Drop Site News reported Monday that Rogers—who is running against Democratic nominee Dr. Abdul El-Sayed—held a position on the MITRE Corporation’s board from 2017 to 2023. He brought his “vast national security expertise” in exchange for the $420,000.

Hegseth announced Project Meridian in late September, a study on the “future of warfare” led by Musk, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and right-wing entrepreneur Palmer Luckey. It aims to “creatively look to the future and identify the domains that we must conquer,” Hegseth said. This ominous effort will be headed by the MITRE Corporation—which was paying Rogers just a few years ago.

Rogers left the corporation’s board during his failed Senate run in 2024, though he has been a vocal supporter of Trump’s Iran war since then. Despite Rogers’s departure, it’s all but guaranteed that a Rogers midterm victory will lead to more warmongering, more suffering, and continued high fuel costs.

Donald Trump is reportedly examining his Cabinet for a potential fall guy, according to a report published Monday by The Atlantic. At the top of the list are two of Trump’s chief advisers on the war effort: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Dan Caine.

Hegseth’s saving grace—amid his tanking favor—is his ability to butter Trump up. “Hegseth is good at telling the president what he wants to hear,” an outside adviser told the magazine.

Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesperson, refuted the characterization, telling The Atlantic in a statement that “Secretary Hegseth always provides the President and White House senior leaders the full operational picture” and that any suggestion otherwise was “dead wrong.”

In an apparent attempt to redirect blame, Hegseth has made mincemeat out of his own stable of advisers, targeting top generals for leaking details to the press—an unforgivable transgression among the MAGA elite.

Last week, Hegseth suddenly fired Army Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Sylvia was the director of the Directorate for Strategy, Plans, and Policy, effectively serving as the Pentagon’s chief war planner, and a vital liaison between America’s armed forces and the White House.

Sylvia is at least the fifth general that Hegseth either forced out or fired since he was appointed to oversee America’s military. But the timing could not be worse, particularly as Trump weighs renewed combat against Iran after the midterms.

Hegseth, however, is not the only Cabinet official to be graced by Trump’s evil eye as the president’s popularity plummets. Last month, as Trump attempted to get out ahead of a predicted midterm bust, he reportedly called several close confidants to assess the job performance of White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Trump’s former campaign manager and famed “Ice Maiden.”

U.S. District Judge Myong J. Joun in Boston dismissed the White House’s lawsuit against the university, saying that the Department of Justice did not follow all legally required steps to get a court order compelling the university to comply with its demands. 

“The ruling does not determine whether Harvard has discriminated, whether the agencies may lawfully seek appropriately defined applicant-level data, or whether Harvard may ultimately be required to provide such data,” Joun wrote in his ruling. 

In its lawsuit, the Trump administration claimed that Harvard wasn’t cooperating with a government review of its admissions policies, and “slow-walked the pace of production” of relevant documents and refused to hand over others. Those documents included application essays.

Harvard said the DOJ’s demands were excessive, calling the administration’s lawsuit “part of the Trump administration’s ongoing campaign against Harvard.” The institution said its admissions process was in full accordance with federal law.

Trump demanded $1 billion from the university earlier this year after it refused to sign his “compact” on education policy and send millions of dollars to the U.S. Treasury. The administration also sued Harvard for allegedly fostering a “hostile educational environment” for Jewish and Israeli students, but that lawsuit was thrown out in August.   

Trump and his far-right allies have sought to fight “far-left” influence at U.S. universities, using cuts to federal education funding and accusations of antisemitism to force these institutions to comply with right-wing policies and ideology. Harvard is the highest-profile university to be targeted and seems to be successfully fighting back. 

At a midterm elections rally for Republican gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy in Swanton, Ohio, on Monday, Vance baselessly claimed that undocumented immigrants were engaged in a plot to steal the state’s election.

“Now, I saw a story, just in the last couple of days, that there are illegal communities of illegal immigrant Somalis who are coordinating to flood the polls and drown out your vote,” Vance said. “Well, I happen to believe that we want American elections to belong to American citizens. Send a message by voting for Vivek for governor!”

There is no evidence to support Vance’s claim, and it’s unclear what “story” he is supposedly referring to.

If you’re feeling a sense of déjà vu, that’s because this isn’t the first time the vice president has indulged in this kind of grotesque gossip. While campaigning with President Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Vance spread false rumors that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs. Later, he admitted that he had absolutely no evidence to support his claims. “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people then that’s what I’m going to do,” he said at the time.

With just hours until Election Day, it seems that Vance may be back to his old tricks, turning his attention to another immigrant community that Trump has attacked with racist smears. And unlike the Somali community in Minnesota, which has broad support from the state’s Democratic-led government, right-wing lawmakers have repeatedly targeted Ohio’s Somali American community.

“Today I’m thrilled to announce the official opening of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool,” he said Monday afternoon, before making a joke that he planned on changing the name to the “Trump Reflecting Pool.”

“The pool is now better and more beautiful than it’s ever been before. And we went through a lot with vandalism. The vandalism was unprecedented,” Trump continued, again pushing the spurious claim that leftist criminals—not his own poor design decisions—were responsible for the “American flag blue” paint at the bottom of the pool peeling off.

Trump on the Reflecting Pool: "We went through a lot with vandalism. The vandalism was unprecedented. People don't like talking about it." https://t.co/9mhZNdPpTZ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 2, 2026

Trump then turned to the show-and-tell portion of his speech, pulling out a series of pictures of algae, graffiti, and other issues with the renovations and analyzing them live, as if he had just seen the photos for the first time.

“These are the pipes.… You know it’s been there since 1922, I guess. It’s in bad shape.… [There were] tremendous algae problems. You have that picture with the algae?” he asked an aide. “Yeah, lemme see that. This was a picture taken just before they closed it down. And this picture, this was in the Biden era.… They just spend money after money after money. It’s not an easy thing. The algae’s brutal, it forms easily, and we have it.… That’s not grass, that’s algae.”

"You have that picture with the algae?" -- President Trump's closing midterms message https://t.co/x3tMssccca

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 2, 2026

“I can’t believe he is actually making his closing argument speech about the reflecting pool renovations,” liberal podcaster and former Obama staffer Tommy Vietor wrote. “This is a bad resistance lib joke come to life.”

While the president eventually did get to more pressing issues, the first 15 minutes of his speech were spent talking about something the vast majority of Americans have no reason to care about at all. People across the country are reeling from Trump’s litany of broken promises, with this new forever war on Iran and the spiking cost of living. That’s nothing to say of other failures, like the DOJ’s botched release of the Epstein files. There’s more than one reason his approval rating is incredibly low, and it sure looks like it’s about to haunt Republicans on Tuesday.

Instead, she decided to offer a full explanation to Olivia Reingold of right-wing outlet The Free Press, who interviewed Stevens at her fiancé Justin Turkish’s home at 11 p.m. Sunday night in the Detroit suburbs. Stevens said she decided to endorse Rogers because she “wasn’t being honest with myself after a certain point.”

The congresswoman told Reingold that it came down to El-Sayed being “obsessive” regarding Israel, pointing to his refusal to say whether Israel or Iran was a greater threat to America in a debate with Rogers. She said his statement in late September that “it is the responsibility of the people of Iran to decide what their leadership should look like” was a refusal to condemn the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. She said that Iran is the “opposite of our friend.”

The final straw for Stevens, she told Reingold, was a Rebellion PAC TV ad supporting El-Sayed that attributed the rising price of groceries to U.S. support of Israel killing Palestinians. While El-Sayed’s campaign was not involved in the ad and has disavowed it, Stevens thinks that he is holding “anti-American” positions.

In response to Stevens’s endorsement, El-Sayed accused Stevens of “relitigating a primary that ended three months ago” and urged Democrats to rally together to defeat Rogers. Stevens claimed his statement went against the wishes of Jewish voters.

“God, I wanted to vote for him, but he just kind of said ‘Forget it,’” Stevens said. “I love the Democrats. I’m not trying to take anything from anyone or judge anybody or shame anybody.”

Stevens is in no position to accuse someone else of being obsessed with Israel. Her own Senate campaign was heavily funded by AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups, and she has a long and loud history of vocally supporting Israel. During the Democratic primary, El-Sayed’s campaign highlighted a clip from 2023 in which Stevens shouted, “Israel comes to me in my dreams” at a Hanukkah celebration.

That Stevens betrayed the Democratic Party, spurning leading party figures who reached out to her for days hoping to keep her in the fold, and then decided to complain about it all to a right-wing outlet founded by Bari Weiss says all you need to know.

During a pretaped interview on the New York Post’s Pod Force One, host Miranda Devine asked Trump about concerns that Democrats were plotting to arrest Musk, seize his factories, and nationalize SpaceX. (Of course, no Democratic lawmaker or candidate has actually called for any of that.)

“It won’t happen. It’s talk. But if it is talk, we’ll have to protect them,” Trump said.

Devine asked whether Trump would consider preemptively pardoning Musk and other allies who’d worked for his administration.

“Well, that’s what [Joe] Biden did. He gave everybody a pardon,” Trump said, referring to members of a committee who investigated the deadly January 6 riot.

“I would if I needed to, sure. I would not even think about it. I’d do it, I did it for J6,” he added.

If Democrats win back one or both chambers of Congress, they have signaled they plan to investigate Musk’s shady leadership of the defunct Department of Government Efficiency, his companies’ lucrative contracts with the federal government, and his alleged role in cutting Ukraine’s Starlink access, perhaps on behalf of his close friend Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Musk has used his proximity to Trump to boost his many businesses in foreign countries. In some cases, the administration even pressured foreign governments into approving his products. Musk was also the biggest individual winner when Trump announced a 90-day pause on tariffs, sending Tesla stock shooting up 23 percent. Just because their plan didn’t work perfectly—and Musk ended up losing twice as much as he cut in government spending—doesn’t mean it wasn’t still corrupt.

If Democrats can take down even a handful of these MAGA personalities, it would be a big prize indeed. And numerous MAGA-aligned House Republicans do appear to be in serious trouble.

Let’s start with Representative Scott Perry in Pennsylvania’s 10th district, who is facing a very tough challenge from local anchor Janelle Stelson. Perry is ultra-MAGA, having played a big role in Trump’s insurrection. Perry helped marshal fake voter-fraud allegations to create a pretext for overturning the election, tried to install a pliant attorney general who’d assist in the plot, and pushed fellow Republicans not to certify the outcome.

Perry is in serious danger of defeat despite representing a district that Trump carried by five points. His seat is ranked “lean Democratic” by the Cook Political Report, and public polls show him trailing by a small margin. Beating him would take down one of the most prominent Trump insurrectionists in Congress.

Then there’s Representative Anna Paulina Luna. A major Trump-aligned super PAC just quietly shifted some $750,000 in TV ad spending into Florida’s 13th district. Tellingly, the money was moved away from the district of a Florida Democrat—Representative Kathy Castor—and into Luna’s, a surprise defensive move illustrating the GOP’s worsening map. That comes even as the PAC has poured around $2 million more into the race.

“That tells me they’re panicking,” Leela Gray, Luna’s Democratic challenger, a military veteran and small-business advisor, tells me. Gray’s challenge is a stiff one, with Democrats releasing their own polling showing Luna in trouble.

Luna is as MAGA as they come. She led a Trump-fueled rebellion against House GOP leaders to try to force through his vote-suppressing SAVE Act. She also regularly goes viral with MAGA tropes and conspiracy theories forged deep in the white-hot furnace of the MAGA hive mind.

To be clear, Luna will still be hard to beat. The race is rated “lean Republican.” But even if she does survive, the shifting of major GOP defensive reinforcements on her behalf itself suggests serious MAGA enfeeblement: Trump carried her district by 13 points in 2024, and she’s a high-profile ally of the president. She shouldn’t be in any danger, and the huge infusion of cash shows she very much is.

Then there’s Representative Max Miller, who is seen as so critical to the MAGA universe—one reporter described him as “young MAGA royalty”—that he’s been able to weather serious domestic abuse allegations without severe recriminations within the GOP. For good measure, Miller even aggressively abuses reporters—he called one “disgusting”—in monkey-see-monkey-do homage to the MAGA master himself.

Trump won Ohio’s 7th district by 11 points, yet here Miller is facing a very spirited challenge from union ironworker Brian Poindexter that’s ranked a “toss-up.” Defeating him in this part of northeast Ohio, which is deep in Trump country, would be akin to taking down an apparent poster boy for MAGA impunity—for violent, consequences-free MAGA misogyny and all-around snarling abusiveness.

Or what about Representative Derrick Van Orden, in Wisconsin’s 3rd district? His Democratic challenger, Rebecca Cooke, grew up on a dairy farm and is a good fit for this rural district, which Trump won by seven points, leading the race to be ranked “lean Democratic.”

At a time when other vulnerable Republicans are fleeing Trump, Van Orden has aggressively hugged him while running an unabashedly pro-MAGA campaign, betting heavily on the Trump base to carry him through. Before getting elected in 2022, Van Orden attended Trump’s “Save America” rally on January 6, marching toward the Capitol and enthusiastically backing the insurrectionists’ aims. Also potentially vulnerable: Representative Bryan Steil of Wisconsin’s 1st district, a big proponent of Trump’s “election integrity” nonsense.

Make no mistake: All these races are still dog fights. But as of now, Democrats feel confident about beating Perry, Miller, and Van Orden. Though defeating Luna is still a steeper climb, it may be within reach on a very good night for Democrats. If not, knocking off the three others (and possibly Steil too) is still very doable on a merely good night.

I’ve argued that an underappreciated factor in this election is the public’s rejection of all three major pillars of the MAGA vision: tariffs, white-nationalist ethnic cleansing, and “America First” foreign policy. As Paul Krugman explains, it isn’t just that the tariffs are serious abuses of power and that the deportations are profoundly cruel. It’s also that both have spectacularly failed even to achieve the material goals that MAGA economics promised: There’s no major manufacturing rebound, and the decline in immigrant labor isn’t unleashing an explosion of blue-collar work for native-born Americans.

On top of that, “America First”—which is not “isolationism” but rather unchecked jingoistic militarism combined with reckless disregard for international commitments and alliances—has gotten us mired in yet another disastrous quagmire in the Middle East. On all three—tariffs, deportations, and war—Trump is deeply, deeply underwater. The result: He has thrown away the GOP’s frequent advantages on the economy, immigration, and national security. MAGA nationalism has brought the country to ruin and pushed the GOP toward the electoral abyss.

Add to all that the unseating of people like Perry, Miller, and Van Orden, which would knock off a big chunk of MAGA Nation’s highest-profile representation in the House. It all would reinforce the sense that MAGA as a movement is inexorably entering into its twilight—along with the visible sunsetting, needless to say, of the MAGA God King himself.

Drop Site News reported Sunday that Abigail Ronson, a former Mike Johnson staffer and now Rogers campaign spokesperson, registered as a foreign agent for Israel back in May. The Foreign Agent Registration Act, or FARA, recognizes a foreign agent as someone who “within the United States (1) engages in ‘political activities’ on behalf of a foreign principal; (2) acts as a foreign principal’s public relations counsel, publicity agent, information-service employee, or political consultant; (3) solicits, collects, disburses, or dispenses contributions, loans, money, or other things of value for or in the interest of a foreign principal; or (4) represents the interests of the foreign principal before any agency or official of the U.S. government.”

Ronson announced the news Sunday that Stevens, the failed Democratic Senate nominee for Michigan, was at church with Rogers. She also facilitated the press conference in which Stevens endorsed Rogers despite earlier telling fellow Democrats she would support the party’s nominee, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed.

The Rogers spokesperson you see starting this press conference is Abby Ronson. She is currently registered as a foreign agent for the state of Israel, according to @DropSiteNews reporting today https://t.co/cspatQJeTt

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) November 1, 2026

Ronson is connected to Rogers’s campaign through campaign strategy firm Convergence Media, and is subcontracted with the Havas Media Group, one of the primary vessels for pro-Israel ads and initiatives. Her FARA registration specifically states that she will offer “strategic communications, planning, and media services in support of Havas’ engagement by the State of Israel to develop and execute a nationwide campaign in the United States to combat anti-semitism.” Knowing that, it isn’t shocking to see her front and center in the midst of one of the most stunning political betrayals ever—especially given that it was centered around a debate over support for Israel and AIPAC’s election influence.

Another registered foreign agent for Israel, Jason Stokes, is also part of Rogers’s campaign through Convergence and Havas. Stokes registered as a foreign agent in October 2025 due to his work with Havas, Drop Site reported, and has written many of Rogers’s press releases.

On the New York Post’s Pod Force One podcast, released Monday, Miranda Devine asked Trump if he’d consider “redoing” the election if the contest was close. Trump said he thought the presence of third-party candidate Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. on the state ballot “was a criminal act” and he’d have to consult his lawyers about redoing the results.

“He even looks like Dan Sullivan. They go out and seek somebody with the name Dan Sullivan, they find a guy, but his middle initial is J, and he tries to have it changed to S, because that’s the real Dan Sullivan is Daniel S., and then they say, ‘We knew nothing about it,’” Trump said, attacking Democratic Senate nominee Mary Peltola, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Trump says he is considering "redoing" the Alaska Senate election if Republicans lose and that it would be a "criminal act" pic.twitter.com/dZENKJbpt9

— Headquarters (@HQNewsNow) November 2, 2026

Trump claims that all of these Democrats plotted “election fraud at the highest level” in order to win the seat. Last week, Alaska Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy seemed to agree, refusing to commit to certifying the state’s election results if Peltola wins.

“If we conclude that there were things that should not have happened, that are illegal, we will act on that,” Dunleavy said. “That may in fact impact whether somebody is seated in the U.S. Senate.”

That’s a disturbing prospect for Alaska voters, and it in fact overstates the impact of having two people of the same name on the ballot. Alaska has ranked-choice voting, which would minimize the risk of Republican voters picking the wrong candidate since they could rank both Sullivans.

Republicans have also attempted similar gambits in other elections. In Washington state in 2024, Democrat Bob Ferguson had to contend with two other Bob Fergusons for state attorney general, and ended up winning after they dropped out of the race. And it’s not clear that any laws were broken: Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. is a legal Alaska resident, and his candidacy has survived court challenges.

A survey by Common Defense Civic Engagement, a grassroots veterans organization, found that 53 percent of active-duty service members want to leave because their service is becoming more politicized.

Another 45 percent of polled respondents shared that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s policy changes and the ensuing instability had made them consider leaving their stations sooner rather than later.

The poll also found that 67 percent of active-duty respondents felt that the recent policy decisions affecting America’s military branches were being made for political gain rather than mission readiness.

“Veterans know what real leadership looks like: You take care of the people under your command and you keep politics out of the mission,” Jose Vasquez, a U.S. Army veteran and the executive director of Common Defense, told Military.com. “Right now, nearly eight in 10 veterans and military families say they’re being left behind, and active duty troops are telling us that politicization is pushing them toward the exit. That’s not a talking point; it’s a readiness crisis.”

The survey, which was conducted in September and released in October, reported that 50 percent of respondents disapproved of Donald Trump’s job as commander in chief. Those polled felt similarly about Hegseth, who received a 45 percent approval rating and a 50 percent disapproval rating.

The backlash was not as severe for uniformed senior military officials: 56 percent of polled military respondents said they approved of their commanders, while 27 percent reported said they did not approve of them.

Yet the potential personal divestment from America’s military branches could not come at a worse time, as tensions continue to rise between Washington and Iran. Trump disclosed Saturday that he had a “very good talk” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and that he still plans to “take care of” one or two more targets in Iran, one of which involves a suspected nuclear site.

“We’ve had such a victory, and we’ll put it away very soon, one way or the other,” Trump said. “Either they’ll make a deal, or we’ll just end it.… The job we’ve done is amazing.”

Speaking to reporters at a Mar-a-Lago Halloween Party Saturday, Trump gave a surprising rebuke of Mildon reportedly receiving a $50 million contract to secure a pardon for a billionaire family.

“I thought it was terrible. I told her, I said, ‘I don’t want her paid.’ I thought we had somebody speak to the people that did it, and she used her relationship to do that,” Trump said. “And it was far too much. You know, it’s one thing for a person to get paid legal fees, or whatever, she’s a lawyer—

“I thought it was totally obnoxious and outrageous, and it’s not acceptable, not acceptable—at all,” he said.

Mildon inked the lucrative deal with a company started by the daughter of Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan national who was looking for a presidential pardon. The New York Times reported last week that Trump was angered by the size of Mildon’s contract, and said that she should donate some of that money to his presidential library or another entity related to him.

Speaking to reporters Saturday, he claimed that she wasn’t the one he was expecting a donation from. “No, not her. I expect maybe the people—I don’t know, if anybody wants to make it,” Trump said, leaving the door open for anyone to fill his pockets.

It appears that Trump is less mad about the size of the payout than he is about the fact that he wasn’t cut in on the deal to begin with. I mean, he’s already openly admitted that he’s served up a pardon in return for political support.

Last week, with just days until the midterm election, Turkish, a Jewish Democrat, announced his intention to vote for Rogers. The disabilities and civil rights attorney claimed he was convinced that Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s criticism of Israel posed a threat to Jews in Michigan. 

After Stevens surprised everyone Sunday with her support for Rogers, her friends and colleagues have begun speaking out about what they consider Turkish’s concerning behavior, suggesting that he may have influenced her decision.

Former Michigan Governor Jim Blanchard told Gongwer News Service Sunday that Turkish had openly admonished Stevens ahead of her scheduled appearance at a Souls to the Polls event with El-Sayed and Representative Jim Clyburn—which she ultimately ditched to support Rogers.

“He was working her over. The way he was saying it was, ‘Everyone is disappointed in you, they did everything they could to help you and then immediately after you lose the primary, you endorsed him,’” Blanchard recounted from a dinner Thursday night. 

Blanchard said he’d defended Stevens for being a “team player.”

Turkish replied, “‘I know, but they’re really disappointed in her,’” the former governor recalled. 

Blanchard told GNS that Turkish was “all distraught” and “strung out” about El-Sayed. When the former governor raised his concerns to Stevens, she replied: “I’m fine.”

Blanchard described the sudden change in his longtime ally, saying several times, “This is not the Haley I know.”

“Something snapped in her. And it snapped in 24 hours,” he told GNS.

One of Stevens’s friends, Michigan University regent Jordan Acker, wrote on X Monday that he had become “deeply troubled” by Turkish’s behavior.

“I’ve heard serious concerns about his treatment of Haley’s staff, friends, and allies. My own experiences have only deepened those concerns,” he wrote. “It is painful to watch someone you care about go through something like this. It is even more painful to worry about the influence of those closest to her.”

Acker wrote that he’d been unable to contact Stevens in the wake of her controversy. “Her fiancé took her phone away,” he wrote on X. (Turkish denied the accusation, saying Stevens had simply turned off her phone.)

Former Stevens spokesperson Caitlin Legacki blamed Turkish for Stevens’s primary campaign failing. She claimed the couple got engaged in secret, and that Turkish began wielding outsize influence over the campaign. She accused him of bullying junior staffers and pressuring Stevens to be more vocal in defending Israel.

Former Representative Susan Wild, who said she’d known Stevens from coming up on Capitol Hill, also voiced concerns about Turkish following her friend’s sudden flip-flop.

“So many people in the Democratic Party have shown so much support to Haley over the years, and she has betrayed them all. If this is because of her new relationship (about which many of us were so happy for her after she lost the primary), all I can say is that any woman who abandons her friends when a new guy comes along is no friend at all,” Wild wrote on X Monday.

All of this is compounded by the fact that Stevens cannot muster any defense for her own defection. Her shameful endorsement of a MAGA Republican may yet prove to be a unifying moment for the Democratic Party. Her senseless defection has earned widespread condemnation from progressive and establishment Democrats alike, and El-Sayed’s campaign has seen a late funding surge.  

“I knew Ashley for a long time, and she was a little bit heavier, OK?” Trump told the crowd. “She was. And she put herself—she knew what she was doing. She knew the weight that was on her—really, literally, the weight. And she knew the importance of what she was doing, and she went out—the old-fashioned way, too. Not with, you know, give me a shot.”

Trump on Hinson: She used to be a little bit heavier. pic.twitter.com/2gazuKtAzM

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 1, 2026

Then a protester decided to start heckling the president, who was annoyed.

“Don’t bother, they’re paid protesters, they go away quickly,” Trump said. “They’re like a gnat, they’re like a little fly.”

As the crowd booed and the protester was removed, Trump added, “There’s usually two or three of them per rally. They get paid $250. They’re paid by [George] Soros. And they’re losers.” He complained “that they always do it right in the middle of my punch line!”

Trump getting heckled in Iowa… I believe someone is telling him f you… pic.twitter.com/9FkENUFVW7

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 1, 2026

The “punch line” was basically Trump praising Hinson for “putting herself in shape,” which is undoubtedly the most important thing to Iowa voters. Trump is holding these midterm rallies because even safe Republican Senate and House seats are in jeopardy thanks to his record-low popularity over the Iran war and struggling economy. These disasters are of his own making, and his rants aren’t reassuring the public, inviting hecklers even in deep-red sections of the country.

Hinson is polling almost dead even with her Democratic challenger, disability activist and Iowa state Representative Josh Turek. Iowans watching Trump’s rally likely won’t be voting Tuesday based on Hinson’s weight but on the large, unpopular, and incompetent president standing with her.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui said that the government’s case was tantamount to “weaponization,” and slammed its error-riddled arguments as “slapdash,” according to MS NOW’s Ken Dilanian.

The DOJ attempted to prosecute former intelligence analyst Nikki Floris, who ran the intelligence division at the Washington Field Office, and Bradley Benavides, a former deputy assistant director for counterintelligence. Both were charged with lying to Congress regarding Biden’s laptop contents, and surrendered on arrest warrants last month.

“This does not feel like an investigation. It feels like a broken one-wish willow obsession,” Faruqui said, comparing the case to the hit horror blockbuster Obsession.

Faruqui noted that he was “deeply troubled by what has happened here in this case,” and that the government’s procedure “cannot be described as anything other than weaponization.”

“It was a rush to charge, and that was a mistake,” Faruqui said.

The laptop scandal began in December 2019, when a Wilmington, Delaware–area computer repair shop owner gave an abandoned laptop purportedly belonging to Biden to Donald Trump’s former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani then handed a copy of the laptop’s hard drive to local law enforcement, which handed over the contents to the FBI.

In the years that followed, Republicans leveraged the laptop’s myriad contents to escalate scrutiny and speculation surrounding the Biden family’s business dealings with Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas and energy company.

Giuliani and Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, insisted that the laptop contained evidence that the Biden family made millions of dollars after former President Joe Biden and a Burisma adviser held a meeting. (The New York Post, which ran the original story on its front page, later said that the contents of the laptop were mixed with fake material and that most of the data could not be verified.)

The alleged meeting became central to an impeachment probe against the elder Biden. Republicans claimed at the time that Biden had engaged in corruption, and had peddled the influence of his vice presidency to rake in cash.

Floris and Benavides briefed Republican lawmakers in 2020 about the contents of the laptop as part of a congressional investigation. Senator Chuck Grassley has since claimed that the pair gave the briefing in order to cast the probe as Russian disinformation.

But the entire laptop investigation fell apart in 2024 after its star witness, Alexander Smirnov, admitted the conspiracy was in fact Russian disinformation. Smirnov admitted to Justice Department prosecutors that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved” in fabricating the Hunter Biden narrative. In the ensuing fallout, Smirnov told investigators he was in contact with “four different [top] Russian officials,” two of whom were the “heads of the entities they represent.”

This story has been updated.

The uninitiated should be aware that these mailings aren’t targeted toward people seeking LGBTQ+ information or support. They instead appear to be a deceptive ploy to incite the ire of socially conservative recipients who might otherwise be insufficiently motivated to vote for a scandal-plagued GOP Senate candidate and an incumbent party that has utterly failed to benefit most Texans’ lives. Very broadly distributed in the state and stamped with a phony return address, the mailings have been traced to a printing company with conservative ties and have already incited a criminal forgery investigation to determine the real identity of the sender. (A judge recently ordered that the people behind the mailer be revealed, but the state Supreme Court delayed that.)

The mailer is embellished with attractive queer-coded images and addressed to “Students of the ___ Family” (inserting the family’s surname). It includes brief sections on “what to do if your parents don’t support you” and “what if I want to be emancipated,” as well as announcing a “Trans Texas Takeover Fall Tour.” In other words, it appears to be carefully tailored rage-bait for those who worry that the Dems are gearing up to abduct and transgender your kids.

The most intriguing, or damning, aspect of the flyer is that it largely mirrors the kind of schmaltzy and encouraging literature that one might actually find at a campus support center. “You don’t need to have everything figured out,” it reassures the reader. “You don’t have to know whether you’re definitely trans. You don’t have to decide about hormones or surgery right now.… Your job right now is to stay safe, find people who will listen to you, and give yourself time to figure out who you really are.”

It then goes on to tell the reader that it’s possible to find help and support “even if your family doesn’t accept you as you are.” The “scandalous” elements don’t extend much beyond that. It provides the names and websites of various real human rights organizations, including the ACLU of Texas, Lambda Legal, and most prominently the Transgender Education Network of Texas, or TENT, (which has denied any involvement with the mailer).

“You are not alone,” the brochure emphasizes in large type. “You don’t have to figure everything out by yourself.” Another section mentions (probably accurately) that TENT can provide Texans with information on handling issues such as bathroom use, bullying, and harassment, and “connecting trans kids and families with resources.”

This is the part where I suspect some TNR readers who reside in more bucolic environs might be asking themselves, What on earth is wrong with that? And even more confusingly, why would right-wingers, by all appearances, be spending millions of dollars to provide this rather anodyne consciousness-raising service for us?

I’d invite such readers to close your eyes and imagine the tense stillness that falls over a cluttered dinner table as a father lifts the brightly colored pink and blue flyer, his jaw tight with anger, his voice rising as his hand punctuates each word: “What. In. The. Ever-living. Hell. Is. THIS?! Would someone like to tell me why we’re getting this? Anyone? Hello?” I invite you to consider the acid in the pit of the stomach, the paralysis that seizes your arms, the lowered eyes, perhaps the quick stammered denial, “Dad, I have no idea; I didn’t …” Then perhaps the tentative maternal intervention: “Honey, I’m sure it’s nothing. Can we just eat dinner? Please?” Or perhaps you can envision the manager’s smirk as he tosses a copy at your feet as you clock in: “Hey bud, looks like we got something for ya.” (Har har.) Or worse—the interlocutor who says nothing at all, who simply looks at the flyer coldly, then at you, and makes a silent decision. There’s nothing nice at all about the scenes that are likely playing out around this small colorful pamphlet across the state.

Because you know, most people in this country do not live in a world where everything turns out OK in the end. Frankly, it doesn’t even matter what exactly your gender or sexuality might be—many Texans who seem different in some way, who might be regarded as suspicious in a vaguely gendered fashion, just had their profile raised. Not by their choice, not in their desired time and context. And for many people that can be dangerous.

Continue with this leap of the sociological imagination, considering an environment that I hope may be very different from your own. Perhaps it becomes easier to intuit the smirking aims of our mysterious pamphlet-maker. Sure, this kind of bizarre double-dealing stunt to manipulate the electorate is par for the course for Republicans: One might trace its lineage to other queer-tinged debacles of years past, including the notorious “inoculate the herd” incident (for which you’ll just have to click the link; you wouldn’t believe me if I tried to tell you). Proceeding with an impressive degree of sociopathic creativity, and an odd fixation on other people’s sexuality and gender, the fake mailer stunt is part of a Machiavellian pattern that might lead one to suspect a bemused contempt for voters and a deep-seated lack of integrity among certain political circles.

Sending out this type of flyer does more than rile up the conservative voters, however. It also crystallizes and exacerbates issues of difference within people’s personal lives in a way that can provide both an impetus and a justification for inhumanity. Someone who doesn’t have a lot of material resources and needs to navigate issues of queerness or other personal differences in a hostile environment has to move carefully. There are ways to handle it, to manage relationships, and to work toward a better situation. Getting an unrequested, brightly colored “TRANS & LGBTQ+ STUDENT RESOURCE GUIDE” dropped on your family’s doorstep is not one of those ways. For this reason and many others, such personalized outreach has seldom been a part of real LGBTQ+ advocacy.

But let me return to the fact that a presumably right-wing agent has been spending serious cash to widely distribute information that is nearly identical to actual LGBTQ+ support literature. Why are they doing this? It seems they think it will benefit them politically and socially. This is where would-be allies who are not living in small-town Texas might want to take notice. Because the context in which such material is encountered matters tremendously, and the politics of representation and visibility and identity may not play out the same way in every community. Advocacy that focuses on visible representation and social encouragement might not always have positive outcomes—in fact, it can be ephemeral, alienating, easily co-opted, and at times more beneficial to organizers than to those who must live in its long shadow.

Observers more knowledgeable than myself have noted that since the 1980s, organized LGBTQ+ advocacy and organized right-wing intolerance have gathered strength in tandem, functioning as “perfect enemies,” while not affecting all regions or individuals evenly. A great deal of such advocacy is well intentioned and deeply felt, under the theory that outspokenness and/or visibility will generate a kind of trickle-down acceptance. But the reality is that greater familiarity often breeds contempt—or in this case, more rigorously ideological hatred and downstream backlash that can pose a tremendous danger to those who don’t have a healthy 401(k). And sometimes it can be much too easy for advocates who have been able to build secure lives to forget this, especially if they are not LGBTQ+ themselves.

The fake flyer tells us something further: It clarifies what the opponents of human rights actually fear. They don’t fear the conversations, the advocacy, the confrontation, the corporate tokenism, the smarmy messages of support, the slick magazines, or the visibility. Probably not even the gay cruise ships. That is all just grist for the mill. What they do fear is stated right there in the scary pamphlet: emancipation. What they fear is that everyone could gain the practical freedom and stability to live our lives in accordance with our own desires and aspirations. In this case, the particular boogeyman is 17-year-olds who may seek to be emancipated from their parents’ control (a situation that is vanishingly rare and requires a court order along with demonstrated financial self-sufficiency; good luck getting that as a trans/queer youth in Texas). More broadly speaking, they fear the emancipation of low-wage workers, of wives, of heirs, of everyone who is staying in a harmful and unhappy situation because they perceive no feasible alternative.

It is the fear that people may gain the ability to build relations based on consent and respect rather than on desperation and domination. The fear that people may become stable and independent enough to tell abusive relatives, partners, or bosses to go fuck themselves.

Many conservatives can’t help but perceive such prospective emancipation, chimerical as it may be, as a threat carried by outside influences. That isn’t just rhetoric for them; it’s the fundamental logic behind this mailer. It is why they readily expect that a pamphlet describing “community,” “support,” “acceptance,” and “information” will be read as coercive intervention. It’s because coercive control is all they know; the only kind of relationship or community they can imagine. The prospect that a serf may become an autonomous human being with rights, desires, and security is not merely loathsome, it is inconceivable. Serfs cannot make choices; they can only be stolen. Perhaps deep down, many conservatives suspect that if everyone were to gain the genuine ability to live independently, then exploitative and toxic relationships would become unsustainable.

So if screaming nonbinary paeans from the rooftops is not always the most effective answer, what can well-meaning friends do to help? What can Democrats do to help? What do LGBTQ+ folks really need to live a life that is satisfying and secure? Well, it’s the same thing that everyone else needs and should be guaranteed for that purpose—in a word, money. Combined with a robust rights regime, of course; but despite our ongoing challenges in the area of rights, in the U.S. today it is still primarily the money that keeps people trapped in harmful situations and that most prevents freedom, rights, and flourishing from being realized. It’s about the basics: ownership of one’s abode, food on the table, access to reasonably good-quality medical care. Knowing that whatever else happens, you can count on having a bit in the bank account each month; enough to move forward.

It’s the predictable financial stability that allows a person to live free as their conscience dictates, to escape abusive circumstances and toxic jobs, to have genuine leverage when dealing with those who seek to mistreat us. With that, everything else becomes possible. Without it, advocacy can start to feel a lot like an incitement of pointless, loud, self-serving conflicts in which us peons just become casualties on the field, taunted with everything we can never have.

Politico’s Playbook reported Monday that Ocasio-Cortez spoke to the Michigan representative on the phone for 25 minutes last Wednesday, the same day Turkish made his announcement. Stevens also reassured the New York congresswoman over text message that she would not be voting against Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed, whom she endorsed after losing to him in the primary.

“Thank you so much for talking to me and hearing me,” Stevens texted. “It means the world. Now back to the productive stuff.”

“You really did and thank you for talking to me too,” Ocasio-Cortez replied. “I’m sorry again and I’m really glad we got to connect and talk and I hope we are able to more. Sending you a big hug.”

Dingell spoke to Stevens the night before she endorsed Mike Rogers, and Stevens reportedly reassured her that she would do no such thing.

Representative Jamie Raskin also spoke with Stevens for 25 minutes on Saturday night, he told The Washington Post. She assured him as well that she would be celebrating with Democrats on election night.

All this outreach apparently meant nothing, as Stevens stood up members of her own party on Sunday in order to publicly endorse Rogers.

Stevens seems to have changed her mind because she felt excluded. Last week, she complained to Politico about not being invited to an event with Ocasio-Cortez in Michigan, saying, “Nobody wants the Democratic Party to feel like an exclusive club.… It’s starting to feel like AOC comes in and it’s exclusive.” She also complained about not getting a text back in 2025, though another source reported it was Stevens who said text messages weren’t the best way to get in touch with her.

Stevens’s own staff tried getting through to her too, texting her in alarm after Turkish’s endorsement, asking if she would endorse Rogers. Her response: “Omg, why would you think I would do that?!!” She also spoke to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and others—telling all of them she remained all in for El-Sayed. She confirmed her appearance with Representative Jim Clyburn and El-Sayed at a church in Detroit on Sunday, only to stand them up to appear with Rogers.

“I’m dumbfounded by this turn of events,” Raskin told the Post. “Something doesn’t compute about this whole sequence of events.”

Just days out from midterm elections that are looking increasingly bad for Republicans, Donald Trump is suddenly looking for some external validation. The president shared a strange image to his Truth Social on Sunday that mirrored a photograph of his own face against Elvis Presley’s. The post did not include a caption or any explanation for the sudden, unwarranted comparison between the U.S. president and “The King” of rock and roll.

It’s no secret that Trump adores Elvis. During his first term, Trump posthumously awarded the singer the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In the years since, he has repeatedly compared himself to Elvis, telling rally crowds that as a young boy he was often compared to Elvis for his good looks. Trump even pilgrimaged to Elvis’s former estate, Graceland, in March, marveling at the musician’s “great genius” and fame.

But Trump’s recent behavior has triggered more genuine concern than exhausted eye rolls. While touring the country over the last several weeks, Trump has fixated on his White House ballroom project, threatened further action against Iran, repeatedly complimented Ohio Senator Jon Husted’s ass, and assured the public that he has bested several cognitive exams designed to test for dementia—though his shifting remarks and muddled recollections of the tests’ contents don’t actually seem to align with what the exam authors say they cover.

It’s not the first time, however, that Trump’s vanity has extended far beyond the scope of reality. In 2022, Trump released a deck of NFT Trump trading cards that bore almost no resemblance to his real face and body. The AI-generated Trump variants reimagined the then septuagenarian as a ripped superhero, a straight-backed astronaut, a thunderbolt-wielding god, a blonde-haired version of George Washington crossing the Delaware, and a cowboy. The public apparently found those versions of Trump worth investing in: The digital cards reportedly netted the president roughly $4.6 million.

Speaking to reporters alongside Rogers in Detroit on Sunday, Stevens struggled to explain her sudden flip-flop.

“How can you support a candidate who stands so firmly with some of the policies that you stood so firmly against?” one reporter asked. 

“Well, look, nothing is perfect—” Stevens said, before being interrupted.  

“Haley’s a traitor! Haley Stevens is a traitor!” a protester shouted. 

One reporter attempted to continue the interview, but Stevens turned and quickly left, with Rogers following her. 

Stevens released a video Sunday announcing her endorsement of Rogers, after she’d previously called him a “rubber stamp for Donald Trump’s dangerous agenda.” Her sudden revolt follows a pathetic effort to urge El-Sayed to condemn his supporters’ criticism of Israel. 

Everyone—including her own team—expected her to appear at a campaign event with El-Sayed on Sunday, but instead she arrived at an event for his opponent. Her official staff, including her longtime chief, promptly resigned. 

Stevens’s shameful endorsement of a MAGA Republican may yet prove to be a unifying moment for the Democratic Party. Her senseless defection has earned widespread condemnation from progressive and establishment Democrats alike, and El-Sayed’s campaign has seen a late funding surge.  

The failed Michigan Democratic Senate hopeful shocked the political world on Sunday by endorsing Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers just days before his midterm election against Democratic nominee Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, whom she previously endorsed.

Rogers is an Islamophobic, anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ MAGA senator whom Stevens previously called a “rubber stamp” for Donald Trump’s agenda. But on Sunday—after her fiancé, Jason Turkish, suddenly went public with his own endorsement of Rogers—Stevens made a complete about-face. She skipped a Souls to the Polls event with El-Sayed and South Carolina Representative James Clyburn, instead showing up at a church with Rogers to announce her endorsement.

This occurred even as Stevens assured state leaders just hours before that she was still supporting El-Sayed. Shortly after her announcement, more than half her campaign staff quit—calling her actions shocking and heartbreaking. When given a chance to explain herself to CNN’s Anderson Cooper late on Sunday night, Stevens completely unraveled.

here's the entirety of the seeming mental breakdown Haley Stevens just had on CNN. One of the most bizarre and incoherent political interviews I can recall. Note how she's completely unable to explain why she changed her mind from supporting Abdul El-Sayed last night to endorsing Mike Rogers today.

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 2, 2026

“Your fellow Michigan Congresswoman Debbie Dingell said that she talked to you at midnight last night, and that you told her you were not going to endorse Mike Rogers,” Cooper asked. “If that is true, what changed between then and this morning?”

“Well look, this is just a weight off my shoulders, OK? Abdul has been gettin’ angrier and angrier. I was trying to help.… That ad was very painful, there are so many Democrats who wanna vote for our Democratic nominee. And they’re just being told, ‘This is a party you don’t belong in.’ … That’s just where I landed on this. I woke up this morning clear-eyed,” Stevens said, not actually answering the question.

Cooper reiterated the question, noting that El-Sayed condemned the ad she was upset about, which he was not responsible for and which linked Israel to higher costs back in America. Stevens offered another nonsensical word-salad answer.

“Anderson, this is a broader point about what’s going on in our party—”

“It’s actually not, it’s really just a question of why you changed your mind.”

“We were just recognizing—look, I haven’t cast my vote yet—”

“So you might change your mind again?”

“Anderson, my mind is made up. I’m rock solid. I’m an independent woman. I made my decision. I still love my party a whole lot, I know there’s a lot of people working really hard on elections all over this country,” she rambled, blinking frequently. “I was a Democrat who flipped a Republican seat here in Michigan. And this is also about Michigan.”

“It’s really just about you right now, and I’m asking you questions,” Cooper replied. “Back in August, you posted on social media ‘Mike Rogers will be another rubber stamp for Donald Trump’s dangerous agenda, we can’t afford to give MAGA another Senate seat in November.’ Why is it OK now, why can you afford now to give MAGA another Senate seat in November?”

“Well, why is it OK to have the Democratic Party and a top nominee ejecting, or injecting rather, this type of anger and lack of kindness?... It sounds like you’re upset with me too, Anderson!”

“Well you’re not answering any of my questions, so it’s somewhat frustrating,” Cooper said.

“I don’t like seeing a Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate campaigning with somebody who’s standing with someone who’s saying America deserved 9/11, I don’t like that,” she said, referring to streamer Hasan Piker. El-Sayed has already condemned Hasan Piker’s comments on 9/11, as well.

“Do you want Democrats to win control of the Senate?” Cooper asked directly.

“I absolutely do. I’m just casting my vote this one way,” Stevens said. She went on to speak incoherently about Piker again and seemed dismissive of her staff’s mass exodus.

“Do you believe that El-Sayed is hateful, or an antisemite?” Cooper asked.

“I think some of the actions have certainly been antisemitic.… I’m just sick of who he stands with. He’s picking Hasan Piker and the uncle,” she said, referring to Cenk Ungyur of The Young Turks, who created the ad about Israel and higher prices.

This was one of the worst political interviews in modern history. Stevens was not able to sufficiently explain her complete 180, and why she betrayed her own party days before the midterms. Democrats in Michigan and Washington, D.C., say she is no longer welcome in the party. Former Michigan Governor Jim Blanchard said Stevens’s fiancé, Turkish, was angrily “working her over” at dinner Friday night—and he hasn’t been the only one to blame him. Either way, the move feels like a career suicide.

What happened to “Vote Blue No Matter Who”? This stunning betrayal before what is arguably the single most important midterm election—calling potentially the first Muslim senator angry and hateful for criticizing Israel’s genocide of Palestinians—shows that it was never about Michiganders for Stevens, or taking back the Senate. It was about AIPAC and her own ego.

The New York Times reports that Marshall went behind his senior aides, got a camera crew together, and recorded the 60-second ad trying to explain that his medical practice often provided free care, but it “did have to keep the lights on.” 

“So we occasionally handed some accounts over to a collection agency, just like nearly every private medical practice does,” Marshall said, not specifying that he sued over 700 patients. “My involvement in any patient’s account ended the minute it was turned over to an outside agency. I never had anyone arrested.”

Ultimately, Marshall’s campaign staff decided not to run the ad anywhere, because they thought it would bring unnecessary attention to the scandal. But that didn’t stop Marshall, who sent the ad directly to people outside of the campaign. A Kansas City talk radio host, Pete Munro, posted the ad on X Saturday night.  

With 3 days left to #ElectionDay, here’s part of the closing argument from @RogerMarshallMD. #kansassenate https://t.co/PB5tCX8cn1

— Pete Mundo (@PeteMundo) November 1, 2026

The video ends with the disclaimer “Paid for By Kansans for Marshall. Approved by Roger Marshall.”

When the Times reached out to Marshall’s campaign regarding the video, a spokesperson didn’t discuss its content. 

“If the best that our haters have is a video that the campaign hasn’t posted or isn’t running anywhere as an ad and that only Twitter is talking about goes to show you that Senator Marshall is on track for a great night on November 3rd,” spokesperson Alex DeGrasse said. 

Marshall’s Democratic opponent, Adam Hamilton, has hammered the senator in attack ads, with one of them featuring a woman who said police came to arrest her over $3,596 she owed for a C-section delivery. Marshall has also been sued by his former patients in a class-action lawsuit filed last week. 

Roger Marshall REALLY doesn't want you to see this ad... Meischa's story is true. Roger Marshall and his lawyers can’t hide the truth about his record from Kansas voters. https://t.co/fH9n9dwoAV

— Adam Hamilton (@Hamilton4Kansas) September 28, 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.

We’re one day out, and the Republican leaks have become a flood. There’s a lot of the usual panic, but something else jumped out at us. Republicans are privately coming to terms with Donald Trump’s sunsetting, and beginning to contemplate a world where his influence has dramatically waned.

This comes as Trump grew angrier with a reporter than we’ve ever seen him, and tellingly, it involved his slipping power. Meanwhile, Republicans are sharing humiliating details about his rallies too, which is striking given that the rallies are so central to his power and movement.

So we’re sorting through all of it with our go-to interpreter of MAGA pathologies, Salon’s Amanda Marcotte. Amanda, good to have you on.

Amanda Marcotte: Thanks for having me.

Sargent: So Politico talked to over a dozen Republican lawmakers and found a lot of anger at Trump, and a very strong sense that if Trump presides over a major loss, things will really change. Politico reports this: “Granted anonymity to speak frankly, many said they believe his days of dictating outcomes with Truth Social posts and late-night phone calls could be coming to an end.”

Amanda, do you think a big enough defeat will finally break Trump’s spell?

Marcotte: What else do they have, right? They may not want—like, they haven’t wanted to be under Trump’s yoke for a long time, if ever, but it’s not like they have anything else going on. It’s not like there’s some Trump alternative that they can turn to.

I think that we’ve seen it this campaign cycle, where he’s objectively bad for a lot of candidates. Like, if he goes and he rallies for them or he campaigns for them, it’s actually hurting them in the polls. And yet they won’t say no. And then he shows up in their states and is mean to them.

He calls Ken Paxton ugly. He makes fun of Jon Husted, or he harasses him, you know, sexually harasses him in front of his audience. And these guys just have to stand there and grin and take it. And I feel like, if things aren’t already bad enough for you to say no to that, what is your limit?

Sargent: I think what you’re getting at there, Amanda, is that nobody really has the key yet to accessing that Trump base.

Trump raged wildly at a reporter over the question of whether he was going to cancel his final rallies in red states. First Trump canceled them, and then a reporter asked why this was happening, why he was canceling them, asking about his health, and then this happened.

Donald Trump (voiceover): [at first mimicking reporter] ‘What’s the reason for this, sir? That you’re not going to Kansas?’

You know the reason is? I don’t feel I have to go to Kansas. I’m going to Florida tomorrow, and I’ll do, if something else comes up. ‘But,’ he said, ‘you’re not going to Kansas, sir. Are you feeling well?’

You’ve been following me for two weeks. I feel perfect. You are disgusting. Put yourself in shape. You look like hell.

Sargent: Amanda, he subsequently reinstated the rallies, which we’ll get to, but wow, was he angry there. And I think it’s telling, because he knows any perception that he’s canceling the rallies because his power is waning in some way is absolutely lethal to his whole mystique. It just blew him up.

Marcotte: The perception that he’s weak, the perception that he’s tired, the perception that he’s unpopular, he cannot stand it. And I mean, the New York Times last week had this amazing article that was about how much he has really shut out anybody giving him bad news, and he’s just got Natalie Harp and a couple other hangers-on who just feed him lies all day about how he’s the most popular, beloved president of all time. And so I think he’s just in a real fragile state, narcissism-wise.

Sargent: It’s an interesting nuance, because even as he’s being kind of cloistered in this bubble by his top people, including Natalie Harp—I guess she’s one of his top people now—you do have Republicans on some of these campaigns and in some of these states struggling to get a message through to the White House political operation and the political thinkers around Trump, to the effect of: We really don’t want him around very much. He’s killing us with the middle of the electorate.

Marcotte: I mean, you have to think about it from their point of view in the White House, right? Which is, on one hand, they want the Republicans to win, and that means keeping Trump close at home.

On the other hand, that means having to have Trump in the White House, breathing down your neck, going on his narcissistic tirades. And I’m sure that they’ve been enjoying the peace and quiet at the White House while he’s been on the road. So, I mean, what a struggle, truly.

Sargent: And also, he actually is sated by the rallies, right? Like, it’s a real obvious psychological thing you can see unfolding in plain sight in real time. He’s in a fury until he gets up there and gets lots of applause, then he thinks all of America’s applauding for him.

Marcotte: Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the before-and-after yoga Amanda.

Sargent: Oh my God.

Marcotte: But, like, sick as opposed to normal.

Sargent: We should do a podcast. We’ll do a before-yoga Amanda, followed by an after-yoga Amanda, and let listeners compare.

Marcotte: Yeah. I don’t rage at people, but you know, you’re a bundle of nerves, you’re stressed out, and you do it, you feel better. It’s just him, but he needs applause.

Sargent: Right. Well, the leaks are getting really bad. Republicans also told Politico that they’re bracing for once unthinkable losses. One senior Republican says this: “It could be quite a brutal evening. Once the dominoes start falling, it becomes hard to stop them.”

Now, I want to stress again that these Senate races could still go either way. But I have to say, this sort of leaking from Republicans is unusual in my experience. Their usual game is to profess absolute confidence right up until the end, even when they’re losing.

Remember in 2012, they did that. I’ve not heard Republican leaks like this in my lifetime, and I don’t know what to make of it. Do you know?

Marcotte: I mean, you’re giving me hope here that maybe they’re actually beginning to worry that the balance of power is tilting in a way that’s dangerous for them.

Well, I know that a lot of people in the White House are very worried about what’s going to happen when Democrats take the House, and certainly if they take both the House and the Senate, which is—it’s accountability season, right?

I know that Pete Hegseth is worried about being impeached. There’s been reporting that Stephen Miller is worried about going to prison when all this is over.

And I know that Jamie Raskin and Ro Khanna have already started to get their ducks in a row for investigation. So I think that there’s reason, if you’re a Republican right now, especially if you’ve been coloring outside of the legal lines, to start to worry about the future. And I wonder how much of this is just them trying to get in a better position before that happens.

Sargent: You know, it may be that this anxiety about Donald Trump’s sunsetting is related to something deeper here, right? So if we go back to this idea that really only Donald Trump knows how to access these constituencies that Republicans have now come to rely on—without him there, they maybe lose the constituency.

So maybe the anxiety is about that. It’s about what happens when this kind of cushion of electoral support vanishes out from under us, and all of a sudden only woke, crazy blue America is in the driver’s seat. Then what?

You see what I’m saying? It’s like there’s a deeper anxiety about this kind of shifting in the country. I’m not trying to get ahead of ourselves here. Democrats could still not win the Senate. But in the event of a big blowout, I think those anxieties start to kick in in a deeper sense, right? Can you talk about that deeper shifting?

Marcotte: Yeah, I think you’re right. I think that regardless of what happens in this particular election, Republicans have every reason to be worried that they’re losing their grip on the culture. I think there was a period right after Trump’s election where there was this belief that culturally the country had swung to the right. And that just has gotten disabused very quickly.

I mean, I think the Bad Bunny Super Bowl situation put a nail in that particular coffin. And you can kind of see it watching Fox News these days, like, they don’t know what culture war thing to make an issue out of. They’re kind of lost.

And I think that the Republican Party could recover the MAGA coalition without Trump, if they were able to sort of continue to generate, like, a coherent bigoted ideology that was able to hold that coalition together. But right now, they don’t know how to do it. And there’s a lot of competing reasons for that.

And I think that Trump—perversely, one of his superpowers was he was perversely able to smooth out a lot of differences between these kind of little subcategories of conservatives with this cult of personality.

And without that, I do wonder, like, the Christian right and then, like, your dirtbag right, they are not natural allies in a lot of ways, right? And Trump was able to bring them together. And obviously the business class. And they are going to be facing a real dilemma on that.

Sargent: And it’s worth thinking about as well, if Republicans lose fairly big, they will have done so after running, I don’t know, $500 million in anti-trans hate ads, right?

Like, so to your point about how Republicans feel like, or Fox News feels like, they don’t really know exactly how to prosecute the culture wars anymore, that’s going to really be a blow to them as well, if the trans stuff completely goes belly up.

They’re running out of ways of demonizing us.

They really haven’t run a whole lot of ICE ads. They haven’t run ads about abolish ICE, which is a striking thing. The dog didn’t bark, kind of. And it’s because ICE is so unpopular, and they kind of lost the cultural battle over that stuff.

So where do they go then? If $500 million in anti-trans ads didn’t do it, and they couldn’t attack abolish ICE because of ICE thuggery, where do they go?

Marcotte: I just want to linger on that number for a minute, of $500 million. If you wrote every trans person in the country a check, that would be what, like a thousand dollars? I mean, there’s just not that many of them.

Sargent: Yeah, no, it’s kind of crazy.

Marcotte: Anyway, yes, I agree. Like, so my colleague Sophia Tesfaye, she wrote a piece last week, or a couple of weeks ago, about Fox News just sort of bouncing around and they don’t know what to do. They tried to make the French protest the thing, and no one cares, because that’s France, right?

They’ve been riding the WNBA, but in a sense they can’t quite ever get a fix on what they don’t like about the WNBA. They say, well, trans players—well, there aren’t any. Black women get to foul on white women, and apparently that’s a problem. And, like, it’s very easy to be like, well, then if white women can’t hang, they shouldn’t play basketball, I don’t know.

With the WNBA stuff, it’s very clear to me that a lot of the anti-trans panic is them trying to find a way to talk about larger gender panic in this country. They’ve lost track of the culture wars in a lot of ways. I think when you and I were younger, it was a little bit easier for Fox News to just be very aggressively sexist.

And now it’s hard for them to be quite as ugly to women, and it’s hard for them to be quite as ugly to gay people. And so they’ve kind of taken this extremely small minority of people and they use them as a scapegoat for, larger anxieties about women’s equality, larger anxieties about gay equality.

But it’s incoherent, because it’s falling apart. Like, everything is so coded right now, and they just can’t ever say what they mean.

Sargent: It’s interesting, because JD Vance is going to inherit this problem, and he’s been the guy who is trying to speak to young men in some sort of new way. He’s, like, the most sort of intellectualized version of all this stuff.

OK, he had the “cat lady” ridiculousness and all that, but there’s, like, an actual argument underneath it all. Which is, We want to make it easier for young men to have more traditional male lives. And that did seem to appeal to a lot of young men in 2024.

But now it sort of strikes me that there’s not really a clean way for him to make the case anymore, because all that’s gone. They’ve kind of lost their hold on young men in some deep sense. Can you talk about that?

Because you’ve written about this really well. Trump has lost that kind of magic with young men that he had very temporarily. And I think that’s a real problem for the Republican Party going forward, because they’re not going to be sure how to get those voters back. And they had come to rely on them after 2024, I think, right?

Marcotte: Yeah, I think so. It’s the difference between running and governing, isn’t it? I think one of the advantages that Trump and Vance had in 2024 for appealing to, like, the youngest male cohort was that they were able to take a bunch of dissatisfaction and blame it on women and trans people and gay people and liberals and feminism.

And then they hold out these images of trad wives as this fantasy that they’re promising you that they can give you, right? And when it’s just vibes, that’s great. You know, that can win people over, as gross as it is.

But now they’re in the driver’s seat. And I think it’s becoming very clear to a lot of young men that voted for them that they don’t actually have a way to make that vision happen.

Sargent: They don’t have a way to empower young men. I think that’s really the essence of this. That was sort of what Trump and Vance were promising: we will empower you, we’ll give you control over your lives again.

Marcotte: I think so. I think that, in a sense, the nuclear family, Leave It to Beaver fantasies they were dangling out were something of a distraction. I don’t think that a lot of these young men actually want that necessarily. I think that it was just because they’re so economically disempowered, it was easier to blame women for, like, a hot minute than it was to think about some of the real issues here.

But now, again, we’re two years into the Trump administration. It’s both clear that they’re not actually going to be able to change the relationship between men and women in any fundamental way, and also that that wasn’t the problem in the first place. That actually what young men need are better-paying jobs, access to education, and things that the Trump administration has no interest in getting them.

Sargent: That’s why I think it’s really important that figures like James Talarico and Jon Ossoff are modeling an alternate liberal version of manhood, of masculinity. And I think they’re doing that quite consciously, don’t you, Amanda?

There is a sense that there is now going to be an opening, because Trump has just flamed out so horribly and just turned out to be so profoundly depraved. There’s going to be an opening to start talking to these young men again with a different model in mind. What do you think of that?

Marcotte: I certainly hope so. I have always felt that this hyper-masculinity that we’ve been served by social media algorithms for, like, a few years now is exhausting. I think that a lot of young men are starting to get tired of the chest thumping, gym bro, super sexist, like, constantly about money and cars and appearances and, you know, treating women like trash. Those things are empty.

And I think that at a certain point in your life, you’re just like, you know, I would actually just like a snuggle with a girlfriend on the couch. I’d like a real job. I want normal things. And hopefully we’re getting to the point where a lot of young men are beginning to realize that that’s what’s important in life. And that the Republicans have no answers for you.

Sargent: And Talarico and Ossoff are saying things like, Being good to your neighbors is real masculinity, taking responsibility for your own messes, that sort of stuff. So that’s why I think it’s important that we’re seeing a new kind of Democratic politics emerge here.

One last great quote from a Republican speaking about a potential loss. This Republican said this: “No one expects Trump to take any blame after the election. So if he doesn’t, who does?”

Amanda, he’s going to screw them one last time, right? Like, he is going to be the reason—if again, if there’s a big Republican loss, he’s why. And he’s going to fuck them with his own voters, with his own people. He’s going to tell his own people it was all their fault. I just love it.

Marcotte: Yeah. Maybe I’m a sick person, but I’ve been watching a lot of his speeches. I’ve been reading Truth Social. And when you actually sort of take it all together, it’s clear that Trump is very fixated right now on figuring out who to blame that’s not himself. His speeches at his rallies, a lot of them are focused on who he’s going to blame that’s not himself. Truth Social, he’s blaming Fox News. You know, it’s anybody but him. We know this, this is who he is. And yeah, in a sense, like, you know, second verse, same as the first, right?

Sargent: Absolutely. And I guess a big question is whether he can kind of take his voters with him and away from other Republicans in a scenario like that.

Marcotte: That’s where I don’t know. I think that maybe some, but I also get the strong sense that because he’s a lame duck, a lot of the people that have been, like, riding for him hard for the past decade are starting to slowly peel off and go away. I mean, his rallies have gotten a lot smaller. And you can just feel the air coming out of the balloon, because he doesn’t serve a purpose for them anymore.

Now, is there someone else who can come in and fill that role? No, I don’t think so. Not that I see. But, you know, weirdly, I kind of think there’s a stasis that could be gone back to, a pre-Trump one, where there’s still a lot of Republican voters, they’re loyal to the party, but they’re just not as fired up as they used to be.

Sargent: Amanda Marcotte, we got pretty far afield this time, but that’s why we love having you on.

Marcotte: Yeah, thank you for having me. It’s always a pleasure.

There is, however, one disenfranchisement method that’s largely played out in the background, out of public view, partly as a result of its being targeted at would-be voters who are not yet technically able to vote—preventing people who should by all rights be citizens from naturalizing in time to cast their ballots.

MAGA-world has been obsessed with the unsupported notion that there are masses of noncitizens voting around the country, not just now but historically; they still blame this, among other things, for Trump’s and other MAGA luminaries’ vote losses, including in the 2020 election. Years of concerted efforts to discover such fraud have turned up almost nothing, which is why the political movement has seized so fervently on isolated anomalies like New Jersey’s accidental registration of some 6,000 noncitizens, of whom a negligible number appear to have actually voted in state elections.

Whether people like Trump or Stephen Miller actually believe that there is widespread incidence of noncitizen voting in elections nationwide, or merely see this as the most convenient path toward instituting formal and informal restrictions on voting, is beside the point. The upshot is that this phantasmal problem is nevertheless animating both political discourse and concrete actions designed to actually keep people from the polls—that is to say, it is providing fuel to manipulate elections under the banner of guarding against electoral manipulation.

At the same time, the government has been engaged in a much less noticed flip side of the coin, preventing people from becoming citizens as the election approaches. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, data analyzed by Bloomberg and other outlets shows that decisions on pending naturalization applications are down about 75 percent this year as compared to last, and denials on those decisions are up disproportionally—with about 18 percent of applications denied in the third quarter of 2026, compared to 9 percent in the same quarter last year. Wait times have more than doubled to over a year on average, all translating to around 50,000 fewer naturalizations per month this year than in the last two years, playing out in states across the country.

The Trump administration seems to have taken it upon itself to hollow USCIS out, as with many federal agencies, but there’s the additional dimension here that opposition to immigration has been a lodestar of the MAGA movement. Accordingly, the White House has worked to shape USCIS from an impartial(ish) adjudicator to an extension of its enforcement apparatus, arming it with additional powers to deny applications. Informally, there is rumored to be a naturalizations cap imposed by the White House, with USCIS responsible for slow-walking or denying applications such that approvals do not go above a certain level. (USCIS has never publicly acknowledged such a directive.)

The upshot is that hundreds of thousands of people who should in theory have been naturalized between last year and the midterm elections are left waiting for a decision or appealing potentially frivolous denials. We don’t tend to think of this as disenfranchisement, in the sense that these folks did not have an existing right to vote that was taken away or limited, but historically we have understood obstacles to eligibility for people who should by rights be eligible to vote to fall under the umbrella of voter disenfranchisement and suppression.

“As naturalization delays grow, so do concerns that eligible immigrants are being prevented from becoming citizens in time to vote in the midterms,” said Celina Stewart, CEO of the nonpartisan national enfranchisement organization League of Women Voters, or LWV, in a statement to The New Republic. LWV had recently successfully sued to block a USCIS policy that had prevented the organization from continuing a longtime practice of offering voter registration services at naturalization ceremonies. Unfortunately, for there to be such ceremonies, there must be people who are being naturalized. “While the administration continues to focus on baseless claims about noncitizens voting, its actions risk creating barriers for eligible future citizens seeking to exercise their fundamental rights,” added Stewart.

While there are generally at least some concrete remedies for citizens disenfranchised by the administration and its state-level lackeys’ voter suppression efforts—there is litigation over attempts to use a flawed database to flag supposedly unqualified voters, for example, and voters turned away at the polls can generally at least submit affidavit ballots—there is little that citizens-to-be can do but watch as another election proceeds without their vote. USCIS’s administrative decisions are not generally reviewable by federal courts, and noncitizens have no ability to demand a right that is theoretical until a decision is made; even if they are granted an approval or defeat a denial, elections will have come and gone in the interim.

These are not paltry numbers. If naturalizations have fallen by 50,000 or so a month over the last year, that’s well over half a million would-be citizens around the country left waiting, including in crucial states and districts with razor-thin margins that will cumulatively determine control of the House and Senate. USCIS data shows, for example, that between the start of April and of June this year, the three field offices in Ohio—Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Columbus—cumulatively approved 990 naturalizations, denied 267, and had nearly 9,000 cases pending. During the same period last year, the three offices approved 2,921 cases, denied 263, and had fewer cases pending. The state is the site of multiple House races that are neck and neck and a tight Senate race between incumbent John Husted and former Senator Sherrod Brown.

Whether or not these would-be citizens could or would influence these close races matters, but it’s no less disenfranchisement in noncompetitive seats. A core pillar of the whole edifice of our constitutional democracy is the oft-repeated maxim, “No taxation without representation.” The judicial demolishing of the Civil Rights Act, gerrymandering, the contemporary status of Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, and much more, have already hammered some sizable holes in that structure, and now Trump’s naturalization stall-out is eating away at the foundation.

If you want to score points cracking down on mean, greedy profiteers, pushing anti-“gouging” rules is a very good thing. But if you’re one of the people the law “protects” from “price gouging,” you won’t fare as well. Consider this scenario: You are thirsty—worried that your baby is going to become dehydrated. You … finally find that dreaded monster, the price gouger. He offers a bottle of water that cost $1 last week at an “outrageous” price—say $20. You pay it to survive the disaster. You resent the price gouger. But if he hadn’t demanded $20, he’d have been out of water. It was the price gouger’s “exploitation” that saved your child.

This was not an explicitly right-wing textbook—just the ostensibly neutral resource for an intro economics course at a liberal university. The fact that so much of it reads like an Ayn Rand novel reflects the reality of mainstream economics today—a field that claims to be based on scientific principles but in actuality functions as rank market-fundamentalist ideology.

Anti-Fascist Economics, by Isabella Weber, represents an urgently needed challenge to this orthodoxy—an orthodoxy that Weber, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, argues has fueled the rise of the authoritarian far right in recent years.

As her book makes clear, this is not a new argument, but rather one rooted in a rich tradition. Karl Polanyi, the seminal economic historian, coined the phrase “the fascist virus” to describe the claim by orthodox economics that the “laws of the market economy prohibit any intervention in economic life on the part of the working people.” To paraphrase, when people are suffering, and their democratic leaders’ response is to say, Oh well, that’s the market for you, nothing we can do about it, that is rocket fuel for fascists, who can in turn argue, Look, democracy isn’t solving your problems, take a chance with us.

Nobody had a better practical understanding of this principle than Franklin Roosevelt. Weber describes how, to launch the New Deal, Roosevelt had to break with orthodox economics—indeed, Roosevelt once said, “I took economics courses in college, and everything I was taught was wrong.” Roosevelt defined fascism as “the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself,” and warned, “People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.” Put this way, the antidote to fascism becomes obvious: Mobilize the state to contain corporate power and provide people with economic security—the exact kinds of interventions that market fundamentalists guarantee will lead to disaster.

But Roosevelt’s New Deal did not lead to disaster. It was fabulously successful at stamping out the fascist sentiments that were gaining ground in the United States, just as they were in Germany and elsewhere in the early 1930s. Indeed, the New Deal made Roosevelt the most popular president we’ve ever had. And his administration’s direction of industrial outputs and prices during World War II—through the War Production Board and the Office of Price Administration—was so effective that living standards for Americans actually rose during wartime, an unheard-of achievement.

For a few decades, at least, it became almost impossible to argue with a straight face that the state can’t act to improve outcomes for common people—because everyone had just collectively experienced it doing exactly that. But this consensus was attacked, weakened, and ultimately displaced over the following half-century by Polanyi’s fascist virus. Perhaps the best embodiment of this new market fundamentalism was Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, which was published in 1944 and became a bible for right-wing movements in the 1970s and right-wing governments in the 1980s. Hayek makes a classic slippery-slope argument, insisting that the only legitimate role for the state is to enforce our subordination to the market—which in practice means subordination to the owners of capital—as any further intervention will lead inevitably toward totalitarianism. As John Maynard Keynes, the most famous economist of his day, wrote in a letter to Hayek after reading The Road to Serfdom in 1944, “You are trying to persuade us that so soon as one moves an inch in the planned direction you are necessarily launched on the slippery path which will lead you in due course over the precipice.”

This is, of course, kindergarten-level reasoning: If you do one little thing I don’t like, the whole world will end. But it’s an extremely convenient analytical framework for economic elites, who do not want democratic states horning in on their God-given right to control our jobs, our lives, and our society. And so—starting as a partisan revolution under Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and solidifying as a bipartisan consensus under Tony Blair and Bill Clinton in the 1990s—this kindergarten-level approach to the world became an unquestionable economic orthodoxy, so indisputable in elite circles that the authors of “neutral” Econ 101 textbooks could wax poetic about disaster profiteering and think nothing of it.

This provides a precise explanation for why, when fascism once again raised its ugly head in the twenty-first century, the United States—in marked contrast to its resilient response in the 1930s—failed to avoid a spiral into far-right authoritarianism. First, there was President Obama’s tepid “banks got bailed out, we got sold out” response to the 2008 financial crisis, which Weber argues helped lead to Trump I. And then—the real focus of Weber’s book—was President Biden’s refusal to take action to stabilize the price of essential goods following the supply shocks of the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to Trump II. As Weber puts it:

The Biden administration faced a basic choice: It could brush aside what people were saying about the severe problems they were facing and instead lean into how “great” the macroeconomy was doing and lament that there was nothing to be done about inflation, or it could take action to address the affordability and inequality crisis by disciplining capital. For the most part, it chose the first route.

Weber catalogs how, across thousands of public earnings calls with shareholders, corporate leaders celebrated that supply chain dislocations from the pandemic were giving them license to hike prices and make obscene windfall profits. Often these statements were phrased in technical terms: Dupont reported that supply shocks were creating a “constructive market for pricing”; General Mills explained to shareholders that inflation would allow the company to “realize net pricing.” But sometimes they dispensed with that language—as one CEO told investors, “It’s kind of like a rain dance, I pray for inflation every day I come to work because inflation, our top line is really driven by inflation.”

Despite these literal confessions of “greedflation,” a term Weber coined to describe how companies were exploiting inflation to score excessive profits, the Biden administration, under the influence of establishment economists, chose to treat inflation like an unknowable act of God—something that could not possibly be addressed with specific government interventions, beyond the sacrifice-the-poor sledgehammer of rate hikes and austerity.

The one counterexample to this trend is itself extremely illustrative. In August 2024, in her first campaign speech on economic policy after taking over the Democratic presidential ticket, Kamala Harris proposed a federal ban on price gouging for food. The plan polled extremely well with swing voters, but it was immediately assailed by leading economists. Jason Furman, who served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama, told The New York Times, “This is not sensible policy.… There’s no upside here.” In the run-up to an election that would have existential stakes for American democracy, where the cost of essential goods was the number one concern for voters, Democratic-aligned economists were actively working to stop the Democratic nominee from giving working-class Americans a reason to vote for her. Whether Harris was more influenced by economists like Furman or by her billionaire donors, who also protested the price-gouging ban, is hard to say. What’s clear is that Harris dropped the issue. The campaign ad that focused on her price-gouging proposal, which scored extremely well in focus groups, was hardly ever aired.

What is perhaps the most frustrating aspect of this story, as Weber highlights, is that everyone involved in both the Biden administration and the Harris campaign had a remarkably clear template, right across the border, for how to block Trump’s return to power. Mexico’s former president—popularly referred to by his initials, AMLO—ignored mainstream economists’ insistence that there was nothing the state could do to stabilize prices. In the face of pandemic-era inflation, his government developed a program to fix the total price of a basket of 24 essentials—mostly food staples like rice and vegetable oil, along with hygiene essentials like toilet paper and soap. Companies could choose how to meet the overall cost cap, so long as all the items together did not exceed the total basket price. Every Monday, AMLO held a press conference on the essentials basket, praising firms that offered particularly inexpensive baskets and calling out those charging the most—thereby creating a public relations incentive for companies to toe the line, while ensuring that every Mexican family knew that their president was fighting on their behalf to keep prices low.

AMLO ended his term with a sky-high 70 percent approval rating. His mentee and successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, won Mexico’s June 2024 election in a historic landslide. She continued AMLO’s essentials basket program, and two years into her term touts an approval rating that regularly reaches 75 percent.

Instead of dismissing Americans’ affordability concerns as a “vibecession,” imagine if the Biden administration had established a program similar to that of AMLO and Sheinbaum. Imagine if every Monday Biden—or, considering his cognitive and communicative deficits, Biden and Harris together—had held a press conference reporting on costs and calling out price gougers. Or, to take an even more recent example, imagine if, during her campaign, Harris had passed or called for measures to clear the debt of millions of workers, reduce the maximum workweek, and establish zero-fare public transportation, as Brazil’s President Lula did in the lead-up to his momentous victory over Flávio Bolsonaro. It’s difficult for me to envision Democrats losing to Trump in that universe. Who’s going to get taken in by Trump’s infamous grocery store campaign stunt when Democrats are demonstrating to the American people that they are actually fighting to take on corporate profiteers and bring down the costs of essentials?

Weber describes additional policy proposals that constitute what she calls an “economics of essentials.” These include shorter-term solutions to stabilize key supply chains that everyone depends on, such as public buffer stocks for essential commodities, in the vein of China’s grain buffer stock system, which held domestic prices stable against global food inflation, or its National Fertilizer Commercial Reserve, which sheltered Chinese farmers against fertilizer price spikes. Weber also stresses that short-term stabilization must always be in service of longer-term solutions that attack the root causes of inflation, and places decarbonization—replacing shock-prone fossil fuels with stable renewables—as the most urgent of these. “As long as fossil fuel prices are allowed to explode, yielding the record profits we have witnessed in recent energy crises, it will be very difficult to convince investors to move out of the sector,” she writes, recommending a permanent excess-profits tax to ensure that profits in the fossil fuel sector never exceed a certain threshold and an emergency price ceiling to prevent wholesale prices from shooting beyond a certain level.

These ideas represent a desperately important corrective to the Jason Furmans of the world—elite economists whose smug dismissal of government action for the public good has aided in bringing far-right authoritarianism roaring back in the United States and across the globe. Anti-Fascist Economics demonstrates why we cannot listen to these voices anymore—not only because market fundamentalism is a severe threat to democracy but also, it’s worth stating, because their view of the world is extremely dumb.

Take that passage from Principles of Economics. It’s set in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The passage declares that critics of price gouging “just don’t understand basic economics,” and that if you “let the market work, suppliers will come.” But the supply shock after Hurricane Katrina had an actual cause: Transportation infrastructure was destroyed. Roads and railways and ports were swept away by the storm. The greedy price gouger wasn’t inducing new supplies to enter the market—he could have been charging $100 or $1,000 for a bottle of water and it wouldn’t make any difference to whether a truck could get over a washed-out highway and into the disaster zone.

The only actual solution to a shock like this is decisive government action to resolve those bottlenecks—to fix the infrastructure and get the essentials moving again. To respond to such a crisis with “Let the market work, suppliers will come” is not just cruel—it’s stupid. It’s kindergarten-level magical thinking, dressed up as hard-nosed realism. Anti-Fascist Economics treats these idiots with the derision they deserve. We should too.

Obviously, I underestimated three things. First, the depth of people’s anger at the establishment, and Trump’s relentlessly cynical hunger to tap into and feed it. Second, the appalling weakness of leading mainstream Republicans, who from Reince Priebus (apologies for reminding you that he exists) on down will be remembered in history for their cowardice and pusillanimity. And third—ah, the third one. I didn’t understand how someone like Trump could create his own reality and get so many people to believe it.

I didn’t see that coming because no one had ever done what Trump was doing in American politics before. No one had lied so consistently and flamboyantly and obviously. No one running for America’s highest office had ever been so openly racist (OK, not “ever,” but in at least 60 years or so). No one had said such outrageous things about people like McCain. I told myself: There’s just no way this can work.

But it worked. One can overstate, and many pundits do, the extent to which it worked. He barely won in 2016. He lost in 2020. His approval numbers have always been lousy: Trump has been president for a total of 57 months, and in all that time, he’s almost never been north of 50 percent. His party got whupped in 2018 and is apparently about to get whupped again. But he came back and won in 2024, and he’s gotten away with crimes that should have gotten him banished from politics and landed him in prison three or four times. The normal rules—the ones that you and I play by—have never applied to him.

But finally, it looks like they’re going to apply Tuesday.

Finally, it looks like you can’t wreck the economy and tell people it’s the greatest economy in the history of the country.

Finally, it looks like you can’t impose a boatload of tariffs that crush farmers and tell farmers they’ve never had it so good.

Finally, it looks like you can’t start a war and lose it and try to tell people the other country actually started it and say over and over that you won it.

Finally, it looks like you can’t support something that 80 percent of the American people oppose—the greased-lightning construction of hundreds of data centers—and call that 80 percent ignorant and backward.

Finally, it looks like you can’t hire thousands of masked goons and have them gun people down in the streets and call it patriotism.

Finally, it looks like you can’t make billions off the presidency and expect people not to notice.

Finally, it looks like you can’t desecrate the White House, ruin the Reflecting Pool, and destroy one of the country’s most beloved cultural institutions, all in flagrant violation of settled rules and/or laws, and think people will be OK with that.

Finally, it looks like you can’t put the world’s oldest democracy on the side of the world’s most malevolent authoritarian dictator, who invaded a democratic neighbor, and tell people it’s the right thing for the United States of America to do.

Finally, it looks like you can’t order the clearly vengeance-driven prosecutions of people you don’t like and call it justice.

And finally, it looks like you can’t hire a bunch of incompetents and conspiracy theorists to run the federal government and think that people won’t eventually realize that they’re incompetent and conspiratorial.

We don’t know for sure yet, obviously. We could be surprised. Nervous liberals—now there’s a redundant phrase!—worry that the polls are undercounting Trump loyalists, or that MAGA-ites are intentionally not answering polls as part of a vast, elaborate plan to shock the world Wednesday morning. These things could be true. I have no idea.

It could also be true that in some races, either the desperate Republican attacks or the occasional Democratic own goal will yield some surprises. Maybe just enough Texans will agree with Ted Cruz that James Talarico believes God is gay, or whatever his latest effluence is. Maybe just enough Michiganders have been terrified into thinking they can’t put a guy who was a captain of his high school football team—sorry, I mean a scary Muslim—in the U.S. Senate. Maybe doubts have been raised in just enough Alaskans’ minds about Mary Peltola’s judgment and honesty. In Minnesota, maybe just enough voters could decide the fraud case that ended Governor Tim Walz’s reelection plans are a bigger violation of the public trust than ICE’s bloodletting.

Maybe all those things and more. But as I write on this Sunday before the voting, it doesn’t feel like it. Ken Paxton canceled a rally over the weekend. Kansas looks like it’s leaning Democratic. Haley Stevens’s act of betrayal looks desperate, petty, and personal. The House seems to be a done deal for sure. One forecaster released its final assessments of House, Senate, and gubernatorial races over the weekend. It changed a total of 64 ratings—63 of them in favor of the Democrats.

If those ratings and all the others are right, it’s going to be a big Democratic night. But actually, I think it’s more accurate to put it the other way. It’s going to be a resounding repudiation of Trump and Trumpism. Because, let’s be honest—it’s not as if the American people are in love with the Democrats. And there’s no good reason they should be. If they are given congressional power, Democrats are going to have to earn the public’s respect by trying to do real things about the cost of living and by being relentless in their pursuit not only of Trump and his minions but of the billionaires and corporations who are screwing working people into the ground every day.

So most people won’t be voting for Democrat X. They’ll be voting against Trump. Yes, it’s mostly about the very real but rather mundane matter of gas prices. But don’t let anyone get away with saying it’s only about that. It’s about corruption and lawlessness and arrogance and, well, reality. Trump has lost the power to create it. Finally, it looks like the rules apply.

But Tabke would be out there in the middle of a blizzard. In 2024, he won his office by 14 votes out of about 20,000. With the Minnesota House then temporarily tilted toward the Republicans by a single vote, the DFL and Republicans parried legislative and legal tactics for weeks over whether Tabke would even be seated. “My community voted heavily for Trump in 2016. Then I won in 2018. I lost in 2020. Then I won big in ’22,” he tells me. “And then, last year, it was that close.”

You may think of Minnesota as deep blue, but Brad Tabke and every other pol in the state is acutely aware that it is purple, and only just.

Full disclosure: I’ve known DFL Senate candidate Peggy Flanagan for several years and introduced her at a campaign fundraiser in 2025. This piece draws on conversations with political allies of Flanagan, Klobuchar, and Ellison, though none who are currently working on statewide campaigns.

Sealed in the national consciousness as the center of resistance to Trump’s brutal immigration policies, Minnesota has crept under the radar as a place where the blue wave could fizzle or even fail. Republicans sense a once-in-a-generation chance to flip at least one statewide seat and perhaps make gains in the precariously balanced legislature. Their spending reflects that optimism: For the first time in recent memory, they’ve spent more than the Democrats in the state, even pouring millions into relatively obscure downballot races. They’ve pinned their hopes on voters wanting to punish Democrats for failing to contain a multimillion-dollar federal welfare scam that is still producing arrests and prosecutions. And their hopes are Democrats’ concerns. “It’s a real problem that [they’re] hitting on,” one senior Democratic staffer told me. Worse, the story lines up with preexisting liberal stereotypes: “It’s proving the Republicans right.”

There’s another dangerous stereotype at play that Minnesota Democrats have had to handle more delicately. Republican ads overtly communicate that Democrats weren’t just loose with the welfare purse strings in general, they let Black people raid the people’s coffers. Many of the embezzlement web’s ringleaders were white, but the grainy images in Republican ads are of the arrestees from Minnesota’s large Somali community. Conservative influencers propagate vivid footage of associated FBI raids taking place in Somali neighborhoods. Add to this potent mix a handful of well-covered incidents of violence involving Somali young people in the summer, and it’s easy to understand why the GOP feels lucky this year. After all, running on welfare fraud, crime, and Black people has been a winning combination for the GOP for almost a century.

This is the week we learn if fraud is a rallying cry potent enough to erase memories of masked stormtroopers in suburban streets and armed men hustling away a little boy wearing bunny-rabbit ears.

The polls may not seem particularly close to an outsider. Senator Amy Klobuchar has been leading her challenger for the governor’s post, state Representative Lisa Demuth, by about seven to nine points—but that’s within the four-point margin of error. Lieutenant Governor Flanagan has been locked in an even closer race against former NFL commentator Michelle Tafoya, edging out Tafoya by just a point or two, or even losing. A Siena/New York Times poll last week should have brightened gloomy Democrats’ perspective: Klobuchar jumped to an 18-point lead and Flanagan to 14. Democrats can take encouragement, as well, from record midterm turnout favoring the DFL despite the palpable exhaustion of an electorate pummeled by a constant stream of negative ads.

But Minnesota, like other sparsely populated Midwestern states, is notoriously difficult to poll, and Democrats have been burned before: In 2016, Clinton was beating Trump by double digits right up to Election Day, when she won by 1.5 percent. Minnesota also has the smallest swing toward Democrats in the country, just three points, according to election analyst Lakshya Jain. A 58 percent Trump disapproval rating hasn’t translated into the Democratic advantage one might expect. The vibes are off. As Tabke told me: “No one thinks Peggy is going to win by 14 points.”

National Democrats paying attention might be most alarmed by Flanagan’s position. After all, a loss to Tafoya would almost certainly dissolve the gossamer dream of Senate control. But Minnesota Democrats are just as jumpy about the Attorney General contest. Incumbent Keith Ellison won in 2022 by less than a point. Currently he’s ahead by between seven and eight points, also within the wide margin of error. “I think Amy wins by five or six points,” the staffer told me. “I think Peggy wins by less. Maybe a lot less. And Keith? I don’t know about Keith.”

Those narrow margins and Ellison’s specific vulnerability stem from what’s inevitably referred to as “the fraud.” It’s sometimes called the “Feeding Our Future” scandal, after the name of the original umbrella organization that was busted, but ask a Minnesotan about “the fraud” and they will know what you’re talking about.

Though Minnesota Republicans and the Trump administration have taken up the case as a cudgel, it was Biden’s Justice Department that uncovered the criminal network. It made the first arrests in the case in September 2022, charging 47 defendants for conspiring to bill the government for millions of nonexistent meals provided to tens of thousands of imaginary children, robbing taxpayers of between $250 and $300 million. The investigation scratched the surface of a tangled and deep-running network and alerted authorities to repeated patterns in suspect billing practices; related inquiries continue through today with hundreds of arrests and the discovery of millions more stolen dollars. The scope has grown to encompass multiple investigations of fraudulent childcare providers, autism centers, housing assistance, therapists, and personal care services.

“Voters hold Keith responsible,” a strategist told me. “The state auditor too, because it sounds like monitoring government funds should be his job—but really, the auditor audits cities. He doesn’t have anything to do with something like this.” This misconception is probably what led to Democrats winning the state auditor’s office in 2022 by an even narrower margin than Ellison taking the attorney general’s office.

Still, Ellison is Black and an outspoken progressive. The target on his back is large and inviting. Ads against him feature the mug shots of the Black defendants in the Feeding Our Future case and none of those who are white—a not particularly subtle cue. For his part, Ellison has been aggressive in promoting his cooperation with federal agencies in exposing the Medicaid fraud under his office’s purview. Just this week, his office announced the raid of several autism centers, with Ellison releasing a statement lauding “the success of my Medicaid fraud unit, which the federal government has acknowledged is both effective and aggressive.”

Democrats’ issues would no doubt be compounded had Governor Tim Walz continued with his campaign for a third term. He started his run before a new wave of national focus last winter halted whatever momentum existed. A Democratic staffer described Walz as a sin eater for the whole party: “Part of Walz getting out of the race is he wanted to jump on that grenade for everybody.”

Walz’s decision to step aside in the race was not, however, the only reason that the Feeding Our Future trials and sentencings disappeared from conversations inside and outside the state for some time. Walz announced that he would not seek reelection on January 5. On January 7, an ICE agent murdered Renee Good.

There is spiraling irony in how this has all played out. Operation Metro Surge began in December 2025 under the pretext of rooting out the very sort of fraud that was already being uncovered—only Trump and his goons imagined it as an immigration operation to send “criminals” back “home.” However, only about 9 percent of the Twin Cities’ Somali community are noncitizens. The existing legal apparatus was already engaged with processing known fraudsters. Casting about in their tactical pants for ways to knock heads and please the higher-ups, ICE shifted to harassing Latino residents and other brown people, which led to neighbors presenting themselves as witnesses, which led to Good’s murder. Which led to Alex Pretti’s murder.

There’s a whole tragicomic chain of causality to follow here, each step a blow to the soul for normal humans and, at the same time, an enormous self-own for Republicans: Good’s murder led to the demand by Trump’s DOJ that Minnesota’s assistant U.S. attorneys investigate Good’s widow for ties to domestic terrorism—and to cease investigating whether Good’s shooting was warranted. Six AUSAs resigned in protest, including the lead prosecutor in the welfare fraud investigations. Eight more attorneys resigned a month later, frustrated over the handling of the shootings and by the avalanche of wrongful-detention petitions forced upon them.

The DOJ has still not filled those positions, and the system remains backlogged as the immigration cases still work their way through the byzantine process. The fraud prosecutions that the Trump department claimed to urgently want to pursue have slowed as the department ropes in attorneys from across the country to deal with cases that they did not build and may not see through to the end. One defense attorney I talked to bemoaned the snail’s pace; despite splashy announcements from the Trump administration, the operation is still running on the juice of the Biden investigations.

From the outside, the Trump administration’s particular version of the fraud narrative is blatantly hypocritical, racist, and explicitly partisan. Among some Minnesotan voters, however, there’s a philosophy of admirable consistency detached from the uglier aspects of Trump’s Truth Social posts on the subject. If anything, Trump’s overt bigotry is a turnoff among liberals and moderates. I can’t argue that white Minnesota voters are themselves free from harboring racist assumptions. I will note that voters I spoke with were disgusted by the Republicans’ lumping together those arrested in the fraud investigations with, as a woman from Rosemont put it, “our Somali neighbors.” “People don’t like it when you make a racial thing,” according to Tabke.

Even more important, perhaps, is the way that upset over government fraud has a different resonance in a state with a long tradition of mutual aid. “For Democrats, and I think to some degree for independents, the idea of the fraud thing damages people’s sense of their pride in Minnesota,” a state-level strategist told me. At the sentencing of one of the Feeding Our Future conspirators, U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel said, “You took the reputation of our state down with you. It’s my hope that one day the words ‘Minnesota’ and ‘fraud’ won’t be spoken in the same sentence, but I fear that day is a long way off.”

Voters are not angry about people stealing from the government, they are offended.

It’s this umbrage about the failure of government to do what it’s supposed to do that underpins the entire Republican strategy here. But disappointment in corruption may not divide the electorate the way Republicans believe it will.

If any of the statewide offices in Minnesota fall to a Republican, there will be a rush to blame Democrats for running too far to the left. Flanagan and Ellison, both at the highest risk of losing at the moment, are both part of the rising cast of young, diverse, and pugnacious politicians willing to bend the Democratic Party to policies outside its comfort zone. But the fight here is not over whether government should do things for its citizens. Minnesotans want government to do things for its citizens. Should Flanagan or Ellison lose, I don’t think it’s because Minnesotans will have withdrawn support for a failing social safety net. Rather, they will have soured on Democrats for allowing it to fail.

The biggest piece of evidence that Minnesotans wouldn’t be rejecting liberal policies in general is from the primary, where Flanagan thumped Representative Angie Craig by double digits despite being outspent by a factor of four-to-one. Flanagan campaigned on Medicare for All and, even more, forceful opposition to ICE. In Congress, Craig had voted for the Laken Riley Act, which expanded the federal government’s authority to detain immigrants. In that contest, Flanagan didn’t just outperform Craig in the Twin Cities, where ICE’s presence was the most visible. She swept up counties outside the metro area too. It’s hard to square that result with the idea that Minnesota Democrats’ biggest problem is an electorate desperate for more moderate policies in general. “If Democrats lose,” the strategist told me, “it’s because of the fraud. That’s it, nothing else.”

Besides, Tabke tells me that in his travels, “fraud is important, but that’s not what people want to talk to me about.”

“They talk about Flock [cameras], they talk about data centers, they talk about the economy, they talk about the price of gas,” he continues. “Democrats dropped the ball on that, meaning fraud. But it all falls under the idea of government just working for people. It’s in the same bucket as protecting folks from surveillance or data centers. Or what ICE did to us.”

The last time I was in Minneapolis, it was a hundred degrees colder than it was in late October. And despite the glorious weather, it seemed as if there might have been fewer people out. It was quieter. I didn’t see anyone in yellow safety vests on street corners, stamping their feet to keep warm. There were no crowds safeguarding children as they walked in and out of schools. I didn’t hear whistles shrieking from blocks away. But protest signs were still there. They’re posted in windows now, slightly faded. The neighborhood Signal chats are still going, just less lively than before. Minnesotans still leave fresh flowers at the memorials for Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

I lived in the Twin Cities for 10 years and never saw as many Minnesota state flags as I saw on a single block in St. Paul on a single day. At a coffee shop, there was a pocket Constitution stuck up next to the espresso machine. On the front door, a warning that law enforcement is not allowed on the premises. Toward the end of my visit, I made the mistake of telling a friend I was in town to cover how the aftermath of Operation Metro Surge might affect the election. My friend was incredulous: “Aftermath? It’s never ended.”

The entire Republican attack depends on inciting outrage over Feeding Our Future and successive scandals to such a degree that moderate voters disengage from the trauma of Operation Metro Surge. What they don’t seem to have accounted for is how the two issues reach back to the same set of values: Government is there to help people. And when someone takes advantage of the government’s power for selfish or cruel ends, they should be made to pay.

The case centers on Colorado’s universal preschool program, or UPK. Private, public, and religious preschools can enroll in the program, in what the state described as a departure from how other states with UPK operate. “More than forty faith-based providers—including six Catholic Charities preschools that are part of the Archdiocese of Denver—participated in UPK’s inaugural year,” the state told the justices in their brief.

Among the state law’s requirements for participating preschools are a variety of health and educational standards, ranging from student-teacher ratios and classroom sizes to free health screenings for students. The law also requires preschools to allow eligible children to enroll “regardless of race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity, lack of housing, income level, or disability, as such characteristics and circumstances apply to the child or the child’s family.” It does not allow exceptions.

In 2023, the archdiocese instructed Catholic preschools not to register with the program because the nondiscrimination requirements ran counter to church teaching on “issues of sexual and gender identity.” The archdiocese and its schools requested a general exemption from the nondiscrimination requirement, but state officials replied that they had no authority under state law to grant one.

Two Catholic preschools and a Catholic family sued the state to challenge the exception’s denial on free exercise clause grounds soon thereafter. They alleged that Colorado’s refusal to provide a carve-out for their religious beliefs had caused them direct harm and violated their constitutional rights.

“Enrollment in [the plaintiffs’] preschools has dropped almost twenty percent, St. Bernadette closed its preschool, and Daniel and Lisa Sheley have been denied over $12,000 in tuition assistance simply for choosing a Catholic education,” they told the justices in their merits brief. “Colorado’s interference with [plaintiffs’] free exercise of religion ought to have been obvious.”

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the state by leaning on the landmark 1990 decision Employment Division v. Smith. In that case, two Native American plaintiffs challenged an Oregon law that denied unemployment benefits to them because they used illegal drugs. The drug in question was peyote, which has a sacramental role in certain tribal religious traditions. They argued the state had violated their free exercise clause rights.

Justice Antonin Scalia led the court as it rejected their claims in a 6–3 ruling. Scalia concluded that the Oregon law in question was a “neutral law of general applicability,” and rejected the plaintiffs’ claim that they could excuse themselves from it by invoking the free exercise clause. “We have never held that an individual’s religious beliefs excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting conduct that the State is free to regulate,” he wrote.

Scalia’s reasoning was grounded in precedent but was also largely pragmatic: He warned against an outcome where judges would have to weigh the importance of various religious beliefs against a government’s basic function of regulating society. “Any society adopting such a system would be courting anarchy, but that danger increases in direct proportion to the society’s diversity of religious beliefs, and its determination to coerce or suppress none of them,” he added.

“It may fairly be said that leaving accommodation to the political process will place at a relative disadvantage those religious practices that are not widely engaged in,” Scalia acknowledged, “but that unavoidable consequence of democratic government must be preferred to a system in which each conscience is a law unto itself or in which judges weigh the social importance of all laws against the centrality of all religious beliefs.”

Smith was not a popular ruling. Congress, responding to bipartisan public outrage, passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to try to reverse the decision by statute. The conservative jurists who joined the court after the ruling have generally criticized it, from Justice Clarence Thomas (who was confirmed later that year) to more recent Republican appointees. The court’s conservative bloc has not yet managed to overturn Smith, instead opting to narrow its scope, bit by bit.

In 2021, for example, the court sided with a Catholic foster-care nonprofit in Philadelphia that refused to place children with same-sex couples despite the city’s nondiscrimination policy. The Supreme Court ruled that Smith did not apply because the policy was not “generally applicable” since it allowed for multiple exceptions. In a concurring opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett rejected calls to overturn Smith because its opponents had not put forward a persuasive framework to replace it.

The plaintiffs in Roy hope to get around Smith in one of two ways. The Supreme Court has often treated Smith “more as a residual rule than as a primary rule of decision,” they argued, while the lower courts have applied it more consistently over the years. They instead pointed to a line of cases since 2017 that took a different approach to the free exercise clause.

The most recent case, Carson v. Makin in 2022, struck down Maine’s “nonsectarian” requirement for private tuition-assistance programs. “The Tenth Circuit ‘distinguished’ Carson by claiming it applied only when religion is ‘specifically targeted,’” the plaintiffs claimed in their brief. “But that view, if accepted, would dramatically narrow Carson and make it easy to evade.” If Carson applies, Colorado would have to overcome strict scrutiny, a level of judicial review with a survival rate on par with rabies. If Smith applies, Colorado’s policy would instead face rational-basis review—the judicial equivalent of the common cold.

Even if the court wants to stick with the “ill-fitting Smith framework,” the plaintiffs argued, Colorado’s nondiscrimination rule should still fail because it is not “generally applicable” either. They describe certain placement-preference requirements as “numerous exceptions that violate the plain text of the mandate and thus undermine Colorado’s asserted interest in ensuring equal access,” such as preferences for low-income families and children with disabilities.

Colorado countered that its placement-preferences system doesn’t amount to exceptions to the nondiscrimination rule. State officials testified in the lower courts that law, policy, and practice allow for adjustments to the sorting algorithm “only when those adjustments do not violate the equal-opportunity requirements.” Those requirements, the state insisted, “ensure that all Colorado parents—Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, gay, or straight—can trust that their four-year-olds will not be turned away from publicly funded preschools because of religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or other protected characteristic.”

The Supreme Court has made a habit out of taking up religious freedom cases from Colorado that challenge the state’s nondiscrimination laws, most famously in ones involving a Christian wedding-cake baker and a Christian web designer who did not want to work with hypothetical same-sex couples. The justices are unlikely to overturn Smith here, and the plaintiffs notably did not ask them to do so, instead hewing to the trend of working around the 1990 ruling. Oral arguments should provide some insight on how far that trend will go.

One executive at Union Carbide—later absorbed by Dow—lamented to fellow executives that the 1974 presentation had garnered a reputation among attendees as “a ‘horror story’ on ingesting PVC resin,” referring to polyvinyl chloride resin, still the world’s third-most-used plastic polymer. For years, companies sponsored and tracked studies on the risks of plastics and vinyl chloride, a typically gaseous known human carcinogen used to produce certain types of plastics. Animals exposed at even low levels developed tumors. Workers who inhaled vinyl chloride kept developing the same rare cancer. All the while, plastics producers and their trade associations continued to push back against federal regulations and downplay risks. As one Conoco Chemical Company executive proclaimed in 1984, “We live in a sea of carcinogens and not only are we surviving—we are living longer!”

A half-century later, Republicans are trying to salvage a fractious coalition that’s somehow come to include both the companies that gathered at the Hotel Delmonico and the people riled up about—among other issues—the microplastics they produce. The figurehead of the movement to Make America Healthy Again, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has spent the lead-up to this year’s midterms pitching Republican candidates to his supporters, who flocked to his opposition to vaccine mandates and talk about healthy foods, at rallies around the country. Tuesday’s election will be a test of whether Republicans can manage to keep the poisoned in bed with the poisoners.

In some ways, MAHA advocates’ concerns about microplastics make perfect sense. A series of studies over the last few years has found them showing up with alarming ubiquity in human blood, brains, placentas, and testicles. Microplastics accumulating in our bodies have been linked to health problems before. A new paper published in Nature sheds light on how they do damage: When exposed to water, tiny plastic particles release chemicals known to contribute to ailments such as heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s. Microplastics, it seems safe to say, are making America less healthy.

In other ways, the MAHA-MAGA alliance is bizarre. According to a KFF poll published in May, some 41 percent of Americans identify with MAHA; most are Republicans and identify with MAGA too. The GOP, however—and this administration, especially—has been exceedingly accommodating to polluters looking for a license to pollute. As microplastics gained prominence during the second Trump administration, MAHA adherents have butted heads with officials all too eager to give the companies that make them a pass.

When Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency declined in June to add microplastics to its priority list of substances to be monitored in drinking water, the founding executive director of the MAHA-aligned Moms Across America movement, Zen Honeycutt, expressed her group’s “deep concern about the growing threat of microplastic pollution to drinking water across the United States,” urging the agency to do more. The administration has responded to pressure over microplastics with what are to date largely symbolic measures. Kennedy’s HHS launched a $144 million “microplastics research program” in April, and the White House’s MAHA report said microplastics might be making kids sick. The EPA has agreed to study them.

There are fairly obvious reasons why Republicans aren’t taking the lead on this issue. The same companies and trade associations that have pushed to roll back pollution rules for decades also donate generously (and disproportionately) to the GOP. While polluters have long been prolific, partisan campaign donors, those gifts have seemed more nakedly transactional under the second Trump administration.

As The New York Times detailed in a recent investigation, industrial polluters started campaigning for exemptions from Biden-era pollution limits nearly as soon as Trump’s second administration began. Not long after these initial requests, the EPA set up an electronic mailbox for the “regulated community” to formally request exemptions by March 31, 2025. On March 19 of that year, political action committees for the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers Association and the American Chemistry Council—trade associations representing the country’s largest plastics and petrochemicals manufacturers—made 13 donations totaling $50,000 to Republican candidates and Republican-aligned PACs; the same day, they sent three donations totaling $10,000 to Democrats. At the end of the month, the AFPM and ACC wrote to the EPA requesting a two-year exemption from complying with Biden-era air quality rules to limit toxins such as ethylene oxide, a “critical building block” for plastic products, according to the ACC, and a carcinogen. In July—after many more meetings, and many, many more donations—the trade associations got what they wanted.

MAHA’s highest-profile members, at least, don’t seem eager to turn their backs on Republicans. Honeycutt spoke with Kennedy at a campaign rally in Iowa last week. At the same event, she posed for a photo with MAHA stalwart Calley Means, who resigned as Kennedy’s senior adviser last week, reportedly over frustrations with the pace of progress. The secretary’s own attempts at campaigning have been something of a mixed bag. While stumping for Michigan Senate hopeful Mike Rogers, Kennedy made remarks that devolved into a racist screed against Muslims. Last month’s MAHA Summit, headlined by anti-mortality guru Bryan Johnson, offered a dour picture of the movement. The event was organized by the nonprofit MAHA Center, which just happens to be run by Robert F. Kennedy’s longtime publisher, Tony Lyons. The laundry list of corporations that funded the conference, including Walmart, aren’t known for their health bona fides. Sponsors like Hims & Hers—best known for marketing GLP-1s, antidepressants, and finasteride to insecure, aging millennials—obviously stand to profit from the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda.

Alarmed by this spectacle, the Heritage Foundation’s Jennifer Galardi cautioned MAHA to steer away from the “dystopian religion” embodied in Johnson’s half-baked pitch to “reimagine human nature” and transcend death. MAHA’s path forward, she argued, should be paved instead by “those who believe that freedom is not found by removing all limitations, but through embracing struggle, pain, and even death to grow, change, and become the image bearers of Christ.”

It’s easy to feel flummoxed by MAHA’s continued, albeit increasingly critical, support for Republican politicians: Isn’t it obvious that a party supported so heavily by polluters will not be the party that also reins them in? But Galardi’s warning—from an institution that’s long led the way in letting companies run the government—offers some grounds for hope. Democratic candidates that really do want to take on petrochemicals producers, Big Pharma, and corporate agriculture can welcome MAHA rank and filers with legitimate concerns about their health, who are fed up with right-wing leaders who’ve sold them out to Dow and Bayer. That doesn’t have to mean indulging every fringe belief of self-identified Republicans and MAGA voters within a fringe, inchoate movement.

Making America healthy really is popular. KFF’s survey found that concerns about food safety and pesticides resonate well beyond those who personally identify with MAHA. Even among self-identified MAHA supporters, people cared more about bringing down the cost of health care than food policy or vaccines. A poll published this summer by the Ocean Conservancy found that nearly nine in 10 Americans are concerned that scientists had found microplastics in the human body; 63 percent were “very concerned.”

But just because ideas are popular doesn’t make them easy to implement. The companies filling our blood, brains, and balls with microplastics have a long track record of avoiding regulations and the fallout from damning stories. Exxon knew for decades that fossil fuels warm the planet; it’s enjoyed record profits in the decade-plus since that story broke.

For the relatively small numbers of us who know that history, what’s unnerving about MAHA’s blinkered anti-corporatism isn’t the movement’s hypocrisy—the fact that crusaders for public health with plenty of valid concerns are still willing to support politicians funded by polluters, and who have handed those donors ever-larger blank checks to pollute. Many of them, after all, oppose vaccination programs that have saved millions of lives. The real trouble is how extraordinarily difficult it has been to translate our arsenal of well-documented facts into accountability, lasting political majorities, and/or policies that both get at the root of the problem and can weather a change in administrations. There are no easy answers for how to confront industries making products that are deadly, ubiquitous, and at least somewhat profitable. MAHA certainly hasn’t figured it out. Democrats who want to try might start by appealing to something a bit more basic than well-trod lefty topics like corporate hypocrisy, or even money in politics: This stuff is making us sick, and that should stop.

It’s not a surprise that the economy is often top of mind for voters; it usually is. What’s new this year is that Republicans have lost their advantage on the issue. And while on the surface that’s about gas and grocery prices, there are deeper shifts happening that could help open the door to a new economic era.

For decades, voters have trusted the GOP to keep the gross domestic product growing based on one misleading idea: They know that the GOP is the party of business, so they just assume surely the pro-business party is better for the economy. 

But voters are turning away from that, and the reason why could mark a seismic change in American politics: Now, they aren’t so sure that what’s good for businesses is good for them. They’re looking for candidates with not just answers but different kinds of answers than they’ve heard before. If Democrats win next Tuesday and actually deliver next year, it could usher in a new era of policy that finally closes the door on the neoliberalism that has dominated for nearly half a century.

The idea that what’s good for the private sector is good for working people has deep roots in the GOP, but in our time, it comes from Ronald Reagan, whose economic policies pointed to government spending as the cause of inflation, claiming it crowded out innovation and cost workers jobs and opportunities. He slashed the federal government’s spending and said he would focus welfare programs on only “the truly needy,” the definition of which was always shrinking. He promised that public revenue would grow even as the tax rates that individuals paid fell, because of overall growth in the economy. “Our aim is to increase our national wealth so all will have more, not just redistribute what we already have, which is just a sharing of scarcity,” Reagan said soon after being elected in 1981. “We can begin to reward hard work and risk-taking, by forcing this government to live within its means.”

Reagan never called it “trickle-down economics,” but of course that’s what it became known as. Despite being disproven as a theory of economics, parts of these ideas have fundamentally stuck. Many voters still think the government causes inflation and is massively inefficient compared to the venerated private sector. They voted for Donald Trump because they believed he was a businessman who could turn things around. 

Today, as corporations continue to rake in record-high profits and billionaires are sending rockets to the moon, the idea that working people’s fates are tied to theirs is less sellable. Voters appear to be ready to turn back to the kinds of economic policies that FDR enacted, in which the government actually makes life better for workers across the income scale. They’re increasingly willing to tax the wealthy in order to do it and are listening to Democratic candidates who promise a renewed sense of government responsibility to provide. 

And they’re fighting the old attacks that used to sink those ideas, like claims from the right that robust government spending equals socialism and communism. “The only minority destroying America is the billionaires,” Texas Democrat Senate candidate James Talarico said at a rally last year.  

He then defended other minorities attacked by Republicans: trans people, Muslims, and undocumented immigrants, who he estimated to each be around 1 percent of the population. “We are focused on the wrong one percent,” he said, to cheers from the crowd. “Trans people aren’t taking away our health care. Muslims aren’t defunding our schools. Immigrants aren’t cutting taxes for themselves and their rich friends. It’s the billionaires and their puppet politicians.”

In recent swing-state surveys, the progressive Democratic messaging group Way to Win, a “strategic donor collaborative and strategy hub,” found that voters were more convinced by messages that promised a government that works for people. Those that included statements like “Our leaders should be fighting to make all of our lives better” and “We need leaders willing to stand up to right-wing corporate interests that hold influence in both political parties” were popular. The people surveyed also blamed things like no-bid contracts and corporate price-gouging for the sad state of the economy.

Medicare for All, which is a big campaign promise in key battleground races like Democrat Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate race in Michigan, is also more popular with voters than ever, with two-thirds of American adults telling KFF they supported a national health plan, although it’s still unpopular with Republicans. The idea was so unpopular under President Barack Obama that any notion of even a public option was jettisoned from the Affordable Care Act. Now, more than a decade later, consumers still can’t afford their premiums, and they increasingly blame the health care industry for making medical care unaffordable. They are looking for new answers to America’s health care problem.

Support for the government helping families pay for childcare costs has also grown, especially among young voters. Nearly 60 percent of Gen Z voters said the government should subsidize childcare for families with two working parents in an October poll by The 19th/YouGov, and 29 percent of women in that age group said the government should fully cover childcare for children under the age of two. Thirty percent of voters aged 30 to 44, the most likely group of adults to be paying for childcare right now, supported a universal program. 

It’s easy to point to Trump’s tariffs and war in Iran as the reasons people are upset about high prices at the gas station and in the grocery store. But populist framing has been adopted by some Democratic candidates who don’t even count themselves as socialist, and it has increased the ire directed at billionaires, helping to promote the idea of taxing them more and changing the conversation about class in America. 

The midterm campaigns may also be changing the way that voters view economic questions in the first place. A CBS News/YouGov poll from August found that 60 percent of all U.S. adults think the economy is somewhat or very unfair. Eighty-three percent of Democrats in the survey said it was most important for Democrats “to show they are fighting for people,” and 68 percent said they should be talking about “big or fundamental changes in policies and approach, even if they are harder to do,” on economic issues. 

In sum, people are furious at corporations, and they no longer see their well-being tied to what boardrooms want. That creates a new opportunity to tell a story about the role the government can play in making the economy fair and providing the basics—like housing and health care—that people need for a good life. The key is that Democrats can’t just win on that message. They’ll actually have to deliver next year. But if they do, 2026 could stand as one of the most consequential midterm elections in modern history: the year when voters stopped buying the argument that what’s good for Wall Street is good for Main Street. 

But Democrats may not be able to draw many lessons from Cooper and Ossoff’s expected victories. Why not? While Ossoff and Cooper have similar leads in similar states, they have taken completely different paths to get there. And other candidates are also succeeding with divergent approaches. The story of the 2026 cycle may not be brilliant individual candidates or strategies but rather an unpopular president and partisan polarization creating opportunities for a wide array of Democratic candidates running in disparate ways across the country. That’s an important, positive story, though it will mean that none of these candidates or their consultants should necessarily be hailed as geniuses. 

Unless you live in North Carolina (and maybe even if you do), you probably don’t know much about Cooper’s campaign against former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley. That’s by design. Cooper has run a campaign straight from the center-left playbook: boring, safe, centrist, local. He talks about making groceries cheaper, reversing Medicaid cuts, and other standard, relatively uncontroversial ideas at small events around the state. He emphasizes his ability to work with Republicans. He then takes a few questions from state-based reporters. 

This is the way the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee encourages candidates to campaign. But they probably didn’t have to spend much time pushing Cooper to this approach—it’s what he did during his previous six successful runs (and zero losses) for attorney general and governor. 

If you’re enough of a junkie to be reading a TNR article, you’ve probably heard about Ossoff’s campaign against Representative Mike Collins. Liberal pundits, we at TNR included, are delighted by his approach and keep praising it. We love that he calls out Republican politicians for their radicalism and racism and attacks Trump in memorable ways, famously accusing the president of being obsessed with “travel with Natalie” (Harp, the president’s personal aide). 

“Mr. Ossoff hasn’t moderated his votes or his message … as Democrats in competitive statewide races often do in the conservative-leaning South,” The New York Times’ Robert Jimison wrote in August. 

It sometimes feels like Ossoff is running a national campaign, so much so that he has had to repeatedly deny that he is running for president in 2028. He regularly does interviews with MS NOW, Pod Save America, Axios, and other media outlets that aren’t based in Georgia. He gives speeches at huge rallies with lines that seem almost intentionally written to be clipped and go viral on social media.  

I don’t want to overstate the differences between Ossoff and Cooper. They have similar stands on most issues. Ossoff isn’t running on Medicare for All or other progressive policies. Cooper, despite his moderate branding, isn’t leaning into conservative positions like former Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia used to. But the last decade has featured a continuous debate among Democrats over whether the party should be defined by fighting Trump and the right—as party activists and groups such as Indivisible prefer—or tamping down partisan tensions, the approach favored by President Biden and many other party officials. A feisty Democrat (Ossoff) and a conciliatory one (Cooper) both easily winning in Southern purple states leaves that quandary unresolved. 

In fact, there are at least five different approaches to Democratic/liberal/anti-Trump/anti-MAGA politics on the ballot on Tuesday in purple and swing states. Several candidates are using the Manchin playbook of explicitly distancing themselves from the Democratic Party and adopting some conservative stands on issues. That group includes gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand and Senate hopeful Josh Turek of Iowa and Senate candidates Mary Peltola of Alaska and Dan Osborn of Nebraska. Osborn is running as an independent; Turek has emphasized his conservatism on transgender rights in particular. 

Elsewhere, the populist style of not being particularly conservative or progressive for a Democrat or sharply criticizing Trump personally but bemoaning the power of the wealthy and corporations is being deployed by James Talarico of Texas and Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Gubernatorial candidates Keisha Bottoms of Georgia and David Crowley of Wisconsin are running as nonideological pragmatists like Cooper. Senate hopefuls Troy Jackson of Maine and Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan are testing out a swing-state version of Bernie Sanders’s politics, touting stands like their support of Medicare for All. 

Ossoff is doing something a bit unique, blending populism with aggressive anti-Trump rhetoric. 

The results next week might suggest that one of those five approaches is clearly worse or better than the others electorally. But it will be hard to draw sweeping conclusions. Elections are complicated and multifaceted. El-Sayed’s biggest challenges probably aren’t his ideology but being Muslim in a country with a lot of Islamophobic people, and the resistance that he has faced from fellow Democratic politicians. Being safe and boring probably works better for Cooper—who has been previously elected statewide several times and is white and male—as compared to Bottoms or Crowley. 

If there is no obvious tactical or strategic lesson from the midterms, that will be a lesson itself. Having lost the intraparty debate on policy, the center-left is now fixated on tactics and strategy. Instead of leaning into the merits of centrist positions, center-left Democrats these days argue that Democrats must sound more like Cooper and less like Jackson to win in swing states. Progressives are now trying to win these arguments by claiming that candidates must adopt more left-wing stands, such as opposing data centers to win in purple areas. I am hoping (perhaps futilely) that election results that don’t clearly vindicate or undermine a particular campaign strategy can allow the party to move back to disagreements about policy, which is the right battleground. We can’t ever predict who will win Wisconsin; we can figure out which candidate’s position on wealth taxes is closest to our own. 

I suspect that the biggest lesson will be that “parties are electable, not candidates,” in the words of Stanford political scientist Adam Bonica. Democratic candidates having a chance in states that Trump won comfortably in 2024 (Alaska, Iowa, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas) and being well ahead in states that are normally close (Georgia, North Carolina) suggests the story of 2026 isn’t about individual candidates. It’s notable that polls suggest that Cooper, despite his tempered rhetoric about Trump and Republicans, is winning less than 10 percent of the GOP vote, similar to Ossoff. Democratic and independent voters are broadly rejecting Trump and the Republican Party. That gives Democrats with different backgrounds, policy views, and strategies chances to win.

There will be a flood of analyses after the midterms crediting a particular candidate or strategy for a win in a given state and suggesting that Democrats must embrace that politician or tactic in 2028. You should read that stuff very skeptically. Jon Ossoff, Roy Cooper, and the other Democrats who will win next week are talented politicians with smart advisers. But the real story of 2026 is that everybody who’s not a hardcore Republican hates Donald Trump. And by far the most important factor two years from now will be if everyone still hates Trump.

So you can imagine my pleasant surprise as the vote tallies came in and the liberal Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva broke out of a narrow race to win handily. As Lula celebrates another term in office, Flávio has lammed it to Florida, hoping that the Trump administration will lick his wounds. As The New Republic’s Perry Bacon wrote, Lula’s shock victory was both “a win for democracy” and “an important defeat for global villains” like Trump. But it also gives us much to ponder about how this win was pulled off and what lessons we can take from it.

Analysts will likely spend some time picking through the details, but one aspect of Lula’s campaign jumped out at me in the days following the election: the work of “Lula’s Army,” a WhatsApp group with 10 million members that created space for solidarity and direct action. The army worked online and in meatspace: They promoted pro-Lula hashtags, provided their candidate’s content with much-needed algorithmic boosts, and recruited new voters from their neighborhoods. As the BBC reported, lawmaker André Janones took charge of the WhatsApp group, handing the army its “missions.” Per the BBC:

Lula’s Army messages often included ready-made templates for followers to share with friends and family. Each one assigned supporters a specific task aimed at boosting Lula’s visibility on social media. Janones frequently instructed his “troops” to “blow up” the latest campaign video or help a new hashtag “take off.”

“Guys, urgent!,” “Don’t go to sleep yet,” “No food before the mission!,” and “I have one more task before you’re dismissed,” were some of the instructions.

As the report notes, it is “notoriously difficult” to assess the role that social media plays in election results. That Lula’s Army was active in ground-level organizing and voter recruitment is just as important as liking and favoriting campaign videos. Plus, it takes two to tango: Lula’s successes were somewhat dependent on Bolsonaro’s failings. But if the social media battlefront was insignificant, then we wouldn’t be staring at reports accusing Meta of putting its finger on the algorithmic scale on Bolsonaro’s behalf.   

The way one member of the army described it in a series of posts, Janones’s contributions to the WhatsApp group were a mix of civic education and social media literacy. The congressman, according to this member, “helped motivate us, encouraged us to talk to friends and relatives to go vote and ... explained to us how social media worked so the people who were clueless about it understood.” Janones also apparently advised the army to stop engaging with the right-wing’s content because doing so only boosted it algorithmically. In a way, Lula’s Army found a way to gamify the resistance, all while practicing some disciplined social media hygiene.

Can this sort of political organizing work in the United States? It already is. As The New York Times reported in September, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has an army of social media influencers who dutifully promote his content and accomplishments. “The administration regularly sends the influencers memos on the mayor’s priorities and encourages them to trumpet his accomplishments, all outside of public scrutiny. The missives are delivered in group chats on Signal, an encrypted messaging app designed to shield posts from public review.”

The Times’ whiff of disapproval should come as no surprise, but not just because the paper’s own political alignment frequently runs afoul of Mamdani’s leftist leanings—the mayor’s online troops are, for the Times, its new competition in terms of influencing the direction of the city’s politics. No longer can the monolithic Gray Lady insist that the city must be run by its preferred centrist du jour. A more modern, social-media optimized force is going to have both an argument and an audience to counter the patricians who run the Times’ editorial board. 

As someone who is frequently dismayed by how Democrats too often seem to not understand the modern media landscape and how to exploit it, what Mamdani is doing is precisely the sort of thing that feels ripe and timely. And if anything, the people they need to reach are already there, waiting for them to connect. Over the past few years, armies of this nature have been forming all around us. In Minneapolis, the anti-ICE movement has used the same tools to keep watch over its neighborhoods, direct support to families in fear, and mobilize for street protests. And as TNR contributor Dan Froomkin reports, the No Kings movement and its affiliated allies are planning to continue their robust organizing after the midterms in the furtherance of a bold agenda that Democrats can run and win on in 2028 by building the “permanent field campaign” once envisioned by Obama insiders, which ended up falling by the wayside.

If anything, Democrats need to learn to fight in these trenches because the MAGA right is already on the march in these online spaces. As The Washington Post reported this week, Trump and his allies are using the same tactics that Lula’s Army used to save democracy in Brazil to undo it here at home: “Nearly 600 high-profile, right-wing social media accounts, podcasts and other online media have published more than 7,000 statements questioning the election’s integrity so far this year,” it reported, adding that “overstated claims that noncitizens are on voter rolls and that mail-in ballots enable widespread fraud” have been widely broadcast online. This isn’t a fight from which Democrats can afford to shy away.

All that said, there’s a broader lesson to be taken from the exploits of Lula’s Army and its online organizing. It’s pretty clear to me that the United States’ Silicon Valley oligarchy, which backs Trump’s MAGA forces and is skeptical of democracy, has designed its various platforms and algorithmic traps to keep people isolated and despondent, doomscrolling instead of hoping, and scraping what meager dopamine hits we can from a narrowing band of content. This suits authoritarians well: Politics is a hard road in a free society; when you feel alone, it can seem even more hopeless. 

But from São Paulo, to New York City, to Minneapolis, we’re seeing that the best way to achieve political change—maybe the only way—is to do it together. When we organize, we turn the arduous process of politicking into a game. We find purpose in shared burdens. We’re more apt to discover that the work actually brings joy rather than hopelessness. And if we lose, we lick our wounds together. Together, our possibilities bloom. On some rare days, you tip an election, thought to be lost, in your favor. On other days, you protect your neighbors from fascist goons. And sometimes, you gather at the Washington Monument to blow off steam, listen to a punk band, and raise a boatload of money for a good cause. As they say, birds are not meant to fly alone.

This article first appeared in Power Mad, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Jason Linkins. Sign up here.

First of all, Vice President JD Vance canceled his appearance at the event in St. Cloud without giving a reason—leaving other Trump officials to stand in front of a giant banner reading “The Vice President’s Fraud Task Force,” with the vice president nowhere in sight.

But things only went south from there. Shortly after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a federal crackdown in the state, with coordinated searches and a $25 million whistleblower incentive program, a reporter pointed out that the Trump administration has an issue of its own: The Department of Homeland Security paid $495 million for a prison in Appleton, Minnesota, in August, despite its owner, CoreCivic, Inc., offering it to the state for just $75 million last year. Bessent didn’t want to answer that question.

“Uh, yeah, I don’t know anything about that, what we are here to do is prosecute criminal fraud and any question like that that deflects away from it I think is a waste of our time, thanks,” Bessent said.

Q: If the administration has declared on waste and fraud, could you explain the $420 million overpayment for a prison in Appleton, MN, when they company offered it to the state for $75m?

BESSENT: I don't know anything about that. That's a waste of our time. pic.twitter.com/AnJ9bedDDd

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 30, 2026

Minnesota TV station KARE 11 reported on the massive overpayment Thursday, citing records filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission confirming the $420 million price difference. It’s the largest real estate purchase in Minnesota history, and it’s a 34-year-old vacant prison that’s been closed for 16 years.

“It’s unexplainable!” Minnesota Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell told KARE 11 when he was asked about the sale.

“Obviously, I was stunned given the reality of the offer that had been made to us just a little over a year prior to that,” Schnell said. “I still can’t figure it out.”

That purchase price doesn’t include any necessary improvements the government will have to make on the facility, which will likely be numerous considering it has been defunct for 16 years and is located in a small town about a three hour drive from Minneapolis and St. Paul. The company in question, CoreCivic, has profited immensely from Trump’s mass deportation policies, and donated $500,000 to President Trump and Vance’s inauguration. But don’t expect that to be the subject of a big federal fraud investigation.

Marshall’s former patient Meischa Zimmerman filed the class-action lawsuit Thursday in Kansas state court against both Marshall and his former medical practice on behalf of herself and several other patients. Last month, The New York Times broke the story that Marshall sued hundreds of his patients for medical debts in rural Barton County, Kansas, where many residents live in poverty and don’t have health insurance.

Zimmerman, an obstetrics patient of Marshall’s in 2009, said the practice sued her over a $3,596 bill for the delivery of her child, plus an 18 percent annual interest rate. According to the court filing, debt collection efforts linked to the usurious debt led to her arrest on three separate occasions.

Under Kansas law, doctors and other businesses can only charge 15 percent interest rates, with some exceptions allowing higher rates if they specify them in a preexisting contract. Marshall and his practice, Heartland Regional OBGYN, charged an 18 percent rate to his patients, mostly mothers from low-income, uninsured, or underinsured backgrounds. The lawsuit calls those rates illegal, and part of a “callous and predatory” debt-collection scheme.

The revelations over Marshall’s past have helped put his seat in play in normally solidly Republican Kansas. That has led to President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance jetting off to Kansas to campaign for him, but it hasn’t gone so well: Marshall’s Democratic challenger, pastor Adam Hamilton, has a slight advantage in recent polling.

This lawsuit is not going to help. Hamilton has called out Marshall’s high interest rates and propensity to sue his patients for as little as $101, saying in a debate last month that “there are 2,000 verses in the Bible that speak to caring for the poor. This is not happening under this man.”

The news of Marshall being sued just days before Election Day on Tuesday will ensure that his medical practice will be in the news through the weekend. It’ll pile on the fact that another damaging story broke about him earlier this week: He made a suspiciously timed pharmaceutical stock purchase when he was a congressional representative on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee eight years ago. Come Tuesday, voters in Kansas might have an easy decision to make.

Officer Mario Alberto Morales is facing a charge of assault with a deadly weapon after running over Miguel Parra Hernandez, who was on foot, with a black unmarked SUV. Hernandez broke his leg and also injured his hip and ankle, according to his family. He is currently undergoing rehab in ICE custody, and Morales was placed on administrative leave.

Hernandez, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, was driving to his construction job when immigration agents tried to pull him over. Hernandez and another passenger fled from the vehicle. According to street camera and body cam footage, Morales then turned his vehicle and accelerated over Hernandez. Hernandez can be heard screaming “You ran over me,” while Morales replies, “You got hit with the car, bro.” ICE backed Morales’s version of events, saying in an official statement that Hernandez “ran in front of an ICE vehicle and was struck.”

ICE still maintains that story, saying that Morales’s indictment “is nothing more than a political stunt by Houston sanctuary politicians.” It also argues that the local government doesn’t have jurisdiction to try and investigate Morales in the first place, a claim Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare says is “false.”

Body camera video shows an ICE agent's chilling response to running over Miguel Parra Hernandez, a Houston immigrant, in northwest Houston on Oct. 10. The agent, Mario Alberto Morales, was indicted by a Harris County grand jury on Friday on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. https://t.co/ARKkcUIoSJ

— Houston Chronicle (@HoustonChron) October 30, 2026

“An ICE badge does not give you free rein to injure, kill, or violate the constitutional rights of anyone,” Teare said.

Morales is only the second ICE officer to face any legal consequences for their actions since the beginning of President Trump’s immigration crackdown. ICE officer Christian Castro was charged with four counts of assault for shooting Venezuelan immigrant Julio Sosa-Celis in Minnesota in January.

CNN money and politics reporter Fredreka Schouten described Musk on October 26 as “a megadonor unlike anyone this country has ever seen.” He’s spent more than $445 million on the midterm elections, which is more than anybody ever spent on an election where the donor was not himself a candidate. That doesn’t count the $291 million Musk spent two years ago to elect Trump and other Republicans. 

In addition to being a megadonor, Musk is a mega federal contractor, largely through his aerospace company, SpaceX. According to a new report by Democracy Defenders Action, a nonprofit legal group co-founded by Norm Eisen (co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during President Donald Trump’s first impeachment), Musk has “won at least $10 billion in contracts since he left the government.” That was a mere 17 months ago, amid a heavily publicized feud with the president. That $10 billion is actually in addition to the $38 billion that Musk suckled from the federal teat before 2025, and it doesn’t count the $6.3 billion that Musk extracted while he was running Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. DOGE was supposed to cut government spending, but instead it ran up a bill of $517 billion, not counting the $6.3 billion in federal contracts Musk pocketed at the same time, nor the $10 billion Musk pocketed later. With enemies like this, who needs friends?

It’s hard to imagine a more extreme example of the sort of chicanery that Congress thought it banned way back in 1940. “Those who are making money out of government contracts,” said Virginia Senator Harry Byrd, who sponsored the measure as an amendment to the 1939 Hatch Act, should not make campaign contributions because these “may be considered in some instances as bribery in order to secure governmental contracts.” Congress strengthened the ban after the Watergate scandal revealed that Nixon campaign officials had a hand in awarding architectural and engineering design contracts from the General Services Administration. The ban was upheld by the D.C. Circuit as recently as 2015.

Musk invested $736 million in the second Trump administration and got back $16.3 billion, a return of 2,200 percent. So why isn’t the guy in jail? Because when the contractor in question is a corporation, as it nearly always is, the corporation’s officers, directors, major shareholders, and political action committees remain free to spend on federal elections. In addition, the ban does not cover unlimited so-called “independent expenditures” by super PACs such as Musk’s America PAC, which accounts for about half of Musk’s expenditures. These are loopholes through which you can drive a Nicolas Tractomas TR 10x10 D100.  

It’s especially galling that Musk is milking the same federal bureaucracy to which he took an axe in early 2025 (as are, I noted earlier this month, the Dwarf Fortress–playing little creeps who worked under Musk at DOGE). Musk’s twin endeavors were not unconnected. The Democracy Defenders Action report notes that the federal government gave SpaceX exclusive access to its most closely held space-tracking data only after DOGE “fired many of the federal government’s nascent space traffic control program’s staff,” citing an October 25 report by Tom Perkins in The Guardian. Indeed, DOGE fired all but one of the traffic control staff (presumably as insurance against an impoundment challenge in court). The all-but-certain next step will be for the federal government to privatize space traffic control entirely and hand it over to SpaceX. Democratic congressional investigators, take note.

The biggest contract awards, according to Democracy Defenders Action, are $4.2 billion and $2.3 billion to help the U.S. Space Force build Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense system. The Golden Dome is a replay of Ronald Reagan’s failed Star Wars program, inspired by the success of Israel’s Iron Dome, which covers an area approximately 1/450th the size of the United States.* The contracts were approved under a fast-track process called “other transaction authority” that, according to Drew FitzGerald and Micah Maidenberg of The Wall Street Journal, zooms decision-making past “many of the regulations that typically slow the process for acquiring weaponry and other technology.” According to FitzGerald and Maidenberg, the Pentagon request “closely matched SpaceX’s capabilities.” Funny about that. 

Dave Vorland, who was President Joe Biden’s acting deputy assistant secretary of space and missile defense policy, told Bloomberg’s Sana Pashankar, “It shouldn’t be the case that you decide ahead of time that you’d like to award a contract to an individual company and then write all the criteria to make that happen.” No, it really shouldn’t. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink, who oversees the Space Force, is close to Musk, a potential problem that Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Duckworth flagged before Meink’s confirmation. When Meink was under consideration for the position, Musk sat in on his interview. “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, told Politico’s Joe Gould. People in Washington nowadays say that sort of thing a lot.

The goodies handed to Musk by the Trump administration are not limited to federal contracts. According to the Democracy Defenders Action report, the bespoke regulatory relief granted Musk’s companies may be even more important. According to Democracy Defenders Action, “at least 11 of the 15 federal executive departments have taken actions favorable, or potentially favorable, to Musk’s business interests.” The report quotes a comment that American Enterprise Institute defense analyst Todd Harrison made last August to the Journal’s FitzGerald and Maidenberg: “There’s been a lot of focus on their contract wins. In the bigger scheme, the regulatory wins have more systemic, long-term implications for [Musk’s] business model.”

For example, Reuters reported in July, Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI, a unit of SpaceX, was somehow permitted to install 59 natural gas turbines for a Memphis data center “without securing federal clean air permits.” All but two of the turbines were situated across the state line in Mississippi—Memphis sits just north of the Tennessee border—and Mississippi state regulators claimed, erroneously, that the turbines in question were exempt from the Clean Air Act. The NAACP filed suit, on behalf of nearby low-income Black communities, to compel the EPA to enforce the law. The Trump Justice Department then threw the federal government’s weight behind xAI, claiming, absurdly, that “the NAACP may not pursue this Clean Air Act enforcement action over the United States’ objection.” It cited for justification a Trump executive order that said: “It is the policy of the United States to sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.” On October 19, a district court judge in Mississippi called bullshit on that and denied the Trump administration’s attempt to dismiss the NAACP challenge.

Another example was the Securities and Exchange Commission’s settlement of a complaint the SEC had brought against Musk in the final days of the Biden administration for delaying disclosure of his Twitter share purchases in advance of acquiring the company. The delay allowed Musk to buy additional shares at an artificially low price. It was a straight-up securities violation, and the SEC initially demanded that Musk pay a $150 million fine. But after Trump took office, the agency agreed to instead settle the matter for $1.5 million. 

“It’s an embarrassing day for the SEC,” Amanda Fischer, former chief of staff to Biden SEC Chair Gary Gensler, told Reuters. The settlement “should ‌cause the ⁠public to question whether the SEC is protecting White House insiders at the expense of ordinary investors.” District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan seemed to agree when she reluctantly approved the settlement. “A court presented with a consent judgment is not a rubber stamp. But neither ​is it an ombudsman,” Sooknanan wrote. “Whether the Executive Branch (through the SEC) has done enough to hold Mr. Musk ⁠to account for his alleged violation is, like many other issues, for our citizenry to decide at the ballot box.” As I’ve noted previously, the November 3 election is as much a referendum on Musk as it is on Trump.

The Democracy Defenders Action report conceded that a few Trump administration decisions went against Musk’s financial interest. Among these were cancellation, under the Big Beautiful reconciliation bill, of a tax credit for the purchase of new electric vehicles that Biden had expanded, and various environmental policy decisions easing up on regulation of gas-powered vehicles. Musk is, of course, chief executive officer of the electric vehicle giant Tesla.

But even this dark cloud, Democracy Defenders Action noted, had a silver lining for Musk. With the resultant withdrawal by legacy automakers from the E.V. market, Tesla was able to expand its market share from 41 percent to 52 percent. Similarly, Trump’s tariffs hit Tesla hard, but it hit many of Tesla’s competitors harder. Trump’s idiotic trade war with Canada, which includes a threatened 50 percent tariff on Canadian automobiles and auto parts, could sock General Motors and Ford, but Tesla has no plants in Canada, and it’s less reliant on Canada for auto parts. 

Whether these softened blows should be tallied among the regulatory returns on Musk’s $736 million investment in Trump and the GOP is a topic I shall leave to cooler heads to solve. But overall, I’d guess Musk is a satisfied buyer. Let’s hope the midterms make him ask for his money back.

* This piece originally misidentified the Iron Dome.

Democrats are already preparing for a range of scenarios along these lines. And while this GOP gambit is very unlikely to succeed, it could get awfully nasty.

Governor Mike Dunleavy’s comments came in a discussion about the controversial report this week that Democrats conspired to get a second “Dan Sullivan” on the ballot to siphon votes from GOP Senator Dan Sullivan. The governor has ordered a criminal probe of the move, and a reporter asked him if he’ll certify the election if she’s still under that investigation.

“If we conclude that there were things that should not have happened, that are illegal, we will act on that,” Dunleavy said. “That may in fact impact whether somebody is seated in the U.S. Senate.”

A quick recap: The New York Times reported that Democratic Party operatives, including on the Peltola campaign, were involved in an elaborate scheme to encourage people to run for Senate to pull votes from the GOP incumbent. It’s unclear how much Peltola herself knew about this, but many senior operatives appear to have been involved.

How bad was this plot? In my view, it’s scummy and antidemocratic conduct. But it’s routine, as ratfucking goes. Indeed, Democrats quickly cited numerous examples of Republicans engaged in lots of similar chicanery. Let’s get real: We live in a world where Trump ordered multiple GOP state legislatures to execute extreme gerrymanders for the explicitly declared purpose of holding the House, where Trump has called on congressional Republicans to seize control of state-administered elections, and where Trump still won’t commit to accepting a midterm defeat.

In that world, the Alaska saga is pretty damn small electoral potatoes. The ballot will be clearly labeled by party, and it’s unlikely to make any difference. Besides, as I wrote in my 2018 book, if only one side adheres to norms of fair play in politics, that is itself destabilizing. Generally speaking, mutual escalation of hardball tactics may be the only way to compel some kind of détente over time.

All that aside, the second “Dan Sullivan” says his decision to run was his own, and state courts (in a separate lawsuit) have already upheld his right to do so. Yet Trump’s Justice Department is already suing to force Alaska not to certify the results, insisting the second “Dan Sullivan” will invalidate any outcome (other than a GOP victory, of course).

Here’s where Alaska’s governor comes in. Look closely at his full remarks:

We are going to investigate. We are going to follow the law. And if we conclude there were things that should not have happened—that are illegal—we will act on that. And that may in fact impact whether somebody is seated in the U.S. Senate.

Can Dunleavy really “act” to impact whether Peltola is seated? Maybe.

According to election law expert Rick Pildes, the governor and lieutenant governor transmit a certified election result to the U.S. Senate. Notably, the latter is Republican Nancy Dahlstrom, who previously disqualified the second Dan Sullivan from running (the state courts overturned this). She’s also openly aligned with MAGA. So we know where her loyalties lie.

The two of them, then, could theoretically decline to transmit certification. But this would immediately face court challenge. As Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias notes, sending certification is the governor’s legal duty.

“Whatever the governor may feel, it is his legal obligation to sign the paperwork to go to the U.S. Senate,” Elias tells me. “If he doesn’t, he will be sued. And he’ll have to sign it anyway.”

The court battle would turn on whether there’s any real evidence that the second “Dan Sullivan” on the ballot legitimately did confuse enough voters to affect the outcome. “That would be highly unlikely and extremely difficult to prove,” Pildes told me. He noted that Alaska’s ranked-choice voting makes it even more remote, since any voter confused about the two “Dan Sullivans” would almost certainly vote for the other as second choice should non-Senator Dan Sullivan be eliminated in the first round.

A key nuance: Note that Dunleavy says he might refuse to send certification only if the state investigation of the ballot packing finds criminality (which is not impossible but highly unlikely). But even if it did, that still wouldn’t justify non-certification, Pildes says, and the courts would overturn it.

That’s because only a concrete finding of a genuinely tainted outcome in which a majority didn’t get its way would suffice, Pildes says. And Trump’s federal lawsuit won’t force Alaska not to certify, legal experts say, because it interferes with the state’s constitutionally protected oversight of its elections. (In another complication, Alaska gets a new governor in December; which party wins will matter.)

Could the Senate refuse to seat Peltola? Theoretically, the Senate could vote to postpone her swearing-in regardless of the certification sent by Alaska, says election law expert Rick Hasen. Then a complicated internal process would kick in, and much would turn on which party controlled the Senate and its Rules Committee at that point. “It would likely be resolved,” Hasen says, “but it could get ugly.”

Here’s the bottom line: All these legal details are almost beside the point. If Peltola wins, it simply will be a legitimate victory as a legal matter. But Trump is clearly laying the groundwork to exploit all these pressure points to stall her seating regardless of what facts and law dictate. Asked recently if Peltola should be seated, Trump declared: “It’s hard to believe that she can even be allowed to run.”

So even if Trump’s federal lawsuit pressuring Alaska won’t work, it’s actually designed to feed the mere impression that the results are tainted. He will then exploit public confusion—created by him—to loudly demand that the Alaska governor refrain from certification. He will insist—again, relying on confusion he helped create—that Senate Republicans sabotage Peltola’s seating.

It’s all very unlikely to succeed. But if you don’t think Trump will do everything in his power to delay the inevitable for as long as possible—and if you don’t think this could get extremely vicious or even violent—then you haven’t been paying attention.

House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi criticized El-Sayed on a recent episode of the On Brand podcast. Host Donny Deutsch claimed El-Sayed had made “concerning” comments opposing the existence of a Jewish state. “That’s antisemitic as far as I’m concerned,” he said.

“No, it’s more than concerning. It’s wrong,” Pelosi said. “It’s wrong, and it isn’t a reflection of the Democrats in the Congress of the United States. This new person in Michigan, we’ll see if he gets elected to the Congress.”

Since launching his campaign, El-Sayed, who is Muslim, has been bombarded by baseless claims of antisemitism. The Democrat has stated that he opposes any state’s right to be organized around an ethnic or religious group, and has been clear that his issue is with the Israeli government, not Jewish people. “An ally that takes your money to push you into wars you shouldn’t be fighting is not an ally,” he said during one interview on ABC News.

But Pelosi appeared more interested in defending Israel than a Democrat on the eve of an important election. (Her spokesperson said Friday that she was urging people to support El-Sayed.)

Representative Haley Stevens, whom El-Sayed defeated in the Democratic primary, also took an eleventh-hour shot at her party’s only hope to keep control of the state’s Senate seat. Stevens issued a statement Friday suggesting that her support for El-Sayed was contingent on whether he condemned a political advertisement that was not even produced by his campaign.

The video was made by Rebellion PAC, a left-wing fundraising group led by Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks—who Stevens wants everyone to know is also “Hasan Piker’s uncle.” The video, which originally aired in February 2024, blamed the rising price of groceries on America’s continued support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

“Why does Mike Rogers care so much about what Israelis want, and so little about what you want?” the ad asks, claiming that pro-Israel PACs had poured $228,808 into Rogers’s campaign.

Stevens said she had agreed to appear at an event with El-Sayed and Representative Jim Clyburn, expecting that El-Sayed would formally condemn the ad. “A disclaimer is not condemnation, and everyone in my community knows the difference,” Stevens said in the statement.

But that wasn’t all she was expecting. Stevens called for El-Sayed to apologize for his own statements tying Israel to Michiganders’ affordability crisis, though it wasn’t immediately clear that he actually had made any such claims. She also asked him to take down another campaign advertisement that included a clip of Tucker Carlson, among a montage of right-wing media figures.

Again, with Stevens, we see Democrats placing continued support for Israel before the success of their own party and their own constituents. Is it any wonder that Stevens lost?

In court Friday, a Justice Department lawyer tried to play dumb about what’s going on in the park, what Trump has publicly said about the park, and how the administration has flouted court orders. When U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes asked the lawyer if he “made any false statements of material fact that you’d like to correct,” the attorney said “not to my knowledge,” drawing Reyes’s ire.

The lawyer claimed that he was new to the case, saying, “We have lots of binders.” Reyes tried to remedy the situation by calling an Interior Department official and asking them the same question, only to get the same answer: “Not to my knowledge.” When Reyes asked if the official’s boss, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, was involved in the park project, the official asked, “What do you mean by ‘involved?’” This prompted Reyes to pull out a dictionary to read the definition of “involved.”

The official then said that Burgum was aware of the renovation project, but wasn’t involved, to which Reyes noted that he toured the golf course. “He doesn’t have a body double, does he?” Reyes quipped.

After Reyes asked when the Department of Interior became aware of plans to close the park on November 15, the official seemed ignorant, prompting Reyes to ask if she needed to look up “plan” in the dictionary.

Reyes noted that Trump wrote on Truth Social October 18 that the park was closing on November 15, and that the DOJ “swore up and down” the next day that park wasn’t closing then, only to later change its story and confirm the November 15 closure date. At that point, assistant Attorney General Stanley Woodward, the number three person at the DOJ, intervened and tried to halt the questioning of the Interior Department official.

“It sounds like you don’t want him to answer a very straightforward question,” Reyes said, before allowing the official to step away. Woodward then started answering Reyes’s questions, saying that the closure plan was “noticed” on October 28. He tried to claim that Trump’s post said the park “should” be closed, only for Reyes to correct him and point out that Trump wrote “will be” closed.

The hearing didn’t get any better from there, as Woodward attempted to explain away Trump’s posts by claiming there were no plans to close the golf course, questioning whether those words constitute “plans” or “orders.” Woodward went as far as to try to claim “executive privilege” over Trump’s social media posts, frustrating Reyes, who said, “That’s quite an extraordinary view of executive privilege.”

The entire hearing continued on in this absurdity, with the DOJ letting slip that a new seawall at the park would cost between $150 million and a whopping $400 million. Trump administration lawyers became noticeably cagey about questions regarding the renovation’s costs after that.

Trump is insisting on this project despite court orders and the law, and openly admits he’s ignoring Reyes’s rulings. Friday’s drama in court is an indication that Trump’s lawyers can’t come up with believable justifications for his haphazard decisions.

President Trump has been so autocratic as president that America is probably understood to be not a full-fledged democracy but a competitive authoritarian regime, says Lucan Way, a political scientist at the University of Toronto. In the latest edition of Right Now, Way explains why Trump’s second term alarms democracy scholars even more than his first. Way argues that authoritarianism does not end if Democrats win back Congress next week and perhaps not even when Trump leaves office.

The 250th celebrations, a series of very disappointing events over the summer, were led by Freedom 250, a Trump-created group that took over a bipartisan committee commissioned by Congress to plan the anniversary. Freedom 250 was officially housed under the National Park Foundation, a nonprofit that is supposed to raise money for the National Park Service—on whose board Trump Media board member Meredith O’Rourke also happens to sit.

Trump still owns a 41 percent stake in Trump Media, raising further alarm about Trump essentially paying himself for ads on the social media company he owns.

A Thursday merger filing first reported by Wendy Siegelman at NewsTRACS reveals that Trump Media, or TMTG, reported $175,000 in revenue from Freedom 250, plus another $175,000 in “outstanding receivables”—money owed for services already rendered—from the organization.

“TMTG performed advertising services to Freedom 250 LLC, an entity created by, and administered by the National Park Foundation, the official charity of the National Park Service. Meredith O’Rourke, a member of TMTG’s Board of Directors, also serves on the Board of Directors of the National Parks Foundation,” the filing reads. For the three and nine months ended September 30, 2026, TMTG earned revenue of $175.0 related to the advertisement of Freedom 250 events. As of September 30, 2026, TMTG had $175.0 of outstanding receivables from Freedom 250 LLC.”

Freedom 250 relies mostly on taxpayer money, as National Park Foundation CEO Jeff Reinbold told the House Natural Resources Committee in February. “The majority of Freedom 250’s operating funds come from federal funds appropriated by Congress specifically for the 250th anniversary commemorations,” he said.

It appears that Trump went out of his way to create lackluster, cheap, and gaudy events, all to funnel more money into his own pockets. It is yet another example of just how committed to corruption this administration is, wringing out every penny they can get from their time in power.

This article was updated to account for an update made by NewsTRACS.

Perry Bacon: Good morning. I’m Perry Bacon, and this is Right Now on The New Republic. I’m joined by Lucan Way. He’s a professor of political science at the University of Toronto. He’s written a lot about competitive authoritarianism. We’re going to talk about that today. It’s a concept we’ve talked about that’s happening abroad. We’re going to talk about that in the U.S. context more than other places. So Professor, thanks for joining me.

Lucan Way: Thanks.

Bacon: So define—I think people have heard this term before, but tell people what competitive authoritarianism is, and how that’s different from democracy, for lack of a better way to say that.

Way: Yeah. So competitive authoritarian regimes describe cases in which opposition parties compete for power in elections that are genuine—they’re not like facade elections as you see in Putin’s Russia or Uzbekistan and things like that—elections are genuine, but in which there’s widespread abuse of power, and in which incumbents basically weaponize the state in order to create an uneven playing field against the opposition.

Bacon: And so what’s the quintessential example of a competitive authoritarian regime from the past?

Way: So observers will know probably Hungary most, under Orbán. This was a case in which you didn’t have massive fraud in elections. You had opposition was allowed to compete openly. They weren’t arrested.

There was actually very few civil liberties violations. It wasn’t like Russia where journalists were shot, or things like that. But access to media and other things [was] severely restricted for those who opposed Viktor Orbán.

Bacon: And so, you have a new piece out with another scholar named Steven Levitsky. He’s one of the authors of How Democracies Die, and your piece is about competitive authoritarianism in America. So you all are making the argument that particularly [in] the second Trump term, more than even the first, the U.S. has now slipped from democracy to competitive authoritarianism. So talk about why that might be the case.

Way: Yeah, definitely. So this has really occurred quite rapidly in 2025, with Trump’s second inauguration. And basically what we saw in 2025 was Trump’s ability to weaponize institutions like the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Federal Communications Commission, institutions that have, in the last few decades, at least since the 1970s, been completely independent of whoever is in power, and autonomous.

And he was able, basically by appointing loyalists to head the Department of Justice, FBI, and other places, to use the power of those institutions to target opposition leaders, essentially, opposition figures, or people that Trump saw as critics or rivals.

Bacon: And you all mention in the piece, the way that he dealt with law firms is a good example of this, right?

Way: Another example is that he took law firms, many of whom obviously are very important in democracy, and basically punished them for their only sin of representing members of the Democratic Party or representing people suing Trump.

So he really threatened their basic livelihood and used the power of the executive to basically punish those who tried to oppose his administration.

Bacon: So you all say there are a few different criteria of competitive authoritarianism that the U.S. under Trump qualified for, for lack of a better word. Tilting the electoral playing field via national gerrymandering, frequent harassment of the media, attacks on individual civil liberties, a modest packing of the media, and skewing of campaign finance.

I think people can understand what those things mean in our context, but you have certain criteria, and the U.S. right now hitting a lot of them.

Way: Yeah, so I think in contrast to past decades, it’s now become harder and more costly to oppose the government. Certainly not impossible. In comparative terms the United States is still a very soft or mild form of competitive authoritarianism. So the authoritarianism is modest and certainly reversible, but quite real, right?

So just to give you the example of the gerrymandering, obviously gerrymandering at some level, at the state level, is as old as the Republic. What’s different about what’s going on under Trump is this sort of national effort to engineer gerrymandering to support the current party in power.

And certainly the midterms will be very competitive, and it’s likely the Democrats will win. But because of Trump’s national effort at gerrymandering, the Democrats face a kind of ten-seat disadvantage than they would have had otherwise. So that’s quite real.

And of course, everybody has seen the sort of massive civil liberties violations by ICE and others, the killing of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. And then you’ve also seen this effort, which is particularly striking, by the Federal Communications Commission, to basically utilize the regulatory power of the FCC to encourage or discourage criticism of Trump on major networks.

Bacon: So the reason I wanted to talk to you today was, we’re in this election, and it appears, and I think it’s pretty clear, Democrats will make some gains in the House, probably win the House, maybe win the Senate, governorships.

So I think I know the answer to the question, but let me ask you anyway. Will America still be in a competitive authoritarianism even if Democrats win on Tuesday?

Way: Yes, absolutely. So I think it’s obviously incredibly important and I think normatively good that elections remain competitive in the United States. But actually what I worry about is that if the Democrats win overwhelmingly, as is certainly possible, that we’ll decide that the United States was never authoritarian to begin with.

The Democrats winning in November will not magically erase all the abuse that Trump undertook, his attacks on civil liberties. That still has taken place. His weaponization of the Department of Justice, where he’s clearly using the investigatory power of the Department of Justice to intimidate those who oppose him. Those abuses will still occur, even with a Democratic victory.

Bacon: And let’s say we have a Democratic president. Does that end competitive authoritarianism? I think you’re saying, “I’m not sure about the answer to this question.”

Way: Yeah. So I think certainly if the midterms are one thing, control over the executive is obviously the most important thing. And if Democrats win in 2028, they can easily end competitive authoritarianism by halting the weaponization of those criminal law institutions. It would be very easy and very quick for a new president to simply stop that weaponization, to stop using the Department of Justice to target enemies.

But nonetheless, Trump has really done long-term damage to our civil service. Now, it’s interesting because we typically think of the civil service and bureaucracy as boring and all. But having an autonomous civil service, an autonomous state essentially, is essential to democracy, because actors who have tremendous power over our lives, can audit us on our taxes, can choose to arrest us—if that is under the direct control of a particular party in power, then democracy is over, right? Because then whoever is president can decide to arrest whoever is opposing him.

And the point is that the first thing that Trump did when he came to power, as people remember, in January and February, was he had DOGE, right? The Department of Government Efficiency under Elon Musk, in which they fired about 12 percent of the civil service. That’s a massive number of people, right?

And what that did was, it took a group of people who had before assumed that they had autonomy from the administration in power, who assumed that their jobs were safe. And it basically showed them that in fact they needed to toe the line, that they couldn’t act independently, or risk facing retribution. And so in a sense, he’s already broken that spell.

And even if, in the best case scenario, the Democrats win and they rehire all the lawyers from the Department of Justice, there will still be that fear that in four years, you’ll go through this whole process again. So this is a kind of long-term damage to our democracy that even if we’ll end competitive authoritarianism, go back to democracy, the damage will remain.

Bacon: So let me probe a little bit to ask, are we at a point where—you’ve used the term competitive authoritarian regime. But is it more precise to say we have a competitive authoritarian party right now, and then more of a democracy party, or a light democracy or whatever, and therefore we’re toggling between, if Biden is a small-D Democrat, Trump is a bit of an authoritarian, Pete Buttigieg is a Democrat, maybe President Rubio. Is that where we are now?

Way: Yeah. So basically, I think you have one of the two major parties in the United States is openly anti-democratic, and that’s the Republican Party. And I think what’s most likely in the medium term scenario is that you basically have a kind of unstable authoritarianism, where you have periods of apparently relatively soft competitive authoritarianism under Republicans, and more or less dysfunctional democracy under Democrats, right? And so I think this sort of oscillation is probably what we’ll see in the coming decades.

Bacon: That is not good. That’s not on the course of democracy.

Way: Yeah, no. So I guess it’s funny, because when I say this, people are always like, “Oh, you’re so optimistic.” I’m like, we’re not Putin’s Russia. I guess that’s a form of optimism. Compared to where we were a decade ago, or 20 years ago, this is far from optimistic.

Bacon: So there’s a political scientist, University of California, Berkeley, Eric Schickler. I assume you’re familiar with him. So he wrote a paper last year arguing that basically we thought that the way America’s constructed, with various power centers, we have independent media, we have independent universities, and so on, that’ll probably stop an authoritarian-style person from consolidating power.

And he wrote a paper last year I thought was good, saying actually the executive is able to influence law firms and universities and the press, and maybe we underappreciate, maybe the sort of diversity of powers in America is not as strong as we thought.

Your paper, I thought, was a little bit more, I’m going to use the word optimistic on this ground. I guess you all argued, “As we have argued in these pages, economic development gives rise to bigger cities and wealthier private sectors, more robust civil societies, and more prosperous and autonomous citizenries. These in turn generate countervailing power.” And then you all argued that America still has a fair amount of countervailing power. You think that’s still true?

Way: Yeah. So first of all, Schickler, his work is great. I think he’s absolutely correct. I think all of us remember in 2025, there was a sort of almost Wizard of Oz quality to what happened. You remember in Wizard of Oz, you have Oz, this great figure, and then the dog puts the curtain back and it turns out it’s quite weak.

So our constitutional system, I think, was demonstrated to be much weaker than I think most of us thought. It just collapsed quite quickly, and I think that’s still very much the case.

And institutions that we thought were the bulwark, separation of powers, were the bulwark of democracy, didn’t function, because institutions are run by humans, and humans have to decide to resist.

So all that is definitely true, and I think our democracy is much more vulnerable than I think any of us thought, and I think it’s important to remind ourselves, even if in the best case scenario, the Trump era ends relatively quickly.

But I do think it’s also important that the United States is by far the richest competitive authoritarian regime ever. So we’re three times as wealthy per capita as Hungary, which is the next richest case. And what this means is that it’s very hard for any leader to monopolize control over the country.

So to give you a counter example to make this clearer. In Russia in the early 2000s, Putin arrested one rich guy, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was the third richest, or owned 3 percent of Russia’s GDP at the time. So when he did this, one guy, right? He was able to starve all opposition of any finance, because there just weren’t that many autonomous rich guys.

That’s not the case in the United States. Trump could arrest 10 Soroses, 10 Reid Hoffmans, these are Democratic donors, and you’d still have a massive middle class that can give money to Talarico, can give money to whomever. So that is just very different from most other authoritarian regimes, which is why I think clearly the United States, we’re in this period of competitive authoritarianism, but it doesn’t mean it’s consolidated. And I think that’s why I am fairly optimistic that we’re going to go back fairly quickly.

Bacon: Talk about what happened in Brazil a little bit. Do you see Brazil as toggling between, or maybe potentially averting that? Are they in the same place we are, which is that one party is an anti-democratic party and one party is pro-democracy, and they’re toggling between, and maybe avoided the bad outcome again? Or is Brazil in most of the same place as us, or is it mysterious?

Way: No, there’s certain similarities. I think there’s a sort of polarization, in the fact that the political spectrum is divided essentially between a party or group of parties that supports democracy and others that don’t. That polarized dynamic is very similar.

What’s different though is that in 2022, when Bolsonaro senior attempted a coup, the courts responded much more aggressively, ultimately jailed him. So he wasn’t able to run again, right? And he was forced to have his son run, who was less popular, and his son lost by, in relative terms, a fairly substantial margin, I think 4 percent.

And so things weren’t great in Brazil, and they’re still unstable and you’re still very nervous, but we’re in a better position than the United States, where after January 6, basically Trump wasn’t held accountable. He’s been allowed to run again, and so in that sense it’s worse in the United States than in Brazil.

Bacon: I’ll close with, if you’re the opposition to a competitive authoritarian, what does taking America out of competitive authoritarianism look like? What does that look like comprehensively?

Way: Yeah. So I think in competitive authoritarian regimes, elections are still the name of the game, so that really is in some ways the most important thing. There’s legal mechanisms. You can’t abandon those.

But at the same time you need to use the full panoply of techniques. You need to use protests. You need to use all of the above, because you can’t simply take institutions for granted as we have done during periods of consolidated democracy.

Protests, what we saw in Minnesota, it’s just hugely important that this sort of active community activism and protests were really essential in pushing back ICE.

And so basically, I guess in a competitive authoritarian regime, we need to do all of the above. You need to do street activism, we need to compete in elections. There’s a hugely important legal mechanism in the courts. So it needs to be a full court press.

Bacon: Lucan Way, thanks for joining me. I encourage people to read—there’s an essay he wrote with Steven Levitsky in the Journal of Democracy. It’s called “Competitive Authoritarianism in America.” So Lucan, thanks for joining me. I appreciate it.

Way: Oh, just one thing.

Bacon: Please, yes.

Way: It’s actually free online until October 31, so you have three days to read it for free. After that, it goes behind the paywall. So do it fast.

Bacon: All right, Lucan. Good to see you. Thank you.

Way: Hey, thanks. Bye.

Bacon: Bye-bye.

The New York Times reported that the country’s 50 largest oil and gas companies raked in a massive profit from April to September. The $130 billion profit margin eclipses the $47 billion that these companies made during the same six-month period last year. The last comparable economic windfall was after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when the oil and gas industry made slightly higher profits.

American households have spent $1,100 on fuel alone since the war began. That’s an extra $147 billion all together, according to Brown University’s Climate Solutions Lab.

Once again, it is massive corporations that stand to gain the most from violence and conflict.

President Trump said it himself a few days ago.

“And while oil prices are temporarily high … the United States oil and gas business is making hundreds of billions of dollars.... Our country is making hundreds of billions of dollars ‘cause of what’s happened in the Middle East … trillions of dollars,” he told a rally crowd in Georgia on Saturday. “My people said, ‘Please don’t mention that sir, because people are paying a little higher’ ... I said, ‘I don’t give a damn, I’m gonna say it: We’re making a freaking fortune.’”

When the president says “we,” he means Exxon, Chevron, and Valero. Not you.

After Trump canceled—and then rescheduled—two rallies in Kansas and Iowa over the weekend, it appears that the rest of the president’s team is still tapped out. Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton all canceled upcoming appearances.

Vance canceled a Friday afternoon appearance in St. Cloud, Minnesota, where he was expected to make an announcement related to his war on fraud. It wasn’t immediately clear what the announcement was regarding, but Vance previously referred Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and state Attorney General Keith Ellison to the Department of Justice for a criminal investigation based on the vice president’s wild accusations that they allowed sweeping social services fraud.

Other federal officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz, were still scheduled to appear in St. Cloud on Friday. Oz, the daytime television host Trump picked to run the CMS, has previously spread faulty claims of health care fraud in other blue states.

Rubio, who will chair the G20 meeting in Atlanta this weekend, canceled plans for a group photo with foreign ministers after several European diplomats refused to pose with Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov.

And Paxton, who is running for U.S. Senate in Texas, also canceled a campaign rally scheduled for Sunday in El Paso. The Texas attorney general held a sparsely attended campaign event in Abilene on Thursday. The latest polls show Democratic candidate James Talarico with a slight edge over Paxton.

Lavrov is the highest profile Russian official to visit the U.S since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. His arrival upset other assembled diplomats, who didn’t want anything to do with him. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was forced to scrap the traditional photo with all of the foreign ministers after European leaders refused to stand next to Lavrov and threatened to walk out. Usually, the summit begins with the photograph.

At home, Republicans too are outraged by the decision to invite Lavrov. Representative Don Bacon condemned the visit on X, saying, “Lavrov should not be allowed in the country.

“As long as Putin is waging war against Ukraine and bombing cities, Russian leaders should not be welcomed in any of these forums. They lead a pariah state,” Bacon posted on Wednesday.

Republican and Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee also condemned the visit in a joint letter last month. The group was made up of Republicans Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, Roger Wicker, Jerry Moran, Thom Tillis, John Curtis, and Alan Armstrong, in addition to Democrats Sheldon Whitehouse, Michael Bennet, Chris Coons, Richard Blumenthal, Tim Kaine, and Ruben Gallego.

“President Putin bears sole responsibility for launching Russia’s full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine. Allowing him to participate in a G20 Summit in the United States raises serious concerns about legitimizing and normalizing a government that continues to attack Ukrainian civilian targets every day,” the senators wrote.

Meanwhile, another key player in the G20 is missing. South Africa, which is part of the international forum, did not attend amid various disputes with the Trump administration, and representatives from the country said their absence wasn’t by choice.

“We have consistently maintained that our nonparticipation is not voluntary,” Phindile Kunene, spokesperson for South African Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola, told the Associated Press.

It’s pretty clear that the Trump administration is trying to force other countries to deal with Russia even as Russian President Vladimir Putin refuses to make any concessions in the war with Ukraine. Excluding South Africa, which is actually a founding member of the G20, this also suggests that the White House is ignoring international concerns.

Inside Washington

What if the polls are wrong?

With four days until the election, Democrats terrified of another disappointment are focused on one big question: Are the polls right?  

Most polls show Democrats winning the House and, potentially, the Senate—a possibility that seemed improbable even a few months ago. A new CNN poll on Thursday, for example, showed Abdul El-Sayed and James Talarico in strong positions. But the most critical toss-up Senate races are so tight that even a polling error of a few percentage points could shift the outcome from Democratic control to two more years of Republican leadership. FiftyPlusOne modeled how the election would look if polling misses matched those in the 2018 and 2022 midterms, or instead matched 2016, 2020, and 2024—presidential election years when Trump was on the ballot. “The polling errors have been much larger in presidential years than non-presidential years,” explained Guy Molyneux, a Democratic pollster and partner at Hart Research. 

If polling averages are off by roughly the same margins that they were in the Trump election years, seats like Michigan and Ohio—critical pickups for Democrats this year—could fall to Republicans. Senator Susan Collins could win Maine by nearly four points, and Senator Dan Sullivan could take Alaska by five. In that case, Republicans could keep the Senate. But if this midterm looks more like other midterms in terms of poll error, Democrats might even be able to pick up seats in red states like Iowa and Kansas.

Molyneux says he’s inclined to believe that this year’s polls will be closer in accuracy to the 2018 and 2022 polls, which would be good news for Democrats’ prospects. Most election-watchers predict that Democrats will take the House, but nobody is sure whether it will be a blue wave or a blue tsunami. If polling is roughly correct, Democrats could take 238 seats (218 seats is a majority), NBC News estimates. But Dems could potentially pick up some 260 seats or win as few as 220. That’s a majority, but a narrow one.

Polls aren’t the only data points people can use to understand the election, stressed Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist. He sees hints of a Democratic advantage everywhere: “We’ve seen it in the candidate fundraising data, where our candidates have raised way more money than their candidates have, which is a far better indication of intensity than the checkbooks of ten oligarchs,” he said—referring to Democrats’ advantage with grassroots donors and Republicans’ advantage with super PAC money funneled from ultrawealthy donors like Elon Musk. Rosenberg also pointed to the fact that Republicans are campaigning in states like Mississippi, South Carolina, Kansas, and Nebraska—areas that ordinarily shouldn’t pose a problem for Republicans. “There’s a lot of inputs here. It’s not just, you know, a handful of New York Times polls in the last few weeks,” he said. 

Early voting data also suggests that Democrats are in a strong position. As of Thursday, 43 million Americans have already voted, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab. Hispanic voters have turned out in higher numbers than they did at the same times in 2022 and 2024, which could be a promising trend for Democrats and help candidates like James Talarico in Texas. (Though Hispanic and Latino voters helped Trump win in 2024, some polls have found that only 24 percent of Latino registered voters approve of Trump’s handling of his job, down from 38 percent at the start of his second term.)

In the final stretch before Election Day, experts stress that voters should view polls as part of a larger picture, rather than overinterpreting any one number (remember J Ann Selzer’s Iowa poll in 2024, which predicted that Vice President Kamala Harris could win Iowa but was 16 points off?). “Both for accuracy and emotional health, I would urge people to focus mainly on the averages, and not the either scary or hopeful news of the day,” said Molyneux. 

Though Rosenberg doesn’t like polling averages, he also recommends looking at multiple polls instead of just one, and trying to find a way to live in the uncertainty. “There’s far less certainty in the data that [voters are] being presented than you assume based on how certain it looks when on television you see a graph that has two numbers,” he said. “It’s only a snapshot in time.”

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

Last-minute polls are rolling in, along with last-minute attack ads. CNN’s latest poll, published on Thursday, has James Talarico leading Ken Paxton in Texas (49–43), Abdul El-Sayed leading Mike Rogers in Michigan (49–42), and neck-and-neck races in Maine and Kansas. While Troy Jackson and Adam Hamilton appear to be leading their Republican opponents 49–45 on paper, there’s a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points. 

Attack ads in Maine—as in other states—are getting increasingly ugly in the final stretch. Republican Senator Susan Collins last week disavowed a new Republican super PAC ad featuring a song about Jackson that goes: “If he’ll screw his own family, he’ll screw yours too.” But as Jackson’s campaign has pointed out, Politico’s Jonathan Martin asked Collins in a video interview last month whether Jackson’s personal life was “fair game,” and she replied, “Well, I’m not going to bring up the fact that the mother of his two children is his second cousin. I don’t know whether people know that or not.” 

Meanwhile, in Texas, a super PAC largely funded by Elon Musk recently ran an ad with evangelical influencer Miriam Evans, saying, “Every mom in Texas should be concerned about James Talarico.” The ad (falsely) claims Talarico supports gender-affirming surgeries for minors and jail time for parents who object. In another one of the group’s ads, Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn opens: “Folks, I’m going to ask you: Where has James Talarico been?” After a pause in which viewers may wonder whether Waybourn’s about to bust the candidate’s alibi in a multiple homicide investigation on Law and Order, Waybourn proceeds to say that Talarico has “been in Austin standing with and donating to a radical group that wants to defund the police”—an apparent reference to Talarico appearing on a video call organized by Texas progressive youth group Texas Rising six years ago. In his own last election in 2024, Waybourn drew scrutiny for the number of people who had died in county custody since he took office in 2017—65 deaths, as compared to 25 in the prior eight-year period—along with a lack of independent investigations as required by law. As of October 18, the number of deaths in Tarrant County Jail during Waybourn’s tenure has increased to 79.

Elsewhere:

• Is it time for Democrats to forgive Ralph Nader for the 2000 election and recognize that he was right about a lot of stuff? The Guardian’s Heather Timmons examines the case, speaking not just with Nader but a variety of think tankers and others on the left, including Robert Weissman of Public Citizen (which Nader co-founded), Lindsay Owens of Groundwork Collaborative, Barry Lynn of Open Markets Institute, and—surprise?—Matt Bennett of the moderate Dem group Third Way. Nader, Timmons reports, has recently “been dialing progressive candidates including Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed and Maine’s Troy Jackson directly, to present his policy plan he thinks would guarantee their midterm success.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

Alasdair Phillips-Robins, Teddy Tawil, and Sam Winter-Levy penned an interesting report for the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace this week about “how middle powers can survive the AI race.” The fundamental problem, they write, is that the U.S. and China control most of the resources. Other countries, “fearful of missing out on the benefits of advanced AI while still bearing the brunt of its harms, are scrambling to respond.” The right strategy for those governments will depend on both the speed of innovation and “the gap between the best systems and open-source or other cheap alternatives.” But “finding sources of leverage at supply chain chokepoints is valuable in almost every technological future.” Sounds … fun. (Warning: This report is unlikely to make you feel better about the AI-riddled future. But there are fancy graphics, if that’s your jam.)

The Natural Resources Defense Council has issued a statement on the Trump administration’s proposed rollback of methane leak rules. “Methane leaks are the dumbest kind of pollution because the industry is losing the very product it is selling,” David Doniger, a senior attorney and strategist at the NRDC, said in the organization’s press release. “These leaks are not just bad for the climate, they result in more smog and cancer-causing pollution for nearby communities.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Good Week: Barack Obama

The former president has been making campaign stops as he does for Democrats every election—and is in fine form. His zingers and humor have gotten under Trump’s skin, galvanized Democrats, and made news in the usually slow days right before the end of the campaign. 

Bad Week: Darline Graham

Graham, who was appointed to be South Carolina’s senator earlier this year after her brother Lindsey—who previously held the seat—passed, has become the poster child for bad candidates. Other Republicans are blasting her as unqualified and such a terrible campaigner that she’s making it possible for Democrats to potentially win in a state where they almost never do. 

—Perry Bacon

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

When was the last time Louisiana was represented by two Democratic senators, and who were they? (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

—Michael Tomasky

But it isn’t as if he hasn’t had competition. There is of course Donald Trump himself, who defended that ad—not once but twice—and has pumped out lie after malicious lie about various Democrats. There’s Ohio GOP Senator Bernie Moreno, a late entry on your card, but one who has proven himself a serious contender after his assertion, as rancidly un-American a statement as a senator has made perhaps since Joe McCarthy benighted the land, that Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed was unqualified to be a senator because he didn’t know Jesus. And, as we round the clubhouse turn, Senator Ted Cruz has made an impressive run with his laughable attacks on James Talarico’s manhood.

Amid all this sewage, one other Republican has stood out. He can’t quite top Ramaswamy after that ad (which Ramaswamy’s now pulled, by the way, after ferocious blowback), but JD Vance has spread toxic waste across at least four different states, and he still has four days to go. The man who decided it was a good idea in 2024 to tell a massive and defamatory lie about the Haitian community of Springfield, Ohio—people who at the time, let us not forget, were the then Ohio senator’s own constituents—is back this year with more.

Let’s start in Ohio, and with his defense of the Ramaswamy ad. “I have to admit that I’m a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans across the country who are whining more about that advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America,” the vice president said on October 21, two days after the existence of the ad became known. That was at a press conference. That same day, in a speech in Ohio, he added: “Politics is a tough business. And my message to my fellow elected Republicans is if you actually believe in the things you say you believe in, stop whining about an advertisement and go win the race in 13 days.”

The week before, Vance was in Michigan, where he called Abdul El-Sayed “a little bit of a psychopath,” adding: “Abdul El-Sayed, who maybe more than any Democrat running in the nation, has engaged in the kind of explicitly anti-white racial hatred that has become common on the Democratic Party.” And there’s more: “I realize that there’s something about Abdul El-Sayed that is very, very evil and on the rise in the United States of America today. And it’s people who see themselves not as citizens of a common nation fighting for every single person—whether they’re Jewish or Christian, whether they’re white or Black or brown—but see themselves as fighting for one group at the expense of others, and that is how, ladies and gentlemen, you destroy the United States of America.” You know—the way Vance fought for Springfield’s Haitians.

Two days before that, down in Texas, he hinted, obviously with about as much evidence as he had in the Haitians case, that James Talarico is into child pornography. He noted that Talarico, whose expressions of support for trans children are obviously intended to express sympathy for a tiny and powerless group that has been used as a political weapon by people like Trump and Vance and Ron DeSantis, had a “weird focus on transgender kids and drag queens.” “Now you got to wonder what the internet search history of a man like that looks like,” Vance added. “Ladies and gentlemen, you don’t want to find out. Neither do I.”

But perhaps most egregious of all were his comments about Democratic Kansas Senate candidate Adam Hamilton. He is, as you must know by now, the founding pastor of the largest Methodist church in the United States, with some 24,000 congregants and seven different campuses.

Referring to Hamilton’s church’s sponsorship (with many other groups) of a Kansas City Pride celebration, Vance, visiting Kansas back in September, said: “Democrat Pastor Adam Hamilton thinks it’s a sin to be white and a sin to raise cattle and eat meat, but he’s OK with supporting groups that spit on God-fearing Americans and mock everything that we hold dear. Ladies and gentlemen, that is not Christianity. That is left-wing radicalism dressed in the skin suit of our religion. Let’s send it packing in November.”

These comments only scratch the surface. Everywhere Vance goes, he leaves a remorseless trail of moral carnage in his wake. His attack on Hamilton may be the most galling. Hamilton’s church runs massive food banks and performs all manner of community service. In 2024, when Hamilton sensed the country and his parish coming apart at the seams, he launched something he called the Campaign for Kindness. It was described by an NPR reporter at the time as having “all the trappings of the political programming you’re probably sick of seeing—billboards, yard signs, and even TV spots. But instead of candidates or policies, their campaign advertises ethics.” Around 1,600 churches nationwide joined the campaign.

That’s the man Vance is calling divisive. There’s only one divisive person in this story, and it sure isn’t Hamilton.

It’s quite hilarious and telling, by the way, that so many of these attacks carry the subtext—or in Talarico’s case, text—of masculinity. Quite funny, at a time when their hero president is singing the praises of men’s asses. These Republican dudes are the least masculine men in America. When his state was in trouble, Ted Cruz ran away to Cancun. That guy’s about as macho as Fredo Corleone. Roger Marshall sues poor people over a hundred dollars. Ken Paxton looks like he couldn’t lift a bag of charcoal briquets. And I’d bet my mortgage that their Dear Leader, Mr. Bone Spurs, couldn’t do two push-ups.

They are frauds up and down, but arguably none more monumentally than Vance. If there’s an example in modern American political history of a person having sold his soul more nakedly than Vance has, I’m not aware of it.

It’s hard to imagine the Republicans nominating such a mean, soulless, rancidly power-mad person as president—just kidding! They’ve already nominated a mean, soulless, rancidly power-mad person three times. Republican voters, driven by their fake-Christian “values” and their thirst for an antidemocratic strongman who will just fix everything, are capable of anything. The only place where Vance may fall short is that he may not be able to pass himself off as a strongman, which is another way of saying he’s not quite as convincing a conman as Trump is. Which is exactly why his current libels might fail. Let us pray that the man who scolded Amy Acton that “politics is a tough business” wakes up next Wednesday learning that lesson the hard way.

Speaking to reporters, Trump exploded when one asked him why he’d canceled rallies in Kansas and Iowa over the weekend.

“So, you not going to Kansas has nothing to do with being sick of travel?” the reporter asked.

“Oh you’re sick to ask that question. You are sick. Who are you with?” Trump snapped.

“I’m with Reuters,” the reporter said.

“You are a sick guy, Reuters is terrible, by the way,” Trump said. “Look at this guy, he’s way out of shape. Look at how badly—he comes to me, ‘Sir you’re not gonna go to Kansas.’ No, I’m not going to Kansas because he’s doing very well. I’m gonna do a tele-rally. Tomorrow I’m doing Florida.

“He says ‘What’s the reason’—after doing, what, 28? He says, ‘What’s the reason for this, sir, that you’re not going to Kansas?’ You know what the reason is? I don’t feel I have to go to Kansas,” Trump raged. “I’m going to do Florida tomorrow, and I’ll do—if something else comes up—but he said, ‘You’re not going to Kansas, sir, are you feeling well?’ You’ve been following me for two weeks. I feel perfect. You are disgusting. Put yourself in shape. You look like hell.”

Trump’s outburst seemed to come out of nowhere, especially considering that the reporter’s question hadn’t been about the president’s health at all. Moments earlier, when a reporter had asked Trump about his health, the president had simply responded that he felt “good.” It seems that it was the word “sick” that sent him over the edge.

Questions about cancellations may have gotten under the president’s skin—by Friday morning, the rallies in Kansas and Iowa were back on.

Paxton’s lawsuit claims that a get-out-the-vote advertisement campaign from Harris County’s office essentially constitutes reverse racism because it encouraged Black and Latino voters (groups with historically lower access to elections) to vote. Harris County is Texas’s most diverse county, notably housing Houston.

“By specifically directing voting advertisements to these and many other racial or ethnic ‘detailed targeting’ terms, it is readily apparent that Harris County is attempting to increase the likelihood that only certain racial and ethnic groups—but not all—will vote,” the lawsuit reads. “In any event, there can be no legitimate reason for Harris County to intentionally target voter advertisements toward this peculiar assortment of African American, Asian, and Latino ethnicities, cultural interests, and countries, but not toward any European ethnicities.”

Harris County has already stopped running the ads, and Paxton has recused himself from this lawsuit, even though he is, of course, Texas’s current attorney general.

This lawsuit also comes as Harris County is shattering early voting records, with over 950,000 residents having cast their ballots and one day of early voting still left. The previous record for a nonpresidential election was 855,711 people in 2018.

“Ken Paxton filed this lawsuit in the final days of voting because he wants to stop Houstonians from going to the polls. He’s whining about ads that do nothing more than tell neighbors when to vote and where to get information about voting,” Texas Democratic Congressman Christian D. Menefee wrote online. “Paxton is upset that diverse voters across Harris County are making their voices heard. He doesn’t like that in this election, people are showing up in big numbers in neighborhoods like Third Ward, Acres Homes, Cypress, Tidwell, and Sunnyside.

“Remember this: Someone with as much power as the Texas Attorney General would only take desperate action like this lawsuit because he is scared,” Menefee continued. “I hope everyone in Harris County who is eligible to vote sees this lawsuit for what it is, and goes to cast their ballot in this election.”

During a pretaped Fox News town hall that aired Thursday, Vance punted a crucial question about lowering the cost of living to talk about President Donald Trump’s new favorite topic: Republican Senator Jon Husted’s ass.

“A constant message that my generation hears from the right is to get married young, have kids young, have as many kids as possible. And I think what the right doesn’t acknowledge most of the time is how disincentivized we are currently because of the cost of owning a home and the general expenses of raising a family,” one young woman said.

“How does the right and yourself expect us to start families young when, you know, the average price of a home in America now costs more than $415,000, which just feels out of reach for us?”

“Sure, sure. Well first of all, again. Thank you for the question, and thanks for the support. I want to point out that I think that I’ve been asked four or maybe five questions by my count. I’ve only been asked one question about Jon Husted’s ass,” Vance said.

Host Jesse Watters managed to laugh, but to viewers at home, the moment felt tone-deaf.

“How is this real and how is he this bad at politics? Or humor? Or interacting with other humans?” wrote Pod Save America’s John Favreau on X.

“If Vance is the candidate in 2028, he will be eminently beatable. He is an awful politician,” Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan wrote on X.

The most embarrassing part? Vance’s actual answer wasn’t much better.

“The one thing that I’d say is, my job is to make it easier for you guys to be able to afford a good life. But as a pure personal advice I’d say: It’s never the right time,” Vance said. “And the one regret, the one regret that I have in my life—Usha and I talk about this all the time—is, I wish we had gotten married earlier, and I wish we had kids earlier. Because you can’t go back and make the decision differently.”

So, after all of that, Vance’s advice is just to get married and have kids even if the cost of living keeps getting higher? The vice president has preached about young people having babies since before he first entered the White House, but when faced with actual voters’ concerns, he preferred to go for a stupid viral moment.

The New York Times reports that Mildon, Trump’s former personal lawyer who has held multiple jobs with his administration, inked the lucrative deal with a company started by the daughter of Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan national who was looking for a presidential pardon. Trump was angered by the size of Mildon’s contract, and said that she should donate some of that money to his presidential library or another entity related to him, according to the Times.

Trump even told one of his confidants that the Herrera family shouldn’t pay out the rest of their contract with Mildon, the Times reported. He later called Mildon, but it’s not known if he directly told her to make a donation.

What Trump seems to be mad about is that he has created a pay-to-play pardon procedure for his administration, where individuals seeking pardons arrange a way for the president to personally benefit in some way in exchange for forgiveness for the crimes they’ve committed. Trump basically admitted as much earlier this month, expressing disappointment over Representative Henry Cuellar staying loyal to the Democratic Party after Trump pardoned him for corruption charges.

Trump has issued many pardons to people who successfully lobbied his administration, spending millions to get the ear of White House lawyers and the president himself. He also reportedly promises pardons to White House staffers, including “anyone who comes within 10 feet” of the Oval Office, according to a Wall Street Journal report from April. It seems he’s mad if anyone close to him is making money off of pardons without giving him a cut.

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

We’re four days out, and Donald Trump is in a very dark mood. New reporting indicates that he’s privately raging over a possible looming loss, yet at the same time he still holds out hope that his formidable cultural power can pull out a victory. In a sense, this election really is a referendum on Trump’s deep faith in his limitless control over the culture. Yet it comes as the final burst of polls really paints a powerful picture to the contrary.

So we’re digging through all of it with Tom Schaller, who has a good piece for the Public Notice Substack on the fizzling of MAGA culture war slop. Tom, good to have you on.

Tom Schaller: Great to be back, Greg.

Sargent: So the New York Times talked to a lot of White House insiders and now reports that the mood among them is grim. Republicans are privately warning Trump not to campaign in any swing areas because he’s too toxic.

But then the Times reports that Trump is angry with naysayers and has dismissed polls that reflect his unpopularity. And there’s this: “Trump remains convinced that his dominant place in the Republican Party is enough to mitigate a tough political climate.” Tom, your immediate thoughts on that?

Schaller: Parties generally focus on base mobilization in the late stages. They believe that the conversion window for persuadable voters is largely closed, even though this is the time period of so-called closing arguments. So it’s not unusual for either party, whether they control the White House or not, to try to focus on base mobilization.

But there’s a base mobilization when you think you’re going to win, and then there’s a base mobilization when you know you’re going to lose. And I think the where of it is very telling, Greg. Where is Trump?

The fact that he’s campaigning in deeply red states to try to protect Senate seats is the tell. And it’s base mobilization to pull the bacon out of the fire for incumbents in states you’d normally never think would be in trouble.

Sargent: Donald Trump isn’t just going to red states in order to juice the base. He isn’t just staying away from swing areas because he’s been told to. He’s campaigning in states with incumbent Republican senators, in places that he won by double digits.

And so it’s all triage. It’s packaged as him on offense, as him rallying huge crowds, but it’s really a profoundly defensive posture at its core. It’s again in places that he won by double digits, and they’re desperately trying to get out that Trump base in order to compensate for his deep losses among the middle of the electorate, even in those places. I think that’s what’s going on.

Schaller: Yeah. And I think, depending on the magnitude of the losses on Tuesday, and certainly if the Democrats get to 54 or 55 Senate seats, there’s going to be a reckoning. Because the one thing that we do know, in terms of a principle that is held fast by Republican incumbents, is their belief in their own political survival. And if it becomes a conventional wisdom that Donald Trump is a net negative drag on the party, watch for the defections to begin.

We’ve already seen early waves of it. The seven House Republicans who voted to curb Trump’s Iran war powers, the votes against, or at least public declarations against, his tariff policies, courageous always-concerned Susan Collins vocally criticizing Trump and asking for these recent exemptions on certain Canadian tariffs. So it’s desperation.

But I also think we could see an emboldened Republican Congress and some emboldened Republican governors after this result, because Trump will truly be a lame duck with little gas left in the tank.

Sargent: God, I hope so, man. I hope that’s enough to do it, although one never knows. I want to point out that you mentioned something like a 54- to 55-seat result for Democrats. We should stress, that’s at the outer tiers of what’s possible here. That’s like if things go really, really well.

I want to read another tidbit from the Times report: “As the elections approach, Trump is feasting on a media diet of fawning press coverage, disparaging clips about his perceived enemies, and helpings of flattering photos and AI slop.”

That’s a Trump insider who called Trump’s media diet AI slop, by the way. And others tell the Times that Trump is “increasingly cloistered” with a small group of “acolytes.” Now, obviously that’s Natalie Harp.

Tom, it’s interesting how they need to limit Trump’s media consumption in the present in order to sustain his belief in this kind of cultural dominance he imagines he has, isn’t it?

Schaller: Yeah, he’s obviously living in a bubble. And as much as they have to limit his consumption of the content, I feel like they would love to find ways to limit his delivery of the content. I mean, he goes so off the page. I know you’ve already probably talked on earlier pods about this remarking on Jon Husted’s physique, bringing up old stories that are completely irrelevant and, like, sort of Trump 2024 greatest hits.

And he’s so off message and he’s so undisciplined. I don’t think they know exactly what to feed him. And when he stands up there and says, I’ve got 99 support among Republicans, when I think the polls show it around—correct me if I’m wrong—like 78 percent.

Like, 78 percent is low for your own party when you’re the incumbent president. For him to think it’s 99 percent means that they literally cannot tell him the truth in the White House. And so he goes out and says things like, the economy’s great, and sure, you’re paying a little bit more for gas, but the oil companies are doing great. Like, he’s so off message, it’s absurd.

Sargent: You know, that’s really interesting, because what you’re getting at there is the self-defeating nature of this kind of campaign to keep Trump in the bubble.

Because when they tell him that he’s at 99 percent with the Republicans, when they tell him that all the criticism that he’s receiving is bullshit, it’s just fake news, the polls that are showing his unpopularity are fake polls—he says that constantly and clearly has begun to believe it.

The result is that he goes full MAGA porn at just about every turn. And no matter what he tells himself, there’s absolutely no way this is helpful to Republican senators who are embattled, or Republican House members who are embattled. Just no way.

Schaller: My theory of the case on Trump has always been, starting in 2015, 2016, is that he’s like a comedian on the road. And I don’t mean that he’s funny, because he has no sense of humor really, and he certainly can’t self-deprecate or take a joke about himself, because he’s a malignant narcissist.

And so when he goes out on the stump today and it’s quiet, he doesn’t notice—by the way, Greg, as you’ve seen, empty seats in there. He claims there’s thousands of people waiting outside. He can’t even fill the seats that are inside. He’s desperate to get that little… it’s like a fix for him, right? It’s like a dopamine fix.

And so he goes to the old standards, because that’s what works. And he’s there really for his own ego glorification more than he is for really helping the party.

Sargent: I think that’s obvious at this point. There are these new CNN polls today. They find Abdul El-Sayed leading by 49 to 42 in Michigan. James Talarico is up by 49 to 43 in Texas. Troy Jackson is leading by 49 to 45 in Maine. And Adam Hamilton, the Democrat, is up by 49 to 45 as well in Kansas over Senator Roger Marshall.

If those are right, that points to a big Democratic victory and a Senate majority of at least 52 or 53 seats. But I can tell you that top Democrats don’t believe those numbers. They don’t believe the CNN numbers. They think everything’s a toss-up. Where do you think things are?

Schaller: I think we’re going to have some surprises on Tuesday, but I would be surprised if it’s all of them, right? That would mean that these early voting data are real, and that this massive surge in under-30 voters, this massive surge in Latino voters turning out early, is real, plus a certain amount of MAGA stay-home effect, plus a certain amount of crossover, sort of moderate Republicans, independents crossing over to vote Democratic. I mean, I think you need to have all of those things to get to 53, 54, or even 55.

But I’ll be surprised if Democrats lose all four, though, Greg. I mean, they’re not going to lose Kansas, Texas, Michigan, and Maine all at once. I think there’s obvious candidates that are more likely, like Kansas.

Maine, however, could be a surprise, and Susan Collins is very formidable, and I’ve covered that race pretty closely. But, you know, I don’t think they’ll sweep all four, but they certainly won’t lose all four.

Sargent: I want to flag two numbers from the CNN polls in the deeper red states. Trump’s approval in Kansas is 42 percent, with 57 percent disapproving. In Texas, Trump’s approval is 41 percent, with 59 percent disapproving.

In Kansas, he’s underwater with white voters, Tom. You wrote a book about these people, so you know how extraordinary that is. In both states, he’s underwater with non-college voters. I just have a little trouble believing it’s quite that bad in places like Kansas and Texas.

The book, by the way, is White Rural Rage. He wrote that with Paul Waldman. You spent a lot of time in these places. Is it possible that Donald Trump’s approval is that low in these deep red places?

Schaller: It’s amazing, and it’s quite possible, given what he’s done to destroy farming communities and rural communities, who maybe, maybe, maybe are finally waking up.

I mean, I think the complaint of Democrats and liberals for years is like, how do these people keep getting fooled by these culture war politics, this culture war slop that I wrote about in Public Notice?

And they don’t recognize that the Republicans peddle this stuff as an attack-and-distract set of politics, so you don’t pay attention to their horrible mismanagement and their complete lack of concern for working-class Americans, as they win elections and then they cut taxes for the rich and deregulate and cut taxes for corporations. Every single time it’s like Lucy and Charlie Brown, right?

And I want to say, though I’m smart enough not to be fully convinced of this, I want to say maybe this is finally the moment where this wake-up is happening. And that’s why I really think, if you said to me, Tom, you can have any two Senate results you want today, four days in advance, I would say give me Iowa and give me Kansas. Because if the Democrats win Iowa, it’s a big night.

And if Democrats win Kansas also, it’s a huge night, because these are largely white states. There’s pockets of African Americans. There’s significant Native American population, eastern Oklahoma. But that means Trump is losing among white voters. And if he’s losing among white voters there, then he’s getting killed among white voters everywhere.

Sargent: I want to home in on that a little bit more. Kansas and Iowa are also very rural states, and they are chock full of the type of territory that you wrote about, that we’re talking about here. This is an argument that goes back decades now. Tom Frank, What’s the Matter With Kansas?—that’s sort of the touchstone that set off this kind of way of theorizing about elections and about Democrats and about the problems the party faces.

So we would be in a situation where, after decades of wondering when are white rural voters going to stop getting hoodwinked by GOP cultural politics, which has been supercharged by MAGA into MAGA cultural politics—they’re related, but MAGA is something else, it’s more authoritarian, I think, or at least more explicitly authoritarian, right?

We’ve been asking, when is this going to happen? When will economic conditions finally break the hold of that stuff? And we might be on the cusp of that happening, right, Tom?

Schaller: Yeah. I mean, people falsely accuse these sort of working-class non-college white voters, whether they’re suburban or rural, of voting against their interests. And as Paul and I argue in White Rural Rage, they’re not voting against their interests. They’re just putting greater salience and weight on their culture.

They do oppose abortion, they do want gun rights, they do want more role for the church in secular society. They are afraid of immigrants and the gay community and people who look, think, act, and pray differently from white Christian male traditional families.

But the question is, at what point do they realize, like, OK, we’re getting fed that and we’re getting some satisfaction, right? Roe v. Wade was overturned and the border is now being clamped down. At what point do they realize that they are making a trade-off that’s too severe, in terms of bankrupting themselves and bankrupting communities?

And look, I should be the last person to say this is the election that does it. But like I said, I’m going to be looking very closely at the overwhelmingly white red states. Because if we see Trump losing eight, 10, 12 points in some of these rural counties, even if he wins them—I mean, even if the Republicans win them, you know, by 70 percent, but Trump did 78 or 82 or 84 percent in the last election—that is a dramatic drop-off in those counties.

Sargent: I’m wondering if what’s making the circumstances here a little bit different than usual is that the conditions are such that Democrats can actually get heard in some kind of new way. I think part of this is people like James Talarico, who, you know, he talks—like, he sounds different. He doesn’t sound like what I think most Texans think a Democrat sounds like.

And so I wonder if that’s what’s happening here as well, that some of these Democrats are figuring out how to pick the lock on the cultural stuff, but also are being assisted by the terrible economic conditions, in the sense that people are now opening their ears to these Democrats. What do you think of that?

Schaller: Well, I think the Democrats are getting better messages and better messengers to deliver that. And I think that’s what’s scaring the Republicans. And I think they sort of saw this coming, which is why they realized, well, if we can control the megaphone, it doesn’t really matter if they improve their messenger and message delivery system, because we’ll just buy up all the media. Which is what the right is doing, right? They control X, they control Meta, they control everything now.

But notice that this week there’s a story that, like, Fox News viewership is down, like, 29 percent year against year, and is falling in the ratings, and people like Jesse Watters are being tuned out. Now, maybe that’s a short-term thing, and people don’t want to turn on the screen and listen to Republicans like Secretary Bessent or Trump himself say, hey, the economy’s actually really great, when they know they’re being lied to right to their face.

And maybe they’re going to all come home again, you know, after the Democrats, you know, win the House and/or the Senate. But maybe they are starting to wise up that they’re being lied to. And then we’ll see. I have to withhold judgment for the moment.

Sargent: So let’s conclude on JD Vance. You mentioned that you’re going to be looking very closely at some of these results in very deep rural areas. JD Vance is someone who’s really all in on the idea that MAGA’s cultural power, the cultural hold of Trumpism, is still fundamentally intact. I think that’s what he thinks.

If you look at how he apes Trump at every turn, he’s not just a vice president being loyal to a president. He clearly believes that Trumpism is a dominant cultural force still.

I wonder, if this election goes as we hope it does, I wonder whether people will start to look at that whole posture of his a little more skeptically and start to say, well, this guy made a bad bet, right? And this guy is essentially… he’s tied himself to a cultural movement that is kind of running its course, and he’s going to have to turn it around very quickly. I wonder if that’s going to happen. What do you think?

Schaller: I think Vance is saddled by Trumpism and MAGA. I don’t think he really believes in it, to be honest with you, but it’s taken him this far. I’ve got to tell you, I would be surprised if, if it’s really bad, and the Peter Thiels and the Marc Andreessens and the Mark Zuckerbergs look at the world, and this is their guy, JD Vance—I wouldn’t be surprised.

You’re going to think I’m crazy when I say this, but I’m going to write this piece after the election, if it’s as bad as the wave is supposed to be crashing on the Republicans. They’re going to turn on Trump. They’re going to turn on Trump, because their view is, do they still want his rotting carcass around, smelling things up for Republicans, right up until election 2028?

He’s getting crazier by the day on the stump. He’s eventually going to do more than just comment on somebody’s backside. He’s going to end up grabbing some woman. He’s going to end up dropping the n—. He’s going to end up saying something so batshit crazy, Greg, that there’s no way for Fox and talk radio to paper over it anymore.

And, you know, there’s going to be a huge temptation for Democrats to move for impeachment and bring articles in the House, which they can with a simple majority. The question would be the Senate, of course, because you’d need some Republicans, no matter how many seats the Democrats win on Tuesday in the Senate.

I don’t think it’s in the Democrats’ best interest to create some sympathy for Trump, a rally around the flag, a rally around the MAGA phenomena for Trump, and to put JD Vance in the White House and give him a leg up. I think, you broke it, you bought it. Let them ride that rotting dead carcass for two more years. That’s my view of it.

Sargent: Tom Schaller, that is a very arresting image, and I don’t know if I want to think about it too much longer. Great to have you on, though, man. Always great to have you on.

Schaller: Pleasure to be here. Cheers.

What to make of this blatant falsehood, undercutting the seeming guilelessness of this spectacular trilogy? Perhaps 1918 seemed a more auspicious start, marking her as the child of a new era—“the year that the World War ended and the eight-hour day was instituted.” Perhaps, as Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell, two of her English translators, suggest, it was so that she would “seem extra precocious!” by placing the publication of her first, well-received book of poetry in her twentieth year, rather than her twenty-first. 

Either way, this mischievous, self-aggrandizing lie is characteristic of Ditlevsen and her understanding of the function of literature. “Everything written in books,” her mother, Alfrida, scornfully tells a young Tove in Childhood, “is a lie.” Alfrida, whose captivating, contradictory presence looms large in Childhood and the rest of the trilogy, “doesn’t care for facts.” Later, after her brother remarks that her early poems are skillful but dishonestly based on experiences she had not had, Ditlevsen reflects that “you sometimes have to lie in order to bring out the truth.” When it comes time to publish her first novel, she writes that “in one way or another it’s about me, even though I may never experience the things the people do in the book.”

Her final novel, Vilhelm’s Room (1975), translated by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell, explicitly takes up these questions of narrative, emotional, and biographical truth. As the book opens, the narrator proclaims, “I want to write a book about Vilhelm’s room and the events which took place in it, or arose from it; those that led to Lise’s death, which I have survived only so that I might write down the story of her and Vilhelm.” But almost immediately, the narrative voice starts to blur. Describing a photo of Vilhelm and Lise, the narrator comments, “We are young and happy, and so obviously in love.” Soon, she is promising that she will “tell you my story, only because I must. And, of course, because no one else rightfully can.”

The narrator both is and isn’t the already-dead woman Lise Mundus, who is and isn’t Ditlevsen. In its funereal narration, its concern with women in the aftermath of a disastrous marriage, and its suicidal force, the novel bears some resemblance to Susan Taubes’s Divorcing, the recently rediscovered twentieth-century classic. But Ditlevsen is hardly little-known: In Denmark, she was a household name in her lifetime, writing poetry, fiction, memoir, children’s books, and even contributing an advice column to a popular newspaper. She remains one of the country’s most famous writers today, her work included on school syllabi. 

In English, she is best known for her crystalline, unsentimental memoirs. In 2024, The New York Times named the trilogy, the last volume of which was published in translation in 2021, one of the best books of the twenty-first century. The Copenhagen Trilogy is a clear influence on the Scandinavian autofiction being written today and has much in common with the work of the French novelist and memoirist Annie Ernaux. Both Ditlevsen and Ernaux share a commitment to writing with unflinching precision about growing up working-class, gendered oppression, and the link between writing and wanting. But where Ditlevsen’s memoirs are clear-sighted and unselfconsciously confessional, her fiction is more slippery, continually playing with the idea that her writing is closely aligned with her life. Vilhelm’s Room, in particular, is about the border between truth and fiction, public personas and private selves, writing and life, and where that border breaks down.

Ditlevsen was unusually well acquainted with forms of literature that can expose and distort the details of a person’s life: She was not only a writer of memoir and of fiction that drew on her own experiences, but she was also married to the editor of a tabloid newspaper, and saw up close the fine line between the confessional and the salacious, the difficulties of being an admired public figure and an object of prurience.

As she describes it in her memoirs, her entry into the world of literary celebrity feels both unlikely and fated, the result of natural talent and indomitable will. Ditlevsen grew up working-class in Copenhagen’s red-light district. Her father was a stoker who was frequently unemployed, the family scraping by on union benefits. She began writing poetry as a young girl, in the small apartment she shared with her parents and brother, but as soon as she finished middle school, she had to begin working a series of odd jobs. She spent time as a maid in a boarding house, working in the stockroom at a medical supply company, and as a secretary in a state grain office. “I was someone whose physical strength they’d bought for a certain number of hours each day for a certain payment,” Ditlevsen writes in Youth (1967), the second volume of The Copenhagen Trilogy, reflecting on these menial jobs. “They didn’t care about the rest of me.” She was sexually harassed at the medical supply company, and her boss at the grain office fired her after he read one of her first published poems (it was published in a journal called Wild Wheat—he bought it believing it to be a trade publication).

She published her first collection of poems at 21 and married her first editor, Viggo Møller. Her career thrived, even as the marriage fell apart. The couple divorced in 1942, and she quickly married Ebbe Munk, an economics student who struggled to adapt to her growing fame, and with whom she had her first child. She left him too, for Carl Ryberg, the doctor who provided her second illegal abortion and her first shots of Demerol. She remained married to him for five years, during which she gave birth to a second child and adopted a third, had the first of several psychiatric hospitalizations, and nearly died of the painkiller addiction she would continue to struggle with for the rest of her life. When she was 33, she fell in love with and married Victor Andreasen, an editor who would go on to run Ekstra Bladet, one of Denmark’s largest tabloid newspapers, and with whom she would have one son. Dependency (1971), the final volume of her memoirs, depicts the hopeful beginnings of their relationship, though their 22-year marriage ended in a rancorous divorce.

The aftermath of her break from Andreasen echoes through Vilhelm’s Room, which reads as an attempt to reckon, formally, with the disassembly of the self. When the novel opens, Lise’s husband, Vilhelm, “Denmark’s tabloid mogul,” has recently left her for another woman, and Lise has been taken, not for the first time, to a psychiatric hospital. This latest crisis is a disquietingly calm one; Lise is merely “no longer present within herself.” While hospitalized, Lise places a lonely-hearts ad in the newspaper:

Recently escaped a long, unhappy marriage—aged 51, but youthful in spirit—wonderful son, aged 15—household literary name—summerhouse—large flat in the city centre—temporarily incapacitated by a nervous breakdown—prefers a motorist.

This is, essentially, an edited version of a newspaper ad Ditlevsen herself placed in Andreasen’s newspaper after their once-happy relationship dissolved. Lise’s morbid, macabre upstairs neighbor, the elderly Mrs. Thomsen, sees the ad and shows it to her lodger, Kurt. Mrs. Thomsen is a tabloid addict who spends her mornings reading stories of murder and scandal to Kurt, while he masturbates beneath her dead husband’s sheets, foreplay for the culmination of their sexual games. Sensing that a relationship with a famous, lonely woman is “the chance of a lifetime” for a down-at-heel young man, she encourages Kurt to reply to the ad. His overtures are successful, and when Lise returns from the hospital, Kurt installs himself in Vilhelm’s recently deserted room.

This lurid setup dramatizes Ditlevsen’s own relationship with the press. As Olga Ravn writes in her introduction to a translated collection of Ditlevsen’s poems, There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die (2025), Ditlevsen was “incredibly famous”; indeed, perhaps Denmark’s “most photographed” writer in her lifetime, appearing in the press “almost weekly.” The public consumed details of her life, just as Kurt and Mrs. Thomsen do. 

Ditlevsen cultivated fame out of financial necessity, Ravn writes, but she also excelled at a confessional artistic mode. Her memoirs don’t shy away from self-revelation; The Copenhagen Trilogy includes a remarkable depiction of drug addiction and the toxic marriage Ditlevsen stayed in to enable it, as well as unsparing accounts of her illegal abortions and her stays in psychiatric institutions. She is candid about her self-interested pursuit of fame, acknowledging that she married Møller in large part because she believed it would grant her access to rarefied literary circles and that her primary fear of the Nazi occupation of Denmark in World War II was that it would delay publication of her first book. In service of this literary experiment in forthright disclosure, it seems clear that she is willing to air the most intimate details of her life to anyone who cares to read.  

Yet in her fiction, Ditlevsen writes of the depredations of fame and self-exposure. In her 1968 novel The Faces, the protagonist—also named Lise Mundus—is a famous writer who reflects, “She no longer belonged to herself. No matter where she sought refuge, people had unashamedly formed an image of her over which she had no control.” For Lise, “peace meant not existing in other people’s consciousness,” but “fame had brutally ripped away the veil that had always separated her from reality.” Lise is hounded by calls from reporters asking her inane questions, including whether she thinks fame comes with obligations. She replies that she “didn’t win it in a national election.” Lise’s wish for a private existence is echoed in Ditlevsen’s poem “Self-Portrait 4,” in which she writes: 

This picture of me
inserts itself
and distorts
like when
a photograph is taken
on top of another. 

I fear the place
I hold in other people’s
memory.

The structure of Vilhelm’s Room, then, reads as commentary on the public’s prurient interest in Ditlevsen’s personal life, and as a pointed critique of her ex-husband’s line of work, though the critique is also a consciously self-indicting one. Ditlevsen furnishes the novel with the trappings of tabloid fodder: a high-profile divorce, a fortune-hunter preying on a mentally unstable woman, the death of someone famous. She even includes a chapter in the form of a series of confessional articles about her marriage that Lise writes for a rival magazine. Then, she sharply resists satisfying any voyeuristic desire. Her narrator calls attention, over and over again, to the book’s status as fiction—“It’s no concern of mine whether Mrs Thomsen ever existed or not. She is a fragment of my dissolved consciousness,” the narrator explains, and Kurt “never really lived.”

This metafictional strategy allows Ditlevsen to affirm that, for all the novel’s resemblance to its author’s life, it is a work of artistic control. In this, the novel is a mirror image of her memoirs, in which Ditlevsen’s clarity and unsentimental honesty resist the reading of confessional literature as mere scandal. It is easy, and not altogether incorrect, to read Lise as an analogue for Ditlevsen, to read her pain as the author’s pain. But this is also incomplete, as the narrator points out, in an echo of Ditlevsen’s comments on her first novel; of the characters that populate Vilhelm’s Room, from the “vile” Mrs. Thomsen to Vilhelm’s mistresses, she writes, “I exist in all of them. I watch over them while the night sleeps.”

Vilhelm’s Room is a novel of decomposition: It rots, slithers, oozes, smells. Mrs. Thomsen’s “vile, slimy thoughts seep through the ceiling”; the streets of a drizzly Copenhagen are “slippery and shiny like eels”; worries crawl “like white tapeworms”; compassion “rises” in Kurt “like nausea”; inside Lise and Vilhelm’s son, Tom, “squirmed grey worms of dread and decay”; and when Vilhelm vomits at an important function he attends with Lise, “it was as if all his bitterness and disgust for life kept gushing out of him.”

In one chapter, titled “(Open letter to my Vilhelm),” Lise reflects on a moment when she and Vilhelm were on vacation and she first realized, “He’s no longer young! It was in the way you carried yourself and the hesitancy of your movements, a faint whisper of decay.” The narrator remarks, too, on the “nascent decay” of Vilhelm’s healthy, young lover. This necrotic mood is brought on by the end of Lise’s marriage but also by the recent deaths of her father and brother, and the lingering wounds of her childhood and her mother’s death (“This was true loneliness,” the narrator explains, “there was no one left to talk to about her childhood”).

Above all, it is Lise’s imminent death, announced in the very first paragraph, that haunts the novel, giving it its atmosphere of both diffuse dread and perverse fascination. The narrator suggests that Lise might have been murdered, perhaps by Kurt. At one point, Mrs. Thomsen, driven in part, perhaps, by her sense of abandonment in Kurt’s absence, but just as much by her desire to participate in the scandal-soaked world of her tabloids, calls a detective inspector to report her suspicions about Kurt’s potential for violence. His motives for moving in with Lise are certainly suspect. But soon, the narrator refutes this suspicion, a little ruefully: “I now realize that I may have at one point implied that Kurt would become a murderer. For such ends, however, I have made him far too stubborn and willful to be used for anything that does not benefit or please him. He didn’t even want to stick around until the end of the book.”

Still, there is a murder of sorts in the book. A resentful and embittered Vilhelm views Lise’s poetry as stolen and derivative. During their marriage, she recalls, he accused her of lacking “literary audacity” and tore into her poems line by line. During one such attack, she reports, he tells her that the poem “falls apart in the middle, at the word ‘heart.’” With that, the page “stiffened and died in his hand as he murdered her poem, a cold corpse shrouded in white lace.”

It is because Vilhelm stabs Lise’s poetry in the heart that the narrator “must bestow upon this woman a new language, the audacity of which Vilhelm will no longer have reason to question.” Vilhelm, here, seems to stand not only for the man Ditlevsen married but also for critics who frequently dismissed her talent.

The cruel irony is that the narrator tells us that Lise finds this new language in her “final book.”  In the novel’s closing pages, Lise dies after taking an overdose of sleeping pills—the same method by which Ditlevsen would take her own life a year after the book’s publication, in a final, fateful collision of author and character. But it is incorrect, or at least incomplete, to call the novel a suicide note, as some have. With this book, Ditlevsen has avowed that her work was not merely confessional but consciously crafted. As she wrote in Youth about her feelings upon her first book’s publication, the book “will always exist, regardless of how my fate takes shape.” In the space between confession and creation, between cruel facts and the truths of the heart, Ditlevsen created a lasting literature.

This fall, voters in seven states—Wyoming, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, and North Carolina—will decide on a dozen ballot measures, most of which would either limit property tax assessment and rate increases or expand the number of exemptions for property owners. These initiatives come on the heels of property tax cuts or caps enacted by 11 states in 2026 alone, as well as a growing movement to eliminate the property tax entirely. This is a worrying trend that the Democratic Party, in particular, will have to contend with very soon.

The property tax is easy to hate. It is America’s only broad-based tax on wealth, and it centers on the home, which is not only the physical and symbolic heart of the middle-class “ownership society” but also the largest store of middle-class wealth. In other words, ordinary homeowners pay a wealth tax every year, at a time when billionaires are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to avoid one on their exploding fortunes.

It is also the only tax that a person might literally be unable to pay. Income and sales taxes are paid out of money already in hand. The property tax is owed on an asset, not on income. Particularly in times of rapidly appreciating home values, the only way to pay it may be to sell the very thing being taxed.

What someone owes in property taxes bears no relation to their ability to pay. The pandemic-era run-up in home prices pushed the median single-family property tax bill up by roughly a quarter between 2019 and 2023, and because assessments lag the market, many homeowners are only now feeling the full force of a housing boom that has already cooled.

The assessment process is notoriously unfair toward poor and minority homeowners, who are forced to pay higher taxes relative to home values than their wealthier, whiter neighbors. Nationally, the poorest fifth of Americans pay more than 4 percent of their income in property taxes each year, while the richest 1 percent pay less than 2 percent.

Unlike most other taxes, the property tax is routinely put before voters, who decide on local levies and bonds. Voting down a property tax levy is one of the few ways to win a measure of direct financial relief at the ballot box. But none of the measures on the ballot this fall will offer much relief to those who need it most, and most of them promise to make things even worse for localities already struggling with their own inflationary cost pressures.

Until progressives—and, especially, Democratic elected officials—take voters’ frustrations with the property tax seriously and work to make local taxes fairer and more equitable, the threat of right-led tax revolts in times of economic uncertainty will remain.

We’ve been here before. In the early 1970s, just as America entered a period of prolonged economic stagnation, local property taxes soared relative to incomes for middle- and working-class households. At the same time, a bevy of scandals and investigations pulled back the curtain on rampant corruption and favoritism in local tax offices.

In response, voters rejected school bond measures at an unprecedented rate. Nationwide, bond approval rates fell from over 70 percent in the early 1960s to less than 50 percent by the mid-1970s. Surveys consistently pointed to pocketbook pressures and frustration over the loopholes and hidden tax breaks enjoyed by the wealthy and well-connected as the driving forces. Grassroots activists on the left sensed an opportunity to channel voter discontent into a movement for progressive tax reform.

Ralph Nader understood why the property tax had become the lightning rod. Because it was the only tax voters could regularly approve or reject, it had “borne the brunt of taxpayer dissatisfaction with the increasing unfairness of the entire tax structure,” the consumer advocate told Congress in 1972. Nader’s Tax Reform Research Group became a clearinghouse for the scores of public interest groups descending on local tax offices to expose the breaks enjoyed by the wealthy and the ruinously high burdens imposed on everyone else.

In Chicago, Saul Alinsky’s Citizens Action Program targeted the outrageous undertaxation of the city’s largest industrial properties, which had left the city’s coffers bare and forced the poor to pick up the check. The group demanded tax relief for poor and working-class neighborhoods and reinvestment in struggling schools and public services.

In March 1973, the anti-poverty activist George Wiley launched the Movement for Economic Justice. “I believe today we need a taxpayer’s revolt,” he declared—one aimed at “the real chiselers,” the “multi-billion dollar corporations and very wealthy individuals [who] do not pay their fair share.”

That December, on the two-hundredth anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, organizers and activists from a broad cross-section of the progressive left converged on Philadelphia for the first T.E.A., or Tax Equity for America, Party convention. There they outlined an agenda that included repealing sales taxes on food, drugs, and other basic necessities; reforming property assessments for accuracy, transparency, and targeted tax relief; and passing state and local corporate and progressive income taxes.

The Democratic Party establishment was largely absent from this movement for tax justice. George McGovern ran ads during his 1972 presidential campaign promising relief from unfair property taxes. But after his landslide defeat, most Democrats beat a hasty retreat from economic populism and redistributive politics, just as voter anger over regressive local taxes was cresting. In their place, they embraced the corporate-friendly, pro-growth policies that would later define the “New Democrat” movement. In California and Massachusetts, Democratic Governors Jerry Brown and Michael Dukakis rebuffed the grassroots left’s calls for reform while homeowners stewed in rage over property taxes that soared throughout the decade.

Liberal Democrats’ failure to respond to voters’ demands for tax justice created an opening for the political right to offer the half-loaf of tax cuts. In 1978, anti-tax crusaders Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann put before California voters Proposition 13, an extreme across-the-board reduction in local property taxes, coupled with strict limits on future assessment and tax rate increases. For most Californians, it was the only meaningful relief on offer—albeit in the form of a measure that promised to deliver its greatest benefits to the state’s wealthiest residents and most profitable corporations.

Californians had been patient. Democrats had urged them to hold out for a fairer, more progressive plan, and they had obliged, soundly defeating nearly identical tax limitation initiatives led by Los Angeles County assessor Philip Watson in 1968 and 1972, along with Ronald Reagan’s Proposition 1 in 1973. Their ideology hadn’t changed since then, but their economic circumstances had. So voters took what they could get: Prop 13 passed with nearly two-thirds of the vote.

Other states soon followed with their own measures restricting local governments’ ability to raise assessments or tax rates, including Massachusetts, where voters approved Proposition 2½ in 1980. An adviser to Boston Mayor Kevin White explained afterward that “the people were very patient waiting for the political leadership to do something.” With lawmakers unwilling to act, Prop 2½ “was the only tool [voters] had.”

Studies conducted at the time found that, by and large, anger over taxes was not ideological. Voters’ views on taxes and spending had barely budged since Prop 1’s defeat. They did not want to “starve the beast.” Even most Prop 13 supporters opposed cuts to all but a handful of services, and many wanted more spending on schools, police, and fire protection. And while many middle-class whites traded in racist caricatures of welfare recipients and, when asked, tended to support cuts to social services for the poor, they expressed even stronger support for raising taxes on the wealthy.

But conservatives were quick to claim Prop 13 as a mandate for their own agenda. Reagan, whose Prop 1 had been rejected by voters just five years earlier, now argued that it had been “an idea whose time had not quite arrived.” Soon he was pitching upwardly skewed federal income and capital gains tax cuts as extensions of Prop 13. “What these Republican proposals in Washington have in common with Proposition 13 here in California is that they are aimed at economic growth,” Reagan said. Few Democrats pushed back, and the press largely accepted the right’s reading of the vote.

What began as a revolt against a tax system that rewarded the rich and punished the poor culminated in Reagan’s election to the presidency. He then enacted massive tax cuts for the wealthy and deep cuts in federal aid to cities and public schools, and presided over eight years of soaring inequality. Ultimately, Republicans used the 1970s tax revolt to exacerbate the very inequities that had fueled it.

The forgotten origins of the 1970s tax revolts offer crucial lessons for progressives and the left today. But based on the initial response to these latest stirrings of revolt, we are not confident that liberals have absorbed them.

Media coverage and commentary have tended to focus on the political extremists pushing these ballot initiatives, while characterizing their supporters as selfish baby boomers seeking to tear up the social contract. Property tax defenders, meanwhile, have sought to remind voters of the essential goods and services that local property taxes fund: schools, fire and police protection, water and sewer systems, streets, and sidewalks. But few have acknowledged, or taken steps to address, why property taxes fall hardest on middle- and lower-income households, and why Americans feel that they’re paying more for local government while getting less in return.

The reasons today are much the same as they were in the 1970s. In an inflationary era, home values have outstripped both overall price increases and working- and middle-class wages, which, after a short period of relatively strong growth, have stalled again.

In the ’70s, the culprits were corrupt assessors who handed out obscenely low valuations on the most valuable properties. Today, it’s cities subsidizing real estate developers through tax increment financing and handing generous tax breaks to data centers, both of which shrink local tax bases and shift the costs of local government onto everyone else. It’s a tax appeals process designed by and for large real estate owners and their attorneys, who use it to win ever-larger reductions, while it remains virtually inaccessible to those most unfairly overtaxed. It’s a local political culture that caters to corporations and mobile capital and asks little in return. And it’s the steady withdrawal of federal and state support for local governments and schools. That process began under Reagan and, with a brief exception during the Covid pandemic, has continued ever since, leaving localities to fend for themselves. In short, average Americans are paying more, and local governments are still coming up short, because the wealthy are paying so little.

Today’s tax revolts should be seen not simply as a threat but also as an opportunity for the left. While orchestrated by anti-tax extremists intent on defunding the state, these campaigns consistently draw their support from average Americans with pocketbook concerns and valid frustrations at a patently unfair tax system. Those voters should not be mocked and dismissed as selfish adversaries but embraced as potential allies, whose mounting anger can—and should—be channeled into a movement for structural reform.

Democrats have tools at their disposal to counter Republicans’ attempt to co-opt the tax revolt. Circuit breakers, which cap property taxes as a share of income, can better align the property tax with ability to pay. While most states offer some type of circuit breaker, only seven states plus the District of Columbia extend them to homeowners and renters of all ages, and few are generous enough to offer meaningful relief to low- and middle-income residents. The federal mortgage interest and state and local tax, or SALT, deductions, which currently flow primarily to upper-income taxpayers, could be refashioned into progressive, refundable credits. Most ambitiously, policymakers could restore the property tax’s original reach as a tax on all forms of wealth, not just the home. That ambition foundered in the nineteenth century largely because local assessors couldn’t track stocks and bonds. Those hurdles are far lower today. Florida taxed intangible assets like stocks and bonds as recently as 2006. Today, the bigger obstacle is political will.

For any of this to happen, though, Democrats must avoid the mistakes of the 1970s. Dismissing the property tax revolt won’t make it go away. It’ll merely cede the revolt—and the voters behind it—to the right, as Democrats did half a century ago.

As the elections approach, Mr. Trump is feasting on a media diet of fawning press coverage, disparaging clips about his perceived enemies, and helpings of flattering photos and “A.I. slop,” as one official put it.

That extraordinary passage shows how his aides are placating his anger. Yet new CNN polls show Democrats with leads in most of the key Senate races that will determine control. So we talked to political scientist Tom Schaller, author of a good piece for the Public Notice Substack on MAGA culture. We discuss whether those CNN polls are right, why Trump believes his influence over GOP voters will save the party, how a big Democratic night could break Trump-MAGA cultural power, and how that could allow Democrats to expand their coalition in coming years. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.

Democratic Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, offered those remarks at a Middle East Institute panel on Wednesday. 

“I will just say this: Their plan is insane.... It will lead to devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law,” Murphy said. “There’s been open reporting as to what we may be planning, and the civilian infrastructure that we may be targeting.... They have been asked by the president to develop a plan. Whether they believe it will work or not, I do not know. But the plan that they have developed will lead, in my view, to a prolongment and an escalation of this war that will be devastating for our security interests.” 

Trump is reportedly planning to restart war with Iran after the election. Some of us have been briefed on the war plan. And while I cannot disclose any details, I can say this: the plan is insane. It will not achieve objectives and will set off a new cycle of escalation. https://t.co/adWJfHVIok

— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) October 29, 2026

President Trump is expected to ramp up operations against Iran after the midterm elections, with anonymous sources saying the U.S. has already begun warning its allies about a renewed military campaign. Last week, Israeli sources told ABC News that they discussed intensifying the blockade on Iranian oil exports and bombing petrochemical sites with the United States. Murphy’s comment seems to be confirmation that there is an escalation in the works. 

That would likely result in more Iranian civilians dying, more of their infrastructure being destroyed, more U.S. soldiers dying and being wounded, and continued high fuel prices. It would also further expose Trump’s false promises about the conflict, which appears to be developing into our next forever war. And the primary goal of destroying Iran’s nuclear capability does not seem to have actually been achieved.  

Bolsonaro, who would have faced multiple criminal investigations if he stayed in Brazil, landed in Miami Wednesday after losing Brazil’s presidential election to incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. But he wouldn’t have made it without the Trump administration’s help.

Bolsonaro and his family were able to come to the United States on a special kind of parole usually reserved for “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit,” after he apparently showed Homeland Security an expired diplomatic passport. His next step will be applying for a green card, a process which an administration official said will be fast-tracked in a manner similar to his brother Eduardo, who was granted permanent residency last year.

Bolsonaro flew from Argentina to Ecuador before finally landing in Miami—and he did it all on a private jet handled by Jason Miller, a White House communications official, an unnamed administration official told the Times.

Brazil’s Supreme Court had ordered Bolsonaro to hand over his passport by Monday given that he was under criminal investigation for a massive money-laundering scheme. The senator was reportedly convinced that he would be arrested following his election loss. His father, Jair Bolsonaro, is currently serving out house arrest in Brazil for attempting his own version of January 6. He also fled to Florida in late 2022 briefly before his arrest.

Trump has been close with the Bolsonaros, both personally and politically. On Monday, he claimed without any proof that the election had been “rigged” against Bolsonaro. “It looked like another rigged election, frankly,” he told reporters. “Elections have to be indisputable, and it looked very bad to me.”

Bolsonaro has yet to concede the election to Lula, and declared himself the leader of Brazil from the United States in a letter on Wednesday.

Earlier this month, Starlink’s satellite-supplied internet service suddenly dropped its connection over Ukraine as Russia barraged Kyiv with missiles. Starlink founder Elon Musk initially blamed the lapse on the recent decisions of the U.S. military and President Donald Trump, but then Trump also refused to take responsibility. Musk finally confessed Saturday to slowing down the region’s Starlink connection, claiming in an X post that Ukraine had violated Starlink’s terms of service by using the internet connection to attack Russia.

But a report published by The Atlantic Thursday indicates that there could have been another reason that Musk’s company decided to pull the plug. U.S. officials told the magazine that when Washington inquired about the outage, Starlink “advised switching to an upgraded contract to restore Ukraine’s access.”

The blunder has put both Ukraine and Starlink in a fraught position. The company’s apparently unreliable connection has jeopardized the safety and sovereignty of tens of millions of Ukrainians as they attempt to fend off Russia’s invasion, while also displaying for the entire world that Starlink’s services aren’t all they were chalked up to be. It has also revealed that the fate of entire nations rests in the hands of the world’s first trillionaire.

Contrary to Musk’s position, Ukraine’s actions were anything but offensive. Russian ballistic missiles slammed two plants supplying heat and electricity to Kyiv and damaged a residential building in the capital city. At least nine people died in the attacks, Ukraine’s State Emergency Services shared in a Telegram statement.

Ukrainian officials suggested that the strikes could have been prevented if they received the proper intelligence—but there was only radio silence. Multiple sources familiar with the matter told CBS News that U.S. officials claimed their defense systems had failed to detect the missiles because of “bad weather,” but Kyiv did not buy the excuse.

The intelligence error occurred days after Trump brokered an eyebrow-raising deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to buy diesel from Moscow, effectively offering the country an economic lifeline that would allow Russia to continue the war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was publicly critical of the arrangement, sparking a multiday harassment campaign in which the Trump administration called Kyiv and other European capitals, threatening to cut off military intelligence sharing and weapons deliveries unless Ukraine stopped attacking Russian oil refineries.

Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton’s long-estranged mother, Donna Arthur, reportedly appeared mentally unwell while filming a campaign video for her daughter’s opponent, sources told Zeteo. Those sources described Arthur as “far gone” and “in bad shape.”

Court filings obtained Thursday by NBC News gave a startling further look into Arthur’s mental health struggles in recent years. In 2022, she faced animal neglect charges after she hoarded 20 cats in her sedan where she lived, and one kitten died in her care in 2021. According to court transcripts, Arthur exhibited a belief that animal rescue workers were conspiring to abduct her cats, and accused a humane society officer and an animal rescue worker of “stalking” her in order to steal her pets.  

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Acton said, “It’s very clear that our mother—who I have not seen since I was 12, my brother was nine—is not well, and I do hope she gets the things she needs.”

“I think this was exploitive to do that to someone in her condition,” Acton added of the ad.

Ramaswamy moved forward with the ad spot against the advice of his own team, and ignored publicly available information that Arthur had abandoned her children in order to skip town with her husband, who was indicted for allegedly raping Action when she was less than 13 years old. 

The 62-year-old biological daughter of Cledith “Bud” Arthur, Acton’s stepfather and alleged abuser, said Wednesday that she believes Acton’s story and claimed that he had also raped her late sister Christine years before he married Acton’s mother.

Representatives Jamie Raskin and Robert Garcia, the top Democrats on the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees, wrote a five-page letter to President Trump on Wednesday pressing for answers on his chatbot use, whether it be Grok, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or any other such tool.

“We are writing to ask whether you have actually been soliciting advice from Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, Grok, in order to help you carry out your official duties as President of the United States. If so, we are writing to inform you that any prompts that you, your staff, or advisors in the Executive Office of the President (EOP) have submitted to AI chatbots … are the sole property of the United States and legally must be preserved for posterity.”

It was reported earlier this month that Trump and then-adviser Elon Musk “spent hours” asking Musk’s Grok chatbot questions about Trump’s legacy. At one point, Trump consulted Grok about how Venezuelans would react to the U.S. capturing Maduro. Grok told him that Venezuelans would celebrate the move, and a month later the U.S. did exactly that. According to Time, Trump thought the chatbot was ingenious.

Raskin and Garcia called the episode “troubling.”

“You consulted Grok—but not Congress—on your military deployment to Venezuela, circumventing Congress’s constitutional power to declare war and introducing instead into American foreign policy decision making a technology that is highly manipulable and demonstrably error-prone,” they wrote. “To the extent any of your Administration’s myriad blunders, such as launching a war on Iran, are attributable to overreliance on AI, the American public deserves to know what advice was rendered and records of that advice must be preserved.”

The Democrats also noted the use of AI in the military strike that killed 123 schoolchildren in Minab, Iran, as well as other issues with Grok, like allowing users to create child pornography.

Trump’s predilection for artificial intelligence has been well documented, from racist memes of the Obamas to depicting himself as Jesus Christ. That his AI obsession extends to actual policymaking that determines whether innocent people live or die is bleak, but unsurprising.

Still, as Raskin and Garcia noted in their letter: “If the American President is relying on the policy advice of a Musk-designed, Hitler-friendly chatbot with a predilection for child pornography in order to carry out his official duties, Americans have a right to know.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made waves Wednesday when he suddenly fired Army Lieutenant General Brett Sylvia from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Sylvia was the director of the Directorate for Strategy, Plans, and Policy, effectively serving as the Pentagon’s chief war planner, and a vital liaison between America’s armed forces and the White House. The senior strategist was accused of leaking classified information about the Russia-Ukraine war to the press.

But when asked about the scandal by reporters Thursday, Trump was apparently so uninformed that he failed to even get Sylvia’s gender right.

“She’s got problems,” Trump said after a reporter referred to Sylvia only as “Lieutenant General Sylvia.” “She’s gonna have big problems. We’re very much looking for leakers. And uh, she’s going to have big problems. Long-term problems.”

Sylvia is at least the fifth general that Hegseth either forced out or fired—but the timing could not be worse, particularly as Trump weighs renewed combat against Iran after the midterms. U.S. officials have already warned several countries in the Middle East to be prepared for potential airstrikes after U.S. Election Day, and cautioned about the possibility of retaliatory attacks from Iran afterward.

“Now is not the time when you’d want to lose the J5,” a former Joint Chiefs official told The Atlantic Wednesday. “This person would serve as a critical link between the operational force, the department policy, and the White House.”

Several aircraft carriers have already been deployed to the region to support American efforts there. They include the USS George H. W. Bush, the USS George Washington, and the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group, an amphibious assault ship with a helicopter launch pad. They’re also joined by a a guided missile destroyer called the USS Shoup, according to a Wednesday report by the U.S. Naval Institute.

The Washington Sun reported Thursday that American companies are concerned that accepting shipments of Russian diesel fuel set to arrive in the United States after the midterm elections will leave them vulnerable to reputational and legal risks. Trump administration officials have been privately encouraging American companies to get over it.

In a last-ditch attempt to alleviate financial strain ahead of the midterm elections, the Trump administration announced earlier this month that the U.S. would temporarily waive sanctions on Russian diesel sold to the global market through April 2027. Trump claimed that Russia would “immediately” supply more than roughly 2.2 million barrels of diesel fuel to the American and global marketplaces—a small drop in the bucket against the sweeping diesel shortage.

Multiple sources told the Sun that the Russian diesel cargoes did not have any confirmed buyers when they were loaded onto the tankers in mid-October. One industry analyst told the outlet that the cargoes had been “shopped” for weeks, but U.S. firms hadn’t been interested.

“They’re being very strongly encouraged by both Moscow and Washington to take these cargoes, including with steep discounts, but they’re encountering a wall of resistance based on reputation and legal risks,” another industry analyst told the Sun.

It’s still not clear whether the diesel will even land in the United States. New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill is looking for ways to prevent the potential arrival of Russian tankers. “Make no mistake: Trump’s diesel deal with Putin is corrupt and illegal, and I am evaluating options to stop it from arriving at a port in New Jersey,” Sherrill told the Sun in a statement. She accused Trump of “lining Vladimir Putin’s pockets at the expense of American consumers and our democratic ally Ukraine.”

Rapidan Energy Group told its clients: “Moscow and Washington are still scrambling to find takers, but we wouldn’t be surprised if the cargoes ultimately head to Brazil.”

Donald Trump has reportedly shrunk his inner circle to just a smattering of trusted loyalists, including Federal Housing Director Bill Pulte and Trump’s beloved executive assistant, “human printer” Natalie Harp, according to 16 current and former administration officials and Trump allies that spoke with The New York Times.

Harp, for one, has moved into a private dining room adjacent to the Oval Office, while Pulte has redirected his attention toward creating artificial intelligence–generated images and mock posters for the president’s social media feeds.

Trump is primarily consuming “fawning press coverage, disparaging clips about his perceived enemies, and helpings of flattering photos and ‘AI slop,’ as one official put it,” the Times reported.

But anxiety has permeated the rest of the executive branch. Insiders likened the current climate to Trump’s first term, which was constantly shaken by staff turnover, legislative dread, and the president’s explosive tantrums.

Despite his floundering popularity, Trump has chosen to place himself at the epicenter of the midterms, effectively making the 2026 election another referendum on his position atop the Republican Party. But with just days on the clock until voters cast their ballots, Trump is reportedly spending his downtime complaining about the decision, lamenting how much effort he’s had to put in, according to the Times.

The ground is shifting as Trump and his allies look for a potential midterm scapegoat, should Republicans suffer major losses next week. Even Trump’s most stalwart supporters are at risk of losing their heads: Earlier this month, rumors circulated that White House chief of staff Susie Wiles could face the axe.

But staffing issues and midterm jitters aren’t the only line items souring the mood in the West Wing. Negative news coverage of his administration is still making Trump nuts. Over the weekend, Trump tuned in to Bill Maher’s show to watch his sit-down interview with former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. But Maher’s barbs must have gotten through Trump’s thin skin, as they incited a scathing 1,300-word social media post in response. Trump declared online that Maher was a “COMPLETE AND TOTAL LOSER,” and harangued the late-night comedian for daring to question his attempts to curtail California’s voting process.

“You’re not transformative, you’re a Loser! I never watched your show much, but I will never watch it again,” Trump wrote Sunday evening.

“Failure to comply with this order may result in sanctions, including but not limited to, dismissal of this action for failure to prosecute this case,” Lett wrote in the court order.

Trump has until November 23 to hand over the relevant documents or risk having his case dismissed. Additionally, in the absence of a register identifying documents withheld due to claims of privilege, Trump must compile a list by November 5.

Trump’s suit, filed last year, is over a 2024 episode of Panorama titled “Trump, a Second Chance.” Trump claims the episode was defamatory because it edited together two sections of his speech on January 6, 2021, highlighting his line calling on his supporters to “fight like hell,” while omitting a section in which he told them to peacefully protest. But by suing the British Broadcasting Corporation, he’s exposed himself and his inner circle to the discovery process.

Trump has had issues with his own lawsuit ever since it was filed. Last week, Lett ordered that he sit for a deposition by December 11. Trump was also ordered to fork over his financial records back in July, which the BBC’s lawyers requested to determine whether Trump was actually harmed by its lawsuit. Lett also allowed the BBC to subpoena Trump’s closest advisers and confidants—including his family members, Stephen Miller, and Steve Bannon—to make the case on what Trump’s actual goals were on January 6.

“The Chairman, the Joint Staff, and the Joint Force extend our deepest gratitude to Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia and his family for their 32 years of distinguished service to our nation,” a spokesperson for the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement to The Atlantic, which first reported the news. “We wish him and his family the best as they graduate to new opportunities and the next chapters of their lives.”

CBS reported that Sylvia’s firing was related to his allegedly failing three polygraph tests about leaks to the press. But Sylvia has been a target of the far right for some time now, as Islamaphobic content creator and unofficial Trump administration adviser Laura Loomer called for him to be fired over a year ago for his son Gavin’s comments on Charlie Kirk.

“Meet Gavin Sylvia. A ‘He/Him’ who displays his pronouns in his bio. He is currently employed as a data analyst with @fema, a DHS @DHSgov agency. Yesterday, he posted on Instagram, ‘Half mast for the literal racist homophobe misogynist?? bffr’. This was his response to Charlie Kirk being assassinated,” she wrote. “His father is a Major General in the United States Army and currently serves at the Pentagon. He was nominated for a third star by Joe Biden…. These people hate us. They don’t belong near the levers of our National Power…. Please fire Gavin Sylvia … [and] @PeteHegseth should also review the employment of Gavin’s father, MG Brett Sylvia.”

One year later, and her wish has been granted.

While the Pentagon claims Sylvia failed the polygraphs, Hegseth hasn’t really needed much of a reason to fire the 25 other high-ranking military leaders. Being a President Biden appointee, being too “woke,” or simply not jiving with Hegseth’s aggressive leadership style have made other officials targets of Hegseth’s purge.

This firing also comes as the war on Iran—one that the U.S. has been definitely losing for almost a year—appears likely to ramp up after the midterm elections.

U.S. District Judge David Carter slammed the president and his subordinates Wednesday evening for filing a temporary restraining order that would have forced California to set aside roughly 20,000 ballots over baseless accusations of voter fraud.

“Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch,” Carter wrote. “In bringing this lawsuit, the Executive would have this Court believe that it reigns as a sole sovereign. But California and its people are sovereign, too.”

The Justice Department had demanded that California election workers not process ballots from thousands of individuals that it posited—without evidence—were “likely” noncitizens. State and local officials shot back that the DOJ list was unreliable. Los Angeles County, for instance, found that many people named on the DOJ list didn’t even have active voter registrations.

Election officials also argued that setting aside ballots before Election Day would be unlawful and possibly impossible, particularly when early voting and mail-in ballots are already being tabulated.

In response, the DOJ warned Californian officials that they could potentially face criminal exposure if they failed to comply with the White House’s demands, according to Democracy Docket.

“These threats must stop,” Carter ordered.

Carter noted that the DOJ has the ability to prosecute individual noncitizens when it actually has evidence they voted illegally, but does not have the authority to assert its election preferences across the country.

“The Executive’s requested relief,” Carter wrote, “would wreak havoc and disrupt the election that is already underway, create a chilling effect on election workers and voters alike, and discount the votes of United States citizens.

“This Court declines to be a party to such process.”

In a new court filing Wednesday, the National Parks Service announced that the agency had entered into a new lease agreement with the National Links Trust, a nonprofit that operates municipal golf courses, in order to shut down the East Potomac Golf Links for sweeping renovations. The closure will begin on November 15.

The agency also announced that on Friday, it would submit its plans for “a World Class, championship-level golf course that is capable of hosting major events” to the National Capital Planning Committee.

In a post on Truth Social Wednesday night, Trump claimed that the course was “highly dangerous, dilapidated, and absolutely disgusting.” He posted several photographs that showed debris and damage to the course.

“The gaping holes in the driving range’s ‘protective’ netting are highly hazardous,” he wrote. “Golf balls soar through the holes at high speed and hit unexpecting Golfers—including a White House staffer who was, sadly, hit violently in the chest.”

Trump claimed that he would ensure the course remained “affordable to locals” like the courses at Torrey Pines and Bethpage Black. East Potomac’s green fees are currently the same for residents and nonresidents, ranging from $16 to $48.

He also warned that he would attempt to hold the judge presiding over the case, U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes, “fully responsible for anybody who is hurt, or killed, on this very dangerous, dilapidated, and unsightly Golf Course.”

Earlier this week, Trump loudly announced his plans to ignore and appeal Reyes’s order blocking his planned takeover of the course, calling the decision “time-consuming, unnecessary, expensive, and unconstitutional.” Reyes had extended the order barring the Trump administration and the National Parks Service from cutting down more trees at the golf course while the lawsuit remains active. The order also requires the administration to give 10 days’ notice before making any “irreparable modification” to any “forms or features” on the property.

Inside Washington

Republican Mike Lawler and Democrat Cait Conley are in a dead heat for the race in New York’s 17th congressional district. Lawler is painting Conley as a radical socialist, while Conley is tying Lawler to President Donald Trump and MAGA. Only one of those strategies is rooted in fact, but either could wind up deciding a race that could, in turn, determine what the next Congress looks like. If Lawler wins, it could also set him up for a higher office, experts say.

Polls show a tight race, and the Cook Political Report lists the 17th as a “toss-up.” The district is one of the most centrist in the country—one of just three, nationwide, that voted for a Republican congressperson while also voting for Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024. The district’s Democratic lean has decreased over time, Lawler is quick to point out: President Joe Biden won it by 10 points in 2020, while Harris won it by less than one point.

“There’s not a minute in this campaign that we’ve ever thought that he would be easy to beat,” said Jennifer Colamonico, the chair of the Putnam County Democratic Party, about Lawler. In Putnam County, volunteers have knocked on four times the amount of doors than they knocked on in 2024, and Colamonico says that Republicans and independents have been more receptive than they were last cycle. She attributes that in part to Lawler’s association with Trump, who is deeply unpopular in the district and the country.

Experts agree that Lawler’s closeness to Trump—the president visited the district in May—could cost him the seat. “Lawler was originally able to wear the mantle of change when he beat the incumbent in 2022, but he now has been in office and is tied to an extremely unpopular president in a district that the president lost,” said Laura Tamman, a professor of political science at Pace University.

As Conley attempts to tie Lawler to Trump, especially by emphasizing his vote for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Lawler and his allies have tried to tie Conley to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

“There’s not a ton of evidence that Cait Conley, who served in the military and in the Biden administration, is super tight with Mamdani,” said Tamman. “Like, she’s not in the same city. She shares the same party, but she doesn’t have Mamdani out campaigning for her.”

The fact that neither Conley’s platform nor her past fit with the radical socialist attack makes no difference, Colamonico explained. “It doesn’t matter who we run,” she said. “They were going to come at us as being socialists and aligned with DSA and Mamdani.”

This narrative about Conley being a secret socialist has been boosted by money from Elon Musk’s super PAC, America PAC. Through that group, Musk has spent more than half a million dollars to boost Lawler. Colamonico has seen the influence of that money firsthand, describing floods of mailers that call Conley a socialist and canvassers dropping off door hangers with the same message.

While the narrative about Conley appears to be baseless, it could hurt her with the district’s Jewish population, experts said. Some of those voters are frustrated with the DSA’s position on Israel and could be inclined to vote for Lawler because of it, despite the fact that Conley doesn’t share the DSA’s positions on Israel. In Rockland County, specifically, there’s a large Orthodox Jewish population that experts say Lawler needs to back him. “It would be very difficult for him to win without them showing up enthusiastically for him,” Tamman said.

Despite the unfavorable environment for Republicans, Lawler could still pull off a win. If he does, then it could have even bigger implications in 2028 or beyond. “If Mike Lawler does survive this year, I think you’ll have a lot of talk of him being a statewide candidate in the future,” said Shawn Donahue, a professor of political science at the University at Buffalo who pointed to the potential for Lawler to run for Senator Chuck Schumer’s seat. Tamman suggested that he could seek the governorship. House Speaker Mike Johnson may have said it best on Tuesday while campaigning in the district with Lawler: “Everybody around America is watching this election. Everybody.”

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

Another thing potentially hinging on the outcome of next week’s elections: whether fire survivors are able to rebuild their homes. CalMatters’s Levi Sumagaysay this week reports on the status of survivors of the Los Angeles fires, an estimated 28 percent of whom have run out of so-called displacement coverage. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funding for renters ran out on October 9, and the Trump administration so far hasn’t supported further FEMA funds being directed to California. “People are wondering if they have to live out of their cars and pull their kids out of school,” Altadena Tenants Union co-founder Katie Clark tells Sumagaysay. Democratic Representatives Norma Torres and Judy Chu tell Sumagaysay they’re hoping that if Democrats win big in the midterms, a newly Democratic House could help get money moving.

The Guardian’s Oliver Milman talks to residents of Southaven, Mississippi, who say that Elon Musk’s AI company xAI, which is currently constructing a massive data center complex with an on-site power plant, has offered to buy their homes “as the owners agree to not join a lawsuit against the company over the power plant’s noise.” Come for the window into data center politics, stay for the spicy quotes from a paramedic, a piano teacher, and other residents who are more or less telling the company to take their offer and shove it.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

On Thursday at 1 p.m., the Urban Institute will host a “virtual workshop exploring how local leaders can foster dignity and belonging in their communities—and why these conditions are essential to advancing upward mobility.” Speakers will include the institute’s Myriam Hernandez Jennings and Isabella Remor, as well as Ricki Ellison of the Greater Wichita Partnership and Marshall Ogier of Seeding Success.

On Thursday at 3 p.m., the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) will co-host an event on how to modernize the Current Population Survey (CPS), which is the basis for calculating the unemployment rate. One possible reform to be discussed: a way to add an online component instead of relying on in-person and phone interviews, which are increasingly struggling with non-response rates. Speakers will include the Census Bureau’s CPS Director Kyra Linse, Nicholas Johnson from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Tom Evans from the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics, New York Fed economic research advisor Wilbert van der Klaauw, Michigan Federal Statistical Research Data Center co-director Joelle Abramowitz, OpenAI economics researcher Alex Martin Richmond, University of Maryland professor Katharine Abraham, and Georgetown University professor Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach. Brookings’s David S. Johnson and John Sabelhaus and AEI’s Michael R. Strain will moderate.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Here’s Why That’s B.S.

TNR’s Edie Olmsted reviews the troubling allegation in House Dems’ new report: former Miss Switzerland Beatrice Keul saying Donald Trump raped her in 1993 when she was a contestant at his American Dream Pageant in New York.

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

Though it’s been Republican for many years now, when Alaska became a state in 1959, its first two senators were both Democrats. The name of one is mostly lost to history. The other, however, made a name for himself as an early and vocal opponent of the Vietnam War and was one of only two Democrats to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which the Johnson administration pushed to authorize U.S. intervention. Can you name either man? (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

—Michael Tomasky

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

We just got hit by two big pieces of news impacting the battle for the Senate. First, a gold-standard poll found that the South Carolina Senate race is a dead heat. Yes, South Carolina. It’s actually winnable for Democrats. Second, we’re now learning that the vile TV ad that ran in the Ohio gubernatorial race is backfiring badly. Republicans are leaking internal polling showing they are now less likely to win that race as a result, and that this could even impact the Ohio Senate race and ultimately Senate control.

We’re talking about all of it with New Republic senior editor Alex Shephard, who has a good piece on the Ohio fiasco. Great to have you on, Alex.

Alex Shephard: It’s good to be back.

Sargent: So, a quick recap. In Ohio, GOP gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy started running an ad featuring Democrat Amy Acton’s mother claiming she lied about her difficult childhood, but then we learned that her stepfather, i.e., her mother’s husband, allegedly raped her. Nonetheless, Trump defended the ad here:

Donald Trump (voiceover): I heard the mother went very rogue on the daughter, doesn’t have a lot of respect for the daughter. It’s a very unusual situation to have a mother hate a daughter that much.

And here:

Trump (voiceover): A mother is saying, don’t put my daughter there, because she’s a terrible person and she’s a liar. Why shouldn’t somebody use that?

Sargent: Alex, what’s interesting is that once Trump said these things, the command went out to all of MAGA that they had to get behind the ad, and the die was cast, right?

Shephard: Yeah, I mean, it tied every Republican in Ohio, at least, to this ad. Because I mean, it’s part of a larger Trump strategy where you never give in and you never back down. And I suppose you can say that that has worked out for Trump, in that he is currently the president of the United States. But one, I think he’s also a very unpopular president. And two, there’s no evidence that it works for other people.

And I think this was a very deliberate and despicable effort on behalf of the Ramaswamy campaign, as I wrote last week, to try to engender a kind of Trumpiness to their campaign.

And I think the backlash, one, is a sign of just how hard it is for non-Trump candidates to do that. But I think two, it’s also a sign of just what a kind of drag Trump is on the ticket itself, not just because he’s so unpopular, but because he forces candidates to embrace his political approach.

Sargent: Well, Axios reports that internal GOP polling finds that due to the ad, Acton is actually leading by more than before over Ramaswamy. A memo leaked with the poll says that the ad is having a, quote-unquote, significant effect on the race.

Eighty-six percent of respondents in this internal poll have seen or heard about the ad, and by a two-to-one margin, they said it made them more likely to vote for Acton.

This thing really broke through to low-information voters in a way that a lot of things don’t. And the result was that it told Amy Acton’s story sympathetically. Talk about poetic justice, Alex.

Shephard: Acton has made her personal story a centerpiece of her campaign. Vivek Ramaswamy is a billionaire, right? Acton grew up homeless, she dealt with sexual abuse, right? She made something of herself, but the idea of her campaign is that she’s like everyday Ohioans.

And I think with this ad, it seemed clear that this ad was meant to get to low-information voters before Acton could, essentially, because it’s such a powerful story that they wanted to essentially try to poison the well. And instead, what you’re seeing is the exact opposite.

Because immediately, as soon as this ad went out—I mean, I think it’s fair to say that this is the most disgusting ad in American political history—as soon as it went out, people were not just outraged, but I think there was a real sense to educate people about what it was.

And I’ve been talking to people in Ohio, and I’ve been reading about people in Ohio, who essentially described almost like a phone tree or something in communities, where people were just immediately texting and calling each other and telling them the truth about this.

Sargent: Well, I want to pick up on something you said there about how this ad had this viral quality, because this is really an intangible thing and it comes along rarely in politics. But when you get it, you’ve got to use it to your advantage, right? Not to your disadvantage.

And so the fact that this is the sort of thing that people would just text to all their friends and talk about—and I’m sure there have just been thousands and thousands and thousands, if not millions, of conversations in Ohio about this ad, and about, as a result, Amy Acton’s childhood, right?

This is like lightning in a bottle in a way. It’s extremely hard to kind of create this out of nothing. And yet they did. Ramaswamy’s campaign did create this sort of magic thing, only it’s working entirely against them. It’s sort of a remarkable outcome.

Shephard: Well, yeah, and I think it goes beyond that. They weren’t the only people calling and texting, right? That Axios story that you mentioned, that was leaked, right? That was presumably leaked from other Republican politicians or Republican Party members in Ohio.

And why would they do that? Well, one reason why they would do that is because this has been such a disaster for Ramaswamy that it’s trickling down to other candidates in the races.

Sargent: Really essential point, that the leaking itself shows that people are deeply, deeply angry with Donald Trump and JD Vance for doing this. Again, Vance is an Ohio guy, of course.

I want to flag another key thing in the Axios report. National Republicans privately say they fear the backlash to the ad could also hurt them in the Senate race, by dragging down GOP Senator Jon Husted against Democratic challenger Sherrod Brown.

I want to underscore a little more how badly Trump essentially fucked everybody with this. Because if Democrats win Maine and North Carolina, which now looks highly likely—Maine is, you know, a little bit touch and go, but I think Democrats are going to win it—if they win those two, and then if they get Ohio, thanks to this in part, they only have to win one out of Iowa, Alaska, and Texas to get to the majority.

And potentially, if they don’t get it out of those three, which I think they probably will, if they don’t, they could get it from one of these outer-tier races in some sort of surprise. But Ohio really puts Democrats on the cusp of a majority.

Shephard: Yeah. And again, it’s a majority that—or Sherrod Brown winning again—just did not seem probable a year ago. It’s a solidly red state now. Trump won it by more than 10 points. He won it by eight points in 2016. He won it by even more, 11 or 12 points, in 2024.

And this is a state that seemed out of reach as soon as Sherrod Brown lost. That loss hit Democrats very hard, because Sherrod Brown seemed like a kind of unicorn candidate who could hold on to a seat that Democrats shouldn’t have been holding on to for a while.

And the fact that they’re on the brink of doing this is extraordinary. And part of that, you know, I think points to the larger political environment, but it also points to candidate selection. Vivek Ramaswamy is not just a bad candidate for governor. He’s a bad candidate for the Ohio Republican Party writ large. And that’s what we’re seeing right now.

Sargent: Well, speaking of really crazy outcomes and races, the New York Times poll of South Carolina finds Democrat Annie Andrews tied with GOP Senator Darline Graham at 48 to 48. Andrews is leading by 57 to 37 among independents in South Carolina.

Alex, this is the story everywhere, these lopsided leads among independents. You see the same thing in Texas, James Talarico racking up something like a solid double-digit lead among independents. You see it in state after state, with Democrats just really outperforming with independents due to Trump’s toxicity with them. It’s an extraordinary story, especially in South Carolina, isn’t it?

Shephard: Yeah. I mean, again, you want to talk about candidate selection, right? You know, it turns out that maybe pushing the unknown amateur sister of a recently deceased Republican senator into a race is not a good idea. Somebody who has had to, in multiple debates, essentially bow out of answering questions about issues like foreign policy, which at least historically is kind of a big part of what the Senate is supposed to do.

And, you know, I think there are some other interesting things there too, where I had kind of been keeping a lot of South Carolina polling at arm’s length, even as it showed a tight race, just because there are a lot of white voters in that state and they tend to vote for Republicans.

But one of the things that I thought was so interesting about the Times/Siena poll is that it pointed to a path for Andrews with white voters. It essentially said, look, she’s doing very well in the kind of Greenville-Spartanburg corridor, a fast-growing area of the state. And there are a lot of independent white voters there. And, you know, if she can win those, then she can win too.

You’re seeing, for instance, Donald Trump was in Mississippi earlier this week or last week. Bill Clinton is going to Mississippi this week. This is an environment right now that I think is turning very quickly. And everywhere you’re looking, what you’re seeing is that there is a lot of enthusiasm for Democrats. And you’re seeing this in Texas as well.

So far, there are a lot of signs that a lot of Republicans are staying home. So in states like South Carolina and Texas, it’s probably better for Democrats if there are low-turnout elections here, because there are more Republicans than Democrats in those states.

And because the candidates are so bad, because the president is so bad, because gas is so expensive, a lot of people just aren’t voting. And we’re starting to see things that I thought I would never see again, like a Democratic senator in Ohio, and things I thought I would never see in my lifetime, like a Democratic senator from South Carolina.

Sargent: Let’s talk about Trump’s unpopularity in South Carolina. In fact, in the New York Times poll, he’s only at 42 percent approval in South Carolina, with 55 percent disapproving. That’s incredible.

And among independents, his approval is only 30 percent, with 68 percent of independents disapproving of Trump in South Carolina. And by the way, I want to stress this too: 56 percent of independents disapprove strongly of Trump in the state.

That’s amazing, because we are seeing this in other states as well. Texas, a majority of independents strongly disapprove of Trump. I suspect that’s the case in many other states.

Shephard: Voters in the first term were willing to take the grinding anxiety and exhaustion of Trump’s political style because the stock market was booming and the economy was good. And, you know, you could always just say, well, he’s just being kind of crazy, but he doesn’t do anything.

And this term, one, he’s acting on the crazy, i.e., Iran. The economy is much worse. And that has also made people way less tolerant of his shenanigans, for lack of a better term. And that, I think, to me is just another part of this that points maybe—to tie it back to the Acton ad too—that I think voters are also just tired of this.

And Republicans, you know, instead of doing what you usually do when you have an unpopular incumbent president, which is you distance yourself from them—Republicans have no choice but to embrace him, right? The president has been all over the country for the last month.

He’s reminding voters of who he is and his responsibility for this. And I think that what we’re seeing is that Trump has claimed that every time he gets on stage, he’s, you know, flipping districts. But the opposite has been true, right? Like, as Trump’s big barnstorming tour has gone on, the outlook for Republicans has gotten steadily worse.

Sargent: We should probably stress that the chances of winning South Carolina are still very, very slim, and the Senate is on a knife’s edge here. I keep saying that. And I’ve been asking everybody who comes on this question: do you think Democrats will get there in the Senate? It’s going to be very tough, but there is a path, but it could go either way at this point. What do you think? Where do you think this is going to fall?

Shephard: I tend to be our resident pessimist in most ways. And today I just—I found a way to 56. I can’t remember how I did it, but because I think that essentially, if they win in, say, South Carolina, it’s a sign that polls were wrong by one standard deviation. And if you move things that way, then it goes real crazy.

I think that they will get to 52. That is my prediction.

Sargent: And if they get to 52, that’ll be essential, because it will Fetterman-proof the majority.

Shephard: Yes. Our most important thing. And I, you know, in a meeting earlier today, I was starting to worry about a 1912 presidential scenario, with Fetterman holding on or running as a third party or something to screw over a Democrat. I don’t think I need to worry about that, but I would like to not have to worry about things like what John Fetterman is doing when he’s not on Fox News, what John Fetterman’s plans are for running for reelection in 2028. I don’t want to think about John Fetterman at all. So I would love for there to be a 52-seat Senate majority.

Sargent: As would I. Alex Shephard, always awesome to talk to you. Thanks so much, man.

Shephard: You too.

Trump has described the recent spike in energy prices as a “very small price to pay” for the as-yet-unrealized benefits of the Iran war. But although gas prices didn’t sink President Barack Obama, Trump has good reason to be nervous ahead of the midterms: A wealth of political science research suggests that gas prices and presidential approval are connected. One 2016 study found a 10-cent rise in gas prices correlated with a 0.60 percent drop in presidential approval.

What’s striking about today’s high energy prices is that Trump created a White House council at the start of his second term specifically to facilitate energy abundance and bring those prices down: the National Energy Dominance Council, which has a linguistically Trumpian name, and is staffed by executive and Cabinet-level leaders. According to experts, however, the council appears to be driven by self-serving, unethical behavior; short-term decision-making—problems that plague much of Trumpworld but are an especially bad recipe for energy policy and infrastructure—and a related fixation on fossil fuels that would be disastrous even if the president weren’t entangled in a prolonged conflict in the Middle East.

The National Energy Dominance Council is at least an inspired idea: It comprises the secretaries of state, energy, the interior, the treasury, defense, commerce, transportation, and agriculture, along with the attorney general, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, and the chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, among others, and was designed to recommend policy to the president. It’s basically akin to the National Security Council or the National Economic Council—just about energy.

As with those groups, in theory, and at times in practice, the NEDC has facilitated cross-agency coordination and streamlined permitting through creative uses of government levers—including those typically reserved for emergencies, such as the Truman-era Defense Production Act. But in many ways, experts see the council as a cut-rate version of the Cheney Energy Task Force of the early 2000s. Ostensibly formed to reduce America’s reliance on foreign energy sources, Vice President Dick Cheney’s task force was routinely criticized for closed-door proceedings that allowed oil, gas, and utility interests to effectively dictate U.S. policy. Today, the NEDC is plagued by similar issues. It operates with the same secrecy and is similarly accessible to and influenced by industry. And it’s led by a less capable, more self-interested administration.

In theory, the National Energy Dominance Council exists to bring down prices for consumers. In practice, however, most of its focus is elsewhere. The NEDC’s deputy executive director, Blake Deeley, said the quiet part out loud in an interview with the National Mining Association in June. The National Energy Dominance Council is “really meant to be a one-stop shop for energy projects,” he explained. “We want to help you not only navigate the White House, but across agencies … we want to provide white-glove service to the energy sector as they … build and bring new energy infrastructure online.”

In hands like these—perhaps the fossil fuel–friendliest administration in history—an organization such as this sounds catastrophic for the planet (even with those white gloves), and nearly as bad for consumers. But despite the lofty status of the figures on the council, its power and its activities remain unclear. (Former advisers to and members of the council declined or did not respond to interview requests for this story.)

The council baffles even right-wing think tanks. “It’s not particularly transparent,” Roger Pielke Jr., a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told the press last year, several months after the NEDC’s founding. “It’s just kind of a black box.” It remains opaque today. Pielke told The New Republic through a spokesperson that he still doesn’t know much about it, and he’s not sure anyone does. The fact that the council is housed in the executive branch makes Freedom of Information Act requests difficult. Nevertheless, environmental legislative experts and a well-placed House staffer shared a common suspicion: that the National Energy Dominance Council appears to be a vehicle for Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, who was spurned for flashier appointments such as vice president or secretary of state, to transcend his post in the backwaters of the Interior Department and play a larger, more international role in the administration.

If Burgum has primarily been saddled with lower-stakes headaches such as this summer’s Reflecting Pool debacle and spending nearly $4 billion to buy back wind farm leases from renewable energy companies, the NEDC gives him an outlet to influence energy policy to an extraordinary degree. “When secretaries like Burgum or [Energy Secretary Chris] Wright meet with foreign nations, they get to put on their Energy Dominance crown and negotiate with the weight of Trump behind them,” said Melinda Pierce, legislative director of the Sierra Club.

The council appears to have played a part in shaping one of Trump’s most significant foreign policy adventures. According to Politico, current NEDC Executive Director Jarrod Agen and his staff visited Venezuela earlier this year on the first direct commercial flight to Caracas in seven years. Agen was accompanied by executives from Hunt Oil, Halliburton, and several foreign oil companies, all of whom traveled to the country to prepare deals for oil and mineral rights with interim President Delcy Rodríguez. After landing in Caracas, Agen signed a guestbook inside the airport terminal with Trumpian decorum, writing, “Drill Baby Drill.”

If the NEDC and Trump’s energy policy are influenced by anyone outside the fossil fuel industry, it’s China, or at least the specter of it. According to Daniel Driscoll, a climate policy fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, policy advisers in the Trump administration are keenly aware that, historically, control over energy automatically comes with global power. All of this is exacerbated by the president’s worldview, in which global relations are a zero-sum battle between winners and losers; the result is a hegemonic power theory on steroids. The administration is convinced that China is seeking to rule through energy dominance by exporting decarbonization technology such as solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles to the world at a competitive price, free of the supply-chain shocks that often come with oil. Its response is to double down on fossil fuels—even though recent reporting has suggested China’s oil reserves are significantly larger than previously thought.

Republicans’ general disdain for renewables—as unserious, liberal-plaything energy sources that don’t involve drilling holes in the ground—makes all of this more destructive. Trump discarded the decarbonization plans that were set in motion under President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, effectively giving up on competing against China on renewable energy (though Trump and his NEDC are facing China head-on in critical minerals extraction, utilizing equity investments in order to increase production).

Instead, the administration is prolonging the life of coal power plants that had been scheduled to be taken off­line, while attempting to rescale a largely dormant nuclear energy sector—all at a time when electricity grids are being maxed out as more data centers switch on every month. And the administration has done all of this while the price of renewables has largely been cheaper than fossil fuels in recent years.

That selective approach shows what the mission really is. “If they really cared about grid affordability, they would do an all-of-the-above approach, not scrapping renewables,” Driscoll said. “That tells us that they’re focused on fossil fuels rather than actually helping consumers out.”

One way that works in practice is by using oil as a power lever by signing export agreements with other nations. The NEDC has made agreements under this model to export liquid natural gas to Japan and fossil fuels to Europe. But this strategy, which is similar to agreements made with European nations under the Marshall Plan, doesn’t make sense in the twenty-first century, Driscoll said. Even heavily fossil fuel countries like those in the Middle East are now aiming to decarbonize themselves, because they make more money exporting fossil fuels rather than using them domestically, thanks in part to supply shocks that lead to price volatility. The Iran war is pushing other countries further toward Chinese green technology.

According to Driscoll, the error is the Trump administration’s reliance on outdated theories about the centrality of fossil fuels. “This commitment to calcified, old ideas of how fossil fuels once helped us in the global economy are backfiring right now,” Driscoll said. “Living in the past just means you have no real vision or ideas for the future—you just keep looking back.”

The all-of-the-above strategy is exactly where the Biden administration’s energy policy ended up. Despite Biden’s push for renewable energy, oil production reached a record high during his tenure due to a combination of factors: leases that were signed a decade earlier; Interior continuing to approve permits; and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which caused gas prices to spike and led to more demand for domestic oil production. Meanwhile, the Inflation Reduction Act had several provisions designed to compete directly against China on renewable energy.

The NEDC has accelerated domestic energy production by using the Defense Production Act to push forward projects that have been tied up in permitting or environmental review. This is a creative solution that has proved durable against court challenges. But such fast-tracking can be a double-edged sword, according to Todd Tucker, director of the industrial policy and trade program at the Roosevelt Institute.

“In the abundance debate, it shows how government can get out of its own way to boost production,” Tucker explained. “On the other hand, it brings government into closer proximity with private interests, which can lead to corruption.”

Jeff Hauser, the founder and executive director of the Revolving Door Project, concurred. He argues that energy is particularly susceptible to malfeasance. “When the government has such lucrative favors to hand out, it breeds corruption,” he said.

He outlined two possibilities for how an executive branch can deal with policy. One is with thick sets of procedures and regulations. The other is heavily personalist. “A personalist government hands out favors to those who do favors for it, and builds interconnections with those who support the administration,” Hauser explained. “This is true of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Mussolini’s corporatist Italy, and in [Jair] Bolsonaro’s Brazil. It’s part of why few heavily energy-producing countries have efficient governments and robust democracies.” Trump clearly favors the personalist approach.

Every once in a while, it’s possible to get a glimpse into the black box of the NEDC. Over the summer, one of its staffers seemed to be straddling the line between government and private industry while still technically serving as a White House employee. At a June press conference celebrating Sable Offshore Corp.’s ability to once again operate an undersea oil pipeline near Santa Barbara, California, the site of two high-profile oil spills, NEDC senior policy adviser Brittany Kelm wore a Sable shirt and hat to the event, as if she were an employee of the company. She officially became one two months later—after she had also posted various comments on LinkedIn such as “Let’s go Sable” while still at the NEDC.

“It’s pretty typical for someone who works in a Republican administration on energy policy to go work for an oil company,” a senior House staffer said. “Most of them in the past, though, have tried to honor their ethics requirements—this administration seems to ignore much of that. I have not seen a revolving door like this before, spinning at such a high rate.”

NEDC advisers have left, sometimes only after a few months, for the private sector.

At least one person has already departed to avoid potential conflicts of interest: Oliver McPherson-Smith, who reportedly resigned in part because his husband was employed by ExxonMobil. Others have simply returned to their previous jobs, like former NEDC policy adviser and power grid expert Peter Lake, who left in July to return to his own company and advise on private power and water infrastructure projects.

Democrats don’t intend to let some of them off easily. The House Natural Resources Committee has taken a keen interest in former government employees like Kelm, and if things go well for Democrats in November’s elections, committee members will likely have questions for her.

In the meantime, consumer energy prices keep increasing, and gas prices really are at a record high—which Trump mentions a lot less these days—all while renewable energy remains on the administration’s discard pile. Is this what dominance is supposed to look like? Definitely not for consumers, and not at all for the Republican Party heading into November.

“We already were energy dominant under the Biden administration, really,” said Steve Feldgus, former principal deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management at the Interior Department. “We were the number one energy producer in the world. Even if you’re supporting oil and gas and coal, there’s no reason to put your thumb on the scale against renewables. That’s just terrible policy.”

Of course, even if the party were to win majorities in both chambers, there’s only so much it can do with its new power: A Senate majority would still require the Democrats to secure a handful of Republican votes to overcome the filibuster, and Donald Trump will still be president, with the power to veto whatever he pleases. But there’s one area in particular where the Democrats can put Republicans on their heels: accountability.

Some Democrats, however, are already antsy about just how much accountability they should pursue. Former vice president—and 2024 loser—Kamala Harris laid out this point of view in an interview with Substacker Aaron Parnas on Tuesday:

Kamala Harris: I think that going in the direction of impeachment is not a good idea. We have limited resources, and I think the energy and the resources need to be put into accountability, need to be put into investigations. And that’s where the time should be spent. I was in the Senate for the last go-round, and the votes aren’t there. I think after the election, we all have to just also agree that our attitude has to be to get stuff done…

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 27, 2026

“I think that going in the direction of impeachment is not a good idea,” Harris warned. “We have limited resources, and I think the energy and the resources need to be put into accountability, need to be put into investigations. And that’s where the time should be spent.” Harris knows what she’s talking about: She was a senator when, during Trump’s first term, that GOP-controlled chamber twice acquitted him on impeachment charges, after the Democratic-led House had impeached him. “I was in the Senate for the last go-round, and the votes aren’t there,” she said. “I think after the election, we all have to just also agree that our attitude has to be to get stuff done.”

Harris characteristically doesn’t quite lay out what she really means. But it’s easy enough to understand. If there aren’t the votes in the Senate to convict—and remove—the president or one of his Cabinet members, then impeachment by the House can be politically damaging. Even with compelling impeachment hearings and a well-managed trial—which Democrats put on in 2019 and 2020—failure to convict can put off voters who dismiss it as political theater. That’s why Harris keeps emphasizing the need to “get stuff done.”

The failure of Trump’s 2019 impeachment, in particular, likely hurt Democrats, sending the message that they were more interested in attention-grabbing stunts aimed at damaging the president than they were at accomplishing things that made people’s lives better. Impeaching Trump this time is perhaps even more fraught. Trump is term-limited and leaving office in two years anyway. What’s the point? Moreover, Americans today are even more frustrated with the political establishment than they were before the pandemic, and have little patience for politicians who aren’t focused on fixing the economy.

To disarm their impeachment power would a bitter pill for Democrats, and one that flies in the face of the conventional wisdom in some corners: that a successful impeachment is its own reward because it highlights the Trump administration’s abuses and generates intense media attention. But as Harris sees it, if the goal is to continue to build political power—and to win back the White House in 2028—then impeachment is simply unhelpful.

Harris’s remedy, however, suggests that Democrats advising caution and deliberate action haven’t really thought through their plan. For one thing, the Democrats will have few opportunities to “get stuff done” that will immediately affect people’s lives, and anything they do accomplish will require Trump’s signature. Her emphasis on investigations seems to acknowledge this, because that is one avenue the Democrats can pursue with just one majority in Congress and the subpoena power that comes with it.

There is so much wrongdoing in this administration that it almost creates its own challenge. The president could be conceivably investigated for his corruption, management of the Iran war, ties to Jeffrey Epstein, desecration of the capital … the list goes on and on. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel, the president’s adult sons and son-in-law Jared Kushner—all could (and should) be investigated for a host of offenses. There is a lot to investigate, whether or not you impeach.

But that’s the problem. Trump has made billions of dollars during his presidency. He has worked to obscure his ties to Epstein, his late friend. He is mismanaging one ruinous war while appearing to help Russia fight another one. Those are just a few of the things that Democrats could pursue. It is fair to describe all of them as potentially impeachable. Indeed, any investigation into Trump’s conduct in office—whatever that conduct is—would likely produce impeachable offenses.

Harris’s idea that the party can simply run these investigations, uncover damaging evidence, and then—presumably—move on to other scandals is simply not plausible. The party’s base is fed up and insistent that Democrats “do something” about Trump and his cronies, which is to say that people want to see them stopped and punished. It’s hard to imagine that investigations alone will be enough to satisfy this bloodlust, even if Democratic voters know that there is no chance of convicting and removing Trump.

The squeamishness from establishment figures like Harris is understandable. It may even be reasonable. But it’s not plausible—the party’s base will not tolerate it, and the evidence the Democrats in Congress uncover will demand it. The fact that many Democratic leaders haven’t faced this reality yet suggests they still don’t understand the political dynamics of the moment. But it will dawn on them soon enough, and the likely result is that the only U.S. president to be impeached multiple times will see his record padded.

But the 46-year-old Navy veteran insists he didn’t attend the rally intending to make a scene. “I was just gonna go check it out and just see what they said, and I hadn’t really made up my mind if I was gonna say anything or not,” he said. Then, as the president began to talk about “criminal aliens,” about 30 minutes into his speech, something in McDaniel snapped. “I got up, I got out of my chair, I said, ‘You’re the criminal!’” he said. “After that, I couldn’t really say anything. I was being choked.”

Videos from the rally show a man pulling McDaniel into a headlock and taking him to the ground, where he was held down as other attendees punched and kicked him. “It’s hard to swallow, and I got some bruises here and there, and the side of my head’s pretty bruised up. They got me pretty decent,” he said. As law enforcement pulled McDaniel to his feet and escorted him out of the venue, Trump praised the attack from the stage. “Wow man, I loved that,” the president said. “Who’s the guy that threw the punch? You know, you remind me of Evander ‘the Real Deal’ Holyfield. The guy stood up, and he just let that little—and he got whacked.” Alone outside, McDaniel got into his car and drove himself to the emergency room, where he spoke with police and filed an assault and battery report.

McDaniel lives in Pickens County, South Carolina—widely regarded as the reddest county in the state—and had considered himself a conservative for most of his life. That changed after his time in the military. “My thing is, defend the Constitution,” he said. “That’s what my focus is. And if I go out to events, I’m bringing my flag and saying, ‘Defend the Constitution.’ We’re supporting everybody’s rights. I took an oath to defend that. That’s what’s important to me.” McDaniel now considers himself an “independent who happens to support Democrats, based on the fact that I think it’s a numbers game, and they have got to reestablish power. That’s got to happen. It’s the only way I feel like our democracy is gonna move forward.”

In the lead-up to the midterm elections, now less than a week away, President Trump has been barnstorming the country and urging his supporters to “pretend I’m on the ballot.” But his speeches have focused less on energizing voters to back the beleaguered Republicans than on his discursive thoughts about crowd sizes, Muslims, and butt stuff. Opponents of the historically unpopular president, however, have taken him at his word: His rallies have drawn a steady stream of protesters, even in some of the reddest places in America.

On October 7 in San Antonio, Texas, Trump’s speech was interrupted nearly a dozen times by protesters shouting from the stands. It happened again in Clarksville, Tennessee, on October 10, and Youngstown, Ohio, on October 12. Eleven people were escorted out of the October 19 rally in Park City, Kansas. Five more were removed on October 20 in Greenville, North Carolina, followed by at least another 12, including McDaniel, in Pendleton on October 21. On Monday night in Corinth, Mississippi, a rally attendee took advantage of a break in Trump’s speech to scream, “Shove that ballroom up your fat ass!”

“They say courage is contagious,” McDaniels told me. “As more people are having the courage to speak up and say something, more people are gonna have to start speaking up and saying something.”

Trump, who once fantasized about punching a protester in the face himself, has responded to his hecklers in typical presidential fashion: He has called them “fat,” “scum,” “really unattractive,” and “low-class”; told them to “go back home to mommy”; and repeatedly claimed that they are “paid protesters,” rewarded with $250 each. But as Michelle Jones of Ottawa, Kansas, screamed before she was removed from his rally in Park City, “I’m not paid, I hate you for free!”

“If my courage to stand, even in a sea of red at a Trump rally, gives one other person courage to use their voice to stand, to say, ‘I can do this if she can do it,’ that’s what I want,” Jones told me.

“I’m not paid,” Danielle Edwards, from Augusta, Kansas, confirmed. “None of us were paid. And if he’s lying about that, something so small and minuscule, what else do you think he’s lying about?” Edwards voted for Donald Trump in 2016, but attended the Park City rally with her husband and children as a registered Democrat. “I’ve never seen a living president, and so I was like, ‘Well, I’ll go see what it’s like.’ And I just, the more I sat there, the more I realized how much I didn’t like him, and I don’t want to have anything to do with him,” she said. Like McDaniel, Edwards hadn’t attended the rally with an explicit plan to protest, but as Trump told his audience to support incumbent Republican Senator Roger Marshall, she stood up and yelled, “Vote Adam Hamilton!”—the Democratic nominee—before security escorted her out.

“There’s something so powerful in it. I got out, and I just felt like I conquered the world. One, because he heard me. Two, I was glowing. I have a picture. I think I’m absolutely radiant. I was like, ‘Jeez, I look really good! I should tell the president to fuck off more often!” Edwards said. “I wanted to teach my kids about our constitutional rights. We have freedom of speech, we have the right to protest … and we have the right to disagree with him without being hurt.”

Layden Duncan, a 20-year-old Democratic Socialist running for City Council in Greenville, South Carolina, said he attended the rally in Pendleton to exercise his right to free speech as well. “I was assaulted for free,” he said. He stood up and called the president a fascist, was grabbed by the collar, and as he was being escorted out, a rally attendee hit him in the back of the head. “We knew that there was a chance of us getting roughed up, and we talked about it before, and I said, ‘That’s just a chance that I’m willing to take,’” he said. “I knew that if I didn’t go, and that if I didn’t get in the building, and that if I didn’t yell at President Trump, that I would regret it the next day, and I would regret it for the rest of my life.”

“I went into that rally fully expecting to be physically assaulted,” said Jeffrey Doshier, a 30-year-old veteran of the Kansas National Guard, who attended the Park City rally. “I had made peace with that possibility going in, but what I felt compelled to do was bigger than any threat to my safety or physical well-being.” Like McDaniel, Doshier had seen the video of Miley’s assault in Ohio, but rather than scaring him away, he said it made him more committed to attending a Trump rally and demanding the release of the Epstein files. “I felt this obligation that someone like me, this straight white male veteran of the armed forces, needs to show up because optically that is important,” he said. “I did what I did because I love this country, despite its flaws, and I believe it’s a country that’s worth fighting for, even if that means standing up to the president of the United States.”

Though these protesters say they weren’t paid, some report an unexpected benefit from their brief moment of fame. “Maybe I’m a paid protester now,” Edwards said, “because people keep asking to buy me coffee or a beer!”

After Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic mayoral primary in New York last year, he faced deep hostility from his own party. Longtime New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a member of the party leadership, falsely implied that Mamdani had spoken favorably about “global jihad.” Gillibrand, Barack Obama, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, New York Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs, Senator Cory Booker, and numerous other prominent Democrats refused to endorse Mamdani ahead of the general election, even though they usually back candidates who win Democratic primaries. Many of these Democrats either stated outright or leaked via their aides disagreements with Mamdani on Israeli-Palestinian issues and/or ridiculous claims that he was insufficiently concerned about antisemitism. Kamala Harris said she supported “the Democratic nominee” in the race, refusing to use his name.

A year later, Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is facing a similar resistance. El-Sayed, unlike Mamdani last year, is running against a Republican in a state that Democrats desperately want to win. So Obama, Schumer, Gillibrand, and other party leaders are backing his candidacy. But some Democrats, such as Representatives Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Hillary Scholten of Michigan, are publicly refusing to back El-Sayed, both citing his connections to twitchstreamer Hasan Piker, who has emerged this election cycle as a trendy stalking horse for those wanting to label Democrats like El-Sayed as antisemitic.*

Others, such as Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and Representative Haley Stevens, who El-Sayed defeated in the Democratic primary, are offering mealymouthed support. Meanwhile, center-left Democratic politicians and pundits spent much of August and September attacking Piker and pressing El-Sayed to distance himself from the commentator who had endorsed the Michigan candidate during the primary.

I have no beef with center-left Democrats feeling lukewarm about progressive candidates. As a progressive, I often criticize centrist Democratic politicians, activists, and pundits. And for some centrist Democrats, supporting Medicare for All, joining the Democratic Socialists of America, and/or describing Israel’s conduct in Gaza as a genocide may be positions that they are so deeply opposed to that they cannot support anyone who holds them. I don’t believe anyone should actually “vote blue no matter who.”

But these center-left Democrats aren’t outright stating that they disagree with El-Sayed and Mamdani on Israel and can’t support them because of policy differences. That would violate the idea that the Democratic Party is a “big tent” of different views, a concept many centrist Democrats purport to agree with. Instead, the center-left demands Muslim politicians soft-pedal their views on issues particularly important to Muslim Americans—or have fellow Democrats hint that they have animus toward Jewish people. This approach turns policy disagreements into a vicious and unfounded character attack.

El-Sayed and Mamdani have repeatedly used the term genocide in regard to Israel, urged the U.S. to stop providing funding to Israeli’s military, and criticized the unequal, apartheid-like regime that Palestinians live under in Israel and the Palestinian Terrorities. Those positions are held by numerous human rights groups, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. They are also held by many Democratic voters.

And those stances are even more broadly held and important to American Muslims. There aren’t a ton of surveys of Muslim Americans, but the data we have suggest that El-Sayed and Mamdani are very much in the mainstream among their co-religionists. According to a 2024 Pew Research Center poll, among respondents who had an opinion on the issue, 87 percent of Muslim Americans felt Joe Biden favored Israelis too much in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks. In the 2024 election, 35 percent of Muslim Americans said the war in Gaza was one of their top policy priorities, according to a postelection survey conducted by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. Just 4 percent of Americans overall ranked the war in Gaza as so important.

Only 12 percent of Muslim Americans have a favorable view of the Israeli government, according to a Pew poll earlier this year. Sixty-six percent of Muslims say they would not back a candidate who refused to call the situation in Gaza a genocide, according to a survey of Muslim voters in Illinois, Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina conducted earlier this year by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, and CAIR Action.

Considering that data, El-Sayed and Mamdani are facing a terrible choice: They can espouse views held by a wide swath of American Muslims–or be embraced by the Democratic establishment. But not both. It’s worth noting that the party’s center-left is also very hostile to two of the five Muslim Democrats in Congress, Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. Omar and Tlaib are also very vocal critics of Israel. Center-left Democratic antipathy toward Omar in particular has only made it easier for the MAGA right to persecute her, as they’ve been doing in recent weeks.

What’s happening to these Muslim candidates parallels the experiences of other minorities within the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party center-left embraces Black political figures like Obama and Booker who downplay racism and racial inequality. By contrast, Black Lives Matter activists were criticized and marginalized by the party, as Jesse Jackson was decades ago. Latino politicians face similar pressures. The boomlet about a potential presidential candidacy for Senator Ruben Gallego is very tied to him being a Latino politician who has embraced more restrictive border enforcement policies. But if Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez runs for president, I suspect she will be urged to make a “Sister Souljah” gesture to distance herself from Latino activists and immigrants.

The demand for these candidates, Black, Latino, and now Muslim, is to essentially silence a core part of their identity and distance themselves from their ethnic, racial, and religious communities to get the party’s support.

A New York Times columnist recently wrote a piece urging El-Sayed to publicly break with Piker in the way that Obama sharply criticized his once-pastor Jeremiah Wright during the 2008 campaign. To the writer, those are examples of political pragmatism. To me, they are painful instances of minority candidates being asked to attack people (Piker, Wright) who have taken principled stands on behalf of marginalized groups in order to appease Democratic Party elites and conservative white voters.

“Often when candidates break barriers to become the ‘first’ of their background or identity to hold office, the price of admission is to emphasize their ‘sameness’ to the majority group in order to make their minority status less central. Mamdani and El-Sayed have somewhat broken from that pattern by explicitly criticizing Israel’s government, rather than taking more centrist positions or de-emphasizing the issue altogether. They’re also implicitly challenging the assumption that this makes them less ‘electable,’” Change Research pollster Lauren Goldstein told me in an email message.

It’s not an accident that so many Black and Latino progressives are deeply invested in the success of El-Sayed and Mamdani. They are more likely to push policies that help Black and Latino Americans than many Black and Latino Democratic politicians, who have accepted the informal agreement of ignoring their ethnic groups’ interests in exchange for establishment support.

Gillibrand aside, the Democratic critics of El-Sayed and Mamdani are not engaged in the horrible Islamophobia that we see coming from the political right. But what they are doing remains deeply troubling.

The situation for Muslim politicians is not analogous to Jewish ones, for two reasons. Jewish Americans are far more divided than Muslims on the war in Gaza and Israeli policy, with many in the Jewish community sharing the view that Israel has committed a genocide. And Jewish candidates are not being asked to ignore an international consensus about the war in Gaza.

I have watched for decades as the Democratic Party establishment essentially announces, “We will support Black politicians, but only this kind.” (Obama and Booker, yes, Angie Nixon, and Al Green, no.) We are now seeing the same dynamic with Muslims today. Zohran Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed are admirable people who have succeeded professionally and politically despite having a faith that many Americans are openly bigoted against. A Muslim man of Indian descent born in Uganda rising to become the mayor of one of America’s most immigrant-friendly and diverse cities should have been a cause for celebration. So does the potential election of the first Muslim U.S. senator, particularly from a state with a checkered history on racial issues.

Instead, many Democrats have hinted that El-Sayed and Mamdani are hateful men of whom the party should be ashamed. No. What is shameful is the Democratic campaign against Abdul El-Sayed and Zohran Mamdani. America already has one party where Muslims aren’t welcome. We don’t need a second.

* This piece has been updated to more specifically cite these congresspersons’ complaints.

As the days ticked down to the midterm election, Ramaswamy hatched a crackpot plan to damage Acton’s credibility by weaponizing the sexual assault she suffered during her childhood against her. Ramaswamy used Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur, as part of a smear campaign to paint the Ohio Democratic gubernatorial nominee as a liar.

He moved forward with creating the ad spot against the advice of his team, and while ignoring publicly available information demonstrating that Arthur abandoned her children to skip town with a man who was indicted for allegedly raping Acton when she was a young girl.

But new evidence has emerged supporting Acton’s account of the abuse. The 62-year-old biological daughter of Acton’s stepfather and alleged abuser, Cledith “Bud” Arthur, told the Daily Mail Wednesday that she believes Acton’s story. Speaking through tears, the Youngstown, Ohio–based woman said that Arthur had also raped her late sister, Christine, years before he married Acton’s mother.

“Yes, he raped her, and it was more than once,” she told the digital outlet on the condition of anonymity.

“It was a terrible time for our family and it’s very hard to talk about it,” she continued. “My brother won’t say anything at all. It’s a nightmare for us to relive what happened in our family after all these years.”

Criminal records obtained by independent journalist Jacqueline Sweet corroborated the account, revealing that Arthur was indicted for raping Christine in 1973, when she was just 16 years old.

Two years later, Arthur married Acton’s mother and became a part of her household.

Acton has been very public about her broken family and childhood struggles. Over the years, she has discussed the horrific sexual abuse she endured from her stepfather (which she told The Youngstown Vindicator occurred between the ages of nine and 12), and also shared the family’s experiences with homelessness. In a March 2020 profile by the Toledo Blade, Acton said that they spent a winter living in a tent outside Youngstown.

Ramaswamy—a biotech billionaire who attended one of Ohio’s largest private high schools—has for whatever reason interpreted those stories as potential political fodder, and has attempted to utilize them for his own personal gain. But in doing so, he hasn’t just hurt himself and his opponent. He’s also injured the individuals connected to Acton’s painful past.

“Christine was a wonderful person but she was very damaged by it. It affected her. Our whole family was,” Acton’s unnamed stepsister told the Mail. “Seeing it played out in this campaign and on TV has brought a lot of terrible memories back.”

Putin was listening to a presentation from his digital development minister, Maksut Shadayev, who said that Russia was working on its own satellite system like Starlink and had already launched 30 satellites of his own, Reuters reports.

“Just a second, ⁠I want to point out this is just our first step. Elon Musk is a genius, truly a genius,” Putin, who was with a group of African leaders attending a summit in ​Moscow, said. “We are just taking our first steps, but we are proud that we started doing this and began doing it on our own. We are in close contact with our American partners, including Mr. Musk, because it is very important not to interfere with each other in orbit and to maintain certain discipline and order. Both we and our American partners value this.”

Vladimir Putin on Starlink and its Russian equivalent Rassvet:

"Elon Musk is a genius, truly a genius. We are just taking our first steps, but we are proud that we started doing this and began doing it on our own. We are in close contact with our American partners, including… pic.twitter.com/R6anqmPlBg

— Margarita Simonyan (@M_Simonyan) October 28, 2026

Musk’s Starlink network has close to 10,000 satellites, and Ukraine has relied on them in its war with Russia. Earlier this month, SpaceX throttled Ukraine’s Starlink connection, hurting the country’s ability to intercept Russian drones. Musk openly admitted to slowing down Ukraine’s connection on Saturday, saying that Ukraine’s use of Starlink “for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be.”

“Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week,” Musk posted on X. “Starlink remains critical to the defense of Ukraine, as it is the only system that cannot be jammed or blown up, at least for now. Were Starlink to be turned off, the Ukrainian front line would collapse immediately. This is NOT a threat, it is simply a statement of fact.”

Musk and Putin have been communicating since at least 2021, and Russia sarcastically offered the tech oligarch asylum when he and President Trump were feuding last year. How much is Musk, who holds billions of dollars in federal contracts, sharing with Putin?

Trump just held rallies in Texas that put this strategy—and its apparent shortcomings—on almost comically garish display. In both, Trump seemed to be talking almost exclusively to his own voters, indulging in juvenile name-calling, boasting about his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico—really, he did that—and treating it as given that his audiences see his Iran war as a world-historical triumph.

Right now, polls show Trump is even underwater with large numbers of Republican voters who don’t heavily identify as MAGA. So ask yourself this: Does anything he’s saying at these rallies appear likely to win back those people, let alone moderates and independents?

Take Trump’s rally in Corpus Christi. He repeatedly insisted oil and gas prices are coming down, while claiming our country is making an “absolute fortune” off the Iran war, seemingly meaning in oil exports. (As TNR’s Michael Tomasky explains, we did sell more oil abroad for a time but not anymore, and oil prices remain astronomically high.) Trump  also insisted that the “deal” he made to seize control of Venezuelan oil was a “big victory” for America. “To the victor belong the spoils,” Trump declared.

As these examples show, even when Trump is addressing the cost of living—the top concern of voters—he’s treating it as a nonproblem, one he has solved via foreign conquest and plunder. He also falsely proclaimed a massive factory boom without mentioning the awful recent inflation and jobs numbers. Who is going to believe any of this? Only voters who are already so invested in seeing Trump succeed that they’re primed to see his destructive adventurism and pillage abroad as some sort of victory for what might be termed vulgar MAGA nationalism.

Trump also declared that oil is now flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, essentially hand-waving away the very thing that has driven oil and gas prices so high, rendering his Iran war deeply toxic. “We’re thinking of renaming it the Trump Strait,” Trump smirked. “We did that with the Gulf of Mexico,” he continued, adding: “Lake Ontario is now Lake America!”

Trump: "More oil right now is flowing out of the Hormuz Strait. We're thinking of renaming it the Trump Strait, should we do it? We did that with the Gulf of Mexico into the Gulf of America! We did that with a little lake, one of the Great Lakes. Lake Ontario is now Lake America."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 27, 2026

If you watch Trump deliver these remarks, it is absolutely clear that he really thinks his audience will see his scribbling of new names on his little toy globe as genuine indicators of American dominance, prosperity, and flourishing. Again, who will believe any of this other than the most besotted of MAGA voters, the ones who are conditioned to associate national success—and their own—with whatever Trump claims as a success for himself?

Then there are the attacks on James Talarico. “He actually said that if Jesus Christ himself came and visited the Texas legislature, Jesus would be promoting sex changes for little children,” Trump insisted. This is a bizarre distortion of Talarico’s frequent claim that lawmakers should minister to the vulnerable. But who is it supposed to persuade, exactly?

Senior Democrats involved in the Texas race tell me they think these attacks are aimed at firing up the MAGA faithful—but also at Republicans who voted for Trump but are disillusioned with the country’s direction and may stay home. Disqualifying Talarico as a “freako,” as Trump puts it, is supposed to give them a reason to vote. Yet notably, these attacks—and everything else Trump said at the rally—don’t offer those voters any serious reason to think things are getting better under Trump-GOP rule. 

To really grasp the nature of the Trump-GOP bet here, see this gold-standard poll that The New York Times released earlier this month finding Talarico up by six points, 51–45. The race is likely closer than that, but the poll’s internals are illuminating. Talarico leads Paxton lopsidedly among independents (60–37), among Latinos (62–30), and among young voters (66–22). If Talarico is to win, these levels of support from groups like that are how he gets there.

So how does Trump fare among those groups? Horribly! Among independents, Trump’s approval is 29–67, among Latinos it’s 26–69, and among young voters it’s 12–85 (not a typo). And note this crucial detail: Solid majorities of all those constituencies strongly disapprove of Trump. His presence actively and energetically repels them.

Let’s repeat this part for emphasis: A majority of Texas independents strongly disapprove of the president. 

So bringing in Trump to campaign—and traffic so heavily in MAGA tropes and obsessions—isn’t about reaching these voters. It’s only about speaking to Republicans. A recent Fox poll—which has the race as a dead heat—also finds that a staggering 47 percent of non-MAGA Republicans disapprove of Trump, and shows that Talarico is winning a surprising 28 percent of those non-MAGA GOP voters. The Trump rally strategy is so heavily geared to juicing MAGA Republicans that it offers little if anything to non-MAGA ones. 

There is a way, of course, that all this could save Paxton, given that the state is so Trumpy (he won it by 14 points in 2024). It’s this: Get turnout among MAGA voters to improbably high levels for a midterm election. Count on Elon Musk’s hurricane of ads attacking Talarico as a woke leftist freak to disqualify him with just enough non-MAGA Republicans—and just enough independents who are Republicans in all but name—to get them to the polls. Bet on anti-trans attacks getting Talarico’s margins down a smidgen among Latinos. Hope that the math adds up. 

It’s possible this will work. But right now, Trump’s rallies look less like a considered strategy than a pure vanity project. After all, in Corpus Christi, the MAGA faithful cheered when he bragged of plundering Iran and Venezuela. They bellowed loudly when Trump called Talarico a “freako.” They were transfixed when he talked about his heroic adventures in renaming things on maps. Up there on that stage, deep in his own head, Trump heard all of America cheering him on. But outside the MAGA bubble, it’s all exhaustion, revulsion, and disgust—and most importantly, a desire to replace all of it with something far, far better.

Under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the DOJ was required to release all files related to the prosecution of sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, except those pertaining to national security. Blanche, however, claimed that “no files are being withheld or redacted on that basis.”

“There’s not some tranche of super-secret documents about Jeffrey Epstein that we’re withholding, we’re actually not withholding anything based upon [national defense information],” Blanche said in January.

New reporting from CBS News contradicts that, finding that at least three of the documents in the public Epstein files point to Blanche receiving classified information that was never released, even as he claimed none of the material met the national security requirement. While it is still unclear what exactly is in the classified material, the missing documents include files pertaining to Epstein’s finances.

“Financial records were not a permissible category for removal,” Barbara McQuade, the former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, said to CBS News.

This is yet another example of the Trump administration refusing to be fully transparent and honest about something that the president campaigned on being transparent and honest about.

“Trump is named over 38,000 times in the Epstein files, as are other members of his administration and his close associates—with accusations of rape, child rape, assault, trafficking and more,” Campaign for New York Health executive director Melanie D’Arrigo wrote. “It’s not a coincidence that classified documents are missing while he controls them.”

Cam Higby and James O’Keefe were charged with felony counts of identity theft and unlawful voting by the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office after they put on disguises and tried to vote during state primaries in August. The pair used hidden cameras to try to make the claim that voting laws in Minnesota are weak. Both are due in court in November, The Minnesota Star Tribune reports.

Higby wore a black abaya covering his face, while O’Keefe wore a white thobe and kufi. Both admitted they were trying to pose as Muslims, in a video posted to social media in August, using fake foreign accents. In a press conference Wednesday, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said the pair’s political views and their offensive disguises weren’t even the main issue.

“It is not against the law to be performative, it is not against the law to be offensive, it is not against the law to say the things they said standing outside the polling place,” Moriarty said. “We can’t let people’s political bent or what they’re here to do affect our decisions in deciding whether to issue felony charges. We take that very seriously. None of that played a role. The fundamental issue here is you cannot go into a polling place and misidentify yourself and use other people’s identity and say that to our election judges when you apply for a ballot, whether or not you intend to vote.”

The pair didn’t cast any votes, and left one polling place after being asked for identification, the newspaper reports, citing charging documents. O’Keefe and Higby allegedly violated the state’s unlawful voting act, which states that “no individual shall intentionally misrepresent the individuals’ identity in applying for a ballot.” The men are also accused of committing identity theft because O’Keefe “used multiple identities that are not his own with the intent to commit and aid in the commission of an unlawful activity.”

O’Keefe has a history of misrepresenting himself in sting videos, pleading guilty to misdemeanor charges of entering federal property under false pretenses in 2010 for posing as a telephone repairman at the office of Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu in Louisiana. His former organization, Project Veritas, was involved in election conspiracies in 2020.

Eight years ago on November 8, when he was still a representative, Marshall purchased 1,250 shares of Ionics Life Sciences, a privately held medical research company based in Ireland. Marshall invested $250,000 at $200 per share, according to Irish documentation obtained by Popular Info’s Judd Legum.

A week later, the FDA approved an application by Ionics’s wholly owned subsidiary Genzada Pharmaceuticals USA, allowing it to begin clinical trials on a radical cancer treatment.

Yet in apparent violation of the STOCK Act, Marshall did not disclose his Ionics stock purchase within 45 days. Instead, he reported the transaction on August 28, 2019—some 240 days late, Legum reported. Marshall misrepresented the day that he purchased Ionics stock, signaling on his disclosure form that he invested in the company on October 1, 2018, rather than November 8.

He also mixed up Ionics’s location, writing on the form that the company was based in Sterling, Kansas, (where Genzada is located) rather than Dublin.

But there were minimal repercussions. And by 2020, the lawmaker’s investment was worth roughly $500,000.

Neither Marshall’s office nor his Senate reelection campaign responded to Legum’s request for comment regarding his investments.

In 2021, shortly after being inaugurated as senator, Marshall joined the Senate HELP Committee, a congressional regulatory body that oversees the FDA. Since then, Marshall has sponsored legislation that could benefit Genzada and, ultimately, his own pockets. That has included bills that would exclude small pharmaceutical companies from pricing their drugs in accordance with federal regulations, and legislative amendments that he’s claimed could benefit emerging cancer drugs, according to Legum.

In the past, Marshall has heralded his role as a sort of revisionary peacemaker with the FDA, reviewing complaints from pharmaceutical companies before attempting to lobby the agency.

“The people that struggle to get their drugs approved blow up my office, but then I dig down with the FDA,” Marshall said during a Senate HELP hearing on April 16.

It isn’t the first time that Marshall has utilized the power of his office to benefit his wallet. The American Prospect reported last week that Marshall previously introduced legislation that could benefit Nueterra Capital, a venture capital firm that Marshall’s family has invested in. It remains to be seen if Marshall will continue to do the same for Ionics and Genzada.

“We are deeply saddened to announce that our beloved mother, Dolores Huerta, has passed away today at the age of 96,” her family wrote in a statement on Wednesday. “As you can imagine, this is an incredibly difficult time for us, and we ask for privacy as we grieve this incredible loss to our family. We know that many of you around the world share in our mourning, and we will be following up on plans to recognize and celebrate her incredible life and legacy.”

Erik Olvera, a family spokesperson, confirmed that she died of cancer.

Huerta’s “¡Sí, se puede!” slogan, translating to “Yes, We Can!”, became a common rallying cry and was adopted by President Barack Obama. She co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with César Chávez in 1962, after which the group transformed into United Farm Workers. Huerta notably accused Chávez earlier this year of sexually assaulting her, alongside two other women. The allegations rocked the labor organizing space and community.  

“Dolores Huerta has passed away from cancer at 96. She was a founder of what became the United Farm Workers and an inspiration for generations of organizers,” California Representative Ro Khanna wrote online. “Her courageous leadership in civil disobedience set an invaluable example in nonviolence. Dolores’s memory will live on.”

“Devastated! We lost our hero! She was so powerful till the end! I interviewed her twice, blown away by the tenacity she still possessed,” actor Rosie Perez wrote. “Saw her everywhere still standing up for people! I’m filled with gratitude to have known her, yet so so sad she is gone! RIP dear Dolores.”

This story has been updated.

Inside Washington

When Republicans set out to redistrict in the middle of the decade, they thought they were all but ensuring more seats in the House. But, one week before the midterm elections, many of Republicans’ tailor-made districts are looking vulnerable.

Texas was the first state to redistrict in 2025 under pressure from the White House, kicking off a nationwide flurry of gerrymandering in red and blue states alike. Across the country in the past year, Republican-controlled state legislatures have drawn maps that increased their advantage in 16 districts, with five of those districts in Texas and four in Florida. Those two states are epicenters of the Republican gerrymandering effort. But, according to polling and ratings from the Cook Political Report, only one of those nine districts is projected to be a sure Republican win next week, and the others will be competitive.

When Florida and Texas first unveiled their new maps, critics immediately noted that the districts appeared to be drawn based on race. They argued that Republicans carved up Black and Latino districts to dilute the political power of those voters. A federal court ruled that Texas’s gerrymandering was, in fact, illegally racially based, but the Supreme Court sided with the state and allowed the new maps to stand.

This race-based gerrymandering now appears to be backfiring. Republicans, explained Tom Bonier, senior adviser at political data firm TargetSmart, were “counting on levels of support from Hispanic voters that at least came close to Trump’s 2024 levels of support.” But now it appears “that calculation is going to be very much incorrect.”

Early voting numbers and polling suggest that Latino voters are reversing their 2024 support for Republicans and turning out to vote for Democrats, at least in part because of the Trump administration’s devastating crackdown on immigrants. Gerrymandering may have exacerbated the problem. “It should have been expected that people are going to be very unhappy with the Republican strategy of undermining political power of African Americans and Latinos,” said Kareem Crayton, vice president of the Brennan Center’s Washington, D.C., office.

In addition to nationwide trends favoring Democrats this year—frustration with the president and Republicans broadly, as well as affordability concerns—young professionals are moving to states like Texas and Florida from more expensive areas, like California. The newcomers are subtly shifting districts’ demographics.

“Some people have looked at this and they’ve used the term ‘dummymander’ to suggest that Republicans have really shot themselves in the foot with these maps,” Bonier said. “I think that misses the truth, at least somewhat.” Even though these districts are more competitive than Republicans originally hoped, the new maps ultimately still make races easier for them to win and have forced Democrats to spend more than they might have to defend their incumbents.

Here are nine districts to watch on election night to gauge the success of gerrymandering in Florida and Texas:

FL-9
In this Central Florida district, Democratic Representative Darren Soto is running against Navy reservist Dan Green. Polling shows an even race, and the Cook Political Report rates the race as “likely D.”

FL-14
Trump won this Tampa Bay-area district by 11 points in 2024, but the race is now rated as a “toss-up” by the Cook Political Report. Democratic Representative Kathy Castor, who is leading in polls, is hoping to defend her seat from Republican Mike Beltran.

FL-25
Democratic Representative Jared Moskowitz is facing Republican Scott Singer in this South Florida district. Polls give mixed messages, but the Cook Political Report moved the race from “toss-up” to “lean D” in mid-October.

FL-22
Democrat Pia Dandiya is up against Republican Casey Askar. Limited polling shows a tight race, with a small advantage for Dandiya. The race is considered a “toss-up.”

TX-32
A lack of polling makes this race hard to judge, but a Harvard-ElectIt forecast gives Democrat Dan Barrios only a 20 percent chance of beating Republican Jace Yarbrough.

TX-9
The Cook Political Report considers this race “likely R” after a leftward shift from “solid R” in late September. Polls show Republican Alex Mealer ahead of Democrat Leticia Gutierrez.

TX-35
Another toss-up race, and this one could be anyone’s game. Polls show Democrat Johnny Garcia neck-and-neck with his GOP opponent, Carlos De La Cruz.

TX-28
Democratic Representative Henry Cuellar has held this seat for 11 terms, and recent polls suggest he’ll win another against Republican Tano Tijerina. Last week, the Cook Political Report shifted the race from “lean D” to “likely D.”

TX-34
Democratic Representative Vicente Gonzales is facing former federal prosecutor Eric Flores in this race, which recently moved left from “toss-up” to “lean D.” Polls suggest Gonzalez is in the lead.

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

A quarter of American adults experienced medical debt last year, either for themselves or a family member, the Ohio Capital Journal reports this week, based on a study from the Urban Institute. Hospital visits were the biggest reported source of that debt, closely followed by bills to specialist doctors (41.5 percent).

This finding comes as medical debt—and medical debt to specialists in particular—continues to roil the unexpectedly competitive Kansas Senate race between Republican incumbent Roger Marshall and Democrat Adam Hamilton. A quick recap: The New York Times reported last month that Marshall, formerly an ob-gyn, sued more than 700 of his patients over past-due medical bills, and, per the Times story, “routinely charged patients an 18 percent annual interest rate.” Hamilton’s campaign subsequently ran an ad featuring a woman who said she was eight months pregnant when she was arrested in front of her two-year-old daughter for missing a $50 payment to Marshall’s office. Marshall’s lawyers then sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Hamilton campaign, alleging defamation, and during a debate last week, Marshall called the allegations “blatant lies”: “This particular patient actually had legal issues in three different counties, she had missed 16 court dates, and I’m sorry about that. We did everything possible to keep them from going to collections. It was a very, very rare situation, but once it was turned over, it was the same process that KU Med Center would do, Via Christi in Wichita. Once we turned them into collections, it was out of our hands.” Hamilton’s camp stood by the ad and has run additional ads featuring doctors and another former patient attacking Marshall over the issue.

A GOP PAC returned fire last week by running an ad accusing the church that Hamilton leads of covering up child sex abuse allegations at a church camp. Kansas City Star reporter Matthew Kelly, reviewing court records, dubbed the claim “misleading,” noting that the church “conducted an internal investigation that court records show was inconclusive” and then reported the issue to local law enforcement after another accuser came forward.

Elsewhere:

• Against the backdrop of this year’s cyclospora outbreak, a Washington Post investigation finds that the Food and Drug Administration “rarely inspects the foreign facilities exporting the vast majority of fresh produce to the United States” and has only inspected 7.6 percent of all facilities exporting to the United States since 2009. The past two decades have seen a huge growth in the percentage of American-consumed produce sourced from abroad, the Post’s Caitlin Gilbert and Rachel Roubein report. Meanwhile, “though foreign food inspection numbers were already low, they dipped even further in early 2025. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency cut FDA coordinators who arranged investigators’ foreign travel, though some were later rehired.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

At noon on Wednesday, New America will host a conversation between Peter Bergen and security and foreign policy researcher Amy J. Nelson about Nelson’s new book, The Arms Control Paradox: Managing Uncertainty in an Insecure World.

In case you missed it: Data for Progress this week published poll results in which significantly more voters identifying as disabled (45 percent) reported being “very stressed financially” than voters who did not identify as disabled (25 percent). Thirty-two percent of disabled voters “rate[d] their community’s economic conditions as poor,” while only 19 percent of nondisabled voters said the same.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Book of the Week: The Rush: California Gold, the Civil War, and the Making of the Modern World
By Nathaniel Philbrick

THE GIST: Philbrick, the author of Mayflower and In the Heart of the Sea, explains how the California Gold Rush helped lead to the Civil War and how its culture of opportunity and greed—and history of booms and busts—is still felt in today’s Silicon Valley.

PRAISE: Popular historian deans Jon Meacham, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Ken Burns have all penned blurbs praising this book. But Erik Larson captured it best: “In The Rush, Nathaniel Philbrick takes the old maxim ‘follow the money’ to an engaging and revelatory extreme,” the author of Devil in the White City writes. “Through an intricate skein of little-known stories, he shows how the discovery of gold in California drove tectonic shifts in the way Americans thought about wealth, and about each other—and in the process fueled the Civil War and today’s mad rush toward who knows what.”

CRUISING THE INDEX: This is a sweeping history with a colorful cast of characters both familiar (John C. Fremont, William T. Sherman) and obscure (like David C. Broderick, the sharp-elbowed anti-slavery Democrat who was killed in a duel with the scandal-plagued California Supreme Court Chief Justice David S. Terry). But its value comes from looking where others rarely do: at the discrimination and violence faced by early Chilean and Mexican miners; at the machinations of pro-slavery Southerners who went West; and at how the possibility of extraordinary, quick wealth provoked a frenzy.

TNR’S QUICK CRITICAL ASSESSMENT: The Rush puts the Gold Rush—and with it, California—in context, which is to say into the context of American history itself. For Philbrick, the state was not some far-off place where a few men made their fortunes (and, in many cases, quickly squandered them) and many more struggled. It was a state intimately connected to the divisions—racial, ethnic, and economic—that define the United States to this day. Philbrick, the author of Mayflower and In the Heart of the Sea, explains how the California Gold Rush helped lead to the Civil War and how its culture of opportunity and greed—and history of booms and busts—is still felt in today’s Silicon Valley.

—Alex Shephard

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

What state has had the most female governors? (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

—Michael Tomasky

Republicans on and off Ramaswamy’s team argued that the message, which featured Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur, would likely backfire by making him seem cruel and callous while framing Acton as the comparatively sympathetic and rational choice to median voters. And that’s exactly what happened when local journalist D.J. Byrnes leaked the spot last week.

Now members of Ramaswamy’s campaign team are reportedly on the verge of quitting, outraged by Ramaswamy’s blind decision and the predictable public blowback, according to Zeteo.

Ramaswamy arranged the cameo despite the fact that Acton had not spoken to her mother since she was 12 years old, and that Arthur abandoned her two children to skip town with her husband, who was indicted for allegedly raping Acton when she was a young girl.

In the ad, Arthur accuses her daughter of being a “liar” and declares that Acton “needs help.”

“It’s siding with the rapist protector mom,” a Donald Trump adviser with early knowledge of the clip told Zeteo. “This was never a good idea.”

Several figures across the national Republican spectrum condemned the anti-Acton political promo, telling Zeteo that the entire arrangement was a “disastrous, self-inflicted wound.”

Yet the fallout has extended far beyond Ramaswamy’s campaign, potentially endangering politicians even tangentially affiliated with the biotech billionaire. Robert McColley, the Ohio GOP’s lieutenant governor candidate, also “expressed reservations” about the advertisement, two sources told Zeteo, but is “now forced to publicly defend it on the campaign trail.”

The ad spot was created by the Ohio-based firm Strategy Group, which previously made headlines for secretly raking in taxpayer money via an unprecedented $220 million Department of Homeland Security ad campaign arranged by ousted DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

The Washington Post reports that Brazil Supreme Court Justice Flávio Dino has ordered Brazilian federal police to investigate the contacts between Vance’s Rockbridge Network and any Brazilian political operatives or companies. It’s illegal in Brazil for political candidates to accept assistance or aid from overseas.

Dino wrote the investigation was “necessary to verify if there was the effective furnishment of resources—including human resources—services, or other measurable economic advantages, identifying its origin, its destination and its eventual use in the campaign.”

Vance has spoken at Rockbridge events within the last year. The donor organization denied any contacts with Brazilian officials, and Vance’s office declined to comment to the Post. Rockbridge received multiple complaints during Brazil’s elections.

The Workers’ Party led by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated Bolsonaro, filed one with the country’s Supreme Court, while Renan Santos, a right-wing presidential candidate who was eliminated in the first round of voting, went to the country’s Supreme Electoral Court. Santos said that Brazilians who claimed to represent Rockbridge had spoken with Bolsonaro campaign officials about providing support.

An unnamed source said they also reached out to Santos offering campaign help. Rockbridge denied any connections with the Brazilians claiming to represent it.

“The Brazilians made false representations about their relationship with Rockbridge and created documents representing or referencing Rockbridge without Rockbridge’s knowledge or consent,” the network said in a statement Tuesday.

Bolsonaro is under investigation for fraud and money laundering in Brazil, and has fled to the U.S. after the State Department reportedly granted him and his family visas. He left before Brazilian police could seize his passport, as the country’s Supreme Court had ordered. If Vance’s group was helping Bolsonaro, that would only add to his charges, and show how far the Trump administration is willing to interfere in other countries’ elections even as it fearmongers about the same happening in the U.S.

Less than a day later, the younger Bolsonaro was gone. On Wednesday morning, he landed in Miami, after President Trump’s State Department stated that it would issue visas to the senator and his family. His arrival in the United States early Wednesday morning represents a new chapter in the Bolsonaro family’s expanding efforts to coordinate the Brazilian opposition from under Trump’s skirt. Flávio’s brother, former Brazilian Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, self-exiled to Texas a year ago so that he could lobby MAGA-world full-time on father’s behalf, for which Brazil’s Supreme Court sentenced him in absentia to more than four years in prison. Though they may have to remind the senescent U.S. president who they are from time to time, Flávio and Eduardo have successfully evaded Brazilian justice. The Donroe Doctrine, Trump’s strategy for Western hemispheric dominance, apparently includes selectively overriding other nations’ sovereign authority to prosecute criminal offenses when the accused are his political supplicants. But not even the authoritarian leader of the world’s most powerful country can save the ignominious Bolsonaros from political irrelevance.

Flávio may be safe for now from any accountability for his misdeeds in his home country. But he has effectively surrendered any claim to Brazilian political leadership for himself or another member of his clan. Indeed, as I wrote in August, one of the questions facing the Brazilian far right early in this campaign was whether one of the disgraced former president’s sons was really the best candidate to run against an incumbent with middling poll numbers in Lula. Why not put up, say, a popular governor who had served in the elder Bolsonaro’s Cabinet but did not carry the blighted last name of the far-right leader? Jair Bolsonaro’s insistence on running Flávio, against the advice of many in his ideological camp, strained his coalition—even more so since Flávio lost. For Flávio now to flee, apparently without warning even close allies, is to concede that the family is not up to the task of sustaining the opposition. Flávio’s own campaign manager admitted he had no idea where the senator was: “We are surprised because yesterday we spoke about the necessity of Flávio, with the 60 million votes he received, assuming this role of opposition leader.” That is the role Flávio had proclaimed for himself even as he was apparently planning his getaway.

For Flávio to leave so abruptly is also to surrender his father to his fate. Trump already applied considerable pressure on Brazil on Jair’s behalf, to no effect. The former president’s wife just won a Senate seat, as did another one of his sons; another won a seat in the lower house of Congress. But the only plausible hope for Jair Bolsonaro to leave jail anytime soon was probably for Flávio to win the presidency, empowering Flávio to check the power of the Supreme Court that sentenced his father. Springing his dad was going to be one of President Flávio’s first acts, he maintained throughout the campaign. Whatever protection he may now hope to secure for himself in the U.S., there is no reason to imagine he will be able to do much for Jair. Any leverage he may have had rested on his ability to mobilize a sizable, disgruntled part of the Brazilian electorate. He can’t do that remotely.

Ironically, in fact, Flávio’s flight may do more to discredit his father than anything Lula’s government could have done on its own. Jair’s political strength has always rested on the conviction among his supporters that he is an aggrieved fighter, a man willing to take on Brazil’s institutions and pay the price for doing so. His brash adult sons have now offered a different model of leadership: denouncing political persecution and vowing to fight on, even while plotting an escape to live lavishly abroad on funds likely secured through the biggest financial scandal in Brazilian history. It is difficult to imagine a more damaging repudiation of the family’s political brand for many rank-and-file bolsonaristas than the actions of Eduardo and Flávio.

For years, the Bolsonaros have presented themselves as indispensable to Brazil’s conservative movement. There is some truth to this: Jair Bolsonaro was the only candidate since 1998 to win the presidency by vocally eschewing the left. The family’s appeal rested in part on the claim that only they possessed the courage to confront the country’s powerful institutions. Flávio’s flight has exposed the weakness in that claim. A movement that depends on the flighty failsons of an incarcerated one-term president and the goodwill of a soon-to-be lame duck in Washington is not much of a movement at all. It is a political inheritance in search of a custodian.

And that is something that Trump, for all his talk of hemispheric dominance, cannot provide. He can issue visas, apply diplomatic pressure, and offer the Bolsonaros a platform from which to denounce Brazil’s government, but he cannot make a credible leader out of a whimpering coward.

“Hey @Meta 👋We are currently hosting a get-out-the-vote rally in Osceola County, home to a large Puerto Rican community, and our #LatinosConAngie @instagram page was suddenly taken down while we were actively posting content from the event,” Nixon wrote Tuesday evening on X. “This page is a critical communication tool for reaching Latino voters and mobilizing our community. With just seven days until Election Day, every minute matters.

“We are calling on Meta to immediately restore the page and provide an explanation for its removal,” she continued. “Voters deserve access to critical election information, especially in these final days.”

Nixon reported that the account was back up an hour later.

This comes after Meta’s own employees accused the massive social media company of suppressing the campaign of leftist Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, while outside sources found it was “actively boosting” right-wing candidate Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign with its algorithm. Meta also shut down the No Kings Instagram account the weekend of the group’s midterm protests, and gave the same treatment to Serbian accounts critical of right-wing President Aleksandar Vučić earlier this year.

Meta has donated $5 million to President Trump’s White House ballroom fund and $1 million to his inauguration fund.

Taylor is the Republican nominee for the Volunteer State’s 9th congressional district and has been endorsed by Donald Trump. He is simultaneously running for reelection in the Tennessee state Senate, hoping to continue to represent district 31, which covers parts of Memphis and the southwestern portion of the state. (If he wins both races, he will have to resign from one of the seats, prompting a special election to replace him.) He has been in politics since 1995, when he was 27 years old, and has framed himself as a Christian family man and a committed husband.

But Taylor’s dual campaign—and his regional reputation—was torn to bits Tuesday when he confessed to sending unsolicited nudes and then proceeded to brush off the wanton behavior as a simple mistake of his youth.

“As I near 60 years old, the expiration date has come and gone on any of my youthful indiscretions,” Taylor told the Nashville Scene when asked about the unsolicited nudes allegation. “Whatever story you think you’ve got, my wife is well aware of, and we’ve worked through it a long time ago.”

“My God and my wife have forgiven me, and I would consider everyone else doing the same,” Taylor added.

One individual who was provided anonymity told the Scene that they received unwelcome nudes from the congressman as recently as 2021—when Taylor was 53.

“All I can tell you is, in the past, I’ve been guilty of being a rounder, back in the day,” Taylor told the Scene.

He did not provide a clear definition for the term “rounder,” even when asked. Instead, he urged the Scene’s reporter to look it up. The digital news outlet noted that “rounder” likely refers to a barfly prone to morally dubious behavior.

Appearing on Newsmax’s Finnerty Tuesday, Zacharia tried to spin her own narrative on why she was fired after just one week of serving in the White House.

“Listen, the media does not like outsiders, and Washington, D.C., does not like outsiders. And what I would briefly say is that the media and all of Washington made it very difficult for me to do the job that I set out to do,” Zacharia said.

“They would not let me do my job,” she said, which was to “focus” on President Donald Trump.

It may have become difficult to focus amid the intense blowback Zacharia faced regarding her phony legal credentials, train-wreck first press briefing, and disastrous appearance on Fox News’s Hannity, where she tried to defend calling herself a “lawyer” but not an “attorney.”

Newsmax host Rob Finnerty asked Zacharia what she made of her interview with Sean Hannity, whose softball questions about her fake legal background had proven to be too much for her to handle.

“Katie, I was shocked by the Hannity treatment, if I’m being honest. I don’t think he does that unless he gets the green light from somebody, perhaps at the White House, I don’t know,” Finnerty said. “But what do you make of this narrative that Fox did this on purpose, that Hannity and the Fox & Friends interviews were set up, deliberately, not to go well for you?”

Zacharia said she was “perplexed” by her treatment on Fox News because she believed she had a “very friendly rapport” with Hannity. “I was not prepared for the hostility I received,” she said.

Finnerty pushed Zacharia to speculate that her terrible interview with Hannity was the nail in the coffin for her short tenure as press secretary. She agreed that if not for that interview, she hoped she would still be press secretary today.

“I made the mistake of saying that I started off by studying his ass,” Trump said at a rally in Lubbock, referring to his repeated praise of Republican Senate candidate John Husted. “Then I looked at [Husted’s] feet and they were massive … and then I looked at his hands.... He had fingers like sausages.... He went from being down to being up [in the polls]. Maybe I should do that with Ken Paxton, but I’m not sure your body is going to qualify. I’m gonna do it with Ken!”

At another rally hours earlier in Corpus Christi, Trump mimicked Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, who used to be vegan, trying to eat meat.

“I love the meat, ahhh! I love it, look!” he said, making strange gestures and a slurping sound.

This is all a continuation of Trump’s obsession with publicly discussing posteriors, particularly those of Husted and, more recently, MAGA rapper Nicki Minaj. Trump spent the rest of his time in Texas bragging about how great his war on Iran is going, how he should make Venezuela the fifty-first state, and how Talarico wants to make every child in Texas transgender. Not the most inspiring showing less than a week out from the midterms.

“Trump’s commentary on men’s physiques gets more homoerotic by the day, but his absolute revulsion at Ken Paxton’s appearance remains unwavering,” The Bulwark’s Sarah Matthews wrote online.

Bolsonaro and his family arrived in Miami, the Associated Press reported.

After losing Brazil’s presidential election to incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil on Sunday, Bolsonaro left Guayaquil in Ecuador for Miami, according to The Guardian. Brazil’s Supreme Court had ordered the police to seize Bolsonaro’s passport Monday, as he was under criminal investigation for his connection to a vast money-laundering scheme. The politician was reportedly convinced that he would be arrested following his loss.

Bolsonaro’s father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, is already serving a 27-year prison sentence in the country after being found guilty of plotting a coup when he lost to Lula in 2022.

Lula’s upset victories both times have been definitive blows to the Trump administration, and to any president who has refused to concede the results of a democratically held election. Donald Trump, who has criticized the former Brazilian president’s incarceration, baselessly claimed that his country’s elections had been “rigged.”

“It looked like another rigged election, frankly,” Trump told reporters Monday. “Elections have to be indisputable, and it looked very bad to me.”

This story has been updated.

A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., declined to indict Hutchinson, The Washington Post reported Tuesday evening, citing two anonymous sources. Neville S. Hedley, who told U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui earlier that day that he was acting senior litigation counsel at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, had warned in court that the jury could not agree on an indictment. Hedley didn’t mention a name, but the Post’s sources said it was Hutchinson.

President Donald Trump and his Republican allies have been seeking charges against Hutchinson for months, accusing her of lying to the investigative committee. In March, Representative Barry Loudermilk referred her to the Department of Justice, and House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan signed off on it.  

Hutchinson was one of the star witnesses in the committee’s hearings, claiming that Trump was very agitated on January 6, 2021, and fully aware of the potential for violence. She testified that he wanted to march with his supporters on the Capitol, and was furious when his aides and Secret Service detail said that it wouldn’t be safe. 

Trump even tried to grab the steering wheel of the presidential limousine known as The Beast, and when a Secret Service agent took his arm, Trump grabbed the agent’s neck, Hutchinson said. Along with then–White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, she said that Trump wanted his armed supporters to march that day, and overheard a conversation where Trump said that Mike Pence “deserves it,” regarding chants of “hang Mike Pence” heard during the riot. 

For now, though, Hutchinson won’t face criminal charges, although MAGA Republicans may try to indict her again. Trump keeps trying to settle old scores in his second term as president. For instance, his Department of Justice just charged former FBI Director James Comey for a third time. 

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

In the final week of the midterms, Donald Trump will be campaigning almost entirely in red states. That tells you exactly what Republicans think of the map right now: it’s deteriorating for them.

And indeed, Fox News just dropped some surprising ratings changes that illustrate that Democrats are now contesting some very deep red territory. Yet by all indications, Trump isn’t aware of what’s happening, as some really strange remarks he just unleashed in Texas strongly suggest.

Michael Cohen has written well recently on his Truth and Consequences Substack about how and why Democrats are now contesting such difficult turf. So we’re talking to him about all this today. Michael, thanks for coming on.

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

Sargent: So as we’re recording this, Trump is campaigning in Texas. He has scheduled stops in coming days in Ohio and Iowa and South Carolina. He just held a rally in Mississippi, of all places. Michael, this is all red territory, some of it deep, deep red territory. What do you make of it?

Cohen: I mean, it’s pretty obvious that the Republicans have problems turning out their voters, and they are really not even trying to compete in blue states or even purple states so much, but they’re trying to shore up their support in red states.

So, I mean having Trump show up in a place like Mississippi, for a race that now looks like it’s actually pretty close. South Carolina, I think he’s going to be there twice, for a race with Darline Graham, who seems to be having all kinds of problems separating from Democrat Annie Andrews. It’s obvious that this is just—he’s playing triage.

I also think in a lot of places, Republicans don’t want Trump there, because he is a liability for the party. The only places where he’s not a liability are solid red states where he still has some reservoir of support and can get voters out to the polls.

Sargent: That is so essential. Stay away from the swing areas, stay away from the places where everybody hates you, only stay in the places where we really need you to get out your base. And even in these red places, the base isn’t turning out. That’s the message we’re getting from this, right?

Cohen: Absolutely. I think it’s pretty clear that the only asset that Trump can possibly serve to Republicans at this point in the campaign is in mobilizing that core Trump vote, which is, I mean, shrinking.

I mean, it is probably around 30 percent. But in a place like Mississippi or South Carolina, it’s a little bit higher, obviously. His approval is probably around 40 percent. And I guess the assumption is that he can get those voters out. Now, is it going to work? Who knows?

But I think it does tell you just how desperate this map has gotten for Republicans, and just that they are playing defense in a lot of places where I think about six months ago, no one would have thought they’d be playing defense.

Sargent: Trump just unleashed some really strange remarks in Texas. Here he’s talking about how his Mideast adventures are such a smashing success.

Donald Trump (voiceover): Your country is making an absolute fortune because of the situation in the Middle East. We’re steering them all to Texas. We’re sailing to Louisiana. Alaska is a big beneficiary. Everybody is a benefit. The whole country.

And here he’s talking about the Strait of Hormuz and his adventures in changing the names of things on maps.

Trump (voiceover): And I will tell you, more oil is right now flowing out of the Hormuz Strait. We’re thinking about renaming it the Trump Strait. Should we do it? Well, we did that with the Gulf of Mexico, into the Gulf of America. We do that with a little lake, one of the Great Lakes. Lake Ontario is now Lake America.

Sargent: So putting aside the crazy details here, the bigger message that Trump is sending with this is that everything he’s doing with the war in Iran is a world-historical success. That’s making everyone rich. He’s scribbling new names on his little globe, and that displays genuine American dominance.

He really thinks this is all perceived as success, as his success, as success for our country. It’s delusional in that sense, Michael. What do you think of it?

Cohen: Well, we should look on the bright side, which is that he is not talking about Jon Husted’s ass. So that is a positive, and that is something I think we should all be glad for.

I think what has been obvious for most of the last two years is that Trump simply does not care about what Americans care about. He cares about his ego. He cares about his vanity projects, like his ballroom and his arch and his golf course he wants to build in Washington, D.C.

He cares about going after his political rivals and his enemies. I mean, he wrote a 1,300-word post the other day about Bill Maher. I mean, this is not a guy who has his finger on the pulse of the country. But what I am struck by is, he doesn’t even seem to care.

He has basically turned the presidency into just his sort of ego-stroking exercise. And that’s all this is for him. And there’s no message coming out of the White House that actually is intended to appeal to non-hardcore MAGA voters. That’s where Trump is now. And I mean, you see this in these clips. He’s just—it’s just free association, but on topics that are not even related to the issues that voters care about.

Sargent: Yes. And I think we should talk about the sound of the crowd at these rallies. So they want him in these red places to really turn out that core MAGA base that you’re talking about. They’re not even expecting him to be able to bring over swing voters at this point, or appeal to independents.

But when Trump is standing there talking about how he’s rewriting names on maps and how we’re all getting rich from his war, right? He hears the crowd cheer, and I really think he thinks that that’s what America thinks.

Cohen: A good part of the reason he ran for president, why he ran again, is to go to these rallies and to get validation from his audiences. That is what motivates him more than anything else. That’s why he does so many of these events, because they are validating and affirming to him, and they are ways of sort of filling the limitless void that exists in his soul. So I think that’s one part of what is going on here. He is just trying to stroke his ego.

The second thing about Iran. I mean, he is again living in a world of total delusion about what is happening in Iran. And he’s trying to keep spinning this. This is something Trump’s always done.

He always tries to spin reality, but it’s just getting harder and harder for him to do it. And on Iran, there is no good way to look at this conflict right now. There’s no good way to think about what the U.S. has accomplished, which is not a great deal.

I mean, we are seeing increasing flows of oil coming through the straits, but that is not actually lowering oil prices, in large part because the cost of getting the oil out of the Gulf is so prohibitively expensive. In fact, ironically, the reason why oil is flowing is because the price is so high. If the price went down, we might not get as much oil flowing to the Gulf.

And now there are reports that he is thinking of attacking Iran after the midterm election. They’re talking about, apparently, a three-day attack that will accomplish nothing. It will not change Iran’s strategic calculus, but it will lead to a spike in oil prices, and it will lead to potentially an Iranian military response that could spike those prices even further.

So I think what you’re seeing with Trump is a politician who is not only deeply out of touch with the American people, he’s deeply out of touch with reality. And I don’t think this is going to end well for him or for his party come Tuesday.

Sargent: Well, to that point, Fox News just shifted a bunch of House races in the Democrats’ direction. Two of these really jumped out for me.

First, Fox shifted Kentucky’s sixth district from Lean Republican to Toss Up. This is a race for a GOP-held open seat. The Democrat here is a veteran and former prosecutor, Zach Dembo.

And Democrats are really bullish on winning and pulling off a surprise here. But Michael, Trump won this district by 15 points two years ago, and Fox now has it as a toss-up. I just find that remarkable. What do you make of it?

Cohen: This Kentucky race is interesting because Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, who is a likely 2028 presidential contender, has invested a great deal of time and energy and his own credibility into Democrats flipping this seat. This is, like, the one seat in Kentucky that is a potential flip for Democrats. This is Andy Barr’s old seat. He’s running for Senate. And Dembo is running neck and neck.

And this is interesting in another respect, that we may know early on where things are going on election night, because Kentucky closes its polls pretty early. And if Dembo is ahead, or if we know that he’s winning, it gives us a good sense of where this race is going to be going.

Sargent: Yes, that’s one thing Democrats are telling me as well. Keep an eye on Kentucky six early in the night, because as you say, we’re going to get the information out of there pretty early. And by the way, even if Dembo isn’t actually winning outright, if he’s keeping it close, we’re going to know that Democrats are probably going to have a pretty good night, right?

Cohen: Absolutely. That’s a great point. Yes, definitely. I mean, look, that is—I think you said the plus-15 Trump district. I mean, if that’s a close race, even if Dembo loses, if you’re seeing a 12-point shift, for example, in where it was in 2024, a lot of places where you have Republicans in seats that are, let’s say, a plus eight or plus 10 Trump, they’re going to be feeling pretty uncomfortable if that’s the result coming out of Kentucky early on election night.

Sargent: Yes. And the second seat that Fox just shifted is North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District. This is also a GOP-held open seat. The Democrat here is Jamie Ager. He’s a family farmer going back generations.

This is western North Carolina. It’s in Appalachia. And Trump won here by 10 points. It’s very rural. And Fox just moved it from Toss Up to Lean Democratic, which is just amazing. A 10-point district for Trump is now leaning Democratic. Democrats think they’ve got this one. That’s pretty striking.

Cohen: What’s happening in North Carolina is pretty fascinating, because first of all, you’ve got a Senate race, with Roy Cooper running, in which he has a huge lead over Michael Whatley. In fact, the Republicans have basically taken money out of the race because they don’t think Whatley has a chance of winning.

And what we’re seeing in the early vote in North Carolina—I know, I hate to read too much into early voting, but in North Carolina, the early voting on behalf of Democrats is just off the charts. And you’re seeing this, by the way, in a number of states. But in North Carolina, you’ve got a lot of close House races that look like Democrats have an advantage.

This race you mentioned, this was a race that I think a year ago would have been seen as a lean, even likely Republican race. Now it’s lean Democratic. And you’ve got other races which were a few weeks ago solid Republican, now moving to the likely, even lean category in North Carolina. And so I think what you have here is just a couple of states where it is fairly obvious that the bottom has fallen out for Republicans. And North Carolina’s one.

And by the way, North Carolina, just for the record, if you look at 2024—I know that Trump won there, but Democrats did really well in statewide elections in ‘24. They won the governor’s race, they won the lieutenant governor’s race, they won a Supreme Court race.

I think they won a number of the down-ballot races. So this kind of prestaged what you saw in ‘24. And you have a very popular Democratic governor in Josh Stein. So I think you’re seeing Democrats making real inroads in North Carolina, and that can have a huge impact down the road into ‘28 and beyond.

Sargent: Well, you mentioned that the Kentucky race has major implications for 2028, and I want to talk about North Carolina’s implications as well. North Carolina, people may remember this district, the 11th district, is in western North Carolina, where there was serious disaster relief needed and Donald Trump lied his ass off about the disaster response there. And Democrats tell me that that’s one of the reasons that they’re so competitive in this Trumpy part of the state now.

And I think we’re going to look at that if Jamie Ager wins, if the Democrat wins, and it sure looks like he’s going to. We’re going to look at that and say, well, you know what, North Carolina’s really moving now.

You mentioned this, I want to detail it a little more though, because right, demographics are pushing North Carolina in a Democratic direction, but more slowly than a place like Virginia. Trump still won there in 2024, but he only won by three points, if I recall, which is actually one of his smallest victories of all.

So if we’re seeing the demographics in the eastern part of the state start to shift enough to bring this into the Democratic column in the presidential, and we’re seeing the western part of the state, the kind of huge margins that Republicans run up in these rural places, starting to come down a little bit—that’s how you get there, to shift North Carolina in 2028, right?

Cohen: North Carolina was always sort of, along with, like, Georgia and Arizona, seen as the places where Democrats could potentially flip those states from red to blue. It’s already happening in Arizona and Georgia.

I mean, Arizona is not a blue state, but it’s certainly moving more in that direction. In Georgia Jon Ossoff’s going to win by a huge margin. Keisha Lance Bottoms looks like she may be able to win that governor’s race, which would be huge for Democrats if she can win. And so North Carolina could be next.

Sargent: So another surprising Fox News ratings change was to move the Ohio Senate race from Toss Up to Lean Democratic. This is a state Trump won by double digits. This is also the place where there’s been this huge controversy over that vile ad by Vivek Ramaswamy about Amy Acton and the governor’s race. Trump has gone all in on the ad.

I don’t think most Democrats think this race is leaning Democratic. They think it’s very, very close. It’s a toss-up. The polling averages do have Brown up by around three points, but that’s still a dead heat, basically. What do you think about what’s going on there?

Cohen: Look, even before that awful ad, the people I talked to in Ohio were suggesting that Acton and Sherrod Brown were likely to win, and that you were going to see one, maybe two House seats flip from red to blue. Keep in mind that Ohio Republicans redrew the maps to give themselves an advantage in one or two seats. And the opposite looks like it’s about to occur.

Now, I’ve got to say one thing here. We certainly could see a situation in which Republicans do end up turning out in numbers higher than we expect, and that pushes a couple of these Republican senators over the line. You could see it in Minnesota, you could see it in Mississippi, you could see it in South Carolina. I don’t know if you’ll see it in Ohio or Texas, but you’ll certainly see it in some of these places. That’s a real possibility. We shouldn’t dismiss it completely.

I just think that if you look, though, at where this campaign is going, what Trump is saying, where he’s going, where money is going from the national Republican campaign committees—it’s going to really solid red seats, seats that should not be in play. So I think what we’re looking at here is a big Democratic win.

The question is, how big will it be? I think that really is the debate point. Is this a wave? Is this a tsunami? Or is this, I like to call it, an extinction-level event for Republicans? I don’t know the answer to that, and nobody does, but it’s one of those three possibilities, I think.

Sargent: Yes, I agree with everything you said there. I want to also underscore that it is absolutely possible that Republicans can just hang on to the Senate barely, if their voters turn out in the places that they need them to turn out.

What’s your sense of the Senate if you had to make the call right now? Nate Silver has it at 75 percent odds that Democrats win the Senate. Where are you on this? Do you think Democrats win it?

Cohen: Yes, if you look at the poll numbers, it certainly suggests that Democrats should win in Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, possibly Iowa, possibly Kansas. Here’s the problem—

Sargent: Alaska.

Cohen: And Alaska too. Thank you. I forgot Alaska. And then there’s, you know, Michigan—we could go either way at this point, it seems to have tightened a little bit. The other races, like South Carolina and Mississippi, I’m more skeptical those things are going to flip.

But here’s the problem for Democrats. All of these races, except for North Carolina and Maine, are in states where Trump won by double digits in 2024. I mean, it’s unprecedented for a party to flip this many seats that are solid red states in one election. We’re talking about it happening in two, three, or four states. That’s kind of crazy.

That’s kind of crazy. It is crazy. And even to suggest this could happen just seems completely outlandish. But you can’t deny what the polls are telling us.

And the polls in Texas have shown James Talarico ahead pretty much since the summer. Same with Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Same with Mary Peltola in Alaska. You know, Adam Hamilton is routinely now leading in the polls in Kansas, and Roger Marshall is running one of the worst Senate campaigns, I’d argue, in the country.

So yeah, I mean, it’s crazy to think that we are at this place where Democrats could win so many places that they just have not won in years. But the data is what the data is, and the polling is what the polling is, and the early vote is what the early vote is. And it certainly suggests that that’s where things are headed. Again, it’s a question of 51 seats versus 53 or 54 seats. I think that is really the question that we don’t know the answer to at this point.

Sargent: And we should stress that polls can be wrong, if they’re off a few points, right? If they’re off a few points in a direction that favors Republicans, all of these races basically don’t go the way we want, or most of them don’t. But the funny thing is that for all the talk about the polls being wrong, what history tells us is that in midterms during the Trump era, the polls actually haven’t been that wrong.

And just to underscore this point too: basically, Democrats really only have to win two states that Trump carried by double digits to get the majority, provided they get Maine and North Carolina, which looks pretty likely. So you can see a path. It’s doable. As remarkable as it is, it’s doable, and so is a slightly larger majority, too.

Cohen: I just want to say this though. I mean, you’re right about the polling. The polling could be off, the polling could be wrong. But there’s so many other data points that just back up this idea that this is going to be a huge election for Democrats.

It’s the performance in off-year elections, which were unprecedentedly high for Democrats, overperformance in 2024. This is this year and last year. It’s the enthusiasm in primaries, the number of Democratic voters turning out.

It’s the early voting, which just suggests that Democrats are motivated to vote, and that even occasional voters who lean Democratic are turning out in record numbers. You’re seeing this in North Carolina, you’re seeing this in Texas, you’re seeing this in Virginia, to some extent Florida.

I mean, I think the only reason why so many of us are just like, I don’t know, is because so many of these battles are being fought in red territory, in Republican territory.

If these were purple states, I don’t think there’d be a question of where this is going. But you have to sort of take it with a grain of salt when you’re in a place like Texas where Democrats haven’t won a statewide election in 30 years.

I mean, in Kansas, they haven’t won a Senate race since the 1930s. So the idea that they’re going to win—I mean, it could happen. I think it might happen. But I mean, let’s just be honest, that’s an earthquake event for that to happen.

Sargent: It certainly is. Michael Cohen, always awesome to talk to you, man. Thanks for all that.

Cohen: Pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Here to make sense of the tragedy is Kristin Kobez Du Mez with her gripping and unnerving new book, Live, Love, Laugh: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made. The author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, Du Mez brings both the personal experience and the research and writing skills that the job requires. She grew up in an ultraconservative Dutch Calvinist community, attended a summer camp where girls, known as “Calvinettes,” were given “glow-ups” and taught which pastel colors best suited their skin tones. Now she is asking a community of believers to hold itself accountable to the principles in which it professes to believe. Having exposed in her earlier work the misogyny and abuse that have corrupted American evangelicalism in recent decades, and which set the stage for Christian nationalism, she knows very well that the reaction to this book, in many quarters, will be unpleasant, not to say dangerous. She does not lack courage.

The rise of a class of female enablers of an authoritarian patriarchy, Du Mez shows, is neither a novel development nor an accident. In a deep, narratively engaging history, she traces the roots of our present predicament to a nineteenth-century movement called New Thought. The formula for a twenty-first-century phenomenon like Erika Kirk, she argues, was already present in the work of Hannah Whitall Smith—an almost unknown figure for most people today but a major Christian celebrity in her time.

In The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life, which was published in 1875 and went on to sell over three million copies, Smith lays out the recipe for the new American evangelical woman. The book exudes the relentless positivity that now freeze-frames the smiles on women like Erika Kirk and compels evangelical women to insist that the sun shines all day in an unending parade of occasions to praise the Lord. Even when Smith’s own life became unspeakably miserable—several children died, her husband cheated and abandoned her, a surviving daughter married, of all people, the atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell—Smith doubled down on the conviction that “every snub and mortification” was an opportunity for spiritual growth and that she could will her way to happiness.

The critical ingredient here is the assumption, echoed by the American philosopher William James, that the mind controls reality. Think the correct thoughts, and all good things will come to you. The Lord will reward you with material security, a loving husband, godly approval—everything one could possibly desire. The Prosperity Gospel, as Du Mez makes clear, comes in early and strong; it is among America’s greatest contributions to theology.

At the core of the doctrine that stretches from Smith to the self-help pioneers of the early twentieth century, to the God-and-country nationalists of the mid-twentieth century, and to the social media influencers of the twenty-first century, in Du Mez’s telling, is a firm commitment to the salvific potential of submission. Obedience—unconditional, unstinting, utterly abasing—will set you free. The lesson applies to all believers, but it has special meaning for women in a deeply unequal society. Being happy means being happy that you are a woman. And that means obeying your (male) pastor and your husband. In everything.

The message receives its clearest expression in the work of Elisabeth Elliot, a midcentury missionary and the author of over two dozen books. Elliot is one of the more disturbing figures in Du Mez’s narrative. After her rage-filled and controlling first husband was murdered by members of an Ecuadoran tribe he was seeking to evangelize, Elliot suffered through two more catastrophic marriages to two exceptionally cruel and angry men. (Her second husband, Addison Leitch, demanded that her daughter from her previous marriage be moved out of the house.) Then she made a career of telling women that “submission to her husband was obedience to God” and that “woman was made for man,” not the other way around.

The same message today can be found in the work of Nancy Wilson, the wife of the pastor Doug Wilson, famous now as a spiritual mentor of self-styled “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth. Nancy “trained women in her church ‘to always be cheerful and never complain,’” as Du Mez reports. “A woman should revere her husband and submit to him, arrange her day around him, and ‘never speak ill’ of him to anyone. If a woman was married to a man who was not a good leader, she must ‘get lower … just get underneath him.’ If he made irresponsible decisions, she must “‘Respect the Uniform.’”

Present at the creation, too, was the dark secret of the new gospel. If you’re not happy, you have only yourself to blame. It isn’t that your husband is an alcoholic with a record of physical abuse; it’s that you’re just not thinking the right thoughts. The mindset here is an obvious invitation to abuse and exploitation, and Du Mez provides a grim bill of particulars stretching across the centuries.

Examples include Stacie Oricco, a Christian musician popular in the early 2000s. When she filed a lawsuit against her manager accusing him of having sexually abused her from the age of 14, her career was sidelined. Christa Brown, abused by her pastor as a teenager, has been excoriated by religious leaders for decades for exposing the systematic cover-up of sexual abuse by leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention. “When people talk about turning the US into a Christian nation, it makes me quake,” she warned. “To ponder what that would mean for women in this country … I have seen what it means.… And it is bloody awful.”

The other, not-so-secret aspect of this new gospel is that it is extremely useful for the rich and powerful—and especially rich and powerful men. One of the more haunting sequences in Du Mez’s book is a survey of the sordid history of multilevel marketing businesses in the U.S., which have enlisted millions of Americans, including many white Christian women, in its lower ranks. “From its inception,” Du Mez writes, “Amway marketed a religious, political, and economic vision inspired by positivity” and Amway founder Richard DeVos Sr. spoke in the language of the Prosperity Gospel: “I believe that life is good, that people are good, that God is good. And I believe … that life in America under God is a positive experience!” DeVos also had a very clear idea of a woman’s place, providing over $5 million in support to the influential preacher D. James Kennedy, who served on the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and whose complementarian views on marriage advanced a gendered view of who should do what.

Those who signed up as distributors in MLMs called themselves “independent businesswomen” and paid for their own indoctrination—purchasing motivational books and tapes, and paying out of pocket for branded merchandise to sell to their networks. One woman, who attended Tupperware parties in the 1970s, observed that selling Tupperware was not a good way to make money. As Du Mez explains, women attended the parties and bought Tupperware even when they didn’t really need more containers and “paid more than comparable products cost elsewhere,” while “dealers earned only twenty-five cents on every dollar of sales, and their compensation was often in merchandise.”

The big winners were the owners of the MLMs, who have directed their fortunes toward political donations and influence, and who promoted an ideology of “free enterprise,” “capitalism,” and “the American way” that involved stripping the social safety net and defunding public goods. (Members of the DeVos family, among them Trump’s former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, are extraordinarily deep-pocketed donors to the Republican Party.) Even when women managed to get in on the winning side of this brutal formula—as in Mary Kay Cosmetics—they largely replicated the dynamic of exploitation. 

Live, Love, Laugh is, to be clear, a history of white Christian women, and mostly white evangelical women (until the very end, when ultraconservative Catholics start joining in the fun). There is almost nothing about Black or Latino evangelical Christianity, and there is no exploration of the parallels between American conservative Christianity and comparably misogynistic and patriarchal systems around the world. This is not meant as a criticism; the tight focus of this book accurately reflects the claustrophobia of American evangelicalism, which often seems to take for granted that God came to America alone and never left. 

Where do we go from here? The emergence of the Christian social influencers, the rise of Christian nationalist women in the Trump administration, the sanctimonious show ponies on propaganda networks, and the ongoing abuse scandals that fill the last chapters of Du Mez’s story offer a grim perspective on the future. A corrupted religion is unlikely to reform itself. And yet that hope is in some sense the unstated premise of this brave new book. Here’s hoping it somehow finds a place inside the bubble, and leads at least some of the people there to listen carefully to their own words and look honestly at the world that they have helped create.

“I haven’t thought of it, but I will tell you, it would be very unfair to go through what we went through for four years with the corrupt weaponization that took place,” he explained. “Biden shielded many people, including the Congress. If you look at what they did with Congress when they set up the special committee, which was a fraud, they all got shielded.”

Congress has immense powers of its own to protect the rule of law. The greatest power that the legislative branch can wield is the power of the purse. The president can issue whatever pardons he likes without congressional obstruction. Congress, by the same token, can and should protect the rule of law by denying all federal funds to anyone who accepts one of these preemptive pardons.

Bright-line rules are the easiest to follow: Anyone who receives such a pardon should not be able to collect any financial benefit from the Treasury for the rest of their life. They would not collect Social Security or receive the benefits of Medicare or Medicaid. They could not purchase health insurance from an Affordable Care Act marketplace or take advantage of the subsidies that it provides. The sole exception should be for tax refunds, if only to reduce the administrative burden for the IRS.

A person who received a preemptive pardon would be ineligible for food stamps, housing assistance, student loans, or similar federal programs. Veterans’ benefits and pensions would be forfeited. Any company that is owned, controlled, or operated by one of Trump’s “preemptive pardon” recipients would be ineligible for federal loans or subsidies of any kind. They would also be disqualified from working as a federal contractor or serving in the federal civil service. (Congress does not have the constitutional power to disqualify abusive pardon recipients from the presidency, vice presidency, or a seat in Congress.)

Many of these programs and benefits already exclude people for a variety of reasons. Even the most universal of them is not without limitations. In 2014, Congress enacted the No Social Security for Nazis Act—a rare piece of federal legislation that does exactly what it says. Under the law, anyone who “participated in Nazi persecution” before and during World War II is ineligible for Social Security benefits. This is a vanishingly narrow group of people in 2026, but the law remains on the books.

Naturally, this is strong medicine, but it is a necessary deterrent against executive branch criminality after the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling in Trump vs. United States. Trump has aggressively and corruptly used the pardon power in the past. On the first day of his second term, he issued a mass pardon for anyone convicted of crimes related to the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, thereby rewarding those who tried to violently overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election. Other pardons during his first and second terms have rewarded sycophants and personal allies or, in some recent cases, appear to have been exchanged for bribes.

Trump is hardly the first president to use pardons in corrupt or controversial ways, of course. But he operates in a different constitutional landscape than any of his predecessors. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States two years ago fundamentally changed the separation of powers by inventing “presidential immunity” out of thin air, saving Trump from an imminent criminal trial. It also broke the separation of powers.

Suppose that the president wants to commit a crime. Before 2024, he and his associates may have feared potential prosecution by a future administration. The president no longer needs to fear it thanks to the Supreme Court. But presidential immunity does not extend to a president’s subordinates in the executive branch, who still face potential criminal liability if they help a president break the law.

A president who issued preemptive pardons prior to Trump v. United States could have still faced potential criminal charges himself. That deterrent is gone. Now, thanks to the president’s “absolute immunity” for any crimes committed through an “official act,” a president can use pardons to create a hermetically sealed bubble of criminality that no one—not courts, not Congress, not future presidents—can pop.

The pardon’s power comes from its scope and its permanence. A president can pardon anyone of any federal crime. Once issued, a pardon cannot be reversed or rescinded by another president, not even by the one who issued it. Courts have generally held that they have no power to reverse them, either. Congress cannot nullify pardons, nor can it prevent the president from issuing them, either by statute or by creating categories of crimes for which they are ineligible. That does not mean Congress is obligated to provide taxpayer funds to a pardon’s preemptive recipients.

The ban should have three important limitations. First, it should only apply to a recipient who is pardoned of a crime without having been convicted of it. Applying the ban to all pardons would sweep up honest and corrupt acts of clemency alike. The ban’s goal is not to nullify or constrain the president’s power to grant legitimate clemency, but rather to impose costs upon those who help him commit crimes. A preemptive pardon is inherently suspect.

Second, a preemptive pardon recipient should be able to avoid the ban by refusing or forfeiting the pardon. This is essential because it would prevent a corrupt president from weaponizing the ban to cut off specific individuals from federal funds against their will. Congress could allow recipients of abusive pardons to complete this step by submitting a sworn affidavit of some kind to the Justice Department and/or to the speaker of the House’s office.

It is legally incontrovertible that pardons can be refused by their would-be recipients. In 1915, the Supreme Court issued a rare but highly relevant ruling on the nature of the pardon power in Burdick v. United States. Pardon-related rulings from the high court are rare since, by their very nature, they remove someone from the legal process. The case involved New York Tribune editor George Burdick, whose paper had published an article about someone smuggling gemstones into the country without paying customs duties on them.

Federal prosecutors hauled Burdick before a federal grand jury in Manhattan to answer questions about the smuggling. Burdick refused to testify by invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. President Woodrow Wilson responded by issuing a pardon for Burdick that would theoretically free him from any Fifth Amendment perils. Burdick refused the pardon and again refused to testify, at which point he was jailed for contempt.

The Supreme Court had previously ruled in the 1833 case United States v. Wilson—a different Wilson, of course—that a pardon recipient could refuse a conditional pardon. “A pardon is a deed, to the validity of which delivery is essential, and delivery is not complete without acceptance,” Chief Justice John Marshall wrote for the court. “It may then be rejected by the person to whom it is tendered, and if it be rejected, we have discovered no power in a court to force it on him.”

Justice Joseph McKenna, writing for the court in Burdick, held that the same reasoning for conditional pardons applied to unconditional pardons, as well. “Granting, then, that the pardon was legally issued and was sufficient for immunity,” he wrote for the unanimous court, “it was Burdick’s right to refuse it, as we have seen, and it therefore not becoming effective, his right under the Constitution to decline to testify remained to be asserted, and the reasons for his action were personal.” Burdick went free.

Third, Congress should set the cutoff date for when the ban takes effect as July 1, 2024—the day that Trump v. United States was issued. No preemptive pardon issued before that date could have been issued to further a criminal conspiracy, while every preemptive pardon issued after it is inherently suspect. This would unfortunately include those who accepted pardons from President Joe Biden in the waning days of his administration. (Once accepted, a pardon cannot be later disclaimed.)

Again, Congress has no power to prevent the president from issuing pardons for federal crimes or overturn them after the fact, not even preemptive ones. What Congress can do is use its Article 1 powers to ensure that those who participated in Article 2 misconduct cannot draw any other reward from the public coffers it controls. If someone is willing to accept a preemptive pardon, Congress must ensure that it is the last benefit they ever receive from the republic.

“Describe one challenge you faced and how you surmounted it.” This inquiry, which seems a reasonable enough job-interview question, doesn’t come from a person who has history in Ben’s area, or from an HR professional. In fact, it isn’t delivered by a person at all. Ben is likely being scored by an AI assessment tool. In more than one interview, he receives a prompt, mere seconds to think of an answer and a minute or so to speak—or, as he put it, “to fill up the space”—while recording himself.

After a number of these anxious algo-exchanges, Ben gets to make his case to actual humans, albeit virtually. He has only one interview in person. He goes on to land a job with a financial firm, but he’s still bothered by the automated interactions and how they determined his fate. He found it uncanny, he said, to “speak to a machine” in virtual rooms, with “no body language to go on.” His friends have passed through similar machine gauntlets in their job searches. “Many feel alienated by it, and rightfully so,” said Ben. “It can seem like we as a society now want people to act like computers.”

For Generation Z, born between 1997 and 2012, digital arbiters are evaluating their worth all day, looming over their studies and jobs, and threatening to sculpt them into something machinelike. And while it promises to make them faster and more efficient, AI may be denying them the kinds of experiences they need to fully thrive as workers—and as humans.

Whether they’re searching for work, trying to hold onto a job as AI changes it, or still in school, Gen Z is facing what we call “anticipatory obsolescence”—the Black Mirror–ish possibility that they may be launching themselves into a future where they are no longer quite necessary, or, at best, are subordinated to an algorithmic authority. “What’s going to happen to a whole generation?” asked Ben.

Three Responses

For months, we’ve spoken to dozens of Gen Zers and identified three overlapping ways they’re responding to the rise of AI. Most are what we call AI Adaptors. They’re using large language models, but selectively, and often more because they have to than because they want to. Many are trying on the technology without really trusting where it’s going. ChatGPT to research a company? OK. Claude for brainstorming? Maybe. Gemini telling them what to do with their lives? No thanks. While they might want to take what makes them faster and more efficient, they balk at surrendering their own thinking and creativity. Their question: How can I use it without it using me?

Like Ben, many are preparing for or working in jobs highly exposed to AI, which includes not only areas like finance or software engineering, but some you might not think of, like nursing, or, ironically, human resources. How, Gen Zers would like somebody to explain, are they supposed to get good at something if AI is there interfering with paths on which beginners learn? What if relying on it is taking away their capacity to learn in the first place? Accordingly, many are trying to “AI proof” themselves by amassing skills that can’t be automated or aiming toward work where human judgment or presence is still required. Others go further, envisioning careers where they hope to master AI or make it safer and more accountable.

As veteran technology theorist and professor Ethan Zuckerman put it, describing most of his college students: “They really don’t think it’s good for society. AI has been thrust upon them, and they don’t know how to cope with the changes—will there be jobs anymore?”

The second group of Gen Zers we’ve talked to, which we call AI Reformers, have decided to funnel their frustration into the fight about what the technology will become and who gets to decide. They’re already engaged with the rules and rollouts of new technology—organizing politically, lobbying or getting into campaigns. They’re people like Nickolas Spiliotopoulos, 22, a recent graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara, who led his campus’s chapter of PauseAI US, a nonprofit that advocates for halting frontier AI development. Like many young Reformers, he sees himself as more pragmatic than ideological. As someone who studied political science, he speaks with both-sides diplomacy: “I want to be part of the movement that is regulating AI but also to find a middle ground.”

He and other Reformers often work through local chapters of groups pressing lawmakers to rein in large language models and to put AI companies on a tighter chain. Others are fighting to protect humans from displacement or demanding greater transparency and accountability around bossware and surveillance, or pushing back on the data centers proliferating like mushrooms around the country. They want to put the public back at the center of a conversation currently dominated by Silicon Valley oligarchs and their machines.

Other examples of protesters include people like Nathan Kim, a Ph.D. student in his mid-twenties at the University of Michigan’s School of Information, who has been organizing a coalition against his university’s plans to create a computing facility in collaboration with the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He and others like him, from places ranging from Tennessee to New Jersey, have been banding together against massive AI infrastructure projects. These include groups like the Climate Revolution Action Network in New Jersey, which pushed successfully to cancel a planned data center in New Brunswick and is fighting against a roughly 400,000-square-foot proposed CoreWeave facility in Kenilworth.

Finally, there is the least tamed group, the AI Refuseniks. Among them are the pranksters and tricksters actively resisting the AI-ification of everyday life. They include people like the Luddite thinker Damian Thomas, 25, a web developer in Astoria, Queens, who runs the Refusenik platform Unplatform. Its cohort also contains young artists ditching generative tools, along with journalists and other knowledge workers sometimes choosing notebooks over laptops, analog workflows over Google Calendars, and human-centered spaces both online and off. The Refuseniks are deliberately embracing the messy friction AI promises to erase—writing by hand, doing things the traditional way, and making room for slowness and imperfection.

Refuseniks don’t want to optimize away these essential parts of being human, but to throw a protective force field around them.

Easier to imagine than achieve.

A Redundant Generation?

Over the summer, a significant chunk of new job seekers were interviewed through AI-fueled hiring practices, often followed by chilly automated rejections. In the spring, a survey by hiring platform Greenhouse found that over 60 percent of job seekers had encountered an AI interview. Among the companies making these tools is Hirevue, whose prerecorded video interview platform is a favorite of employers. Users on Reddit’s r/recruitinghell have described the one-sided auditions, facilitated by Hirevue and similar companies, as “the most humiliating recruiting experience ive had” and “extremely uncomfortable,” with one weary poster offering a deadpan suggestion to use “a sock puppet or action figure/Barbie in place of you.”

For Gen Zers, job hunting can feel like a game rigged to waste their time, where the prize is a spectral illusion. One survey found that 81 percent of recruiters admit their companies post “ghost jobs”—positions not intended to be filled, but used to signal growth, harvest applicant data, or, even worse, keep current employees on edge. A few defiant Zoomers—a nickname that stuck after they were forced onto the platform during the pandemic—are ghosting back, but employers hold the cards, and some are refusing to hire this generation at all.

The old promise of entry-level work, where you find a position, learn the ropes, and make your way up, was already fading. Gen Xers and millennials can tell you that. But AI is quickening the unraveling, disrupting how young people find jobs—if they find jobs—and also what they confront when they get there. Gen Z is squinting into a fog, unsure of what’s coming, yet certain that disembodied decision-makers will have a say in it.

Technology podcaster and critic Edward Ongweso Jr., who co-hosts This Machine Kills, reminds us that young people have always discovered they have little power over their jobs. But AI, he said, is making the power imbalance harder to ignore, because now “your boss is structuring your workplace in the hopes of replacing you.”

“And we’re the grunt-force out there being asked to build the AI infrastructure,” one Gen Zer told us. “Kind of unsettling.”

Deloitte’s global 2026 Gen Z and Millennial Survey shows these pressures already impacting how young people work and plan. Nearly three-quarters are already using AI in their work, but almost a third say their organizations aren’t prepared for the changes it will bring, and another third say the AI tools they’re handed aren’t really up to the job. It seems that they’re having to work alongside machines while the parameters of what they’ll be needed for, and how much that work will even be worth, grow ever more obscure. More than half are putting off major life decisions because of financial worries. They’re hit hardest of any generation by rising housing costs, and as far as having kids? Too expensive.

All of these groups are confronted with an economy they can’t afford, a president they don’t approve of, and a political system they trust about as much as a corporate chatbot. In a poll by Axios-Generation Lab, depressively characterized as “Thumbs down on everything,” more than a quarter of 18- to 34-year-olds said they believed they, or someone they know, has already lost a job to AI, and over three-quarters say finding a job themselves would be somewhat or very difficult. The actual AI job apocalypse hasn’t arrived—yet. But the damage to Gen Z is already showing up in who is getting hired: A recent United States Census Bureau study found that employment among 22- to 24-year-olds dropped 12 percent in the most AI-exposed industries over the 10 quarters following ChatGPT’s arrival.

Ongweso noted that companies are certainly acting as if a big transformation is already underway, and even if it doesn’t happen as expected, that doesn’t change the grim reality for people who didn’t get hired or found themselves pushed into careers they didn’t want because of it. Did any young person ever say to herself, Hey, I’d like to spend all day babysitting AI agents! Probably not. And yet often, that’s where the new jobs are.

With all that to contend with, as well as layoffs, punishing inflation that snuffs out any wage gains, high interest rates, and the sky-high cost of just being an adult, it can all feel like Gen Z is being thrust into an epoch that author and AI critic Cory Doctorow calls the “Enshittocene.”

Gen Z favorite Phoebe Bridgers sings of the fatalism young people feel as everything real seems to be receding: “The billboard said, THE END IS NEAR, / I turned around; there was nothing there / Yeah, I guess the end is here.”

A generation eyes its own redundancy.

Adaptation Nation

On a June evening in Midtown Manhattan, a packed room of Adaptors gathers for “AI and the Future of Society,” a conversation hosted by the Aspen Institute’s Samuel Kimbriel with Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark. The vibe is “existential cocktail party.” On stage, the two men volley questions about what makes an ideal society.

During the Q&A, Nina Bodow takes the mic. What is the most sacred human capacity, she asks, that young people should protect from AI? Suddenly, things feel a lot less abstract. Clark’s smooth answer is to guard your attention fiercely. But, of course, AI is extraordinarily good at monopolizing just that: It’s instant, personalized, and much more emotionally validating than your roommate. In short, addictive.

Bodow, now a Yale University junior, doesn’t reject AI. She uses it every day for voice-to-text, organizing notes, and some other time-saving tasks, and as a critical sparring partner. But she won’t let AI draft or outline her work, or turn to it when she is stuck. The emergence of AI has contributed to her focus on studying philosophy, specifically ethics, where she is drawn by precisely what the technology threatens to make harder: thinking for herself. “Philosophy forces you to be autonomous in how you think, what you say, how you process information,” she said. Bodow is already envisioning a career focused on aligning AI with human interests: “The whole point is that AI can’t think about itself,” she said. To her, that still requires a brain. The human variety.

In a labor market eager to automate thought, that might be one of the few things left to put on your résumé.

Adaptors like Bodow grapple with the complicated dynamic they’ve been handed. They’re told to become AI fluent and flooded with ads for boot camps and master classes. But they’re also warned that “AI natives” risk becoming mentally stunted and shallow. At the same time, they don’t believe they can avoid the technology, and they’re fully aware that it’s creeping into every aspect of their lives—algorithmically scanning, ranking, and routing them every minute.

Universities like Harvard and Ohio State have already baked AI into the curriculum, while jobs ranging from Starbucks barista to junior banker have routinely forced young employees to work under it, clean up its mistakes, and somehow use it to do more, faster. Mixed messages fly at young people constantly like digital confetti: Build skills, but don’t become dependent. Use AI, but don’t sound like you’re using it. There are courses for that, too: You can pay to learn how to make a machine’s work sound just like your own voice—assuming you can recall what your own voice sounds like once you’ve “humanized” yourself.

Kayla, 28, is a cardiac nurse at a hospital in a North Carolina city and a reluctant Adaptor. With a few years on the job under her belt, she sees firsthand what AI can do and what it can’t. She is grateful for tools that can scan and summarize patient charts or translate medicalese into plain English, but Kayla is also watching AI chip away at her authority. The technology is supposed to help nurses, but a lot of them are being asked to bow down to algorithmic judgments that sometimes go against common sense and hard-won, on-the-job experience.

One AI program Kayla must use assesses patients’ risk of falling based on factors like gender, height, and lab results. “But sometimes it would miss if a patient has actually fallen before!” she said. When the software gets it wrong, nurses “have to debate AI, try to manipulate the algorithm” into reflecting what they already know. The people who understand the patient best end up as the system’s backup, with their expertise pushed to the sidelines and carrying less weight. Kayla said, exasperated, that “sometimes there just aren’t enough hours in the day to argue with it.” Sometimes she just gives in.

Kayla is not alone: Medical professionals early in their careers report fears of losing their clinical skills to AI. They’re also at risk of giving up their autonomy, as well as ending up as scanned and surveilled “quantified workers.”

Lucas Olslund, 25, a more enthusiastic Adaptor, contends with different challenges. A computer science major as an undergrad, he works at Fastly, a San Francisco–based cloud service company, as an engineer.

In the office, he uses AI for coding, planning, and teaching himself things, and likes that it speeds up tedious tasks and helps close the experience gap that comes with being a newer hire, freeing him to take on more responsibility. But he still wishes he had a few AI-less years at the start of his career. When Olslund needs guidance, he finds it easier and faster to ask AI rather than track down a senior colleague—someone who might otherwise become a mentor. That convenience, he thinks, comes with a cost: “It can substitute for human connection for a little bit, but it’s not real, and it will come back to bite us.”

Hiring trends offer a glimpse of what that bite might look like: In early 2026, nearly 70 percent of U.S. software development postings on the job search website Indeed targeted senior engineers. As AI takes over tasks like routine coding, companies seem to want experienced workers who can direct it, catch its mistakes, and exercise judgment. But where do experienced workers come from? Hatched from an egg?

Human mentors can show young workers how to deal with mistakes and navigate office politics, and can introduce them to people who may help their careers. They might not always have been easy to find, especially for women historically shut out from patrilineal networks of power, but what if the “mentor” is an algorithm? Clearly, getting taken to lunch is off the table.

When asked if he worried about losing his job to AI, Olslund smiled: “Oh, I’m probably good for at least two years.” His answer captures how diminished Gen Zers’ expectations have become in the AI epoch, even for those fortunate enough to be relatively well-employed.

The Reformation

The AI Reformers we’ve spoken to have many of the same feelings as the Adaptors, but they are trying to tackle the problem directly at the level of politics and power. Some are college students setting up tables on their college greens, making their case to both AI enthusiasts and those who view it as a useful tool but are ultimately shruggingly indifferent. Others are looking into the larger systems of how AI gets deployed—the labor rules, corporate decisions, and public policies that determine who bears the risks and who gets the benefits.

The mood they reflect was hard to miss in spring 2026, when students at the University of Central Florida and the University of Arizona booed commencement speakers delivering AI-pilled sermons, and again this September in North Carolina, when OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, and other tech heavyweights descended on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for the G20 Innovation Ministerial conference to wax bullish about AI’s economic promise. Hundreds of students and community members answered with chants of “Up, up with education, down, down with AI nation,” waving signs targeting everything from job turmoil to data centers to the hated Flock Safety cameras appearing around campus.

Felix De Simone, 25, is the former organizing director of PauseAI US and believes his role was about, as he put it, “educating people about the dire threat of superhuman intelligence and the need for regulation.” PauseAI US is an organization with local chapters that defines itself as opposed to dangerous frontier AI, while also abhorring more extreme forms of resistance, like the firebombing of Sam Altman’s house this year. It wants to stop the headlong rush into AI, not blow up the house.

PauseAI US argues that AI labs are racing to automate economically valuable work and that workers should have a say in how that transformation unfolds. Its agenda, in classic Reformer fashion, includes mandatory safety testing, stronger liabilities for AI companies, and the power to shut down systems posing extreme risks, as well as limits on the computing power used to train advanced models. It also insists on time for reflection on developing superintelligent AI until adequate safeguards are in place and opposes efforts to keep states from regulating AI themselves while the federal government stews.

Many Reformers want to extend labor movement half-successes against AI in, say, the entertainment industry or publishing, or argue to expand the AI Dividend, a basic income framework currently overseen by two nonprofits, that intends to claw back some of the value AI creates before it detaches from human work.

They also want to hold the tech oligarchs to account. As De Simone said, “I am tired of being lied to. You can see these multibillionaire CEOs, developing AI, risking our future…. I didn’t vote for Sam Altman.” Indeed, many Gen Zers are passionately critical of AI CEOs. In CNBC-Generation Lab’s survey of 18- to 34-year-olds, all nine AI executives who were mentioned inspired overwhelming distrust, with Palantir’s wild-eyed, shit-talking Alex Karp leading the pack.

Gen Z AI Reformers can often appear progressive, but the anxiety fueling them is broader than any one political camp. The fall 2025 Harvard Youth Poll found that 66 percent of young Democrats and 59 percent of young Republicans saw AI as a threat to their job prospects. A new generation of politicians seems ready-made to appeal to their anxiety: A recent Washington Post analysis found that both Democratic and Republican candidates in nearly 40 percent of 2026 House, Senate, and gubernatorial races had staked out positions on AI or data centers—some sounding the alarm, others touting their economic potential. They’re aware that new technology has become inseparable from fears about jobs, education, the environment, and democracy itself. But what, exactly, are they prepared to do about it?

The politics of AI are peculiar. New York state Assembly member Alex Bores recently made AI regulation a defining issue of his 2026 congressional bid in a high-income Manhattan district, and he nearly pulled off a victory. With slogans like “Together, We Can Beat the Machines,” he cast ordinary New Yorkers against the tech titans, backing AI safeguards on everything from jobs to data centers. But even this apparent backlash came with a catch, because Bores was also a proxy in the AI industry’s own battles. A fat cat pro-industry network backed by OpenAI and other tech investors poured cash into attacking him, while Anthropic-backed groups spent millions supporting him. The result was a strange kind of political choice: Voters were being asked to choose sides in a fight over AI, but the AI industry was bankrolling both sides. To some Gen Zers, that felt like no choice at all. Opponent Micah Lasher, who had the endorsement of outgoing Representative Jerry Nadler, won the seat.

In the first half of 2026, tech and AI companies and their trade groups let loose roughly $41 million buying influence in Washington, with OpenAI and Anthropic sharply increasing their spending as lawmakers eye tougher rules. Gen Zers are keenly aware that their votes—and their imaginations—are something these companies want to win over. But Ethan Zuckerman sees young people in his classes as highly suspicious of a world in which Silicon Valley overlords like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg wield so much influence, and are so deeply interlocked with politics, that ordinary voices are drowned beneath the grinding machinery of power.

Justin Seo, 22, a senior at Swarthmore College, sees AI as part of a larger crisis for Gen Z—an economy in which, he said, those at the top seem largely indifferent to whether anyone else can get ahead. “But the dam is starting to break,” he said. Then, for some, comes the worry: What will the powerful do when it does? “The American elite has really clamped down on protest culture,” another Gen Zer said, pointing to the reaction to the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America and their challenge to the AI industry as evidence that the establishment is “really afraid of people gathering their power together and using it.”

For Gen Zers, who’ll be living the longest with the consequences of this epic technological shift, getting into the political fight is crucial, but so is keeping a raised eyebrow when AI companies or the politicians they fund talk about “abundance,” “staying competitive,” or “responsible regulation.” They have to reckon with corporate America’s shareholder-first model, still stuck in the greed-is-good ethos of the 1980s that sends the gains to executives and big stockholders, leaving workers and the public to tussle over the scraps. And they can’t forget that Silicon Valley has made a dark art of outrunning regulators, exploiting loopholes, and treating the rules as obstacles to be routed around.

That leaves Gen Z with the classic choice of trying to challenge the system from within or deciding it’s not a system worth salvaging. The Reformers want a seat at the table; another group is thinking about just walking away from the table altogether.

Rage Against the Machine

In late June, riffing on the Boomers’ Summer of Love, the AI Refuseniks hosted the “Summer of Ludd,” an eight-day festival held in New York City. Its organizers urged young people to break up with Big Tech and experience public space without their phones as intermediaries. Events included a saddle stitching class; a radio class with transmitters, walkie-talkies, and a game in which participants competed to erase “toxic apps”; and daily meditation. he festival, advertised anywhere but social media, drew Zoomers with flip phones who took classes in “Luddite Rizz”—Gen Z slang for the better type of charisma required to mingle and date without apps.

Critics of the original Luddites have never tired of painting them as backward nutters, doomed in their efforts. But their resistance was hardly futile. In the early nineteenth century, these British textile workers, based originally around Nottingham, fought against the factory system that stripped them of autonomy. They laid the groundwork for the modern labor movement and, eventually, legislation that helped curb some of industrial capitalism’s worst aspects. Later, in the twentieth century, corporations would use the information revolution to claw back much of that power—automating work, monitoring workers, and shuffling production around the globe, steadily handing more power to management and big shareholders.

It’s certainly not hard to imagine corporate America using the AI boom to expand those powers again. But the lesson for today’s Luddites is that so-called technological progress can indeed be contested, slowed, and redirected to serve social goals.

Ludds are turning their rejection of digital technology into a social movement. They hold “Delete Days,” like AA meetings in a church basement, where groups gather to purge commercial apps. They also throw phone-free dance parties. At one event, young Ludds built a cardboard data center on the dance floor and then staged an action around it at the night’s end.

Ludd Damian Thomas’s resistance began in middle school, and intensified as he started rejecting the automatic use of social media—the “unwanted abuse” of technology. In the “office hours” for his site Unplatform, he teaches his peers how to organize parties, newsletters, and political events outside of the massive tech platforms. He steers them away from surveillant apps like Partiful and toward options that help build creative and political practices in other digital spaces, or in person. Much of what people use AI for, he argues, could be handled by Wikipedia or other human-curated sources. Instead, he argues, AI offers an “illusion of independence” while actually organizing a kind of control that is “tyrannical.”

Thomas wants his generation to “stop taking for granted the state of things” and reject the idea that tech companies get to decide how society works. He believes technology is often brought in to solve problems that are really failures of human organization. When people haven’t communicated, planned, or built functioning institutions, they reach for a fast technological pseudo-fix.

Seo, the Swarthmore senior, knows the drill. When he and a friend showed up to a Fourth of July gathering in New York for interns that was advertised online, they couldn’t find the event location, and their attempts to reach the organizers were shunted to a useless AI assistant. A bot had been used to handle basic logistics and field questions, “but they just created a wall” at a time when interns desperately want in-person experiences and relationships, as suggested by a recent KPMG Summer Intern Pulse Survey.

Nick Plante, 26, runs NYC Off Tech, which essentially serves as the virtual broadsheet of modern Luddism. He co-runs the cheekily named event series “Let’s Get Off Together,” a nightlife “experiment” where attendees surrender their cell phones at the door and instead connect through DJs, theatrical happenings, and occasional tech-CEO parodies. The events are meant to counter a “dispiriting” moment when the “workforce looks strange and in crisis”—a time when young people are looking for “coherence.”

Plante is tapping into a deep generational longing. A Harvard/Gallup study found “alarmingly high” rates of anxiety and depression among Gen Z adults, over half of whom lack meaning or purpose or both. But it’s not fair to call them apathetic—the survey reveals that most want to do good and help others, to find meaning and connection in a moment when both seem in pretty short supply.

Beneath the flip phones and disdain for toxic apps lies a pretty basic desire to belong. AI threatens to obliterate this as it eats into young people’s experiences and communities. The question is: Can that hunger drive them toward a real, ­generationwide solidarity?

Regeneration

Gen Z won’t be the only generation transformed by AI. But it crashes into their lives at a uniquely vulnerable moment—just as they’re trying to figure out who they are and what they’re good at, and how to carve out a place for themselves.

When AI scrambles that process, they get handed a tired, individualistic script that tells them: If technology threatens your job, just go get some new skills. If you’re scared of becoming obsolete, you need to adapt faster. The technology isn’t the problem—you are.

But young people are getting wise to the contradictions. For all the talk about how AI will make them better off and more productive, they see themselves being asked to swallow more insecurity and watch the technology crowd out the experiences they need to become productive in the first place.

For earlier generations, work was a crucial metric of measuring whether you were a functional adult in society. You might have taken a job for the paycheck, but you were still allowed to learn while you work, often getting paid while you got the training that would carry you forward. Being inefficient for a while was part of the deal.

AI threatens to break that classic bargain. The result could be a new form of generational inequality, where the learn-by-doing jobs are harder to justify economically, so the youngest are expected to somehow leap fully formed into a labor market not especially interested in forming them.

Video game Generation Zero imagines a world where young people return home to find it overrun by machines. To survive, the player has to figure out what the machines are doing, learn how to use them strategically, and decide when to fight back. There’s no one strategy that will work.

That helps explain why the three groups we encountered, Adaptors, Reformers, and Refuseniks, keep bleeding into one another. The Adaptors want to use AI without it using them. The Reformers want a say in how it is deployed and who benefits from it. The Refuseniks want to hang on to the parts of life that feel threatened when machines mediate everything. But underneath it all is a singular refusal. Nobody wants to become an NPC (nonplayer character) in a future somebody else designed, with equations cooked up in the bowels of some data center calling the shots.

Young people are up against a daunting economic, political, and technological cascade, but if Generation Zero is going to become Generation Hero, they have to fight for a future they actually want.

They’ve already grown up mistrusting institutions even more than their Gen X elders did, and have been advised to solve every problem on their own. Now they’re being asked to develop a sense of social class while AI is making it harder to get established and to form relationships where co-workers are more than Slack strangers—especially true in AI-exposed white-collar fields, where unionization has historically been weak. Thomas Ferguson, who directs research at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, commented via email that “New Deal union organizing was heavily place and community based, supported by local church groups, blue collar hobby and social clubs, and often friendly local authorities. Most of that structure has faded away, replaced in some cases by nothing at all.” Gen Z is entering the workplace with fewer community and institutional bonds, and fewer opportunities to forge them. Now they’re adding a new phrase to their resistance lexicon: “algorithmic union-busting,” as employers use AI to suss out troublemakers—thinning the ranks of potential organizers before they can actually organize.

And sometimes they wonder, why bother, if AI is just going to wipe us all out anyway?

Gen Zers tell us that older generations simply don’t get what they’re up against. Instead, headlines declare them dumber than their parents, while they’re dismissed as dysphoric doomers, phone zombies, postliterate tablet kids, allergic to work, and brain-rotted burnouts. Their wacky anti-work memes may look like brain rot from the outside, but they can also be read as resistance to a world obsessed with productivity and optimization—and to boomers calling them lazy from the security of million-dollar homes.

Rather than complain about them, or ask them to rise up and smash the existing order on their own, older generations have a job to do, too—to teach them, give them somewhere to start. “Are we going to put it all on young people who have legitimate questions about whether they’re going to feed themselves or stay healthy?” asked professor Zuckerman, a Gen Xer. “As boomers are leaving the stage, I think a lot of this is on my generation—we need to be looking at our children and saying, wow, what are we leaving?”

Metaphorical Filicide

In New York, longtime activists and Adbusters-style artists Reverend Billy Talen and Savitri D., the duo behind the Church of Stop Shopping, are mentoring a new generation of Refuseniks. Their East Village space has become a Luddite clubhouse, reviving a tradition of theatrical resistance that predates the internet takeover. They are thrilled by what they see as a brave continuation of their tradition.

It’s worth noting that a large share of the Refuseniks and Reformers we spoke to were college-educated and middle class. This gives them more freedom than other Americans have in choosing to go offline or to resist AI’s capture.

There’s a precedent here. Some of history’s famous young rebels have come from backgrounds comfortable enough to let them rebel. The 1960s marches and demonstrations were teeming with relatively privileged kids who found an identity in protest before they had one in the workplace. Today, Gen Zers from more affluent backgrounds may have a similar opening. If work can’t tell them who they are, maybe a movement can.

The generation born around the turn of the current century is far from unified as a political constituency. Young voters are more Democratic than older generations, but the 2024 elections illustrated just how politically mercurial they can be, particularly young men. Young Americans disagree sharply about politics, culture, and even what progress means. Still, collective action doesn’t mean everyone has to agree on everything. It can start with something small and local—a school using AI in ways students hate, a data center pissing off everyone from ranchers to city ratepayers, or a workplace where algorithms are making decisions they can’t challenge.

Surprisingly broad coalitions are forming around some of these problems. Across the political spectrum, people are thinking about how ordinary citizens get a share of what they produce. That’s why ideas like sovereign wealth funds and universal basic incomes are showing up across political lines. These proposals start from a useful recognition that the public should benefit from any gains coming from new technology. But neither is going to magically fix a political system awash in big bucks and a corporate governance culture where the art of squeezing money from workers and taxpayers and giving back less has been perfected over decades. And just giving people more money doesn’t necessarily give them more security if the health care system and other bloated institutions are there to take it right back. It doesn’t give them an identity either.

But Gen Zers don’t have to figure out everything right away to get going. A local fight can teach skills they won’t get from AI companions, like how to persuade and negotiate with real people and how to stick together. And sometimes, how to win.

Gen Z can sniff out inauthenticity a mile away. They need older generations to start showing up for them, listening to them, and giving them room to try things, including resistance. What’s at stake is the normalization of a late-capitalist cruelty: asking an entire generation to become fully fledged adults while denying them the experience, agency, and work that make that possible. Call it metaphorical filicide.

Ben, the AI Adaptor who began this story by speaking into a camera for an algorithm, still wonders whether the work he does will exist in a few years. He has also started thinking more seriously about faith, ancestral traditions, and the possibility of building a life around meaning-making rather than more conventional measures of success like earning power and/or being tech-au-courant.

He doesn’t think the answer is to turn back the clock. “I don’t think we can go backwards,” Ben said. That’s true, of course: He and his generation can’t stop the future from arriving. But they can’t give up their voice in defining what it means.

This story was co-published and supported by the journalism nonprofit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

When you donate, you may feel pleased with yourself; when you don’t, it can be hard to ignore the creeping sense of guilt that you’re not doing your part. But what if neither the pride nor the guilt is really warranted? What if, as the scholars Jake Grumbach and Adam Bonica demonstrate in The New Republic’s revealing November cover story, most of the money raised goes toward raising money? What if the Democratic Party “is being devoured by an ecosystem of consultants” who get paid whether a candidate succeeds or fails, and who will go on raiding our wallets till hell freezes over?

The danger of untethered profit-seeking is a theme that runs throughout this issue. Michael Friedrich follows a group of tenants fighting a plan to let a private company demolish, rebuild, and manage a public housing complex in the highly desirable neighborhood of Chelsea in Manhattan—and collect a tidy sum renting market-rate apartments alongside the subsidized units. Lynn Stuart Parramore and Alissa Quart explore how Gen Z is contending with its looming obsolescence in an increasingly AI-dominated economy. And Adam Elder shows how the Trump administration’s fealty to fossil fuel companies is contributing to rather than stemming high energy prices.

It can be hard to remember amid the onslaught of his misdeeds, but Trump wasn’t always president. Photographer Peter Adams went into the Presidential Libraries and amassed a collection of images—from Ronald Reagan’s jelly-bean jar to LBJ’s remote control—that bring to life a time before. The backward glances here, however, are hardly sentimental. Osita Nwanevu takes issue with the idea that “the world is getting worse because people are reading fewer books.” Joanna Scutts considers the complex legacy of the socialist leader Eugene Debs.

No doubt Debs would agree that the fundraising emails are right on one count: Democracy does need us. Whether it needs the consultants is far less clear.

Then, up pops a screen offering to break the purchase into six or eight manageable—and interest-free!—payments. How great is this, you think.

Sometimes, and for some consumers, this can be great. But for others, it’s yet another new, tech-enabled financial trap. In October, the lending site Lending Tree released its annual report about the use of these so-called buy now, pay later loans, a relatively new fintech product that allows people to quickly get approved for small loans, through apps on their phones, for online or in-store purchases.

Almost half of Americans used at least one of these loans in the past year. An increasing number have used them because they can’t afford everyday goods like groceries, are holding more than one loan at a time, and have made a late payment on them.

In other words, during these hard times, these loans have become another way to squeeze money out of working people increasingly desperate to make ends meet. Worse, we don’t even fully understand how these loans are going to impact consumers in the long term.*

That’s a big reason why some Democratic lawmakers are looking for more answers about how much these loans truly cost working Americans. “Millions of Americans use buy-now-pay-later because they’re stretched thin,” Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren said on X in May, when she joined three other Democratic senators in sending a letter to the credit reporting bureaus. “The last thing they need is to be penalized on their credit score for it—especially with no transparency, no consistency, and no recourse.”

Buy now, pay later loans—from companies like PayPal, Affirm, Klarna, and CashApp Afterpay—can seem like a lifeline. Borrowers can sometimes get one without a hard credit inquiry, and the balances aren’t always reported to the credit reporting bureaus. (Affirm does voluntarily.) But when users miss payments with some of these companies on some products, they can be hit with late fees, and too many missed payments mean the account can be turned over to a debt collector. Moreover, customers who sign up for auto-pay may face overdraft fees when payments are automatically deducted from their checking accounts.

Experts worry that these terms aren’t always clear to borrowers. During online checkout, the loans seem like easy installment payment plans, often with little or no interest. They can seem worry-free. But if borrowers don’t pay the loans back within certain time frames or get bigger loans, they might have to pay high interest rates that aren’t always clear up front, making them a more expensive option over time. And if they borrow too much or are late too often, they can find themselves cut off from more of the loans they’ve been relying on.

What’s worse, people often turn to these products when they’re already deeply in debt. In September, researchers at the Century Foundation and Protect Borrowers, a nonprofit that fights predatory lending, released a report showing that half of all workers’ wage gains since 2022 have gone to debt service, mostly to credit cards and auto loans. That means that rather than using any increases in wages to save, get ahead, or improve their lives, they’re using extra money they earn to pay back the debt they’ve taken on as their lives have grown increasingly unaffordable.

That research didn’t even include data from buy now, pay later loans. But it helps explain why consumers have had to turn to this additional lending option to pay for their basic expenses. Their income gains have gone to debt service, their credit cards are already maxed out, and their interest rates are high. They turn to buy now, pay later because they have nowhere else to turn.

“It’s often people who are already distressed who are taking this on as just a lifeline to be able to pay their groceries for the week or kind of meet their basic needs,” said Angela Hanks, chief of policy programs at the Century Foundation. She said the loans were initially marketed for big, luxury purchases, but that’s not how consumers have used them. “What we’re actually seeing is that people are using it because they’re maxed out on their credit card, they have a paycheck that hasn’t meaningfully gone up in quite a long time, and they still need to buy groceries to feed their kids. They still need to put gas in the car, they still need to buy their kid who’s grown out of their shoes from last year a new pair of shoes. So they’re finding people who are using it more and more to make their ends meet.”

Customers can quickly find themselves in over their heads. “The collection tactics of the buy now, pay later lenders are much more aggressive than what you see from your average credit card company,” Hanks said. It also helps explain why consumers are so upset about the economy. They’re not just paying higher prices for gas and groceries; they’re paying higher prices plus interest rates higher than 20 percent because they’ve had to use credit cards or take out loans to buy them.

So what can the Democrats do, if they retake power in one or both houses of Congress? Back in May, four Democratic senators—Warren, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii—send letters to Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion asking for more information about how buy now, pay later loans were used by the credit bureaus. While the buy now, pay later lenders don’t automatically report information to the bureaus, those bureaus can get that information and have been less than forthcoming about how they interpret it and incorporate it into their scores. “The current infrastructure of credit reporting in the United States is extremely opaque; the credit reporting industry has been very secretive about its scoring models, which presents major, potential consumer protection issues. With the rise of data harvesting, credit reporting companies hold more information about consumers than ever before,” the letter said. TransUnion published information about how the loans could impact credit in October.

Under President Biden, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau tried to regulate buy now, pay later loans like credit cards, but the industry sued and President Trump stopped trying to enforce the new regulations. (The industry argues that many existing regulations already apply to some of loans they make.) While some states, like Illinois, New Jersey, and New York, have started to try to regulate the loans, New York Representative Daniel Goldman, a Democrat, has introduced a bill to subject them to the Truth in Lending Act. The bill has been referred to the Financial Services Committee, which ranking member Maxine Waters is set to lead if Democrats retake the House. She has supported the CFPB’s regulations of such products in the past.

Because credit scores will impact how many Americans, especially those with lower incomes, can buy cars, get apartments, or meet other basic needs, the senators want to know how the increasingly high buy now, pay later debt burdens they’re carrying will be used in those scores’ calculations. Just having the debt could cost consumers more money over the long term because it could impact the interest rates they pay. It could cost them even more if they fall behind and enter collection.

It’s like a bomb waiting to go off. Americans have been using their wage increases to service their debt. Now that real wages aren’t rising as fast as they were, we could be on the edge of a looming debt crisis.

It’s a problem that’s been building for decades, Hanks said. “I think we’re just at a point where people are feeling quite broken by it,” she said. “They’re feeling it because they can’t get affordable health care, because they can’t get affordable childcare, because they can’t get affordable education, and all of those things keep getting more and more expensive. And there’s sort of less help from the places where they should expect it,” That means there are more opportunities for banks and lenders to step into the void. “They’re around every corner, ready to sell them a product that’s quite expensive in order to meet that need.”

* This article has been updated.

Democrats are less afflicted by this malady than Republicans. Thus, smart guys like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama become president and, in the latter two cases, serve two terms. Even a smart woman like Hillary Clinton managed to win the popular vote in 2016, though this achievement was denied the smart woman Kamala Harris in 2024. (In both instances, what likely did them in was not that they were smart, but that they were women.)

But the Democrats’ greater attraction to brainpower invites a pathologically high level of scrutiny from the GOP. Republicans are forever trying to catch Democrats revealing themselves to be snobs. Obama got barbecued for saying in 2008 that people in small Midwestern towns, where “the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them … get bitter. They cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.” Eight years later, Hillary Clinton got barbecued for saying that “to just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables.’ Unfortunately, there are people like that. And [Trump] has lifted them up.” What made these statements wounding was that they were true; as former editor of The New Republic Michael Kinsley famously observed 36 years ago, “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.”

Also true (and quite funny) was Obama’s wisecrack October 24 about Trump gilding everything in sight:

He is very focused on home renovation. He should be on HGTV! Guy’s building a ballroom that is bigger than the White House, paved over the Rose Garden—paved it over!—put a helicopter pad on the South Lawn. And then there is just gold everywhere. What’s up with the gold? I mean, he’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. It’s just gold everywhere! He is clearly not focused on lowering prices for you!

Fact check: Trump does indeed focus excessively on elaborate refurbishments in the White House and elsewhere. Maggie Haberman of The New York Times estimates that these pursuits take up 70 percent of his time. The ballroom is indeed bigger than the White House, and Trump really did pave over the Rose Garden and slap a helipad on the South Lawn. And yes, there is “gold everywhere.”

But what’s captivated the popular imagination this week is Obama’s perceived insult to the Cheesecake Factory restaurant chain.

The Trump administration’s counterattack is to portray any slight to the Cheesecake Factory as a slight to the masses. “For you to say it’s a Cheesecake Factory, that just shows why you were a lousy president,” Trump replied. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (net worth: $600 million) immediately went out to a Cheesecake Factory two blocks from the Treasury building, ordered a $22.95 French Dip Cheeseburger with grilled onions and sriracha mayo, and said: “I had a great meal. I always have a great meal, and I would tell the Martha’s Vineyard set to give it a try.”

“Has never been in a cheesecake factory,” Scott Jennings, a conservative columnist and onetime deputy director of political affairs in the George W. Bush White House (net worth: perhaps $5 million) wrote about Obama on X. “Undefeated at condescending to regular folks.” Even the centrist Atlantic posted a piece by Elaine Godfrey headlined, “Leave the Cheesecake Factory Out of This.”

Oh, please. Twenty-three bucks for a cheeseburger is more than three times what you’ll pay at McDonald’s for a Big Mac or a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, and twice what you’ll pay for a much better burger at Five Guys. My editor interjects that the best burger in the D.C. area is the Jon’s Classic at Jon’s Joint, which sells for a mere $8.95.

The point is that insulting the Cheesecake Factory (average per-customer check: $31.79) is not anything like insulting Cracker Barrel ($16) or even Olive Garden ($24). The Cheesecake Factory is a high-end chain whose flagship original restaurant—still in business 48 years after it opened—resides in Beverly Hills, California, across the street from an Erewhon where a 33-ounce bottle of natural spring water will set you back $48. As it happens, I ate lunch at this landmark a couple of weeks ago. The waiter was friendly (notable because we were a big party) and the food was … unobjectionable. If you consider the Cheesecake Factory prole food, then your bank account is fatter than mine.

For the record, Obama’s tiny dig at the Cheesecake Factory—mostly he was mocking Trump’s mania for gilding things—referred neither to the clientele nor the food, but rather to the restaurant’s deliberately over-the-top décor, which CNN this week described as “theatrical” and “at once Egyptian and European, with a touch of Las Vegas flair.” Add gilding, and a Cheesecake Factory would indeed look like Trump’s penthouse apartment in Trump Tower, the aesthetic Trump is bent on recreating inside the White House and all over Washington.

Perhaps the objection is that Obama mocked not the proletariat but the nouveau riche. But to the limited extent Obama himself possesses richesse, it’s a whole lot more nouveau than Donald Trump’s. The Trump fortune (net worth: $6.6 billion) builds on the killing Trump’s grandfather Friedrich Trump made running a brothel in the Klondike Gold Rush of the late 1890s and the real estate fortune amassed atop that by Trump’s father, Fred C. Trump. According to a New York Times investigation, Fred Trump was paying little Donald $200,000 per year at the age of three, and big Donald eventually accumulated “at least $413 million” from Fred. By contrast, the Obama fortune (net worth: $70 million) is less than 10 years old and has no parental component.

If the curse of patrimonial capitalism was once ameliorated somewhat by the blessing of refined taste, Trump is living proof that we can no longer count on that. Trump’s taste in architecture and design is execrable, rendering it all the more poignant that this is the realm where Trump feels most confident. “I am a very aesthetic person,” Trump explained last year, sounding exactly like Dustin Hoffman boasting repeatedly in Rain Man, “I’m an excellent driver.” Trump is, as Spy magazine observed decades ago, a short-fingered vulgarian, and it’s telling that when Spy leveled this memorable accusation, Trump raged against the “short-fingered” part but didn’t seem to register the “vulgarian” part. In most respects a deeply insecure man—hence the frantic boastfulness, especially about his intelligence—Trump is at his least defensive and most serene when describing his strengths as a builder. That’s because he feels unaccountably confident about them.

Yes, I am faulting Trump for possessing bad taste. If that consigns me to the cultural elite, then I’ve got a ridiculous amount of company. In July a Washington Post-Ipsos poll asked more than 2,600 adults in the United States their opinion about Trump’s ballroom, the 250-foot Arc de Trump, and his remodeling of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Nearly 65 percent said they were dissatisfied with or upset by them. The feeling of revulsion is so widespread that, Dan Diamond and Luke Connors reported last week in the Post, Democrats have spent at least $1.8 million on ads highlighting Trump’s decision to tear down the East Wing to make way for the ballroom. A Post-Ipsos poll of 2,545 Americans earlier this month found that 59 percent agreed Trump spent “too much time” on his construction projects in the White House and around Washington.

If this be the cultural elite, then it’s somewhere between 59 and 65 percent of the entire country, which doesn’t strike me as very elite at all. It’s not just Ivy League toffs like me who can’t stand what Trump is doing to the capital’s monuments. It’s the majority.

What that majority understands is that Trump’s redecorating binge is an offense not only to good taste, but also to our shared sense that gilded pomp ill suits the American democratic tradition. The right’s inept attempt to defend Trump by remaking the Cheesecake Factory into a symbol of the working class can’t hide the glaringly terrible values emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Would a tribune of the proletariat shower the rich with tax breaks, stuff his own pockets, keep the hourly minimum wage at a miserly $7.25, and piss all over labor unions? He would not.

The good news is that the working class appears to be catching on. On Election Day, Trump may discover that, for once, voters care less about punishing elitist snobbery than about getting the president’s tiny fingers out of their pockets.

At a hearing, Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui refused to rubber-stamp a superseding complaint, which would have added an obstruction charge against former intelligence analyst Nikki Floris, who ran the intelligence division at the Washington field office, and Bradley Benavides, a former deputy assistant director for counterintelligence.

Faruqui told the prosecutors that if they wanted to file a superseding complaint, then a judge would first have to find probable cause that a crime had actually been committed. Instead, the government had transmitted the complaint in the middle of the night and expected the judge to sign it.

Faruqui said that he believed the government had broken precedent by seeking a superseding complaint without first receiving a judge’s signature.

“I’m concerned with your view as to what the law is,” he said. “Why today, on this one case, have you changed the entire history of how you charge cases?”

After Floris and Benavides surrendered on arrest warrants last week, Faruqui had ordered a hearing on Tuesday in order to establish probable cause for the initial complaint. Notably, the DOJ did not obtain a grand jury indictment against the ex-officials.

On Monday night, the government submitted an unsworn affidavit it claimed would support an additional obstruction charge. Faruqui refused to sign the complaint without reviewing it or finding probable cause, and proceeded to hold the hearing on just the first complaint.