The FDA’s Overton Window Problem

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Inside Washington

The FDA’s Overton window problem

On Thursday, Republican Senator Susan Collins, a self-described abortion rights supporter, asked not a single question about abortion during the hearing for Food and Drug Administration commissioner nominee Heidi Overton. That, along with testy exchanges with Democrats over Overton’s vaccine views, is likely to be the primary takeaway from the confirmation hearing.

But while Overton’s past comments on mifepristone and vaccines receive top billing, less attention is being given to the larger dysfunction that has plagued the FDA since Trump’s second inauguration. 

Democratic senators, unlike Collins, took a strong line on abortion on Thursday. “I am not going to support someone who doesn’t support a woman’s right to make her own choices,” Senator Patty Murray of Washington, who sits on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, told The New Republic. If confirmed to lead the FDA, Overton will inherit an ongoing study of mifepristone’s safety, which could be an opening step for the Trump administration to restrict its use. In her past role at the MAGA-aligned America First Policy Institute, Overton wrote an article claiming that medication-assisted abortion is “dangerous to women.” On Thursday, she dodged questions about whether she believes mifepristone is safe, instead saying that she agrees with “the statutory standards of safety and efficacy” set by the FDA.

Vaccines were another major issue during the hearing, particularly because of Overton’s association with Trump’s and Health Secretary RFK Jr.’s rhetoric on vaccine safety. Last month, Overton stood beside the two men when they suggested that combination vaccines could cause autism. Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire pressed Overton on vaccines, asking her if she believed Trump could “ever be wrong about something.” Overton didn’t answer the question directly, instead saying that she “had the privilege of working for the president.”

Overton also attended Trump’s Oval Office signing of an executive order to reduce the childhood vaccination schedule and split the MMR vaccine into multiple shots. During the event, Trump also called the MMR vaccine “potentially quite lethal.” Overton denied that the vaccine is lethal at Thursday’s hearing, but that disavowal came too late for some senators. “She should have corrected the president in public when he was putting out bad information about the efficacy of vaccines,” said Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, who sits on the HELP Committee. “When he said it was ‘lethal,’ she should have corrected him right there.”

“She seems like a very nice person, but I don’t think she’s the person who should hold that job,” Senator Bernie Sanders, the ranking member of HELP, told The New Republic. “We need people who have the courage to stand up to President Trump. I’m not sure that’s her.” 

Overton stands to take over a deeply troubled federal agency. The FDA’s current crisis began early on in President Trump’s second term, when nearly one-fifth of the agency’s workforce (around 4,000 employees) left due to firings or buyouts. Since then, a number of high-profile foodborne illnesses and recalls have popped up across the country, which some experts and politicians have suggested could have been exacerbated by cuts at the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Staff turnover has been rampant at the FDA. In 2025, around 90 percent of senior FDA personnel reportedly left the agency, leaving just three experienced senior leaders in place. Since Trump’s inauguration, the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which focuses on the development of vaccines and drugs for rare diseases, has had six different directors. In May, the then head of the FDA, Marty Makary, resigned after just a year at the helm. His tenure was marked by political interference into the FDA’s decision-making. Anti-abortion groups criticized Makary for not advancing the review of mifepristone, while e-cigarette company executives complained to Trump that Makary wasn’t approving their products fast enough. The vaccine chief under Makary, Vinay Prasad, left the agency twice after right-wing activists like Laura Loomer and biotech executives alike criticized him.

In addition to their concerns about abortion and vaccines, some Democratic senators worry that Overton would continue this pattern of politicization within the agency. “I just don’t think [Overton is] committed to ending political interference in the FDA decision-making process,” Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who sits on the HELP Committee, told The New Republic. “She’s been given that job specifically to protect political interference.”

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

The charter companies running ICE deportation flights out of Akron-Canton Regional Airport, the Ohio Capital Journal reports, owe the airport a combined $46,513 for landings between the end of April and early September—of which $33,927 is past due. In recent weeks, “Akron-Canton has become a Great Lakes hub,” reports Doug Oplinger, who has been staking out the airport while scrutinizing flight records. He finds “planes landing here in the evening, often from a major ICE prison and deportation center in Alexandria, Louisiana, and on occasion directly from Tapachula, Mexico, the end point for many of the deportees.” Oplinger writes that attempts to get comment from the companies involved, ICE media relations, and multiple other parties have been “largely unanswered.”

In case you missed it: The Arizona Republic’s Stacey Barchenger went hunting for the alleged Democrats supporting Republican Andy Biggs against Katie Hobbs in the Arizona governor’s race—the ones mentioned in a slew of “Democrats for Biggs” signs that have proliferated recently. The signs, she notes, are paid for by conservative group Turning Point USA—the late Charlie Kirk’s group. “Biggs couldn’t name a Democrat who supports his campaign—but he said they are out there” and referred Barchenger to “whoever’s putting up those signs.” Barchenger duly contacted Turning Point spokespeople, who “did not respond to multiple questions about … whether any coalition of Democrats backing Republican Andy Biggs for governor exists.” Read the full story for all this and significant further shenanigans.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

Public Citizen publishes a statement on the report recently released by Senators Chuck Schumer and Sheldon Whitehouse on the fossil fuel industry’s influence in the Trump administration. The report highlighted, among other things, the policy “wish lists” the industry compiled for the administration, many items of which were quickly enacted. “Every American family struggling with high costs is suffering because of the corrupt relationship between Donald Trump and the fossil fuel industry,” says Public Citizen’s climate program director, David Arkush, in the group’s statement.

Friday, September 25, at noon, the Roosevelt Institute holds its Fall Policy Summit with Roosevelt Network members “fighting for academic freedom, democracy, and LGBTQ+ rights; working with local organizations to explore how city governments can better support workers; and traveling across their states to hear directly from farmers about the economy they want to see.” Interested viewers can join on Zoom to “hear from Network members about what they’re working on and how they’re turning ideas into action.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Good Week: Abdul El-Sayed

The Democratic candidate for Senate in Michigan got two new polls this week offering him good news, and boy is this welcome for Democrats. A Suffolk poll found El-Sayed leading GOPer Mike Rogers by 47–40. And the gold-standard New York Times survey found him up by 49–44. Notably, the latter found him clearing 40 percent with working-class whites, a key threshold. With many analysts wondering if he’ll win enough of this demographic to prevail in the Midwestern state, all this will help quiet Democratic panic about El-Sayed’s chances.

Bad Week: Troy Jackson

The aforementioned gold-standard Times poll also finds this week that Maine Senator Susan Collins is leading her Democratic challenger by three points, 49–46. What really jumps out is that Jackson’s support among non-college voters is an abysmal 34 percent. True, a recent CNN poll showed Jackson up three points, but taken altogether, this is way too close for comfort in such a pro-Democratic national environment and in a state that Trump lost by seven points in 2024. What’s more, the CNN poll also finds Jackson at 38 percent with non-college voters, suggesting this group is a real problem for him. That’s especially noteworthy, since one of this fifth-generation logger’s biggest political selling points is his roots in the rural working class.

—Greg Sargent

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

Tomorrow, Donald Trump will be in Knoxville for the Tennessee-Texas game. Some years ago, a president infamously waded into a heated debate over who was the number one team in college football. This was back when presidents didn’t offer their opinions on every topic under the sun, and it was a big controversy. Whose fans did he please, and whose did he infuriate? (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in Tuesday’s newsletter.)

—Michael Tomasky

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Inside Washington

Why Sherrod Brown might beat the crypto industry this time

On Monday, the pro-crypto PAC Fairshake confirmed that it would spend $30 million against former Senator Sherrod Brown’s campaign for his old Senate seat in Ohio. Perhaps you are feeling a touch of déjà vu: In 2024, Fairshake spent $40 million against Brown. But experts say that circumstances are different this year, and unlike in 2024, Brown might just be able to survive the influx of crypto money.

“It’s like comparing apples and oranges,” said David Cohen, a professor of political science at the University of Akron, about the difference between Brown’s loss in 2024 and his campaign this year. Two years ago, Brown was on a ballot with then–Vice President Kamala Harris, who struggled in the conservative state. Now Brown is running in a strong environment for Dems nationally. Trump is 20 points underwater in Ohio, gas prices are high, and Brown’s opponent, GOP Senator Jon Husted, doesn’t have a strong profile in the state. “I’m just not sure that any amount of money is going to turn things around for Republicans in Ohio,” Cohen said.

Fairshake, which has more than $120 million on hand and is funded by crypto companies like Coinbase and Ripple, is targeting Brown for a number of reasons. Perhaps most importantly, he served as the chair of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs during his time in the Senate, and was skeptical of the crypto industry. In 2023, for example, he said that the cryptocurrency industry had “betrayed the public interest.”

Brown also has a strong populist brand and has long been an opponent of wealthy corporate interests. This election cycle, he’s loudly criticized data centers and Husted’s role in promoting them. “This is a union hall Democrat who isn’t easily wowed by the technology world, and I think they see that,” said David Niven, a professor at the University of Cincinnati. “And if he’s not going to fall for their lines, then they’d rather he not be there.”

There’s also the timing of a recent piece of legislation in the Senate. A bill the crypto industry really wanted passed, the Clarity Act, died in the Senate last week after lawmakers across both parties opposed it. But many in the crypto world are eager to blame Democrats for the bill’s failure.

“The ads are in Ohio, but the message is for Washington,” said Henrik Schatzinger, a professor of political science at Ripon College. “I think there is an implicit message here, and the message is: Oppose us, and we can make your next election much more expensive.”

In the past, Fairshake has supported Democrats, such as Senators Elissa Slotkin and Ruben Gallego. The group recently suggested that it will announce more bipartisan spending in the coming days, and isn’t just planning to spend against Brown. Fairshake didn’t respond to The New Republic’s request for more information.

Fairshake’s attack ads probably won’t mention cryptocurrency. “You’d never know that the crypto industry had even gotten involved in 2024 because they were trying to bring up culture war issues” in their ads, said Cohen. “They’re going to try and bring out the greatest hits from 2024,” like immigration and transgender people, he explained.

Asked about Fairshake’s plans, Brown’s campaign manager, Patrick Eisenhauer, on Wednesday responded with a statement doubling down on Brown’s populist message: “Jon Husted’s for sale, and the billionaires and corporations pouring millions into this race know it,” he wrote. “Of course the special interests are panicking, they know Sherrod will fight the rigged system they’re feasting on to stand up for working Ohioans.”

Cohen sees the cash dump as indicative of the strong position Brown has found himself in. “The tsunami is coming,” he said about the potential for major Democratic wins in November. “You’re seeing a lot of desperation on the Republican side because they know it’s coming, and there’s not much they can do to stop it except for throw money at it.”

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

A new poll released Wednesday by Marist University shows Democrat Gina Hinojosa leading Republican Greg Abbott by three percentage points in the Texas governor’s race—but with a 4.4 percentage-point margin of error. If you missed Hinojosa’s interview with 22-year-old Lajward Zahra in The Nation earlier this week, check it out: It’s a bit of a barn burner. Obviously, all politicians are highly incentivized to make the case that their race is vital. Prodded by Zahra, however—who wanted to draw Hinojosa out on arguments she made in a speech in Houston last month—Hinojosa lays out the math for why Texas’s gubernatorial results could determine the political direction of the country for decades: “Texas controls 10 percent of seats in Congress,” Hinojosa tells Zahra. “Republicans in Austin, in particular, are coming back next year [with the intention] to redraw congressional maps.… When that happens, that’s nine to 10 seats that will be off the table for Democrats in Congress if these same Austin Republicans are in charge.” Without a veto on redistricting from a Democratic governor, Hinojosa says, “I think it’s likely one-party control of Congress, likely for a generation.” Conversely, she says, Democrats have a powerful opportunity in this anti-incumbent climate: “Once Texas is in play, it changes the political calculus in this whole country.” (The same Marist poll that showed the Hinojosa-Abbott contest within the margin of error on Wednesday found James Talarico leading Ken Paxton in the Senate race by six points.)

Speaking of gubernatorial races: Three billionaires account for roughly two-thirds of Republican Tom Tiffany’s campaign cash in the Wisconsin governor’s race, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported Wednesday. Tiffany so far has outraised Democrat David Crowley 11 to one. The two campaigns then exchanged insults over their donor bases in the Journal-Sentinel story, with the Crowley campaign accusing Tiffany of trying to “buy this election” and the Tiffany campaign bringing up LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, a large donor to the broader state Democratic Party with Epstein ties, who does not appear to have given directly to Crowley’s campaign. “Crowley’s largest donors to-date have been political action committees and groups linked to labor, including the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Wisconsin Laborers’ District Council, and Wisconsin Pipe Trades Association,” Mary Spicuzza and Eva Wen report.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

The Groundwork Collaborative and Reset Tech have released a new report on the “hidden cost” of AI. It’s not just via electrical bills, write authors Rishi Bharwani, Janelle Jones, Lindsay Owens, and Zoe Butler. Other pathways they identify include: online scams, algorithmic pricing, “amplifying the harms of social media,” and higher health care costs due to the use of AI tools in prior authorization review and medical coding.

Data for Progress finds that public disapproval of Flock cameras has grown significantly in the past month. In August, “voters viewed the cameras unfavorably by a 19-point margin. One month later, that deficit has grown to 29 points, with 52% now unfavorable.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Here’s Why That’s B.S.

No way was “national security” the real reason Trump banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House. Watch TNR’s Edie Olmsted break this down.

Political Trivia Question of the Day

Which American president established full diplomatic relations with China? (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

—Michael Tomasky

You’re reading The TNR Blue Book. Get daily scoops, strategy, and developments inside the liberal ideas factory delivered right to your inbox. Sign up for free.

Inside Washington

The new “hot” issue: Home heating bills spiking due to the Iran war

As autumn begins and temperatures start to dip across the Northeast, many Americans who rely on heating oil to warm their homes are facing massive price increases due to the war in Iran. Democrats have started talking about utility costs on the campaign trail, and voters facing a cold and expensive winter seem to be listening.

Some of the cycle’s most watched elections are in states where heating oil keeps houses warm in the wintertime: Maine, Alaska, and Pennsylvania. Democratic candidates in these states are already running on the high cost of heating as winter approaches. On Tuesday, the House Majority PAC released an ad slamming Paul LePage, the Republican candidate running against Democrat Matt Dunlap in Maine’s 2nd congressional district. “LePage supports a foreign war that’s sending gas and oil prices in Maine through the roof,” the ad says.

Dunlap hammered that point in a statement to The New Republic, writing that “Mainers are already being forced to choose between heating their homes, buying groceries, and paying for health care.” Meanwhile, he said, “Paul LePage supports the Iran war that’s raising prices and refuses to challenge his party bosses in Washington.”

Maine Senate candidate Troy Jackson’s campaign tied heating oil prices to Senator Susan Collins in a statement to The New Republic: “Susan Collins has spent decades selling out Mainers by supporting an agenda that raises their energy costs, dismantling programs aimed at lowering prices, signing off on Trump’s war that’s jacking up the cost of heating oil as Mainers schedule their tank fill-ups for winter,” said campaign spokesperson Cheyenne Gallivan.

In Alaska, Senate candidate Mary Peltola echoed that sentiment, releasing a statement tying her opponent to the cost of home heating. “A dozen times Dan Sullivan has voted to continue the war in Iran. A dozen times Dan Sullivan has voted to jack up our prices. Sullivan’s fuel price hikes affect everyone—from our smallest fishing boat in the ocean, to families heating their homes through winter,” the statement reads.

Earlier this month, the price of oil topped $100 per barrel for the first time since July, and estimates from the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, or NEADA, project that U.S. households will spend on average nearly 9 percent more than last year—an extra $82—to heat their homes this winter. The figure is even higher for households that rely on heating oil, though; NEADA estimates that households using heating oil could pay $707 more than they did last winter to stay warm.

In New York, the cost of heating oil has shot up 66 percent from last year’s price. Across the Northeast, some homeowners are already making tough decisions about how they plan to heat their homes. Experts stressed that utility costs have already been higher than usual, and the Iran war has only added to that burden.

The increased cost of energy comes as the war in Iran nears its seven-month mark. This week, Senate Democrats are planning to push another vote curbing Trump’s war-making power to the floor, hoping to get Republicans on record in their support for the expensive and devastating conflict. In previous war powers votes, Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Rand Paul of Kentucky have voted with Democrats to oppose the war. Retiring Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina has said that he would support the resolution this time, after voting against it previously.

Aside from trying to halt the war in Iran, some Democrats are pushing to strengthen energy assistance programs that help the lowest-income and most vulnerable Americans, like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP. “Last year was Vermont’s coldest winter in almost two decades, and the weather will only continue to get more extreme—in red and blue states alike,” said Vermont Senator Peter Welch. “Yet the Trump administration has threatened to eliminate LIHEAP—not just once, but six times.” On Thursday, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York sent a letter to RFK Jr. requesting that the Department of Health and Human Services release LIHEAP funding to the states earlier, “in light of the alarming rise in global oil prices prompted by this administration’s war in Iran.”

In the early days of the Trump administration, DOGE fired the entire staff responsible for LIHEAP. “Making sure that there is a federal workforce that is able to administer the LIHEAP program and release the funds at least on time is definitely super important,” said Rachel Jacobson, the lead researcher on state climate policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Meanwhile, she explained, states could put into place moratoria on utility shutoffs, preventing utilities from cutting off energy to residents who can’t afford it during the coldest months of the year.

While it could be an expensive winter for some in the Northeast and beyond, Sandeep Vaheesan, legal director at the Open Markets Institute, cautiously suggested there could be a bright side. “One sort of positive feature of the moment is energy costs have been politicized,” he said. “Will the public and political interest be sustained and be enough to activate elected officials? I don’t think the affordability crisis is going away, so I’m cautiously optimistic.”

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

Reaction continues to ProPublica’s blockbuster report published Tuesday morning. GOP Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the ProPublica team revealed, was being investigated by the FBI over surprisingly detailed and specific pay-to-play allegations when the Trump administration gutted the anti-corruption arm of the Justice Department, shuttering an investigation that was rapidly widening to include other members of Congress. Democrat Troy Jackson, who faces Collins in November, quickly issued a statement Tuesday calling Collins’s actions “corruption of the highest order” and saying that Maine residents “deserve answers.” Collins’s team, meanwhile, has called the ProPublica story “categorically false.” The final line of ProPublica’s Tuesday piece implicated another senator, as well: the late Lindsey Graham. As of Wednesday morning there has been no reaction from the campaign of Darline Graham Nordone—Graham’s sister, appointed to replace him, who is now defending the seat against Democratic challenger Annie Andrews.

At Spotlight PA, Stephen Caruso lays out possible scenarios for Democrats to flip Pennsylvania’s state Senate, after decades of GOP control. “Pennsylvania Democrats have their best shot in recent memory,” writes Caruso, “at winning a vaunted trifecta—meaning control of the governorship and both legislative chambers.” Democrats Eileen Hartnett Albillar, Mark Pinsley, Chris Thomas, and Brian Wrightson are challenging Republican incumbents in the 6th, 16th, 24th, and 40th districts, respectively, and the limited polling available suggests some of these may be close. “The latter two races,” Caruso notes, “have been defined by the ongoing data center debate.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

Open Markets Institute isn’t loving the Paramount–Warner Bros. merger settlement, in which Paramount agreed to various niceties in exchange for state attorneys general dropping the suit to block the company’s acquisition of Warner Bros. “It is increasingly obvious,” OMI executive director Barry Lynn said in an aggressive statement on the organization’s website, “that many top political leaders and officials are either beholden to corporate monopolies, or feel unable to stand up to their power.” Lynn singles out California Governor Gavin Newsom, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Xavier Becerra, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass for particular censure, alleging they pressured California Attorney General Rob Bonta to settle.

As is traditional ahead of state visits like the one Washington will see this week, several think tanks and outlets have published ideas and recommendations for better U.S.-China relations in the lead-up to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s White House visit on Thursday. Here’s a particularly interesting one: At the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, visiting researcher Lucy Luo last week tackled the question of what an AI crisis “hotline”—as some have recommended to deal with the risk of rogue AI agents—would need to look like in order to be effective. Prior U.S.-China hotlines “repeatedly failed in moments of need,” Luo notes. For this one to work, she writes, it should be text-based, would need to “establish different lines for routine communication and emergencies,” as well as “thresholds” for hotline use, and would need to “design for AI.” Have a read.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Political Trivia Question of the Day

Trump’s threat to “annihilate” Iran brings to mind the 1953 CIA-backed coup that installed the Shah (who in turn was deposed in 1979 by the revolution that ushered in the current government). Who was the CIA operative long credited with orchestrating the coup? (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

—Michael Tomasky

You’re reading The TNR Blue Book. Get daily scoops, strategy, and developments inside the liberal ideas factory delivered right to your inbox. Sign up for free.

Inside Washington

How do you stop election tampering before it happens?

A potential crisis was averted last week when the Supreme Court blocked President Trump’s plan to restrict mail-in voting. But election integrity experts and lawmakers are still lying awake at night worrying about threats on the ground: physical intimidation at polling places, ballots seized, and postelection insurrection.

On Friday, a coalition led by the NAACP filed a lawsuit asking for a court order to prevent the Trump administration from deploying federal agents to the polls “in a manner that unlawfully intimidates voters or anyone urging or aiding voters.” The coalition, which includes a number of labor unions, is concerned that Immigration and Customs Enforcement or National Guard presence at the polls could discourage naturalized citizens or Hispanic voters from voting.

But that’s not the only scenario worrying people. “We have no idea what Trump will do next because his entire presidency this time and last time has been totally unpredictable and chaotic,” said Jane Kleeb, the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee and president of the Association of State Democratic Committees, or ASDC.

“What I am really worried about is the possibility of a law enforcement warrant to seize election materials and ballots,” said Shelby Wayment, a staff attorney at UCLA Law’s Safeguarding Democracy Project. The group recently released a guide for judges if they do receive a request for a warrant to seize election materials. The government has attempted to do similar seizures before—the FBI seized 2020 voting records in Fulton County, Georgia, and the Department of Justice has attempted to get warrants for 2024 voting records in Wayne County, Michigan.

Wayment is particularly concerned that this could happen in states like California (where tabulating the vote notoriously takes a long time) or in counties that are critical to determining who ultimately takes control of the House. “If the chain of custody is disrupted” by having ballots seized, Wayment explained, “you don’t really have clear evidence of who has handled those ballots, where those have been.”

Even though Trump’s plan to restrict mail-in ballots was blocked, advocates are looking at other aspects of the March executive order that established that plan. In that same executive order, Trump instructed the federal government to create lists of citizens in each state and send the lists to the state election officials. The idea behind the citizenship lists, explained Aria Branch of Elias Law Group, would be to force states to purge voters who aren’t on those lists, no matter that the lists could be incorrect. Litigation is ongoing to prevent this, but Branch is still concerned. “I don’t think that we are out of the woods on that issue at all,” she said.

Democratic lawmakers, election officials, and civil society groups have been collaborating in the lead-up to November. On September 14, the ASDC launched the New Battlefield Project to protect the midterms across all 50 states. The project is threefold—training up to 10,000 volunteers to be poll watchers, pushing voters to vote as early as possible, and establishing the Democracy Defense Network, a group of analysts who monitor election disinformation and scare tactics and inform state parties about what they’re seeing.

“What keeps me up at night is the idea that all of the insurrectionists [Trump] pardoned would be summoned to get their buddies and go outside of polling locations and drop-box locations to intimidate voters,” said Kleeb. To counteract that threat, the ASDC will train volunteers to show up at polling places and peacefully observe, gathering any information necessary for lawsuits if something goes wrong.

The New Battlefield Project is also funding “Election Protection Directors” in 20 states that didn’t have the resources to hire anyone for the role. These directors will coordinate with the DNC if anything goes awry in their state’s elections, assemble teams of lawyers, and help coordinate the poll-watching volunteers.

Last week, Representatives Analilia Mejia, Emanuel Cleaver, Emily Randall, and Suhas Subramanyam introduced a resolution affirming the House’s commitment to enforcing the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and protecting voting rights. “Congress must act before the next election is upon us,” Mejia wrote in a statement to The New Republic. She pointed to the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act, though that legislation is unlikely to be passed anytime soon. “Congress has a constitutional responsibility to oversee elections, and we are derelict in our duties,” Mejia said.

Her co-sponsor, Subramanyam, is looking ahead to what could happen after the election. “I’m concerned that after the election, when Democrats win the majority, at least in the House, the president will call into question the results of the election and try to make that a mainstream Republican viewpoint,” he told The New Republic. He worries that there could be another January 6–style insurrection. If that happens, he explained, “certainly we’ll appeal to the courts to make sure that they implement the results of any election.” But if Republicans and the administration don’t back down, he said, “people will need to take to the streets.” Branch agrees that November 3 won’t be the end of things. “Election Day is sort of the beginning of this,” she said. “We also have to get the election certified, and then we have to get our members seated.”

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

Playing with fire: “Only eight of 160 utility companies that operate in fire-prone areas of Texas” have complied so far with a 2025 law requiring them to submit wildfire mitigation plans, The Texas Tribune reports. GOP state Representative Ken King, who spearheaded the 2025 law, is displeased. But there’s some interesting context to this news item that might not be immediately apparent to readers outside the state.

Focusing on electrical utilities has been a relatively popular GOP response to wildfires in recent years. GOP Senate candidate Ken Paxton, for example, as state attorney general, sued the electrical company believed to be responsible for the Smokehouse Creek fire. Any talk of how climate change is increasing wildfire risk, by contrast, is off the agenda. (Bizarrely, Paxton actually suggested ESG—a.k.a. “environmental, social, and governance” business practices—might have led to the fires.)

The 2025 wildfire mitigation law known as H.B. 145, though, was actually one of a trio of laws passed in response to the deadly 2024 Panhandle wildfires. The other fires burning around the time of the Smokehouse Creek fire are believed to have been caused not by a utility company but by private lines supplying an oil field. Accordingly, H.B. 143 and 144, which King also spearheaded, gave the state (especially via the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the oil industry) more regulatory oversight over oil and gas field electrical equipment.

Anything involving the oil industry in Texas is, obviously, a little more politically sensitive. (Even King in 2024 prefaced these proposals by telling the Tribune he would “never do anything to damage the oil and gas industry in our state.”) Right now, fossil fuels are a white-hot issue in the fight for Texas’s vital Senate seat. Paxton, a lifelong fossil fuel champion, has accused Democrat James Talarico of having “dedicated his career to trying to destroy the oil and gas industry.” Talarico, who has previously backed emissions-reductions targets and whose campaign materials cite wildfires as one of the dangers associated with climate change, has taken pains in recent weeks to emphasize his support for a fossil fuel–inclusive, “all of the above” energy policy (a position that gives climate activists nightmares).

Meanwhile, the race for a spot on the body newly tasked with inspecting oil field electrical equipment—the Texas Railroad Commission—has garnered national attention, after Republican candidate Bo French’s racist tweets prompted “shocked, shocked!” responses from state Republicans who cannot possibly have been surprised by this. Karl Rove even took to The Wall Street Journal to declare his allegiance to Democrat Jon Rosenthal instead.

Elsewhere:

• Record diesel prices are hammering the agriculture and trucking industries. NPR talks to fourth-generation farmer John Boyd Jr. in Virginia, and highlights the plight of Black farmers at risk of losing their farms. MPR News in Minnesota features the perspective of truckers who may “fill up 200 to 240 gallons at a time”—an act that now costs “more than $1,200.” Republicans are getting visibly nervous, and have proposed a diesel export ban and more.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

Wednesday at 5 p.m., the Brookings Institution, America’s Rural Future, West Virginia University’s Reed School of Media and Communications, and the American Enterprise Institute co-host an event at West Virginia University about the loss of local news and its impact on rural communities. Speakers include Mayor Amy Shuler Goodwin of Charleston, West Virginia, and Rebuild Local News director of policy Matt Pearce.

Tuesday at 11 a.m., the Center for American Progress hosts a conversation with Senator Tammy Duckworth on “the evolving challenges posed by the People’s Republic of China, as well as opportunities for strategic engagement within the bilateral relationship.” CAP senior vice president Damian Murphy will offer opening remarks, and senior fellow Jonathan Fritz will join Duckworth onstage for the discussion.

In case you missed it: The Progressive Policy Institute last week released an intriguing report profiling Democratic candidates who have succeeded in working-class districts. A rather pointed quote from the interview Robin Johnson, the report’s co-author, did with Vox for the release: The successful candidates, Johnson said, “are from a variety of backgrounds … and we want to contrast that with the consultants who tried to make the perfect Frankenstein candidate out of [former Maine Senate candidate Graham] Platner. These people are out there—you don’t need to create it. They’re out there.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing: Four Questions For

Dustin Gouker, journalist covering gambling and prediction markets

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

A: I am a longtime journalist who currently self-publishes two newsletters: The Closing Line, which focuses on gambling, and The Event Horizon, which focuses on prediction markets. I am trying to figure what’s next for prediction markets and for me. It’s easy not to look past the next newsletter, given the aggressive news cycles these days.

Q: What is the most common misconception you regularly see about how prediction markets operate?

A: I think too many people see prediction markets as a binary thing that is good or bad, and gambling or not gambling. There is a lot of good in prediction markets, but it’s accompanied by some nonsense. And while betting parlays and sports sides are pretty clearly gambling, there are markets that are legitimately useful from a price discovery and economic value standpoint. I don’t think prediction markets should be pigeonholed.

Q: Is internal enforcement enough for keeping prediction markets in check, or would you like to see more regulation?

A: I am afraid of what will happen if there’s not more regulation of prediction markets. Don’t get me wrong, there is definitely regulation, and much of it is good. But some of that regulation doesn’t treat prediction markets as gambling products, and I don’t think there are enough guardrails in some areas.

Q: What keeps you going in these stressful times?

A: I have always been a writer, and the task of writing and publishing two newsletters pretty much every day is something I can fall back on. I am blessed that I get to work for myself and do something I love and that other people value.

Interview by Grace Segers

Political Trivia Question of the Day

Since it’s U.N. week, a rare question on international rather than U.S. politics. The first two secretaries-general of the U.N. were both from Scandinavia. Can you name them and the countries they came from? (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

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Inside Washington

The surprising issue dividing Senate Dems right now

While Americans worry about sky-high gas prices and AI safety, the Senate has its sights trained on something entirely different—the world of college sports. Though it might seem like an odd focus for the upper chamber in the last few weeks before the October recess, a bill is sparking substantive disagreements over antitrust policy, racial justice in sports, and workers’ rights.

The bill dividing Democrats is the Protect College Sports Act, which the Senate voted to advance on Thursday. The bill attempts to regulate the lucrative world of college sports by setting a cap on payments to athletes, placing a five-year limit on playing eligibility, and giving the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA, an antitrust exemption. Supporters of the bill say that it will bring order to the world of college sports, setting rules on how athletes can use the transfer portal, stopping a “spending spiral” by schools, and putting an end to lawsuits on these issues.

The bill easily passed the vote to consider it, with 77 votes for it and just 22 against it; 19 Senate Democrats voted against the bill alongside three Republicans, moving them closer to a final vote on the legislation. “I think the bill is necessary, and it’s not a perfect bill,” said Michigan Senator Gary Peters, who voted for it. “I don’t think we’d ever be able to come up with a perfect bill.”

Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, an outspoken Democratic supporter of the bill, agreed that the bill does more good than harm. “On balance, this is a compromise that secures a lot of significant benefits and protections for college athletes,” he told The New Republic on Thursday. When asked what he thought about his colleagues who were concerned about the antitrust exemption, he mumbled wryly: “Good for them.”

Anti-monopoly advocates worry that the antitrust exemption takes power away from student athletes, who in recent years have benefited from competition between schools trying to woo them onto their teams with cash deals. In 2025, the settlement of a 2020 lawsuit gave Division I schools the right to pay players directly. But before student athletes gained the right to make money from their work on the court or field, coaches and athletic directors took home the most cash. “The players were getting pennies on the dollar,” said Sandeep Vaheesan, the legal director at the anti-monopoly organization Open Markets Institute. “Even though they were the ones really generating all this money.”

Vaheesan, along with lawmakers like Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, are concerned that this legislation could reverse these recent financial wins for student athletes. “I think we’re going to rue the day we gave an antitrust exemption this big to the colleges,” Murphy said. “It’s going to result in a huge cost increase for consumers and for folks who follow college sports on TV.”

Asked why he thought the bill was passing with the support of some of his fellow Senate Democrats, Murphy said: “The Power Five schools have a lot of influence. They’ve spent millions and millions of dollars on lobbying.”

Coons argued that the bill isn’t too deferential to the interests of colleges. “They did not get the definition of college athletes as never being employees, which was one of the top asks of the conferences and colleges,” he said. “That was a concession to those of us who are strong supporters of organized labor and want to retain the possibility to organize.”

Meanwhile, all five of the Senate’s Black members—Republican Tim Scott and Democrats Cory Booker, Raphael Warnock, Lisa Blunt Rochester, and Angela Alsobrooks—opposed the bill. The NAACP’s president and chief executive strongly opposes the legislation. “Sharecropping is over,” he said on a media call this week. “We should not ask athletes, particularly Black athletes, to generate revenue on the football field or basketball court and then share in none of the revenue.”

“It does raise concerns about how committed members of the Senate, including Senate Democrats, are to the well-being and welfare of workers,” Vaheesan said.

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

Surging gas prices are dominating headlines this week, particularly across the Midwest. In Michigan, gas prices jumped 22 cents from Wednesday to Thursday, drawing worryingly close to $5 a gallon, with further hikes predicted. (Average prices in Minnesota rose 14 cents in the same 24-hour period. In Cincinnati, Ohio, prices jumped 25 cents overnight between Tuesday and Wednesday.) At the Detroit Free Press on Thursday, Frank Witsil reported new calculations from Brown University professor Jeff Colgan estimating that since the start of Trump’s war on Iran, American households have paid on average $826 more on gas than they would have without the conflict. Susan Tompor of the same paper reported a troubling new trend of free gas and free groceries scams. “This summer,” writes Tompor, “the Better Business Bureau Scam Tracker page received reports from consumers who complained that they received postcards claiming they qualified for valuable gas and grocery gift cards and vouchers,” from the mysteriously named “AAPP”—which can look like “AARP” if people are reading quickly. Those who followed the instructions “complained that they lost money once they paid a $5 processing fee. Some consumers saw additional unauthorized charges of $46 or more being taken out of their accounts.” Analysts predict that prices will remain high for months to come—with record diesel prices rapidly affecting the rest of the economy via their impact on trucking and farming.

In case you missed it: Arizona Republicans are pushing ahead with subpoenas for Governor Katie Hobbs, state Attorney General Kris Mayes, their staff, and others over events from 2022 that The Arizona Republic first reported in 2024. Specifically: The state’s Department of Child Safety, per Axios reporter Jeremy Duda’s retelling of the somewhat tangled tale, “granted a previously rejected rate hike to Sunshine Residential Homes after the group home provider gave $400,000 to Hobbs’s inauguration fund and the Arizona Democratic Party.” Mayes’s office concluded a two-year investigation last month finding no “evidence of the necessary quid pro quo to support a bribery charge,” per the final memo. But GOP State Senator Jake Hoffman says the investigation was phony and incomplete, and now the hearing at which Hobbs and others will be compelled to testify is scheduled, Duda reports, for “eight days before early voting begins and five weeks before the election.” Hobbs and her running mate, former GOP Mesa Mayor John Giles, have consistently led Republicans Andy Biggs and running mate Sine Kerr in recent polls, but the margins have varied widely from poll to poll. While the Cook Political Report moved the race from “toss-up” to “lean Democrat” in July, their race summary still rates Hobbs “the most endangered Democratic incumbent.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

The Center for Biological Diversity is suing the Trump administration “for withholding public records detailing the efforts of politically appointed industry insiders at the Environmental Protection Agency to reapprove the dangerous, drift-prone pesticide dicamba,” according to the org’s press release. Dicamba is typically applied to crops that have been genetically modified to resist it, so that it kills the weeds but not the crops. But it also has a habit of “drifting” from its initial area of application and killing other crops, as well as wildlife. Plus it’s repeatedly been linked to increased risk of cancer in humans. “If you’ve done nothing wrong, then you have no reason to withhold public documents,” CBD’s environmental health science director Nathan Donley said in the press release. CBD was also part of a coalition of groups that sued the Trump administration in February, challenging the initial reapproval.

Friday at 1 p.m., a webcast at the Center for Strategic and International Studies asks: “Is U.S. Economic Diplomacy Up to Speed?” The question may feel bleakly comical against the backdrop of Trump tariffs, the economic shocks of the Iran war, and speculation that Canada might join the EU just to piss Trump off. But Enoh T. Ebong, Allison Lombardo, and Jonathan Gandomi, according to CSIS’s event summary, will focus on a broader, more process-oriented issue: whether the State Department is ready to participate in a new era of negotiations over “critical minerals supply chains … technology standards,” and more. “While the State Department’s role has expanded significantly,” the organization’s event summary states, “its internal structures have not kept pace, leaving expertise fragmented across nearly 20 agencies without strong coordination.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Good Week/Bad Week

Good Week: Macklemore

Sure, the middling rapper got booted from his supporting slot on Ed Sheeran’s tour because of his pro-Palestinian statement during a performance at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium—that’s bad news for him financially. But his righteous stance is being applauded worldwide, and other Sheeran opening acts followed suit. Plus, when was the last time everyone was talking about Macklemore? (Never.)

Bad Week: Ed Sheeran

We knew his music was an abomination. Now we know that his politics are too. Booting an artist from your tour because he said “Free Palestine” does not make you “apolitical”; it makes you an explicit opponent of Palestine’s self-determination, and a craven lickspittle of the corporate entertainment complex.

—Ryan Kearney

Political Trivia Question of the Day

With Texas on our minds: Three speakers of the House in the twentieth century, all Democrats, hailed from Texas. Who were they? One is really hard—he was speaker for just one term. One was speaker for nearly two decades. The third’s tenure ended in (ginned-up) scandal. (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in Tuesday’s newsletter.)