “second-rate,” telling them to “be quiet,” that they “know nothing about nothing,” and that he doesn’t like their “attitude.” His vitriol has only intensified during his second term. In November, he told Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey “Quiet, Piggy!” Last month, he targeted CNN’s Kaitlan Collins with transphobic jokes.

Separately Monday, the White House attacked Holmes for another question about criticism of the president’s cozy relationship with his aide Natalie Harp, calling the question “disgusting and inhumane” in a post on X. Clearly, it struck a nerve.

“Mr. President, is there enough food on the USS Lincoln?” a reporter asked Trump right after he finished berating a CNN reporter who asked him about North Korea.

“Yeah, it is. That was a CNN fake report. The Lincoln has been out there for a period of time … but over the years we’ve had ‘em out there much longer,” Trump said. “I was at a group meeting, and an admiral came up to see me over the weekend.... He said ‘I’ve been on ships that are out there much longer than that sir, and I know people on the Lincoln, they say it’s beautifully maintained’.… It was fake news reporting from CNN.”

Reporter: Is there enough food on the USS Lincoln?

Trump: Yeah, there is. It was a it was a CNN fake report. pic.twitter.com/l7JaCA8wKW

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 17, 2026

It wasn’t just CNN. Multiple outlets have reported extremely low morale aboard the Lincoln caused by a low supply of dismal-looking food, provisions, and contaminated water—which, combined with the nine months on the water, has caused some of the sailors on the Lincoln to literally jump ship. Family members of sailors and Marines aboard the Lincoln have detailed concerns about their mental health to various publications, including the Military Times, USA Today, and MS NOW.

The Republican response to these reports has been either flat-out denial with no evidence—like Trump—or attacking and emasculating the sailors.

“How weak are you?” Fox News contributor Joey Jones ranted on Sunday. “To sit there and say it was terrible because you had a corndog and a hotdog?… If this is a representation of who our military is now … we’re just Rome sitting here waiting to burn.”

Over half of America opposes the war on Iran. It seems like some of the people fighting it are coming around too.

Attorney General Todd Blanche announced a new regulation Monday that allows convicted felons to apply to restore their access to guns. The Justice Department estimates that 330,000 people will attempt to take advantage of the new rule when applications open next month.

Federal law prohibits anyone from possessing a gun who commits a crime punishable by more than one year, as well as undocumented immigrants, dishonorably discharged military veterans, and people convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors. Overall, about 30 million Americans can’t legally own firearms due to criminal convictions.

“The Second Amendment is not a second-class right, and the federal government should not permanently deprive Americans of a constitutional right without regard to whether they pose a danger to public safety,” Blanche said.

Previously, only those who were pardoned for their crimes regained gun rights. Last year, pardon attorney Liz Oyer was fired from the DOJ after refusing to restore the gun rights of actor Mel Gibson, who was convicted of domestic violence in 2011. Under the new plan, registered sex offenders, violent criminals, and undocumented immigrants will still be barred from owning guns, the DOJ said.

In his second term, Trump has expanded the rights of gun owners and manufacturers, signing executive orders stretching the Second Amendment as far as he can (except for trans people) and reviving attacks on Democrats for “coming for your guns.” This new move from the president will curry favor from gun enthusiasts and organizations like the National Rifle Association, which have long fought regulations that would reduce gun violence and mass shootings. In this case, Trump only cares about making his right-wing base happy.

But over the weekend, the DNC made three decisions that showed how the party committee can be a force for progress and innovation in a party desperate for both. Thank goodness. All is not lost at party headquarters.

The official party, which is made up of 450 members from across the country, adopted a wide array of resolutions over the weekend. One was to formally approve the calendar for the upcoming Democratic presidential nomination. South Carolina’s primary will be held first on January 22, 2028 (a Saturday), then Nevada on Tuesday, February 1, New Hampshire on February 8, New Mexico on February 15, Michigan the following Tuesday, and finally Virginia on the Tuesday after that, February 29. (New Hampshire is very protective of its first-in-the-nation status and might try to be first again.) That’s a great mix. States in every region of the country. Some with large Black populations, others with large Latino populations, some very urban; some quite rural (New Hampshire). Lots of different industries and kinds of workers are in those states.

Some progressives are complaining that starting off in South Carolina gives an unfair advantage to center-left candidates, since establishment Democrats such as Representative James Clyburn have a lot of sway there. Those in the party (left and center-left) who don’t want Kamala Harris to again be the party’s nominee worry heavily Black South Carolina leading the process tips the scales too far in favor of the former vice-president. I think they’re wrong—or at least overstating their case. Close to half of the voters in South Carolina’s primary will be white, and many of the African Americans there are young, progressive, or both. I don’t think Harris (or another center-left Black candidate such as Maryland Governor Wes Moore) is automatically guaranteed to carry South Carolina, which was mostly recently won by Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.

Even if Harris wins South Carolina, that momentum doesn’t ensure her victories in the next several states. South Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, and New Mexico are so different that it’s hard to imagine that a single candidate wins all four. If someone does, then that person is a really strong candidate. This combination of states requires a candidate to have a fairly broad support within the party to win lots of states consecutively. That’s how it should be.

This calendar officially ends the days when the party that is supposed to represent America’s diversity had its two most important contests, the ones where most campaign stops were held and the field winnowed, in two of the least-diverse states in the country (Iowa and New Hampshire).

Second, the full DNC rejected a proposal from the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee that would have banned ranked-choice voting in the presidential primaries. Ranked-choice voting is the system by which people list their preferred candidates in order and the choices of the lowest-ranked candidates are discarded until one person has a majority. It’s what New York City Democrats used in their most recent mayoral primary. Several states vote this way too.

Ranked-choice is a particularly useful system for races with more than two candidates, allowing voters to both choose their favorite and then rank one of the leading candidates if their favorite isn’t among the top. A presidential primary will likely have several candidates, and sometimes hopefuls drop out after people have already voted.

According to DNC rules, a candidate doesn’t win delegates unless they win at least 15 percent of the vote in a state. So currently, if you back someone who finishes at 14 percent or below, that vote is essentially wasted. With ranked-choice, that 14 percent will be redistributed to higher-polling candidates. That won’t make much difference in the total delegate math. But it means that more voters will have gotten to select one of the top candidates.

Third, the DNC adopted a resolution calling for Democratic members of Congress “to craft legislation abolishing ICE.” Conservatives have seized on this resolution, arguing that it shows the Democrats are too liberal. But it’s important to distinguish between abolishing police and abolishing ICE, both stands adopted by some on the left. In terms of electoral politics, while abolishing police polls terribly, close to a majority of Americans favor getting rid of ICE. So this isn’t a huge political risk.

And in terms of policy, getting rid of ICE is a much more realistic goal than cutting back on police. Advocates calling for the abolition of both ICE and local police departments correctly argue that both kinds of law enforcement often ignore civilian authority, brutalize people, and discriminate against people of color. The differences are that police departments also provide a vital service of fighting local crime and report to a diffuse array of mayors and city council members across the country. In contrast, ICE has been turned into essentially a standing army for Trump, preying on liberal cities and activists. And since we have local police departments, the FBI, and numerous other agencies to enforce laws across the country, the United States does not actually need a special apparatus for interior immigration enforcement. I am not suggesting getting rid of all immigration law or personnel. The Customs and Border Patrol, for example, is still useful. But America was fine before ICE was created in 2003 and the heinous actions of the agency during both of Trump’s terms suggest we need to rethink our immigration infrastructure now.

DNC policy resolutions have no practical effect. Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer aren’t likely to demand that all the party’s candidates pledge to abolish ICE—and might even distance themselves from this idea. That’s fine. The party’s voters overwhelmingly support getting rid of ICE. So it’s great that the DNC is representing their perspective and pushing congressional Democrats in that direction.

None of these positive moves have much to do with Martin himself or the party’s lackluster fundraising under his leadership. The party should still take stock of whether Martin is the right leader ahead of a critical presidential election. His messy handling of the autopsy convinces me that Martin should be replaced.

But the DNC is bigger than Martin—and at least this weekend, better.

The British network asked a U.S. federal judge for help in getting documents and testimony from Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and her husband Jared Kushner, the Associated Press reports, citing court documents. Serving the subpoenas has posed a challenge due to all three having Secret Service agents and other security protection, the documents stated. 

Trump filed the $10 billion lawsuit in December, claiming the British network defamed him in a 2024 documentary by editing his speech on January 6, 2021 before the Capitol insurrection. He accused the BBC of “splicing together two entirely separate parts” of his speech to “intentionally misrepresent the meaning” of what he said.

But the lawsuit has had unintended consequences for the president. The network demanded Trump turn over financial documents to demonstrate financial harm from the documentary, to which a judge agreed. The judge also approved subpoenas of his family members and close advisers, including Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon. The BBC has additionally asked for more records related to former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into January 6. 

Trump balked at handing over any financial documents, filing an emergency motion to pause the judge’s order that was later granted. Now though, the BBC wants to know what information the Trump children have, as they were reportedly present while the president was revising his speech that he would deliver after his supporters had stormed the Capitol. Trump’s lawyers say that “the BBC is simply trying to distract away from their own obvious liability.”

“The BBC intentionally defamed President Donald J. Trump, and now the BBC is seeking to harass him, his family, and supporters by abusing the deposition process,” Trump’s legal team said in a statement. 

Trump probably thought he could scare the BBC into a settlement payday and some favorable coverage. Now, he’s having to fight attempts to discover his internal finances and what his family knows about January 6, 2021.  

Ossoff questioned the president’s relationship with Harp, 35, at an Atlanta rally on Sunday.

“He golfs and trades stocks,” he said. “See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.”

Ossoff says that Trump doesn’t want to do his job but wants to “travel with Natalie” pic.twitter.com/aDLMKFeMmR

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 16, 2026

The crowd broke into applause—and the White House took the bait.

Trump himself lashed out after being asked about Ossoff’s comments Monday afternoon.

“You mean Pee-Wee Herman? Pee-Wee Herman lookalike?” Trump replied, pulling out his recent nickname for Ossoff. “I would much rather do other things.”

“Jon Jackoff has to be the biggest cuck loser in politics,” Steven Cheung, the ever-cantankerous White House communications director, posted on X. “Instead of denigrating hard working people serving their country, Jon should look deep into his soul and ask himself why he’s a miserable person who hates this country. It’s because he’s a radical, extremist Dumocrat.”

“Jon Ossoff is a cringeworthy, feminine theatre kid cosplaying as Barack Obama. Nobody gives a shit what this lightweight loser says,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said on X, launching a homophobic insult at Ossoff.

Trump and Harp’s working relationship has long been the subject of scrutiny, and Ossoff calling her out by name will only intensify it.

Harp was one of the few administration members who snuck away with Trump on a secret flight out of Turkey last month, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio, other Cabinet members, and journalists remained aboard the Air Force One gifted by Qatar—amid concerns it would be the target of a potential Iranian strike.

Harp’s own brother told The Daily Mail that Harp and Trump’s relationship was “very unhealthy,” and in their book Regime Change, The New York Times writers Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reported that Harp in 2023 left Trump what amounted to love letters, with one even reading, “You are all that matters to me.”

“Ossoff winking at the rumor that Natalie Harp is more than just Trump’s staffer,” liberal podcaster Tommy Vietor wrote on X. “The question now is whether this will kick up a round of actual reporting by news outlets.”

This story has been updated.

The outrage was on its face ridiculous. Not only would the foot washing stations have been perfectly legal and accessible to all travelers, but there are already two foot-washing stations in DFW Airport. The manufactured controversy was part of a growing wave of dangerous anti-Muslim sentiment being pushed by conservative leaders in Texas, according to a sweeping report The New York Times published Monday.

Dallas-Fort Worth has become a popular destination for Muslim families looking to make their home and find community in the United States. Over the last decade, the population of immigrants from Muslim majority countries grew by an estimated 80,000 people in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area.

Still, Texas’s Muslim population is estimated to be between 300,000 and 500,000 people, accounting for roughly 2 percent of the state’s entire population—and yet for many conservative voters in Texas, Islam has replaced the U.S. border as a major concern.

In Dallas-Fort Worth, this anti-Muslim vitriol hit a new wave in early 2025, after officials announced the construction of the East Plano Islamic Center, or EPIC City, a large housing development and mosque outside of Dallas. Governor Greg Abbott has launched an investigation into the project. In the past year, things have only gotten worse.

In November, Abbott designated the Council of American-Islamic Relations as a “terrorist” organization, just months after the group documented a surge of Islamophobic rhetoric nationally. In May, Abbott ordered the cancellation of a private “Muslims only” party at a water park to celebrate Eid al-Adha, inviting a wave of backlash against the organizers. In June, the Texas State Board of Education voted to make the Bible a permanent part of the K-12 education curriculum.

That same month, at a Texas State Republican Convention, every speaker expressed some form of Islamophobic sentiment. Multiple panels warned of a so-called “invasion.” In a post on social media, Bo French, the Republican nominee for Texas Railroad Commissioner, warned, “I know I won’t rest until every Muslim is gone.”

Looking forward, Texas Republicans are looking for ways to use state laws to ban or regulate Islamic cultural practices governed by religious rules as soon as next year. Representative Alan Schoolcraft, a Republican candidate from San Antonio, told the Times that Islam is “much more than a religion” and urged Muslims to “try to become a citizen where you’re living. Otherwise there’s going to be conflict.”

But for many Muslims, “assimilating” comes with its own risks. Dr. Farhat Shaikh, a resident of Frisco, north of Dallas, told the Times that assimilating meant being “part of the decision making,” but noted that being actively involved in institutions can get labeled as a “take over.”

Kushner met with Netanyahu along with Board of Peace Director Nickolay Mladenov Monday to discuss implementing the 15-point plan, CNN reports. The president’s son-in-law, who doesn’t hold an official position with the Trump administration, asked that Netanyahu “not create obstacles,” an unnamed Israeli source told the network.

Netanyahu refused to commit to anything, telling Kushner and Mladenov that Hamas had to disarm before Israel begins withdrawing any troops from Gaza. The meeting with Netanyahu came one day Kushner met with Hamas representatives in Egypt on Sunday. Hamas said it agrees to Trump’s peace framework, but will only begin disarmament if Israel follows through on a sequenced withdrawal from Gaza at the same time.

Israel has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians in Gaza in the last three years, including at least 1,260 since a ceasefire was declared last October. But Netanyahu publicly rejected the proposed peace plan earlier this month, calling it “problematic” because of impending Israeli elections in October. The accused war criminal has tied his political fortunes to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, using the war as an excuse to evade corruption charges and rally Israeli voters. Any concessions could undermine his chances of staying in power.

“Low-optics” is the key term there. The new gloves won’t stoke public outrage like traditional weapons and they don’t leave any marks—making them the perfect tool for dodging lawsuits for excessive force.

Speaking in a promotional video for Compliant Technologies published in 2024, Adam Glueck, then-assistant chief of the Cape Girardeau Police Department in southeastern Missouri, explained why his officers had grown so “attached” to the devices.

“In today’s society, you know, everybody’s filming everything, everybody has a cell phone,” Glueck said, adding that the glove “looks better on camera, and it looks better to those witnesses. With a glove, there are no burn marks or scars.”

Bob Couey of the Floyd County Sheriff’s Department recommended the glove for “anybody that’s looking for a utility they can use that is conducive to not leading to lawsuits.”

Video footage of the gloves in action show just how powerful they can be, causing grown men to crumple to the ground in a matter of seconds.

The gloves are considered less lethal—but federal agents will likely feel more empowered to use them against a wider range of people. The manufacturer warns against using their device on elderly people, pregnant women, children, and people with severe disabilities—individuals who have not been spared from the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on immigrants.

The Washington Post reported over the weekend that the Navy is conducting an internal review on the viability of moving command towers from the starboard side of the aircraft carriers to the middle, in an attempt to mimic the older warships from World War II that Trump likes. The decision was spurred directly by Trump’s aesthetic preferences, with a Navy official telling The Hill that the president requested the Navy “implement design changes to our future aircraft carriers.” The review is due in “several weeks,” another former official said.

Trump has also ordered the Navy to switch from electromagnetic catapult systems to steam-powered ones, another aesthetic decision that would force the military to spend time and taxpayer funds on making its ships look more antiquated, all so that they can keep sitting around in the Persian Gulf while the Strait of Hormuz remains closed.

“The placement of the island on the Ford class was chosen to support the ship’s design purpose of maximizing aircraft sortie generation—which for an aircraft carrier, directly translates to combat power. A good-faith exploration of future carrier design based on real-world operational requirements is one thing,” Naval maritime strategist Hunter Stires told The Hill. “Expending millions of taxpayer dollars and the time and energy of the Navy’s engineering organizations redesigning the nation’s premier capital ship to indulge the president’s aesthetic whims is not only wasteful and abusive, it exemplifies President Trump’s evident contempt for America’s fighting sailors.”

This news comes as Trump’s upcoming class of 10 new aircraft carriers is estimated to cost $275 billion over the next 30 years.

Jennings, a CNN contributor, went viral last week after posting a heavily edited, intentionally misleading video of what looked like Piker expressing extreme hostility towards Black voters and calling for lynchings. With the full context, it is obvious that Piker was being sarcastic. 

“Black voters have been voting against the socialists, only to be ruled in many cases by privileged white commies,” Jennings claimed, using Black identity as a bludgeon against the Democratic left. “Did you ever notice, by the way, how violent these people are? … Now [Abdul] El-Sayed’s best friend is out there calling for Black voters to be lynched. Beneath all the smiles and dancing videos, there’s nothing but hate and violence in the heart of these Communists.”

Abdul El-Sayed’s best pal and campaign partner says the USA should resume lynchings against black people.

Listen for yourself and understand what the socialists have in store for the black community pic.twitter.com/N3ntbIHefw

— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) August 12, 2026

As Snopes reported, Jennings lied when he claimed that Piker wanted to bringing back lynchings, as “Piker’s remarks on lynchings were sarcastic reactions to a user’s chat comment and opinions expressed by someone else in a separate video.”

Jennings’s video was widely panned, with many calling for Piker to sue. The streamer called Jennings’s video “the worst instance of defamation” he’d seen. On Sunday, Piker confirmed that his team is preparing a defamation lawsuit, saying it seemed “unavoidable,” and that it might include Fox News.

“This kind of defamation is completely unacceptable,” Piker told Status. “It’s exactly how normal people perceive mainstream media to operate, and it’s a real crisis of credibility. I think someone has to push back against it at some point.”

“In Trump 2.0, we now traffic in lies all the time. Just because the Republicans are trafficking in lies with regular frequency doesn’t mean that you can’t uphold some kind of editorial standard,” he continued. “CNN can put whoever they want to on a panel at the end of the day, but it just signals to me, and I think a lot of other people, that some of their panelists are just going to be liars.”

Piker has been a boogeyman for right-wingers like Jennings and centrist liberals for some time, as they choose to focus their slander on him rather than constructing any kind of tangible, positive political message. And Jennings is perhaps the last person anyone should be listening to in regards to Black politics in America.  

The president took to Truth Social Sunday to blame vandals for a large area of dead grass on the National Mall—that happened to be on the same spot where he built a massive stage for his Fourth of July celebrations.

“Look what VANDALS did to the grass connecting the vandalized World War II Monument and the vandalized Reflecting Pool, which will be opened again, and better than ever, shortly,” Trump wrote. “Anybody who thinks the Reflecting Pool wasn’t vandalized should go back to Law School!”

Last week, Trump sounded the alarm again after the World War II Memorial was covered in red and green graffiti and soapy bubbles. U.S. Attorney Jeannine Pirro said felony charges are being brought against Melissa L. Farris, but the charging documents made no mention of the patch of dead grass on the lawn.

Regardless of Trump’s apparent outrage, the president has demonstrated that he couldn’t care less about protecting national landmarks—he’s the one destroying them.

The president who cried vandalism has been behind a lot of the destruction at the National Mall. The Department of Justice concluded that Trump and his hand-picked contractors were responsible for the damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool that left the monument drained and surrounded by chain-link fences. Trump’s federal contractors were also also responsible for cracking the fountain at the German-American Friendship Garden. Not to mention that across the country Trump is actively bulldozing Big Bend National Park in order to build his border wall.

Fox News’s Trey Yingst reported on the network Monday that Trump claimed there is a backchannel with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard officials, but that he is in “no hurry” and, “if Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them.”

It’s not a reassuring statement, especially considering that Iranian Army chief Amir Hatami on Sunday announced bounties for the death or capture of U.S. troops. The sums start at $30,000 and double if a woman completes the mission. Hatami said the plan came after a “large number of requests” to support the war.

“Anyone who kills or captures and hands over invading American military personnel will receive a reward equivalent to $30,000,” Hatami said. “Courageous Iranian women who carry out such an action will receive double the reward.”

Any weapon captured in such an operation would be bought by the Iranian Army for twice its market value and displayed in a museum, according to Iranian state media.

Trump has alternatively threatened to escalate the bombing campaign against Iran while claiming that a peace deal is imminent. Usually, at the last minute, Trump claims he has pulled back from bombing for one reason or another, such as U.S. allies in the region warning against escalation or U.S. military leaders warning of declining missile stockpiles.

On Friday, Trump said that he planned to declare the Strait of Hormuz as U.S. territory, even as Iran continues to throttle maritime traffic through the critical waterway. The area is split between Omani and Iranian territory, and oil and gas from Persian Gulf countries are exported to the world from there. As this war stretches on without Trump sticking to a deal, the global economy continues to suffer, with civilians in Iran and around the Middle East praying that they don’t fall victim to a bomb or airstrike.

Trump sought to overturn a 2023 jury verdict awarding $5 million to Carroll for defamation and alleged sexual abuse. The Supreme Court rejected an earlier appeal from Trump in June, and Trump wanted them to take the rare step of rehearing the case, which the court unceremoniously denied Monday.

Carroll accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a New York City department store in 1996, which Trump denied, attacking her on social media and accusing her of “a complete con job” and a “Hoax and a lie.” She sued him in 2022, and a jury ruled against him, leading to a series of appeals by Trump.

The president eventually paid the cash to Carroll through a fund set up during the appeals process, which grew to $5.8 million after interest. He continues to insist that he didn’t know Carroll and accuses her of making up the story for political and financial reasons, even as he lost another defamation lawsuit to Carroll for $88.3 million, which he also appealing.

Trump is likely to throw a tantrum over the ruling, just as he did when the Supreme Court turned him down in June. He hates having to pay money that he owes, despite the fact that he’s financially better than ever thanks to using the presidency to enrich himself. This time, though, Trump is out of excuses to evade paying Carroll.

This story has been updated.

“Based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un, of North Korea, I am not happy with the fact that the United States has, long ago, agreed to participate in Joint Military Exercises with South Korea. These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful,” he wrote Sunday evening on Truth Social.

“I have instructed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises!” he continued, attributing his decision to South Korea’s position on the Iran war.

“While somewhat unrelated (?), I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, ‘No thanks!’”

It’s unclear how the U.S. plans to reduce the exercises. The annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise already proceeded as planned on Monday, the South Korean Defense Ministry confirmed—with 18,000 South Korean forces and 28,500 American ones.

Nonetheless, Trump is spiting South Korea, a longtime ally, for not helping bail him out in Iran while also making a clear overture to the one country it has the most hostile and adversarial relationship with.

“Trump’s description of the D.P.R.K. as ‘unthreatening and respectful’ is alarming to allies, who have watched the regime steadily improve its missile and nuclear capabilities, while also gaining an additional patron in Russia for its support in the war on Ukraine,” Asia Society Policy Institute Deputy Director Emma Chanlett-Avery told The New York Times.

This is just the latest example of the deteriorating U.S.-South Korea relationship under Trump. South Korea has been hit by U.S. tariffs, had hundreds of its citizens (with valid work visas) detained in an immigration raid, and now has lost access to joint military exercizes—all while Trump praises Kim Jong Un and North Korea continues to expand its military capabilities.

“For 70 years, America has held these joint exercises to train AND reassure its Asia-Pacific allies. Furthermore, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is NOT respectful of the USA, now or ever. In the past few months, he has blatantly said NoKo is and always will be a nuclear power, specifically to ward off any hostile action, like America and Israel’s war on Iran,” CNN’s Christiane Amanpour mused Monday on X.

“He already has dozens of nukes, and in June, called for an ‘exponential’ expansion of Pyongyang’s arsenal. They’d already ramped up dramatically since Trump’s failed Hanoi summit with Kim in 2019, which I covered,” she continued. “Since then, Kim has ramped up missile testing, while his soldiers now have real battlefield experience since fighting for Russia against Ukraine. Respectful?”

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Donald Trump just had two very strange outbursts that won’t make Republicans happy. In one, he angrily ridiculed the idea that anyone would be upset about higher costs created by his war. In the other, he brushed off the concerns of military families about the length of overseas deployments. All this comes as Trump is pushing through dramatic new changes to aircraft carriers that are roundly rejected by military experts.

And that prompted a scalding takedown from a Democratic senator who actually knows something about these topics. It occurs to us that all this captures something essential about the fix we’re in. Trump has been faking it all his life, and it’s finally catching up with us. We’re going to work through it all with MS Now’s Steve Benen, who caught a really interesting pattern buried in all this lunacy. Steve, good to have you back on.

Steve Benen: Thanks, Greg. It’s great to be here.

Sargent: So let’s start with what Trump said at a rally just now. Listen to this.

Donald Trump (voiceover): For you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember, you’re doing it so that a very evil country cannot have a—it’s really the number one state sponsor of terror in the world. We don’t want to have them have a nuclear weapon. So remember that when you have to pay a little bit more. You’re at four dollars. It’s OK. I mean, it’s—I’m not, I’m not—I’ll never apologize. I did the right thing.

Sargent: Steve, that is really something. Note the pure seething contempt for anyone who’s concerned by the added costs created by his war, his unnecessary war. He’s unable to grasp these voter concerns through any frame other than how it reflects on him. I think this is a big deal, big news. What do you think?

Benen: Yeah, I think you’re right. I mean, here we are, twelve weeks out from the midterms. Polls showed that affordability and the cost of living are the number one issue on the minds of the vast majority of voters. And so one would like to think that the head of the Republican Party, the sitting American president, would have the wherewithal to express some empathy and to say, maybe I can try and help you. Maybe I care about the pain that you’re dealing with right now, and I’m going to maybe promise you new policies or a better tomorrow in some way.

But no, he doesn’t do any of those things. Donald Trump instead stands in front of a crowd full of supporters, mocks the very idea that they’re suffering in any way, and denies any responsibility for the fact that he’s to blame for these circumstances that people are suffering through.

And so, you said you think it’s a big deal. I agree with you. I think this is the sort of thing that can resonate with most voters, who see this and will be disgusted by it. And so I would not be the least bit surprised if this is one of those quotes that just lingers in the public mind for the next several weeks.

Sargent: Yes. And this is something that Democrats really have to grab onto. I don’t want to hear anything from any Democratic strategists about how Trump’s negatives are baked in or whatever. Grab this and use it. That’s what I think they should do.

Benen: Well, wait a minute. It’s a gift handed to Democrats on a platter. I mean, here we are, looking at a set of circumstances in which Democrats are saying that they want to focus almost exclusively on kitchen-table issues. They want to avoid social issues altogether, nothing about the culture war. They want to talk about the economy. Well, great.

The head of the Republican Party just said he doesn’t care about higher gas prices. He laughs off affordability as a scam. He doesn’t accept responsibility for the fact that he’s ultimately to blame for the fact that people are suffering through these higher costs, higher cost of living, higher prices. And so, I think you’re quite right. For Democrats who are looking for a strategy for the final 12 weeks, for this home stretch between now and November—well, here it is. Donald Trump just handed it to you.

Sargent: He absolutely did. This is the sort of thing that could really seep into the coverage. So let’s now go to this other Trump outburst. Reporting had indicated that on the USS Lincoln aircraft carrier, living conditions were poor, in part because it had been out at sea for far too long in the Mideast.

Now, the audio of this exchange is not great, but listen carefully and you can hear that a reporter asks Trump to respond to families’ concerns about these long deployments. Trump just brushes it off. Listen.

Reporter (voiceover): Family members of U.S. servicemembers are concerned with the conditions aboard the USS Lincoln…

Donald Trump (voiceover): Well, no, that ship is moving. No, they’re not. That ship is moving right now, or very shortly, and it’s being replaced with another very similar ship.

Reporter (voiceover): Have the deployments gone on too long?

Donald Trump (voiceover): No, not nearly long enough.

Sargent: So there Trump says that the families just aren’t concerned about all this, because he says so. And then he says, you know, the deployment hasn’t gone on long enough, by which I think he means, we’re going to continue this until we win. But again, the seething contempt is the story here.

Steve, I recognize that Trump has rewritten the rules of our politics, but this plus the other thing together paint a picture of a president who feels zero obligation of any kind to take ordinary people’s concerns seriously.

Benen: I think that in both instances he had an opportunity to show empathy, but he’s simply incapable of doing so. It’s just not in his nature. It’s not part of his MO. He can’t bring himself to recognize that this was an opportunity to show some sympathy, to show some empathy, to show that he cares, that he understands the suffering of people who deserve sympathy—and yet he can’t bring himself to do it.

Now, in the case of high gas prices, it’s a much larger group of people, but at the same time, it’s just as important, if not more so, to sympathize with the sailors and marines on the USS Lincoln and the loved ones back home, who are concerned about the fact that they’ve had this modern-day record for the longest possible deployment, and now they’re running out of soap and food.

What is the president’s response to this? It’s to express indifference, to just shrug it off.

Sargent: Trump instantly converts everything into a question of whether he is getting the esteem and the adulation that he knows is due to him.

Benen: If he were to acknowledge the fact that these families exist, that these loved ones who are worried about the sailors and the marines on the USS Lincoln—if he were to acknowledge the fact that their concerns exist, it would reflect poorly on him. It would reflect poorly on his administration, on his poor judgment, on Pete Hegseth’s judgment, for an illegal war that he doesn’t know how to end.

And so if he were to acknowledge their existence, it would reflect poorly on him. And so therefore he has no choice, in his twisted mind and his twisted perspective and worldview, but to say, well, then therefore they don’t exist, because they can’t, in his mind. And it’s just so offensive on its face. A normal human being, much less a normal American president, knows not to behave this way. And yet here we are, seeing him once again demonstrate the fact that his entire worldview is broken.

Sargent: Yes, and it’s in this context that Trump is directing the Navy to completely uproot a system it uses for launching jets from aircraft carriers and replace it with steam catapults. Now, I don’t claim any expertise in this area, OK?

Benen: Neither do I.

Sargent: But a lot of experts are saying it’s a terrible idea that will needlessly cost billions of dollars. And the Navy has been battling the idea for years, because it’s been a longtime obsession of Trump’s. Steve, can you sort of sum up what this is all about?

Benen: Well, sure. About a decade ago, apparently, according to Donald Trump, he spoke to some sailor who said that the current system of launching jet fighters off of aircraft carriers was too complicated. And so apparently, as part of this conversation, this sailor—who may or may not exist, whose name we do not know—said that he preferred the steam catapults.

And ever since then, Donald Trump has said, for whatever reason, that he disagrees with the Navy, disagrees with the experts, disagrees with all the engineers and everyone who could possibly lend him good advice. He disagrees with all of them and says, no, no, we need steam catapults, not electromagnetic catapults.

And so, early on in his first term, he apparently directed the Navy to start pursuing this change. And they blew him off because—and this is the important part—they know what they’re talking about. Unlike the president, who doesn’t, they knew what they were talking about, and so they ignored him.

And yet here we are, second term, and we have an official document posted to the White House website that shows that Donald Trump has actually gone to the Pentagon and said, I am directing you to move forward with plans to swap out the existing system and replace it with steam-based catapults—because, according to the president, this is the smart thing to do, despite the fact that the Navy has told him that it is not.

Sargent: Yes. And so you caught this interesting, broader pattern in which Trump just declares himself to be one of the world’s foremost experts, or even the world’s leading expert, in all sorts of different areas, in whatever comes up at any time. You looked back and found that he said this on construction, on tariffs, on firearms, on health care, on drone technology, even on grass. That one, I didn’t know what to make of. Trump is an expert on grass. What kind of grass? I might be leaving a few out.

Tell us what you found when you looked at this pattern.

Benen: Well, you know, last week, in an offhand comment, Donald Trump said, quote, “I know more about grass than any human being, I think, anywhere in the world,” end quote. Now, if you’re laughing, as you should, because it’s hilarious—I laughed at it too. But in context, this is something that he does all the time. No matter what the subject is, he is the world-renowned authoritative source on every subject.

He not just claims to have familiarity with the subject, or a basic competence—he claims to have limitless expertise, without rival anywhere on the planet, on all of the subjects. Now, on the one hand, of course, we can laugh about that, because it’s absurd. But on the other hand, that arrogance, that misplaced arrogance, leads him to believe that he’s capable of making decisions about things he knows nothing about, because in his mind he is the foremost expert on these subjects.

And so when it comes to things like how best to launch jet planes off of an aircraft carrier, he doesn’t turn to people who know what they’re talking about. He instead says, well, I am the foremost expert on this subject. I talked to a sailor 10 years ago who likes catapults. So therefore, we’re going to go with that steam-based approach.

Sargent: Donald Trump is a devotee of positive thinking. He’s someone who genuinely believes that you can make things true by saying them. This has been true about Trump all his life. And all his life as well, it has also applied to him saying that he knows more than anyone else in the world about any subject.

But I can’t help but feel like, after a lifetime of Trump getting away with this, we might finally be at the point where he’s not going to be able to get away with it much longer. Is that too optimistic, or what?

Benen: Well, I don’t think it’s too optimistic. And the reason I believe that there’s something to this is that right now we see his approval rating sinking. We see his popularity collapsing. And I think that that is a reflection of the fact that the American mainstream has had an opportunity to get a good look at this guy, to get a good sense of where he’s leading the country, looking at the results of his approach to governance over the last year and a half—in fact, over the last five and a half years of his presidency. And they’re rejecting it roundly and soundly. And they’re saying, you know what? I’m sick of it.

There are a lot of people who voted for him who now regret that. There are a lot of people who voted against him, or who are now eager to vote in the midterms. And so I don’t think it’s overly optimistic to think that we’ve really turned a page here. We’ve got congressional Republicans kind of separating themselves from him. We see voters definitely rejecting the White House.

And so I think that combination of factors, plus what we’re seeing in terms of the special election results and primary turnout—all of these factors lead me to think that there is a blue wave taking shape, that there is a movement taking shape to reject what we’re seeing out of the White House. And so I think that optimism that you described, I think, is well grounded.

Sargent: I think a lot of people will listen to you and me talking about this with a little bit of pessimism or skepticism. They’ll say, OK, well, we went through this in Trump 1.0. And in a few years, everybody just forgot about what Trump had done, even though, you know, hundreds of thousands of people needlessly died and the economy was crashed into the shitter. And that’s true, right? But there is reason to think that things are different this time.

For one thing, voters wrongly, I think—but still, they concluded that COVID was kind of an external event that wasn’t Trump’s fault. It was imposed on him, and that that’s what crashed the economy, right? I don’t think that’s right, but I can see how voters concluded it. For another, during Trump’s first term, he actually did listen to people to a degree that he simply does not right now. And I think that’s a critical difference.

We’re seeing in his second term Trumpism unshackled on every front—immigration, tariffs, America First in the world. And I think that that fact, that the three major pillars of Trumpism, of MAGA, of right-wing populism, were really tried in this new kind of way and are failing so miserably, kind of creates an opening for a different level of rejection of Donald Trump and Trumpism. Do you think that’s too optimistic?

Benen: I don’t. And I want to back up for a second, because you were saying that a lot of people who are listening to this are going to think that, well, we’ve been through this, but Trump had kind of worked his way out and he ends up on top anyway. But I’d remind folks, in his first term, his first midterms were a disaster for Republicans. Democrats took back the House. And in a presidential election, Trump lost roundly, by more than five million votes to Joe Biden.

And so I don’t want to make it seem as if somehow Trump has always persevered under these circumstances, because I think we look back in recent history and that hasn’t been the case. But putting that aside, even looking at more contemporary conditions, I think that what we’re seeing now is a wholesale rejection based on a wholesale failure.

I mean, I think that the benchmarks that you just identified are true. I think that right now the fact that Democrats have an advantage on immigration for the first time in many, many years is a reflection of the fact that people see the status quo and they’re not satisfied with it. They are rejecting it, and they’re opening the door to something fundamentally different.

Sargent: Some polls are showing that Democrats have the advantage on the economy for the first time in many years. So immigration and the economy and national security—three areas where Republicans have had traditional advantages, all thrown away by Donald Trump’s incompetence. That’s the story, I think.

Benen: Right. And it’s fueled by fact. This is not just based on perception, it is fueled by fact. I think that ICE and the immigration agenda has been a spectacular failure. We look at the economy, we see the economy losing jobs and with stagnant growth. These are not just based on perceptions. It’s not just based on media narratives. This is about facts. This is about reality. This is about the daily lives that Americans are experiencing, and they’re seeing failure, and they’re sick of it.

Sargent: These are really the three pillars of right-wing populism more broadly, right? Immigration, economy, America First in the world. And so I think, as you said earlier, the American people might be ready to hear something different. I think really they may have their ears open in a way that maybe they haven’t in a very long time. I sure hope so, anyway.

Benen: I think you’re right. And I think that there’s ample public opinion research that shows that this is not just something that we’re kicking around as a possibility. It is something that is absolutely happening right now as we speak.

Sargent: Well, let’s conclude on Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. He responded to Trump’s craziness about the Navy and the uprooting of the system. Listen to this.

Mark Kelly (voiceover): By the way, Donald Trump knows nothing about this stuff. Not in any world would I ever suggest to the Navy to change the design of some system on a ship at this point. I mean, does the guy know nothing about the way our government is supposed to work and how it’s supposed to be managed? For him to get in these details, especially with his background? I mean, what is his background? He’s a marginally failed real estate developer, right, with multiple bankruptcies. He shouldn’t be weighing in on systems on aircraft carriers. But for some reason, like something like six years ago, somebody said something to him, and he’s been fixated on this issue that, to a president of the United States, should not be an issue.

Sargent: That’s quite a takedown, Steve. I think that Democrats have an opening to really recapture national security in a very broad sense here, by putting people like Mark Kelly out there to just scaldingly ridicule the idea that this guy has any idea what he’s talking about on any of these fronts, especially when we’re in the middle of such an absolute global catastrophe as the one he’s drawn us into. What do you think?

Benen: It reminds me a lot of what the political landscape looked like towards the end of 2008. You know, the economy was in ruins, and Americans were not only upset about the Great Recession, they were also upset about the fact that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had launched two unsuccessful wars in the Middle East, in Iraq and Afghanistan, respectively. And at that point, there was an opportunity for people to say, you know what, I’m sick of this, I want to be ready for a change, not just on the economy, but on foreign policy too.

And I think the fact that Trump is failing so miserably in Iran, and the war continues to drag on—here we are, it’s nearly six months in. Americans were told that this was going to be a quick war, this was going to be an easy war, that this was going to be a casualty-free war, and none of those things have happened. And so now we have people like Mark Kelly, who has a lot of credibility on this, clearly speaking out, but others are speaking out as well.

And this message is getting through. The war is wildly unpopular with the American mainstream, nearly as unpopular as Trump’s economic performance. And that one-two punch is absolutely devastating, not only to the White House and its agenda, but to the Republican Party at large, especially here we are in this critical election period.

Sargent: Just to take your 2008 and George W. Bush comparison one step further—everybody should recall that in 2004, after George W. Bush was reelected, he looked absolutely untouchable. I remember the atmosphere at the time was that because of September 11, and because of all the theatrics that Karl Rove was doing, which at the time looked really formidable—the sense was that he had absolute dominance over our information space, that there was no way they could lose arguments, that Democrats were just scattered and listless and without direction. And then, in two short years, Republicans lost both chambers of Congress. And, then we got 2008 and one of the biggest Democratic victories in, I guess, our lifetimes.

Benen: Exactly. You know, it’s so easy to forget that after 2004, we heard the same things that we were hearing shortly after 2024—that we had entered an era of Republican dominance, that Republicans were going to be leading for the foreseeable future, that they’d cracked the code, they’d rewritten the alignment, everything was going to be different from here on out. That’s what we heard in 2004, when Republicans were running the show. They had the White House, the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. And as far as we were told, the conventional wisdom from most of the pundits was that Democrats were just lost at sea for the foreseeable future. Two years later, Democrats took back Congress. And then two years after that, they controlled the show. They were in charge.

And so I think that when you heard similar talk in 2024, after Trump won, that he had somehow realigned American politics, I couldn’t help but laugh at the time, thinking, yeah, let’s get back to me in a year and a half. Let’s see what’s going on as we approach the midterms. And here we are. It’s exactly what’s happening. History is repeating itself. They didn’t really earn a mandate in 2004 or in 2024. They overplayed their hand. Americans rejected the poor economy and a failed war in the Middle East. And it’s happening just like it happened then. It’s happening again now.

Sargent: And Trump was supposed to be the guy who was much shrewder than the Bushes and the Roves of the world. Steve Benen, all of that was beautifully said. Thank you so much for coming on. Folks, if you want to check out Steve Benen’s stuff, make sure to check out the MaddowBlog over at MS Now. Steve, great to talk to you.

Benen: See you soon, Greg. Thanks.

This $1.7 billion project is groundbreaking, as is another one forthcoming in the same state: The world’s largest carbon removal plant will open at the end of the year.

There are caveats in both cases. The surface coal mine and adjacent coal-fired power plant in Bremond, which sits between Dallas and Houston, will continue operating alongside the new solar farm. And many environmental experts are skeptical of carbon removal as a realistic solution to the climate crisis.

But there’s no doubting this much: Texas is a national leader in renewable energy, and has been for decades. It’s first in wind power—by a long shot—and second in solar power generation, behind only California. It generates enough power from solar to power the equivalent of half the homes in the state.

In its enthusiasm for wind power, Texas, which Trump won even more convincingly in 2024 than he did in 2016 and 2020, couldn’t be more at odds with the president. He has had a weird vendetta against wind power ever since the early 2010s, when a wind farm was built near one of his golf courses in Scotland—ruining the view, in his opinion. He claims that all renewable energy is part of the Democrats’ “Green New Scam,” and he’s wildly exaggerated the impact of wind turbines on whales and birds.

Now, in his second term, Trump has ramped up his war on wind power. His Defense Department invented completely bogus national security concerns to justify delaying more than 150 onshore wind farms (a federal judge last week ordered the administration to lift the freeze). The administration, with appalling disregard for our futures and our tax dollars, is also paying companies billions of dollars to abandon wind farm projects, which if built would have, according to a Senate investigation, powered millions of homes and created tens of thousands of jobs (not to mention averted huge quantities of carbon emissions).  

Texas is not following suit. It may be Trump country, but it’s also Green Energy country—a paradox that has a fascinating history.

Texas, being an extremely sunny and windy place, has an ideal natural landscape for renewables. Midland is famous for oil wealth, but in the early twentieth century it was known as “Windmill City,” as nearly every house had a windmill in its yard. But natural resources alone don’t explain everything. People must make decisions and lead, and at the end of the twentieth century one of those people was a Midland native, Republican governor, and future president.

Like his father, George W. Bush was a market-based environmentalist. He didn’t support renewable energy out of concerns over air pollution or global warming, but because he saw how much money there was to be made in the industry. “I didn’t use climate change to get the state of Texas to go forward,” Michael Osborne, who co-founded the Texas Renewable Energy Industries Association, told the Houston Chronicle last year. “I used the green that Republicans relate to.” 

Bush signed a bipartisan bill that broke up the local electricity monopolies and mandated that the state install more renewable energy. Under his successor, the far more conservative Rick Perry, the wind boom really took off. In 2005, Republican legislators set 20-year goals for renewable energy—and blew past them by 2010. Since then, wind energy in Texas has more than quadrupled.

In the Trump era, some Republicans in the state legislature have tried to mess with Texas’s green energy sector. Last year, they attempted to limit the development of renewable projects, but failed. This year, they proposed a quota to protect fossil fuels, as the renewables share of the state’s future electricity generation reaches 70 percent. But in Texas, 60 percent of Republican voters support renewables, and not even the oil and gas industry opposes them; after all, that industry uses renewables to power its own operations—to save money.

This is not to say that Texas is a climate policy paradise. It simply is following the Bush template: monetizing all the state’s abundant natural resources. Texas isn’t forcing the phase-out of coal or other fossil fuels, instead pursuing an “all of the above” energy policy, and they’ve been welcoming to data centers. But this approach has strengthened the argument that all new forms of energy are welcome, with the result that renewables don’t have serious opposition, even in a state that normally loves a culture war.

No serious opposition, that is, except from the Trump administration, which has delayed 54 wind projects in Texas as part of its national freeze. The president’s war on wind has been criticized by conservative Texans, who see his moves as interfering in the free market—and with their values and economic interests. Former GOP state Representative John Davis, a Trump voter who has seven wind turbines on his ranch, told the Chronicle that wind energy was a “conservative idea” and that he was frustrated with Republicans who have abandoned it: “Their own voters are rural Texans, and it’s hurting their own voting base.”

Renewable energy makes practical sense in rural places all over the country, where people are struggling with high energy bills yet have abundant access to sun and wind. If Republicans nationally continue to back Trump’s weird vendetta against wind it could hurt them in Texas but also in other conservative rural states. After all, the state that produces the second most wind energy is Iowa, a famously important state in the presidential election calendar. And solar farms and battery storage on coal mines are not even unique to Texas, as similar projects are underway in Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and Louisiana.

Trump will never come around on wind. His mind is made up. But even red states whose Republican leaders have gone full MAGA can see the economic upside to renewables, and the profit motive is steadily proving more powerful than a dumb culture war. The voters, politicians, and businesspeople of Texas have understood this for many years, and it’s only a matter of time before their ideological brethren across the South and Midwest follow suit.

But the protesters still weren’t satisfied. They also wanted Ridglan to surrender the animals in its possession to ensure they wouldn’t be killed or sold for use in future experiments. And so, on a bright and chilly April morning, a surprisingly bipartisan group of 1,000 activists traveled to Blue Mounds, Wisconsin, to engage in what they hoped would be a mass “open rescue” of the more than 2,000 beagles that were still held in the facility.

The first, smaller liberation was met with comparatively little resistance. This time, however, the company was prepared. Perimeters were blocked and trenches dug and filled with manure to dissuade trespassers. Private security guards and police patrolled in force, ready to repel demonstrators with tear gas and rubber bullets.

Some of the protesters wore hazmat suits and carried tools intended to help them enter the facility and open cages, but the majority of attendees were dressed in regular clothes and looked like ordinary Americans. Which is what they were, for the most part. Lawyer and organizer Wayne Hsiung had intentionally emphasized a shared concern for animals and a commitment to the principle of nonviolence that attracted people from across the political spectrum. Anti-capitalist vegans stood shoulder to shoulder with dog-loving conservatives. Parents with children and seniors in wheelchairs cheered from the sidelines as more brazen activists tried and failed to breach the barriers.

Not long after the attempted rescue mission began, Gretchen Primack crouched in pain, her eyes burning from pepper spray. A poet and bookseller from New York state’s Hudson Valley, she had traveled roughly 1,000 miles to try to rescue the dogs. But facing pepper spray and rubber bullets, protesters like Primack had been beaten back.

After four tense hours, the crowd retreated. Twenty-seven people had been arrested, and several were hurt; one demonstrator reportedly lost multiple teeth. As Primack rushed a friend who had been hit with rubber bullets to the ER, she wasn’t alone in feeling, she told us, “totally demoralized.”

And then, just as fast as the cops had gassed the protesters, the activists won. Hsiung called it “the greatest turnaround in animal rights history.” Their victory was, in part, thanks to support from right-wingers.

In April, shortly before the smaller scale raid on the facility, the popular conservative podcaster Tomi Lahren interviewed Hsiung and praised the activists for their bravery. The “bipartisan” issue of animal cruelty, she said, is “one of the few areas I think we can all come together on.” After the action, Lara Trump, President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law and a proud beagle owner, urged Ridglan to make a deal and sell the dogs. Working behind the scenes, reportedly aided by well-connected allies and some deep-pocketed Trump donors, the activists secured the release of 2,000 dogs on undisclosed terms.

Under past administrations, bold direct actions like the one seen in Wisconsin have typically been dealt with harshly; for decades, law enforcement equated animal liberation with domestic terrorism. Yet even as it viciously suppresses First Amendment dissent in other arenas, the Trump regime has seemingly embraced some forms of militant animal activism and opportunistically seized the moment to take credit for the heartwarming Ridglan outcome. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins released a joint video statement boasting about the “major win for animal welfare,” while Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin posted a photo of himself with a beagle and doubled down on the administration’s preexisting commitment to eliminating animal testing in January. The far right clearly sees political value in these animal welfare fights. So why has the left largely ceded the issue to them?

In 2019, Emily Atkin wrote an insightful article for this magazine titled “Why Animal Rights Is the Next Frontier for the Left.” In it, she predicted that “it’s only a matter of time before [the left has] a serious discussion about the ethics and wisdom of consuming billions of animals every year.”

When it was published, we nodded our heads in agreement, hopeful her analysis would prove prescient. What neither we nor Atkin foresaw was the possibility that animal rights might actually be the next frontier for the right. When, the day before the 2024 presidential election, Vivek Ramaswamy posted that “animal cruelty will eventually become a genuine concern for conservatives,” and that it “shouldn’t be a partisan issue,” we scoffed in disbelief. Perhaps we shouldn’t have. Even then, conservatives were up in arms about P’Nut, the pet squirrel turned social media star who had recently been seized and euthanized by New York state authorities, a viral symbol of supposed government overreach and hostility toward pets. “Just go out there and vote for P’nut,” advised Elon Musk.

Today, Ramaswamy’s call is even harder to discount. A movement is gaining momentum on the far right that can’t simply be reduced to opportunistic concern about celebrity squirrels. In addition to launching a “strike force” to crack down on puppy mills and dogfights, the Trump administration is working to rein in animal experimentation. The National Institutes of Health, or NIH, the world’s foremost funder of biomedical research, has dedicated $87 million to the development of animal-free research methods, and the Food and Drug Administration has published a strategic road map to phase out animal testing. Kennedy has met with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, about the possibility of turning NIH-backed primate research centers into animal sanctuaries—a possibility the NIH has reportedly followed up on.

Tomi Lahren, along with fellow influencers Laura Loomer and Mike Cernovich and Republican officials including Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna, all worked to defeat the Save Our Bacon Act, a misleadingly named bill being pushed by the pork industry that would have preempted state-level welfare protections that provide gestating sows a tiny bit of room to move.

To be clear, the Save Our Bacon Act is a Republican bill, a fact that underscores the fundamental incoherence and hypocrisy of the right’s relationship to animal welfare. Trump’s fossil fuel–guzzling and pro-corporate policies are, of course, disastrous and deadly for humans and nonhumans alike, and the president and his allies are busy deregulating the government agencies capable of monitoring and halting the animal welfare abuses some right-wingers have begun to decry—including, most recently, with a major rollback of the Endangered Species Act. RFK Jr. may sincerely love dogs, but he has also used his bully pulpit to promote red meat consumption and claims to follow the flesh-heavy “carnivore diet.”

Still, you don’t have to squint too hard to see the potential outlines of a phenomenon similar to Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA. Once again, we have a set of broadly popular issues generally seen as belonging to the left, but never centered or taken seriously there, leaving a vacuum to be filled by savvy conservatives.

The polling justifies the enthusiasm, “While the Left and Right don’t align on much these days, over 85 percent of Republicans and Democrats do agree animal testing should be phased out,” reports the conservative Washington Examiner. Eight out of 10 voters also consider preventing farm animal cruelty to be a moral concern, while 72 percent report being more likely to vote for a candidate who supports protecting threatened and endangered species.

Few progressives appear to take seriously the transformation unfolding on the right—one that may well secure victories for some vulnerable animals while also further elevating an anti-government, anti-science, anti-egalitarian agenda. That appears to be the goal of the White Coat Waste Project, an initiative led by Anthony Bellotti, a former Republican operative who cannily connects animal testing to right-wing preoccupations including Covid conspiracies, federal spending cuts, and transgender fearmongering (based on misrepresentations of hormone studies conducted on mice).

Justin Marceau, faculty director of the Animal Law Program at Sturm College of Law and co-founder of the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project, is hopeful about a subset of conservatives expressing what he describes as “genuine care about nonhuman animal well-being.” Meanwhile, he and many of the people he speaks to are also deeply frustrated with many of their ostensible political allies, including a Democratic Party that appears to take animals and their human advocates for granted. “For nonhuman animals who are dying by the billions every year, we’re already in the worst-case scenario,” Marceau explained. “I think Democrats view people who care about animals as a fringe subset of people who care about climate and the environment. They seem to think it’s just not a constituency that they could lose. I think they’re wrong about that.”

Once again, the parallels to MAHA feel inescapable. A few years ago, it was almost impossible to imagine crunchy moms who hate Monsanto becoming a key part of Trump’s electoral coalition. But here we are.

Of course, MAHA quickly revealed its MAGA-laundering fraudulence. Every time its goals have come up against corporate interests in this administration, the corporate interests have won out, often spectacularly so—as when Trump successfully petitioned the Supreme Court to shield glyphosate manufacturers from liability for the health impacts of their pesticides, an almost farcical contravention of MAHA’s ostensible values.

“I don’t see the political right turning on big corporate power when it comes to factory farming,” Marceau acknowledged. “But Democrats have not gone to battle with these big corporate interests either.” And even if the right doesn’t take on the meat industry directly, it “could plausibly deliver victories for animal advocates that were truly unimaginable under Obama or Biden.”

Our conversations with animal rights activists revealed a personal and profound sense of betrayal with regards to the wider left—the ideological and political community, or constellation of communities, separate from the Democratic Party. Consider the fact that the Ridglan protests were covered by mainstream and right-wing news outlets, but barely made it onto the radar of liberal and left media, a massive direct action against a corporate target seemingly unworthy of serious coverage or consideration.

This resistance on the left to even a basic vocalization of compassion for nonhuman animals helps explain why the animal rights movement celebrated some MAGA figures who have begun stepping into the vacuum. “It’s difficult to watch animal rights folks accept this embrace from the right, but at this point I honestly can’t blame them,” explained an activist, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “If you tell people to fuck off enough times, they’re gonna fuck off. And that’s what the left has been doing to animal rights activists for decades.”

Much of the reluctance to embrace animal rights seems to stem from a broader, zero-sum assumption that these fights distract from or are irrelevant to more traditional leftist issues. This perspective is profoundly divorced from the reality of our industrial system of meat production, the horrors of which are deeply intertwined with the consolidation of corporate power, the exploitation of workers and immigrants, and the destruction of our environment. Far from the prevailing sense of animal rights as a sort of individualistic lifestyle issue, disconnected from a broader critique of capitalism, ending systemic violence against animals actually requires taking on a range of fights that fit in perfectly with the populism that is driving the left’s current political resurgence.

Interestingly, of all the interviews conducted for this piece, it was a conservative activist who best articulated a shorthand for this synthesis. Liam Gray, a former editor for The Daily Caller, is founder of the Wilberforce Institute, a conservative animal rights outfit “focused on ending big government, taxpayer-funded animal cruelty.” Speaking about animal testing companies like Ridglan as well as Big Ag actors like Tyson Foods and Smithfield Foods, Gray said, “The divide on animals right now is feeling less like left versus right and more like people versus special interests. And the more that Democrats don’t respond to that, and side with the special interests, and take for granted that they have the animal people behind them, I think the more it’s going to hurt them.”

Of course, this intersectional approach to animal protection is not guaranteed. MAGA is already attempting to instantiate a very different form of animal politics—what The Atlantic’s Daniel Engber has labeled “Animal Nationalism,” in reference to traditional twentieth-century fascist politics that elevated a subset of animals alongside a subset of supposedly superior human beings.

While conservative groups like Wilberforce are deeply committed to reducing the suffering of all nonhuman animals, for many on the right, it’s clear that some animals are worthy of concern—the cats and dogs in JD Vance’s hateful libel against Haitian immigrants; the bald eagles and whales that have been dishonestly instrumentalized to further right-wing attacks on wind farms—while the vast majority of living beings are imperiled by MAGA’s program of xenophobic cruelty, corporate corruption, and planetary arson. Rather than allow compassion for animals to become another tool in the right’s system of hierarchical politics, the left has the ability—and, indeed, a duty—to elevate a moral framework for animal rights that objects to violence against humans and nonhumans alike on universal grounds.

Fundamentally, any project that aims to decrease needless suffering—which has always been an essential goal of the left—is simply and glaringly incomplete if it does not recognize the vast suffering that humans needlessly inflict on nonhuman animals. Living beings that are capable of joy and pain, affection and sadness, deserve moral recognition. And addressing their immiseration is not at odds with fighting an authoritarian oligarchy that exploits us all. Indeed, not doing so poses serious political risks.

It would be an ethical and tactical blunder to let MAGA uncontestedly lay claim to the compassion that so many feel toward animals. But there is still time to change course. As Marceau put it, “The best-case scenario is that this movement on the right awakens the left to the idea that animal welfare and animal protection ought to matter. To me, that’s the true ideal, because there’s an alignment there that actually makes sense.”

For decades now, the Republican Party has built its electoral success on myths and lies. Ronald Reagan was the last Republican president who your average person would say left the country better off than he found it. I wouldn’t say that, for a range of ideological reasons, but I’m a liberal. I’m ready to admit, however, that your average person would say that about him.

But that’s a long, long time ago now. You have to be in your fifties at least to have any memory of it. But the last three Republican presidents—Bush, Bush, and Trump—have been disasters. The first Bush oversaw a double-dip recession and a massive savings and loan scandal that looted the treasury. The second Bush started a costly and tragic war based on lies and nearly brought the global economy to its knees. Trump, you know about—corruption, fascism, and staggering incompetence.

That’s four decades of failure. In fact, it goes back much farther. I got an email a couple of weeks ago from my friend Simon Rosenberg, who has for years paid careful attention to the performance of the economy under Democratic and Republican administrations. In this email, he had a chart showing that going all the way back to Franklin D. Roosevelt, monthly job growth has averaged 176,000 under Democratic presidents, and 59,000 under Republican ones. Trump’s average over both terms, because of the job loss during the pandemic, is actually in the red, minus 7,000. In his current term, Trump averages 44,000 a month. Joe Biden, you wonder? He averaged 336,000.

There’s so much more. Returning now to the post-Reagan era: From 1989 to 2026, we’ve had Democratic presidents for 20 years and Republicans for 17.4 years. Care to hazard a guess as to the number of jobs created under Democrats vs. Republicans?

Answer: It’s 49.8 million versus 1.9 million. That isn’t a typo. Fifty million to two, basically. Democratic presidents have also done far better than Republicans on median household incomes, GDP rates, the Dow Jones index, and even deficit reduction. Dramatically so on deficit reduction.

So why do people usually believe the Republicans are better for the economy? Three reasons.

First, the GOP benefits from being the party of big business, which just leads people to assume that they must have a better handle on profits and loss (they certainly do on the latter). People see that nearly every Wall Streeter and corporate honcho is a Republican, and they take their cues from that.

Second, the Republicans and their media propagandists are extremely skilled at reinforcing the above lazy misperceptions. When a Republican is president, they find the one piece of good economic news and flog it endlessly. When it’s a Democrat, they do the opposite, as Fox News and Fox Business did over and over with the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s downward jobs revisions during Biden’s last year in office. Downward revisions are fairly common, but you can bet the Fox outlets aren’t talking about them much these days.

Third and I think most important, the Democrats do an awful job of talking about all this. To begin with, I’m not even sure most of them know just how wide the divergence on the economy is. I remember talking to a group of Democratic House members a few years ago. I started rattling off some of these statistics, and several of them grabbed a pen and a scrap of paper and began scribbling them down. I could tell by the looks on their faces that this was news to them. That’s just indefensible—a total failure of the national party and congressional leadership.

Democrats and their consultants seem to have this belief that they shouldn’t bother attacking the perceived strengths of Republicans. I remember talking with a Biden aide (this was when Biden was still planning on seeking reelection) who said the perception of Trump as a successful businessman was hardwired and unshakeable.

I wouldn’t doubt that every poll and focus group said that. But that doesn’t mean the right line of attack and a pile of cash can’t change that. If you’re old enough to remember 2004, you remember what “Swift-boating” was. In July, the country saw John Kerry as a war hero. Three months and $22.4 million later, half the country thought he was a traitor or a coward or a little of both.

This is a lesson the GOP takes to heart: They went right at his strength, and they changed perceptions of him. When done right, it works. Democrats need to get this. And of course, they were lying about Kerry. And it still worked. But the Democrats just have to tell the truth.

In the current case, Democrats haven’t really done much to drive Trump’s approval down. They haven’t had to. Here, observable reality is doing a lot of the work. But between now and November 2028, it will be up to the Democrats to finish the job.

They have to start telling the country the actual story of the American economy over the last four decades—that every Republican president has left a mess that the Democrat had to try his best to clean up, and that every Democrat has left the country better off economically than he found it, usually far, far better. They should make sure every American knows the numbers 49.8 million and 1.9 million. I’ve only ever heard one prominent Democrat refer to these numbers in a high-profile speech: Bill Clinton, in his speech at the Democratic convention in Charlotte in 2012. It should be mandatory for every speaker at the next convention to mention this.

And by the way, another GOP strength they have to go after directly—this idea that the GOP is the pro-military party. Tell that to the mothers of the sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. Can you imagine if what’s happening on that carrier had happened under President Kamala Harris? First of all, it wouldn’t have, because whatever her good and bad points, she would not have been stupid enough to start this stupid war because Benjamin Netanyahu put stupid ideas in her head. But if somehow it had, Jim Jordan would be screaming about impeachment, and Fox News programming would consist of little else (as things stand, Fox has covered the story somewhat, but at least one anchor recently ripped into those whiny sailors).

Add to that Trump’s utterly baffling announcement last week ordering the Navy to revert to old, steam-powered catapult systems on some carriers. (Where does he come up with some of this stuff?) Experts say these systems are badly outdated, less effective than the electronic systems currently in use, and will cost billions of dollars to install. To give credit where it’s due, I did like what Democratic Senator Mark Kelly had to say on this one: “He’s a marginally failed real estate developer with multiple bankruptcies. He shouldn’t be weighing in on systems, on aircraft carriers.”

So: no, no, and no. A businessman can’t magically fix things in Washington. One day, maybe one will, but not this one. He’s a con man and always has been. The Republican Party is not good for the economy. They screw it up every time. And the Republican Party is not pro-military. The last two Republican presidents have started completely unnecessary wars, gambling with the lives of service members. The next Democratic presidential nominee—moderate, socialist, man, woman, whatever—better say these things bluntly and repeatedly. And every Democrat needs to join them.

In fall 2017, less than a year into President Trump’s first term, I wrote a piece in The Atlantic titled “American Kakistocracy.” As I wrote then, “Kakistocracy is a term that was first used in the 17th century; derived from a Greek word, it means, literally, government by the worst and most unscrupulous people among us. More broadly, it can mean the most inept and cringeworthy kind of government. The term fell into disuse over the past century or more, and most highly informed people had never heard it before (but to kids familiar with the word “kaka” it might resonate).” They should pay attention now.

Bad as the first Trump term was, it was nothing compared to this one. And the key components of the anti-science, anti-government nihilism, combined with willful ignorance about the consequences of their actions, and the interrelationship across policy areas, is about to play out big time starting next year, with health care and policy on the front lines. Three components of horrible policies across disparate areas will interact to engender a catastrophe in an already stressed health ecosystem.

One is the insane anti-vaccination conspiracy theories brought into full focus by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his cohort in the Trump administration, all amplified by Trump himself. The measles outbreak, the emergence of tetanus cases, the attacks on the flu and Covid-19 vaccines, and the evisceration of food safety programs leading to outbreaks of norovirus, cyclospora, e-coli, and listeria, have begun to put more stress on the system, with increased costs, more hospital burdens, and likely more trouble ahead when flu season begins and new Covid strains emerge. Not only that, many undocumented immigrants have been working in meat processing plants—some estimates have been as many as 200,000. The massive deportation policy has left many of those plants with fewer workers to do the same volume of processing, and often a form of self-regulation by the industry for the safety of their products.

Add to that the soon-to-be forced removal and deportation of Haitians, among others losing Temporary Protected Status. Over 100,000 Haitians have been employed in the healthcare sector, many taking care of seniors in nursing homes and via home health care, others working hospitals as orderlies, nurses, or other jobs. It will be a significant blow when those jobs are vacated.

Now comes the biggest problem. When the Republican Congress enacted Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill in July 2025, it included massive cuts in the Medicaid program, totaling around $1 trillion over 10 years—but made sure to postpone them until 2027, conveniently after the midterm elections. The cuts focused on adding onerous work and paperwork requirements, all designed to force recipients off the rolls, and will remove somewhere between 10 and 15 million people from the program, leaving them without any health coverage. That is in addition to the millions losing coverage or facing huge premium increases with the erasure of subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. But the impact will go far beyond those directly losing their health insurance. Medicaid money does not go to Medicaid recipients. It goes to the providers. The loss of a major chunk of the money going out to them will have big reverberations.

The American health care system, unlike in most advanced countries, was jerry-built, a combination of public and private entities, and state and federal involvement. But the public and private are not separate. They are like the organs in the human body—if one declines or fails, it has huge impact on the others. And these cuts are going to reverberate in many catastrophic ways.

Start with hospitals, most of which already face major financial strain, and not just in rural areas. There have been major consolidations as those strains have increased; hospitals have had to be creative, to say the least, in finding the revenue to stay solvent. Independent, community-based hospitals have declined precipitously, and the market has shifted to giant, integrated health systems, with major involvement by both private equity firms and large corporations like health insurers and pharmacy giants buying physician groups and integrating vertically and horizontally. Significant revenue, especially via the emergency rooms, comes from Medicaid.

Cut that revenue, and some hospitals will close, in both urban and rural areas. For those that remain, the burden in the ERs will increase their costs and strain their staffs. The law requires hospitals to provide emergency care to anyone in health crisis coming to their ERs, whether they can pay or not. Poor people and the undocumented will either go to the ER and not be able to pay, or will defer any treatment, including drugs they need, and that will mean more emergencies, more deaths, more burden on the broader system.

The loss in revenue may cause many hospitals to reduce staff, adding to the burden on nurses and doctors who remain. For many, their staffs will already be burdened when the deportations take full effect. And reduced staffs will also put more hospital patients in jeopardy if there are fewer nurses and doctors to watch over them and care for them. Of course, to maintain revenue, hospitals will find ways to charge more for their paying patients, so those cost burdens for them and their insurers will go up as well.

Next, turn to nursing homes. Almost two-thirds of those elderly and disabled people living in nursing homes have their care paid for by Medicaid. They have all reduced their assets to a negligible level to qualify for Medicaid coverage, enabling them to be in these facilities instead of in their children’s homes or in precarious situations living on their own.

Nearly all nursing homes rely heavily on that Medicaid revenue. Lose it, and many elderly and disabled will be out on their ears. Their families will take them in—but there is a double whammy here. The subsidies that exist for home health care, including by family members, are going to be slashed as well, leaving families with their own terrible dilemmas, worsened when trained and trusted Haitians depart.

As for the nursing homes, some will close; others will cut staff and staff pay. The ratio of residents to staff will decline, meaning residents unable to secure help when they need it for such vital tasks as getting medications when they require them, getting help going to the bathroom, getting help in bed to prevent bedsores or worse, having responsive care during a health trauma or emergency. More unqualified staff could mean more abuse of the residents.

There will be more effects seen throughout the country, for everyone who is a part of our intertwined health care system, from those working in it to those using it. No wonder Republicans made sure none of the Medicaid cuts would happen before voters experienced the impact. It turns out that kakistocracy is not just a funny word, but a reality with horrific consequences.

But no one is more choleric over the occasional success of progressive politicians than the dismal corporate dullards at Third Way. After the aforementioned El-Sayed won his Senate primary in Michigan, the centrist organization announced that it was going to “war” with a $15 million campaign against democratic socialist candidates between now and 2028. Both the sense of aggrievement and the paltry amount of money being dispensed makes this extremely sad.

The opening salvo in this supposed “war” is also pretty sad: a wan op-ed by the organization’s top dogs, Jon Cowan and Matt Bennett, in the pages of The Washington Post. The two combine for a few hundred words of grievance, in which they argue that the Democratic Party’s recent woes can be attributed to its extreme politics, which is a very strange thing to say about a party whose recent standard-bearers were Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Cowan and Bennett, in fact, fault Harris for not doing enough to pivot from the leftier positions she espoused on the 2020 stump. This makes me wonder if they were in a coma during the 2024 election, because I distinctly remember Harris both veering wildly toward the center, abandoning previous positions with something approaching a frenzy, and even campaigning with Liz Cheney.

The op-ed is, nevertheless, revealing. Third Way’s politics seem frozen in amber. There’s scant evidence that Cowan and Bennett have spent any time ruminating on the political shifts we’ve undergone since the 2024 election. There’s no mention of the hot-button issues that are fueling the fires of the Democratic electorate, such as the high costs of early childhood, opposition to data centers, the war in Iran, or the GOP’s corruption. The only thing they point to that could be called “recent” is a New York Times poll showing that 62 percent of the Democratic electorate identifies as either somewhat or very liberal, and that most voters want “a fighter for working people who gets things done and is authentic in his or her beliefs.”

That doesn’t describe the kind of candidate that Third Way would support. As Robert Reich wrote this week, “If you bother to look at the funding sources of Third Way ... you’ll find a Star Wars cantina of billionaire megadonors, Fortune 500 CEOs, corporate dark money bundlers, and giant corporations.” Third Way’s donor base is a “Trojan horse” packed to the gills with scoundrels: Wall Street cretins and private equity goons; “members of the GOP-aligned American Legislative Exchange Council,” best known for producing cookie-cutter right-wing legislation that is diametrically at odds with just about every Democratic Party policy priority; and supporters of the Republican Attorneys General Association, “which helps elect Republicans who fight federal environmental and other regulations.” In addition, Reich points out that two of the organization’s former honorary co-chairs are Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Enough said! (Sludge’s David Moore also reported this week that Third Way has received donations from health insurance interests that undoubtedly oppose Medicare for All, which was the centerpiece of El-Sayed’s campaign.)

Third Way’s limitations as a political organization stem from the fact that its leaders have an umbilical connection to Republican money and probably haven’t talked to a human outside of a cable news green room in years. In fact, the last time anyone from the organization sought to learn what life is like for normal Americans, it was chronicled by Molly Ball in The Atlantic, who trailed the researchers the organization dispatched to Wisconsin after Donald Trump’s first election to find the mythical 70 percent of the population that they believed occupied a position of non-partisan purity.

As Ball’s piece described, things didn’t go the way Third Way expected. Instead of finding a centrist majority out there in the hinterlands, it found a population that was extremely partisan—and fairly skeptical of the organization’s donors. But Third Way’s superpower, it turns out, is the ability to perform vertiginous mental hijinks when its priors are challenged. As Ball reported, the study that Third Way published after its tour of flyover country neatly omitted any of the doubts that she watched the researchers wrestle with on the road. “The report surprised me when I read it,” Ball wrote. “Despite the great variety of views the researchers and I had heard on our tour, the report had somehow reached the conclusion that Wisconsinites wanted consensus, moderation, and pragmatism—just like Third Way.”

This is the biggest irony: The successful politicians who so terrify Third Way are actually really good at listening to the concerns of voters and then organizing those voters around campaigns to address those needs. A recent New York Times report on the insurgent left reveals that these candidates aren’t really reinventing the wheel, they’ve just—well, mastered politics: “The campaigns themselves say the secret is in the basics. They have built old-fashioned ground games, harnessing the anger and energy on the left to recruit armies of volunteers, who in turn have greeted the moment’s protest movement with open arms.”

In fact, if there’s one thing that the smattering of successful DSA-aligned candidates have done in recent campaigns, it’s been the thing Third Way refuses to do: show a willingness to abandon preconceived dogma when it doesn’t survive an encounter with reality. As Nathan Newman recently wrote, the local DSA-aligned politicians who are winning elections have learned something that the national DSA is still struggling to accept: “To win local office, you not only have to activate the maximum number of DSA members possible, you need to reach out to a wide range of other progressive individuals and organizations to win election.” There’s something nifty going on here: It turns out that the successful socialists, through their mastery of retail politics, are showing that they’re capable of a little moderation.

Third Way could really stand to learn a thing or two from the politicians it disdains. But that’s not what the Republican funny money backing its every move wants. Instead, you are going to get $15 million worth of Red Scare fulmination. And that rhetoric will be used by the right to disparage every single Democratic candidate—not just the ones who want to enact Medicare for All. Third Way will be arming both the conservative media machine and the slop merchants at CNN and The New York Times with talking points, and using its phony-baloney identity as a liberal organization to color these attacks as coming from the illusory center.

Update: After this article was published, Bennett emailed TNR to say Third Way funds and partners with groups “to help Democratic legislators win and govern, offering them both policy and political insights and ideas.” He also noted that he’s spoken at Democratic Attorneys General Association meetings, and said his group has “worked closely” with Democratic attorneys general “to fight election interference from Republican AGs.”

This article first appeared in Power Mad, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Jason Linkins. Sign up here.

The Guardian reports that the Adams County Correctional Facility, which is run by the private prison contractor CoreCivic on behalf of ICE, also had a long power outage, leading to a loss of air conditioning for two days this week. This forced detainees to either roast inside cramped cells or spend hours outside in 100-degree temperatures without shade, one detainee told the publication through family members.

The high temperatures also raised tempers, with arguments and physical incidents increasing among the detainees in a facility that is understaffed, causing the publication’s source to fear for his own safety. The gas leak reportedly took place Saturday, and the source, who spoke to The Guardian anonymously, said detainees were evacuated “out into the afternoon heat for hours.”

“They were outside for hours. And when they came back in, it still smelled of gas. And then some of the men were getting headaches and symptoms of inhaled gas. They were never really told where the leak came from, how it was resolved, or was it fully resolved,” the source’s wife said. “Illness has been growing. So there are a lot of people getting sick, and they have begun putting people three to a cell that was designed for two.”

The power outage took place on Monday, and by Tuesday, electricity had only been partially restored for lighting and other operations. Air conditioning would not come on until late in the day Wednesday.

“When these things are happening, either they’re shut out outside without shade and air conditioning, and they’re not given any answers,” the detainee’s U.S. citizen wife told The Guardian. “Or a lot of the time the power was out they just had them locked in their cells, they didn’t get to leave for dinner or breakfast.”

The facility also attempted to prevent detainees from telling anyone outside of the facility about the poor conditions.

“They didn’t give them the tablet devices during that time because they didn’t want them notifying loved ones,” she said. “If they feel anyone’s organizing anything, they’ll send them to solitary.”

CoreCivic downplayed the conditions at Adams County in a statement to The Guardian, saying that the publication received “some bad information.”

“While several detainees thought they may have smelled something related to a natural gas leak, none of our staff members detected anything along these lines,” said CoreCivic’s senior director of public affairs Ryan Gustin. “Out of an abundance of caution, an on-call facility maintenance staff member came in to assess the facility for any possible gas leaks, and none were found.”

Gustin said that the power outage was due to a storm in the area, and that there were no disruptions to the air conditioning systems. He also claimed that no one at any time was refused medical treatment.

The Mississippi facility is one of the largest immigration detention centers in the country, holding more than 2,000 detainees on a 14-acre property as of March. At the time, only nine percent of detainees there had a criminal record. The poor conditions there are not unique, as poor hygiene and illness have been recorded at ICE facilities across the country, such as the Dilley family detention facility in Texas and Delaney Hall in New Jersey, which recently had its third detainee death.

Maisa Lopes Eliaser was mid-flight Wednesday with several other immigrants when agents received a call about her. She told the Associated Press that an ICE agent then asked her if she wanted to continue to Brazil or return to the U.S. Eliaser’s husband, Army Staff Sgt. Alexis Jaramillo, told the AP that they didn’t know who made the call, “but someone made the phone call, and then she came back.”

Other detainees were led off of the plane in Brazil, but Eliaser was allowed to stay on board to return to Louisiana. Agents then told her that thanks to videos and news reports about her case, she was “famous.”

Jaramillo, an aviation operations specialist who has served in the Army for more than 10 years, was forced to take leave from his duties training soldiers to care for his five-year-old stepson after she was detained last month at an immigration appointment. The government previously told the AP that Eliaser had been issued a final order of removal by an immigration judge in April for overstaying a tourist visa.

Now Eliaser has an appointment Monday to reopen her case and green card application, and the couple is worried. Jaramillo, who is a U.S. citizen and married Eliaser in 2024, has been told there won’t be any more issues. But he and his wife “are really, really, really scared about it, but you know, we have to go.”

“I told the person who gave me the appointment, ‘Hey sir, don’t play with me, I’ve been through a lot,’” Jaramillo told the AP.

The Trump administration has disrespected the immigrant family members of U.S. military personnel, with ICE agents raiding a military base to arrest a newlywed soldier’s wife and staking out Marine Corps graduations to detain immigrants. While Democrats in Congress are investigating deportations of military personnel and their families, Eliaser was fortunate enough to be allowed to return to the U.S. Others have not been so lucky.

Investigators with the FDA finally arrived at Taylor Farms’s operation in Mexico to inspect facilities linked to the parasite that can cause explosive bowel movements, four U.S. officials told The Washington Post Friday. 

Donald Prater, the FDA’s acting deputy commissioner for food, said that there was extensive research required before the agency could launch an investigation into the growing conditions.

But food safety experts and some former top FDA officials criticized the agency for waiting so long after publicly linking the company’s shredded lettuce to a national outbreak that has sickened more than 13,000 people and caused two deaths. 

Barbara Kowalcyk, director of George Washington University’s Institute for Food Safety and Nutrition Security, told the Post that in-person work at the facility was necessary for prevention. 

“Ideally, as soon as [the FDA] traced it back to the source, they would be out there working with the facility and specifically working with Taylor Farms to do a root-cause analysis so that we can understand what happened,” Kowalcyk said. “That’s really what’s going to drive prevention going forward.”

On July 17, the FDA notified Taylor Farms that its shredded iceberg lettuce had tested positive for cyclospora. Taylor Farms falsely claimed that the FDA had later walked back its determination, but still promptly recalled all of the shredded iceberg lettuce that was grown and processed in central Mexico out of an “abundance of caution.” A sanitation inspection conducted by Mexican officials between July 18 and July 20 tested negative for cyclospora. The company’s website claims that its own testing of roughly 2,000 samples also tested negative for the parasite. 

Taylor Farms is the country’s largest supplier of fresh produce, and is also pro-Donald Trump. The company sells products to Walmart, Sam’s Club, Kroger, SYSCO, Aldi, Target, and Dollar General.

Before any of this, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reportedly cut back on parasite monitoring. 

“No president has been hated more when it comes to gas prices,” CNN’s Harry Enten said during a Friday segment. “79 percent ... that is the highest disapproval rating for any president on record.”  Former Presidents George Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, who each had their own struggles with gas prices, never eclipsed a 75 percent disapproval rating on the issue. 

Enten: "Even a majority of Republicans -- 52% -- that loyal Republican base who has been through thick and thin with Donald John Trump, even they have turned against the president on gas prices ... these are just atrocious numbers" pic.twitter.com/hc5xJfrA6O

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 14, 2026

“Donald Trump takes the cake as these $4-plus gas prices continue to give us pain at the pump. The American people are taking their anger out on the President of the United States,” Enten said.

The poll’s party line breakdown is even more devastating, as 52 percent of Republicans disapproving may put Trump-backed candidates at risk in their November elections as they have to answer for his decisions—especially in swing states. 96 percent of Democrats disapproved, along with 85 percent of independents. 

These are startling numbers that Trump can’t convincingly blame on decisions Biden made three years ago. Gas prices are high—and will continue to be high—because Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started bombing Iran and Lebanon, and Iran closed the crucial Strait of Hormuz in response. That’s why your gas is $4 for the third time this year—something else that has never happened before.

Trump offered a shockingly callous response while taking a question about the aircraft carrier that’s been deployed since November. 

“Family members of U.S. servicemembers are concerned about conditions onboard the USS Lincoln—” one reporter said. 

“Well no—that ship is moving—no, they’re not,” Trump interjected. “That ship is moving right now, or very shortly, and it’s being replaced with another very similar ship.”

Asked whether he believed that the servicemembers had been deployed for “too long,” Trump had a similarly heartless reply.

“No, no, no. Not nearly long enough,” Trump said.

Reporter: Family members of service members are concerned about conditions on the LIncoln.

Trump: No they’re not.

Reporter: Has the deployment gone on too long?

Trump: No. Not nearly long enough. pic.twitter.com/7TM1LPeOru

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 14, 2026

Family of sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln have detailed the carrier’s multiple issues, including plumbing disasters, disruptions with the delivery of mail, and shortages of food, water, and other supplies. These issues have placed an immense strain on the mental health and wellbeing of sailors on board the ship. It’s gotten so bad that multiple sailors have tried to jump overboard. 

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the USS George Washington aircraft carrier will soon be deployed to the Persian Gulf from Japan to replace the Abraham Lincoln, part of a previously scheduled rotation plan. But the Lincoln has already been deployed for 250 days and gone a record 200 days without a port call.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth previously claimed that reports about the state of affairs aboard the Lincoln had “misrepresented” the situation. 

Clearly, the president couldn’t care less about U.S. servicemembers or their families. 

You’ve probably noticed that Fox pumps out enormous amounts of propaganda designed to smear the Democratic Party as wildly extreme and irredeemably crazy. Leading Fox personalities routinely depict the party as hostage to globalists, transgender rights activists, and violent socialists. Fox figures regularly savage leading Democratic Party figures as traitors.

Fox also perpetually offers a safe space for Donald Trump’s propagandists to smear the Democratic Party as overrun with Communists and worse. On Fox recently, Stephen Miller dissolved into crazed paroxysms as he seethed that the party’s primary ideology is “hatred for America.”

The game here, of course, is not just to drag down Democratic candidates by association. It’s even more fundamental: It’s about getting voters to stop seeing the midterms as a referendum on Trump—to stop getting crazy ideas in their heads about holding Trump accountable for his world-historically disastrous presidency already.

So how’s that going? Well, perhaps these Fox News personalities should take a peek at the most recent polling from—wait for it—Fox News.

An intriguing pattern is developing in Fox’s polling of the Senate races this summer: Just about all the Democratic candidates are significantly outrunning the favorability of their party. While the party’s standing—which is pretty bad—can’t be shrugged off, Fox’s polls do show that most of these Democrats are not getting dragged down by association with the party.

Meanwhile, all these polls show Trump deeply underwater—including in states he won by double digits.

To wit: Fox’s latest poll in Ohio finds Democrat Sherrod Brown leading GOP Senator Jon Husted by eight points, 53 percent to 45 percent. That’s despite the fact that only 42 percent view the Democratic Party favorably. The rub is that only 44 percent see Brown as too close to the Democratic “establishment,” while 55 percent do not. Turns out a lot of voters who don’t like the party support Brown.

This applies across other races. Fox’s newish poll of Texas finds Democrat James Talarico leading Republican Ken Paxton 51–48, even though the Democratic Party is upside down at 45–54. The new Fox poll of Maine finds Democrat Troy Jackson slightly ahead of GOP Senator Susan Collins 48–46, even though the party is underwater at 44–54. That’s too close for comfort for Jackson, perhaps reflecting his recent entry into the race, but it’s promising.

Meanwhile, earlier this summer, Fox’s poll of North Carolina found former Governor Roy Cooper leading GOPer Michael Whatley 53–44, even though the Democratic Party is polling 43–56. And Fox’s survey of Iowa finds Democrat Josh Turek leading GOP Representative Ashley Hinson 50–46. This poll didn’t test the Democratic Party’s favorability rating, but it did find that only 36 percent of Iowa voters view Turek as “too liberal,” while 60 percent do not.

There’s one exception here: Michigan. Fox’s new survey finds Democrat Abdul El-Sayed trailing GOPer Mike Rogers by 47–51. El-Sayed is outrunning his party (which polls at 43–56), but not by enough. Perhaps it’s that he hasn’t consolidated the base yet (he only wins 75 percent of Black voters), or that his positions are seen as too extreme (54 percent say this), or that he hasn’t reached working people yet (he trails among them by 10 points). But there’s a lot of work to do.

Admittedly, Fox is only one pollster, many other factors will decide these races, and control of the upper chamber is on a knife’s edge. But it’s worth planting a flag on this pattern—Democratic candidates achieving some separation from the party—because it will be a crucial factor. Democratic strategists often say many of these candidates have their own strong identities in their states, and that this will matter more than the party’s overall standing, even in red places. For now, at least, this appears to be holding.

One last thing is worth noting about these polls: Trump’s net favorability ratings are deeply underwater. They’re upside down in Ohio (-14), in Texas (-9), in Iowa (-13), and in North Carolina (-19). In several of these he’s at least 50 points underwater with independents. Trump won all those states—and he won all but the last by double digits.

So here’s a crazy idea: Maybe—just maybe—Trump is a bigger problem for the Republican candidates than the Democratic Party is for the Democratic ones. Note, for instance, that in Maine, 55 percent say Collins votes with Trump too often.

Of course, obscuring such unpleasant realities is one of Fox News’s most critical missions. As Matt Gertz of Media Matters often points out, Fox regularly shields its own viewers from Fox’s own poll findings. Indeed, Trump himself often rages at Fox to fire its pollsters when Fox delivers findings that displease him.

In that sense, Trump and Fox both share a deep understanding about how Trump’s mystique with MAGA really functions: Even mere perceptions that Trump is politically weak or falling short in any way risk fracturing the base.

It’s taken as a truism in American punditry that the supposed impregnability of this base is why Trump has an allegedly unmovable floor. But many of these polls show this base cracking pretty badly as he underperforms with non-college whites and even with rural voters to boot. Fox personalities: If you don’t like hearing all this, well, go take it up with your own network’s pollsters.

One mother told journalist Jim Acosta that her son, a sailor aboard the USS Tripoli, is dealing with low food and hygiene supplies, losing more than 30 pounds in just four months.

Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego rebuked Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth over his dismissal of conditions aboard the Abraham Lincoln, saying Thursday that he was communicating with a military spouse who was forwarding her husband’s text messages.

“Stop lying and fix the problem,” Gallego admonished Hegseth.

The Abraham Lincoln is experiencing multiple issues, including plumbing problems, disruptions with mail delivery, food shortages, and supply shortages, straining the discipline and mental health of sailors on board the ship to the point that some have tried to jump off. One military wife, whose husband jumped overboard, told MS NOW Thursday that her spouse was in the water for about an hour before he was rescued, and she wasn’t told about the incident until four days later.

“I think that it was handled very poorly because they didn’t inform me and they didn’t want me to know, and they’re just trying to cover this up,” the spouse told the network anonymously. She’s waiting for his return to the U.S. after he was medically evacuated from the ship, and said she had difficulty staying in regular contact with him, an aircraft mechanic on his first deployment, because the ship’s internet connection is unstable.

One text message she did receive from him states:

“i think the boat is finally getting to me and i really dont think i can keep up my peace act anymore, you are right about it all not being okay, we were supposed to leave 5th fleet on july 15th but then something had to come up and my last hope of being home soon was gone, im really trying to not feel negative or hopeless but between the wifi and not knowing when i will come home and not knowing what is happening back at home, its really getting me, i dont think i can do another deployment after this and i dont even know if i can finish this deployment.”

The parent of another sailor on the Abraham Lincoln told MeidasTouch that the toilets backed up on the ship just before their son finished his deployment on board. “Overflowing, there was about half a foot of human waste throughout the floor in the restrooms,” the parent said via text.

And another person, whose brother’s fiancée served aboard the USS George H. W. Bush, told MeidasTouch that that carrier was struggling with supply levels.

“They have virtually no food, water, or soap,” the person said.

Joe McBride, a defense attorney who has represented multiple January 6 insurrectionists, has posted multiple fake pictures of Andrew and Tristan Tate—who are currently in Miami awaiting extradition to the United Kingdom—in prison. They wear orange prison jumpsuits and are often residing in comically disgusting conditions. 

“The conditions Andrew and Tristan Tate are being held in are a disgrace. Small filthy cell. Cockroaches. Shower water to drink. No chair. Lights they cannot control. Food that makes Taco Bell look like a Michelin restaurant. Beds too small for men who are 6’3” and 6’5”,” McBride wrote in one post. “Three days outside since the day they were locked up. This is not punishment after conviction. It is illegal punishment that violates their constitutional and human rights.” 

Prosecutors have contested McBride’s description of conditions, writing that “while FDC Miami is not a ⁠Marriott, the Tates’ conditions of confinement are reasonable, constitutional and within BOP’s discretion.”

The conditions Andrew and Tristan Tate are being held in are a disgrace.

Small filthy cell.
Cockroaches.
Shower water to drink.
No chair.
Lights they cannot control.

Food that makes Taco Bell look like a Michelin restaurant.

Beds too small for men who are 6’3” and 6’5”.

Three… pic.twitter.com/gVZC0zwyI6

— Joe McBride (@McBrideLawNYC) July 28, 2026

Another depicts the brothers in those same orange jumpsuits, meditating while sitting in the lotus position.

BREAKING: The Court has granted our motion. Andrew and Tristan Tate's bail hearing is now set for Thursday, August 27th.

We are pleased with the Order of the Court.

The government filed a brief loaded with new accusations, then opposed giving us the time to answer them. The… pic.twitter.com/TlCAO7VF2Q

— Joe McBride (@McBrideLawNYC) August 12, 2026

And perhaps the strangest one shows McBride and the Tate brothers sitting in some dingy room surrounded by Elon Musk, George Washington, Joe Rogan, and  John F. Kennedy, among others. The words “sovereignty,” “masculinity,” “conquer,” “manosphere,” and “power” are on the walls.

“THE MANOSPHERE BUILT WESTERN SOCIETY. MEN ARE THE WARRIORS, THE FATHERS, THE PRIESTS, THE PRESIDENTS, THE GENERALS, THE BUILDERS. EVERY WAR FOUGHT AND EVERY CATHEDRAL RAISED WAS THE WORK OF A MAN,” McBride wrote in all caps last week. “THE RECORD IS NOT IN DISPUTE. TESTOSTERONE IS NECESSARY. LONG LIVE MEN.”

McBride told Mother Jones’s Anna Merlan that the AI-generated images were actually all part of his plan.

“Strategically, a picture is worth 1,000 words,” he said—a claim that could only be taken seriously if those pictures didn’t look extremely stupid and fake. 

McBride is rallying and having Tate supporters do pushups outside of the Miami Detention Center because he’s trying to cast the brothers as these independent free thinkers who are victims of a politically biased U.K. government. In reality, they are glorified internet pimps who have been hit with seven rape charges, three counts of sex trafficking, three counts of assault with bodily harm, and 19 charges for child and extreme pornography—absolutely abhorrent accusations. 

And Andrew Tate wasn’t just some ambiguously right-wing, manosphere poster. He literally ran an online course to “free the modern man from socially induced incarceration” and get followers to recruit women into their “sexual slavery” schemes to obtain their Ph.D.—“Pimping Hoes Degree.” It cost $8,000 per year. 

“You have to fuck them, and they have to love you. It’s essential to the business,” Tate said in one of the courses. “You have to be militant with your fucking pimping.”

“Bang out the machete, boom in her face, then grip her up by the neck,” he said in another clip. “The machete’s on the floor, her panties are all wet, and you go fuck her. That’s how it goes. Slap, slap, grab, choke. Shut up, bitch. Sex.”

The brothers have a pretrial hearing on August 27. 

THE MANOSPHERE BUILT WESTERN SOCIETY.

MEN ARE THE WARRIORS, THE FATHERS, THE PRIESTS, THE PRESIDENTS, THE GENERALS, THE BUILDERS.

EVERY WAR FOUGHT AND EVERY CATHEDRAL RAISED WAS THE WORK OF A MAN.

THE RECORD IS NOT IN DISPUTE.

TESTOSTERONE IS NECESSARY.

LONG LIVE MEN. pic.twitter.com/8R8MPow84W

— Joe McBride (@McBrideLawNYC) August 8, 2026