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 Christie, 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.

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 mostly unregulated 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 reported to the credit reporting bureaus. But when users miss payments, 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 because they’re not reported to the credit bureaus. 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.

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. 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.”

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.

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.

“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.

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.

House Judiciary Committee Democrats released a 50-page report on Monday accusing the Trump administration of a vast cover-up of the president’s involvement in Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal sex schemes. The report cites the experiences of 11 women, FBI records, and documents released through the Epstein Files Transparency Act. But one detail in the sprawling investigation hinted at an explicit attempt by Blanche to keep Maxwell from implicating the president in Epstein’s crimes.

Blanche notably did not ask Maxwell any questions about a certain Jane Doe, despite the fact that she was on the FBI’s radar for alleging that Trump attempted to orally rape her and subsequently punched her in the head when she was 14 years old.

At one point in the interview, Blanche vaguely mentioned testimony that alleged Epstein and Trump were involved with a 14-year-old, asking if Maxwell recalled “any obviously under-18 women coming to give him a massage?”

Maxwell volunteered that she believed Blanche was “talking about Jane.” But Blanche didn’t bite, instead responding simply, “yeah”—evidence that he was aware of the victim’s accusations.

As soon as Maxwell began to address Jane’s claims, Blanche “cut her off and instructed her not to share specifics,” according to the report. At other points, Blanche interrupted Maxwell to redirect her attention away from Jane’s allegations, arguing that he didn’t want to “get into … he said, she said.”

“Absolutely, not. I’m not—I don’t want to go there either,” Maxwell responded, adding, “I’m not going to do that.”

Maxwell tried to independently mention Jane later in the interview but was again shut down by Blanche, who abruptly cut her off to say he didn’t want to “talk about individuals.”

“The whole point of the conversation was not to uncover information but to create a conspiracy of silence and strategically deter Ghislaine Maxwell from sharing information that was not public at the time regarding the relationship between Trump and Epstein,” the report alleges.

Bolsonaro’s allies reported his escape to CNN Brasil, and Reuters also confirmed he is headed to the United States, citing two sources.

Brazilian outlet O Globo reported that the far-right senator “was convinced he could be arrested.” While both Bolsonaro’s departure point and destination are uncertain, another Brazilian outlet, Metropoles, reported that he was on his way to Florida to seek asylum. Bolsonaro’s father, former President 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.

Bolsonaro, who has still not conceded the election to Lula, had his passport canceled by the Brazilian Supreme Court due to an active money-laundering case against him. He had until 11 a.m. Tuesday to turn his passport in, but of course didn’t show—fueling questions about his whereabouts.

The Trump administration has been quite friendly to Bolsonaro’s family and antagonistic toward Lula’s left-leaning government.

Neither Bolsonaro nor the U.S. State Department have made a public statement.

The court denied an emergency request to reinstate administrative closure, the practice that allows judges to temporarily delay deportation cases, after the Trump administration made an agreement with the state of Texas to end it in June. The request came from three cities—Baltimore; New Haven, Connecticut; and Columbus, Ohio—and from nonprofit legal aid organization Centro ⁠Legal de la Raza.

The court’s denial was one sentence long without any explanation, a standard practice for emergency requests, and there were no reported dissents.

The agreement to end administrative closure was made in federal court in Texas on the same day the state sued to challenge the practice. A judge also approved the agreement the same day, which the plaintiffs cited in their lawsuit as proof the White House colluded with Texas to get rid of the rule.

“The need for interim relief is ​underscored by the collusion that infected this suit from its inception,” the cities and organization wrote.

Administrative closure used to be common, with immigration judges using the tool to clear packed dockets, especially when a person had proceedings that could prevent their deportation such as a visa petition or appeal of a criminal conviction. Conservative politicians in places like Texas argue that the practice allows immigrants without legal status to stay in the country indefinitely.

The Biden administration tried to make the practice permanent in 2024, but after Trump returned to the White House, the Department of Justice announced it would no longer defend administrative closure. Tuesday’s ruling follows Friday’s federal appeals court decision that immigrants aren’t entitled to bond hearings. In less than a week, the Trump administration has successfully eroded immigration law in order to deport more people.

This comes as the U.N. prepares to vote on whether to condemn the U.S. embargo on Cuba, the longest-running economic war and trade embargo in modern history. Parrilla has accused the U.S. of pressuring other countries into voting against a condemnation of the embargo, even as the most recent fuel blockade has led to the collapse of the once-revered Cuban medical system, doubling the infant mortality rate and putting millions of Cubans at risk. Waltz spent the entirety of his speech Tuesday calling Cuba’s government corrupt, accusing its leaders of having a private island and Rolex collections, and blaming them for their country’s current situation—even as the U.S continues to block fuel from reaching the island.

Parrilla interrupted Waltz’s speech by calling for a point of order, arguing that the rules of the General Assembly had been violated, referencing Rule 71, which holds that “a representative may rise to a point of order, and the point of order shall be immediately decided by the President in accordance with the rules of procedure.”

The U.S. Permanent Representative Mike Waltz is a disgrace to what it means to be a diplomat.

The man talk, walks, and acts like a character from the film Idiocracy.

Cuba will not stay idly as this person eviscerates the principles of the United Nations.…

— David Ramírez Álvarez 🇨🇺 (@DvidTwit) October 27, 2026

Waltz disagreed, saying that Parrilla just didn’t “like” the points he was making. “He doesn’t like the hard truths,” he said as Parrilla began to approach the podium, still demanding that his point of order be recognized. “You can come and intimidate all you want, I ask you to back away from this podium!”

Waltz then turned back to General Assembly President Khalilur Rahman.

“Mr. President, this individual needs to back away from this podium, he’s not going to intimidate me in the United States of America like he tries to do to political prisoners! I’m the representative of the United States of America, back up!”

“You are a liar!” Parrilla retorted.

“Back away! … Do you understand who you’re dealing with?” Waltz threatened while Parrilla continued to call him a liar. “This is the United States of America. Back up.” The meeting was then suspended.

NEW: @USAmbUN Mike Waltz just got into a shouting match on the floor of the general assembly with Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla

"He's not going to intimidate me in the United States of America, like he tries to intimidate political prisoners," Waltz… pic.twitter.com/DgZZ4v8w7w

— Josh Christenson (@jchristenson_) October 27, 2026

While President Obama loosened many of the embargo’s restrictions during his tenure, President Trump doubled down on them—especially in his second term when Cuban American Marco Rubio became Secretary of State. The fuel blockade has induced food and water shortages, daily blackouts, a mass exodus from the country, and a medicine shortage that has forced Cubans to buy lifesaving drugs off the black market. Even ventilators keeping premature babies alive aren’t working. The U.S. has continued to insist that these sanctions are targeting Cuba’s Communist government, but they are obviously having direct negative impacts on the Cuban people. Even still, Waltz’s outburst indicates that the Trump administration has no intention of loosening the economic “noose” on Cuba anytime soon.

Vance was asked Tuesday to explain the rationale behind a fast-tracked Justice Department lawsuit working to preemptively block the Last Frontier’s Senate election results in the case of a Democratic win, but instead he offended the intelligence of voting Alaskans.

At issue is a general election ballot that will feature two men named Dan Sullivan. There’s Senator Dan Sullivan, the Republican nominee who will be prominently noted as the “incumbent,” and Dan J. Sullivan Jr., an independent candidate who remains unaffiliated with any official party.

“Why shouldn’t Alaskans find it insulting that the administration is suggesting they can’t read the word ‘incumbent’ on their ballot and know to vote for Senator Sullivan?” a reporter asked Vance at Joint Base Andrews Tuesday morning.

Vance’s explanation wasn’t particularly satisfying.

“I think the question presumes quite a bit. I mean, look, a lot of Alaskans are going to go and look at the ballot and realize exactly what you said, that this is all a big fraud,” Vance said, claiming the reporter said something that he did not.

But the vice president’s answer only went downhill from there as he suggested that Alaskans are so overwhelmed by the burden of daily labor that they don’t have the time to properly read election ballots.

“But people are busy. People have lives. People have jobs. And when you put a person on the ballot, explicitly to try and confuse voters, I think that’s electoral fraud,” Vance added.

The second Sullivan initially filed to run as a Republican in the Senate primary in May, days before the filing deadline. State Republicans have since argued that Sullivan worked with Democrats to cook up the scheme, accusing him of attempting to snatch votes away from the two-term senator in a flagrant bid to aid Mary Peltola, a former U.S. representative and the Democratic nominee.

But the unaffiliated politico has rejected the allegations.

“I entered this race because I am unhappy with the 12 year record of the current Senator and I feel we need a change,” Sullivan wrote in a social media post at the time. “It’s that simple.”

Hyde-Smith, who is up for reelection next week, was supposed to speak after Trump introduced her but upon reaching the podium, she said one sentence and then bolted.

“Is this not the best president of our lifetime?” Hyde-Smith told the crowd, before stepping down. Trump quickly attempted to spin her abrupt departure.

“Thank you, Cindy. I love that, you know? Sometimes they get up and they talk for 10 minutes,” Trump said.

Despite the rally being held in a Southern, staunchly Republican state, Trump was interrupted at least three times by hecklers during his own speech, including one who shouted, “Shove that ballroom up your fat ass!” While Trump dismissed the protester as being “paid $250 by [George] Soros,” it seems Hyde-Smith was scared to be on the stage with Trump for too long.

Trump’s historic unpopularity is bringing the entire Republican Party down, putting safe states like Mississippi in play. Anti-Trump protesters would have been unheard of in the Magnolia State in previous years, but the president’s policies have caused a backlash even in deep red states.

Hyde-Smith’s reelection campaign wasn’t going well before this rally. In February, in response to people upset over high beef prices, she said, “You know you have so many proteins to choose from.” That was quickly seized upon by her Democratic opponent, Scott Colom, who put out an attack ad where a man grilling burgers said, “Pick another protein? I’d rather pick another senator instead.” Colom trails Hyde-Smith by only three points in the latest poll.

In a complaint made in March 2025 and obtained and published Tuesday by The PunchUp, a whistleblower who worked for the FBI’s Information Management Division described the chaotic, high-pressure process of readacting the Epstein files for release.

“The director has threatened to fire [FBI staff] if the job is not done by his made up deadline, and has already tried to slim down the FBI,” the whistleblower wrote. “What better way than to fire us during this ever changing process, or as scapegoats for the DOJ’s lack of proper procedures.”

The complaint came as the Department of Justice shed thousands of employees.

John Sullivan, former section chief in the intelligence division, told The New York Times in January that Patel had berated employees on the redaction team during a conference call, telling them to work faster and that he’d fire anyone who didn’t meet his deadlines—a claim that is now reinforced by the whistleblower’s accusation.

The whistleblower also warned that reviewers were not removing personal information that could be used to identify bureau employees, and that details they’d be instructed to leave unredacted could expose survivors’ identities. The whistleblower raised concerns that the DOJ would publish the material without further checks and blame the FBI for any mistakes.

“I am concerned that the rush deadline on the project, for no [discernible] reason, will lead to mistakes that could destroy people’s lives,” they wrote.

Catherine Sheehan Bruno, assistant FBI director and chief ethics and compliance officer, responded to the complaint on March 24, 2025, saying she was obliged to report the allegations. The following day, an FBI lawyer confirmed that the employee was willing to be identified to the inspector general. Then the FBI closed its own case. It’s unclear whether the inspector general took the matter any further or whether anyone charged with reviewing the Epstein files was subsequently fired.

In the end, there were thousands of redaction errors in the DOJ’s massive release of Epstein-related documents, which allegedly exposed the names of at least 100 survivors. Nearly 40 nude photos of women, possibly underage, were mistakenly released unredacted, while an innocuous photo of President Donald Trump somehow was redacted.

CNN reported that Ryan Higgins, who has closely advised Hegseth since he assumed office, has used his social media platforms to spread racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and xenophobia. Before joining the Pentagon, Higgins worked with Ben Carson’s 2016 presidential campaign, as well as with Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk. 

In 2024, Higgins, who calls himself an “American Settler” on X, posted that “Islam teaches death to all who do not comply.” In January, he wrote that “violent illegal immigrants and even many ‘asylum seekers’ are destroying the entire planet. This is not just an America issue. They act like barbarians, killing and raping our white women.” The very next month, he called immigrants “absolute animals” who “by definition and action, have no interest in assimilating and embracing the culture. These people many times come from barbaric cultures which has no place in the western world.” And in February, he asked, “How long until the monarchy is dethroned by Muslims?” 

In January, he begged American Christians to vote or “lose America forever.” This summer, he claimed that “separation of church and state does not exist,” and said that the WNBA had a “hatred for Christianity.” 

Higgins also doesn’t think women should have actual jobs or get abortions. 

“No ‘career’ will ever give you the fulfillment you’re looking for that can only be found from being a mother,” he wrote in May. “Don’t believe the lies.” 

“If you are still claiming this is a ‘lump of cells’ you’re a retard and a liar,” he said of those with pro-choice views. “Anyone who takes a life should be charged with murder....  I’s that simple. Heck, we teach our kids not to squish ants because they are God’s creation, and yall are chopping up babies. Disgusting.” He also compared abortion to human sacrifice, and that those who received them were akin to Satan. 

Higgins has also railed against the LGBTQ community, calling them a “satanic cult.” And back in 2020, Higgins proclaimed that “while there are some pockets of racism in this country and every country on earth, there is NOT a ‘systemic racism’ issue in the US.” 

This is the top spiritual adviser to a man who can essentially drop bombs on whoever he wants whenever he feels so inclined. It’s no surprise that the person with Hegseth’s ear also thinks he’s some kind of modern white crusader sent to save America from infidels (anyone who isn’t white or Christian or heterosexual or a housewife). 

Fine extended his venom beyond just Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar while speaking with NewsNation on Monday, arguing that anyone caught fabricating details on their citizenship paperwork should be thrown out of the country—even if that included Melania Trump and Elon Musk.

“I believe that anyone who lied on their paperwork to become a citizen should be denaturalized and should be deported,” Fine said.

He was then specifically asked whether the current crusade against Omar should extend to high-powered immigrants tied to the Trump administration.

“Do you think this type of scrutiny should be placed on others who are high-profile, with connections to the administration?” asked NewsNation’s Nichole Berlie, citing as examples the first lady and the world’s first trillionaire, both of whom were naturalized in the U.S. within the last three decades.

“I believe we should go back to 1990, and we should reevaluate everyone who has become a naturalized citizen,” Fine responded. “Because what I am understanding is that the kind of fraud we’re hearing about from Ilhan Omar is endemic in Minnesota.”

“I think Ilhan Omar should be the first; she certainly should not be the last,” Fine declared. He notably did not make any allowances for Trump’s entourage.

MAGA conservatives have rumbled for years—without evidence—that Omar married her brother as a form of immigration fraud into the U.S. The conspiracy first emerged during her 2016 campaign for the Minnesota state legislature in a since-deleted post on the conservative blog Power Line, where an anonymous source was quoted as saying that Omar’s ex-husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, was related to her by blood.

Omar has vehemently and repeatedly denied the unfounded allegations, which have been disproven by her marriage certificate. Responding to the conspiracy in 2016, Omar described the insinuation that she had married her brother as “absurd and offensive.”

But Republicans have really turned up the temperature against Omar in recent days. Just two weeks ago, Homeland Security agents raided her home in an attempt to uncover evidence that her age did not match her original citizenship paperwork. Omar told reporters that agents “went room by room” and took a total of 17 items.

In a statement at the time, Omar called it “an outrageous abuse of power and an unprecedented escalation in the weaponization of federal law enforcement to target political enemies.”

While a race for insurance commissioner may seem at first glance to be mainly of local importance, this election could have implications well beyond California, the world’s third-largest insurance market. In two-thirds of counties across the United States, home insurance now costs more than property taxes. Over the last several years, the rise in the average cost of home insurance—a necessity for receiving a federally backed mortgage—has been triple the rate of inflation, swelling by 46 percent since 2021. And one of the country’s top affordability issues is also a climate issue. Major insurers have fled neighborhoods and even whole states where they’ve had to make massive payouts as a result of hurricanes, flooding, and wildfires, leaving public officials to erect privately operated insurers of last resort that take on the kinds of risky policies companies don’t want on their books. Rates for California’s insurer of last resort, the FAIR Plan—now consisting of nearly 700,000 dwelling and commercial policies—rose by an average of 29.1 percent earlier this month; enrollment in the FAIR Plan has swelled by more than 157 percent since September 2022, from 2 percent to roughly 5 percent of the state’s single-family households.

To address this sorry state of affairs, state legislator Ben Allen—who currently represents the Pacific Palisades—is pitching reforms to the state’s rate-setting process; expanding grants that would make it easier for homeowners, business owners, and neighborhoods to protect their properties against wildfires; and bringing insurers back into the high-risk areas they’ve fled over the past several years. Former San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim, meanwhile—the top vote-getter in the June 2 primary—is proposing an ambitious, publicly run “single-payer” disaster insurance program that is noticeably rattling the insurance industry. But for Kim, desperate times call for desperate measures. “Right now California and many states are in a situation where we have two choices: We either let them raise rates, or they leave California, or threaten to,” she said. “That’s not a healthy market. That’s a hostage situation.”

As households pay more, she points out, insurers have collected tidy profits. Nationwide, property and casualty insurers last year enjoyed their most profitable underwriting year in over two decades. Insurers’ underwriting income—what’s left over from premiums after operating expenses and payouts on claims—surged from $24.3 billion in 2024 to $68.7 billion in 2025. Insurance companies last year also earned $111.6 billion from investing premium income. For insurers, their business model worked as intended: A less intense disaster season for the rest of the country in 2025 helped balance out catastrophic losses from California’s destructive Palisades and Eaton fires. Insured losses from those events reached $37.5 billion, and insurance companies still had nearly $1.27 trillion in reserves. The cost of homeowners’ insurance in California, meanwhile, jumped by 21 percent. “Instead of actually addressing risk or trying to mitigate risk to make a portfolio safer,” Kim told me, “what they’ve figured out is how to make more money than ever before despite growing risk.”

Insurance is regulated at the state level, and California is one of just 11 states that elects insurance commissioners. Kim hopes to leverage what she sees as an underutilized power of the office: its ability to license companies’ ability to operate. Her campaign has, for instance, proposed mandating that companies that want to sell Californians auto insurance—reliably profitable policies—must also offer home insurance. Her proposed nonprofit public disaster insurer—which would require legislative approval—would be financed by a levy on insurers, collecting some of the income from premiums Californians are already paying. Like private providers, a public disaster insurer would invest income from premiums and buy reinsurance—i.e., insurance for insurers—while guaranteeing disaster insurance for all.

The proposal seems radical only insofar as it challenges an arguably more extreme consensus: that a handful of for-profit companies’ pricing decisions should decide how society plans for the climate crisis. While there are certainly details to be worked out, Kim’s concept for nonprofit, state-run disaster insurance would be a means of allowing California to do more of that planning and prep work in-house and at scale. Although a series of state-level policies have sought to incentivize households and businesses to invest in hardening their properties against flooding and wildfire risk—through grants and state-mandated discounts on premiums—a public disaster insurer would let the state reinvest what would constitute profits and executives for private insurers directly into mitigation. “We would take excess capital and drive it back to communities in the form of fire and flood mitigation,” Kim said. It’s “the only way to make insurance affordable in the long run and reduce risk.”

Unlike most insurers, Kim added, a state-run disaster insurer wouldn’t invest in fossil fuel companies whose products are helping intensify storms and wildfires. Along similar lines, Allen’s would require insurers to be transparent about their fossil fuel investments. Kim’s program also includes a range of smaller-scale consumer protections, like stopping insurers from raising rates after a claim is filed; charging insurers interest on delayed payouts; tackling price discrimination in auto insurance; and scrutinizing insurers’ definition of the “reasonable profit” they’re permitted to factor into proposed rate hikes.

The high stakes of the California insurance commissioner race are apparent in the money pouring into it. Some $6 million has now flowed in across the primary and general elections. Kim and Allen have both agreed not to accept donations from industries that stand to be impacted by the insurance commissioner’s decisions, including insurance companies. But the nonprofit newsroom CalMatters reported on Monday that a number of PACs—including some funded by insurance industry interests—have spent roughly $3.2 million to support Allen’s campaign and $1.5 million opposing Kim. Allen has been clear that he hasn’t courted these donations. As he told CalMatters, “I didn’t ask for this and don’t welcome it.” Election law prohibits coordination between candidates’ campaigns and PACs. Unlike donations made directly to campaigns, that is, candidates aren’t able to return funds donated to independent spenders.

Although relatively small amounts of spending in the race are coming from the insurance industry, the list of donors lining up against Kim seems to suggest that major business interests in California see the contest as important for reasons that reach beyond insurance. A win for Kim—who’s been endorsed by Bernie Sanders—could be a bellwether for progressives’ broader ability to tap into populist outrage over how one of the country’s most important and inscrutable industries makes its money. CalMatters detailed the PACs wading into the race. Major insurers like State Farm have largely stayed out. Three bail bonds insurers each made a $10,000 contribution to a PAC supporting Allen, which also took in $9,500 from “an industry that appears to be connected to the bail bonds industry” (per CalMatters) and $48,000 from a health insurance PAC. The biggest spender in the race is a super PAC called Californians for an Affordable Future, which has devoted all of its $2.1 million in spending to backing Allen. The group is funded overwhelmingly by crypto billionaire Chris Larsen, a prolific political donor nationally and in California, where he’s spent roughly $12 million to oppose the state’s proposed billionaire wealth tax. JOBSPAC has devoted roughly a quarter of its total spending on the insurance commissioner race, having so far contributed $1.51 million. Sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce, the group’s major funders include Meta, Google, and its founder Sergey Brin, as well as several investor-owned electric utilities, including PG&E and Edison International. Other major donors to pro-Allen PACs include the California Association of Realtors and the California Business Roundtable.

The moneyed interests on Kim’s side are decidedly more modest. Her main outside spending support has come from the California Working Families Party, where she served as executive director before deciding to run for the office. The group has poured $607,000 into the race, accounting for roughly 70 percent of its total spending this cycle. Its largest donors are the wife of Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings; real estate developers Wayne Jordan and Quinn Delaney; and labor unions including the California Nurses Association and the state council of the Service Employees International Union.

California is certainly unique. But states around the country are grappling with similar problems: ballooning premiums; private insurers that cherry-pick the most profitable policies, offloading riskier properties onto poorly managed insurers of last resort; and a for-profit sector that’s fundamentally ill-equipped to undertake the kinds of planning required to navigate the climate crisis. Rising temperatures promise radical changes to just about every sector of the economy. The question isn’t whether insurance will be upended, but who gets to write the rules of how to weather the future.

In the new book Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East, author Matthew Cole reported that the United Arab Emirates paid Kushner millions to oust Tillerson, who had allegedly become extremely cozy with the Qataris.

Tillerson, who served as secretary of state from 2017 to 2018, had publicly opposed a blockade on Qatar, and the Saudis and Emiratis urged Donald Trump’s White House to fire him. When Tillerson was finally fired via tweet, Kushner apparently had been secretly pushing for his exit for months.

“In Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, Tillerson’s removal proved once again Kushner’s influence with his father-in-law,” Cole wrote.

A source with knowledge of the UAE’s secret arrangement with Kushner told Cole that the president’s son-in-law had even pressed UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, referred to as MBZ, to speed up their agreed-upon payment. A month later, the UAE sent $50 million via Azerbaijan into a bank account in Cyprus for Kushner.

Kushner’s lawyer has denied that he had an account in Cyprus, and denied that he asked for or received any money from MBZ.

Tillerson’s manufactured ousting caused a panic in Qatar—but the problem also presented its own solution: It could simply pay off Kushner too. In late March or early April of 2018, the Qatari government quietly informed Kushner they intended to help him secure his property at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. After that, Trump appeared to soften his hardline stance against the Qataris, but it’s unclear what, if anything, he knew about the foreign government’s deal with Kushner.

Kennedy told the Kent County GOP in Grand Rapids, Michigan, “There’s 500 million Arabs in the world. And yet they don’t produce science. They don’t win the Nobel Prize. They don’t win the Fields Prize. They don’t win the Wolf Prize. They don’t produce literature.

“They were the first to make books and they, in the thirteenth century, typical Muslim princes had more books in their libraries than in all of Europe. Oh, and all of that tradition has been destroyed by the Muslim Brotherhood. They’ve created stagnant societies that do one or two things: hatred and war and victimization,” Kennedy said.

The remarks are not only offensive, they are inaccurate. Three Arabs have won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, four Arab people and one Arab organization have won the Nobel Peace Prize, one Arab has won the Nobel Prize in literature, and two Arabs won the Wolf Prize for achievements in chemistry.

Kennedy immediately faced a massive backlash on social media.

“Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel in Literature in 1988. Ahmed Zewail won the Nobel in Chemistry in 1999, after winning the Wolf Prize. Omar Yaghi won the Nobel in Chemistry in 2025,” user Jordan Guy pointed out. “Algebra is an Arabic word. So is algorithm. The math on this claim doesn’t work.”

Journalist Mehdi Hasan said, “One of the men who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry last year was a Palestinian-American, Omar Yaghi. Racist POS.”

Saudi Arabian influencer Eyad Al-Hamoud called out Kennedy in Arabic, citing four recent Nobel winners. “The strongest part is that in the responses, they remind the secretary that under Arab rule, the greatest sciences emerged—ones we’re still living off to this day:

“Algebra and algorithms, development of trigonometry and equations, observatories, surgery and anesthesia, the hospital system, modern optics with Ibn al-Haytham, experimental chemistry and distillation, preparation of acids and water clocks (and much more besides),” Hamoud said.

Even Kennedy’s claim about the Muslim Brotherhood is inaccurate, as it doesn’t even have political power in the country where it was founded. But Kennedy’s speech (which comes close to violating laws against federal employees engaging in political campaigns) was meant to denigrate the Michigan Senate candidacy of Egyptian American Abdul El-Sayed, whom conservatives continue to brand as supporting the Muslim Brotherhood despite his repeated disavowals. Never mind that he also has a medical degree as well as a doctorate in public health from Oxford University.

Inside Washington

Here’s what’s missing from the affordability discussion

In a midterm season focused on affordability, one big thing is being sidelined in campaign rhetoric: actual poverty. Crushing budget cuts kicked in this month, with government numbers now showing that more than five million Americans have already lost their SNAP benefits due to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or OBBBA, changes taking effect. More could follow. But compared to fuel prices, SNAP remains a backburner issue for many Democrats. Advocates working on hunger policy say that has to change.

“It’s frankly scary to think about how bad it could get if our leaders don’t listen to constituents and take action,” said Anne Filipic, CEO of Share Our Strength, a hunger relief organization. In the country as a whole, SNAP participation has fallen by 13 percent since the OBBBA, also known as H.R. 1, was signed in July 2025. That pencils out to around 5.5 million people, including two million children, who lost their benefits. Some states have been hit harder than others. In Arizona, the number of people enrolled in SNAP was slashed in half.  

In Alabama, more than 97,000 residents lost their SNAP benefits between January 2025 and August 2026. That number, explained LaTrell Clifford Wood, a hunger policy advocate at Alabama Arise, “is enough to fill the football stadium, the Jordan-Hare Stadium, at Auburn University.” Alabama is one of many states that doesn’t have extra space in its budget to account for increased costs, and it has already had to make funding changes to keep its program up and running.

Despite the acuteness of the SNAP cuts, they’ve only become a headline issue for the 2026 midterms in a few key races. In California’s 22nd congressional district, for example, progressive Randy Villegas is challenging incumbent Republican Representative David Valadao, who voted for the OBBBA. In the Central Valley district, one in four families rely on food assistance. In the state, 300,000 people have already lost their benefits since the bill was signed. “Like so many people in the Central Valley, I grew up in a working-class family where we relied on programs like WIC, SNAP, and Medi-Cal to get by,” Villegas wrote in a statement to The New Republic. “These very same programs are now at risk because David Valadao voted to cut them to give tax breaks to billionaires.”

In Kansas last week, Senate candidates Adam Hamilton and Senator Roger Marshall sparred over SNAP cuts during their debate. “As he laments the SNAP benefits, he’s managed to cut SNAP benefits for thousands of children across the state of Kansas,” Hamilton said during the debate. “Apparently, our sitting senator is not ashamed of letting kids go hungry.”

While SNAP in particular hasn’t gotten a lot of airtime, the cost of groceries for all Americans has been a major talking point in the midterms. Lawmakers and advocates are increasingly trying to tie SNAP cuts to the broader food affordability crisis. Last week, Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins outlining what she calls the “food misery index.” According to analysis from Warren’s office, the combination of inflated grocery prices and SNAP cuts has cost Americans $22 billion since OBBBA was signed. 

Meanwhile, the anti-hunger community is looking ahead to the day after the election, and setting demands for lawmakers. “Certainly, we’re aiming for a repeal of H.R. 1,” Filipic said. “But [we’re] also looking at some more immediate steps that can be taken. In particular, delaying the cost-sharing provision.”

That provision is set to start in October 2027 and would shift more SNAP costs to states based on their error rates—a measure of how accurately benefits were sent out to recipients. That change would force states to pay millions more on SNAP than they ever have, which could be downright impossible for states with the tightest budgets. This, in turn, could cause millions more to lose their benefits. The states with the highest error rates were granted a two-year delay before the cost shift kicks in, and advocates want every state to receive the same delay.

“Democratic leadership like Mr. Schumer, Mr. Jeffries, need to know that this is a priority,” said Gina Plata-Nino, SNAP director at the Food Research & Action Center. “We hear them talking quite a lot about health care, which is super important. We don’t necessarily hear them talking about SNAP.”

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

Last-minute get-out-and-vote operations are in full swing. Kansas Reflector reporter Tim Carpenter spoke to Becca Peck of Overland Park, Kansas, who has knocked on an astonishing 4,627 doors in Johnson County and plans to keep going in the final week before the election. “Normally in the midterms, I will get a lot of people that say, ‘I’m not voting this year.’ This year, everybody’s voting,” Peck said. Carpenter noted that the numbers somewhat support this impression. As of the end of last week, 73,000 registered Democrats, 20,000 registered independents, and 60,000 registered Republicans had voted early or by mail. The total of 154,000 early ballots cast is considerably ahead of where that number was at the same point in the 2022 (119,000) and 2018 (92,000) midterms. Kansas’s Senate race has gotten unexpectedly competitive this year, with Democrat Adam Hamilton tied with or even a couple points ahead of Republican incumbent Roger Marshall in recent polls. 

“They are not crazy. They’re not making it up,” Urban Institute fellow Gregory Acs told Stateline’s Kevin Hardy, discussing new research that suggests 49 percent of families are now struggling with basic living expenses due to price increases. The increasing gap between voters’ views of the economy and the economic indicators (GDP, unemployment) that politicians typically rely on has been the topic of a lot of debate recently—spurring the use of the rather dismissive term “vibecession” to describe consumer pessimism. But this new research, Acs said, shows that people are “not being marketed into feeling bad. They really do have struggles.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

On Tuesday at 10 a.m., the Brookings Institution will host an online discussion about the complexities of college pricing, specifically “how families can navigate these decisions to choose a college that is a fit not only academically but also financially, and what changes are needed to improve the process.” Speakers will include Sarah Reber, Phillip Levine, Christina Lopez, and Ron Lieber.

On Wednesday at 1 p.m., the Center for American Progress will host an online discussion about policy approaches to the challenges that small businesses are facing. In addition to the usual problems of navigating economic upheaval, or tax advantages that disproportionately accrue to larger players, “an estimated 6 million business owned by Baby Boomers are expected to need to transition ownership by 2035 as their owners retire, raising urgent questions about how to ensure successful business transitions and preserve the local businesses that communities depend on.” Speakers will include Virginia Representative Don Beyer, Terri-Nichelle Bradley, Kathleen DeLaney Thomas, Gina Schaefer, Anne Zimmerman, and Michael Negron. 

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Four Questions For: Manny Pastreich, President of 32BJ SEIU, headquartered in New York City

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

A: I’m the president of 32BJ SEIU, the largest property service workers union in the country. Right now, we are running campaigns across the East Coast to get pro-labor candidates elected and flip the House—we have more than eight competitive House races just in our coverage areas. This past week, hundreds of 32BJ members knocked on doors and made phone calls. At the same time, we are preparing for what happens if the administration doesn’t honor the will of the voters. 

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

A: Facing large employers and a hostile federal administration, we’ve had to look for creative solutions on the state and local level to give workers a voice on their jobs and in the ballot box. Currently, we are bargaining contracts for 70,000 Uber/Lyft drivers, thousands of security officers, and over 10,000 airport workers, who are all trying to achieve the wages and benefits they need to not just live but to thrive. The majority of our union members are immigrants, so the impacts of the administration’s cruel attacks on Temporary Protected Status designations and immigrants generally is destabilizing for our members, their families, and our communities.

Q: What was your biggest success in the last year or two?

A: In addition to the industry-leading contracts we have won for cleaners and residential workers, we have opened the door for Uber and Lyft drivers to have a union. The union of 70,000 drivers will provide a powerful voice and path forward for so many more who are deemed to be independent contractors without many of the protections so many of us take for granted.

Q: What keeps you going in these stressful times?

A: On Saturday, I was with 300 SEIU members ready to knock doors in New Jersey in D-7. The energy was amazing. Our members know we have the power to win at the bargaining table, win in politics, and work toward a vision of a better society. They motivate me every hour of every day. I am truly lucky to have that in times like these.

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

You may be old enough to remember the wave elections of 2006, 2010, and 2018. But when was the biggest wave midterm election in U.S. history, when the opposition party picked up a mind-bending 110 seats? Hint: It was a very long time ago, and it was the Republican Party that gained. (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

—Michael Tomasky

The president visited Corinth, Mississippi, on Monday night to support the midterm efforts of Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, an incumbent Republican in an increasingly tight race against Democratic nominee Scott Colom. Trump was in the middle of rambling about the condition of the White House when he was heckled about his $600 million ballroom project.

“Shove that ballroom up your fat ass!” a man shouted from the crowd.

It was at least the third time that night Trump was interrupted by a dissenting voice, but he didn’t appear too bothered by the intrusion. “Go home. Go home,” Trump responded, laughing.

The crowd, however, went bananas. Thousands of people began to boo. Then they stood up, threw their fists in the air, and chanted, “USA, USA.”

The president, in turn, claimed that the protester was “paid $250 by [George] Soros,” and lamented that he was interrupted “just at the punchline” of his story.

“These people are sick,” Trump said. “For $250 he broke up my punchline, and it was a beautiful—we have to have a beautiful, well kept, White House.”

Trump knocked down the historic White House East Wing last year to make way for his enormous ballroom. He did so without obtaining permission from Congress or the requisite agencies. And he has been practically obsessed with its construction ever since.

An analysis by The Washington Post in April found that, by that time, Trump had invoked his ballroom in roughly a third of his public remarks, far outpacing any mentions of his supposed policy priorities.

The president has repeatedly claimed that the 90,000-square-foot expansion would be free of charge to the American public and entirely funded by private donors, but that is far from the truth. Earlier this year, Trump pushed Congress to sign a $400 million check for the ballroom’s construction. Several Republicans backed the strategy, arguing that the cost could be offset to taxpayers by reallocating on national park funds and custom fees.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes 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.

This got Trump ranting and raving on Truth Social late Monday night.

“JUDGE ASKS FOR NOTIFICATION AS PUBLIC GOLF COURSE PROJECT, IN WASHINGTON, D.C., IS BUILT. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR TO APPEAL THIS UNCONSTITUTIONAL REQUEST,” he wrote. “We believe this Project is totally ‘as of right,’ and that the judge does not have the Constitutional Right to ‘ask for or receive notices,’ which are time-consuming, unnecessary, expensive, and unconstitutional. We will immediately appeal this decision.”

He went on to claim he must ignore the court ruling due to “wayward” balls on the golf course.

“To have to give advanced notices to a judge who has no expertise in Golf, Architecture, Landscaping, Construction, or anything else having to do with building such a World Class Project, is not fair, appropriate, or Constitutional,” he continued. “In its current form, the Course is extremely dangerous to play, in that the narrow and nondescript fairways are far too close together, leading to a constant barrage of people being hit with wayward shots, and the echoing throughout the air of the word, ‘FORE!’ The judge has absolutely no right to hold up this very important and beautiful Project.”

This latest crashout comes just over a week after Trump called Reyes a “crazed lunatic” after she lambasted the Trump administration for giving her last-minute notice that it would start cutting down trees in the park. When Justice Department attorney Marissa Piropato argued the government’s actions over the weekend were “not a renovation,” Reyes called her excuse “preposterous,” “doublespeak,” and “completely beyond the pale.”

While East Potomac Golf Links was already slated for renovations, Trump’s federal takeover of the project—which aims to turn the once beautiful and accessible course into a massive property to host championship golf tournaments—has been a complete legal mess.

President Donald Trump’s oldest son spent two days traveling with Kremlev in August. A guide told the outlet that during the trip, Trump Jr. killed one Altai argali, an endangered sheep valued for its large horns. News of the hunting trip follows a bombshell report that Kremlev dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars on Trump Jr.’s wedding in May.

Kremlev is president of the International Boxing Association, which is financed by Gazprom, a Russian state–owned energy company. Kremlev has extensive ties to Putin: The Russian president has positioned Kremlev as a central figure in the sports betting industry and chosen one of his companies to run the national lottery. In 2023, Putin nationalized Russia’s largest car dealership company—and Kremlev promptly became its owner. Kremlev is also involved in a sports education organization called Healthy Fatherland, which has been sanctioned by Ukraine for allegedly abducting and relocating Ukrainian children.

After the trip concluded, Trump attended dinner with Mongolia’s President Ukhnaagiin Khürelsükh. A government spokesperson posted on social media that the two had discussed relations between the United States and Mongolia, as well as potential business opportunities. The post was removed soon after, and Trump’s spokesperson claimed it was an informal meeting where they discussed the outdoors. Khürelsükh’s spokesperson said, “They did not discuss politics or official visits.”

Trump’s spokesperson separately stated that the first son has “a personal friendship, not a business relationship,” with Kremlev. But intelligence experts warned the Financial Times that the relationship still posed a major risk.

“It really doesn’t matter if people have the most above board intentions,” Holden Triplett, who served as counter-intelligence director on the National Security Council during Donald Trump’s first administration, told the outlet. “The moment the Russian security and intelligence services figure out someone has a relationship with anyone of high value, they will try to weaponize that.”

The Department of Justice alleged that the former FBI director leaked national defense information 10 years ago, according to court filings made public Monday. The DOJ claims that Comey was the source of national security information that ended up in a 2016 New York Times report.

Prosecutors filed a “waiverless criminal information” in Washington, D.C., federal court, allowing them to bring charges without an indictment and extend the 10-year statute of limitations to get one. Comey vowed to fight any charges in a video he posted Monday.

“It would almost be funny if it weren’t such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice, one that we cannot become numb to. Nothing’s changed with me, I’m still innocent, I’m still not afraid of these people, and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary,” Comey said, adding that prosecutors waited too long to bring the charges.

President Donald Trump still holds a grudge against Comey over the FBI’s investigation into ties between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia. He fired Comey in 2017, and in Trump’s second term, the DOJ tried to indict the former director for allegedly lying in a 2020 congressional hearing, only for that case to fall apart because the prosecutor was improperly appointed.

Later, federal prosecutors charged Comey for somehow trying to threaten the president’s life with a social media post of seashells on a beach spelling out “86 47.” The government argued that Comey used “86,” a slang term meaning “get rid of,” to say “kill” and used “47” to mean Trump, the forty-seventh president of the U.S. That case remains pending.

The new charges came just hours after a judge ruled that Comey’s daughter Maurene, the former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, was wrongfully terminated in July 2025, and ordered the DOJ to reinstate her with back pay. No reason was given for her dismissal, although her last name may have been a factor.

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

Donald Trump has been ranting like crazy on Truth Social about elections over the last couple days. He raged at Senator Lisa Murkowski, fumed about imaginary voter fraud in the coming midterms, and seethed that the Brazilian election was rigged.

We think it’s not a coincidence that this is happening even as we’re now seeing early voting data emerge and it really doesn’t look good for Republicans. In fact, we’re seeing a number of MAGA data analysts who are warning of a bad election based on this right now.

So is this panic justified? We’re talking to Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, because he’s been closely following the early voting on his Hopium Chronicles Substack. Simon, thanks for coming on.

Simon Rosenberg: Greg, it’s always a pleasure.

Sargent: Good to see you, Simon. So Trump has been raging a lot lately. He seethed at Lisa Murkowski, who objected to his effort to sue to block the election if the GOP loses in Alaska. Trump said this:

“The Republicans’ worst senator by far is Lisa Murkowski of the great state of Alaska. The Democrats are trying to steal this important Republican seat, and if that happens, everything we’ve done for Alaska will come to an immediate halt!”

Simon, it does look like Democrats are a hair up, but it is on a knife’s edge. I’ve got to think that if Democrats win Alaska, they’re probably winning the Senate. And that’s why he’s panicking about it. What do you think?

Rosenberg: Yeah, look, he’s had a really bad few weeks. You know, the inflation reports were terrible. The jobs report was terrible. Brent crude is up at $115 a barrel today, right? The Middle East war is getting worse. I mean, nothing has gone right for him in these final few weeks before the election.

And we’ve seen it play out in the polling. I mean, the last round of polling that was done by The New York Times and everybody else, every single one of the articles said he hit a new low. The generic ballot was at plus 11 for us on average. So the battlefield underneath him has deteriorated in the last few weeks. And I think they are legitimately now starting to panic.

Sargent: Well, Trump also had this insane tweet where he said this: “Anybody reporting voter fraud in the past elections or the upcoming 2026 midterm election will be paid one million dollars upon the arrest and conviction of those that created the fraud!”

So if you’re Donald Trump and you think that millions and millions and millions of people are voting illegally, that means he’s going to pay out a shitload of money, isn’t he?

Rosenberg: Yeah. I mean, look, and his performance on the stump has been erratic. He looks terrible. I mean, he’s bloated, and even the makeup is not helping him. The MAGAs just got their butts kicked in Serbia and Brazil.

You know, and the other thing, Greg, that I just don’t think has gotten enough coverage is, there’s just been an incredible amount of bad news spinning out of the White House. Infighting, people getting fired.

It feels like they’re closing with chaos instead of with strength. And you’re starting to see it in how they’re approaching the final ad spend in the race, and also what they’re doing with his time. I think they are in a form of panic now.

Sargent: Correct. And I do think this is related to the early voting figures we’re seeing now. We’re going to stress, this early voting is not necessarily predictive, and we’ll get into that. But some MAGA figures are now panicking about the election, particularly the early vote.

One of these people is Jennica Pounds, who’s a big MAGA account that goes under the name Data Republican. She posted this: “I’ve been asked about early voting analysis. The dilemma I have is that my platform is big enough that being too blunt can affect morale.”

She then said she won’t announce the numbers on X, adding: “You must turn out and bring friends and brace yourself on election night. Even Texas is going to be a fight.” Big credit to The Bulwark’s Will Sommer for catching this.

Simon, there you have it. If she puts up the actual early voting data, it’ll depress morale too much on the right. Your thoughts on that?

Rosenberg: Yeah, look, I mean, there are a handful of states where the numbers are incredible for us right now. North Carolina and Georgia and Texas, for example, and Kansas and Indiana and Nebraska and New Mexico. I mean, we’re seeing real wave numbers, right, in these early votes.

And so I think that the Texas numbers have been a collective shock for them, you know, for all of the sort of right-wing data people. And also the North Carolina and Georgia numbers. As we get more early in-person voting in, they’re getting more pessimistic.

Sargent: OK. So let’s walk through the early voting data as of today, Monday afternoon. Simon, how many states are we getting early voting data out of right now?

Rosenberg: Well, we’re over 40 now, Greg. So most of the country is now in some form of early voting. And tens of millions of people have voted, and tens of millions more will vote between now and Election Day.

Sargent: So we’ve got 40 states right now reporting early voting data. This includes a number of states with big Senate races. How many people as of now have voted early in total nationwide?

Rosenberg: So in the latest TargetEarly data today, 27 million have voted, which is about four million more than had voted at this point four years ago. So turnout is up, which is a sign of intensity, which is a good sign for us.

Sargent: OK. So 27 million people have voted early as of right now. We think 53 percent of the early vote is Democratic, correct?

Rosenberg: Yeah, and 39 percent Republican. So this is a good number, and we should be happy with that number, in part because we’ve seen turnout come up so much since 2022.

Sargent: OK, so 53 to 39, Democrat to Republican. What was the partisan breakdown in 2024?

Rosenberg: At this point it was 47-44. So we only had a three-point lead. And this time, as you were saying earlier, we have a 14-point lead. So we’re doing about 11 points better than we were at this time in 2024.

Sargent: Right now we’ve got an early voting electorate that’s 11 points more Democratic than the one in 2024, right?

Rosenberg: Yep. Greg, the most significant data we have in the early vote so far, the stuff that means the most, I think, about where this election is going, is that we’ve seen a big surge compared to 2022 among the voters in our coalition. So Black voters are voting at a rate 10 percent higher. Eighteen-to-29-year-olds are up 25 percent compared to this point in 2022, and Hispanic-Latino voters are up 41 percent.

And the overall electorate—at this point in 2022, the electorate was 75 percent white. Today it’s 70 percent white. These are huge shifts compared to the electorate that showed up in 2022. And remember that we’re also doing better with all these demographic groups, in terms of the Democrat-Republican vote, than we were in 2022.

So not only are they voting in much larger numbers, they’re going to vote much more Democratic. And so this is a very encouraging sign about what’s going to happen all across the country in the election in 2026.

Sargent: Just to clarify for people, when you say that Hispanics are up 41 percent relative to 2022, what you mean is that the share of the early vote as of now is that much higher among Hispanics than it was in 2022.

Rosenberg: You’re seeing a really incredible surge of Hispanic voters, and it’s everywhere. I mean, it’s not just in Texas and California. It’s in every state that we have data.

If I can just read a couple of examples to this, Greg, just to give people a flavor. The Hispanic vote share is 35 percent higher in Texas, 44 percent in California, 15 percent in Arizona, 25 percent in New Mexico, 35 percent in Colorado, 51 percent in Illinois, 84 percent in Virginia, 70 percent higher in New York, 45 percent higher in Nevada, 59 percent in New Jersey, 58 percent in Georgia.

So what all that means is that this is a universal trend. It’s not surprising, frankly, given how Trump and Stephen Miller have disproportionately targeted Hispanic families and families in Hispanic communities, his dismal treatment of people in Latin America during his time, and his desire to become viceroy of Latin America.

And so, to me, this is a very significant event. And it’s one of the reasons that places like Texas are so competitive. Because the old line is, this is waking a sleeping giant. Well, Donald Trump sure looks like he’s woken a sleeping giant here in our politics.

Sargent: That’s really fascinating, the treatment of Latin America being a big contributor to this. And I think that will be a big narrative coming out of this, as well.

You brought up the fact that the white vote is kind of declining as a share of the early vote right now. And in fact, that’s one of the things that’s inspiring this MAGA panic. This MAGA pollster Rich Baris put it very well. Here he’s talking on OAN about the early vote in North Carolina. Listen to this.

Rich Baris (voiceover): The Black vote share, and increasingly Hispanic too in North Carolina, is typically not this much of the early vote. And I love this about the Southern states, because we have a larger group of subgroups, you know, including Black and Hispanic voters. We’re looking at potentially a pretty low white vote share. We do expect that to get more Republican as time goes on, but Republicans are running significantly behind where they are. And a big part of that is not only that Black vote share is almost double what it has been in the past as of right now, but—this is where Republicans really need to step it up.

Sargent: So here Rich Baris is treating North Carolina as a sort of baseline for other states. In other words, he’s seeing this happening nationally. And Rich Baris has also elsewhere agreed with an interviewer who said that Republicans are facing, quote-unquote, disaster.

Simon, it does look like the declining white share of the early vote is an important story, doesn’t it?

Rosenberg: Yeah, and it’s because it’s big, you know. I mean, these are big movements. A movement of, you know, five points in a demographic group is a sizable movement. We’re seeing 10-, 25-, 41-point shifts among parts of the electorate, and two of these groups had swung to Trump, right, in 2024. And certainly I think one of the stories is, there may be no groups that are feeling more betrayed by him than the ones that loaned their vote to him in ’24, right?

And so I do think that the electorate is younger. There are far more people of color in it than in 2022. This is all very encouraging stuff. But yes, what we would have wanted, and what would have been righteous and just, would have been for voters of color to have turned out in large numbers as a way of punishing Trump for his rancid white supremacy. And we may be seeing that play out now all across the country.

Sargent: Well, another MAGA data guy, Mark Mitchell, had a really interesting tweet. More panic here. He was responding to someone who pointed out on X that Trump’s campaigning right now isn’t working.

This person pointed out that Trump is not a good closer and should have just stayed in the White House. So this MAGA data guy, Mark Mitchell, said this in response: “Good pollsters knew this would happen instinctually. Guess none of the highly paid ones had the balls to tell Trump.” Close quote.

Simon, that’s harsh stuff. It is a big story right now that Trump just isn’t anything like what he used to be with his voters. It’s also just obviously true that his pollsters didn’t have the guts to tell him this, right?

Rosenberg: I have a slightly different take. I think they did tell him. I think that in his vainglory and his arrogance and his addled state, he just always believed that judgment would not come. The reckoning would not come. They would spend their way out of it. Democrats are weak and pathetic, that he couldn’t lose to Schumer and Jeffries.

He had all these things in his head, right? You know, the war would be resolved and gas prices would go down. He had all these scenarios in his head where what is happening wasn’t going to happen. And it didn’t happen that way.

And he’s now closing out the election campaigning and spending money in places like South Carolina and Mississippi, you know, and the House battlefield continues to erode. And because, Greg, what happens in a wave election like this is that it’s almost inevitable that the party [in] power sees the election turn against them by a few points at the end. And that’s exactly what’s happening.

And I agree with the MAGA commentator that his campaigning isn’t helping him. He’s saying crazy stuff on the stump. He’s generating negative news. He’s not closing with a positive, strong message for them. And in fact, in the D.C. political press, in Politico and other places, the amount of griping about how crappy Trump has been on the stump and how much trouble he’s causing them has been kind of shocking, to be honest. They know they’re in a lot of trouble, and they know that he’s not going to be able to save them. And they thought they had a firewall with all this additional money they had, and it’s proving not to be the case.

Sargent: It absolutely is remarkable, the leaking about Trump at this point and the level of rage among Republicans at Donald Trump right now. But on the other hand, screw you, Republicans. You brought this on yourselves, right?

That aside, Simon, I want to pour cold water all over everything we’re saying right now, in this way. All right, look, here’s the thing. Like, the House looks like it’s probably a foregone conclusion. Anything can happen, of course, but it does look as if Democrats are pretty much certain to take the House. The Senate, on the other hand, not at all certain, right?

OK, so Democrats are, you know, in the polling average, they’re maybe a point or two up in every one of these races. Like, if you had told me six months ago that that was going to happen, I wouldn’t have believed it. And it’s pretty amazing that they’re up a point or two in races like the one in Texas, the one in Ohio, the one in Alaska.

But the thing about this is that all these races are touch and go. They’re incredibly close. And it’s really not hard to see all of them going against Democrats, really, or maybe enough of them going against Democrats that you guys fall short of the four that you need to flip. I mean, that’s the thing. So tell me why I shouldn’t necessarily place too much stock in the early vote.

Rosenberg: No, I don’t think it’s throwing cold water. I think it’s reality. I think that these are all very close races. You know, they’re in very hard places for us to win. Many of these states, we have no recent history of performing well.

We don’t have the kind of infrastructure underneath us in many of these places that allows us to close with the kind of strength that we would have in places like Georgia and North Carolina, where there’s more historic infrastructure there. And we have very little history of winning in places like Kansas and Alaska and Iowa and Ohio and Texas. We haven’t won a statewide race in Texas in 32 years.

So I think you’re not throwing cold water. You’re giving an accurate picture. Final point, Greg, is that what you’re getting at is the reality that we are being outspent in these Senate races by astronomical numbers, unprecedented numbers. There’s just a worry that we don’t really know what will happen because of that, because we’ve never actually gone through an election like this.

And so I think the sort of prudence that the Senate campaign people have shown has been appropriate, given just the outrageous levels of money and how much we’re being grossly outspent in all these races.

But I just interviewed Adam Hamilton today. The early vote in Kansas is through the roof for us. He told us today that he was at an event in Pratt, in a red part of Kansas. A group of farmers came up to him and complained about the tariffs and the fertilizer costs. He said this state is going to go blue.

I think let’s just hope, fingers crossed, right, that things break our way in these final eight days, that the trends are going in the right direction, and that we close and we win this thing in the Senate. But you’re right. I mean, could we fall a little bit short in these Senate races? Of course we could. I mean, these are very close races in places that we just don’t have a lot of history of doing well in. But I’m very encouraged about where we are, and we’ve got to put our heads down and do everything we can to push this thing towards us in the last eight days.

Sargent: You mentioned this in passing, so I just want to highlight it before we say goodbye. Donald Trump later this week is campaigning in, yep, South Carolina. And that sure says something about where they think the election is.

Rosenberg: They’re spending money, Greg, in this final week in Nebraska, in Kansas, in Mississippi and South Carolina. You know, in a campaign at the end, you can tell where their strategy is based on where the candidate goes and where they’re spending money. The candidate’s going to be in South Carolina twice in the last two weeks. He’s going to Mississippi. This is the sign of an eroding, deteriorating battlefield, not a positive development for them.

And so we should take that to heart, but we can’t take our—you know, we’ve got to keep our pedal to the metal and run through the tape, close strong, all those, you know, things. Because as my friend Anderson Clayton said, elections may be decided in November, but they’re won in October. And we just have to do everything we can now to close strong and run up the score and win this thing next week.

Sargent: Simon Rosenberg, best of luck to all of you. Thanks so much for coming on. Always a great pleasure to talk to you.

Rosenberg: Thanks, Greg. Always fun.

But last week, D.C.’s most famous chef—and beloved humanitarian—joined the fray. “Sure but then let’s ban beef and pork and chicken … and also vegetables too because is a study that says that maybe indications of suffering … we have children hungry in USA and the World … lets end hunger and then we talk,” José Andrés tweeted, adding, “Lets concentrate on things that matter … cars with children are being shot by ICE, immigrants working in farms and restaurants being deported many with green cards and even citizens … so many other issues!”

Initiative 86, which is on next week’s ballot, asks voters to approve or reject a law that would prohibit the force-feeding of birds—defined as “inserting a tube into the bird’s throat to deliver excessive feed”—“for the purpose of enlarging the bird’s liver beyond normal size,” and ban the sale and distribution of products created through that process, including foie gras. Such a ban already exists in California, and in cities including Portland, Pittsburgh, and New York (whose 2019 ban is still being held up by legal challenges). The range of the critiques of these bans is broad, but Andrés’s—which was seconded by prominent right-wing podcaster Mary Katherine Ham—is perhaps the most common: that it’s trivial compared to larger societal problems, and represents a potentially slippery slope of government overreach.

Should the government restrict practices that cause harm, including on the dinner plate? It is a philosophical and legal question that gets at the heart of the role and limits of the state in a liberal democracy. It pits individual freedoms and pleasures against collective values and decision-making. But it elides the more basic point that in a democracy, citizens can and should use whatever political tools are available to them to try to change society to reflect their values—no matter how incremental that change may be. What some people consider “silly,” others see as a means to make the world just slightly less cruel to animals.

Foie gras is produced through a process called gavage, or force-feeding of birds like ducks and geese in the last few weeks before they are slaughtered. This is usually done by shoving a metal or plastic pipe down their throats to dump highly fatty and caloric corn-based feed directly into their stomachs. Since these animals tend to swallow food whole (the question of whether they do or do not have a gag reflex is debated), they are susceptible to being fed this way. This overfeeding rapidly induces hepatic steatosis, or fatty liver disease, meaning that the birds’ livers swell to between five and 10 times their normal size. It is these diseased livers that become a premium-priced foodie delicacy once the birds are slaughtered.

The process causes extensive harm, injuring the birds’ beaks, digestive tracts, skulls, and sternums and causing sores, lameness, reduced mobility, and increased on-farm mortality. This has made foie gras, like veal before it, not just a taboo but a leading target of the animal rights movement. The production of foie gras has been banned in over 20 countries, and both its production and sale have been banned in India and Brazil (whose ban comes into effect in January).

The argument for banning foie gras seems simple enough: We should not cause unnecessary harm to animals to cater to the whims of a small number of elite eaters. But then, as Andrés suggests, why not ban most meat, since upward of 99 percent of meat consumed in the United States comes from factory farms, where animals suffer as much if not more than on foie gras farms? The idea has certainly been floated. But much of politics is a question of working within the Overton window—the bounds of the possible. Calling for a ban on all factory farming, even if the ethical argument is sound, is likely a political nonstarter.

The problem for animals in democratic politics is that they can’t participate. They have no voice and are no one’s constituents. And so they depend on others to speak for their interests. This leaves the task of championing animals’ interests to concerned citizens and activist groups who must pursue pro-animal politics within the constraints of a political system not often inclined to hear their arguments. As such, the animal rights movement tends to be one focused on targets of opportunity, no matter how large or small; a sort of pragmatism of necessity. As the great American philosopher Richard Rorty argued, the core task of a politics of meliorism should be the reduction of cruelty for the simple reason that reducing cruelty improves society.

The animal rights movement targets cruelty in two ways: mitigation and bans. Mitigation, such as improved animal welfare practices, tends to be more viable at scale. While some campaigns, such as those seeking federal welfare protections for farmed animals, have gone nowhere due to entrenched farming and meat interests, there have been considerable wins like California voters’ passage in 2018 of Proposition 12, which banned the production and sale of products including pork and eggs that come from factory farms that use extreme forms of confinement. Ballot initiatives, like Prop 12 and Initiative 86, have long been a preferred tool of the movement because of a political disconnect on animal rights: It’s ostensibly a fringe and unpopular issue, in part because Americans eat more meat per capita than almost anywhere else in the world, so politicians usually ignore it, but pro–animal welfare measures tend to be popular with the public. Direct democracy, in the form of voter referenda, allows citizens to weigh in on ethical issues like animal treatment that make it onto legislative agendas far less frequently.

Targeted animal rights measures, like D.C.’s proposed ban, are especially likely to succeed; banning the production of duck and goose meat entirely would likely be a nonstarter in the city. But that doesn’t mean that a ban on just foie gras wouldn’t be consequential. There are only a handful of foie gras producers in the entire country, and the three cities that consume the most of it are Las Vegas, New York, and D.C. So banning it in one these places endangers the viability of the entire domestic industry. At the same time, a ban would hurt only a very small number of farms, restaurants, and eaters—so the opposition is not particularly powerful. The choice to target D.C., in other words, is not a random or trivial decision but a pragmatic, strategic one.

Product bans tend to be politically unpopular, especially in the United States, which has a libertarian streak on matters of government regulation. Opponents of pro-animal policies often argue that legislating what people can eat impinges on core freedoms, including gustatory pleasure—especially when the state should be, as Andrés argues, doing more important things for our fellow human beings. Call it foodie libertarian whataboutism. But the argument is a weak one. Indeed, it was not a champion of a strong state, but one of the world’s foremost libertarian philosophers, Robert Nozick, who wrote that the pleasure one gets from causing harms to animals does not outweigh those animals’ interests in not being harmed.

Besides, food is already one of the most regulated and politicized aspects of everyday life, its production, distribution, and sale shaped by countless laws about everything from food safety to working conditions to animal treatment. We banned trans fats because of public health harms, and surely no one is clamoring for the freedom to shove those down their gullet. But more to the point, especially in the case of ballot initiatives, the distinction between the state and one’s fellow citizens is a fine one. A ban on foie gras would not be the government legislating taste and gustatory pleasure for its own sake, but voters asking the government to prevent harm in the public interest. And while the enforcement cost—about $100,000 per year for a food inspector—might make fiscal conservatives and some on the City Council balk, it’s peanuts compared to other budget lines.

That leaves the charge that the proposed law is a distraction from graver ills, such as the plight of immigrants working in the food system. The easy answer here is that citizens have many concerns and government can do many things. As Zohran Mamdani has shown in New York City, government can give out free opera tickets while fixing potholes while winning legal settlements for fast food workers. But the more compelling answer, to paraphrase Canadian political philosopher Will Kymlicka, is that rather than counterposing human rights to animal rights, pursuing both can lead to a more robust and inclusive democratic politics. It would be what Rorty referred to as expanding the boundaries of our moral community, only across species lines.

Of course, opposition is just as much a part of democratic politics. The critics have every right to their opinions and concerns. Now it is up to the voters to decide. And no matter which side they choose, the very fact that we’re having the debate about banning foie gras has made a difference. The Overton window is now just a hair wider than it was before.

So people might be primed for a new documentary that puts MAGA malfeasance under a microscope. On Tuesday, Defiance.org released Corruptionland, an investigation into the staggering scale of corruption in Trump’s Washington. The 35-minute film is streaming free here.

“For two years, Trump’s scandals have hit one at a time, and each one gets buried under the next,” said Miles Taylor, executive producer of the film and the former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security during the first Trump administration. “So we added them up. When you put 100 episodes in one place, the scale is staggering: $377 billion in a tangled web of alleged corruption that is without any precedent in American history. Even that number undersells it, because you can’t put a price on the president’s revenge agenda and his weaponization of federal power. Every American deserves to see the full picture before they vote, and now they can.”

In the film, Taylor is joined by Donald Sherman, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW; together, they walk the National Mall and provide a geographic map of the Trump administration’s misdeeds. Along the way, a host of former officials and advocates give an intimate view of how long-erected safeguards against corruption were dismantled from the inside, including former DOJ Pardon Attorney Liz Oyer, former ABC News journalist Terry Moran, former FBI official Chris O’Leary, Democracy Forward president Skye Perryman, Representative Jason Crow, and others.

Viewers are going to get the kind of civic education that the political media is often incapable of providing. As the producers describe, “The documentary traces how the five ‘filters’ that historically checked presidential corruption—from White House ethics lawyers to inspectors general to Congress—have been purged, captured, or sidelined.”

As I’ve written in the past, the mainstream media has been slow on the uptake where corruption is concerned. When Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán was defeated back in April, news outlets seemed to have been caught flat-flooted that a broad anti-corruption message could succeed so vividly in a country that seemed to be so deeply mired in authoritarianism.

Democrats, on the other hand, have been ahead of the curve. As The Washington Sun (then doing business as NOTUS) recently reported, “Democratic candidates are leaning into anti-corruption messaging this cycle, seeing it as an opportunity to emphasize what they see as excessive corporate influence, unethical stock trading and shady behavior from their opponents.”

“I’ve been on the receiving end of the president’s corruption,” Taylor said. “He accused me of treason and issued an executive order directing his agencies to investigate me for First Amendment protected speech. I was not afraid to call out his corruption then, and I’m not afraid now. Neither are millions of Americans who are speaking up.

“This isn’t about Republicans and Democrats anymore,” Taylor added. “It’s about a constitutional order that faces a mortal threat—and an internal rot that will destroy our republic if we don’t address it.” With Democrats on the hunt and the public hungry to set things right, Corruptionland’s timely dose of Trump transgressions will add considerable fuel to a raging fire.

According to a separate tally by Americans for Tax Fairness that’s more comprehensive but less up-to-date, billionaires are on track to spend about $2 billion in 2026, twice as much as they spent in the last midterm election in 2022. Of the 170 billionaire families whose contributions ATF tallied through August 28, 113 gave predominantly to Republicans and only 45 gave predominantly to Democrats. Here, too, the partisan divide is even more lopsided when you count dollars, with 69 percent ($1.2 billion) going to Republicans and 28 percent ($488 million) going to Democrats. And that surely understates the case, because after ATF made its tally, Elon Musk more than doubled his spending to not quite half a billion dollars.

If you vote Republican on November 2, you’re voting for the American oligarchy. That may not be news to you and me, but the money makes it more true today than in past elections. Mostly, you’re voting for the oligarchy’s richest member, Musk, who’s in for more than $445 million, which is more than any human ever spent on any American election (excepting the $1 billion Bloomberg blew on his own misguided presidential bid in 2020). Since July, according to Bloomberg’s Bill Allison and Dana Hull, Musk has given, on average, $3.6 million per day.

These midterms represent a kind of test for the oligarchs. Congressional Republicans have pretty slavishly supported nearly everything President Donald Trump has done, not necessarily because they agree with it but because they’re terrified of the man. When Trump tells crowds, “Please pretend I’m on the ballot,” that’s good advice. Spending money to elect Republicans to Congress is spending money to maximize Trump’s power.

Is Trump worth it? Let’s review. He’s boosted the price of oil above $100 per barrel and United States Treasury bond yields above 5 percent, creating twin crises in inflation and debt. He’s imposed tariffs that have lowered gross domestic product 0.4 percent. He’s showing increasing signs of cognitive and physical decline. He’s enriching himself at the public’s expense. And he’s using his Justice Department to try to overthrow democracy.

None of this is news to the billionaires. But the stock market is still rising (I’ve given up guessing when it will crash), tax bills are down $300,000 on average for the top 0.1 percent of households, and regulation (except for food stamp recipients) is at a standstill. To congressional Republicans and the oligarchs showering money on them, these things matter much more than the overall health of the economy, even though any objective calculation of rational self-interest would conclude that they shouldn’t. Indeed, the further Trump’s favorability rating slouches toward terra incognita (Trump’s around 37 percent; the limbo champ is President Harry Truman at 22 percent in February 1952), the more money the oligarchs throw in Trump’s general direction.

Musk is the oligarchy’s poster child because he’s spending more than anyone else (Elizabeth and Richard Uihlein place a distant second with $150 million); because he’s the richest person in the world (net worth $935.4 billion, per Forbes); and because he is the greatest embodiment in human history of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s oft-quoted line (in The Great Gatsby), “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

The principal mess Musk made was the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which was not a department at all but rather a division of Russell Vought’s Office of Management and Budget. As I noted a couple of weeks ago, DOGE, which was supposed to ferret out government waste, instead created government havoc; killed nearly 800,000 people, of whom more than 500,000 were children; is expected to cost the Treasury $517 billion over the next decade; and, outrageously, became a jumping-off point for its youthful Muskrats to become government profiteers.

Musk has more or less shrugged DOGE off. Last week, he told his biographer Walter Isaacson, on Isaacson’s podcast The Builders, “What I should have done, I think, is be more in the background.… I got carried away, basically.” Last year Musk went further; asked by the podcaster Katie Miller (wife of Stephen Miller) whether he’d do it all again, he answered: “I mean no, I don’t think so.”

DOGE was a humanitarian, organizational, and financial catastrophe, and all Musk has to say in retrospect is, “Whoops”?

Musk is similarly susceptible to mood changes about Ukraine. Musk interrupted Ukraine’s Starlink satellite service last week, probably at Trump’s malign behest, while claiming that the country had violated Starlink’s terms of service by using it to direct offensive drone strikes in Russia. The Ukrainians said that wasn’t true. “It’s very strange that Elon Musk doesn’t know about the restrictions on Starlink’s operation in Ukraine,” said the defense technology adviser Serhii Beskrestnov, echoing complaints within the civil service about what Musk didn’t know when DOGE was rampaging through the federal bureaucracy. In both instances, Musk was given an outrageous degree of power over governmental functions based not on knowledge or competence but on wealth. Unsurprisingly, Musk’s favorability rating is as low as Trump’s, at 37 percent.

In his Texas Senate race, Democrat James Talarico has shrewdly turned Musk into a punching bag. “Elon Musk wants our land,” he said at a San Antonio rally on Saturday, according to Bayliss Wagner in The New York Times. “He wants our water. He wants our tax dollars. He wants his very own personal United States senator.” In September, Musk gave $158 million to a super PAC that immediately handed the money over to the campaign of Talarico’s opponent, Ken Paxton, according to the Times’ Theodore Schleifer, and in August Musk gave $10 million to a different pro-Paxton super PAC that immediately started running TV ads. “Let me remind Elon,” said the narrator of a digital Talarico ad last week. “Texas is not for sale.”

Talarico isn’t the only one to identify midterm Republican candidates with Musk. On October 12, Senator Bernie Sanders posted on X that Musk was spending $336 million to elect Republicans (this was before Federal Election Commission filings showed it to be $445 million). “STOP MUSK,” Sanders wrote. “STOP OLIGARCHY.” In Maine, Democrat Troy Jackson has tied Musk’s super PAC contributions to Susan Collins. “He wants to have people that are totally beholden to him and Donald Trump, making sure we’re getting tax cuts for billionaires on the back of our healthcare system, our hospitals,” Jackson said in August. “You don’t get to buy the government you want, and we don’t want his dirty money in politics.” It wasn’t clear at that point that Collins’s campaign had benefited from Musk money, but the following month it came out that, yes, Musk’s super PAC, America PAC, had indeed spent about $170,000 in Maine to boost Collins.

Democratic candidates need to take more shots against Musk even when it can’t be shown that his spending directly affects their own campaign, because half a billion dollars is going to end up finding its way into many, many midterm races. The Princeton historian Kevin Kruse rightly complained last month on Bluesky that “Many Democrats just refuse to take the open shot at Musk. He’s a ripe, rich target, and an obvious way to dramatize key issues and mobilize key voters, but some of them are still sitting on their hands.” Kruse said he wasn’t sure whether “they’re cowards who don’t want to take him on or if they’re complicit in taking money from him and people like him.”

Many Democrats have indeed taken Musk money in the past; according to a tally last year by Bridget Bowman of NBC News, since 2008 nearly 180 Democrats had received contributions from a Space X PAC. Then-Representative Mikie Sherrill’s acceptance of such money became the basis of an attack ad in her New Jersey race for governor. Sherrill gave the money away to a New Jersey food bank and then won decisively.

Democrats should demand that Republican opponents who’ve received indirect money from Musk do the same. Because these amounts are so much bigger, Republican candidates will find it much harder to do than Sherrill did. Collins, for instance, doesn’t likely have a spare $170,000 to hand off to the Little Sisters of the Poor. When Trump says, “Please pretend I’m on the ballot,” he should say, “Elon too.” If he doesn’t say it, let’s hear Democrats say it for him.

Sure, you might spy campaign signs at high-traffic intersections. The local school board candidates have planted their names and slogans at nearly every litter-strewn freeway entrance from Pasadena to Malibu. But nobody seems to be running for anything higher than the school board. Signs supporting Xavier Becerra, who would be the first Latino governor of California, are few and far between. A similar census of yard-borne advertisements for Steve Hilton (who would be California’s first Tory governor) yields few, if any, results. The same is true for the city’s mayoral contest. If incumbent Mayor Karen Bass or her upstart challenger Nithya Raman—the Democratic Socialists of America–aligned Harvard graduate aiming for a generational upset of the sort that Zohran Mamdani undertook in New York—have ardent fans, you wouldn’t know from the city’s front lawns.

But even if Angelenos aren’t declaring their preferences in their front yards, that doesn’t mean they’re unaware of the upcoming election. The ads run constantly, the ultrarich are spending a million dollars a day trying to kill this year’s billionaire tax, and the national press regularly frames Raman as the Mamdani of the West. 

The Mamdani comparisons have become a refrain mostly because they make for a good headline and, at least in the right-wing press, because red baiting drives clicks. But when you take a minute to examine this framing, the comparison fails on two counts. In the first place, Raman and Mamdani are vastly different political creatures. More importantly, the offices they represent are wildly distinct. The mayoralty of Los Angeles is unlike the Big Apple’s equivalent—and intentionally so. In the national political landscape, to be the mayor of L.A. is, well, its own little thing. It’s not nothing, but neither is it a perch to lead a political revolution of the sort that Mamdani wrought. 

Mamdani is a core DSA member; he spent nearly a decade building the group’s New York infrastructure before harnessing it to knock on something like 1.6 million doors. Raman is also a DSA member, but she joined mostly as a political maneuver to boost her first campaign for City Council in 2020. In the intervening period, she has brokered an uneven relationship with the lefties of Los Angeles. She split with DSA L.A. when she voted to confirm the current chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. The local DSA declined to endorse her in the primary. Even after a hotly contested debate within the chapter, she barely earned its endorsement ahead of the general election. DSA L.A.’s eventual decision to endorse Raman—which was made via an all-member vote—opened the group’s infrastructure to her campaign. Since then, it has knocked on 30,000 doors for her. 

The DSA’s rise in Los Angeles has run parallel to Raman’s own political story. “This moment in Los Angeles has been building for several years,” says Tal Levy, a member of DSA L.A.’s electoral committee. “Nithya’s first victory to City Council was a major breakthrough—she was the first City Council member to unseat an incumbent in a generation, and on the back of her victory, DSA endorsed and won three more City Council seats.”

Still, the city’s other three DSA City Council members have all endorsed Karen Bass, declining to flip their endorsements despite Raman’s lead in the polls. This isn’t that surprising: Raman herself had endorsed Bass before jumping into the race at the last minute to run against her. She’s defended her about-face with the line that “every elected [City] Council member endorses the mayor, you have to do that when you’re in City Hall, that’s how you get resources.” 

It’s a strange defense, not so much because it is true (it isn’t), but because it positions the City Council as subordinate to the mayor—and the Los Angeles City Council is the most powerful municipal body in the United States. “They have enough power to cause shenanigans for the mayor,” explains longtime California strategist Steven Maviglio. Just last year, for instance, the City Council cut Bass’s proposed additions to the LAPD in half. The year before that, it was one vote shy of overriding the mayor’s veto powers—an action it took in 2021 against Mayor Eric Garcetti.

The mayor of New York, by contrast, endures no such nonsense from the New York City Council. But Los Angeles’s division of power is deliberate, and it’s led to the confusing notion that the person supposedly running the whole city is merely a ceremonial figure around town.

“The mayor’s office in L.A. was explicitly designed to be unlike the mayors of New York and Chicago,” says Raphe Sonenshein, executive director of the Haynes Foundation. Sonenshein told The New Republic that L.A.’s original City Charter (written in the early 1920s) embodied the theories of the then-dominant progressive reform movement. L.A’s original charterers envisioned a city with “no machines, no bosses, no mayor who could appear to control everything … none of the accoutrements of what were strong mayor systems, usually with large City Councils,” says Sonenshein, adding that “usually, the bigger the City Council, the more powerful the mayor.” New York, for example, has 51 City Council members. Chicago has 50. Los Angeles, by contrast, has 15.

But the century-old intention to fashion the mayor of Los Angeles as a weaker figure than the mayor of New York doesn’t validate the common perception that the mayor of the city is powerless. Since the City Charter was written, the mayor’s power has expanded—often to the consternation of the City Council. In the 1950s, Mayor Fletcher Bowron created the position of city administrative officer, a move that gave him substantial power over the budget. Originally, the mayor couldn’t even remove the heads of departments. That began to change after the Rodney King riots when Mayor Tom Bradley initiated a reform to remove the civil service protection from the chief of the LAPD. 

A few years later, in 1999, voters approved another reform of the city’s charter, giving the mayor the power to fire department heads (excepting the LAPD chief). Again, this complex system is easy to misunderstand. It is not true, for example, as one Wall Street Journal writer recently claimed, that “only the board [of commissioners] can remove” the chief of the LAPD. The City Council can do that too. “There are a lot of personalities on that council,” says Maviglio. “It’s constantly a tug-of-war.” 

Los Angeles is a city of continual politicking. It is in this respect that a Mamdani type—an affable and charismatic power broker—might thrive. But Raman is far better when talking about policy than she is when she’s talking to people. In most cities, once a mayor has gotten themselves elected, it doesn’t matter so much if they can vibe on podcasts. That’s not the case in Los Angeles, where throughout their tenure, the mayor is constantly forced to play people-first politics.

While Raman may not have Mamdani’s charisma, she was sharp enough to read the tea leaves a few months ago. She figured out that this election looks a hell of a lot like one of those cycles where change is on the ballot. So while there might not be many Nithya Raman signs in the front yards of Angelenos, there is an ambient appetite for change in the air. Last year’s wildfires coupled with the ongoing homelessness crisis have bottomed out Bass’s popularity. The fact that Spencer Pratt got a quarter of the city’s vote despite running a campaign devoid of any discernible policies is evidence of L.A.’s appetite for something, anything, that might constitute change. 

If Mamdani had to hustle to earn his mayoralty, all Nithya Raman really has to do is be there when it happens. And if she can tie her race to the progressive insurgency currently unfolding on the national political scene, that’s a bonus. In a recent appearance on the Higher Learning podcast, Raman sounded on script when she positioned her race against Bass as something that’s just “not done in the Democratic Party—you don’t challenge incumbency. I think that’s a problem.” 

Her well-timed entrance and her history of shifting positions have led to the criticism that Raman is running for mayor simply in furtherance of her own political ambitions. But this is where hype collides with reality: The mayoralty of Los Angeles offers very little to a striver with political ambition; in fact, it is historically incapable of providing a perch for further political ascension. No mayor here has ever won an election to higher office. Meanwhile, one of the early Democratic front-runners for president, Gavin Newsom, is the former mayor of San Francisco. Asked about this limiting aspect of the role, Maviglio suggested, “I think it’s because the rest of the state looks down on L.A. as an urban mess.… It’s also a problem that California has with the rest of the country. People look at California as that crazy place west of the Rockies.”

Los Angeles mayors do not become governors or senators. Instead, they occupy a bizarre nowhere space in the national political landscape. Sure, they’ll be invited to offer platitudes on the opening night of the odd Democratic National Convention. They’ll occasionally get nominated for ambassadorships to Asia (only to have their nominations languish for years in the Senate). The mayor of L.A. may not be a ceremonial figure within the city—that is to say, they have more control than people suspect, but in the larger Democratic firmament, they will typically graduate to a wider variety of mostly ribbon-cutting roles. The mayor cannot dictate the outcome of congressional races within their territory, as Mamdani recently did in New York. Even Tom Bradley—often cited as L.A.’s most powerful mayor—was eventually proven to be weaker than the city’s representatives in Washington.  

Bradley’s tenure is instructive. He was the mayor of Los Angeles for 20 years, during which time he expanded the power of his office, lost two gubernatorial elections, and presided over the 1984 Olympic Games. The Olympics are returning in 2028, and Bass has attempted to convince voters that Raman is uniquely incapable of leading the city through the event. In the final debate before the election, the sitting mayor called the upcoming Olympics “the greatest sporting event in U.S. history” and said the “city would be destabilized” if Raman is elected. But Angelenos don’t seem to care about these supposedly high stakes. Five days later, that mayoral debate stream had been viewed 81,000 times, which sounds like a big number until you hear that, in the same respective time frame, the Mamdani-Cuomo debate stream had 1.2 million views. 

So, as you drive through Los Angeles, you may not notice many yard signs dictating preferences in the mayoral race. Maybe that’s a meaningless metric. Maybe it’s too anecdotal. Maybe the Santa Ana winds blew all the yard signs into the Pacific while no one was looking. Still, it seems more likely that the position—the actual job of running Los Angeles—just doesn’t prompt the kind of race that inspires people to put out yard signs. Maybe the role of mayor of Los Angeles isn’t a stepping stone, or a position of pivotal significance. Maybe it’s just a sideshow—a seat for pseudo-political dreamers, ruling a city that’s best known for breaking dreams.

The complaint, filed in federal court in Alaska last Thursday, starts with a tricky little problem: There are two candidates named Dan Sullivan on the ballot. One is the incumbent Republican senator, running neck and neck with Democrat Mary Peltola. The other, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., is a first-time candidate with far less support, a registered Republican who by his own account has voted for Democrats in the last three presidential elections. There are some indications that Sullivan II stepped forward to provoke confusion and draw votes away from the incumbent. That, at least, is DOJ’s theory; its complaint calls his run a “frivolous candidacy.”

Bizarrely, Alaska has been here before. In 2014, Anchorage’s mayor, also named Dan Sullivan, ran for lieutenant governor on the same primary ballot as the future senator, and a poll found nearly one in five Republican primary voters mixed them up. “Dan Sullivan” would appear to be Alaska’s version of John Smith.

It should surprise no one that the case is completely the handiwork of the political ranks of the administration, including Trump himself. On Thursday, Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters, “It is not DOJ’s intention to, and it’s never our intention to, improperly interfere with elections or the state certification process.” That night, his department filed the complaint, signed by Stanley Woodward, the department’s third-ranking official and a former Team Trump defense lawyer. On Friday, Trump cleared up any mystery: “I’m the one that said do it.”

The point that controls this case, up one side and down the other, is that the federal government has no role to play in trying to minimize any confusion. It’s 100 percent a matter for the state, as paradigmatically a state-law matter as a divorce or a parking ticket.

In fact, the state has acted. In June, Alaska’s elections director removed the second Sullivan from the ballot, concluding that he filed his candidacy “with a purpose to confuse or mislead.” But a state trial court reversed her, and the Alaska Supreme Court affirmed. The state then built a ballot designed to minimize confusion. The senator appears as “Sullivan, Dan S. (Registered Republican) Incumbent”; the challenger as “Sullivan, Daniel J. Jr.,” with no party label at all. And because Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, any voter who isn’t sure can simply rank both Sullivans.

Most importantly, Alaska’s voters have affirmed that they want Sullivan II on the ballot. They sent him to the general election as one of the top four finishers in the state’s open primary. You can understand why Republicans cried dirty pool, and Alaska Democrats may well have been pretty crafty. But Sullivan II’s presence on the ballot is the choice of the sovereign people of Alaska. That should be the end of the story.

The DOJ is trying to parachute into the case, but it has no parachute. Its complaint is eye-poppingly defective in three separate ways.

First, the department’s entire basis for asserting a federal role is the preamble to the National Voter Registration Act, a 1993 law about, as the name suggests, registering voters. DOJ doesn’t claim Alaska violated any of the act’s provisions. Instead, it claims authority to dictate the state’s certification process because the preamble cites a statutory purpose “to protect the integrity of the electoral process.” That’s like invoking the Constitution’s preamble goal “to promote the general Welfare” to make everyone eat broccoli.

The department vastly overreads the preamble, in any event. The very same section of the act lists its first purposes as increasing the number of eligible citizens who register to vote and enhancing their participation as voters. DOJ skips past those to invoke “integrity” for the opposite end: freezing the votes of an entire state, but only if those votes elect a Democrat.

Second, there is, manifestly, no live dispute. The DOJ asks a court to rule on something that hasn’t happened and may never happen: a Peltola win, by less than the second Sullivan’s total, with ranked-choice transfers breaking a particular way. Even if the case weren’t otherwise ridiculous, any court would tell the DOJ to come back if and when its speculation came to pass. Indeed, in virtually any other election case, the DOJ itself would be making that argument.

Third, the proposed remedy is positively Looney Tunes. If the senator loses and would have won with every vote for Daniel J. Sullivan added to his column, the DOJ wants certification blocked “pending an investigation to determine whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant to be cast for Senator Sullivan.”

Think about what a court would actually have to do to execute such an investigation. Alaska’s Constitution requires that voting be secret, so once a ballot is cast, no one can trace it back to the person who cast it. The investigators would have no one to question. Even if they could find the voters, what would they ask? “Did you really mean it?”

The DOJ wants a court to determine which votes were, in its words, “meant” for the senator. But the best evidence of a voter’s choice is what’s in the oval where they mark their ballots, and once someone has voted, there is no way to rewind the tape and reexamine what the voter “really meant.”

We learned that lesson, bitterly, in 2000. In Palm Beach County, a confusingly designed “butterfly ballot” led voters who wanted to choose Al Gore to punch the hole for Pat Buchanan instead. Conservative statistical analyses establish that at a bare minimum, 2,000 voters, out of some 380,000 who used the ballot, were fooled into switching candidates, in a state Gore lost by 537 votes. Of course, no Magic 8 Ball or Delphic oracle could identify the specific duped voters.

Voters went to court seeking a revote or “a statistical reallocation of the election totals,” essentially the remedy the DOJ now wants in Alaska. The Florida Supreme Court unanimously said no, citing “the reluctance to reach a decision which would result in the disfranchisement of the voters.” Which is precisely what the DOJ is trying to accomplish.

In the last 24 hours, there has been a salvo of motions to dismiss and expedite, by various would-be intervenors. Assuming the court permits intervention, we should expect this case to go nowhere fast.

The DOJ knows that it can’t win this case. It’s all part of an effort to stoke the fires of grievance and try to undermine confidence in the election. If Peltola wins narrowly, Team Trump will have its talking point ready, an extralegal deeply muddled argument for refusing to accept the result.

But there’s no federal role, no legal basis, and no possible remedy. To paraphrase Churchill, the lawsuit is a nullity, wrapped in an absurdity, inside a press release.

Two Ohio restaurants—Elliot’s Wood Fired Kitchen and The Old Dog Ale House & Brewery—have canceled events with the Ohio Republican Party featuring Ramaswamy after he released and then doubled down on his advert featuring Acton’s mother, Donna Arthur. An event the party was supposed to host on Tuesday now lists “to be announced” as the location.

The ad features Arthur accusing her daughter of lying about how she was raised. But Arthur lost custody of Acton after her husband, Cledith “Bud” Arthur, was arrested for raping Acton when she was just 12 years old. Bud skipped bail and left town with Acton’s mother, who stayed married to him until his death. Now she is being platformed by Ramaswamy, calling her daughter who survived years of sexual abuse a liar on camera.

That cruelty is negatively impacting Ramaswamy’s campaign. An anonymous Ohio Republican even told Zeteo that they were “getting calls that people don’t want him there.” Other venues that hosted Ramaswamy over the weekend have been flooded by one-star reviews on Google.

Aside from the restaurants, Ramaswamy has been rebuked by every living governor of Ohio, Democrat and Republican, for the ad—which has continued to run. Former Republican Governor Mike DeWine said that it was “wrong” to run the ad last week and urged the Ramaswamy campaign to take it down.

Even still, Ramaswamy, President Trump, and Vice President JD Vance have continued to defend the decision to run the ad, while Acton’s brother Philip Stearns lambasted the campaign last week.

“It’s not surprising that Vivek Ramaswamy has stooped to such a despicable low as to attempt to turn the sexual abuse Amy endured at twelve years old from our birth mother’s husband into a political talking point,” Stearns said. “After he was arrested and Amy and I were removed from their custody, our birth mother stayed married to Amy’s rapist until he died. This desperate, disgusting attack reveals exactly who Vivek Ramaswamy is at his core—a pathetic excuse for a man who is willing to hurt anyone as long as it gets him what he wants.”

The Ohio Republican gubernatorial nominee’s boorish ad campaign against Democratic candidate Dr. Amy Acton has inspired one of Ohio’s oldest newspapers, Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer, to break company policy in Acton’s favor.

The paper had stated a few months ago it would not make political endorsements, including in the governor’s race. But on Sunday, its editorial board published a statement declaring it stood firmly behind Acton.

The weekly’s decision is just the latest in a tsunami of public backlash against Ramaswamy and his team after they aired an advertisement earlier this month that featured Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur. In the ad, Arthur claimed that “Amy has a serious problem.”

The MAGA Republicans 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.

“A candidate who uses childhood sexual abuse as a weapon against the person who endured it has crossed a line that Ohioans should defend, whatever their party,” the newspaper’s editorial board wrote.

“We are better than this. We have a responsibility to show it,” it continued. “We made our endorsement policy to serve our readers. We cannot let it become a reason to remain silent when we believe Ohio faces a choice this consequential.”

Dozens of Republicans—including Ohio Governor Mike DeWine—have since come out against Ramaswamy’s tasteless ad, advising the former Trump official to take it down.

Nonetheless, Ramaswamy has repeatedly defended the ad. On Friday, he told the Ohio Capital Journal that the message had “nothing to do with childhood abuse, sexual abuse.”

“Our ad was about a consistent track record of Amy Acton telling lies, including during this campaign,” Ramaswamy said.

But the voting public has not seen it that way. Protesters have begun to appear outside of Ramaswamy’s speaking engagements. At a campaign event in Strongsville last week, demonstrators held up signs that likened Ramaswamy to a snake: “Nobody slithers lower than Vivek #VileAds,” read one posterboard recorded by the Journal. Others said Ramaswamy “defends child predators,” protects “pedos,” and “exploits child abuse for votes.”

The negative rhetoric has begun to materialize in damaging ways for the biotech billionaire. Several Ohio venues canceled Ramaswamy’s speaking events over the weekend, apparently concerned about the fallout should they be affiliated with his drowning reputation.

Beatrice Keul, a model and former Miss Switzerland, told Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee that Trump violently raped her in a hotel room at his Plaza Hotel in New York in 1993, when she was 24 years old.

According to the Democrats’ report, Keul said Trump grabbed her from behind and raped her, which she described as “brutal.” He allegedly tore her dress, bruised her in multiple places, and caused her to bleed. Afterward, she said he sat her on the edge of the bed, repeated promises he had made earlier that his associate, modeling agent Paolo Zampolli, would help her with a U.S. visa and admission to New York University, and made her promise to keep quiet. (Zampolli would later hold roles in both Trump administrations.)

“The show must go on,” Trump allegedly told her. Months later, he reached out to her and again promised to help her get a visa and go to NYU, but she declined assistance, according to the report.

Previously, the Swiss model told the Daily Mail in 2024 that Trump only attempted to assault her, jumping on top of her and groping her. In that account, she said he backed off after she resisted.

“I tried everything I could. Finally, I said, ‘Let’s talk first’ or something like that, then he slowed down,” Keul said in that interview. The Democrats’ report does not mention why Keul decided to change her story.

The report states that the assault happened while Keul was in the U.S. for Trump’s American Dream Pageant for 16- to 22-year-olds, and that he introduced himself to her at a press luncheon for the event, where she also met Epstein. The billionaire financier introduced himself as “Jeffrey, Don’s best friend,” spending 10 minutes talking to her while grinning sideways at Trump, who was watching them talk from afar, according to the report.

Keul alleges that Epstein also made promises to her, saying, “You know I can take care of you. We organize many parties with Don.”

“Flights, accommodations, you don’t have to worry about anything,” Epstein said per the report.

The report states that Trump’s promise of NYU admission is part of a pattern of Epstein promising an NYU education to “lure in and then control his victims,” and that Keul would have no way of knowing this when she mentioned Trump’s offer to the Daily Mail in 2024, months before Epstein’s NYU offers were revealed in later public reports.

The incident also fits with Epstein’s usual practices, as he often called foreign pageant winners and invited them to visit him in Florida, according to the report. An unnamed assistant to Epstein in the 1990s has reportedly said that “on dozens of occasions in the mid-1990s, the financier instructed her to call a pageant winner from somewhere in the world and invite her to visit him in Florida.”

The White House has denied the allegations, with spokesperson Lauren Bis telling HuffPost in an email, “This ‘report’ is nothing more than a desperate attempt by crazed Democrats to distract Americans from the surging Republican momentum driven by President Trump’s historic achievements. The President kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club at Mar-a-Lago because he was a creep, and he has been fully exonerated of anything related to Epstein.”

A new report published Monday by the Democrats on the Congressional Joint Economic Committee revealed that the value of Trump’s personal holdings in oil and gas may have increased by 43 percent in the last 10 months alone.

The president’s oil and gas holdings are currently worth between $22.5 million and $81.6 million. At the end of 2025, they were worth between $12.6 million and $46 million.

The report came out shortly after the president started bragging about how the energy prices hurting Americans are making him and his billionaire buddies rich.

“And while oil prices are temporarily high, and will be falling dramatically in a short period of time as soon as that war is over—because there’s so much oil,” he said to the crowd at a rally in Georgia on Saturday, referring to his war in Iran.

“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.”

Meanwhile, the average price Americans are paying for gasoline under Trump has officially surpassed the average price during the Biden administration. Trump has repeatedly pledged to end his seven-month “six-week war” with Iran and lower gasoline prices to below $2 per gallon. But what reason does he have to end the war and lower prices when he’s openly admitting it’s in his financial interest to let Americans suffer? And what kind of message does this send to Americans ahead of the midterm elections, where Trump wants voters to pretend his name is on the ballot?

“Using Starlink, a civilian commercial service, for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be,” Musk wrote in an X post Saturday. “Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week.”

Musk had previously suggested that he was not responsible for the drop in Starlink’s satellite-supplied internet service over Ukraine last week, which occurred as Russian missiles barraged Kyiv. Instead, Musk blamed the lapse on the recent decisions of the U.S. military and Donald Trump.

Trump refused to take the blame shortly afterward. “I don’t know who did it, but I was not involved,” Trump told reporters as he departed the White House on Wednesday. Trump reportedly called Musk to demand he return service to the region that same day, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Yet despite Musk’s renewed position, Ukraine’s actions early last week 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 blunder 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.

The White House’s influence over Starlink appears to be greater than the president lets on. Six former senior U.S. officials told Reuters Friday that both the Biden and Trump administrations had previously asked SpaceX to adjust its Starlink internet availability in different countries, including Ukraine and areas of the Middle East.

While the three newsrooms were already victorious in their preliminary injunction against the administration, this recent lawsuit—filed on Monday by Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute and Yale Law School’s Freedom & Information Access Clinic—advocates for the American public, as well.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of six plaintiffs who rely on credentialed White House reporters to do their own jobs: Yale professors Kenneth Roth and Beverly Gage, Lawfare editor in chief Benjamin Wittes, Press Watch editor Daniel Froomkin, student journalist Ethan Young, and New York City high school teacher Peter Schmidt-Nowara.

“The Policy violates the First Amendment. The White House has long maintained a protected forum for certain members of the press to engage in the First Amendment activities of newsgathering and reporting,” the lawsuit reads. “The Policy is unconstitutional because it conditions access and participation in the White House Press Forum on criteria that are viewpoint based and unreasonable.”

“The ultimate injury here … is to the democratic public,” says the lawsuit, which was filed in New York.

“The White House cannot decide what information Americans receive by punishing critical reporting,” said Knight First Amendment Institute deputy litigation director Katie Fallow. “When the White House expels reporters because of their coverage and threatens others with expulsion, it isn’t just the press that suffers—the public loses access to independent reporting and gets something closer to government propaganda.”

This debacle first began on September 18, when Trump dramatically denied CNN, MS NOW, and Politico access to the White House due to unfavorable coverage of his administration. Since then, they have been granted a temporary injunction allowing them to return to the press pool—but Trump has defied them, continuing to deny CNN access to his Air Force One jet. Only time will tell how Trump reacts to this most recent legal action against him.

This story has been updated.

Trump made the comments while complaining to the audience in Port Huron, Michigan, that the Nobel Peace Prize was won by a “woman nobody had ever heard of.”

“I said ‘What about me? Do they do two of them?’ Think of it, I settled, so I’m not in love with Norway. Frankly, Norway sucks. Norway has become a shithouse country, actually,” Trump said to laughter.

“Denmark? Take ’em. Sweden. Norway, I don’t think so because I didn’t get the Nobel Prize,” Trump continued. “I don’t want anybody from Norway, I don’t want anything to do with Norway.”

Norwegian officials are shaking their heads.

“He knows very well that the Nobel committee is independent,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said to NRK, the country’s public broadcaster, on Monday. “We have reminded him of that, in case anyone is wondering, and that is still the case.”

It’s funny that Trump is so annoyed, considering that he said in January that he actually doesn’t care. He still railed against Norway at the time, claiming, “If anybody thinks that Norway doesn’t control the Nobel Prize, they are just kidding. They have a board, but it’s controlled by Norway, and I don’t care what Norway says.”

Even funnier is the fact that way back in his first term, Trump reportedly complained in an Oval Office meeting about accepting immigrants from “shithole countries” like Haiti and places in Africa, and instead suggested the U.S. should take in more people from countries like Norway, mentioning that country in particular. He said similar words at a rally last December. To Trump, though, being snubbed for an award is enough to override his racist preferences for immigrants.

Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, was fired in July 2025. The DOJ did not provide a rationale for her ouster at the time, simply citing Donald Trump’s authority to do so as the sole justification.

In a federal lawsuit, Comey argued that her firing was part of the president’s political retribution campaign against her father, who testified before Congress during Trump’s first term regarding the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

In a 55-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman declared that Comey’s termination was not only unfounded, but it was also illegal as it fundamentally violated the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978.

The government’s other defense, which cited Article 2 of the Constitution barring Congress from regulating the removal of assistant U.S. attorneys, was similarly fraught, as it “flies in the face of nearly two centuries of Supreme Court precedent,” according to Furman.

“Indeed, to accept Defendants’ argument would be to unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation’s constitutional system,” Furman wrote.

Comey was involved in several high-profile cases prior to her firing, including prosecutions against musician Sean Combs (also known as P. Diddy) and child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. She is expected to receive back pay dating from the time she was fired to December 2025, when she obtained a new job in private practice.

Trump has been very public about his contempt for James Comey. The president fired Comey during his first term in the midst of the Trump-Russia probe, prematurely ending the director’s 10-year term. His decision to do so prompted a follow-up investigation by Comey’s predecessor, special counsel Robert Mueller, who determined that Russian influence in the 2016 election was “sweeping and systemic” and found substantial (if non-prosecutable) evidence that Trump had obstructed justice by firing Comey.

In April, a grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina indicted Comey on two felony charges relating to a seaside photo the former FBI director shared on Instagram that depicted seashells in an arrangement reading: “86 47.” Eighty-six is a popular phrase used in the restaurant industry to signify that an item has been crossed off the menu.

Yet the Department of Justice claimed that the message would be interpreted by any person “familiar with the circumstances” as a “serious expression of an intent to do harm to the president,” according to Comey’s indictment.

Whether or not the government’s case against the elder Comey will pan out remains to be seen. However, recent revelations regarding Trump’s personal involvement in the initial investigation could unravel the suit.

This story has been updated.

At a rally in Port Huron, Michigan, Saturday, Trump continued to rave about Ohio Senator Jon Husted’s buttocks. 

“I looked at his ass, and I’ve never done that with a man before,” Trump said. “Off the record, women yes, men no.”

Then Trump decided to ogle someone who was actually in the state instead.

“By the way I looked at one hell of a beautiful ass before: Nicki Minaj!” Trump said, as the crowd cheered. “That’s hard to miss! That’s—stand up! That’s hard to miss!”

The rapper-singer joined Trump onstage, telling the president that she’d support him if he ran a third time. It’s not clear what any of this had to do with Michigan’s Senate race. Trump did eventually turn his attention to making wildly Islamophobic remarks against Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed, calling him a “jihadist” who was “on the side of the terrorists.”

The president’s frequent fantasizing about other people’s bodies has become a mainstay of his weird political rallies, which have started to feel more like a farewell tour than a campaign blitz. Even if Trump isn’t impeached following the midterm elections, it’s not looking likely that the 80-year-old president will hit the campaign trail again. 

“The meeting was in no way an endorsement of the president, his policies, or his party.… We were told the meeting was to be a private discussion, that several Catholic members of the Cabinet might make an appearance, and that there could be an opportunity to pray privately with the president,” Milwaukee Archbishop Jeffrey Grob wrote Sunday in a statement titled “A Public Apology.”

“We were then directed to stand behind him and pray. After which several photos were taken and we were ushered out. Unbeknownst to the group of bishops a video was also taken. But permission for the public distribution or posting of either the video or photos was not given by the bishops,” Grob continued. “It did not take long thereafter for the White House to post a video and photos of the prayer. I soon began receiving messages of serious concern over the possibility that I had inadvertently participated in a political event less than two weeks before a national election. I also heard from some who felt wounded because of the ways they or their family had been harmed by the president’s policies.”

Iowa Bishop William Joensen expressed similar sentiments.

“I wish I had been more shrewd and less simple, like those who exploited our meeting for partisan political purpose,” he wrote. “I pray I am more prudent and wise going forward, even as I remain resolute in my openness to engaging and praying for political leaders at all levels.”

Catholic Archbishops and Bishops pray with President Trump in the Oval Office ❤️ https://t.co/facV5wTGQQ

— Margo Martin (@MargoMartin47) October 22, 2026

The White House meeting was organized by the ultraconservative Heritage Foundation. And Trump is about as pious as his policies (not very). This made the images from the meeting and the shady nature in which it unfolded all the more questionable—and regrettable—for some of the clergymen involved.

“I feel a heavy sadness, not only over the pain I caused, but also for the fact that something so sacred to a group of religious leaders, prayer to our Heavenly Father, would be manipulated in that way,” Grob continued. “We came in good faith to try to work for the betterment of our fellow human beings, to ease their suffering, to build up the common good, and to pray with a president, not to pose for a political photo opportunity to benefit the few. We should never have been put in that position by the White House.”

Anthropic confirmed to Axios Sunday that the company’s artificial intelligence model had, without prompting, requested a digital entry pass, or “access token,” to collect aggregate vote counts for a statistics project.

“Claude did not access the state’s voter registration system, change any voting records, or pull any individual voter records,” Anthropic said, adding that it had placed guardrails to prevent the chatbot from taking these sorts of actions in the future.

The company first notified the Georgia secretary of state’s office and the White House three weeks ago about the spontaneous access. Trump administration officials urged the state office to disclose the incident, but those calls went unheeded, a source told Axios.

This revelation comes as Anthropic unveiled its Initial Public Offering filing Monday, ahead of what is expected to be one of the largest stock debuts in history at an estimated value of more than $2 trillion. It also comes weeks after one of its researchers warned that the company’s product could cause a mass extinction event.

This is just the latest instance of an AI company being forced to disclose its model’s unauthorized behavior.

House Judiciary Committee Democrats released a 50-page report Monday morning accusing Donald Trump of participating in Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal sex schemes. The caucus also accused the Trump administration of a broad cover-up, designed to shield the president from blowback as it tried to roll out the release of the Epstein files to the general public.

The report cites the experiences of 11 women, FBI records, and documents released through the Epstein Files Transparency Act. At least five women accused Trump of rape or sexual assault in Epstein’s company, according to interviews conducted by the committee. Others said there were “apparent attempts” by Epstein and his longtime girlfriend and associate Ghislaine Maxwell to traffic them to the real estate magnate.

Beatrice Keul told lawmakers that Trump “violently raped” her at a November 1993 pageant at the Plaza Hotel. She further described the beauty pageants as a “hunting ground” that Epstein and Trump would use to find and “prey” on young women and girls. Jill Harth also shared an account of a party at Mar-a-Lago in 1994, where she said Trump aggressively pursued and sexually assaulted her. Trump and Epstein were the only men present, Harth told lawmakers.

In total, at least 28 women have accused Trump of rape or sexual misconduct.

The report concludes that Trump and Paolo Zampolli, a former modeling agent and longtime friend of the president as well as a former senior Trump administration official, “may have been co-conspirators” in Epstein’s sex trafficking ring in the 1990s.

The report also claims that Trump’s Justice Department deliberately or prematurely shut down investigations into Trump-related allegations made by some Epstein survivors. It also accuses Attorney General Todd Blanche of specifically instructing Maxwell not to discuss a survivor whose account implicated the president.

“Trump’s Justice Department appears to be covering up these crimes to protect the President,” said Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin in a statement. “The women who survived Epstein deserve to be heard, Congress must have the complete files required by law, and an independent special counsel must investigate Epstein’s co-conspirators and DOJ’s cover-up and ensure that state and foreign prosecutors have the evidence they need to pursue justice.”

Last week, reports emerged that White House officials were involved in drafting the infamous July 2025 FBI-DOJ memo that effectively shut down future Epstein-related investigations. The memo created explosive public backlash even among MAGA supporters for declaring at the time that there was no Epstein “client list,” no punishable co-conspirators to the pedophile’s crimes, and no grounds for further investigation.

Puck reports that Hegseth is hoping that Tennessee’s incumbent Senator Marsha Blackburn wins her election for governor next week and appoints him to fill her vacant seat. Hegseth lived in Tennessee for three years before Trump appointed him to the Cabinet. On October 17, Hegseth was spotted at a University of Tennessee football game seated next to Blackburn and Republican Representative Tim Burchett.

Hegseth’s tenure has earned him both Republican and Democratic critics. He has fired or pushed out multiple senior military leaders, endangered U.S. troops with the “Signalgate” group chat scandal, and burned through missile stockpiles in the war with Iran. Outgoing Republican Representative Thomas Massie has led calls for his impeachment, which forced House Speaker Mike Johnson to dismiss the House early to avoid embarrassment.

Last week, The Telegraph reported that current and former Pentagon officials are ready and willing to “spill their guts” if Congress moves to investigate and impeach Hegseth.

“There’s going to be a lot of people that are going to very quietly go to the chair of the Armed [Services] Committee and are going to spill their guts, provide them with everything they can and leak everything they can,” an anonymous source told the British newspaper. “It’ll be horrendous. It’ll be consistent embarrassment.”

The Pentagon denies that Hegseth is seeking such an escape.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, Secretary Hegseth’s singular priority is leading the War Department and delivering on the President’s America First agenda,” Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson told The Independent.

Hegseth’s plan might run into resistance, as Burchett is also eyeing the seat, and has spent much of the year campaigning for Blackburn. With Trump’s unpopularity shattering presidential records and next week’s midterm results looking worse and worse, it’s only natural that the rats will want to start fleeing the ship. Will Republicans look to protect Hegseth, or leave him to his fate?

The president literally admitted this to thousands of people at a Georgia rally on Saturday.

“And while oil prices are temporarily high, and will be falling dramatically in a short period of time as soon as that war is over—because there’s so much oil,” he said to the crowd, “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.”

Trump went on to tell the crowd that his team advised him to avoid talking about gas prices in that manner due to how incredibly tone deaf it sounds.

“My people said ‘please don’t mention that sir, because people are paying a little higher,’” he said in a whiny little voice. “That number’s gonna come way down, but what we’ve done for this country, we’re making money like this country has never made before. So I said let me say it gingerly.... I can just see the fake headlines: ‘President Trump is talking about all the money they’re making while people are suffering at the pump.’ That’ll be the headline. I said I don’t give a damn I’m gonna say it: We’re making a freaking fortune.”

Trump and his Big Oil friends are making a “freaking fortune,” not the normal Americans he’s trying to convince to vote Republican next month. But of course the most corrupt president of the century would have no issue conflating the profit margins of billionaires with the financial status of the average American—even as there is a negative correlation between the two. His comment was lambasted far and wide.

“Trump just said the quiet part out loud: He doesn’t ‘give a damn’ about higher gas prices, as long as his billionaire friends are making a fortune,” independent democratic socialist Senator Bernie Sanders wrote online. “Trump doesn’t tell the truth very often, but he did last night!”

“Donald Trump has made $2.2 billion off the presidency—and counting,” Illinois Democratic Governor and 2028 presidential hopeful JB Pritzker wrote. “The only person making a ‘fortune’ is him.”

“Give @POTUS credit for leveling with the American people. HE’s making money like he’s never made before,” CNN analyst David Axelrod added. “And he doesn’t give a damn about high gas prices. (Not a great closing message, though.)”

This is such a “let them eat cake moment” for the president, blatantly expressing his giddiness at his own personal financial windfall during a rally that was supposed to convince voters to support the same rich friends he bragged about. And when is that war on Iran actually going to end?

The lawsuit alleges that the Senate election should be nullified if Sullivan loses because there’s another “Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.” on the ballot also running as a Republican, and the Trump administration thinks voters will be too confused. Alaska’s Supreme Court in June upheld lower court rulings that found the two Sullivans could run in the same election—but the Trump administration has waited until just days before the election to intervene.

Appearing on CBS News’s Face the Nation Sunday, Blanche threw a tantrum as host Margaret Brennan showed that Sullivan was clearly listed as the “(Registered Republican) Incumbent” on Alaska’s ballot.

“I mean you’re not telling the truth, you’re not being honest with the voters!” Blanche whined.

Donald Trump has already admitted that he was the one who ordered the lawsuit, but Blanche refused to provide any details. “Who did he tell to do it?” Brennan pressed.

“So, I don’t—I will never, ever, ever talk about communications that I have with the president of the United States. I never have and I never will,” Blanche said.

Brennan read from the lawsuit that the DOJ had asked that Alaska’s state elections board and ballot counting review board “not certify an election result that may be impacted by voter confusion.”

“The confusion is defined as ‘Senator Sullivan not winning,’ and ‘had all votes cast for Daniel J Sullivan been cast instead for Senator Sullivan then he would’ve won,’” she said, leaving a lengthy pause for Blanche to respond.

“Well, that’s not what it says,” Blanche said.

“I’m quoting from it,” she said. “You are telling them not to certify it. What right does the federal government have telling a state not to certify or how to certify?”

“You know if you talk the whole time, you’re not going to get answers out of me!” he fumed.

Blanche didn’t fare much better during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union Saturday. Host Dana Bash quoted Trump’s claim that “the Democrats are trying to steal this important Republican seat.”

“He’s admitting it’s political. Do you see your job as helping Republicans keep this seat?” Bash asked.

“He’s not admitting it’s political!” Blanche cried. “Wait, you’re saying that a president saying that there’s something improper happening at the ballots is necessarily political? He’s the executive, he’s supposed to make sure that everything in this country is running right!”

Blanche raged that Democrats were “cheating” and Bash had “cherry-picked” that quote.

He finally exploded after Bash suggested that there were concerns that Trump was laying the groundwork to overturn the election, like “what we saw after January 6.”

“I mean oh, stop it!” Blanche shrieked. “Oh you gotta stop it with that. You’re not being a real person! Come on, man! That is crazy!”

Surely, when your arguments become that the other side is simply crazy, that’s how you know you’ve got a winning lawsuit. Clearly, Blanche has veered into unknown territory: It is extremely abnormal for the Justice Department to be involved in election certification. But that won’t stop the Trump administration’s most blatant effort so far to swing ballots in Republicans’ favor.

Bolsonaro, the son of imprisoned former President Jair Bolsonaro, said that the results of the runoff election should be annulled because of a Brazilian Supreme Court ruling extending voting by two hours. However, both Lula and Bolsonaro’s parties had called for that extension, making his point moot. (The Supreme Court only ruled on Lula’s petition, though the requests were the same.)

Lula’s left-wing Workers’ Party supported the extension because voters in urban São Paulo and Bahia, where it has a strong support base, had trouble getting to the polls due to trouble with bus services. Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party, meanwhile, cited heavy rains in the southern parts of Brazil, where its supporters are more numerous.

Bolsonaro’s complaint is not likely to sway the Supreme Court. The high court’s president, Kassio Nunes Marques, who was appointed by the elder Bolsonaro, confirmed the election result, noting that extending times did not affect the electoral process or the vote count. Lula won 51.79 percent to Bolsonaro’s 48.21 percent, a difference of 4.4 million votes.

U.S. President Donald Trump had pushed for Bolsonaro’s party to win, having supported Jair Bolsonaro during his tenure and disputed his prison sentence over attempting to overturn Brazil’s elections in an attempted coup d’état in 2022. Trump has not yet commented on the result, but his son Donald Trump Jr. did on X Sunday night.

Complaining about Brazil’s Supreme Court, Trump Jr. posted that “if a conservative government in Brazil did this, everyone in the mainstream press in America would lose their minds, but I guess they’re just choosing to be silent because it’s all for the cause.” Perhaps he’s just mad that Brazilians have done what Americans failed to do: lock up a corrupt far-right leader and keep him from returning to power.

All of which raises a question: Can Democrats do anything about this? Well, yes, they actually can.

Senior House Democrats tell me they’re discussing a dramatic step, should they win the majority: wielding the power of the purse against the illicit persecution of Trump critics. This could entail targeted efforts to defund investigations and prosecutions ordered up baselessly by Trump. Democrats also plan to extensively deploy subpoena power against officials at many levels to expose the corrupt processes by which Trump orders underlings to carry out these directives—including the investigation and expected prosecution of Omar.

“We will actively and aggressively investigate this case,” Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington state, told me. “We will probably have legislation to make sure there are no funds expended on this investigation.”

Representative Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat who will chair the Judiciary Committee in a Democratic majority, adds that his committee will confer with Democratic appropriators to develop a kind of joint defunding strategy against corrupt prosecutions.

“We have the power of the purse,” Raskin told me. “We’ll be working closely with our Appropriations Committee partners to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to cut off money that is being used for political harassment and persecution.”

Jayapal, Raskin, and more than 170 other House Democrats just sent a letter—obtained by The New Republic—sharply condemning Trump’s action against Omar.

“This weaponization of law enforcement to harass a sitting Member of Congress 22 days before an election is unprecedented and unacceptable,” reads the letter, which is addressed to Attorney General Todd Blanche and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. “We demand you refrain from taking further actions,” it continues, emphasizing: “We stand with Congresswoman Omar.”

The letter—which is also led by Representatives Robert Garcia and Bennie Thompson, ranking Democrats on the Oversight and Homeland Security committees—is notable for the strong backing it shows for Omar within leadership and the caucus and for what it telegraphs about how a Democratic majority might proceed. It highlights grave substantive problems with the operation against Omar, calling the attempt itself “incompatible with our democracy.”

To wit: The administration is reportedly building a case for denaturalizing the 44-year-old Omar by showing that her father falsified her naturalization form by claiming she was 17 at the time, when she was supposedly 18. Homeland Security agents executed an October 12 search warrant secured by the Justice Department on the Washington-area home of Omar—a Somali refugee who arrived here in 1995 as a teenager—seizing her phone and many other items.

That alone appears highly irregular. As the Democrats write, a “pre-dawn raid on her home” is not justified by questions about “paperwork her father filed when she was a minor.” The move also violates DOJ protocol about executing search warrants close to an election.

What’s more, the Democrats’ letter cites extensive public statements from Trump and top supporters—he’s called her “garbage” and presided over rally chants of “Send her back”—that reveal deeply corrupt motives behind the prosecution. Indeed, it’s plainly driven by Trump’s racial animus and zeal to exile a critic from the country.

And as the letter suggests, Trump apparently ordered the prosecution of many other critics, including six lawmakers who urged military service members not to carry out illegal orders. Not coincidentally, those are also sitting members of Congress that Trump sought to humble.

Notably, officials during Trump’s first administration looked into this Omar theory and found no basis for it. Regardless, even if Omar’s father did falsify the form, it’s not at all clear Omar herself would be liable for it. So the targeting of Omar will likely fail, as those other prosecutions have. But simply waiting for that to happen isn’t enough.

Instead, Democrats are signaling that the deployment of all kinds of tactics against such persecutions is on the table. Employing aggressive oversight, a Democratic House could subpoena all communications between Trump, the White House, DOJ, and the Department of Homeland Security about the targeting of Omar. Trump has claimed he didn’t personally direct DOJ’s decision to pursue Omar; internal communications might show otherwise.

Democrats can also encourage whistleblowers to come forward and subpoena the investigation of Omar that was done under Trump 1.0. They can seek testimony from mid-level officials being directed to carry out the Omar investigation to establish corrupted processes and internal opposition. As Jayapal, also a member of the Judiciary Committee, told me: “Assuming the elections go the way we want, that’ll be more incentive for people to come forward.”

“Everybody involved from top to bottom will be subject to legislative investigation,” Raskin added.

Beyond Omar, Democrats say they’ll probe mid-level actors involved in corrupt prosecutions in a broader sense. This could be consequential. Note that when Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin recently suggested Congress should target obscure officials executing Trump’s corrupt schemes, MAGA threw a phony outrage fit. Trump does need mid-level bureaucrats and lawyers to carry out high-level corruption, and targeting them with legitimate investigations would threaten his lawless project.

Then there’s the power of the purse. Deploying this will involve many complexities around how exactly to target particular investigations or departments for defunding. But critically, Democrats say they’re currently exploring how to carry out this move.

“Because Trump is so lawless, we have got to use the appropriations power as carefully as we can to prevent violations of people’s constitutional rights,” Raskin told me.

Is this feasible? Yes, says Georgetown professor Josh Chafetz, author of a good book on Congress and its powers. He notes that DOJ will likely argue that it’s unconstitutional for Congress to interfere with individual prosecutorial decisions but Democrats would have a good case anyway.

“Congress can do almost whatever it wants with the power of the purse,” Chafetz told me, adding that it can “put whatever conditions it wants” on the executive’s use of appropriations, so long as those conditions are not themselves unconstitutional. Democrats can also try to write broader limits into appropriations bills against investigations ordered up directly by Trump under illicit conditions, Chafetz says.

Trump will of course oppose such moves. Could that lead to government funding showdowns? Yes, it could. Fine: Let Republicans defend these corrupt prosecutions in fights over keeping the government open as Trump drags them ever downward. And yes, this will all be endlessly litigated. Bring it on.

Because the bottom line is this: Democrats have to try. Again and again, Trump has expressly commanded law enforcement to simply disregard what facts and law dictate in the quest to target Democratic critics. And as TNR’s Michael Tomasky writes, the stakes are particularly high with Omar. Trump has unleashed the power of the state on a group—one that includes a whole lot of U.S. citizens—that he’s openly designated an ethnic enemy within. Democrats must get very creative in response. And no legislative tactic—none—should be off the table.

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

Donald Trump lost it with a young female reporter who dared to ask him a tough question about his support for that vile ad that’s running in Ohio. It’s critical that the reporter was young and female, because Trump really does reserve his worst venom for such reporters, particularly non-white. We think the bigger story behind all this right now centers on Trump and MAGA’s belief that misogyny can actually help them in the home stretch of the midterms. Yet this view is even alienating some Fox News figures who are starting to cringe very visibly over it.

We’re talking about all of this with Nicole Hemmer, who’s written good books on the history of the conservative movement and the right-wing media. We’re going to get into the right’s long history of misogyny politics. Nicole, thanks for coming on.

Nicole Hemmer: Thanks so much for having me, Greg.

Sargent: All right, so everyone’s seen the ad that Vivek Ramaswamy’s running in the Ohio gubernatorial campaign. It features Democrat Amy Acton’s mother calling her a liar about her difficult past, but then it emerged that Amy Acton’s stepfather, i.e., her mother’s husband, apparently raped her. Ramaswamy, Trump, and JD Vance are all in on this now. Nicole, I just wanted to get your general thoughts on this whole thing.

Hemmer: Honestly, like, a decade into the Trump era, I didn’t think, A, anything could still genuinely shock me, the way that this ad shocked me. And B, that anything could shock Republicans as much as this ad seems to have shocked them.

One of the things that I think we’ve gotten very used to is that when something terrible happens, there might be an initial wave of Republican sort of aghastness and outrage, but then they, you know, kind of fall back into line. Trump pushes back and they end up back on the Trump train.

But in this instance, there does seem to be such a gut-level revulsion against this Ramaswamy ad that I just don’t think that we’ve seen in a long time. And I didn’t even realize we had the capacity for anymore.

Sargent: Let’s listen to an exchange between Donald Trump and NBC reporter Monica Alba. If you listen closely, you’re going to hear in the crosstalk that the reporter says, do the sexual abuse allegations mean nothing to you, sir? And you’ll hear her say, they are very serious sexual abuse allegations. Listen.

Donald 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?

Monica Alba (voiceover): Do the sexual abuse allegations … do the sexual abuse allegations make no difference?

Trump (voiceover): Wait, wait, wait, wait. Slow down. Who are you with? Who are you with?

Alba (voiceover): I’m with NBC, sir.

Trump (voiceover): The one of the worst networks you have.

Alba (voiceover): But these are very serious sexual abuse allegations. They make no difference to you?

Trump (voiceover): Quiet. Isn’t she a fresh person? You’re a horrible little reporter, aren’t you?

Sargent: So, Nicole, what that reporter was talking about there was the allegation that Amy Acton was raped, of course, and Trump was clearly set off by the pointed questions about the sex abuse allegations, didn’t you think?

Hemmer: Absolutely. In part because the reporter was almost giving him an out. She was like, I get that maybe this was your gut reaction to just seeing the commercial, but once you have the context, would you like to rethink your response to this?

And of course he doesn’t want to, right? A, because he never wants to. B, because he lives in this world of, like, plausible deniability. And C, actually, there isn’t anything that seems to trigger Donald Trump more than references to sexual abuse. Because he has his own past here, right?

It’s the Epstein scandal, it’s his own history of accusers and even being found liable for sexual assault before. And so that just opens up a whole world of things that he doesn’t want to speak to. And so when a young woman has the temerity to push him on that, it trips, like, three different triggers for him, and he starts lashing out.

Sargent: Right. And this is a case where the facts are ultra clear. Again, to the point where even a bunch of Republicans had to come out and condemn the ad. I think we should point out here, and maybe you could comment on this, we do know at this point that Trump is unusually triggered by young female reporters, particularly non-whites, don’t we?

Hemmer: Absolutely. I mean, Donald Trump doesn’t like to be challenged in general, but he certainly doesn’t want to be challenged by people who he does not see as his equal. And there are very few people that Donald Trump sees as his equal, and all of those people are white, male, and wealthy.

So for a young female reporter to challenge him, for someone who’s not white to challenge him—all of those things, it’s both like that he doesn’t like to be challenged, and then also, how dare you? You don’t have the right to challenge me.

Sargent: I think there’s actually some continuity here between his vicious abuse of female reporters in general on the one side, and the politics around this vile ad itself. It’s kind of all a bet that misogyny is somehow a winner in the closing stretch of this election.

It’s all a bet that this type of politics can get out a certain type of voter that they don’t think they can get out any other way at this point, especially without Trump on the ballot. Can you talk a little bit about that? Do you think that’s what they’re up to?

Hemmer: Yes, absolutely. I mean, misogyny has been one of the key political appeals of the Trump campaign. It is not a coincidence that the two elections that he won, he won against women. If you were at the 2016 RNC, it was like a misogyny fest.

All of the attacks on Hillary Clinton were not attacks about her policies, but they were attacks about her as a woman, right? Or the attacks on Michelle Obama for being a man, or Kamala Harris. This misogyny has been part of the bargain with Trump from the very beginning.

The Access Hollywood tape, the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court—like, all of this has been saying, we not just, like, don’t care about women and feminism, but we’re actively trying to mobilize misogyny, because we want to mobilize, in particular, like, young disaffected men who we think are going to be drawn to that appeal.

And so that MAGA voter, particularly that MAGA voter who is, like, the non-traditional voter, like the low-propensity voter, they think that misogyny is the tool for bringing them out. And not just for bringing out white men. That has been the key for drawing Black men and Latino men into their coalition. And so that’s been something that they have pressed on again and again, because it’s their way to sort of, like, a rainbow coalition on the right.

Sargent: I want to pick up on that point about bringing in all these different types of men into the MAGA coalition, because I think in some really fundamental sense, what we’re seeing here is that Trump is still sort of in the headspace of 2024. I mean, this was a really heady thing for Trump. Obviously it was this miraculous comeback, and it was very heady times.

If you think about the inroads that they were making with young men in 2024, there was something special happening in the culture for them, I think. For MAGA in some very general sense, and for Trump in particular, they felt like they had unlocked some sort of magic power, I think. Some sort of magical, I don’t know, phenomenon of some kind. And I feel like they’re almost trying to recapture that a little bit.

Can you talk about that?

Hemmer: Right, to recapture the magic of past moments of glory. And those past moments of glory have been so connected with misogyny. They’ve been so anti-woman. And that coalition has been just drenched in misogyny as a way of inspiring and bringing that out.

But I do think that there is something—in some ways you can see Trump’s response to the Ramaswamy ad as almost like a take two on the response to the Access Hollywood tape, like, eight—gosh, 10 years ago now. That idea that, like, he had sort of apologized a little bit for the Access Hollywood tape, and there had been this intense Republican backlash to the Access Hollywood tape initially, and then everybody coalesced.

And you kind of get the sense that Trump just wants to skip past that. He thinks that he’s powerful enough at this point that he can just, like, skip past the part where everyone pretends to be sad about something he said, and then just sort of muscle his way forward and, like, get to the part where everybody celebrates him for being such an unconventional person.

And so I think that’s part of it. Trump is always looking back to the glory days, right? That’s Make America Great Again, but it’s also wanting to recapture the high points of his political career. And it’s no wonder he’s trying to do that in 2026, when he is at frankly one of the low points of his career, right?

His approval numbers are pretty weak. His support among Republicans is much weaker than we’ve seen, even among white working-class Republicans. It’s just not as strong as it was. So him trying to, like, call upon that old magic—no wonder he’s trying to mobilize that in this moment, because it’s been around elections that he’s largely been able to tap into that in the past.

Sargent: Absolutely. Well, let’s listen to some Fox News figures who are now turning on this. These are all flagged by Media Matters. Here’s Fox contributor Mary Katharine Ham commenting on Trump and Vance supporting the ad.

Mary Katharine Ham (voiceover): I disagree with the president and Vance. As soon as I saw that ad, I thought, normal moms are going to watch this ad and go, a mom trashing her daughter straight to camera, they better have the goods. That’s actually what I thought when I first saw it. And it doesn’t appear that they do have the goods, because she has a really good response to it, which is, like, she had this very hard childhood.

Here’s a Republican consultant and commentator on Fox.

Republican consultant (voiceover): It is not a new phenomenon to use family members that have a problem against candidates in political ads. But if you do that, you better darn well know the whole story and know that it’s not sympathetic to the intended target. And of course, what we found out about this is it is, in the absolute worst possible way.

And here’s Fox & Friends host Lawrence Jones talking about Ramaswamy’s decision to air the ad.

Lawrence Jones (voiceover): I thought this was just stupid. He’s already struggling in Ohio. I just don’t understand why he would do this.

Sargent: So those are all interesting, but I thought Mary Katharine Ham’s intervention is particularly pointed, because she directly calls out Trump and Vance for elevating the ad in a way that she says will alienate ordinary women. What did you think of that?

Hemmer: I think that’s right. And I think that it points to the part of the reaction that I have found so surprising, is that there has been a real reluctance to criticize Trump. You know, normally the criticisms fall to people under Trump, like, he’s been advised inappropriately. Vance, who has been seen as, like, the next hope of the MAGA movement—there’s been some reluctance to criticize him as well.

But in this case, I mean, I think that Ham is hearing from the people that she talks to how rattled Republicans were by this ad, particularly Republican women. In part because Republican women aren’t necessarily on board with feminism.

They have by and large not been on board with the #MeToo movement. They’ve been very skeptical of claims about sexual abuse, whether it’s against Kavanaugh or against Trump, or even in the recent case of the Cornell 7.

But in this particular case, when we are talking about the rape of a child—she was only 12 years old when she was taken from her mother because of these accusations—we’re talking about the rape of a child by a stepfather, and a mother choosing the stepfather over the child.

It is absolutely a bridge too far for ordinary people who are seeing this. And I keep using the word repulsed and disgusted, but there’s something gut-level and emotional about people’s response to this that you can’t, like, MAGA your way out of.

Sargent: You can’t MAGA your way out of. I like that a lot. They really think they can MAGA their way out of pretty much anything, don’t they?

Hemmer: Well, they have in the past. There’s a good reason why they believe that. And so I think perhaps they’re even surprised by the response to this.

Sargent: Well, let’s talk about some polling here. The New York Times national poll, in the generic congressional ballot matchup, had Democrats winning women by 56 to 37. That’s a 19-point edge. The gender gap is enormous in this election.

It seems to me like Donald Trump and JD Vance are, again, to return to this idea of being in the 2024 headspace, somehow deciding that female voters just don’t really exist in this election.

I think a lot about a tweet that Stephen Miller sent during the 2024 election. It was on election night, when everything was really hanging in the balance. It looked very close. Do you recall this? Stephen Miller sent this tweet out where he said basically something like, men, get out to the polls. It was something like that. It was as clear-cut as that. It was like, we know that if women vote, we’re screwed, but we need men to vote.

And a midterm election is a different animal from the type of presidential election that their head is still in, I think. To return to a point you made earlier, I don’t understand why they don’t get this, right? A midterm electorate is going to be highly engaged. It’s going to have, you know, fewer young, sporadic voters, fewer of the young male type voters that they were relying on.

There are going to be a whole lot of women voting in this election. Fifty-six to 37. What do you make of all that? Do they just erase that from their minds, and what’s going on?

Hemmer: He just returns to what’s comfortable for him. And it’s part of the reason why the more establishment Republicans, the kinds of people who do know the difference between a midterm and a general election, are so wary about this particular incident.

It’s because, precisely as you’re saying, like, the Stephen Miller quote was very much about, we know that there is this, like, batch of voters that we are very good at turning out when Trump is on the ballot. And they are young men, and they do make the margin of difference. And they’re very, very unlikely to turn out in a midterm election.

And so trying to mobilize them—this is not going to get young men to the polls, especially at a moment when the economy is doing so poorly. Like, you’re not offering anything in this case. But Donald Trump doesn’t have, like, a wide range of tools in his tool belt. He has misogyny. And that’s kind of what he keeps returning to, because it’s one of the only things that he has, other than racism.

Sargent: Well, to your point, the Harvard Youth Poll came out just a few days ago, and it confirms your point to a T. It says that among young men, men under the age of 30, nearly 70 percent disapprove of his performance in his second term.

I think maybe part of what’s going on here is that the cultural moment that made 2024 possible is just gone. It’s not here anymore. And they don’t know that, I don’t think. That cultural moment was, there really was this kind of massive disaffection out there among young men, men more generally, you know—I don’t know, wokeness or whatever, whatever it is, but it was mostly, I think, probably economic in a lot of ways, and things just felt kind of adrift after the pandemic, maybe.

And so Trump was essentially telling all these men, I will give you purpose, right? And the stuff you’re talking about, the promise not to go to war, the promise to get inflation under control—these are all basically ways of saying I will empower you, men. You’ll have control of your lives again.

And now that he’s in the White House, he hasn’t delivered that empowerment. And so he’s got no real way to appeal to them anymore, I don’t think. Can you talk a little about the lapsing of the 2024 cultural moment?

Hemmer: Yes. And it is exactly as you say, that there was an appeal that he was able to make because he was able to make promises based in some ways on a fantasy. And he was able to make them while he was in a race against a Black woman, which made it much easier for him to leverage that polarization and to leverage misogyny and racism in that election.

What I would say is that we have not seen the end of the mobilizing of this idea of a ‘crisis of men’ for reactionary politics. That is going to be with us for a very long time. It has been part of U.S. politics for a very long time.

It’s something that we saw, for instance, in the 1992 campaign when Pat Buchanan was running. He was constantly attacking feminism and women as being kind of the enemy of white working-class men. They’re taking your jobs, they’re feminizing our culture.

And that has been a strain of right-wing politics for a very long time. It will continue to be a strain of right-wing politics, particularly because this idea of the ‘crisis of men’ is now so embedded in both conservative and, frankly, liberal politics as well. So I don’t think that that’s over.

But I think Trump as the avatar of that position, or Trump as the most persuasive proponent of that position—he’s fallen on hard times, because what voters have seen and what young men have seen is that Trump is raking in the cash for himself while the economy flounders, while they can’t find jobs, while they’re fighting inflation and not able to pay for things.

They’re seeing Trump start wars that they’re worried that they’re going to have to fight in. And so that sort of imaginary version of Trump that has mobilized so many male voters, it has come into conflict with the reality of Trump. And they’re not going to go vote for Democrats, but they’re very unlikely to go vote at all this election.

Sargent: That’s fascinating stuff. Just to close this out, let’s talk a little about JD Vance. I think he’s calculating that that energy is still there in some sense. He goes out there and he says, stop whining, Republicans. He’s very tough and he’s dressing down the wimpy Republicans, and he’s saying manly politics requires that we stand by this ad and grind the female candidate under our heels into the dirt, basically. I mean, that’s what he’s saying, right, Nicole?

And so he seems to be calculating that he can maneuver his way around the broken promises that you’re talking about, by leaking here and there that he was a skeptic of the war, but then also going full misogyny with this ad.

How do you sort of see his trajectory playing out when it comes to this male-baiting reactionary politics?

Hemmer: This is Vance’s only play, to lean into the kind of cultural grievance, to lean into the I’m just one of the guys kind of politics, to lean into the Trumpian look-at-me-saying-the-things-that-I’m-not-supposed-to-say kind of politics, trying to play the tough guy against the beta male and the feminist and the women out there.

The problem is, he has a really hard time selling it. Vance is not Trump. Vance is so much more like Vivek Ramaswamy than he is like Donald Trump. And he has the same kinds of problems that Ramaswamy has, which is they’re both very off-putting every time they open up their mouths. They’re smarmy, you don’t quite believe them when they talk.

And they both have a problem with the core Trump base. In Vivek’s case, it’s because he’s Indian. And in Vance’s case, it’s because he’s married to an Indian woman. And so he’s got a problem with the racist base of the Trump coalition. And by the time Trump’s done with his presidency, that might be the only part of the MAGA coalition left.

So Vance can’t play to that part of the base. He can play to the misogynist part of the base, but I don’t know that he is convincing as the alpha male of the Republican Party. And that’s going to be a big problem for him going forward.

Sargent: Nicole Hemmer, so awesome to talk to you. Folks, if you enjoyed this, check out Nicole’s books. They’re really good. One is called Partisans, another is called Messengers of the Right. Nicole, always a great pleasure to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on.

Hemmer: Lovely to chat with you, Greg.

“Our country is making hundreds of billions of dollars because of what’s happened in the Middle East, because they’re coming to Texas and they’re coming to Oklahoma and they’re coming to Louisiana and they’re taking that oil. My people say, ‘Please don’t mention that, sir, people are paying a little higher.…’ I can just see the fake headlines: ‘President Trump is talking about all the money they’re making while people are suffering at the pump.’ But I said, ‘I don’t give a damn, I’m gonna say it: We’re making a frickin’ fortune.’”

There’s quite a bit to unpack there, but let’s just start with the most obvious thing. For a president to say 10 days before an election that he doesn’t give a damn that people are paying high prices—which is what he said, no matter how his apologists try to spin it—is, well, unusual. The way he defines “our country,” as consisting of just a handful of oilmen, is of interest as well.

Also, as ever with Trump, it practically goes without saying that it isn’t true that the United States is making a fortune off the war in Iran. It was true, for a while. In the war’s early months, with the Strait of Hormuz completely shut down, countries were indeed purchasing more U.S. oil. But that started to change in July, and now, it’s just no longer the case. Middle Eastern oil flows have returned to nearly prewar levels. In fact, The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Persian Gulf oil exports had surpassed prewar levels. And OilPrice.com reported over the weekend that U.S. exports to Asia, which were driving the springtime export boom, have fallen off the cliff—by about 50 percent in one month—because of sky-high freight rates. “The cost of shipping crude oil from the U.S. Gulf Coast to China soared to as high as $80 million earlier this month,” the website reported. “That’s ten times the average tanker rates that had held for years before the Iran war.”

But what really makes Trump’s remark worth considering is not what’s happening on the high seas; it’s what’s happening in between his ears. And inside that aging, creaking, mildewed mind, so well lubricated by the venom he spews at enemies near and far, is unquestionably a secret and perverse desire for the Republicans to lose.

Why? Three main reasons. First, he’s not on the ballot, so he doesn’t really care. In fact, not only does he not care—he’d rather see them lose if he’s not on the ballot, because his Brobdingnagian insecurity is such that he’ll say to anyone who’ll listen, “See? They can’t win without me.”

Second, there’s definitely a part of him that wants to see the Democrats regain control of Congress. He sees politics, indeed all of life, as mortal combat—just one giant you-know-what swinging contest. If the Democrats take power and come at him and his people with their questions and subpoenas, there’s a part of him that will actually like that. He’s at home in that embattled zone. He’s lived on that knife’s edge his entire adult life, daring those poor vendors who had the misfortune of doing business with him in Atlantic City to sue him and go take a number. Among the lessons he learned from Roy Cohn is this one: If you’re not at war with at least 10 enemies, you’re not really living.

Third—and this is the reason that should be most concerning to normal Americans—he wants Democrats to win because he wants to be able to accuse them, with of course no factual basis whatsoever, of cheating. On a deep and visceral level, nothing in the world gives this twisted man more pleasure than leveling completely false accusations against people he hates. If the elections go the Democrats’ way, in the House and especially in the Senate, he’ll carry on for days, for weeks, about voting machines that supposedly converted Ken Paxton votes into James Talarico votes, or about fictional reports of thousands of noncitizens voting for Abdul El-Sayed in Dearborn or countless undocumented (though he won’t use that word) “Somalians” (rest assured he will use that word) pulling the lever for Peggy Flanagan.

And odds are strong that he’ll do more than complain. He’ll order Attorney General Todd Blanche to investigate or maybe even block results, along the lines Blanche outlined last week with respect to Alaska. What else? ICE raids on immigrant communities where he alleges fraud took place? Invocation, finally, of the Insurrection Act, and the assumption of vast emergency powers? All as prelude, of course, to next January 3, when many people fear Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson will figure out a way not to seat the new Congress. If you somehow missed Michael Luttig’s brilliant and important piece on this for The New Republic on September 10, you need to read it.

So there’s no reason to be surprised that Trump said what he said Saturday. He uses that tired trope a lot—my people told me not to say this, but what the hell, I’m going to say it. It communicates to the MAGA-brained that Trump and Trump alone is the swashbuckling Quixote, brave enough to speak the unconventional truths that those timorous ninnies advising him would never utter. When they applaud these crazy lines that no other politician could get away with saying—that no other politician would ever dream of saying—they’re applauding that: the middle finger he’s waving at the world.

Trump’s entire political career is built around that premise. Remember in the original Jurassic Park, when that Australian guy who eventually got his arm chomped off was explaining to the others how the velociraptors probed the perimeter fences, looking for weaknesses? That’s Trump. He’s constantly probing the fences, seeing what new disgusting thing he can get away with and assuming that he can get away with all of it.

But voters have fingers too—middle ones, and the ones they mark ballots with. Let’s hope they put them to good use next Tuesday.

That’s where the focus was during this past Saturday’s “No Kings: Vote Early” events. Unlike the previous No Kings mass protests, Saturday wasn’t about delivering a message of resistance, it was about delivering the votes needed to back it up.

But if voters do restore Democrats to congressional power in November, the fight isn’t over—and what happens next will be just as crucial. In a series of interviews with movement leaders, a Step Two is coming into view: making sure that when Democrats take over one or both chambers of Congress, they don’t wimp out.

“I talk to so many people who are like, ‘It doesn’t really matter who I vote for because it’s not going to make a difference. Both parties are the same,’” says Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led political action organization.

“And I think there’s a lot of ways in which the next two years could prove them right, if nothing happens or if they don’t hear about anyone who they voted for at all.”

Democrats in Congress have so far been “both unable and unwilling to really stand up to Trump in the ways that really matter,” Shiney-Ajay says. In the next two years, they need “to show that they are willing to fight.” Her hope is that by the time the 2028 presidential elections roll around, “we are able to say: ‘Here’s what’s different because of what you did.’”

“If the Democrats take back Congress, it isn’t because of a milquetoast agenda,” says Neidi Dominguez, executive director of Organized Power in Numbers, a worker rights organization that is part of the May Day Strong Coalition. “They have to be responsive to that,” in a way that “breaks through to the everyday person,” she says.

Democrats are running “on an argument of corruption and affordability,” says Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, a progressive grassroots organization with over 2,500 local chapters. “If you then don’t use the power available to you, you will undermine your party’s reputation—for good reason—because you will have demonstrated that on the campaign trail, you’ll say whatever it takes to get elected, but once you’re governing, you’re not going to do shit.”

Levin says, “That’s the number one problem that the Democrats face now and in the future. It’s not an individual policy disagreement that they have with the voters. It’s that most voters think Democrats are feckless and don’t mean what they say. And so, a major project at the Democratic Party over the next two years has to be to revitalize its brand; prove [to] the voters that when you elect us, change happens.”

Older progressives remember what can happen when a mass movement stands down. Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign famously built a grassroots machine of two million supporters—“super-activists” prepared to engage in large-scale organizing to support his vision of hope and change. But Obama basically shut that operation down after he became president. He abandoned the “transformational” model promised by his campaign in favor of a transactional one. He hired archetypal political operator Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff; he deferred on financial matters to a group of “confidence men” whose sympathies were with Wall Street. His most ardent progressive supporters were ignored and let down.

The No Kings coalition has made it clear to Democratic leaders that it doesn’t intend to let that happen again.

“What I’m telling them is that the movements that put together the mass mobilizations in ’25 and ’26 aren’t evaporating on January 3 of ’27,” Levin says. “They’re looking for who is actually going to fight because that’s who they voted for.”

Realistically, even in the most optimistic scenarios, there’s only so much Democrats can do with Trump in the White House. He has the power of the veto, as well as a history of ignoring both congressional budgets and subpoenas.

Expectations should be attainable, says Hunter Dunn, national press coordinator for the grassroots 50501 movement. “We have repeatedly called for the abolition and prosecution of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, the dismantling of Department of Homeland Security, and a pathway to citizenship for all people living within the United States. That’s going to require someone who isn’t Trump to be president. Same deal with things like Medicare for All, Green New Deal, and expanding the Supreme Court.

“I think, obviously, some people are going to be disappointed when some of those things don’t pass,” Dunn says. “But I also don’t think people think Abdul El-Sayed is running on passing Medicare for All in 2027. He’s running on trying to get it passed in 2029. And I think people are aware of that.”

“There are far fewer opportunities to unilaterally bring the change than I would like when you just take control of Congress,” says Levin. “We don’t have a parliamentary system, that’s reality. But there are some levers. There are some things you can do.”

So what’s to be done? What the No Kings movement wants more than anything is for Democrats to develop a bold agenda, craft it into legislation, and hold floor votes on bill after bill after bill—even if Republicans are likely to block them in the Senate or Trump is likely to exercise his veto. By staking out bold territory on policy, Democrats can make what’s at stake in 2028 more vivid.

In the short run, that could mean well-publicized votes on ending the war in Iran, curbing inhumane and lawless immigration policies, and stopping weapons sales to Israel. In the longer run, they can get started on work for the future, and craft legislation that advances Medicare for all, a Green New Deal, a path to citizenship, and expanding the Supreme Court.

“We need clear contrast,” says Levin. “There needs to be a clear, compelling vision for what a post-Trump America looks like. And you don’t get that if everything gets just bottled up in committees and dies before it hits the floor.”

In a way, they welcome Trump’s vetoes. “I want to make him fight popular stuff and create the conflict,” Levin says. “That’s healthy conflict. That allows the public to see which side we’re on and which side they’re on.”

Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, the consumer advocacy and government-watchdog group, argues that “setting up a policy agenda that puts forth what you hope to accomplish when you can” would have “a meaningful impact” on voters. Each bill would be a “statement of care,” she says: “‘We care about housing. We care about grocery prices. We care about fighting corruption and fixing government.’ These are the sort of statements that Democrats should be making with their legislation.”

Even if the bills don’t become law, Gilbert says, “it still feels important to me to do the thing, to come out with bold policy prescriptions that demonstrate commitment to unrigging the system, fighting corruption, creating progressive economic policy—all the things that will help people and that they’re demanding.”

Dunn describes the goal bluntly: “This is building towards a future next administration, one without the stench of the Trump regime.” A Democratic majority that shows that Democrats “know what they’re doing and have an efficient standard for how they get things done” will bring increased credibility to their 2028 campaigns, he argues.

And as a bonus, making Republicans vote on popular Democratic proposals will “force them to either pass these bills or take an even worse electoral wipeout in 2028,” Dunn says.

The No Kings crowd worries that the current Democratic leadership—particularly Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer—aren’t wartime consiglieres and lack the stomach to mount this kind of aggressive legislative campaign. (Indivisible, for instance, only endorsed Senate candidates who committed to opposing Schumer as majority leader.)

They are concerned that the current leadership would be too willing to make concessions to Trump rather than stand and fight.

That’s certainly Trump’s expectation. He was asked by a local TV news reporter in Florida on Friday whether he could work with a Democratic Congress. “It’ll work because I’ll be vetoing everything,” he said. “And then they’re going to call and say, ‘how do we get something passed?’ and we’ll make a deal.”

But there is also cause for optimism. “We’re seeing an incoming class of Democrats that includes some of the most movement-aligned Democrats that we’ve really ever seen,” says Shiney-Ajay. Many of them are up for “getting dirty and fighting.”

“I mean, this isn’t just politics as usual anymore,” she says. “There’s just so many things that have become existential because of the Democrats’ refusal to stand up to this newly fascist Republican Party.”

Accountability is also a huge issue for the No Kings movement, and leaders intend to push Democrats to engage in aggressive oversight, including the use of subpoenas and public investigations to expose the inner workings of any number of Trump-era scandals and outrages.

The goal, Dunn says, is to “get as much information as possible into the hands of the American people, revealing the extent of the rot and corruption.”

There are two schools of thought about oversight. One the one hand, there is a clear desire for Democrats to go on offense against Trump administration officials who undermined the Constitution and broke laws. At the same time, there is a pragmatic consensus that oversight should focus on issues like affordability that have a more material impact on voters.

Gilbert is advocating for oversight that focuses on “how the corruption of the moment—both corporate corruption and Trump administration corruption—are connected to harms that people are experiencing in their real lives.” Oversight efforts would ideally “center investigative priorities on accountability, transparency, and affordability—how to protect regular Americans from the abuses of power and corporate misconduct we’re seeing.”

“It’s kind of trying to tie together the real urge to kind of give everyone a pound of flesh,” Gilbert says, “and also make it meaningful, so that people pay attention.”

Dunn wants to see televised hearings about links between Jeffrey Epstein and Trump. And he wants to see impeachment proceedings. His group, 50501, has called for the impeachment, conviction, and removal of Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, FBI Director Kash Patel, and other complicit officials.

And while Trump’s conviction by a two-thirds vote of the Senate is hard to imagine, Dunn still thinks it’s worth impeaching him in the House. “You can use it as a way to launch a number of investigations and get public information out there, which puts pressure on either removing him or, more likely, makes it easier to impeach, convict, and remove Hegseth or Patel or other complicit officials who are less popular.”

Dunn wants Democrats to start with Hegseth and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “When it comes to RFK Jr., you can definitely impeach, convict, and remove that guy. That guy is not incredibly popular amongst Senate Republicans based on what I have heard. Like he is a very vulnerable Cabinet official.”

The most leverage Democrats are likely to have in the next two years will come when their votes are needed for legislation to keep the government open. Among several possibilities—depending on what happens during the lame-duck Congress—the most likely is a bill to raise the debt ceiling. Similarly, if they control the Senate, Democrats would be able to pass a budget reconciliation bill with a simple majority in both chambers. In both those cases, Democrats will be able to threaten a government shutdown if their demands aren’t met.

So what should those demands be? There is widespread agreement within the No Kings community and among Democratic leaders that restoring three of Trump’s devastating attacks on the safety net is a top priority. That means:

• repealing requirements and funding changes that threw five million people out of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP;
• restoring enhanced tax credits for Affordable Care Act enrollees, whose elimination led 4.6 million people to lose their health insurance, while millions more are now paying higher premiums for lousier plans; and
• rolling back rule changes that go into effect in December that will kick as many as 10 million people off Medicaid next year.

“Trump and his Big Ugly Law have done immeasurable damage to the health care system, and people are furious,” says Gilbert. “So there are remedies that you can absolutely move by simple majority and attach to a budget reconciliation bill. That feels like a great place to dare Trump to veto.”

But there could be more—like increasing taxes on billionaires, she says. “You can’t do everything via reconciliation, but you can do a lot. And it’s going to be a really important vehicle for making statements—if Democrats have both chambers, daring him not to sign something that’s going to be so incredibly popular.”

For Dunn, an even higher priority is cutting funding for ICE. That’s a particularly ambitious goal since Congress in the last two years has front-loaded ICE and other immigration-enforcement operations with nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars to spend over the next three years—a massive sum that insulates ICE from the annual budget process.

But Dunn wants to hold must-pass legislation hostage in order to “grab back as much money from that slush fund as possible.” He explains: “Giving them less money to do damage with is the most important thing.” Congress “can’t make ICE less evil,” he says. But it can “make ICE weaker.”

Levin agrees that ICE must be defunded. “The Republicans won’t like that,” he says, “but that’s the cost of having a secret police goon squad murdering Americans in the streets.”

Is there any major legislation that enough Republicans would support to override a presidential veto—or force Trump to go along?

Shiney-Ajay thinks a consensus is forming over imposing a data center moratorium. “I mean, it’s an 80–20 issue; you just see massive support. And I think that’s the type of thing that if the Democratic Party decided to pick a fight on it, the Republican Party and Trump would have a really hard choice on their hands: of, piss off the vast majority of Americans, versus, actually say ‘yes’ to something.”

Regulating crypto and AI are also increasingly important priorities for No Kings, although leaders are realistic about the influence the industry is buying with members of both parties. “Obviously, AI and crypto are throwing around their money like nobody’s business,” Dunn says. But regulating AI “is another thing that I think a majority-Democratic House and Senate could get passed and force Trump to—at the very least—leave it unsigned and allow it to come into law.”

That’s what happened with a major housing affordability bill that passed both chambers by huge margins in June.

“It’s not impossible that you could get a solid infrastructure bill that helps American people through a divided but blue Congress and Senate and then get it on the president’s desk and put pressure on him to sign,” Dunn says.

He’s also keen on Democrats pushing for veterans’ health reforms. “That’s something that I think could, with the right pressure, be passed under Trump,” he says. “And not because Trump’s a good guy, but because the optics of him not passing it would be disastrous. I don’t think he could veto a bill called ‘Make Veterans’ Health Care Great Again.’”

“You change the Democratic Party either through advocacy or through electing new leaders,” Levin says. And he wants both.

If Democrats take the Senate, “the majority will be made up of new folks who came in saying we don’t want Schumer,” Levin says. Keeping Schumer as Democratic leader “will feel like a betrayal of the voters who built the wave,” he says.

“We can try to organize against that and other bad strategic moves they might make that will undermine them in 2028.

“Whether or not Democratic electeds actually listen is directly related to how much of a political threat they think that grassroots energy is,” Levin says. “If you get a few hundred, a few thousand people organized in a congressional district who are unified in purpose and are paying attention to what their member of Congress does, it affects how they think. That’s true in swing districts when it comes to general elections, and it’s true everywhere when it comes to primaries.”

So Indivisible chapters, like they have for the last 10 years, will continue to organize their communities, protest offices, run advocacy campaigns, raise money, recruit candidates, hold town halls, and write letters to the editor, Levin says.

But there’s going to be a significant shift in emphasis. “After the election, depending on how the election shakes out, but certainly in some way, we will be in a new political reality,” Levin says. “It’s no longer just about limiting harm from an out-of-control authoritarian. That’s a piece of it—but we should also be preparing for the next step, and that means going on offense.”

This genre is fertile ground for feminist writers, perhaps because it doesn’t take much more than checking out the latest proposals coming out of, say, the Texas Statehouse, to send the imagination spiraling into worst-case scenarios. For women who have benefited most from centuries of progress—the college-educated women writing in rooms of their own—and feel viscerally how much they have to lose, the not-quite-sci-fi novel is a place to work out those fears.

In Sarah Anderson’s debut novel, Fallow, a young woman named Natalie finds herself, like so many other young women of her generation, underemployed and saddled with student loans. She works at a call center that handles whistleblower complaints on behalf of thousands of companies. One day, she comes across a flyer advertising a mysterious role that promises only a “GENEROUS SALARY WITH BENEFITS.” The last part is crucial. Natalie has tooth pain so severe she can barely sleep, and no dental insurance. After correctly answering a series of questions—Do you have any tattoos? Do you live with cats? Have you ever had an abortion?—she’s called in for a job interview that includes a vaginal ultrasound. She signs up to be a surrogate for a mysterious tech company (ominously referred to only as “The Company”).

In recent novels about surrogacy, the protagonists are often mothers whose only chance at providing a better life for their child is to rent out their womb. Natalie is neither a destitute Indian villager, like Asha, the surrogate in Amulya Malladi’s A House for Happy Mothers, living in a run-down surrogate hostel so she can pay her brilliant son’s school fees, nor a Filipina immigrant high school dropout single mother, like Jane in Joanne Ramos’s The Farm. Natalie, a college-educated American, theoretically has a certain degree of class mobility.

By doing away with some of the disparities that traditionally loom over both fictional and real-life surrogacy narratives, Anderson heads off common criticisms of surrogacy and the skewed power dynamics between gestational carriers and intended parents. Instead she focuses on surrogacy as just one type of job in America’s already exploitative labor market, and poses a stark question: If surrogacy exploits women, then who, exactly, is doing the exploiting?

Natalie is keenly aware of the capricious and crappy nature of work. In her job at the call center, she documents a variety of appalling incidents, from “every imaginable flavor of sexual harassment,” to accidents involving heavy machinery, to “people fired for being too sick from chemo to hand out seasonal cheese samples.” This panoramic survey of the labor market confirms for her “two important truths: that there is no such thing as a good job, and that I had no interest in working.”

Natalie’s toothache eventually drives her to the dentist, who quotes her between two and four thousand dollars for oral surgery. She considers starting an OnlyFans but realizes it would take too long and require too much effort to accumulate the money; she then begins selling her plasma, though she nets only $50 for a two-hour donation. The surrogacy role is significantly more lucrative.

Shane, the “beefy, red-faced man” who offers her the job, hands her a hefty contract that she is given half an hour to review. It proposes seven babies in 10 years; $92,000 for each of the first three successful births, plus a $10,000 bonus for unmedicated vaginal births; and a raise to $112,000 per birth for the next four. The seventh and final birth comes with a $700,000 completion bonus, plus $60,000 in “desired cosmetic and reconstructive surgery,” in other words, the “Mommy Makeover.” As a gestational carrier, she has no genetic connection to the embryos that will be implanted. She will be given 26 weeks off between births. And, she observes, “I didn’t even have to do the hardest part; I didn’t have to keep the babies.”

Natalie skates over the ethics of surrogacy as quickly as she skims the fine print of the contract. “I knew I should be thinking hard about this,” she muses. “But for me, the choice was clear.” It turns out that there’s not much to think about; it boils down to simple math: “One decade of my body to win back the rest of my life.” She could avoid working, she reasons, perhaps not forever, but “for a long, long time.”

Her job, instead, will help other women work longer and harder for The Company. She is the test case for Genesis, Shane’s brainchild, “a groundbreaking initiative designed to accelerate gender equity through gestational outsourcing.” Company research has found that female employees feel less connected to their work during maternity leave, and earn less money (although it’s not clear if Shane is referring to the widespread wage penalty women face after getting “mommy-tracked” into less senior roles, or if The Company simply pays women less when they’re on leave). If employees can use a surrogate instead of going through pregnancy themselves, they can forgo the physical demands of pregnancy and childbirth, enabling The Company to trim maternity leave down to a tiny sliver. Women can report back to their desks at least part-time just a week after welcoming their newborns.

The Company pitches this scheme as an act of feminist allyship—“an opportunity to support our female colleagues on their leadership journey in every possible way.” In fact, The Company’s plan is to “eliminate the issues caused by maternity leave” by, essentially, eliminating maternity leave.

Thus, Natalie whiles away her twenties gestating and delivering other people’s babies. The Company pays for her two-bedroom condo, and deposits nutritious meals, already cooked, into her fridge. Her only responsibilities are maintaining her weight, sleeping, exercising, taking supplements, meditating, and avoiding forbidden foods and chemicals. She passes seven years in this suspended state, filling her largely empty life with online shopping, reality TV, and social media scrolling. Her water and air are very, very purified. Serial birthing, by her own criteria, is actually a pretty sweet gig.

Natalie is witheringly funny, but also superficial, incurious, and utterly devoid of maternal instincts, an antihero along the lines of the nameless protagonist of Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, minus the drugs, and for many more years. OK, not quite minus the drugs. In what she calls her “fallow” periods, the six months off between births, Natalie goes on Rumspringas involving abundant cocaine and booze, revolting quantities of ultra-processed foods, and nightclubbing with Libby, her former colleague from the call center, who has become a flight attendant. Sustaining romantic relationships, or even close friendships, is tricky, since the terms of her employment contract forbid her from telling anyone about her job, preventing her from explaining why or how she has fallen pregnant.

To Natalie, the worst parts of the job are the ones that most resemble, well, a job. Shane informs her she must come into the office three days a week. Her dedicated obstetrician, Dr. X, surveils her minute by minute through an Oura-like ring, sending her passive-aggressive texts when one of her vital signs wavers. “BP looking a little high. [alarm emoji] Try meditation. Link in ur inbox.” His micromanagement underscores her function as merely an incubator, and yet she doesn’t really seem to mind. After her first, almost effortless natural birth, she wonders if she has finally discovered an innate talent: “Maybe this was something I was just good at.”

There’s some truth in The Company’s claim that Genesis helps female employees. One woman chooses to use a surrogate after having an extremely difficult first pregnancy, an experience she never wanted to repeat. Another woman “hated her husband and was clearly relieved not to have to naturally conceive.” A Black executive, cognizant of disproportionately high rates of maternal mortality among Black mothers, had been wary of childbirth.

The difference between Natalie’s job and more conventional employment is most obvious when a project she has been working on gets shut down, so to speak. In the first trimester of her pregnancy for Jackie, The Company’s chief marketing officer, Jackie is fired and loses her benefits, which leads Shane to direct Natalie to get an abortion. Natalie, given a packet of abortion pills, can’t bring herself to take them right away. Nearly a week goes by in which each morning she wakes up promising herself that this will be the day she finally does.

While Natalie wavers, Jackie goes to CNN with the story, resulting in a flurry of news coverage and protests outside The Company’s offices. Isolated in her apartment and under strict orders from Shane to not speak to anyone (“Remember your NDA”), she is overtaken by bitterness. “I was trapped here, knocked up and alone and villainized for a thing I hadn’t even done yet.” The media rehashes shallow and inadequate narratives about women, work, babies, and the relationships between them. In news commentary, Natalie is either “a brainwashed capitalist sex slave or a robot baby murderer whore or a kind-of-hot feminist icon.” None of these descriptions captures Natalie’s experience of being a surrogate, nor the stark power asymmetry between Jackie and The Company that briskly goes about destroying her best hope of having a child.

Jackie’s CNN appearance is not the last we hear from her, and it is ultimately her grace that brings about Natalie’s redemption. Fallow is a novel about surrogacy, but is also explicitly about work more broadly. Anderson nods throughout the book to the idea that embodied or emotional labor—OnlyFans, sugaring, plasma donation—can often feel like a woman’s best available options in an ever-worsening job market. One of Natalie’s clients leaves a $1,500 cash tip on her hospital nightstand, as if she were a high-end escort. When her sister Phoebe, unable to get a read on the sketchy details of Natalie’s job, asks if she’s doing sex work, she considers saying yes. “She wasn’t that far off, really,” Natalie thinks.

Natalie’s talent, as it were, for gestation, is not the norm. The closest she gets to the emotional highs and lows of pregnancy is crying during reality TV shows. She seems not to suffer physical discomfort or worse during pregnancy, as many women do. Being among the eldest of 11 sisters, she has been thoroughly desensitized to babies: One of the tests she passed with flying colors during The Company’s interview process required her to listen to the sound of an infant’s cries for 25 minutes, which she did without an emotional response. Other novelistic accounts of surrogacy describe the pain of separating from a baby one has been growing for nine months, and even Natalie admits that there’s something off about going home empty-handed after each birth. “It’s always a strange thing, leaving the hospital without a baby. It feels like I am recovering from a surgery, from the removal of something. A tumor, or my appendix.” There is a reason that forced gestation is a feature of many feminist dystopian novels; for many women, this job would be nothing less than a nightmare come true. But Natalie is the kind of exception that undoes attempts at making rules.

In a 2022 paper in the International Journal of Comparative Sociology, four scholars argued for the plural term “surrogacies,” rather than surrogacy in the singular, to acknowledge the many versions of surrogacy and the wide variation in circumstances around each pregnancy and family. Fallow’s plot twists and turns, and the relationships and friendships Natalie eventually develops, demonstrate how the ethics of surrogacy are not reducible to any one of these narratives, but depend instead on the power relations that define each case. Natalie’s relationship to surrogacy itself evolves as the power dynamic evolves, from one of exploitation to one of respect and consent. Moreover, her entire approach to work shifts as her relationship to other people shifts: She learns to take pleasure in work when it becomes an act of interdependence rather than a mode of capitalist accumulation.

Feminists have long argued for wages for housework. They were asking for compensation for the unpaid work of social reproduction, or what one scholar calls “life-making”: birthing and raising and caring for generations new and old, cooking and cleaning and mending and all-around sustaining that has been, and overwhelmingly still is, done by women, ostensibly for love and not money. In its withering critique of work in all its more banal forms, Fallow suggests that unscrupulous bosses and our economy’s callous disregard for workers, not Natalie’s choice of labor, are the far more pressing problems.  

Sarah Stein Lubrano argues that political debates almost never change anyone’s mind. And there is no real “marketplace of ideas.” Instead, the author says that our political views are shaped by our relationships and social environments. For example, having a gay friend is more likely to make someone supportive of gay rights than reading a pro-LGBT op-ed, she argues. Joining a union or other organization also shapes their views. She calls for a new “politics of connection.” Stein Lubrano is author of Don’t Talk About Politics: Changing 21st-Century Minds and the Substack newsletter My Subschtick.

Perry Bacon: Good morning, or maybe good afternoon, depending on where you are. Because our guest is in London right now, and I think it’s the afternoon there. Sarah Stein Lubrano is an author and a public intellectual. She has a Substack that I enjoy reading. But we’re going to talk mainly about her book, which is a great title for this podcast. The book is titled Don’t Talk About Politics: How to Change Minds in the Twenty-First Century. So Sarah, welcome. Thanks for joining me.

Sarah Stein Lubrano: Thanks so much for having me. I’m excited.

Bacon: I spend a lot of time—in fact, I’ve spent my entire professional career, so more than 20 years, talking and writing about politics. I talk about politics in casual settings as well. So I want to break down—I think you’re not saying, “Don’t talk about politics because it’s bad.” You’re saying the way to change people’s minds is not to talk about politics, and we’re going to talk about what you mean by that.

But the first chapter of your book talks about this marketplace for ideas. We have this idea, the marketplace for ideas, and this is how ideas are spread. And the way to change people’s minds or to influence them, I think, is often suggested as, you enter the marketplace of ideas.

So you write your New York Times op-ed, and somebody writes theirs in The Guardian, and somebody else writes somewhere else, and this changes people’s minds. Talk about why that might be an improper framing of how ideas and political liberation are shared.

Stein Lubrano: Yeah, there’s a kind of irony where I ended up writing an op-ed for The Guardian about my book, and it says something like, “This op-ed won’t change your mind, but here’s why.”

One of the things I wanted to do in this book is look at the reality of how people actually think about political ideas, and what does and doesn’t cause them to change their mind about politics. And I think many of us, even if we’re skeptical, still have in our heads a model that democracy is basically people thinking on their own for themselves, doing their own research about political ideas in the abstract, and maybe they’re encountering ideas on the internet or whatever, in the newspaper, and then slowly they come to the right conclusion, and that the best ideas will probably rise to the top over time and we’ll all gravitate towards reality.

Now look, if you’re living in 2026, you may no longer believe this myth exactly, but I think it’s worth noting that it’s still incredibly powerful. It’s still more or less the way elections are framed. It’s still more or less the way parliamentary debate works in the United Kingdom where I live, although I’m an American, and the idea behind a lot of congressional debate. It’s why we have debates publicized in the media.

And to be clear, I’m in no way trying to quash free speech. My point is more that it turns out when you look empirically at how people think about politics, most of that stuff doesn’t seem to shift the dial at all in either direction.

So one of the most interesting and remarkable studies in the book, which I profile in chapter two, is just that a bunch of social scientists, professors, I think at Princeton, did this kind of study where they looked at debates, public political debates that were livestreamed and/or televised, and whether public opinion changed in a marked way the day after people watched the debate.

So if debates were important, you would expect to see a larger jump in people’s opinion one way or the other the day after they watch a debate. But actually, you don’t. You see a very small shift.

When you see something like, “Oh, Joe Biden is two points up in the polls,” that’s actually a non-piece of news, because it turns out that Joe Biden is up or down by about two points in the polls any given day in an election cycle. That’s just random statistical luck. They found essentially no effect to watching debates.

And similarly, although these things are obviously a little bit difficult to measure, there’s very little evidence that people are changing their minds, even in a self-reported way. Most people, if you ask them in studies, “Have you changed your mind about something reading on the internet in the last year?” they’ll say no.

Now, people do sometimes get radicalized on the internet through a more long-term process, usually where they join communities. But in terms of just imbibing ideas and then shifting our minds, it turns out people are really not doing that through abstract thought. And this might all sound incredibly pessimistic, but as I get you through the rest of the book—

Bacon: Let me slow you down a little bit. Let me stop you there for a second. People do read stuff. People watch videos. They watch TikToks. So they’re getting lots of media, they’re reading articles. So what are they doing when they read these articles?

The New York Times publishes op-eds every day. I publish lots of op-ed articles. What are people doing if they’re not changing their mind? What are they reading and doing then?

Stein Lubrano: What they’re often doing is affirming their own opinion.

Bacon: That’s true. That’s what I thought you were going to say.

Stein Lubrano: They’re reading it and they’re like, “Perry is completely correct.” And also what they’re often doing, if they are enjoying your writing—and I obviously say this with grief about myself, because when people repost me, they’re doing the same thing. They’re like, “Yes, this.”

And as somebody who weirdly, after I made this book, became an Instagram personality just about the stuff I write about, not the other parts of my life, that’s what people do when they repost me. And Instagram lets you see. They repost a reel that I’ve made, and they’re like, “This lady’s correct, and actually this is why I’m also correct.” And that’s more or less what people seem to be doing. Sometimes they read you to disagree with you, and you probably have those reply guys also.

Bacon: But either way, they’re not going from, I thought wealth taxes are bad, and now I think they are good. That’s probably not happening very often.

Stein Lubrano: Not so much. Not in a measurable, important way.

Bacon: So at the politician level, they watch a debate. They might learn new facts. “Kamala Harris, who I was already going to vote against anyway, I also learn thinks this thing.” But they’re not changing their mind about the actual issue, you’re saying.

Stein Lubrano: Yeah, you can totally learn new facts. One of the more interesting bits of study in this is—I write about the study where they just look at whether people change their mind about non-political things. Obviously everything can be linked to politics, but if I try to convince you that you should plant different trees in your backyard and it’s not tied to any of your political ideas, you may well be convinced.

It’s not that we are stubborn about everything. It turns out we’re just stubborn about politics. And that’s because it’s tied to our sense of self and our sense of ourselves as good people and capable agents in the world, basically.

Bacon: In the book, you’re also implying that if I sit down with my mother and try to change her mind, I’m also not going to be successful there either, right?

Stein Lubrano: Yeah. I’m sorry. As someone who’s had to talk to many family members. But that’s interestingly what most people want to do when they come to my courses, for example. They’ll say, “How do I have the conversation with my annoying uncle?” And, good luck.

Bacon: And that is for the same reason? I think it’s more obvious a big politician cannot change minds. But why can’t I change my mother’s mind with a rational argument? To give a real example, when I told my mom that police funding should be reduced, she did not change her opinion about what I said, even though I gave very rational arguments for funding here being reduced. And this is a real example.

Stein Lubrano: I don’t know your mom, so obviously I’m going to have to guess. But I would suggest that probably it’s a combination of things related to her sense of herself as a good person, and her own experiences.

So perhaps she’s had better experiences than the average Black lady with the police. Who knows? Maybe her friends and her community actually really believe in the police, and if she were to change her mind, it would in some way estrange her from her relationships with other people, as we’ll get into. It might be that she says, “I can’t talk about that in church,” or whatever, the knitting club, or I don’t know. I’m making your mom too quaint. She’s probably really fierce.

But it might be that there’s something about her sense of herself as a good citizen that means she can’t imagine that, and she needs to, understandably, feel that is her sense of agency in the world, that she supports law and order, for example.

And also, I’ve listened to quite a few—they often are Black commentators, who will say, “Actually, Black people often want more police because they have experienced more crime,” and that sucks.

So in this case her lived experience of crime happens to have shifted her in that particular direction, but obviously it can go either way. There are also people of whatever ethnic background who say, “Now that I’ve had a bad experience with the police, I’m done with them,” obviously.

Bacon: I think you mentioned there’s something democratic about the idea that we are debating ideas and the best idea wins, and that’s why you’re writing this. And Donald Trump is president, so it seems obvious that the smartest, most articulate best arguer is not winning. But I think people are like, “Well, only a few years ago, we had the smartest person, Barack Obama. He made good arguments. We’ve had an aberration, but Barack Obama’s smart. We might have Buttigieg in two years, and he’s smart, too.” That’s not my preferred candidate. I’m just saying that he does come off as thoughtful and so on.

And so I think it’s embedded in us, that people should lead because they’re good at argument and good at debate, and it’s a quality. I think there’s something attractive to this for us, too, that democracy means we have rational debate, and we choose the best at rational debate. There’s something attractive about that, right?

Stein Lubrano: Yeah. Look, as I very carefully say throughout the book, this is a book that is sympathetic to liberals that are becoming disillusioned, because probably on an earlier timeline than some others, I was once also—I went to both Obama inaugurations. My parents took me to the first one, and we stood there in the cold, and we cried.

And I think America is eternally—I wouldn’t even say in this instance, although we are certainly in this instance—coming round again and again to the reality that there are parts of liberalism, that are like liberal ideology as a whole rather than any specific tenet, that are not accurate. They’re not good representations of reality.

And one of the most beautiful ideas in liberalism that is also false is that the best ideas are going to win. And I think Donald Trump’s presidency is a very clear indicator of that. How could we be living in a world where the best ideas inevitably win out if we’re here with him, right?

Bacon: Twice.

Stein Lubrano: Twice. And you know what? He was very much elected the second time by any system.

And I think in order for us to become more thoughtful political agents, all of us, in America especially, and I’m very passionate about this as you might imagine, we have to get over that romanticism. We have to get over that myth of a marketplace of ideas that ultimately leads us the right direction.

If ideas win, as I say by the end of the book, they win because people make them alive in the world, and they make them alive through laborious, intensive organizing and relationship building and taking action, and not just talking, and often not talking in the direct sense at all.

Bacon: OK. So what does change people’s minds? I think you’re hinting at this. Let’s go into that a little bit. Why don’t I let you open? What are some things that change people’s minds?

Let me give an example. I read the book a few months ago, so let me refer to—it looks like for some period, the Black Lives Matter protest did move public opinion. Do you consider that a real change? And talk about why that might be the case.

Stein Lubrano: Yeah, they did. It’s actually really interesting.

There are people that specialize intensively on just this point about protests, but I’m going to do my best, and then if someone wants to correct us because they’re a researcher of movements specifically, they can.

But the general thing is, first of all, it’s a little bit difficult, obviously, to disentangle the instances of police violence that happened and the actual protests themselves. And so obviously there were loads of people, Black and/or otherwise, who saw what happened to George Floyd and others, and they were, let’s say, brought round to consciousness about how awful and brutal the police can be, and obviously how prejudiced they are structurally and otherwise.

Bacon: But if you’re saying the videos versus the protests, either way that’s not a person came on TV and said, “The police are meanies.” So neither one of those would go to the theory that it’s about arguments. Watching the videos or seeing the protests or participating in the protests are all not debates, right?

Stein Lubrano: I think that’s correct, yeah. They’re not debates.

And I think the best sociological suggestion here is that essentially what happens is that people get activated, right? This is also true when I talk about how the far right kind of activates people on the internet. There’s a kind of moment where people almost don’t really have an opinion, and then their social network—essentially, literally not just their online network, but their actual network of humans they know—gets activated with a kind of, “We need to come round to this.”

So for example, as a white lady living in the UK, there were friends of mine who were like, “We’re doing a reading group now.” I don’t know why, that was like the white people response in whatever year it was. And everyone had a reading group, and we all had to learn about structural racism and also unconscious bias and whatever.

And that’s not to say bad, by the way. But it’s not like I just took that independently. It’s because my network of friends became concerned and they said, “Oh, we should do this thing,” right?

And so what’s very likely, when you look at this graph—there’s a graph of what happened to public opinion about Black Lives Matter and police violence in the US, and what happens is that at first there’s a big bump where a lot of people suddenly start agreeing, like the police need to be defunded, or at least there’s far too much police violence, et cetera. And then over time it goes back down until it hits its baseline again after a few years.

And what’s likely happening there is that people get activated by their social network, they care for a while, but then other forces in their life begin to pull them in other directions. So essentially the radicalization, so to speak, is short-lived, because other forces in our lives that persist for longer pull us back in other directions. Maybe the people that did the reading group five years ago get sunk back into their network of white people who express more skepticism about this, or whatever else happens.

And actually, if you look at the data right now, I believe that what we now see in the US is that there is no long-term shift in public opinion about the police, sadly. And in fact, white people are a little bit more in favor of the police, and everyone else is a little bit less in favor of the police. But overall, we’re in no better, in my view, position. We are no more skeptical of the police, and that’s shocking in some ways. But it’s because protests are short-lived. They have an enormous effect on the people in the protest movement, but otherwise most people get pulled back to their baseline by a variety of other sociological factors.

Bacon: So that was one I just had in my head. What are some things that do change people’s minds about politics?

Stein Lubrano: Basically, as I put it in the book, the best evidence relates to either relationships of all kinds, but especially friendships and meaningful connections with people that somewhat disagree with us or have had different life experiences, and also with our own actions and experiences in the world.

And I have a chapter on each one. I have a chapter basically on how our friends change our minds, and how really that’s a beautiful thing in a lot of ways if you think about it, and then how our own actions and experiences seem to shift us quite a lot in the long run.

And both of these relate to cognitive dissonance theory, which is what I wrote my PhD on. They relate to the way our minds try to juggle contradictions. And very often what happens is we’re juggling contradictory thoughts the whole time, right? We think, “Oh, but that one police officer was nice, but also this is horrifying, but also I don’t know if we could live without police.” All these contradictory thoughts. And then what tends to happen is that we end up aligning our beliefs with our actions and with our relationships. That’s what sorts us out from the chaos.

Bacon: Let me just pause you to say, did I misunderstand, then, when I said I didn’t convince my mom about policing? In reality, we’re going to have some influence on our friends and the people around us just by talking about politics. Talking about politics with the people in our circle might make some difference, or no?

Stein Lubrano: It might, yeah. But I think it’s important to think about it as a sort of long-term network effect. I don’t know about your relationship with your mother, and I don’t know who else is in her life, but I’m a left-wing Jew, right?

If I talk to some of the people in my community about Gaza, they might be influenced by how I think, but they have a lot of other people saying other things in their ear. And a lot of other community relationships at stake, and it takes a long time to get round to people and say, “Look, we have to…”

We could go on this for ages, but you get the idea. So I don’t know what’s going on in your mom’s life exactly, but probably a similar set of questions about where the relationships are in her life.

Bacon: But the network can change people’s minds is what you’re getting at, right? It’s not one argument with one isolated person, but the network comes to have a different point of view, and that might make a difference.

Stein Lubrano: Yes, especially because our friends do a couple of things. So one of the things friends seem to be the best at, and this is touching, is they help us overcome prejudice.

And there’s a lot of evidence that essentially there’s what’s called social contact theory, or intergroup contact theory, which is that if people exist as equals within institutions, relative equals, and if especially certain conditions are met where they’re actually treated like equals, where they have shared goals, which I think is a really interesting qualifier, then they begin to be less prejudiced against groups.

The original studies were on the integration of the US military, actually. And the white people in that group, actually both groups, became less prejudiced against each other, but obviously the white people are more concerning in this case.

But similarly, people become much less prejudiced against gay people once they have gay friends, or when their friends come out to them. There’s lots of evidence for that. So one of the main things that happens is our friends help us overcome our prejudice.

And interestingly, it doesn’t just seem to be that we meet one person and think they’re great and so we decide the whole group is great, although that can happen. It seems to be also that our friends are like our metric of trust. So one of my favorite little statistics about this is, let’s say that we’re talking about overcoming Islamophobia or something, right? If I have a Muslim friend, sociologically I become less Islamophobic. Great. But it turns out that if you’re my friend and you have a Muslim friend, I also become less Islamophobic.

Bacon: Oh, interesting.

Stein Lubrano: Because my brain is doing a thing where essentially it’s like, Perry has good judgment and he likes Mohammed—sorry, that’s a horribly cliche name.

Bacon: No, that’s fine.

Stein Lubrano: It is the most common Muslim name in the world. I’m like, cool, maybe Muslims are all right because Perry thinks so, right? So friends are like these metrics of trust.

Perry Bacon: So our actions change our minds. Talk about why that might be the case.

Stein Lubrano: Yeah. This one is interesting and it’s complicated, and I think it’s both lovely and a kind of a dark science at the same time. But in my chapter on actions and experiences, I look at a lot of data that suggests that people in general tend to move their beliefs towards their actions rather than the other way around, which is not necessarily our intuitive model of how people think.

Many of us think, “Oh, I’m going to think for a while, and then when I come to a decision or a belief, then I’ll act in accordance with that decision or belief,” which sounds great, and maybe that is actually how you picked, I don’t know, the software for your company or something. But in terms of our political views, it seems that it often works the other way around.

So I’ll give you a couple of weird examples. One of them has to do with abortion. There’s actually this long-term study of what happens to people that are denied abortions that they want in the United States. I think it is the United States.

Anyway, denied abortions that they want, and they pair up people that are otherwise identical, but for whatever reason, this person couldn’t get an abortion. Usually they’re slightly past the date they thought they were or whatever. God knows it’s hard to get one now in the US in some places.

And they track what happened to these mostly women, of course, over time. And what happens interestingly is that by a small margin, but a noticeable margin, the women that were denied abortions become somewhat less in favor of abortion as a right. And the women that have got the abortions they wanted become slightly more in favor of abortion.

Basically, what’s happening is that a person experiences some contradiction between their lived experience and actions and their existing belief system, and they’re moved somewhat towards their actions, because cognitive dissonance is, remember, the discomfort between those two things, and we find ways to shift our beliefs around.

In general, we shift our beliefs towards our actions because our actions are more or less—I don’t want to say fully structurally determined here, I’m not that kind of thinker, but there are a lot of structural constraints. In this case, literally the person just couldn’t receive an abortion that they wanted, right?

And it turns out that similar findings happen throughout the literature. In particular, if people are about to experience a legal change that they think is irreversible, they will often interestingly become very much in favor of it as soon as it’s passed, even if they didn’t like it beforehand, and I put lots of evidence about that in the book as well.

So it seems like a lot of us are shifting our beliefs to get on board with how our life has actually gone, whether or not it was a good thing for us. And this is a controversial thing to say, by the way, because it’s an unfashionable view among political theorists of the left of a certain age anyway, to say people have false consciousness in some way, or they get on board with their own oppression.

But there is a lot of evidence that many people do essentially end up embracing the terms of oppressive life experiences, because in a way it perhaps gives them a sense that there is still something in their control, or else that they aren’t to be blamed for things that have gone wrong for them.

There’s some really interesting stuff about race in—oh, I’m forgetting his name right now. It’ll come back to me. There’s a great psychologist who did a bunch of studies on how darker skinned Black people are a bit more likely to endorse the system in some cases, and especially in the South where they’re treated worse. There are people who say, “No, the system either couldn’t possibly be different, or it is actually fair this way.” And that perhaps gives them back a sense of agency in some way, for better or worse.

Bacon: So if you wanted to change people’s minds, how does that work then? If you have actions, so you want people to—if we make people volunteer, what does that look like in action?

Stein Lubrano: Yeah, I think it’s really interesting that this is the sticking point for so many people when they get to this part of the book. They’re like, “But I can’t imagine what I would do otherwise,” right? Their model of political action is basically a speech, and they can’t imagine anything else.

And I want to say that my next book that I’m writing, which will come out very far away because it’s a hard book to write and publishing industries are slow, is partially about this.

And it is to say that, look, what I say in the book that’s already come out is, in order to change someone’s mind, you have to change their life. You have to change their life. You have to change their network of friends and connections. You need to change the experiences they’ve had in the world.

There is a lot of evidence that people that, for example, joined the Black Lives Matter movement, they changed their opinions for good. And most people who join protest movements do, because their whole social network gets rearranged, especially if that movement is good at keeping them in the movement after the actual protest, which unfortunately movements are not usually that good at doing.

And so essentially what I’m arguing for is a form of—we could add different words to this pile, but a pile that includes activism, long-term community organizing, having an actual political party, and I mean a membership-based party, not a top-down party like the Democratic Party basically is right now or whatever. And really being deeply involved and embedded in a long-term process of political change with other people. But there are lots of ways to get into that, and it doesn’t always look like immediately joining a membership-based party.

Bacon: So one thing I read in one of your pieces, you wrote, “Join a consumer union or a co-op with your neighbors.” Why would that matter?

Stein Lubrano: I’ll tell you, because I’m in one. So in the process of writing this book, I’m in a cooperative union, so to speak, so basically a food co-op in my neighborhood, that was set up by my friend, actually. He got really interested after he read my book, because I interview this person in the book called Shiri Chami, and she runs something called Cooperation Town, which is basically a consumer union.

Every week people get together with their neighbors and they order vegetables and other things in bulk, and it gets delivered to this distribution hub, and then someone comes and picks it up. I’m actually getting my groceries this evening. And you get pretty much—I wouldn’t say all the groceries you need for the week, but a lot of the groceries you need for the week, for about £5. Which is very little, right?

But as Shiri puts it in the book, and to me as well, she says, “I don’t really care about food. I’m an anti-fascist organizer. And the reason I want these co-ops to exist—of course, I want people to have cheaper food, but what I really want is that they know all their neighbors, because one day something else is going to happen,” right?

So I’m a pretty bougie lady, but look, a lot of people in these food cooperatives are not, and they’re getting evicted. What happens when you’re getting evicted? You need 10 of your neighbors to show up and sit in the house with you so that the bailiffs can’t get you out. And if you have people that you order vegetables with every week, they’re going to do that for you.

So it’s a process of kind of reknitting the social fabric together, which is of course what my next book is about really in a lot of ways. And also of people beginning to recognize that they have shared political concerns, because I think a lot of people have trouble understanding that until they’re deeply involved in each other’s lives in a way that is now unusual.

Bacon: Let’s see what else you wrote here. Create gateway actions.

Stein Lubrano: Yes. Yeah, let’s talk about gateway actions. This is drawn from this kind of niche sociology literature, but there was a debate among certain kinds of sociologists about whether small actions that are political lead people to larger political involvement, or whether they see it as like a getaway. “Oh, I recycled. I don’t need to fly less. I don’t need to join a climate march,” right?

Obviously, people can go either way technically, but on the whole, increasingly research suggests that these gateway actions, these small actions, genuinely lead people to larger political action. And that makes sense if you think about cognitive dissonance literature. One of the things I continuously do throughout this book is connect different areas of empirical study and say, “What’s the larger theory here? What’s the connection?”

A small action shifts our beliefs a little bit, and then we do another action, and we shift our beliefs a little bit more, and we get deeply involved. By the way, that can also happen for bad groups. The far right uses this tactic in a lot of ways.

But if you’re an organizer, I think a lot of people are tempted to think, “OK, I’m going to be political. I’m going to go argue with people and tell them why they’re wrong.” But actually, it’s often much more effective to say, “Oh, let me take someone with me to do a gateway action.”

If you want to convince your mom, bring her to a vigil for somebody that has been harmed or worse, killed by the police. Bring her to help people who’ve been arrested by the police. You can do arrestee support. It’s an interesting activity. You learn a lot about how people were treated, right?

These are just examples, but those are examples of gateway actions. And successful movements—successful in the sense that they achieve political ends, not necessarily that we agree with every single thing they do—but many successful political organizations have a system of gateway actions.

You go through the first gateway and then the second gateway, and then you’re climbing the ladder. I think there’s actually a word for this in movement literature somewhere that I’m forgetting, but there’s a kind of increasing circle of actions that you do until you’re fully in the movement.

Bacon: Rebuild a third place that is actually accessible to most people.

Stein Lubrano: Yes. So the third place is a term also from sociology, I think.

Bacon: Meaning basically not a business and not your house, right?

Stein Lubrano: Yeah, it’s usually defined as neither the private home nor the workplace, right? Because if you think about it, the home is an exclusive space by necessity, basically. My home is full of weirdos staying over all the time because I’m a weird person. But look, most people are living in a private family home. That’s a very private space. You’re not really going to do political life in the same way. There’s still a politics to the home, but that’s a different question.

Similarly, in the workplace, it’s not as exclusive, although it is somewhat exclusive, but it’s also hierarchical almost by necessity. Even the best workers’ co-ops, there’s still stuff going on.

Whereas a third place is interesting because it’s a place where people are more or less equals unless they really misbehave. Like a bar, a coffee shop, the PTA meeting even can in a certain way be like a third space.

These are places where everyone is assumed to be more or less equals, and you are interacting with each other in a way that essentially encourages a kind of democratic life, where you begin to have to take each other’s considerations seriously perhaps. You’re going to meet new kinds of people and different kinds of people.

The reality is that in the US especially, but in other places also, we’ve seen the shrinking of third places, especially cheap or free ones, over the last really 50 years, because of the rise of the cost of living, because of increased basically rent seeking. There was an amazing study I use in the book where this company that rents robotic lawnmowers and chainsaws, which sound terrifying but whatever, they just want to see, OK, is there green space in cities around the world?

And they use satellites to look at the green space that’s publicly accessible, and it shrinks in these cities every year. So even parks and little spaces where you could go outside are increasingly privatized and closed off and built up and developed by capitalism. And as a result, we have very few places to go and even meet our fellow citizens without paying a lot of money.

Bacon: Organize movements that don’t just engage in demonstrations, and which ask a lot of you. Why is that important? Or how can that change—

Stein Lubrano: Yes, exactly. So this goes back to the stuff about protesters, right? One of the things I say in the book, and this pisses people off, and I’m really sorry to people that are pissed off. Many of the things I say obviously would piss off the right.

I’m so left-wing I would fall off the Overton window, right? But this pisses off the left, because many people on the left are very committed to nonviolent demonstration as their method of political change. They want to go and basically hold a sign.

And if you look at the literature on whether those nonviolent demonstrations change public opinion in the long term, as we already visited with the data on the Black Lives Matter movement, that was the best data that sociologists had, by the way. For a little while, they were like, “Oh, maybe this one is going to change things.” But it did the same thing that all these other movements do. It went back to baseline for general public opinion.

Similarly, there is not really good data that governments change their policies directly based on protests alone, demonstrations alone. I’ve got to be more careful. I want to use demonstrations specifically, because there’s a lot of kinds of protests, right?

And I encourage readers to think about it this way, which is to say, if you’re a government official, you already have very good reasons to have the policy you have. Good for your own interests anyway. You have your rich buddies you want to help, or maybe you generally think it’s the right thing to do. You see a bunch of weirdos in the street with signs, this is not going to be a great reason for you to change your mind, and you often are able to dismiss them immediately as, “These are the weirdos who have time on a Tuesday to be in the cold. What are they doing?”

Generally speaking, to shift the balance of power, you need to essentially hold something hostage that the people in power want, that they can’t get until they give you something you want. That is unfortunately the reality of political change. So there are other forms of protests that have been shown to be effective.

Obviously, it’s always a gamble, but you can go on strike, then you’re holding labor hostage. You can block a road. There are complicated backlash issues there, but it could work. You could fill up the prisons, as they tried to do in this country with the climate movement, and see if you can really inconvenience the whole justice system until something else happens. There are lots of material—

Bacon: I guess a boycott fits this, if you boycott the right people who have the right income.

Stein Lubrano: Yeah. And I would say that it’s very complicated to analyze why the civil rights movement succeeded, but I would suggest that the evidence is strongly that it was not a matter of shifting public opinion, even though some people’s opinions did change in the long run, because when they succeeded, they were still very unpopular with the general population, and even with the politicians who made these decisions, some of which were made essentially because it was going to be too inconvenient not to, right?

If you can hold up the whole transit system, eventually they think, “OK, I guess we have to throw these people a bone.” Or realistically, many people who study movements say really they gave them some stuff because they were worried that otherwise the Black Panthers would just go and arm everyone. And so you think, “OK, let’s give these more reasonable Black people this thing, so we don’t get armed revolt in the street.”

And these are material forms of protests that are more effective in the long run, I would argue, than anything about a demonstration itself. But that doesn’t mean a demonstration has nothing to do, because it’s very often an excellent place to recruit people and to mobilize them, and sometimes to give them emotional support. It’s just that I fear that we’ve lost the sense that in the long run, you have to do something besides have a demonstration.

If you look at No Kings or something like that—not only are there maybe other issues with them, but where are you taking those people afterward? We live in an age of networked protests, that people join protest movements, and then they go on the march because they found out online, and then they leave, and they don’t even have anyone else’s phone number. We need to be able to mobilize in a much more strategic, long-term way, where we’re holding stuff that people in power want hostage. And that’s going to take a real shift in how we think about this stuff.

Bacon: So for our audience, how does the Democratic Party win more elections and win over people from Trump or MAGA or the Republicans? That’s the core question. We save democracy by winning. We can debate that question.

But if Ken Martin or Hakeem Jeffries or Chuck Schumer said—not in, elections are three weeks. So what is a long-term plan, four or five years, maybe by 2028 even, two years? What’s a long-term plan to move people, change people who are voting Republican, get them to vote Democratic? How do you change their minds or change their behavior?

Stein Lubrano: Oh, yeah. Look, this is not my theory of change. I just want to say this first, but I’m very disappointed by the Democratic Party, like many Americans. But I also don’t think my theory of how things could get better comes through the Democratic Party at all.

That said, if they, I don’t know, put me in prison and were like, “You have to be our advisor,” OK, fine. And I can only speak truth. So I would say I think you need to rebuild the membership base of the Democratic Party, and you need to do it in ways that commit people deeply to serving others in their community. And realistically now is too late. Forget it. Do whatever dumb stunts you’re going to do for the next three weeks.

Bacon: That’s what I mean. That’s why I said not in the next three weeks, or maybe in the next two years. But long term.

Stein Lubrano: Look, Mamdani has been very successful at winning. Why? Because he has used many of these tactics. Then you can always argue about whether you like this or that thing that he did. Who cares?

The point is, he was actually pretty good at essentially using a series of relational and community organizing tactics to mobilize people through their social networks to come out and vote, right? And he had lots of other interesting and important tactics. But you need to be basically doing organizing on the ground with people’s networks.

And also, and I think this is very important and incredibly neglected, you need to also provide some material stuff for people. Even in little ways that might not seem that important. That particular administration, is what you’d call Mamdani’s government, they have done little material things that actually mean a lot to people.

Like where they’ve set up, for example, not just the potholes or whatever, but they set up these little stations for all the delivery drivers to come and charge their phones. And if you’re a worker who works incredibly long hours and you’re also constantly shut out of even the McDonald’s bathroom unless you make a purchase, and you can’t charge anything, something like that is a huge deal.

You essentially need gateway actions to just show people, “Hey, we’ve got your back. We’re thinking about you. We’re on your side,” in this very, honestly, difficult and brutal world.

Bacon: You said organization on the ground, and I don’t know how old you are, but you’re not 70. So I assume you use the internet and have an iPhone. You’ve heard of TikTok. You’ve heard of Instagram. All I hear every day is, the world is all online. So why do you think having things on the ground matter?

Stein Lubrano: Because the evidence that people change their minds when they’re on the internet is very little, and the evidence they change their mind when they hang out with people in person is pretty good.

And I’m looking at this a lot now for my next book, which is on social isolation. But even putting politics aside for one half of a second, the evidence that our friendships are much stronger when we’re in person is also pretty good. In ways that are weird.

One of the things I looked at recently was just about smell and social contact, which might sound really weird, but it turns out people who can smell better also do much better at social cues, because we are, in fact, just weird little animals like our dogs and cats, and we need to smell each other to know how each other feel.

We are basically much more effective at learning from each other and existing with each other when we do it offline. And that doesn’t mean there isn’t a role for online life. Again, I am an Instagram influencer, for lack of a better word. It’s just that should be the beginning of a funnel where you get people offline.

And if you want to hear a really bleak thing, you know who else knows that? Steve Bannon, and I quote him at the end of the book. He says, “Yeah, I use the internet to excite people, but then I get them offline. I give them little tasks to do. I send them to their local government, and I get them going.” And we can’t replicate everything the far right does, by the way, but some of that is indeed replicable and important.

Bacon: Two last questions. You’ve got an essay that I was reading that came out last week. I’m on the progressive end. I want to reduce police funding and do a wealth tax and all those other things, too. But I’m very skeptical of this idea that’s really strong on the left right now, which is, I think the term Odell uses now is deliverism.

This basic idea is like, if Zohran makes life more affordable, if we have cheaper housing prices, or we have free buses or free college, AOC should run on these economic policies. That we are in an affordability crisis. The working class cannot afford their lives. They’re mad. That’s why they’re voting for the right.

And so I agree with all the policies, but I find myself being skeptical that this will result in different election outcomes, and I think you are, too. In part because the evidence is not that—if the poor people in America all voted for Trump, then the Black people would’ve, because the Black people have the lowest incomes on average, and they mostly didn’t. Overwhelmingly didn’t. And so Trump voting is not really aligned with economics particularly well at all.

Stein Lubrano: Yeah, and people really struggle with that finding. Let’s talk about it. I have a couple of thoughts.

First of all, I think it’s worth saying I wrote quite a long and thoughtful piece that is available for my paid Substack subscribers. Sorry to paywall anything, but that’s how it works sometimes. And is also in the journal Renewal, which is actually a UK journal, but it has the same question at heart, which is, can we do deliverism and then we save democracy?

And the problem, and this is why I believe fundamentally, by the way, that we have to use some empirical data and science about psychology in the way we look at political issues, is that people are incredibly bad at attributing improvements in their life even to things that have been delivered to them by governments, right?

In particular, there’s all kinds of evidence that if their lives get better, they attribute that to themselves. They’re like, “Oh, my boss is paying me a bit more. That must be me.” That’s the market on it.

Whereas if something goes wrong, even if the government couldn’t possibly have prevented it—there’s a study on shark attacks, and when shark attacks increase, then people think the government’s worse. Which is, I really don’t think they’re in charge of that. So people just have all kinds of weird, deranged psychological responses to events, and they’re not that good at responding to that stuff.

One of the things I argue in this piece that I’m mentioning is that interestingly, people radically underestimate, for example, how much social contact is going to make their lives better, but then when they experience it, they do feel happier.

So there are interesting experiments to be had potentially with increasing the level of socializing people have. Because interestingly, I believe it’s something like a 5 percent increase in socializing is as good as a 10 percent increase in income in terms of your happiness. It’s huge. I’ve got that data slightly off the cuff here, but something like that.

First of all, the question is, what are we delivering? I actually think the Mamdani campaign has done reasonably well at choosing things that are extremely clear that they come from the government, right? It’s impossible not to think your free bus isn’t from the government. I actually think the way they happen to have done the grocery store policy is not a good use of resources compared to other things you could do to make groceries cheap. But again, you can really see it’s from the government in that case, which is interesting.

But overall I think the important thing about deliverism is, it’s not that a policy wonk somewhere should be able to verify that the person’s life was improved through a policy. Because as someone who grew up in the liberal bubble in DC, I have seen how poorly that works, right? Here we are, we’ve got Trump.

It’s more that I think you want to be thinking about what you deliver in a way that pulls people back into a world where they see they have shared interests and commitments with other people, and could potentially even get recruited into your party, of whatever kind of party that is. So it’s not just about improving their life, it’s about improving life in a way that also shifts the little actions they engage in day to day, the relationships they’re going to form. And that more than anything is going to bring their politics at least into a new and interesting place.

Bacon: So you’re a materialist on policy, but you’ve used the word social and relational a lot of times. And those are the things you’re saying are important.

Stein Lubrano: Yeah. Look, I am a Marxian sociologist in my commitments, right? I think that much of our politics is fundamentally about the structure of the economy. And a lot of people’s beliefs rest on top of that, whether they recognize it or not, sadly.

Bacon: So I’ll finish with—you wrote a few months ago about Robert Putnam, and I think he’s this social theorist who wrote this famous book called Bowling Alone, for the audience. And you seem to share some of his concerns that people are too socially isolated.

So tell me about what you think he might be getting wrong, because his book has been very influential. There’s a lot of talk about the idea, is America going through, particularly men are going through this sort of loneliness crisis, and the implication is men are lonely, they’re on the internet too long, and they’re voting for Trump, and that’s the decline of America, and maybe the far right is rising all over the world because of this. So talk about this problem in the Robert Putnam thesis and your thesis. They might be different.

Stein Lubrano: Yes. So look, obviously many people really revere Robert Putnam because he wrote some very important stuff documenting with great detail and lots of graphs, which he loves, how much Americans are spending time alone compared to previous generations, how they are not part of membership associations anymore. And that is a genuine and very serious problem.

However, before we get to critiquing Putnam, I think it’s worth saying we’re not actually facing a loneliness crisis, because people don’t report feeling much lonelier. The feeling of loneliness is not at stake here. It has not changed much in the last 20 or 40 years according to most metrics, and lots of other measurements that are there are off as well.

Instead, we just see that especially the last 15 years, but even before that, people are increasingly spending their time alone, and that they are no longer part of groups as much, essentially.

Bacon: So people are alone more. They’re not necessarily saying they’re lonely more. That’s interesting. This is an important distinction.

Sarah Stein Lubrano: Which is very different. And my next book is about this, and how what we’re actually experiencing is what you might call social atrophy, which are these quite shocking changes in the brain that happen when people are alone but don’t necessarily involve the feeling of loneliness.

But the problem with Putnam’s stuff, to be honest, and we need to respectfully gesture to him and then also say, “But people who have done important research can also be wrong about stuff,” right? Putnam is a deep moralist. He’s a sentimental guy. If you watch the interviews with him, he cries, and he cries about everything. And look, I also cry about everything, so part of me is like, “Yeah, solidarity, Robert.”

But look, he thinks that the solution to this problem is basically that we all have to go and become moral people. He has, as he acknowledges himself, the unfashionable among social scientists and political theorists view that fundamentally you just need a moral revolution, and then you save everyone through your moral convictions. And I do not believe this at all, and I think the evidence for it is also extremely weak, especially in this area.

Bacon: He means moral, not religious, right? He’s saying something different, right?

Stein Lubrano: No. He means—I don’t even know if he has a religion. I think he converted to baseline Judaism for his wife or something. But he means we need to care about each other. And look, I also want us to care about each other, no problem. If you believe in God, that’s fine too.

But he thinks that basically we just need to convince each other of the moral importance of other people, and that is the pathway forward as organizers, and even puts these rules for organizers, be moral in the way you campaign. And I think it’s a misguided approach, because fundamentally if it worked, we would be in a different place.

And if you look at the data on why people have increasingly stayed in their houses, every single time you see a contraction in the economy, that’s when people stay in their houses. And then after that contraction, whether it’s 2008 or COVID, they basically never go back to the level of socializing they had before.

And there are interesting neuroscience reasons for that, but there’s also just straight up economic reasons. Let’s say that you have an economic crisis. You learn to live with less. You learn to go to the pub less. Your friendships that you used to have dissipate during that period where none of you can afford to go out and drink together or whatever you do, and you lose your memberships to stuff, and then eventually the club that you had a membership to actually closes because no one’s a member anymore.

And meanwhile, you’ve got a Netflix subscription that’s cheaper and you’re staying at home. Even when the world reopens after COVID, there’s just never the same infrastructure for social life again. And also, as I write about in another of my pieces, your brain has changed, and you no longer feel like that level of socializing is even feasible for you.

So that’s a structural problem. It’s not a good problem to moralize about. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t have moral significance. Our lack of connection to other people is deeply morally significant, but it’s something that has to be addressed not purely through moral conviction, but through structural change. And Putnam regularly discounts that.

He will often offhand be like, “Oh yeah, I guess there were some economic reforms that helped with this,” but he really doesn’t see the importance of the economics in this calculus. And I think his approach is fundamentally misguided in a way that is very dangerous in an age where the economic contractions we’re facing are likely to lead to greater and greater authoritarianism and votes for the far right.

Bacon: So we need to have economic change and these social changes too?

Stein Lubrano: Yeah, of course. Look, our lives are important as human beings not because we have money, but because we have friends. I don’t know how else to put it. That’s my politics, in a way. But it’s very dangerous to disentangle the two, because they’re profoundly intertwined, especially in the kind of economy we live in.

Bacon: So your essay is called “Centering the Social: Towards a New Politics of Connection.” Give us a little bit on that and we’ll end there.

Stein Lubrano: Yeah. Something that people often tell me about my writing is that they appreciate that even though I am, again, the leftiest lefty in certain respects, I’m not a profound pessimist. And as much as I just said something difficult about Robert Putnam, who’s like America’s grandpa, I’m not actually on a campaign to destroy people either. I try to always show something appreciative about them. Even Putnam, he’s obviously an important guy.

So I often try to put forward specific things that we can do, because I think it’s so difficult in this age of reduced political imagination. So many people have never even known someone who was in a social movement that asked a lot of them. They can’t imagine what they could do next. I have, by the way, a piece on my Substack about the social skills you can cultivate that will help you be a revolutionary.

But there’s all kinds of things we need to do. In “Centering the Social,” I’m trying to rethink the question of deliverism that you’ve asked, which is, what could governments do that would actually make people happier? And according to all of the best available evidence, the thing that really determines your quality of life is the quality of the relationships that you have with other people.

Past a certain baseline of getting out of poverty. But after that, the amount of money that you have has almost no effect on how happy you are, whereas almost any increase in the number of deep, meaningful, good relationships that you have radically improves your quality of life.

And governments—look, I’m not a huge believer in governments are going to save us. I really am not. Nevertheless, I thought it would be an interesting experiment to think about, what could governments do that would increase the likelihood that people have deep, meaningful relationships, friendships, connections with their neighbors.

There’s lots of things. But I think one of the main things to think about, especially because it can be done outside of any particular governmental system, is the increasing need for, of course, as we say, third places, and third places that are both social and political.

And one of the examples that I give is that in Europe we have a problem that is less common in the US, which is that people don’t have air conditioning, and it gets really hot and people die. And actually, more people in Europe die every summer of heat deaths now than die of gun deaths in the US. It’s just a much quieter epidemic, because everything is infrastructurally built wrong, and unfortunately, old and disabled people especially can really struggle with the heat and die.

In any case, as a result, various municipalities especially—I believe in both Warsaw and Barcelona, but Barcelona has the more prominent example—have built these cooling spaces. Anywhere you live, there’s 10 minutes from where you walk, there’s a cooling space. And you can go during the day, and it either has literal air conditioning or another system that cools down a building, and you can escape the heat.

But what I would love to see is that spaces like this become a place where perhaps that’s also where you can go and get help with your various bureaucratic problems. Maybe that’s also a place where there’s a playgroup for kids, because parenting is exhausting. Maybe that’s also a place where you get your cheap groceries from your food co-op. And the more that these places become places where we reconnect with people and learn essentially to trust them again, the better.

And if a government helps us with this, wonderful, and if it doesn’t help us with this, then we do it as a social movement. But I wanted to think about how we could recenter social life as a real political priority, because I think without doing that, we’re never going to regain the skills that we need to make radical political changes that are required for us to essentially survive the next 75 years.

Bacon: So I’m left with a contradiction, which is that I feel as if I want AOC to have a politics of connection platform in her presidential campaign. My immediate thought even when you were talking was, I should write an op-ed calling for AOC to have a—but you’re hinting that may not be a very effective way to influence AOC or anyone else. So I need to find AOC’s friends?

If your job is to write essays about politics to change people’s minds, and you’ve been told that is not going to work, what other tools are in the toolbox? The social part you’ve mentioned is important. AOC’s not a good example for me, but I get the point. The point is, do we need to have other tools in our toolbox?

Stein Lubrano: Yes. And I think that’s part of what I wanted to achieve in this book, is to say we have a diminished idea of what a political individual is. If you ask a lot of people, they’ll say, “Oh, it’s a person who’s read all the policy stuff and they vote.” I don’t want that to be our image of politics. Politics is about your commitments that you have to other people, your ability to analyze the power structures in your life and do something about them. It’s a different thing.

But in any case, to go back to your question about what should we do. Look, first of all, I’m a writer, right? So I’m a hypocrite. I love writing. But I think it’s worth saying writing does a lot of other things. Writing is how I discover what I think. Writing is how I reach a community of other thinkers and we can think together.

I actually put this in the book. There’s a wonderful quote by this guy from several centuries ago. He says, “I write not to persuade people, but to tell my enemies that I still disagree.” There is a kind of thing it’s doing that matters. They haven’t won yet. I don’t agree with them. I don’t agree with the Trump administration.

But yeah, look, write the op-ed, especially if someone’s going to pay you for it. But then think about, who’s going to send this op-ed to AOC’s policy guy? And make friends with that guy and be like, “Hey dude, lady, whoever.”

That is realistically—if you ask people how they actually get stuff done, of course it is the social relationships. And that means that people with social skills, for better and worse, are the people that tend to, alongside many other material concerns, get stuff done politically when it’s needed.

Bacon: Sarah, I appreciate you joining me. This was a great conversation. I think it was educational too. So tell people where they can get your book and where they can read your Substack.

Stein Lubrano: Yes. My Substack is called My Sub Schtick, the Yiddish phrase. You can just Google my name. It will come up. I really encourage everyone to hang out with me on Substack, and obviously here on the Substack Live you can see me. But also my book is available in all the best bookstores, as they say. You can order it online. Maybe don’t order it from Amazon if you can help it. If you have to, it’s there. And I’d love to hear people’s thoughts. I’m also on Instagram, and I encourage viewers to watch my weird little videos every day. You could hear more things about Robert Putnam.

Bacon: Great to see you. Thanks for taking the time. Bye-bye.

Stein Lubrano: Thank you so much. This was a pleasure.

Brazil had been a shining example of democracy and the rule of law resisting far-right authoritarianism—and this election preserves that legacy.  After Flávio’s father, Jair, was elected president in 2018 and proceeded to rule like a dictator, a broad pro-democracy coalition led by Lula defeated him in the 2022 election. Bolsonaro wouldn’t concede, and his allies attacked government buildings in an attempt to stop the transfer of power, eerily similar to what Trump and his supporters did in the United States two years prior. That effort failed, and Lula took office. Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court sentenced Jair Bolsonaro to 27 years in prison (he is on house arrest), while its electoral court barred him from running for public office until 2030. Many scholars and pro-democracy experts say Brazil’s treatment of Jair Bolsonaro is what should have happened to Trump. 

Flávio Bolsonaro was likely to govern in the autocratic style of his father and use government power to punish Jair’s enemies. It would have been akin to Donald Trump Jr. being elected president in 2024—not as bad as the autocrat returning to office but essentially an exoneration of his coup attempt. Sunday’s election averted that terrible outcome. 

Flávio Bolsonaro was also expected to repeat his father’s aggressive anti-environmental policies. That would lead to further deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, the world’s largest, as James North explained in a recent TNR piece. Another calamity avoided. 

And Lula’s win was in many ways a unique victory for democracy itself. The blue wave likely to hit America next month and deliver huge losses to Republicans is excellent news, but Trump’s unpopularity can be attributed to high gas prices and the anti-incumbment sentiment hurting leaders across the world. It’s not clear that the U.S. elections are a rejection of Trump, the far right, or authoritarianism. Brazil is different. Lula is the incumbent. And after he finished behind Bolsonaro in the first round of the election, he and his supporters fully leaned into the argument that Brazil was choosing between democracy and authoritarianism. Brazilians chose democracy, putting aside their concerns about electing an 80-year-old to a fourth term.  

“We don’t want dictatorship. We don’t want hatred. We don’t want guns. We want a country of love,” Lula said on the eve of the election. 

The Bolsonaros and far-right activists in Brazil weren’t the only losers on Sunday. President Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and much of the administration in Washington had worked aggressively to put a Bolsonaro back in power in Brazil. Their regime-change efforts were both overt and covert. After Jair Bolsonaro’s conviction, the U.S. imposed additional tariffs on Brazil and revoked the visa of one of the Brazilian Supreme Court justices involved in the ruling. Trump met with Flávio Bolsonaro in June and released a Truth Social post praising the Brazilian and showing the two of them meeting in the Oval Office. 

Behind the scenes, two State Department officials, Darren Beattie, senior adviser for Western Hemisphere Affairs, and Ricardo Pita Macedo, deputy assistant secretary for North America, spent the last year imploring U.S. diplomats in Brazil to do everything possible to undermine Lula’s administration and restore a member of the Bolsonaro clan to the presidency, according to a detailed report by Reuters. 

The administration’s moves in Brazil are part of a broader imperialistic bid by the United States to dominate Latin America, by either forcing reluctant leaders of those countries to carry out U.S. edicts, helping more pro-American figures win power, or in the case of Venezuela, arresting their leader and then replacing him with a proxy beholden to the U.S. Lula is perhaps the most vocal figure in Latin America opposing Trump’s agenda, both in that region and around the world. It would have been a great victory for Trump to defeat one of his most prominent enemies. Brazil’s voters denied the American autocrat such a win. 

Lula’s win is a blow to the billionaire class, as well. While American billionaires weren’t overtly helping Bolsonaro as they do Trump, there is considerable evidence that Instagram was suppressing pro-Lula content but not accounts and posts favorable to Bolsonaro. Brazil’s election court thought that the allegations of favoritism were serious enough that it issued a ruling demanding that Meta’s media platforms treat the candidates’ content equally. (Meta denies that its platforms discriminated against Lula.) 

The other good news about this election is how Lula won. After finishing behind Bolsonaro in the first round of voting, Lula and his campaign essentially adopted an all-of-the above strategy. Lula blasted Bolsonaro’s antidemocratic views while also announcing a slew of populist economic proposals, most notably reducing the workweek there from six days to five. His campaign greatly increased its presence on social media. They aggressively courted people who hadn’t voted in the first round, as well as evangelicals, a bloc that leans right but includes many people who would consider a left-wing candidate. 

And Lula’s campaign, unlike liberals in the United States and other nations, didn’t hesitate to bluntly accuse a billionaire-owned social media platform of favoring the right. It forced Meta to commit to neutrality. That’s an important precedent from which other left and liberal leaders around the world should borrow. 

Lula’s campaign didn’t adopt the doom and fatalism of so many of those fighting the far right. They assumed that voters could be convinced to oppose Bolsonaro—and acted on that belief.  

To be sure, what happened in Brazil is more avoiding the worst possible outcome than achieving the best one. It’s discouraging that the Bolsonaro family continued to dominate one of Brazil’s major parties after Jair’s antidemocratic rule and coup attempt. It’s even worse that so much of Brazil’s electorate doesn’t prioritize democracy and the rule of law and nearly put a Bolsonaro back into the presidency. And while it didn’t win the presidency, the Bolsonaro-led Liberal Party made huge gains in Brazil’s Congress in this fall’s elections. They will be able to implement much of their agenda and block Lula’s. 

And Brazil aside, Trump allies are gaining power throughout Latin America. The far right is ascendant in Germany and much of Europe. And even if Meta was chastened by this election, billionaires will continue to use their media properties and other holdings to help authoritarians, who tend to reduce regulations and taxes on the superrich. 

All that said, the narrow defeat of Bolsonaro in Brazil likely followed in two weeks by a resounding rejection of Trump’s party in the United States is worth celebrating. The far right isn’t dead. But neither is the movement against the far right.

Ruffin has been at Elliott-Chelsea for more than 30 years. The apartment’s two bedrooms allowed her to raise Prince, who liked keeping small pets and fixing electronics, until he was a teenager. She often worked two security jobs at a time to make ends meet. Eventually, she earned a master’s degree in speech therapy. By the late 2010s, Ruffin was making a decent salary and paying a little over $1,500 a month, still a manageable sum in a neighborhood that she had watched transform as artists and luxury retailers crept in, followed by the lush tourist trap of the High Line park, the gleaming towers of Hudson Yards, and the soaring rents that came along with them.

Public housing continued to support Ruffin in 2019, when a diagnosis of multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood plasma, forced her to retire. The treatment damaged her kidneys and she went on dialysis, withdrawing her pension to cover her mounting medical expenses. By then, her apartment had mold problems, and the New York City Housing Authority, racked by decades of federal disinvestment, was slow to remediate. Her property manager helped place her in a seniors-only building where the units were clean and large enough to fit her new rolling walker. Friends from the community visited to check on her. Together, they would take walks at the park nearby or watch Knicks games on TV. From her window, she could look out over a rippling canopy of green and the Empire State Building rising above it.

One day in 2024, Doris Ruffin returned to her apartment after a long hospital stay to find a notice from NYCHA taped to her door: She would be relocated. The housing authority—working with Related Companies, the mega-developer of Hudson Yards, and its spin-off firm Essence Development—intended to demolish and rebuild her home, along with the whole of Elliott-Chelsea and the nearby Fulton Houses. Ruffin’s building would be among the first leveled. Staff “relocation specialists” would help the 67-year-old move into a different unit in the complex. In a few years’ time, she would be placed into a brand-new building packed with modern amenities like fitness centers and central AC. Ruffin was unmoved by this pledge. “I was in disbelief,” she said. Sure, the elevators needed an overhaul, and the plumbing clearly deserved repairs. But why did these problems require a teardown?

The plan to transform Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea falls under a federal scheme that allows local agencies to convert developments out of the public housing system and bring on private real estate companies that can finance their rehab or reconstruction. Often, these partners are big corporate landlords that are more than happy to take over managing the homes—and collecting the government-guaranteed rent that they provide. As Congress has withdrawn funding from public housing, many cities have used the program to turn their entire portfolios over to private managers. This might be fine if the companies consistently delivered big upgrades. But the program does not exactly have a stellar track record. A 2018 report from the Government Accountability Office found that large percentages of tenants in converted developments nationwide reported poor renovation quality and nonresponsive management, and a 2022 assessment from Human Rights Watch warned that, in New York City, it has “negatively impacted the right to housing of low-income residents by leading to a reduction in oversight.” That neglect has caused a range of serious problems for tenants, from increased evictions to poor living conditions.

NYCHA, however, has bulldozed ahead. So far, the agency has converted around a quarter of its public housing stock, and its plan for Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea is especially aggressive. Under a $1.9 billion proposal, Related and Essence would conduct the first demolition under the program, razing all 18 buildings of the complexes and replacing them with six high-rise towers for public housing residents. The developers would erect thousands of new mixed-income apartments on the remainder of the land, some of the most valuable on the planet. Tenants have described a planning process riddled with deceptions and disregard for their input. But with the housing authority staring down roughly $78 billion in backlogged maintenance over the next 20 years, officials have said that the cash flow from this conversion is one of the few ways to give the aging apartments the repairs they need. The agency views the project as a model for other developments, according to NYCHA’s chief executive, Lisa Bova-Hiatt.

None of this smelled right to Ruffin. “These developers are just being greedy,” she said, her eyes growing big. “They don’t care about the people and how it’s affecting them.” When she viewed the temporary apartment that NYCHA had reserved for her, she found small, narrow rooms that were impossible to navigate with her walker. Ruffin decided that she was staying put. In her 14-floor building, she is one of 24 holdouts, as of late September. Six other families have refused to move out of a mid-rise in Fulton, the first marked for demolition in that complex. Together with tenants across their community, they are fighting in street rallies and in court against a plan that they view as a land grab. “This is what we’re used to, this is our environment,” Ruffin said. “If you take that away, you’re taking everything away from us.”

In picking this fight, Ruffin and her neighbors are battling a political behemoth. Not only do the housing authority and its real estate partners favor the plan. New York City’s new democratic socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who campaigned on holding corporate landlords accountable, seems eager to turn public housing over to private companies if it means a quick fix for troubled infrastructure. And in Washington, bipartisan members of Congress recently authorized a vast expansion of such conversions nationwide, a continuation of a decades-long retreat from direct control of public goods.

As the country unwinds the social gains of the twentieth century, what remains for public housing tenants?

Public housing began as a grand social democratic experiment. Born from the economic depths of the Great Depression, the Housing Act of 1937 charged government with creating affordable rentals for working Americans, a stout brick bulwark against the slums of the for-profit housing market. The idea was not without opposition. Politicians on both sides of the aisle smeared it as socialist, and real estate groups decried it as a threat to their livelihood. In the end, the program, known formally as Section 9 of the law, was a compromise, ensuring that public housing would be built to minimum standards and reserved for the poorest citizens, so as not to compete with the private market. Still, into the postwar era, its segregated garden apartments and squat brick townhouses enjoyed a foothold in urban life. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his 1944 State of the Union address, nodded to the program when he declared “the right of every family to a decent home.”

Over the decades, however, that sunny New Deal vision has clouded. In the midcentury, cities struggled as white residents fled for the suburbs, lured by incentives denied to families of color. Public housing became the high-rise terrain of a Black urban underclass. Politicians and the media blamed the projects for rising crime and poverty, despite the vibrant communities millions still found there. Beginning in the 1970s, notorious superblocks, like St. Louis’s Pruitt-Igoe and Chicago’s Cabrini-Green, served as justification for Congress to drastically defund the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Local agencies spiraled into dysfunction; much public housing was allowed to deteriorate. In 1995, President Bill Clinton promised to “end public housing as we know it,” a bid for bipartisan agreement. “Most public housing worked pretty well,” said Edward Goetz, a professor of urban planning at the University of Minnesota and the author of New Deal Ruins: Race, Economic Justice, and Public Housing Policy. “Yet we embarked on this large-scale effort to eliminate it.”

Plumes of debris rose from Chicago to Atlanta to New Orleans, where agencies took federal grants to sell off or detonate their public housing, as white, affluent families streamed back to urban centers. On the grounds, developers built mixed-income rentals, but most public housing was never replaced. Even at this stage, politicized tenants understood these “transformations” as a land grab. Some were given government-issued vouchers to rent from landlords in the private market; many were pushed out of the system altogether when they were rescreened for eligibility. Thousands of families were scattered into other poor and segregated pockets of the urban landscape. Nationally, the number of public housing units has fallen from 1.4 million at the program’s postwar peak to 860,000 today, even as the waiting lists in big cities reach the hundreds of thousands.

Into this smoky air of decline, HUD launched a new plan for public housing transformation. Adopted in 2012, the Rental Assistance Demonstration, or RAD, is a classic Obama-era public-private partnership—much like the deals that cities strike with companies to manage everything from utilities to hospitals. Under the program, local agencies can convert public housing into what’s called project-based Section 8 housing, a different form of low-income rental that provides roughly double the funding stream. The public still owns the land, while the private partner leases it for 99 years and takes a 50 percent stake in the venture. The idea is that these companies can borrow private capital and access tax credits to finance repairs in ways that housing agencies can’t. Unlike the diabolical demolition schemes of the 1990s and 2000s, the program stipulates one-for-one replacement of public housing units and guarantees tenants the right to return, with the same rent and without rescreening. For struggling housing authorities, the advent of the program was something of a stunner, said Paul Williams, a housing policy analyst who serves as executive director of the Center for Public Enterprise. He described it as a “life hack” for the agencies.

Historically, New York City has preserved its public housing. NYCHA is the largest housing authority in the country. It’s responsible for some 400,000 tenants across 335 developments, the equivalent of a midsize city. And while the agency has had its share of dysfunction, it was long the well-run exception to the bad big-city systems—“public housing that worked,” as its most prominent historian once described it. But decades of austerity have caught up to NYCHA. As with virtually all housing authorities, its apartments literally cost more to run than it receives in rent and subsidies combined. In 2018, NYCHA was forced into a federal consent decree requiring agencywide reforms and repairs to dangerous conditions like lead, mold, and broken elevators. It’s easy to see the bind that housing authorities like NYCHA face, and why many cities are racing to partner with deep-pocketed landlords. “We are limited in the tools that we have to try to reverse the decades and decades of federal disinvestment,” Bova-Hiatt said.

From the outset, however, RAD had problems. Certainly, the program attracted billions in investment, and there were complexes where it resulted in serviceable rehabs. But introducing corporate landlords with a profit motive meant completely changing the incentive structure of running these homes. Plenty imported their habitual cost-cutting practices. “When you bring in these new companies, some of them have very checkered histories,” said Iziah Thompson, a senior policy analyst at the Community Service Society of New York. “Some of them are companies that the tenant movement has been fighting as ‘slumlords’ in the low-income housing space for years.”

For these reasons, many advocates have come to see the program not as a “life hack” but as another spasm in the death throes of public housing.

In January, Doris Ruffin held onto her walker as she spoke into a cluster of local news mics at the entrance of the Hudson Guild, Elliott-Chelsea’s community center. Dressed in layers against the cold, she admonished NYCHA for harassing her. Flanking Ruffin were residents of the complexes, supporters from the Chelsea neighborhood, the Democratic district leader, a former state senator, and members of local left-wing organizations. After the seniors refused to leave, NYCHA began putting heat on them, they allege. Agency staff knocked on their doors day and night. Notices arrived threatening lease termination for unspecified rule violations. Many of the seniors are ill, disabled, or speak limited English. NYCHA, for its part, has said that all these measures were taken in the spirit of providing tenants with accurate information about the plan and the terms of their lease. In 2025, the housing authority sued 16 residents, including Ruffin, in hopes that a judge would have them removed; the judge declined, and the agency withdrew its request. But some tenants were intimidated by these tactics. “It is not right,” Ruffin said to the crowd. “It is not ethical.”

Standing at Ruffin’s side was Renee Keitt, looking on protectively from behind thick-rimmed black eyeglasses. An urban farmer and community organizer, Keitt grew up in Elliott-Chelsea. Her mother lives in the complex. Her grandmother died there. In early 2025, Keitt became the resident association president by running an insurgent campaign against NYCHA’s redevelopment scheme, unseating a longtime incumbent who supported the plan. Since then, she has served as the de facto leader of the opposition. “Nobody has asked us,” Keitt said during her turn at the mics. “We demand that you start listening.”

How the process of repairing Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea became a crucible for the fate of public housing in New York is a long and complicated story. But as Keitt indicates, it begins and ends with tenants feeling that their wishes are being ignored, a familiar experience for people of color across the United States whose government-run homes a city has decided to tear down in order to make room for the more affluent. Back in 2019, officials gave up on an initial plan to demolish two Fulton buildings and replace them with mixed-income towers when residents revolted. Chastened, the mayor’s office launched a working group process, where tenant representatives, community board members, and officials hashed out the gritty details of repairing both complexes under the local RAD variant (known as Permanent Affordability Commitment Together, or PACT). There were asbestos issues to consider, as well as leaks, mold, outdated elevators, and faulty heat and hot water. A delicate compromise was reached, with tenants agreeing to conversion on two conditions: no demolition of residential buildings and a limited amount of new market-rate construction. After NYCHA and tenant leaders chose Related and Essence to lead the project, community meetings were held, and tenants were bused to sample properties to demonstrate the companies’ good work. In 2022, Keitt recalled, the developers promised that tenants would receive renovation plans the following year.

Instead, tenants received a shock. In 2023, NYCHA and tenant leaders announced that it was now a demolition and redevelopment project. Many learned about the change from a press release, on social media, or from a story in The New York Times: “to improve public housing, new york city moves to tear it down.” Rebuilding was more cost-effective than renovating, officials explained. To rehab all 2,056 units would cost $1.14 billion, whereas the developers could reconstruct the buildings from scratch for just a touch more, at $1.3 billion. The main thing, though, was the benefit that the new plan would provide: Tenants’ apartments would be replaced with brand-new ones. Reconstruction would occur in phases, meaning that nearly everyone would move only once, directly into their new homes. The few tenants who were required to move twice would be placed temporarily into freshly renovated units on the same campus for the estimated three years that the first phase of construction would require. A rezoning would allow the developers, over at least the next 16 years, to deliver retail spaces and apartments to the housing-starved city, including 3,500 mixed-income units, with most renting at market rate and approximately 1,000 restricted to middle earners. A survey, administered by NYCHA, showed that tenants preferred this course of action.

Much about this change of plans outraged tenants who had been part of the process. The renovation estimates used to justify wholesale demolition, which had ballooned from $492 million to more than $1 billion when rerun by the developers, seemed fishy to say the least. Tenants believed that their buildings were in sound structural condition. And NYCHA and its partners helped nothing by failing to provide a third-party building condition and cost report, claiming that it was not officially required by HUD now that the plan was to redevelop. In 2025, the figures were called into question by a former NYCHA chief architect, who balked at the notion that rehabilitation costs could have doubled in the space of two years and suggested that the numbers were likely invented to support the partners’ preferred plan. (NYCHA contends that it has provided tenants and community groups with cost estimates. New buildings will provide a higher “degree of preservation,” a spokesperson said, meaning that they will last longer before needing repairs, not to mention offer greater value for NYCHA and the city.) Meanwhile, the housing authority and the companies stood to split $16.3 million annually in revenue from the first Section 8 tower alone. Tenants, of course, wanted repairs for their homes. But they suspected that the land they lived on was becoming a piggy bank to cover NYCHA’s capital shortfalls and “unlock tremendous value,” as the project’s website put it, for two real estate giants.

Particularly galling to skeptics was the claim that tenants themselves had chosen the new plan. The survey in question had asked them to pick between “rehabilitation of existing units” or two types of “new construction.” Nowhere was the term “demolition” used. Only 29 percent of the population of 3,388 eligible tenants responded; 57 percent, 550 tenants total, marked a preference for new construction. Now, NYCHA and the developers were trotting out these results to claim consent. “I’ve never seen anything so obviously disingenuous,” said Thompson, of the Community Service Society, who worked with tenants throughout the process. “It was just terribly, terribly dishonest.”

An irony of all this engineering is that it only hardened some tenants’ opposition. Their resistance was not limited to objections about an illegitimate process. As details emerged, tenants learned of significant material costs inherent in the plan. For one thing, conversion to a Section 8 lease and private management would mean a loss of certain protections afforded them by conventional public housing—despite New York City’s expanded rights for program participants. Tenants, for example, are no longer permitted to transfer into other complexes. Most consequential is a seriously defanged grievance process for issues like nonpayment of rent and succession of tenancy after a relative moves or dies, legal advocates have said, with private landlords moving more quickly to remove tenants and frequently bypassing required procedures intended to keep them housed. “We know that there is an increased eviction rate after a conversion,” said Celines Miranda, a lifelong resident of Elliott-Chelsea and vice president of its resident association, who strongly opposes the plan. “This is an issue throughout the city as a whole.”

In addition to threatening tenant rights, the redevelopment of Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea would gobble up valued open space, reducing well-used playgrounds and recreation areas across the two campuses by roughly 28 percent to make way for mixed-income buildings. In their place, developers have proposed an uninspiring set of new playgrounds and pocket parks that would largely be divided by massive high-rises or enclosed within their courtyards, disconnected from the sidewalk and the neighborhood. “If you look at the before-after renders, there is no significant improvement,” explained Matthias Altwicker, an architecture professor at the New York Institute of Technology who studies open space in NYCHA developments, and is otherwise a proponent of the city’s version of the RAD program. “These are terrible spaces compared to the existing through-block playground and sitting areas that were typical of NYCHA historically.”

Meanwhile, tenants like Ruffin, who were expected to relocate during construction, would lose their neighbors as they moved to temporary apartments in buildings where they knew nobody. Even under the best circumstances, the strong networks of the complexes would be radically disrupted. “We will lose a sense of community, something that has been so essential in our lives,” Miranda said.

In her professional life, Keitt had seen beloved community gardens destroyed when developers wished to erect towers on the land, with little regard for the harm it caused, she told me. Now, she looked at the plan for her home and recalled the botched public housing redevelopments of cities like Chicago. She glanced around her own city and saw NYCHA partnering with notorious slumlords like Pinnacle Group that subjected tenants to miserable conditions. Keitt decided to fight. At tenant meetings, she met Miranda and other neighbors who distrusted demolition. Together, they knocked on every door across the complexes, collecting more than 1,000 signatures on a petition against the plan, nearly double the number who selected “new construction” on NYCHA’s survey. Today, Keitt and Miranda not only are officers in their resident association but also lead the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Tenants Against Demolition, a multigenerational, multilingual group of residents that crashes NYCHA board meetings, testifies at City Council hearings, and stages rallies outside the Related Companies’ glassy Hudson Yards HQ. “It’s a constant fight, a constant battle every day,” Keitt said. “There’s a sense of violation of our homes. I’m worrying about the seniors. I’m worrying about everyone.”

There are, of course, pro-demolition tenants who simply want improvements to their homes, come what may. Miguel Acevedo, the president of the Fulton Houses resident association, has been especially outspoken on behalf of those eager for new construction. His attitude is basically pragmatic. Washington is not coming to the rescue, Acevedo reasoned: “If you have no funding, you get nothing fixed. If you get some type of funding, at least you have the opportunity for capital improvements.” Fears about poor-quality redevelopment are unfounded, he told me. Related and Essence are “the best of the best.” Tenant opposition he dismissed outright as being ginned up “through lies.” His position has resulted in some pretty ugly confrontations in community meetings with the anti-demolition crowd.

NYCHA and the real estate companies, for their part, are adamant that the project responds to tenants’ wishes. Engagement is their maxim. Jamar Adams, who spent his early years in public housing and played professional football before founding Essence, has become the face of the project. He points to an input process that entailed more than 65 community meetings. “I brought the transparency, the thoughtfulness, the desire to engage with the residents and not make decisions without them,” Adams told me. “I see a lot of the residents very much like I see my family.” Despite this familial thoughtfulness, however, many participants still ended up feeling blindsided—and pushed to the margins of their community.

The Chelsea neighborhood, over the last two decades, has witnessed a dramatic influx of wealth in one of the most extreme gentrification processes in the country. Part of the rationale for allowing developers to clear public land for new housing is that it will absorb the renters who want to live there, a supply-side logic that has gained traction in recent years. Adams is fluent in this line of rhetoric. “Everyone knows that we need housing,” he said, yet “we allow the loud minority to slow down and stop and delay much-needed housing stock in the city of New York, and it’s not OK.” But those in public housing can’t help noticing that the new mixed-income towers will include few if any rentals that they, their families, or their friends can afford.

Neighbors of Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea have become involved in the fight. In the area, there is no shortage of well-heeled townhouse owners, middle-income renters, and social activists who have taken up the cause. Many were genuinely appalled to learn that the redevelopment could mean living alongside a construction zone for decades. They were similarly appalled by the city’s treatment of public housing residents, said Layla Law-Gisiko, the local Democratic district leader, who has been one of the plan’s most steadfast critics. “It became very clear that this was a major concern across Chelsea, not only for public housing tenants but for neighbors, local businesses, and residents of surrounding developments,” Law-Gisiko said. “As the scale and duration of what was being proposed became clearer, people became increasingly alarmed.” These forces, the “loud minority” to whom Adams apparently refers, now rally alongside tenants, and pro-demolition partisans have seized on that support to discredit the opposition. There’s an impressive level of message discipline on this score. “There are some very loud, vocal groups, and we have to be honest that those are somewhat organized by outsiders,” Heather Beck, NYCHA’s chief real estate officer, told me. “I think outsiders have come in and stoked concern with residents that it’s a ‘land grab,’” Adams said. “That’s NIMBY,” Acevedo said. “That’s selfishness.”

Seemingly galvanized by these provocations, this coalition of supporters has poured time and money into scrutinizing the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea plan by researching public documents and posing challenges in the courts. A variety of legal filings exploits everything from land-use arguments to state public housing statutes to tenant law in an effort to halt demolition. In several cases, Ruffin is a named plaintiff. “She has been harassed and threatened,” one filing reads. NYCHA is firm that its conduct is about working with tenants to find a resolution. “It’s absolutely not harassment,” said Bova-Hiatt. “It’s engagement.” The legal approach, however, has created obstacles. Early this year, tenants won a temporary restraining order, bringing all the engagement to a grinding halt, at least for a time.

If tenants seem needlessly intransigent about a plan designed to build them brand-new homes, it’s worth considering the program’s record. When people fret about privatization of public goods, a primary concern is the drift away from strong democratic oversight. Across the country, turning public housing over to real estate barons has come with abuses undeterred by public regulatory agreements and accountability procedures, including failed relocations, wrongful evictions, and wretched living conditions.

Miami offers the most vivid warning in its conversion of Liberty Square, the subject of a chilling PBS documentary that Keitt has screened at the Hudson Guild Theater as political education for her tenants. In a rapidly gentrifying district of the city, the housing authority worked with a subsidiary of Related Companies on a $300 million redevelopment of the historically Black public housing complex. Input sessions were held; promises were made to avoid displacement. But before the new mixed-income complexes came online, the housing authority turned around and offered tenants the option to take vouchers for the private market in place of their right to return to reconstructed homes. In the end, only five of the more than 600 original families remained in the community. Complaints about mold, leaks, and cracks in the walls have continued in the replacement buildings.

San Francisco, one of the first cities to convert the bulk of its government-run stock, attracted $800 million in capital improvements across the system. Yet tenant complaints increased drastically for issues like lack of heat and hot water, plumbing malfunctions, and nonworking appliances. Private management companies have reportedly been combative about fixing routine problems.

New York City, with its newfound will to remake an expanse of noncommodified brick towers into productive assets, provides some of the most extensive data on the outcomes of RAD conversions. More than 44,000 units have been converted to private management under the program since 2016, and another 18,000 are marked for inclusion. In a survey published in 2024, the Community Service Society found that tenants of converted properties were more likely to report that their new landlords met their repair needs—as should be expected, given the large capital infusions to the developments. At the same time, however, tenants were more likely to describe issues like leaks, mold, and faulty heat and hot water as “serious” than those in conventional NYCHA public housing. New York City tenants have also suffered more than 10,000 code violations in converted developments since 2021, according to data from the independent local news outlet The City Reporter.*

To account for the stacks of violations at converted developments, NYCHA has cited analysis by a housing research group showing that such conditions are acute during the construction phase but decrease after renovations are complete. But the aggregated data hardly explains the many alarming tenant complaints about particular landlords years after their buildings have been renovated, as captured by the Community Service Society, nor the hundreds of incidents, identified by The City Reporter, in which NYCHA has been forced to hire vendors to perform emergency repairs that private managers ignored.

Converted properties in New York City have also shown higher eviction rates. One problem is the loss of a rigorous grievance process under private landlords, according to attorneys from the New York Legal Assistance Group. Tenants technically retain the right to request a hearing to dispute rent increases after a loss of income, resolve nonpayment, or plead for succession of tenancy. But it is significantly more burdensome for them to do so, and whereas the housing authority is prevented from pursuing evictions during the grievance process, private landlords under the program are not. That change has undermined succession rights and led to a shift away from NYCHA’s long-standing efforts to avoid removing tenants. Indeed, in 2024, eviction rates in NYCHA properties under private management were nearly five times greater than in conventional public housing, according to a report from the New York City comptroller’s office.

NYCHA took exception to claims of a weakened grievance process, saying that it handles income recertifications and holds grievance hearings with tenants in a timely manner—and that it takes pains to protect public housing succession rights. The housing authority also challenged the findings of the comptroller’s eviction report. “The fact remains that there have been very few evictions” under the program, a NYCHA spokesperson said. “The program upholds resident rights and protections and provides households with ongoing social services and financial assistance to resolve existing rental arrears.” The agency’s own data shows that in 2025, eviction rates in converted properties were well below the citywide rate and in line with those in conventional public housing. Advocates, however, have continued to worry about systemic problems observed in the comptroller’s report, like routine failures by private managers to provide struggling tenants a copy of the grievance procedures or offer repayment agreements, as required before filing an eviction.

Recognizing these problems, some advocates and policymakers have fought for federal funding to preserve the existing public housing system. The cost of full repair may sound insurmountable: A recent report from the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities found that it would take roughly $170 billion over the next 10 years to address the system’s needs. But compared, for example, to the $28 billion per year in mortgage interest deductions for homeowners, itself a form of subsidized housing, the price tag sounds less daunting, said Korey Lundin, a senior attorney at the National Housing Law Center. “The federal government could choose to do something different,” Lundin said. “Congress could choose to adequately fund federal housing.”

A bit of hope glimmered in August, when Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reintroduced the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act, a bill that would fully address the long-standing capital backlog in federal homes, modernizing them to be sustainable and environmentally resilient. That wager, however, has been shot down in the past, and in recent years Congress has mostly continued to place its bets on the private sector. The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, recently passed into law with bipartisan support, makes the RAD program permanent and lifts the national cap on conversions by 100,000 units. The law also includes provisions intended to better enforce tenant rights in converted properties in the future, as well as an annual mandate for HUD to study the impacts of the program on residents. All the while, President Donald Trump’s HUD is chopping away at funding even for supposedly stable Section 8 assistance and taking measures to make it easier for cities to demolish or dispose of public housing.

In the face of capricious federal decision-making, more grassroots policy demands have arisen. Ramona Ferreyra, the founder of the New York–based public housing preservation group Save Section 9, promotes an array of state and local taxes that could provide sustaining revenue. “People kept asking, how are you going to fund public housing?” said Ferreyra, a NYCHA tenant. “Funding the repairs is the only way to stop privatization.” A state proposal would tax every transaction that Wall Street processes, and the group requests that it earmark for NYCHA 5 percent of the proceeds, which would provide $2 billion in annual operating funds. Ten percent of a local tax increase on millionaires could bring NYCHA some $400 million per year. To finance renovations, Keitt favors the use of a program called Comprehensive Modernization, which has been responsible for revitalizing several NYCHA complexes when residents negotiated funding as part of local rezoning efforts. In the end, what tenants like Ferreyra and Keitt demand is straightforward: the option to preserve public housing, without unasked-for private entanglements. “What I would like to see is democracy at work,” Keitt said. “Ask people what they want. Give them choices.”

In New York City, democracy has proved to be a contested proposition. Some advocates were hopeful that Mamdani would step in the way of what they see as privatization. On the campaign trail, he quoted liberally from New Deal Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and promised to double capital spending on NYCHA. For some, then, it felt like a heel turn when Mamdani took office and committed to moving full speed ahead with the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea redevelopment. In a video from February, Cea Weaver, an accomplished organizer whom Mamdani appointed to lead the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, could be seen at a meeting with residents of the complexes saying, “We are interested in continuing to move forward the plans here.” The room erupted in protest. Later, the anti-demolition group sent a letter to the mayor, requesting a halt to the project and a meeting with him. To date, he has not replied.

Before long, the Mamdani administration came out in full-throated support of the program. His housing plan, released in May, devotes significant funding to the local version of RAD and a related program called the Public Housing Preservation Trust, which would lease properties to a public-benefit corporation. Unable to gain an audience with the mayor himself, the opposition has taken its message to a range of public forums. In July, several dozen agitators showed up at NYCHA’s Annual Plan public hearing, held in an airy auditorium in Downtown Brooklyn. Many wore T-shirts that read PROTECT PUBLIC HOUSING. One by one, they testified against the inclusion of thousands of new conversions in Mamdani’s 2027 budget. “Our buildings are sound and strong,” said Samantha Ortiz, a Fulton resident. “We want rehabilitation, no privatization.” Miranda urged tenants not to sign new Section 8 leases. Even policymakers chimed in. Council member Chris Banks, chair of the Committee on Public Housing, has been a skeptic of the program and advocates that all tenants get to vote on whether their properties will be converted. At the hearing, he questioned the Mamdani administration’s commitment to NYCHA residents. After Banks spoke, as an official attempted to call the meeting to order, the crowd broke into shouts: “Save Section 9!” Officials looked dourly out from the stage.

Weaver seems unconvinced by these eruptions. She has, in many ways, become the spokesperson for the mayor-as-landlord, in part because she’s unusually willing to respond to critics, scrapping with anti-privatization crusaders on X and absorbing the most searing accusations from tenants. (Section 8 is “a form of public housing,” Weaver told Keitt when they clashed at a recent NYCHA tenant forum hosted by the mayor’s office. “I’m not understanding how you keep telling my tenants that,” Keitt replied. “It’s not the truth.”) A onetime opponent of the RAD program, Weaver is now a true believer. Above all, she emphasizes its publicness. The program is a more “politically stable, hopeful option for a democratic socialist administration,” Weaver told me. NYCHA maintains control, with the private partner enjoying little more than a “vendor relationship” to the public agency. Strong accountability measures encouraged by the city—including a “roundtable” of providers to support tenants during conversion, and potentially even “co-management” agreements between resident associations and new private landlords—will help enforce tenant rights and monitor renovation quality. If landlords fail to uphold their end of the agreement, NYCHA can always kick them out. “Everything about this is made possible through public money, public control over the asset,” Weaver said of the program. “This is something that is entirely with the public sector in the driver’s seat, and that’s important because the public is where democracy happens.”

Anti-demolition tenants have a different form of democracy in mind, one in which they make the final decisions about the fate of their homes. That fate will far outlast the oversight intentions of the Mamdani administration. What gets lost in policy debates is that the people who actually live in public housing may have separate motivations from those of political and real estate elites. It doesn’t seem like NIMBYism for them to say that they don’t want their perfectly good apartment buildings razed for the sake of the bottom line. It doesn’t sound outrageous to ask the city, which funded public housing for decades, to scrounge up money to sustain it—at least as much as it finds for programs like police and schools. Nor does it seem strange to expect the new mayor, who promised to tame the excesses of the private sector, to protect working people rather than surrendering them to the whims of profiteers.

In July, an appeals court lifted the temporary restraining order that had throttled the plan at Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea. For developers, that means it’s open season. Yet NYCHA must turn the buildings over unoccupied. The Mamdani administration, high priests of pristine optics, would prefer to avoid the spectacle of hauling seniors into housing court. At the moment, the city’s approach is “bespoke, one-on-one engagement,” according to NYCHA, with groups of city officials knocking on holdouts’ doors to inform them of their rights and persuade them to move into temporary apartments. As of late September, there were no takers. But in the end, the housing authority is a landlord, with all the tools of one. Recently, it delivered lease-termination notices to those who remain. The agency has repairs to consider, revenue, and especially development—not just of homes for the “ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished” of the Roosevelt era, but these days, apparently, for all of Gotham’s twinkly-eyed in-movers. “We never want to evict somebody,” Bova-Hiatt said. “But we can’t let a handful of people stand in the way of progress.”

Doris Ruffin has remained immovable. Early one Friday in August, Ruffin took her morning walk, four laps of the track at Chelsea Park, across from her building’s front door. On the soccer field, it was peaceful. Runners lapped the red clay track in the rising heat. Someone kicked a soccer ball around the damp grass of the field. The exercise and fresh air helps with her condition. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said, mustering the resolve of a cancer survivor at the prospect of NYCHA taking her to housing court. “I’m going to fight tooth and nail.”

But all the uncertainty is stressful, she said. Will her home be demolished? Will it ever be rebuilt? Will her new landlord be worse than the last? She loses sleep. “I put in my time,” she said. “I worked. I should be able to live in peace, not worrying about who’s going to knock on my door.” She has contributed to her family and community, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent to landlords in the private and public sectors. Now she’s sick. What she wants, she feels, is simple: repair without loss, improvement without displacement. For some reason, this city, this state, this country are no longer designed to provide that.

* This article originally misstated the alleged cause of a gas explosion at a public housing development in the Bronx.

Folks, I’d love to flip the Senate. The possibilities are enticing. We might return Sherrod Brown to power in Ohio. The dream of a blue Texas is somehow in play, thanks to the fact that the GOP has, in Ken Paxton, nominated one of the most cartoonishly corrupt people to ever stand for office. Between Alaska, Iowa, Michigan, Kansas, and Nebraska, there are big dreams and vaulting ambitions. For me, however, there’s one race in particular in which I want to see the Republican candidate fail: Susan Collins in Maine.

Collins has been an irritant for me for as long as I can remember. Somehow or another, she has managed to carve out an identity for herself as a moderate Republican, despite being a Trumpist par excellence. She’s voted with Trump 92 percent of the time, which means one important thing: She has played a leading role in bolstering the administration’s corruption. But if there is one arena in which Collins’s mendacity shines, it’s in her unearned pro-choice pretensions.

Collins has snowed a lot of people; if you read the typical fare from the political media, you’ll mostly see her characterized as a pro-choice Republican who, somehow or another, keeps casting pivotal votes that further the ends of the anti-abortion movement. As someone who has boundless contempt for both Collins and the political press that has enabled her, I deeply hope that her lies might finally catch up to her.

Collins’s meretriciousness shines brightly on the reproductive rights front. And in recent days, she’s at it again. This week, Collins was asked to account for her pivotal confirmation vote for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whose presence on the high court all but ensured the gutting of Roe: “I’m very disappointed in his vote to overturn Roe v. Wade,” Collins attested. “There was no way for me to anticipate that.”

It’s pretty weird that this one Maine senator was unable to “anticipate” something that the right has been working toward for the past half-century, building out an entire right-wing legal movement and funneling anti-abortion judges through the pipeline of the federal judiciary, vetting each oh-so-carefully, remembering the betrayal of David Souter. This is where I wish journalists made a more robust effort over the years to hold Collins to account. Because the way I see it, her claims of not being able to anticipate the obvious means she is either a dullard or a liar. Either way, she’s not fit to be a senator.

Collins has sworn up and down that Kavanaugh convinced her that he had no plans to undercut the reproductive rights protections offered by Roe. That simply doesn’t square with Kavanaugh’s career. It was Kavanaugh who gave a speech to the American Enterprise Institute in 2017, in which he praised William Rehnquist’s dissent in Roe as well as his majority opinion in Washington v. Glucksberg—a defining case for Kavanaugh where unenumerated rights are concerned. “Even a first-year law student could tell you that Glucksberg’s approach to unenumerated rights was not consistent with the approach of the abortion cases such as Roe v. Wade,” Kavanaugh said, adding, “The Glucksberg case stands to this day as an important precedent, limiting the Court’s role in the realm of social policy and helping to ensure that the Court operates more as a court of law and less as an institution of social policy.”

Glucksberg would pop up again during Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings. During a back-and-forth with Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who was particularly interested in the would-be justice’s philosophy on unenumerated rights such as abortion, Kavanaugh told Cruz, “All roads lead to the Glucksberg test.”

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, the popular criticism of the justices who gutted Roe is that they walked into their confirmation hearings and fibbed about their intentions. But Kavanaugh’s testimony shows that he spoke pretty clearly about what he planned to do with abortion rights. You just needed to listen. As Ian Millhiser, who did, summed up: “So, to spell this all out, Kavanaugh believes that the way to determine whether the Constitution protects a particular unenumerated right is to apply the test the Supreme Court laid out in Glucksberg. And the judge also thinks that ‘even a first-year law student could tell you’ that Roe is inconsistent with Glucksberg.”

How much more clarity does Susan Collins need? Hopefully, in a few short weeks, we won’t need to keep asking her.

“Supersized heatwaves used to be rare,” Tamman wrote. “No longer. Now they swarm the planet.” In a video accompanying the report, he explained that “whereas heat waves were once small and relatively self-contained, now we live in a world where these heat waves are massive.”

Drawing on interviews with dozens of scientists and researchers, Reuters defined a “heat storm” as an episode of “abnormally high temperatures” that lasts for at least five consecutive days and covers more than 1 percent of the earth’s surface, an area roughly the size of half of Canada. Whereas the planet averaged about five heat storms per year in the 1960s, the largest of which covered 6 percent of the planet and lasted for 46 days, the average today is 102 heat storms per year, the largest of which affected 85 percent of earth’s surface “and virtually every single human being living in 2023 and 2024.”

Heat storms, Tamman added in the video, are not only larger and stronger than heat waves, they “are also different in another way: They are cascading, where there is an endless series of storms, one after the other.” Indeed, for the last 18 years straight, “at least one heat storm has been roiling the planet, and often more than one,” according to a fresh analysis of global temperature data that Reuters conducted with the scientists.

Tamman, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2025 for an exposé on the global fentanyl trade and has covered climate change for years, was drawn to this project after having long been “frustrated by a disconnect between scientists and the public,” he wrote. It can be useful for scientists and policymakers to talk about the need to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, he acknowledged, but “what is an ordinary person to make of that? Not much.” Extreme heat, on the other hand, is something that ordinary people viscerally understand—and that nearly everyone on earth has now experienced. In recent months, global warming and the heat that follows has become even more visceral, bringing ever more extreme events like last summer’s glacier collapse in Nepal and the deaths of more than 35,000 people across Europe.

Like the best climate reporting, the Reuters investigation both humanized and localized the story. One installment told the story of Justice Trumpler, a 17-year-old high school football captain in Texas who invites college recruiters to watch him play, only to succumb to nonstop vomiting in the 100-degree heat and end up in the hospital. Another installment described how hundreds of the iconic pink dolphins that inhabit the Amazon river were literally cooked to death by extreme heat. In the Philippines, a math teacher saw a student face down on his desk, crying; when the teacher coaxed him to sit up, the boy’s face and chest were covered in blood from a spontaneous nosebleed, a common malady in extreme heat.

All this and more is happening, bear in mind, after average global temperatures have risen by “only” 1.4 C. And because emissions continue to increase, temperatures are projected to rise to at least 1.7 C by roughly 2050, the United Nations Environment Programme said in its annual “Emissions Gap” report, released October 13. A key reason emissions keep increasing, The New York Times reported, is that the U.S. under President Donald Trump has reversed its previous efforts to limit fossil fuel production. To limit the amount of “overshoot” of the Paris Agreement goal of 1.5 C of temperature rise, UNEP said, “a massive global scale-up” in emissions reductions will be needed, a goal certain to be discussed at the COP31 U.N. climate summit taking place in Turkey from November 9 to 20.

To help both the public and policymakers grasp how harshly even today’s 1.4 C of global warming is transforming life on earth, the Reuters project suggested that heat storms be given names, just as hurricanes routinely are. According to the report, “Naming events is ‘a powerful way for people to understand that something is happening,’ Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, told Reuters. Yet ‘we don’t currently do that with heatwaves,’ he said, even though heat has been estimated to kill almost half a million people a year.”

In online discussions, some meteorologists have bristled at the term “heat storm.” David Dickson, Covering Climate Now’s resident meteorologist, noted that “storm” is a term “with a very distinct meteorological definition that is the opposite of what happens during extreme heat (storms occur with low pressure, heat with high pressure).” However, Dickson added, “I can’t think of a better name, and think it does the job in communicating impacts quite well—and we already have other things described as storms that aren’t, i.e., solar storms.”

For nearly a decade, thousands of climate scientists have been deliberately using the term “emergency” to describe how fast and dangerously global warming is intensifying. Activists picked up the “emergency” framing as well, but the Reuters findings underscore that that framing has always been fundamentally a matter of science, not politics.

The Texas Tribune reports that the Paxtons gave the cash to a construction materials business run by Scott Sherman, a home builder who pleaded guilty to mortgage fraud in 2014, through what was presented to the public as a blind trust. In reality, the Paxtons’ business activities were not shielded, as should be the case in a blind trust.

According to the Tribune, which cited previously unreleased records from Ken Paxton’s 2023 impeachment investigation, Sherman’s companies sent the Paxtons thousands of dollars while they were facing mounting tax debts. Ken Paxton was investigated by the Texas state legislature and was eventually acquitted. Now he’s Texas’s Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in a tight race with Democratic challenger James Talarico.

Paxton’s business dealings fly in the face of his public statements. He said in a news release last year that “in Texas, we fight fraud head-on and will not rest until every last corrupt actor is brought to justice.” Ethics experts told the Tribune that his activities undermine his position as Texas’s top law enforcement official.

Richard Painter, a former chief ethics lawyer to President George W. Bush, said he thought Paxton would be smarter than this. Referring to people like Sherman, Painter said, “They’ll pay out their friends while they’re not paying their taxes, run up debt. But the question is, why is the attorney general of Texas dealing with those kinds of people?”

Painter added that he thought “the attorney general of Texas would have the good sense not to be dealing with a convicted felon.”

Angela Paxton filed for divorce from Ken last year on “biblical grounds,” referring to her husband’s infidelity. Ken Paxton has continued to deal with shady characters since his investment in Sherman, spending New Year’s Eve 2024 partying with his mistress and two campaign donors who both fled the U.S. from health care fraud charges.

The Des Moines Register reported that the parents of lieutenant governor nominee Derek Wulf allege that he stopped paying rent two years ago on the farmland he rented out from them. A court petition filed Tuesday demands repayment and also accuses him of lying about his assets in financial documents to a lender.

While Wulf has yet to comment, his Trump–endorsed running mate, gubernatorial nominee Zach Lahn, denied that Wulf owes his parents any money at all—and insinuated that the conflict was spurred by the poor health of Wulf’s father. Wulf’s parents rejected that, calling the claim “categorically false.” 

Duane and Jackie Wulf, 83 and 82 years old respectively, join a long list of creditors demanding repayment from the Republican candidate. Eight people and companies have sued Wulf and his company, Shallow Creek Land & Livestock, since 2023 for payments owed to them. All but one of the lawsuits have been settled. That one is from the WCF Financial Bank, which claims that Wulf is over a year behind on credit payments. 

Wulf is a 45-year-old man with a wife and two children running for lieutenant governor. These financial issues are not only embarrassing but raise alarming questions about how he might abuse a position in office. Hopefully, Iowa will never have to find out. Polls show that he and Lahn are currently trailing Democratic gubernatorial nominee Rob Sand by about 11 points—in a state Trump won by 13 points two years ago.  

In a 10–7 en banc decision, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that ICE detainees with pending immigration hearings are not entitled to receive a bond hearing, where a judge could assess their dangerousness and flight risk, regardless of how long they have been in detention.

The decision blocks efforts by federal judges who have been ordering the release of hundreds of immigrants—many of whom have no criminal record and have deep ties to the United States—held without bond by ICE’s mass deportation policy.

After the Fifth Circuit upheld ICE’s policy in February, other federal judges discovered that they were able to argue that detention violated immigrants’ constitutional due process rights. In the past year, judges have ruled against detentions without bond more than 21,150 times. The Fifth Circuit has now choked off that legal argument.

The case will likely head to the Supreme Court, which is set to decide on a number of immigration reform cases in the coming term.

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, surrendered on arrest warrants earlier Friday. During the following hearing in Washington, U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui said that the case pertained to “Hunter Biden’s laptop, investigations around that.”

Floris’s attorney condemned the charges in a statement. “Nikki Floris is a patriot. She served our nation as a dedicated FBI intelligence officer for nearly 20 years. Yet today, the [Justice Department] has accused her falsely of a crime on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts. It’s no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election,” the statement said. The charges come just 10 days before the midterms.

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 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.”

“You must know now who ordered the Starlink access in Ukraine to be restricted. Who was it?” a reporter asked Trump outside of the White House. Trump denied any knowledge, and replied, “Well, I wouldn’t tell you if I did,” asking who the reporter worked for. When she said, “CNN,” he chuckled.

“Why would I tell CNN?” Trump said, before saying the network did some “nice polls” on him recently.

Earlier in the day, Zelenskiy said regarding Starlink that “the speed has not been restored,” despite Trump’s claim that Elon Musk, who owns the company, had restored access. Ukrainian military and government officials told The Wall Street Journal that connections were failing at higher drone speeds, hurting defense capabilities. Another reporter asked Trump if he had told Musk  to stop messing around with Ukraine’s connection. 

“I have not spoken to him. I might have to, but I have not. I’ve heard it was fixed, but if it’s not, I’ll speak to him,” Trump said.

Trump and Musk are each blaming each other for the decision to throttle Ukraine’s Starlink service last week, which allowed Russia to launch a massive aerial attack on the country. The Wall Street Journal earlier this week reported that Musk in fact ordered internet speeds to slow down, and discussed the decision with Trump ahead of time. 

The FBI’s July 2025 Epstein files memo immediately blew up in the bureau’s face. Its declaration that there was no “client list,” no punishable co-conspirators, and no grounds for further investigation both infuriated the president’s MAGA voter base and started the long domino effect that would eventually oust ex–Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Trump administration messages obtained by Raw Story revealed Friday that Taylor Budowich, then the White House deputy chief of staff, had his fingers in the FBI’s drafting process prior to the memo’s public release.

“Have something I can edit?” Budowich emailed FBI Director Kash Patel two weeks before the memo was released. The email’s subject line read: “Re: Draft memo from DOJ—we have not edited it yet.”

“Just got it from DOJ. Here you go. Thanks,” Patel responded hours later.

The next day, Budowich told Patel that he had passed the draft along to the White House communications team, noting that the message needed to be pasted on DOJ and FBI letterhead, according to Raw Story.

Almost a week later, then–Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche sent a “final version” to Budowich. It failed to meet Budowich’s expectations, however, lacking the identifying seal of the Justice Department.

“I need a version on letterhead,” Budowich repeated. “Someone needs to own this. I can’t give a doc to a reporter that could easily be confused with a [high school] term paper, so need to provide some validation of the doc.”

Diego Pestana, Blanche’s counsel, fulfilled Budowich’s request an hour and a half later.

“These records show that Kash Patel worked hand in hand with the former White House deputy chief of staff on the 2025 DOJ-FBI memo, which stated there would be no further investigation or release of the Epstein files,” Chris Swartz, senior counsel and deputy director of ethics and anti-corruption at the Democracy Defenders Fund, told Raw Story.

“It’s deeply concerning that the FBI coordinated with the White House on this memo, given President Trump’s well-documented association with Jeffrey Epstein and Trump’s frequent mention in the files,” Swartz added.

The lawsuit alleges that the Senate election should be nullified if Sullivan loses because there’s another “Daniel J. Sullivan” on the ballot also running as a Republican, and the Trump administration thinks voters will be too confused—even though Dan Sullivan is properly listed as the incumbent on the ballot.

“Daniel J. Sullivan decided to run for Senator in 2026 as a Republican with the intention of misleading supporters of Senator Sullivan into voting for him,” the DOJ lawsuit alleges. “The sole purpose of his candidacy is to benefit the Peltola campaign by reducing the number of votes for Senator Sullivan.”

The lawsuit raised alarm across the political sphere.

“Surprising that the president who tried to end American democracy and stay in power even though he lost is queuing up additional ways to try to end democracy in America,” the Center for American Progress’s Bobby Kogan mused online.

“Election Day isn’t the end of the fight,” the Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson wrote. “Get ready to get loud.”

“Trump isn’t going to try to interfere in the midterms, he’s already getting started,” chimed journalist Pedro L. Gonzalez. “They’re going to do this everywhere they think they can get away with it.”

This lawsuit comes just a day after Attorney General and former Trump personal attorney Todd Blanche admitted that he was open to blocking states from certifying elections. Now his DOJ is attempting to do just that.

Again, it is extremely abnormal for the Justice Department to be involved in election certification.

Speaking to reporters, Trump struggled to defend the campaign ad featuring Donna Arthur, who lost custody of Acton after years of documented issues, including homelessness and sexual abuse by her stepfather. 

“A mother is saying, don’t put my daughter there because she’s a terrible person, and she’s a liar,” Trump said. “Why shouldn’t somebody use that?”

“But do the sexual abuse allegations mean nothing to you, sir?” the reporter asked. “But do the sexual abuse allegations make no difference?

“Wait, wait, wait, slow down. Who are you with? Who are you with?” Trump said.  

“I’m with NBC, sir,” the reporter replied. 

“One of the worst networks you have,” Trump sneered, but the reporter continued to press him.

“Quiet,” the president snapped. “Isn’t she a fresh person? You’re a horrible little reporter, aren’t you? If my mother said bad things about me, you think the Democrats would put it up? I think so. But my mother thought I was wonderful!”

Of course, the issue isn’t that the advertisement featured Acton’s mother—it’s that it featured a woman who was estranged from her daughter because of alleged sexual abuse by Acton’s stepfather. In 1978, Arthur’s husband Cledith “Bud” Arthur was charged and indicted for rape. Court documents indicate he’d engaged in sexual contact with Acton when she was less than 13 years old. After her stepfather pleaded not guilty, he skipped bail, and Arthur left town with him, Acton said in a 2019 interview. 

This wouldn’t be the first time Trump has downplayed, or outright ignored, serious allegations of sexual abuse. The president has repeatedly dismissed the government’s own findings about his old friend Jeffrey Epstein, an alleged sex trafficker, as a “hoax.” The Department of Justice initially withheld documents relating to three interviews with a woman who accused Trump of sexually assaulting her as a child. Additionally, Trump has railed against a court that found him liable for sexually abusing author E. Jean Carroll. Meanwhile, dozens more women have accused the president of sexual assault.

Arthur achieved notoriety earlier this week when she joined up with MAGA billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, her daughter’s opponent in the gubernatorial race. Starring in a $4 million attack ad, Arthur called her daughter a liar and expressed contempt for the child she abused, rejected, and abandoned 48 years ago.

Maybe the Ramaswamy campaign hoped that Donna Arthur, who spoke to the camera from a cozy kitchen, would seem like a salt-of-the-earth type. Perhaps viewers would believe she’d been left behind by a heartless, upwardly mobile daughter.

They did not, because the history is clear. On July 14, 1978, in Austintown, Ohio, Donna Arthur appeared in court alongside her 43-year-old husband, Cledith Arthur, who had been arrested and charged with raping Amy, his stepdaughter, then 12. After the arrest, Amy was removed from her mother’s custody. Her mother then fled the state with Cledith.

“In the courthouse after they were charged, I went to give her a kiss, and she just turned her cheek away,” Acton told the The Vindicator in 2019. “That was the last time I ever saw her.”

On Wednesday, as blowback against Ramaswamy’s exploitative and cruel ad reached fever pitch, the Acton campaign made public an official chronicle of Arthur’s “long history of fraud, abuse, and legal jeopardy.”

Arthur has indeed been charged repeatedly over the years with financial fraud and animal abuse, as well as innumerable lesser charges, including driving while texting and violating laws meant to protect wildlife.

In 1995, Arthur pleaded guilty to passing bad checks and misleading someone into giving her money.  In 1996, she was found guilty on fresh charges of the same crimes and sentenced to two years in prison. It’s not clear if she served any time.

More recently, in 2021, according to court documents, Arthur, who was then living in her car, was found “keeping several cats and/or newborn kittens in a locked and filthy vehicle.” The car was 120 degrees inside, and one of the days-old kittens had died of heat exhaustion. A second died shortly after, while being cared for in a sanctuary.

During her 2021 hearing for the animal abuse charges, Arthur accused a police officer of trying to ruin her reputation. “In light of other credible evidence and testimony to the contrary,” say court documents from the case, “the court found [Arthur] to be not credible.”

According to public records, Donna Arthur was born around 1944 to Hazel and Lambert Hollopeter in Pennsylvania.

In the 2019 Vindicator interview, Acton says her mother was an artist of about 20 when she met a young man, Gerald Stearns, at a theater party at Youngstown State University. After getting pregnant, Acton says, Donna felt forced into early marriage with Stearns in 1965, and gave birth to Amy shortly thereafter. When Amy was three, her parents, who also had a baby son named Philip by then, divorced. Things got dangerous for Amy and Philip. “I spent so much time being scared as a kid,” Acton said.

In the Ramaswamy ad, Arthur says she worked at something called the “Children and Family Service Association,” but her employment history has proven elusive. Acton says her mother had a range of boyfriends, and the family lived in some 18 places during Amy’s first 12 years. Many of these places were unsafe, including an unfurnished basement with a sump pump on Youngtown’s North Side and, in the winter, a tent on a campground outside the city.

At one point, Donna moved with the kids to California, then drove partway back East, only to put eight-year-old Amy and five-year-old Philip alone on a bus from Nebraska back to Ohio. In 1975, Donna married Cledith Arthur, who Acton says had already been accused of molesting children. Arthur sexually abused Acton for years until his arrest in 1978.

Acton has regularly said that her mother is unwell. Indeed, women who stay with partners who abuse their children are often suffering domestic abuse too. When Donna left her kids in Ohio to leave with Cledith Arthur, she may have felt coerced. Or maybe motherhood had simply become too much.

After their mother left, Amy and her brother went to live with their father. Both began to thrive. After earning an M.D. and a public health M.A., Amy married Eric Acton, a middle school teacher and track coach, in 2010. They have six children in a blended family. Acton rose to national prominence when she led Ohio’s early response to Covid-19. She won a John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in 2021.

By contrast, Arthur, whose husband, Cledith, died in 2004, has spent the last several decades showing up in American courthouses, sometimes for financial misconduct, sometimes for traffic violations, sometimes for bankruptcy proceedings.

Donna Arthur bears a remarkable resemblance to another troubled daughter of Ohio: Beverly Carol Aikins, the mother of JD Vance. As Vance documented in his memoir, Aikins had her first child at 19, divorced when her son was three, developed an opiate addiction, lost custody of her kids, and married five times.

Under other circumstances, Vance, a former Ohio senator, could have decided that he might actually work together with Acton—who has a bipartisan record of working closely with GOP Governor Mike DeWine on the state’s pandemic response—to improve the lives of Ohio women like their mothers. About 18 percent of Ohio women live in poverty, and 35 percent of female-headed households with children live below the poverty line.

Instead, Vance is stumping hard for Ramaswamy, who famously called Medicaid and Medicare a “mistake,” and supports work requirements that would threaten food assistance for nearly 1.4 Ohioans. “Whether the ad was appropriate or not is not really my concern,” Vance said, referring to the Ramaswamy campaign spot. “Stop whining about an advertisement and go win the race.”

As of this writing, prediction markets give Acton an 83 percent chance of being Ohio’s next governor.

In the new book Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East, author Matthew Cole revealed that Kushner oversaw roughly $2 billion in secret foreign bank accounts filled by the Saudis and Emiratis.

In a post on X Thursday, Kushner claimed the allegations were “completely insane and never happened.”

“These are outrageous fabrications being presented as investigative journalism. This is not journalism. It is a mixture of fantasy, fiction, and advocacy, written by someone who is either deeply disturbed or acting with sinister intent,” he wrote.

Kushner’s lawyer, Chad Mizelle, also hit back at the Vanity Fair article on behalf of his client—and threatened to sue the publication.

“Before publication, we sent Simon & Schuster a detailed 13-page letter responding to and categorically denying the extraordinary allegations made against my client, Jared Kushner, and challenging the total absence of supporting evidence,” Mizelle wrote on X.

“Vanity Fair has now published an excerpt amplifying these false and defamatory allegations. We have seen no credible evidence substantiating any of these claims, and we question what independent verification Vanity Fair conducted before publishing them,” he wrote. “We intend to pursue legal action against those responsible and hold them accountable.”

In the 13-page letter, another of Kushner’s lawyers, Alejandro Brito, insisted that Kushner had “no knowledge of, or involvement with, any such accounts.”

“Any allegation that Mr. Kushner knew of, had access to, had authorizations for or engaged in or directed any conduct related to any government-funded or government-linked bank account is totally false and defamatory,” the letter stated.

Speaking to reporters Friday, Donald Trump denied the potentially damning story about his son-in-law. “It’s a false story. It’s a false story. It’s a totally false story. It was totally an incorrect story. It was just fake news. Amazing,” Trump said.

The allegations contained in Cole’s book carry considerable legal weight. In 2017, Kushner was a government employee who worked in the White House, meaning he was required to submit both public and confidential financial forms and disclose any bank account to which he had access as a signatory or beneficiary. Kushner also failed to disclose himself as an agent of a foreign government, having been paid nearly $2 billion in total by foreign leaders. If he offered anything in return for the money, even just conversations with his father-in-law, then he would have violated U.S. bribery laws and the foreign agent statute.

The Guardian, citing a data leak from the AfD, reports the party has lobbied Trump going back to his election in 2016, with the party debating on how to word a congratulatory telegram. The final message included the wish that Trump’s “hopes as a person be fulfilled.”

The leaks comprise over 420,000 emails, documents, and personnel records from the AfD since 2013, though the info thins out after 2019. They were given to reporters by Distributed Denial of Secrets, a hacker activist group.

After Trump’s election, the AfD didn’t just congratulate him but asked that he support its efforts to remove the “enemy state” clause from the U.N. charter, a post–World War II vestige that allows action against “any state which during the second world war has been an enemy of any signatory.” The clause is irrelevant today, but the AfD, alone among German political parties, sees it as an attack on German sovereignty.

AfD leaders also sought to make contact with Richard Grenell, who during Trump’s first term was ambassador to Germany, but was unsuccessful, and pursued contacts with former White House adviser Steve Bannon, according to the leaks.

The party holds hardline anti-immigration and Islamophobic views, and some of its members have displayed sympathies and connections to Nazism. The party’s leader in the Thuringia region, Björn Höcke, was convicted of using a banned slogan from the Nazi Party’s paramilitary wing in 2024. AfD is currently leading national polls with 30 percent support in Germany’s multiparty democracy, and in September, it won 43.8 percent of the vote in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, where it is trying to form Germany’s first far-right state government since the Nazis.

German intelligence labels the AfD as a suspected domestic extremist organization. Germany’s leading political parties refuse to govern or form any coalitions with it. That hasn’t stopped Trump and his MAGA allies from praising the group. Vice President JD Vance, as well as numerous State Department employees, have frequently met AfD politicians, including the party’s leader, Alice Weidel.

The party’s deputy leader, Beatrix von Storch, and her husband, Sven, were at Trump’s “Make America Great Again Victory Rally” just before his inauguration last year, and Storch bragged in a newsletter that she met Steve Bannon and Donald Trump Jr.

Trump celebrated the AfD’s September win in Saxony-Anhalt on Truth Social, posting, “Wow! The Populist Party in Germany just had a really big night. They finally got tired of the absolutely horrible Immigration rules and regulations which have hurt Germany so badly. THEY ARE ON THE RISE, and not going to take it anymore! MGGA!!! President DJT.”

Inside Washington

Florida’s gubernatorial race is heating up. In a sign that Republicans are eager to turn out their base and boost voting numbers, President Donald Trump plans to hold a rally on Friday with Republican candidate Byron Donalds in Fort Myers. Earlier this week, the Democratic Governors Association, or DGA, announced that it would funnel $1 million into Democratic candidate David Jolly, whom polls put within striking distance of his Republican opponent. Florida hasn’t elected a Democratic governor in 28 years. Can Jolly overcome major fundraising and voter disadvantages to break that streak? And does it help that he himself used to be a Republican House member, before leaving the party in 2018?

When I asked Fernand Amandi, the managing partner of public opinion firm Bendixen & Amandi, about the key issues in the race, his reply was simple: “There’s only one issue, and it is that Florida over the last 10 years has become totally unaffordable for Floridians.” Rising grocery costs and high gas prices due to the war with Iran have added to a long-brewing home insurance affordability crisis in the state. “All of these factors combined have created a Category 5 economic hurricane in Florida,” Amandi said. That’s likely why Jolly could beat Donalds, despite the plain numbers game that gives Republicans an advantage—there are 1.5 million more registered Republicans than Democrats in the state. Jolly used to be one of those Republicans, but he left the party in 2018 due to his opposition to Trump and his influence over the GOP. After identifying as an independent, Jolly officially joined the Democratic Party in April 2025, months before launching his campaign.

Donalds holds a two-point lead over Jolly in a recent poll from the University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab, which surveyed 1,471 likely voters. That’s well within the poll’s 2.8-point margin of error. The same poll also asked about the Senate race and found that GOP Senator Ashley Moody has a four-point lead over state Representative Angie Nixon, the Democratic nominee. Other polls show Donalds with a larger lead, including a poll from last week that found Donalds up by nine points. Though the candidates are different, both the gubernatorial race and the Senate race show the Democratic candidate closer than one might expect. Like Nixon, Jolly will need the support of no-party affiliation voters to overcome the state’s Democratic registration disadvantage.

Donalds has enjoyed a major lead in fundraising, which could help him overcome the unfavorable national environment for Republicans. “This whole year is sort of an interesting sort of experiment on how important money can be in overcoming deficiencies in campaigns,” explained Kevin Wagner, a professor of political science at Florida Atlantic University.

More than $170 million has poured into the race as of Tuesday. Donalds has $33.3 million more in cash on hand, with much of the money coming from special interest groups. His top donors are private prison corporations, sports betting groups, and the AI industry, according to an analysis from OpenSecrets. His third-largest donor is the Seminole Tribe, which holds a monopoly on sports betting in the state and earlier this month filed a lawsuit against online sports betting platform DraftKings. Meanwhile, the Sports Betting Alliance, which includes companies like DraftKings, gave Donalds nearly $1.3 million. Donalds’s fourth-largest donor is private prison company GEO Group, which is headquartered in the state and runs several immigration detention facilities. He has also received funding from NextEra Energy, the parent company of energy providers planning to construct data centers in the state. Donalds told voters in August that “there ain’t no bans coming” on data centers.

“There’s a huge loophole because Florida allows candidates to open affiliated PACs,” said Aubrey Jewett, a professor of political science at the University of Central Florida. These PACs can raise unlimited money, unlike campaigns, which can only receive $3,000 per donor. Billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, for example, gave $10 million to Donalds’s affiliated PAC in July. Though Jolly is behind in the cash game, he’s still been able to reach voters, especially with the help from the DGA. “He’s not competing on an even playing field in terms of money, but he’s gotten enough where he can at least get his message out,” Jewett said.

Voter frustration is the vital element keeping Jolly in the game. “If Democrats were ever going to have a year where they could compete,” Wagner said, “it would be a year that looks like this.”

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

The Trump administration is “again refusing” to cooperate with Minnesota law enforcement’s ongoing investigations into the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the Minnesota Star-Tribune reported on Thursday. In July, the feds finally handed over “hard drives, body camera footage, and statements from immigration enforcement agents about the killings,” report Jeff Day and Sarah Nelson. But court filings last week, reviewed by the paper, indicate that state officials still don’t have “the cell phone of ICE agent Jonathan Ross, who shot Good” or “the firearms used [by Customs and Border Patrol officers] to shoot Pretti and a recording of a statement by one of the officers who shot him.” Minnesota U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen apparently told Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty last month that “challenges with D.C.” had halted all evidence sharing “indefinitely.”

Former Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow has penned an op-ed backing Callie Barr in the state’s 1st district. “For the first time in nearly two decades, a Democrat has a shot at winning the 1st District,” wrote Stabenow in the Detroit Free Press on Thursday. There hasn’t been any public polling on this race since the primaries, and the idea that Barr could win is pretty striking, given that the Cook Political Report rates the district as “solidly Republican” (GOP +11), and Jack Bergman has held the seat since 2017. Stabenow, however, highlights Republican lawmakers’ disavowal of Bergman earlier this year after he endorsed someone in a state race that he’d allegedly promised to stay out of. Also on Thursday, The Detroit News reported that Bergman has for years been renting a D.C. home from one of his campaign donors, before the donor sold the home to Bergman’s daughter “in a favorable seller-financed deal this year.” In her op-ed, Stabenow praised Barr’s “life of public service” as an advocate for veterans.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

On Thursday, more than 100 environmental and other advocacy groups signed a letter opposing a recent permitting bill introduced by Democratic Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Martin Heinrich and Republican Senators Shelley Moore Capito and Mike Lee. While many climate advocates have expressed at least theoretical support for so-called permitting reform if it could help speed up renewable energy development, these groups say the current bill’s attempt to streamline the permitting process will instead “eviscerate public lands protections, prevent the public’s ability to protect themselves from harmful projects, cede management decisions to fossil fuel polluters, restrict Tribal consultation and cultural resource protections, limit judicial review, and further enable foreign-owned mining companies to seize public lands and contaminate our precious streams and rivers.” The Center for Biological Diversity issued a press release on Thursday with statements from three of the signatories. Said Olivia Juarez, the public land program director at GreenLatinos: “Here in Utah, where 73 percent of voters oppose fast-tracking oil, gas, and mining projects on public land, we say America’s worst ideas come from the desk of Sen. Mike Lee.” (If you want to read further about Whitehouse’s position in all this mess, try this or this.)

At the Roosevelt Institute, Charlie Eaton, Albina Gibadullina, Adam Goldstein, and Marie-Lou Laprise pen a report on the “four interconnected roles” that private equity now plays in the economy: “corporate raider, Main Street invader, monopoly builder, and shadow owner.” Write the authors: “Private equity is often misperceived as a check against corporate concentration. This may flow from lingering memories of hostile takeovers by corporate raiders in the 1980s.” In reality, they argue, “private equity has maintained a long-standing role in monopoly building through mergers and acquisitions (M&A) exit sales to other nonfinancial firms.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Good Week: Hakeem Jeffries

This week brought lots of evidence that Democrats could win the House by an unexpectedly large margin. That would, of course, make Jeffries House speaker, but the details here are important. The gold-standard New York Times poll just found the Democratic generic ballot lead to be 11 percentage points. Forecasters just shifted numerous districts that Trump carried comfortably (NC-11, WI-03, IA-02, PA-10) from “toss up” to “leans Democratic.” And GOP super PACS are pulling money out of some of these Trumpy districts, suggesting surrender in them. The critical point here: The broadening battlefield suggests not just a Democratic takeover, but a potentially sizable Democratic majority, which would be easier for Jeffries to manage.

Bad Week: JD Vance

The vice president foolishly rushed to defend that loathsome ad from Ohio GOP gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, which smeared Democrat Amy Acton by using comments from her estranged mother, who stayed together with the stepfather who sexually abused her as a child. Many Republicans have now run from the ad. Vance’s bizarre decision to double down may prove to be a more consequential blunder than he realizes. If this saga contributes to a Democratic victory in the Ohio gubernatorial and Senate races—in Vance’s home state—it will raise further questions about his political judgment and staying power heading into 2028.

—Greg Sargent

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

If both Amy Acton and Sherrod Brown win, it will be the first time that Ohio has simultaneously elected a Democratic governor and senator since what year? (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

—Michael Tomasky

Recent numbers from the Harvard Youth Poll show that confidence in Trump’s ability has cratered among men under the age of 30, with nearly 70 percent of them disapproving of his performance in his second term. That same number also disapproves of the Republican Party at large.

Seventy-four percent of men under 30 disapprove of how Trump has handled the economy, with the majority of them saying that their financial situations had either gotten worse or remained unchanged since he entered office. Furthermore, over half of young men said they’re entering midterms with the frame of mind to vote against Republicans rather than for Democrats, and 42 percent said their vote was a “vote in opposition to President Trump and his policies”—perhaps an indictment of both Trump and the Democratic establishment.

Trump’s success with young men was a key factor in his 2024 election victory against Vice President Kamala Harris. Men under 30 turned away from Democrats in droves, shifting nearly 30 points to the right since 2020. But much like the Black and Latino red wave that Republicans bragged about after that election, their ability to keep young men in their base has been fleeting. Rising costs, uncontrolled development of artificial intelligence, a lack of future security, and a general disapproval of the direction of Trump’s administration are all playing a part. Aside from the men, only 9 percent of young Americans in general think that the country is currently going in the right direction—presenting an ominous message for Trump as midterms rapidly approach.

View the full polling here.

“It was just revealed that Ilhan Omar’s name is not Ilhan Omar, the one she used to get elected and sworn into Congress, but rather, it’s an entirely different name, Ilhan Nur Said Elmi,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Thursday night, dredging up a practically ancient GOP attack against the Somali-born lawmaker that baselessly accused her of marrying her brother.

To iron out the record: Omar’s birth name is Ilhan Abdullahi Omar (a spokesperson for the representative confirmed this to Fox News). Trump’s grand evidence that Omar’s ex-husband was actually her brother appears to be that they shared a last name—a cultural expectation of women when they tie the knot. Her decision to keep using “Omar” after their marriage would also strike married women as resoundingly normal, as many career women keep using their maiden names in the workplace to minimize confusion.

“When asked whether or not she married her brother, she said, ‘Not to my knowledge.’ In other words, she somehow didn’t know?” Trump continued. “Therefore, because she used a fake name to be sworn in, I assume she must IMMEDIATELY resign from Congress.”

The president insisted that Omar should “not be legally allowed to be a member of this August Body from this point forth” because of the Republican-created controversy.

MAGA conservatives have rumbled for years—without evidence—that Omar married her brother as a form of immigration fraud to enter the U.S. The conspiracy first emerged during her 2016 campaign for the Minnesota state legislature in a since-deleted post on the conservative blog Power Line, where an anonymous source was quoted as saying that Omar’s ex-husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, was related to her by blood.

Omar has vehemently and repeatedly denied the unfounded allegations, which have been disproven by her marriage certificate. Responding to the conspiracy in 2016, Omar described the insinuation that she had married her brother to be “absurd and offensive.”

But Republicans have really turned up the temperature against Omar in recent days. Just last week, Homeland Security agents raided her home in a fruitless attempt to uncover evidence that her age did not match her original citizenship paperwork. Omar told reporters that agents “went room by room” and “took 17 items.”

In a statement at the time, Omar called it “an outrageous abuse of power and an unprecedented escalation in the weaponization of federal law enforcement to target political enemies.” In an interview with MS NOW, the longtime Trump critic said the raid was “designed” to freak her out.

Nonetheless, Omar decided Thursday that the raid had made her living situation in Washington unfeasible.

“Obviously, I can’t continue to live there,” she told MS NOW. “So we have to figure out where to move to because our address has been public, and with the death threats that I deal with, it’s no longer going to be feasible to be in that house and have my kids visiting off and on, having people track them.”

After holding 21 campaign rallies in the span of just two months, the evidently exhausted 80-year-old president appeared to short-circuit repeatedly during a rally in Iowa Thursday.

“If you don’t want Communists controlling the Senate, which is between JIIIAAAAT,” Trump slurred. “How about the gentleman from a place called Michigan, he’s in a jihadist. He’s a jihadist!”

Trump was referring to Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who is Muslim and a Democrat—not a Communist or jihadist.

Later, in a desperate attempt to appeal to normal people, Trump once again pretended he could relate to struggles with landscaping equipment, with some … creative insertions.

“You got to be very smart to turn on a lawnmower. I don’t want you to have to think too much. I’d like you to POWW or BIIING,” Trump said.

It appears that Trump’s post-verbal outbursts are becoming a commonplace communication tactic for the commander in chief.

At a rally in South Carolina Wednesday, Trump declared “EUHH” when discussing former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, announced “PEW, PEW, PEW” when lying about his unlawful military strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats, and shouted “POW” when describing how oil would supposedly flow when his extended military campaign against Iran finally ends.

There you have it. The sickest and most repulsive TV ad in American political history, endorsed by the sickest and most repulsive human in American political history. Once again, Trump drags America to a bottom that most of us didn’t know existed.

But is it really the bottom? Please. There’s always a new bottom with Trump. We’re 12 days out from Election Day. And we’re 73 days out from January 3, when, by custom and in theory, the next Congress will be sworn in and seated—a ceremony whose execution right now seems very much in doubt. There’s time for a dozen new bottoms between now and then.

But this is the bottom we have for now, and it’s worth noting, because it screams at us that there is literally nothing these MAGA Republicans won’t do for power. And don’t be fooled by these headlines about “overwhelming bipartisan denunciation.” Yes, some Republicans have denounced the ad—but if you look at it, it’s not really that many. Ohioans Mike DeWine and Jon Husted did, lest its mephitic stink encircle them (although DeWine added that he still endorses Ramaswamy, so what is that denunciation worth?). But if you google “Republican senators and House members who have denounced the Ramaswamy ad,” you’ll find pretty slim pickings.

The press loves to slap the word “bipartisan” on a story whenever it can, even on the thinnest of justifications. When a group of New Republic editors was discussing this matter on Wednesday morning, one editor said, “Yeah, I see these headlines that say ‘bipartisan criticism of Trump,’ and I look for the Republicans, and it’s one quote from Thom Tillis.”

So: Does it really matter that Meghan McCain denounced the ad? Or even Nikki Haley, who is (for now) retired from politics? Representative Nancy Mace, who has spoken about being raped, laid into it, so at least that’s one sitting non-Ohio GOP pol. I’d imagine there were a few others that I missed, but the outrage has been a long, long distance from universal.

And among right-wing pundits? I admit that I don’t read or watch them much, and spending too much time googling the matter feels a bit like googling how many mass shooters denounced Dylann Roof. So maybe some Fox News host was indeed genuinely outraged, and for this, I (with one hand) applaud them.

But Media Matters for America has collected a number of right-wing commentators who are as pleased as punch about it:

• Michael Knowles of the Daily Wire called it “brilliant, brilliant,” adding: “I think it’s a very, very effective ad. It’s brutal.”
• Newsmax host Greg Kelly: “Everybody in Ohio and the country should be listening to Amy Acton’s mom.” And: “The mother speaks with love here. I believe the mother loves Amy.” And: “She seems like a very nice lady, actually.… Wow, that’s some—the mother, I believe her.”
• Dan Bongino, the podcaster turned FBI honcho turned podcaster: “This is the most destructive political ad I have ever seen.”
• Gateway Pundit’s Wayne Allyn Root: “The more you meet these Democrat candidates, they’re all crazy. They’re all covering up for the fact that they’ve had mental illness their whole life. They’re crazy, whacked-out people.” He also called the ad “absolutely hilarious.”

You might say that this doesn’t add up to much. And perhaps it doesn’t. Maybe Ramaswamy’s polls will tell him that the blowback is too much.

But there exists another possibility. Now that the president of the United States has lent the ad his imprimatur, a day after his vice president did the same, I submit to you that it’s pretty clear what the next 12 days could bring. Trump, Ramaswamy, and JD Vance—the latter two, by the way, were buds when they were at Yale Law together—will keep pushing and pushing this. And the right-wing media, and that segment of it that might have been knocked back on its heels for the first 48 or 72 hours, will collect itself and hop enthusiastically on this toxic train.

I hope Amy Acton and her campaign team are ready for this. A normal person … well, a normal person wouldn’t have made and run that ad to begin with. But let’s say a normal person did. Said normal person would take stock of the revulsion and quietly pull the ad, or scale back the buy, and change the subject to something “relevant” like trans athletes.

But these are not normal people. These are sick, twisted, cruel, sadistic, and psychotic people. That’s five adjectives, which may seem like a bit much, but I chose them with care. They do not care at all that Acton was raped as a 12-year-old girl. They care only about how they can crush her—politically, emotionally, in every way. That’s what makes these people different. They don’t just want to win elections. They want to destroy lives.

And here’s a question that I really hate to ask, but it’s one we must contemplate: What if Ramaswamy still wins? It’s possible. And if he does, it’s hard for us normal people to imagine what kind of attacks will be unleashed for 2028 and beyond if this vile smear works.

It probably won’t work. It probably will backfire. But I hope Acton and her team are not sitting there assuming that Ramaswamy is going to soften his approach. He’s going to start hitting harder on this and other points. And Trump and Vance will have his back. It will be yet another new bottom. But rest assured that it won’t be the last.                     

Video footage from a reporter with the Pine Barrens Tribune shows Bianchini having to be restrained by multiple people and escorted from the council chambers while he yelled, “I am getting you—I am fucking get you!” Bianchini was upset at Michael Sawka, a frequent critic. Sawka called for Bianchini to resign and to be arrested after the incident.

“He just threatened me! That is on video! That is on audio,” Sawka said. “I want the police here to arrest him for that threat. That is assault!”

During the meeting, Sawka allegedly insulted Bianchini’s wife and daughter, who were at the meeting, and then made an obscene gesture at Bianchini.

Later, Bianchini told TV station WPVI, “Was it wrong? Absolutely. Was it justified? Absolutely. And I would do it again if I had to.”

“Don’t attack my family. I think any good husband, any good father, would’ve done just what I did.”

Sawka denied provoking the mayor.

“His family behind us started saying stuff. I turn around, and I start waving my hands, like kinda just—why don’t you all just shut up? I didn’t even say a word; I just was waving my hand,” Sawka said.

Bianchini has a history of confrontation since becoming mayor in January. He told a councilmember to “shut the fuck up” during a budget dispute in May.

“Just recently I gave all members of the United States military $1,776,” Trump said at the Iowa rally, speaking of his one-time “warrior dividend” for service members. “And everyone said, ‘Oh, it can’t be done. You can’t do it. It won’t be done. You can’t do it.’ Well, I did it. I said, generals, I want to give them a bonus. They’ve been so great. Tell me what we can do.... These three guys who were so handsome. I hate handsome men. I’ve always hated. They’re like central casting, four-star guys.” Trump went on to finish his anecdote.

This is becoming a trend for Trump, which is especially strange given that he likes to present himself as particularly hypermasculine. For the last week, he has been obsessing over Senator Jon Husted’s buttocks.

“I don’t do this with men very often. I started examining his body. And I looked and I watched up and down. I watched his ass and I looked at the whole. And then I looked at his hands. Look at his hands, he’s got these, like, claws. And I got it. You are a great athlete. I didn’t know that because he doesn’t talk about that. Congratulations, now they finally know. That was very good,” Trump said last week.

“I’m studying his body,” Trump said again days later. “I’ve never studied the body of a man before. It’s not my thing. Nothing wrong with it, of course. But it’s never been my thing. But I looked at his ass. And then I looked at his legs. I said, ‘His ass, shit, it’s like a pile of muscle.’ Then I looked at his legs and I said, ‘Man, his feet are big.’”

“Every night now he plays out a new gay fantasy in public and makes bizarre noises. His words increasingly make no sense. Dementia is overtaking him, and the fact that his party refuses to see it makes the whole party a danger to the United States,” Trump biographer Seth Abramson wrote online. “Vote to protect your country.”

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

This week, Donald Trump and JD Vance expressed support for a disgusting new ad that’s running in the Ohio gubernatorial race. GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy aired a spot featuring Democrat Amy Acton’s mother questioning her truthfulness about her difficult childhood. Then it emerged that Acton’s stepfather appears to have raped her. So now it’s all backfiring on Trump, Vance, and Ramaswamy. Republicans have denounced the ad, and even MAGA is divided, and it probably makes a Democratic victory in Ohio more likely.

We think this captures a lot about the fundamental indecency of MAGA politics and the national reaction we’re seeing against it. So we’re talking to Jim Swift, senior editor at the Bulwark, who has a good piece on this whole fiasco. Jim, good to have you on.

Jim Swift: Greg, pleasure to be on your show.

Sargent: So most people have seen this ad by now, but we’re going to play a snippet. The speaker here is Donna Arthur, who’s the mother of Amy Acton. She’s the Democratic candidate for governor in Ohio. Listen.

Donna Arthur (voiceover): It’s not easy for a mother to say this, but Amy has a serious problem. She is a liar. She lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true. She’s lied her entire life. My daughter needs help. And she can’t help you if she needs help herself.

Sargent: So eventually Vivek Ramaswamy took credit for this ad, but then we learned that Acton’s stepfather, Cledith Arthur, who’s Donna Arthur’s husband, was indicted for raping Acton when she was young. Jim, can you just bring us up to date on this?

Swift: The ad features, direct to camera, Donna Arthur, who is an older woman. Who was not in the ad was Cledith Arthur. Cledith Arthur was the man that Donna Arthur was married to. I do not believe he is the biological father of Amy Acton or her brother Philip Stearns, who has risen to her defense, both in statement and in commercials and video clips and everything.

And Arthur says that my daughter is a liar and she needs help, and, you know, how can you trust a liar to run your state? And, you know, the problem here is that Cledith Arthur, who she remained married to until Cledith died in 2004, was alleged to have raped Amy Acton, and also abused the brother, Philip Stearns.

And Amy and her brother became wards of the state. And she had a really rough childhood. She has an ad about growing up in a tent. She lived in a lot of places before she went off to medical school and got her life on track. And she had a really tough childhood.

And that’s part of the reason why people in the Ohio Republican establishment, particularly within the DeWine administration in which she had served, see this ad as horrific and disgusting. Because in their minds there’s no doubt of Amy Acton’s story here. There’s no doubt on her narrative.

Sargent: Right. And then Ramaswamy decided that this was good politics, because that’s what MAGA does. Donald Trump defended the ad, and he defended Ramaswamy’s role in it. Let’s listen to Trump.

Donald Trump (voiceover): I heard the mother went very rogue on the daughter, doesn’t have a lot of respect for the daughter, and I think the mother is a witness to things also, so who knows, and you have to figure that out. It’s a very unusual situation to have a mother hate a daughter that much, but I don’t think that has anything to do with Vivek.

Sargent: So Jim, that’s convoluted, but he clearly suggests the ad is raising legitimate points about Amy Acton. JD Vance went further, ripping into Republicans for, quote-unquote, whining about the ad.

Swift: My colleague Jonathan Last, in his great newsletter, The Triad, had kind of talked about what a sociopath Vance is. And the Haitian dogs and cats lie is still being felt here in southwest Ohio, where I live. You know, as is the tentacles of ICE that are coming in and just really ruining this community that had come to embrace the Haitians.

So when I saw JD Vance was coming—I was traveling back to Ohio from some work trips—I just knew nothing good would come of that, and lo and behold was proven correct. Because JD Vance, I think, kind of has a Nixon fetish, Greg. Like, and maybe he’ll try and finish it out in a way Ford didn’t. But this guy has no moral bottom.

Sargent: Well, now it’s all backfiring. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine just took the extraordinary step of condemning Ramaswamy for running the spot. DeWine said this: “It was wrong to run this ad. I would urge the Ramaswamy campaign to take this down.”

Then one GOP strategist told Time that, “We had a really good chance and then we do this two weeks out.” A second GOP strategist said, “We deserve to lose this race.”

This is the kind of story that I think could really blow up in Ramaswamy’s face. I mean, you wrote about this. Well, it is blowing up in his face, isn’t it?

Swift: Yeah, I think it is absolutely blowing up in his face. Trying to be Trump never works for people, as hard as they try, especially when it comes to escaping personal accountability for crimes or performative cruelty. It just shows when you’re being fake. And Vivek is many things, and I’m not sure he’s this cruel in his personal life.

And it does kind of come across as fake. Like, he doesn’t have the sincerity of twisting the knife, which is why he needs Trump and JD Vance, who are shameless and have no morals, to come and twist it for him. Because it really isn’t working.

And I think that as my colleague Will Sommer has reported, you know, there’s a lot in MAGA media world who are now having to kind of go along with this. You know, this is a command from the top, that this is acceptable, this is fair play.

And to see that put so brazenly on the air with no consideration of the victim, which happens to be his opponent—I think, really, I don’t know who looked at the focus group results from them and thought, we’re going to spend $4 million on this in the last two weeks, this is really our ticket to victory. It’s just bizarre.

So I do think it’s blown up in his face, and I don’t think there’s any righting the ship. There’s just going to be some people who’ve been ordered to play the fiddle and violin as the ship sinks.

Sargent: Well, I want to home in on a point you made there, which is that figures like Ramaswamy look at Donald Trump and decide that his depravity is what they have to imitate in order to kind of unlock that magic potion that gets them the Trump base, right?

Like, so Donald Trump’s approval rating in the new Fox News poll in Ohio is now 41 percent, and 58 percent disapprove. That’s in Ohio. This is a state Trump carried by double digits.

I’ve got to wonder whether imitating the most disgusting features of this guy who’s deeply underwater is the way to a victory statewide in Ohio. Is that a crazy question, or what? I mean, what are these guys thinking?

Swift: I think they’re willing to try anything at this point. I mean, of course, Greg, you cannot gerrymander a state—Ohio is a heavily gerrymandered state, but you can’t gerrymander statewide elections, right? So Republicans should be running away with this. You know, if Dave Yost, the attorney general, were the nominee, he’d probably be leading Amy Acton by five or six points.

I mean, I think Acton has run a very good campaign, but it’s helpful that she’s running against a candidate who said he wanted to shut down some of Ohio’s state colleges. We are very proud of our state colleges in Ohio.

It’s true, we have a lot of them. But he also proposed year-round school. He constantly steps on rakes and gives her a bow-wrapped gift of an ad every time he talks.

Sargent: What’s really striking to me is how divided MAGA is over this as well. You pointed out a little earlier that when Trump essentially defended the use of this in the ad, the command went out to MAGA that they had to defend this.

And so you do have figures like Ben Shapiro defending the ad now, calling criticism of it pearl clutching. You’ve got Glenn Beck defending it as well. Your colleague Will Sommer had a good piece on this.

But you’ve got some MAGA figures like Nick Fuentes criticizing the ad, saying, “What kind of person would run an ad like that?” Now, yes, that’s going to be wrapped up in racism against Ramaswamy, but still, it does appear MAGA’s divided. You had another Fuentes ally, James Fishback, condemning it. What do you make of that? It seems like mostly MAGA has kind of gotten in line.

I just want to bring up Megyn Kelly a little bit more here. She compared the ad to the infamous racist Willie Horton ad in the 1988 presidential race. And then she basically said, you know, George H.W. Bush won in 1988. So I guess that’s her way of saying that this was a good move.

Swift: Yeah. I think Republicans have had to grapple with the effects of Willie Horton for decades. And I think for a while we kind of got out of that. I mean, think about John McCain’s celebrity ad. You know, that wasn’t about racism. It wasn’t an effective ad.

But they were kind of like, he wants to be a world celebrity. And I think that the Republican Party itself tried to get away from that, but that all went out the window when Trump won.

Sargent: What interests me about this is that it’s focusing a whole lot of media attention on Amy Acton’s upbringing, and she grew up in Youngstown, Ohio. You know, that’s in Mahoning County, and the president was just in Youngstown. This is a critical area, and we wrote a piece on this at NewRepublic.com. Folks can check this out.

Mahoning is kind of like the epicenter of the place where blue-collar ancestral Dems moved to Trump, and it became, in the media mythology, sort of the center of Trumpism’s victory over Democrats. And so now you’ve got Acton being from Youngstown, and you’ve got Sherrod Brown, who’s highly competitive with working-class voters and is heavily contesting that area.

I think you could see Mahoning County go to Democrats. And that would be a very big deal, because the media treated this place as sort of the locus point of Trumpism’s rise for many, many years. Can the Democrats flip Mahoning?

Swift: I think it’s possible. The question is, how many people are willing to cross the aisle twice to vote for them both?

Sargent: And it would be seismic if Democrats were able to take back Mahoning, wouldn’t it, given its sort of storied place in the kind of history of Trumpism and its triumph in the Rust Belt?

Swift: I think it would. And if they don’t get it, I think they’ll get close. But I think we’re also going to see a lot of bleed in the 32 counties that kind of are south and to the west of Youngstown, that are known as Appalachia, because of the data centers.

That is proving hugely unpopular for Jon Husted in particular, and Vivek, who’ve both been on record as pro, where that’s not true in Brown’s case and it’s not true in Acton’s case.

Sargent: Let’s go big picture about what this means about MAGA politics. I think, reading your piece at The Bulwark, what I take from all this is that people like Vivek and JD Vance still think Trumpism and MAGA is ascendant in some deep sense.

They think this type of politics, the depravity, the malevolence, the viciousness—they think that there’s still a large enough body of people out there, a latent body in the electorate somewhere that gets kind of flushed out of the woodwork by this kind of thing, to support them, to support Vivek and this ad.

But I think they’re misreading the situation. Going back to Trump being heavily underwater in Ohio, a state he won by double digits, what we’re really seeing is a kind of national rejection of this kind of politics.

And I don’t think people like Vance or Vivek are able to perceive that, that they’re not able to see that there’s a backlash against their politics. Is that a fair reading of what’s going on here?

Swift: I think so. I think that it’s also a failure of them to grapple with the reality that the people they need to win elections don’t turn out when Donald Trump himself is not on a ballot line. He might be metaphorically on the line, and he’s tried to make that—I’m on the ballot—you saw that at the convention.

He is not. And unless he is truly on the ballot, there’s a huge swath of voters who don’t view this as existential, and they will not find a reason to vote if it suits their purposes. And for that I’m thankful.

Sargent: Well, and it sure sounds like these guys think that the way to get those voters out is with this kind of thing.

Swift: Yeah. I mean, maybe. But I think that they fail to see this connection, is that in the mind of those voters, it is all about Trump and Trumpism. It is not about MAGA and MAGA Inc.

And unless it’s the man himself, they aren’t going to show up as much. It’s like being told the Savannah Bananas are coming to play and it’s the two lower-tier teams. You don’t get as big of a sellout unless the Savannah Bananas are there.

Sargent: Well, Jim, do you expect Acton and Sherrod Brown to win their races?

Swift: I do. If you had asked me that two years ago when I moved here, I would have told you no. I also would have thought Sherrod Brown would have beaten Bernie Moreno, but I was wrong about that.

I do think it’s hard for a lot of people to cross the aisle and vote for two Democrats if they’re historically Republicans. I’ve got my own personal experience in that world. But I think enough will do it, and enough will stay home, where I think it’s quite likely both of them win.

Sargent: That would be really, really remarkable. And by the way, that has major implications for 2028, because it’s going to cast a lot of doubt on JD Vance’s political acumen and political instincts. People are going to really start to question that, because it’s JD Vance’s home state, and because JD Vance continues to go full MAGA.

And in the face of that, it sure looks like they’re kind of floundering, that they’re misreading the electorate. I think that’s going to become a clearer thing to a lot of people if what happens in Ohio is what you say is going to happen and the two of them win.

Swift: Yeah. I mean, we know that JD Vance has an accelerator and his foot on the pedal. The question is, how good are his brakes, and what’s the suspension like, because he is going 80 miles an hour down a cul-de-sac. I’m not sure he knows it yet. But how he will adapt, I’m sure we will see, because the man always adapts.

Sargent: That is really well put. Jim Swift, tell us more about Ohio soon, man. Come back on.

Swift: Thanks for having me. I would love to come back.

Woke versus MAGA, Democrat versus Republican, liberal versus conservative, and pro-democracy versus authoritarian/far-right are all important divides in American politics today. But author and writer Hamilton Nolan says the most important conflict is capital versus labor. In the latest edition of Right Now, Hamilton discusses the problem of a small bloc of Americans having accumulated so much wealth and now using it to influence the political system. Democracy is about voting and elections but also a balance of power between various interests in a society, says Nolan. And right now, billionaires and corporations have too much power compared to other blocs in the United States. That makes adopting policies that take away some of that wealth, such as the proposed billionaires’ tax in California, so important, according to Nolan. Another critical way to rebalance power is by increasing the number of Americans in unions, says Nolan. He also discusses his recent pieces calling for journalists to realize that they are in a perpetual fight with the wealthy and powerful and urging Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to run for president. Nolan is the author of the newsletter How Things Work and the book The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor.

Perry Bacon: Good morning. I’m Perry Bacon. This is Right Now on The New Republic. I’m joined by one of my favorite writers. Hamilton Nolan was at Gawker for a long time. He now does a Substack called How Things Work, where he writes about politics and labor and just a wide variety of political issues. So Hamilton, welcome. Thanks for joining me.

Hamilton Nolan: Thanks for having me, man.

Bacon: So I want to start by—I love this shirt, by the way, so I want to start out by shouting out this very nice shirt. I appreciate it.

Nolan: Thank you.

Bacon: But we’ll go from there. I want to talk about first what’s in the news right now, which is this wealth tax in California. You wrote a piece on October 7 about the war against accumulated capital. And so I want to read one sentence from that and discuss from there. “There is no more significant ballot measure than this in the United States.”

So talk about why you think—we’re talking about this proposal to have a one-time 5 percent tax on the income of billionaires in California, that’s been aggressively, intensely opposed, unsurprisingly, by all the billionaires there, but also, sadly, Gavin Newsom and some of the Democratic politicians there. So talk about why this wealth tax is so important.

Nolan: It’s extremely important, I think, for Americans to understand that the greatest threat to our democracy today is these huge pools of accumulated capital in private hands. We hear people like Bernie Sanders talk about the oligarchy, and we hear that on the left, but it is vital, I think, for people to understand that breaking up these enormous fortunes is critical to us maintaining a democratic government in this country.

It is fundamentally incompatible with a democratic government to have one guy with a trillion dollars. And the level of wealth inequality, in particular in America, has gotten so far out of hand that it threatens our ability to have a democracy. As flawed as our democracy is, these two things are not compatible.

Bacon: Break that down a little bit more. Michael Bloomberg’s had a lot of money for a long time. We’ve had Rockefellers and so on. Democracy means you can vote, you have elections, people who win get in power, people who lose get out of power. So how does having super wealthy people threaten democracy?

Nolan: I think a useful way to think about politics and its goals is as a balancing of power, right? Democracy is a method of spreading power throughout society. It’s a method of giving some measure of power to all citizens in a society. And I think we can stipulate the flaws in American democracy, but that is what democracy is going for, to spread the power.

And when you have these enormous accumulations of private capital in the hands of a very tiny minority of people—money is power, and it throws off the ability to balance power in society, is the short answer. And in America, our political system obviously is very susceptible to being influenced by money. It’s very susceptible to having political power bought, not quite directly, but almost directly.

And so when money buys influence, and you have these obscene, enormous, nation-level fortunes in private hands, it just at a certain point crowds out the ability of everybody else to influence politics in a way that you have any kind of balance of power.

There are always inequalities, and this is nothing new, but at some point the inequalities of capital get so large that all the rest of the people added up cannot counterbalance the influence of the billionaires. And that is what we are really facing now, and it’s important, I think, that we internalize that we are there. We are knocking on the door of this situation. And so breaking up those fortunes is a critical public value that we all need to think about.

Bacon: Just a note here. Elon Musk is, I think, estimated to spend $336 million in this cycle, which is probably more money than everyone in Kentucky, where I live, has donated. Maybe we have a billionaire or two here, but that’s probably more money than everyone in our state has donated, is my guess, to the campaign.

OK, so in California, what you’re seeing is Gavin Newsom and some people who listen to this show might support—there are some mainstream Democratic politicians whom I probably agree with on 90 percent of the issues, who are saying, “We can’t do this wealth tax. Not because I disagree, Hamilton, that the wealthy have too much power, but if we had a wealth tax in California, the wealthy would just move to Texas or to Nashville, or wherever, or to Kentucky for that matter, and we would just lose our tax base in California because they would go.” How do you respond to that?

Nolan: A couple things. The mobility of capital is a real thing, and any state level wealth tax is going to face the issue that rich people can move. But by the same token, any city level tax faces that, any state level tax faces that, any nation level tax faces the issue that billionaires can fly off to New Zealand. So this is on one level an argument against doing anything, right? And so we can say, yes, it’s real, and internalize it.

When you look at the billionaire tax in California specifically, it was crafted to overcome this. It was crafted as a one-time tax. In other words, it’s not an annual tax, it’s a one-time tax on billionaires who were residents of California at the beginning of this year.

So in other words, if they move this year, it’s too late. It’s going to be the residency of who was there already, so it’s already locked in. It’s a one-time levy designed to overcome the Medicaid cuts from the Trump tax bill. So it’s very targeted. It’s one time, and it’s already locked in for the residency requirements. So they crafted it in that way specifically to avoid the ability of billionaires to flee the state.

Bacon: Do you think Newsom and politicians like that are sincerely opposing that, or do you think they might have other motives?

Nolan: It goes to show why it’s so hard to do this, right? Because if you’re Gavin Newsom, or any of his political peers really, your incentive is not to break up accumulated fortunes. Your incentive is to get elected in the next election, right? And the most direct path to doing that for Gavin Newsom, or for any of his peers, is to get money from those people. It is in their interest to cater to those donors and not to upset them too much.

So when Gavin Newsom says, Oh, I’m opposed to a state level tax, but we should have a national wealth tax, I have a fucking bridge to sell you, man. Do you believe that Gavin Newsom is going to get elected president and then proceed to pass a national wealth tax? He’s not. He is demonstrating his bona fides right now.

But to be fair to these craven politicians, many of whom are scumbags, this is a structural problem. Because of the effect of money in politics, it is hard for any politician to undercut themself and take themself out of those very powerful donors by supporting those wealth taxes.

Bacon: You had in your piece, some labor unions in California are opposing this too. That’s more striking. Is that the same thing, though? Even labor unions, they’re part of the structure too? How do you see their opposition?

Nolan: I think in California it’s a little bit different of an issue. Much of the labor movement in California is supporting it, so we should say that upfront. It was sponsored by SEIU healthcare, a big SEIU local, and much of the California labor movement is supporting it. But there are some outliers, like the California Teachers Association and the Building Trades.

I think in the case of the Building Trades, they’re probably opposed to it because they’re scared that they’re going to lose jobs ultimately. If billionaires flee the state, there’s going to be less—they are buying the business side argument against this.

And I think in the case of the teachers, some of the controversy in California was that this tax is earmarked mostly for healthcare. And some of the other special interests in the state are like, “What about us? What about education? What about that?”

The sponsors of the bill say, “Look, it’s designed to head off Medicaid cuts specifically. It’s designed to prevent the collapse of healthcare in California specifically as a result of this bill.” And so I think the teachers are being extremely shortsighted, I think, and anyone who would oppose this bill on that basis I think is very shortsighted. Saying, “What about us? What about us?” There are bigger issues at play here, right? And I think it’s disappointing for any union not to back this.

Bacon: I saw Derek Thompson once at The Atlantic, the journalist—I think his point was that if you tax income and capital gains more, that can hit the wealth of the wealthy, and also wealth taxes, the Supreme Court might strike it down, so why bother? So talk about those arguments.

Nolan: If you understand what a crisis this level of inequality is for society, and you understand how pressing it is for us to do something about it, it’s, let’s do something. And of course we should, yes, we should raise capital gains tax, and we should raise income tax. But the underlying problem we have is wealth inequality, not income inequality. Wealth inequality. And we need to do something now.

This is a crisis today. It is a crisis today that Elon Musk has a trillion dollars and can spend $400 million on the midterms, and that’s not even a lot for him. He hasn’t even started, and nor have his peers even started to spend what they can spend on politics.

And so when you understand how critical it is to do something, and you see this effort in California that is very well-developed, that is well-funded, that has gone to all of this enormous effort to get itself on the ballot, to overcome hundreds of millions of dollars of opposition spending already by billionaires, it’s like, let’s pitch in where—in the most helpful place right now.

All of these people, to me, are making basically the same argument as Gavin Newsom, which is, “I can think of a more perfect way to do this.” But they’re not going to do it. Is Derek Thompson going to be out there with a clipboard at fucking ShopRite in California getting signatures? He’s not. This work has been done. Tons of work has been done on this. Let’s support it, and if it’s not perfect, it can serve as a springboard for a national wealth tax.

Bacon: That’s well said. I’m going to go to—you wrote a piece on September 7. The title is “Capital is Organizing the World to Its Advantage and Everything Else is a Sideshow.” And I want to follow up to say, I think a lot of people think about politics as maybe MAGA versus woke, to be very reductive, or Republican versus Democrat, or even authoritarian and far right versus democratic, small D.

And those are distinctions that I think are important. But a lot of your work, you center that the fight we need to focus on is capital versus labor, or capital versus everything else. Why is that the central fight in politics in your view?

Nolan: What’s happening in America today is capitalism, fundamentally, right? It’s not Trumpism, it’s not even fascism, I think. It’s capitalism proceeding as capitalism is in the nature of capitalism to proceed.

So the great fortunes that are being made—one quality of having a lot of money is that your job becomes defending your fortune. So if you think about these mega billionaires, people who have hundreds of billions of dollars, they enter into this political realm that is different from you and me putting money in our 401(k). Their job is to protect their fortune. And organizing the government and the laws of the country is just another business decision for them.

And as I said, because our system is so susceptible to the power of money, those people over time become the most powerful political forces in the country, and they will organize the entire government and the entire regulatory structure of our country in their favor.

And that goes for individuals, but I guess more so it goes for corporations, which are essentially robots that do this thing. They’re robots to make profits, and organizing the government in their favor is just another part of the algorithm.

And so really, we should recognize that this is the natural path of things if we do not directly block this from happening. Increasing accumulation of corporate power, increasing control of government by billionaires and corporations, that is the natural path of capitalism. And our failure to regulate business, to put adequate power in the hands of labor and workers, which is the counterbalance to that, is naturally going to cause this to happen. And so the things that are happening around us are this natural consequence.

And Trump is a fantastic example of what happens, because Trump is not ideological. Trump is a strong man, and he says, “You flatter me, and then you can do whatever you want.” And that’s exactly what we’re seeing, right? When you see the CEOs of all the tech companies sitting behind Trump at the inauguration and paying to fund his ballroom and all that stuff—that’s not because they’re Republicans. That’s because they’re businessmen, and they do that so that they can operate in the way that they want to. And that’s how you get fascism. Fascism is an outgrowth of this, and that’s what we’re all living through right now.

Bacon: Let me follow up to ask—so in some ways you would concede that some people in the Republican Party are very strongly opposed to abortion or transgender rights. There’s probably some sincere views there, right?

What you’re saying, though, is what’s driving the party’s decisions and what’s driving politics is not—our American politics is not really organized around transgender rights, even if that’s on commercials. It’s organized around this capital fight. That’s what you’re saying. You’re not denying that there are fights over things, but you’re saying what’s driving politics is this capital fight.

Nolan: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s the history of the Republican Party, right? Is a party to serve the interests of the rich that reaches out to racists and religious people in order to get their electoral majority. That’s a short description of the Republican Party’s entire history, I think.

And that has always been the coalition of the right, because obviously billionaires are not a voting majority. So if you’re a party to serve the interests of capital, you have to still somehow cobble together this majority to win elections.

And so what’s the majority? The majority is religion and racism, fundamentally, and other forms of bigotry, many of them rooted in religion, and social conservatism. So that’s been, with ups and downs, the history of the Republican Party.

I think Trump sort of upset the coalition a bit, in the sense that the money people in the Republican Party have always assumed that they had the ultimate control of the party, and Trump came along—and not that Trump’s not a money person, but he’s not the genteel classic Republican—and he beat all those people. So that was a bit of a revolution of thinking, I think, of traditional Republicans. But that doesn’t fundamentally change the policy underpinnings of the Republican Party. They’re not that different.

Bacon: So one thing I like about your work is, you gave a sort of a discourse about capital and so on, the way a lot of people on the left who might write for Jacobin or whatever would say. I think that’s pretty Bernie Sanders, et cetera.

But one thing we’ve seen is this move in the Democratic Party, which is to say basically politics is about the wealthy using these quote-unquote cultural issues to win power, so therefore we need to ignore or minimize or even at times embrace Republican positions on other issues like transgender rights. We need to say, “Actually, they’re right on transgender rights. We should ban trans kids from sports. We should not defend them, because that helps the right win if we talk about those issues at all.”

You’ve been very much on the end of being like, “Yes, the fight in America is about capital. At the same time, no, we should not embrace or ignore what the right is doing to hurt trans kids or women who want abortions or Black people.” So talk about why you think it’s useful still to stand up for those marginalized groups, even if that maybe helps play into the Republican culture war on some level.

Nolan: Yeah. I think that the bargain that the Republican Party strikes, that we just talked about, is, capital says we want our interests and we’re willing to throw some people under the bus to get it. That’s fine. We’ll throw whoever you want under the bus, just give us what we want.

The opposite of that is belief in human rights, right? And so you can’t triangulate your way out of that and say, “We’ll also throw some people under the bus if you vote Democrat. We’ll give you the, we all hate trans people.” That’s not what the opposite of that is. That is not the contrast that you want to make. The contrast is human rights. Human rights above capital. Humanity is more important than capital. Capital serves humanity and not vice versa.

And if you start from a place, I think, of human rights and belief in human rights, your politics will proceed in a healthy direction. And you should never triangulate your way out of human rights, because that is the path to all atrocities in history. All of history’s atrocities proceed from saying, “Let’s bargain away somebody else’s human rights.”

And so I think even electorally speaking, you have to offer voters an actual alternative, and not a weak version of the other side. And that is something the Democratic Party’s been banging its head on for decades and decades unsuccessfully. I grew up in Florida, the state where they keep running former Republicans for governor. Not only is it inhumane, but it doesn’t work, because you’re not offering voters an actual alternative.

Bacon: Union density is the cause of and the solution to our problem. You write about labor more than most people who write about politics. It’s a big focus of yours. You wrote a book about the importance of unions and having a stronger labor movement. So talk about why union density is the cause and solution, because I think labor is underpowered in Democratic circles and Democratic Party discussions right now.

Nolan: Yes, thank you. I love to talk about union density. I want all pundits to talk more about union density.

Union density just means the percentage of the workforce that are union members in our country. In the mid-1950s, one in three workers in America was a union member. Today, it’s one in 10. And that’s the scale of decline of organized labor power since the middle of the twentieth century.

And along with that has come the inequality crisis that we talk about. Along with that has come the imbalance of power that we talk about, because all of the power that is being sucked away from the working class in the form of fewer unions doesn’t disappear. It goes to somebody else. And who’s it go to? It goes to the investor class, and it goes ultimately to billionaires and to corporations.

And I like to center unions in the discussion of the way that American politics has gotten out of whack. Because when unions were ubiquitous and powerful in society and in our politics, we had a very different political landscape. We had a very different economic landscape. We had much more shared prosperity in this country, and we didn’t have the kind of oligarchy that we have right now.

And the two things are directly related, again, because we’re talking about balances of power. Power goes from one side to the other, and on one side is the working class, and on the other side is the people who have power today.

And so I just think that is so important, if you’re going to think about these issues in a political context, to understand that this imbalance of power is rooted in a loss of power for the working class, and that was caused by the decimation of labor power in this country. And then to think about how do we get that back, which is a separate discussion.

Bacon: I’m going to leave this conversation with this idea you’ve mentioned. When I’ve brought up democracy, you’ve brought up not elections or the way we talked about it, but this idea of the balance of power. I think that’s an important distinction. Part of what happens in democracy is you have a bunch of different interests that are balanced, as opposed to a few that are dominating.

You said one third of Americans versus one tenth of Americans in unions. That is not because Americans en masse are saying, “No, I do not want to be in a union.” That’s not what’s happening, right? That might be happening to some extent. Explain why that number has declined so much.

Nolan: Yeah, absolutely. Public opinion polls show, in fact, that unions today are more popular than they’ve been in 60 years. So not since the 1960s have more people approved of unions. And people want to be in unions. We know that statistically. People like unions and celebrate unions and wish that they had a union, but they don’t.

And why don’t they? That’s a book in itself, but the short answer is, it was a reaction of capital against that level of labor power, right? So after World War II, when you had very strong labor power, partly as a result of the industrialization and deals that organized labor struck with the government to unionize the industrial power coming out of World War II—capital doesn’t like that. The business world does not like labor having that much power.

And so there was a decades-long procession of, first of all, anti-union laws. The Taft-Hartley Act was passed in 1947, the end of World War II, that undercut a lot of the methods that unions used to strike and organize and accumulate power. We’re still suffering from that today, have not been able to overturn that in almost 80 years now.

And also the professionalization of the union busting industry, and just a procession decade by decade, a concerted and very well-organized effort by business to undercut the ability of unions to organize and to maintain power.

And I also place some blame on the shoulders of the labor movement for a failure to counteract that. And that, again, is a separate discussion, but we should have done a better job fighting that. We didn’t. There were unions that got lazy in their position and allowed that slow decline of power to happen. That, by the way, is still happening today.

And so it is possible to turn that around. It is possible to have a resurgence in labor power. The conditions are there. People want it. It’s going to take some legal reform. It’s going to take some spending by unions. It’s going to take some radicalization by people within the labor movement. But it can absolutely happen. And I tell everyone, if you’re frustrated with politics, unionize your workplace, because that will ultimately have more effect on this class war that we’re in than elections.

Bacon: September 28, “The Free and Unfree Press: Journalism and Its Adversaries.” You write a lot about the media, and it’s an important subject obviously for us personally, but I think you make an argument it’s an important subject for the country. And you were writing about Bari Weiss and CBS. But the point you made here:

“Something that many people who work in the press do not like to acknowledge is that the press is a participant in a fight, an ideological, political power struggle against entrenched power itself. Powerful people and institutions, as a rule, do not like journalism, because journalism properly done makes it harder for powerful people to carry out their will with no public oversight or pushback. Some in the media find it uncomfortable to state these things plainly because they are wedded to the idea of objectivity, and they mistakenly believe that political conflict is a sign of political bias. It is not.”

But this idea that entrenched power and the press are perpetually in conflict, so the press, if it’s doing well—Elon Musk should hate the press, right? Or, the press is doing its job well, basically, right?

Nolan: Yeah. And rest in peace to The Washington Post, Perry.

Bacon: Yes.

Nolan: Look, one of the good side effects of being unemployable in the respectable part of the media is we can just say these things which are true in a straightforward way. And “Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted” is the old slogan about the role of the press.

It’s an illusion, in other words, that the press is this objective thing that sits above society and politics and the economy and passes judgment with no bias and so forth. Everybody really knows that’s not the case. There’s a lot of not only built-in sort of Overton window baked into the coverage that goes into The New York Times, The Washington Post, and things like that.

But there was a whole economic arrangement that supported journalism for 100-plus years that’s been destroyed, right? Ad-supported journalism that put a local newspaper in every community, that has been blown up by Big Tech. And Big Tech has taken all the money that used to go into those local papers, and now all the Google guys have it. And that is a basic example of political economy coming for the structure of the press.

And what do reporters do? Reporters shed sunlight on power. Reporters tell the public what powerful people and institutions are doing, and they do that in order to keep those powerful people and institutions honest, right?

The basic theory is, the government shouldn’t operate in secret. The most powerful business in your town shouldn’t operate in secret. The richest people in your town shouldn’t pull all the strings without people knowing what they’re doing.

Bacon: And these are beliefs. They’re not ideological beliefs necessarily, but they’re beliefs. The powerful should be accountable to someone is a belief that journalists as an institution, as a group, have generally. And that is not a neutral—

Nolan: No, it is implicit in journalism existing, that you should know what these people are doing. Otherwise, why do we write all this stuff?

Bacon: Exactly.

Nolan: And that again is a balance of power argument. It’s that these people, if they operate in secret, it is impossible for the public to judge and to knowledgeably exercise its power in society.

And so the function of good journalism has always been to keep the power of the powerful in check. And the powerful have always not only despised journalism, but bought journalism for themself, right? Hearst bought journalism because he wanted to control that conversation.

And same as Rupert Murdoch, and same today as the Ellisons buying journalism, and Bezos at The Washington Post, buying journalism because they do not want that conversation happening out of their control. And so journalism has to continually reinvent itself in places outside of the control of the rich and powerful in order to stay honest. And we’re obviously going through that process today still.

Bacon: The Substack model is precarious because it relies on a lot of dispersed people giving you $10 a month, or I don’t know how much you’re charging. Subscribe to Hamilton’s Substack. I do think it’s excellent. But that model is challenging in that it requires lots of individuals. The good thing, as you hinted at, is that you are free from the ultra rich coming down on you, right?

Nolan: Yeah, the model that we’re under, where we all kind of beg for money from subscribers, is great if you can make it. But that model in the big picture is going to produce a much smaller number of journalists than the model we had before, which was ad supported and could put a local newspaper in every—Topeka, Kansas probably had 50 reporters in it, right? And today there’s probably not 50 reporters in the state of Kansas.

And that’s a result of all that advertising money being totally sucked out of our industry. And so yeah, independent journalism’s great, and everybody please pay for whatever you like to read or consume. That’s the way it will exist. But also, we need to think about public funding of journalism as a social good, and hope that—

Bacon: I’m glad you brought that up, because right now with this government, it is worth asking. I generally think public funding journalism can be a positive thing. Right now with this government, if they were funding journalism, wouldn’t they demand that it be, Trump good, actually, Trump is winning the election, Ilhan Omar’s parents are terrorists? What would it look like right now?

Nolan: Yeah. You could argue that Trump is already doing that by other means, by approving the Paramount merger. That is an in-kind donation to state media. But yes, I hear what you’re saying. The good news is you can do this on the state level too, right?

California just passed a public funding bill for journalism, signed by Newsom, which is great, funding local journalism in California. Every state can do that. New York has a version of that which we’re going to try to help renew.

And you can do it on the state level and hopefully not be quite so polluted ideologically as it might be on a federal level. But ultimately, I think it needs to be more of a PBS sort of vision, where you’re like, “We’re funding local journalism as a social good.”

Bacon: August 30, “You Can Ignore the Bad Pundits.” And you wrote about some of the people I think write punditry. You mentioned James Carville, you mentioned Matt Yglesias, people who I regularly mock—or disagree with, I should say, and occasionally mock when I think they’re being disingenuous.

But I wrote this—I put this on Bluesky, and immediately people were like, “How is he saying we can ignore these pundits?” You went through the David Brookses and so on, and you said there’s no reason these people need to be followed or their arguments analyzed, because they don’t have any special insight. Getting a job at The New York Times is not a sign of great intelligence, as you argued, and I worked at The Washington Post, so I think I can speak to that being true.

But the question is, the responses I got when I posted that were along the lines of, “These people set the discourse, so we need to debate them because they are setting the discourse.” And I think you mentioned Ezra Klein and Ross Douthat. I do think there might be a point where they do set the discourse. So can we really ignore the bad pundits?

Nolan: And shout out to you for being not a bad pundit at The Washington Post, a rare thing.

I think this has been a revelation for me personally, because I’m speaking as somebody who worked at Gawker. I spent years of my life—a stupid part of my brain is taken up with mocking Tom Friedman.

I’ve wasted hundreds of hours of my life writing jokes about every bad pundit in America. So I have had a revelation, which is that the power of any pundit comes from our attention. We give these people power. We, as readers, as news consumers, as citizens, we give writers and so forth power by reading them and talking about them. That is what gives people influence, and we have control over that.

And as somebody who is immersed in the independent media, and who knows how many smart writers there are out there with smaller platforms—and I would argue that the smartest writers that I could think of in America almost all have smaller platforms than any of those people that we just touched on. I had a revelation, that’s, “Let me pay attention to the people who are actually smart, and not waste my brain on the people who—”

How many things do we read just to hate read? Every time you see a Bret Stephens headline, you mentally are like, “I hate this, and this is going to be horrible.” And we can ignore it, and we can lift up those who are actually smart. And by doing so, I think that we will all kind of contribute to a healthier and smarter discourse.

Bacon: Let me follow up to say, I think what people are saying, and maybe they’re not saying it well, is these arguments are out there, and they need to rebut them because these are the arguments that are going through.

So David Brooks’ column has power, not just because we’re reading it, but because it’s in the thing we’re all reading, so I need to rebut that. And I agree with you that rebutting it reinforces its importance. But maybe we’re talking about, why are you not going to be able to rebut Bret Stephens’ arguments in a way that really stops them from coming up?

Nolan: You’ll never rebut Bret Stephens’ arguments, because Bret Stephens’ function in the world is to be the guy who makes bad arguments. It’s like wanting to get rid of every cockroach in the world. You’re not going to do it, man. It exists.

Bacon: If Bret Stephens died, God forbid, they would hire some new scrolly right-wing person to do something similar, right?

Nolan: There are slots at The New York Times for each ideological slot, and they’re just going to put a new Bret Stephens in place. And when you understand that—again, we’re in an attention economy. You can spend your attention on good things, and by doing so, you make those things more powerful too.

Bacon: And I’ll finish by—I think this might be the one subject we might mildly disagree about, so I wanted to probe it a little bit. “AOC must run for president,” Hamilton wrote on July 30. “History is calling. Sorry.”

OK. So I like AOC, so let’s lead with that. My concern is that there’s a strong movement on the progressive left, and if it becomes centered in one candidate, then I worry it becomes like a personality thing about her.

I think you’re seeing that in New York a little bit, where, are we reforming police? Are all of our needs and wants captured in one person? I feel like there’s a strong movement, and maybe I’d like to see 10 candidates pursue the movement, as opposed to one person represent the movement and all its interests.

Particularly, I would argue, this one person—I like a lot of what AOC does, but I perceive her, and I thought the Woke 1.0 comment was pretty reflective of my concern, which is that it seems to me that her approach is, “I’m the person from the left, and I represent the left, but my job as a candidate is to move to the right, to appease the sort of moderate Midwestern person, to appease the Matty Yglesias Democrat who has to be convinced that I’m electable.”

So in 2027 I’m wondering if I would prefer Andy Beshear, J.B. Pritzker, and a few other people maybe pursuing, seeing, “Oh, there’s a big base of progressives. Let me pursue those people a little bit,” as opposed to one person who I have to watch move to the right for an entire year. That’s not going to be fun, and I’m not sure how productive that’s going to be. So tell me why I’m wrong.

Nolan: I hear your concerns. My thinking is this. We’re in a serious situation for all the reasons that we just talked about. We need some radical changes policy-wise. So we need a truly left candidate. We need somebody who is effectively a successor to Bernie to run in the primary. It’s not going to be Bernie. So who is it? Who are the options?

Bacon: Let me probe the question. You’re saying there has to be somebody, but there’s a big movement out there. So let’s say there’s 20 people. Let’s say AOC’s not running, even Ro Khanna’s not running. There’s 20 people running. They can’t all say Israel has a right to defend itself, wealth taxes are too complicated.

If only because there’s an economy of voters to the left of them, somebody will be like, “Oh, maybe I should say something. There’s 30 percent over here. I can’t win the oligarchy-friendly Democratic vote, so I need to win something else,” right?

Nolan: For my whole lifetime, the role of the left has been to try to pull the Democratic candidate in their direction. And what I’m arguing for is that maybe we’re in a position of power where we can be the candidate.

And there is a huge policy difference, and difference in impact on the world for people’s lives, between having an actual left president and the left being like, “We’re trying to pull Joe Biden. We’re trying to pull Obama.” And also, that’s what primaries are for, right? Primaries are to contest that within the party. And so we absolutely need a truly left candidate.

None of them—Beshear and Pritzker and Ossoff, none of them are left candidates. They’re all center left people who maybe can be pulled. So who is the left candidate? We must have a left candidate.

And if Ro Khanna is the left candidate—I think Ro Khanna has good politics, more or less, but I don’t see Ro Khanna winning. And that’s a subjective judgment on my part.

Bacon: Winning the primary is what you’re talking about right now.

Nolan: Where charisma is extremely important, yeah. And star power is important, and AOC has that. And I guess my question to everybody who disagrees with me is, who is it then? Who’s the name?

Bacon: I had not heard your full analysis. What I was coming into this with was, do we need a left candidate? That was the question I was trying to probe with you.

And I think the Bernie example is good, in that Bernie did more while losing for progressive left-wing politics than—I covered the 2004 primary. Howard Dean did what I’m saying. He saw the left opening. He said some stuff, but if he had been president, I think he would’ve governed like an Obama or a Bill Clinton. I think you’re right about that.

And so Senator Warren also—I’m not sure if she’s purely the most left, but she actually believed in things in a way that I think, as you say, Beshear, Pritzker, Ossoff. Because I think the Ossoff buzz is built around, we can pull him left and he will code as electable. I think that’s the whole thing there.

Nolan: Yeah. The left does not need to settle for doing that in 2028. We’re powerful enough right now that, at the minimum, running a candidate is the minimum. The worst that can happen is you lose. Bernie lost, but he accomplished a lot, as you said, and also he didn’t lose by that much. He was a very real political player.

And maybe the pendulum has swung enough for us to win, but the only way to find out is to run a candidate. So if it’s not AOC, I just have a hard time knowing who it is. And if somebody can tell me, great. Who is it?

Bacon: Let’s say AOC runs. If she does a Woke 1.0 thing, I found that irritating. And I worry I’m going to spend a whole year, yes, AOC should win, but it would be nice if she didn’t throw us under the bus every third day. Is that a realistic concern? How are you going to handle it if that’s what she’s doing? Because I think that’s a realistic concern.

Nolan: That’s the nature of politics, maybe. You either are going to elect an establishment Democrat and be pissed at them for not moving left, or you’re going to elect a leftist and be pissed at them for trying to move to the middle a little bit. And that, by the way, is what’s happening with Zohran in New York right now. People are mad at him about the police and stuff.

But that’s the nature of politics, and also speaks to why you shouldn’t make heroes out of politicians. It’s not about who the politician is, right? It’s about the policy. And my subjective judgment is that overall, if you put a leftist in and get annoyed by them throwing bones to the center, you still are substantively getting more policy-wise, and you’re going to have a better world than you would having a centrist and trying to pull them left.

Bacon: Your point is, you live in New York, you’d rather have Zohran than—what was the guy who’s running for Congress now? I’ve forgotten. Brad Lander. You’d rather have Zohran than Brad Lander, and definitely you’d rather have Zohran than Andrew Cuomo. That’s your point.

Nolan: Absolutely. And also I think that it’s not that Zohran is perfect, or that you have to make a hero out of him, but overall he starts closer to you, his beliefs are closer to you, his platform is closer to you. And there’s also, I think, a value in—one of the values of Zohran getting elected is it shows what’s possible.

A Democratic socialist is the mayor of America’s biggest city. That moves the Overton window. That expands people’s belief in what is possible and what’s realistic in politics. And I think going into 2028, it opens up people’s vision of what can happen within the Democratic Party, and somebody like AOC could in fact be the nominee.

Bacon: Yeah. Hamilton, we’ll end there. You mentioned in the middle of the conversation that some of the best people you read are writing in the independent space. Do you mind naming those people? I think people should read you. Do you have any recommendations of people they should read?

Nolan: You’re putting me on the spot. Oh my God. I would just shout out a couple of media co-ops, like Defector. I think Defector is a great worker-owned media publication, I encourage people to subscribe to. My favorite writer in America about Donald Trump is David Roth at Defector. If you’re not familiar with him, great dude to read. Hellgate is a great worker-owned publication here in New York City.

And there’s a ton, and I’m going to stop because I’m going to forget people, and then they’re going to be mad at me. But seek out independent media and read it. People will find that the quality in independent media is as high or higher than you’re going to get in more famous publications.

Bacon: Good. Hamilton, tell people where they can read your book and your Substack, and then we’ll close out.

Nolan: Yeah. I wrote a book called The Hammer. It’s about the labor movement, some of the things we talked about, why it declined, and how we can bring it back, and why that’s important. You can buy that wherever books are sold. And my publication’s called How Things Work. You can read at hamiltonnolan.com.

Bacon: Yeah. Hamilton, great to see you. Thanks for joining me.

Nolan: Thanks for having me, man. Appreciate it.

Bacon: OK. Bye-bye.

Nolan: Bye-bye.

And, importantly, there was one more factor, internal to Democratic politics, that rendered Talarico a long shot: He didn’t have the Black vote.         

Black Democratic voters overwhelmingly supported Talarico’s opponent in the Democratic primary in March, Representative Jasmine Crockett, nationally known for her vivid rhetoric and punchy comebacks on Capitol Hill. A popular figure in her Dallas district, Crockett enjoyed the support of Black political and religious leaders and rank-and-file voters. She received approximately 61 percent of the Black vote in the primary. Perhaps not surprisingly, hard feelings cropped up between the two camps during and after the campaign.  

At a post-primary town hall when Talarico backers raged against Crockett, the nominee took up her defense. “I felt, just at a personal level, offended,” he told TheGrio, a website focusing on African Americans. “If we were really serious about winning this race,” he said, “if people who claim to be my supporters or who claim to be part of this movement we’re building, if they’re sincere in their support, then they should be trying to heal divisions, not deepen divisions.”

Crockett endorsed him after her loss but has not campaigned with him, turning her attention to candidates in downballot races. But one of the state’s Black leaders, Rodney Ellis, a Harris County commissioner and former state senator from Houston, was among the first to speak out for Talarico. “I was for Jasmine Crockett in the primary,” he said on a video. “But there is too much at stake in this race to be petty. I like Talarico’s message. It’s grounded in faith.… I think he’s going to have a tremendous amount of support in the African American community.”  

Talarico has since been moving on several fronts to win Black support. His campaign engaged Black political operatives and Black communications firms. It laid out the largest Black voter outreach plan of its kind in modern Texas history, and gave priority to Black media, podcasts, radio, television, newspapers, and other outlets.  

Talarico may have one more huge factor in his favor. His name is Ken Paxton. The state’s scandal-scarred attorney general has plenty of PAC money and dark money. The New York Times reported on October 16 that Elon Musk alone has given Paxton $158 million. Overall, outside Republican groups have poured around $250 million into backing Paxton, which is more than five times what Democratic groups have given Talarico. Talarico has raised more than $130 million so far, which is far more than Paxton, but Paxton’s dark money gives him an overall advantage.

In mid-September, a Texas Southern University survey showed Black voters backing Talarico 87 percent to 10 percent. Around that time, Talarico won the crucial endorsement of the Congressional Black Caucus’s political wing, a powerhouse in Congress.

Recently, Cal Jillian, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University, told me that the Black vote in Texas usually runs 80 percent to 85 percent in favor of most Democratic candidates, but to win the U.S. Senate seat, Talarico needs no less than 90 percent.

Is that anywhere near possible?

From the start, “there were questions about the Talarico campaign and whether Black voters would be there for him,” Kardal Coleman, the chair of the Dallas County Democratic Party, told me.  

The friction between the two camps broke out in the final stretch of the Crockett-Talarico primary race when a social media post claimed that in a private conversation in January, Talarico referred to the former Congressman Colin Allred as “a mediocre Black man,” according to The Texas Tribune. Allred lost the Senate race against Senator Ted Cruz in 2024, and he was Talarico’s early rival in 2025 until Crockett declared her candidacy for the Senate. (Allred now is running for the congressional seat in the Dallas-area 33rd congressional district.)  

In response, Talarico said it was a “mischaracterization of a private conversation,” the Tribune reported. He said he had described Allred’s “method of campaigning” as “mediocre,” not Allred himself. But the damage was done.

The rancor lingered through the primary and through the early months of Talarico’s campaign against Paxton. The campaign intensified the drive to win over Blacks. Talarico engaged with pastors and congregations in numerous Black churches, notably Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas, which has 13,000 congregants, including Crockett, and is led by a prominent pastor, the Reverend Dr. Frederick D. Haynes III, now running for Congress in the 30th district-seat Crockett vacated to seek the Senate seat. Talarico dropped by Black restaurants like Smokey Joe’s in south Dallas and Mikki’s Soul Food in Houston. He toured HBCU campuses, attending the Prairie View A&M game against Grambling State University, where he received a standing ovation. And back in May, he had a highly publicized lunch with President Barack Obama at Taco Joint in Austin.  

Along the way, he launched a $25 million project to build Black voter turnout across Texas, addressed the maternal mortality crisis affecting Black women, released statewide digital and radio ads, and built a multimillion-dollar campaign chest mostly with state and out-of-state donations. He became something of a celebrity, showing up on national TV and creating a stir when his scheduled interview on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert was banned by CBS attorneys citing equal-time Federal Communications Commission rules. Colbert then posted the full segment on his YouTube Channel, and it went viral with millions of viewers.

“Talarico is fortunate in his opponent,” professor Jillian said during our conversation.

Paxton, 63, who has refused to debate Talarico, has been a target of numerous federal and local investigations and was impeached in 2022 by the Republican-led state House and acquitted by the state Senate. His wife, Angela Paxton, 63, a Republican state senator, has filed for divorce “on biblical grounds,” meaning adultery. Such imbroglios, accusations of abuses of power, allegations of corruption—and several recently leaked audio recordings of Paxton that damaged mostly himself—have come to define him and his campaign, and Trump’s three rallies in Texas haven’t helped. (Trump is so unpopular, even in Texas, that Governor Greg Abbott, in an unexpectedly close race with State Representative Gina Hinojosa, didn’t show up for the president’s San Antonio rally.)   

Paxton doesn’t actively court the Black vote, though more Blacks live in Texas, 4.5 million, than in any other state, making up approximately 13 percent of the state’s population of 32 million.

“Republicans are openly hostile to Blacks,” said Matt Angle, director of the Lone Star Project, a Democratic political action committee and strategic communications organization based in Texas. “You can see it in the way they have redrawn districts to eliminate the Black vote.”

Angle met Talarico in 2017, when Talarico was 29 years old. “Young-looking, earnest, talented, an extraordinary talent,” Angle recalled. “He’s good with the Black community. He goes to Black churches, takes tough questions, takes criticism, and listens.”  

In his appearances, Talarico speaks often of his faith, cites Bible passages of compassion and humility, and takes issue with the racist, white Christian nationalism of many in the Republican right wing.  

No dirty trick seems too low for Paxton. When Talarico left the campaign trail for nine days in late September to stay home in Austin with the flu, Paxton supporters peddled a rumor on the internet that Talarico had been taken to a mental health facility in Ohio for tests. Paxton gleefully egged them on, and the post went viral. Finally, the health facility responded: James Talarico was not then nor had ever been at that facility. Talarico reappeared in public on October 9, at a Kacey Musgraves concert in Austin and was swamped with fans.   

“Talarico’s campaign is finally in stride,” Kardal Coleman said. “To his credit, he has shown up to answer questions everywhere, and he goes on Black media and has shown himself to be an advocate of Blacks here in Texas. His message is resonating, meeting people where they are.… His campaign has finally caught fire. He will likely get 90 percent of the Black vote.”

It’s an opinion I heard from another Black leader, State Representative Rhetta Bowers, who called Talarico her state House classmate because they joined the legislature at the same time, in 2018.

“I’ve seen numbers recently that reach 90 percent,” she said. “Talarico’s Christian message helps with Blacks. It speaks volumes for him. It resonates with Black people.”

Senator Royce West, who has served in the state legislature more than 30 years, sees strong signals from the Black community for a high turnout. “Talarico is doing all the necessary things to get the Black vote. But Trump is doing an even better job turning the Black vote to Talarico, with all Trump has done in this Second Reconstruction period. People are fed up with what’s going on in D.C., and the economy and gas prices, the affordability issue, the central issues.”

West, too, supported Crockett in the primary. “Many of us thought Jasmine was going to be the candidate,” he said. “There were some hard feelings, but Talarico is better than Paxton. Paxton’s record weighs him down. Also, there’s something else. Talarico may have coattails and help downballot races and Gina Hinojosa in her campaign for governor.”  

That Talarico could pull off a historic Democratic victory doesn’t surprise Matt Angle. “He may not be the male Texas stereotype, tough-talking macho, but he’s the tough guy in the race,” Angle said. “Two things about him appeal to Blacks. One is his Christian faith, and the other is that he was brought up by a hardworking single mother.”

Chairman Coleman was optimistic but cautious. “I want to stress how important this race is for Texas, this being once in a generation. But this time I think the Democrats are in the driver’s seat. We’ve got great candidate selection. A perfect storm.”

A perfect storm is what it’s going to take for a Democrat to win a statewide election in Texas. And that storm will have to include Talarico hitting that 90 percent mark among Black voters.