President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are considering removing Guilfoyle as America’s newly minted ambassador to Greece over allegations that she engaged in illegal conduct, the Associated Press reported Monday.

In a series of reports, Guilfoyle has been accused of threatening a host country official and offering access to Trump administration officials in return for the quiet payment of a $100,000 credit card bill. She was also caught bragging about her close ties to two Greek tycoons who she said were bankrolling her travels as she begged to get into a dinner with Eric Trump.

As the ex-fiancé of Donald Trump Jr., Guilfoyle’s close ties to the president’s inner circle could earn her some amount of grace. But Rubio has become increasingly frustrated as the reports about Guilfoyle’s alleged misconduct have multiplied, one U.S. official told the AP. Rubio was particularly pissed off after he arrived in Greece last week entirely unaware of the shitstorm that was about to rain down on America’s ambassador there.

The State Department’s inspector general is looking into the allegations, a second U.S. official told the AP, but could not say whether a formal investigation had been launched.

This multithousand-dollar gaffe was made by the Defending Main Street Super PAC Inc, which sent a commercial calling Collins’s Democratic opponent Troy Jackson “taxin’ Troy Jackson.” Too bad virtually none of the people who will see it can vote in that election.

Republican Main Street Partnership President Sarah Chamberlain told NBC News Monday she was “absolutely furious” and blamed the ad buyer, Cross Screen Media, for a “ridiculous” error.

“The buyers made a mistake on one of the placements. It’s down now and they’re running it in Portland, Maine,” Chamberlain said. “It has nothing to do with us. I would never run an ad in Portland, Oregon, for Susan Collins, for Christ’s sake.”

Collins certainly could’ve used that money, as multiple polls have the incumbent slightly behind Jackson in the upcoming November election.

A nine-page memorandum reviewed by Texas Monthly outlined all of the ways that the state government could thwart the construction of the East Plano Islamic Center, or EPIC City, a large housing development and mosque outside of Dallas.

The memo warned that “foreign adversarial interests” might be seeking to “abuse” and “exploit” Texas, and “undermine our communities from the inside,” Texas Monthly reported Monday. The memo had no letterhead, signature, or date but was disseminated to different agency heads by members of Abbott’s office and his advisers. Sure enough, the memo’s language has since reappeared in press releases announcing official inquiries from a range of state agencies, including the Texas Funeral Service Commission, Texas Workforce Commission, and the Texas Rangers, among others.

Travis Iles, then-commissioner of the Texas State Securities Board, had a meeting in March 2025 with Daniel Mittnacht, a political adviser; Trevor Ezell, Abbott’s general counsel; and Caleb Gunnels, an assistant general counsel. The group went over the memo, and after the meeting, Iles assembled a team of six career regulators and attorneys to investigate whether EPIC City’s investors were being told enough about the project, Texas Monthly reported.

Iles’s investigation found that EPIC City’s fundraising didn’t seem to have anything to do with securities at all. Investors in EPIC City had purchased units that would guarantee them the opportunity to purchase property lots at a discounted price—not securities that would passively derive profits.

That’s when Paxton got involved. In October 2025, Paxton’s office issued a press release alleging that EPIC City’s developer had “flagrantly and undeniably” broken securities laws—without ever discussing the matter with agency officials. Iles quickly realized that Paxton’s office was expecting him to provide the pretext for a securities-fraud case.

Iles was pressured by Mittnacht, Ezell, and Gunnels to refer the case to Paxton’s office. Eventually, he did, but he declined to say that EPIC City’s developers were selling securities, and he made clear that he had not reviewed the attorney general’s supposed evidence. Iles even suggested that Paxton’s office should sue under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, rather than pursue securities-fraud charges.

Paxton was undeterred. He announced a securities-fraud lawsuit against EPIC City’s developers on December 5, 2025. Fox News reported that Iles had claimed the developer “sold securities without meeting registration or exemption requirements,” and had referred the case to the attorney general “after identifying ‘flagrant’ violations.”

“Horseshit,” Iles wrote in the subject line of an email the next day. In the body of the email, he included a link to the Fox News article and his assessment of the case: “Corrupt.”

In a press release on December 8, 2025, Iles said that the assertion the EPIC City’s developers were selling securities was “a wholly false statement” that had been wrongly attributed to him by Fox News. Shortly after, he was asked to resign. He quietly stepped down as commissioner and left the agency in April 2026.

Axios reported Monday that the president “didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic” about the plan, which Democrats and Republicans alike have panned as heinous and barbaric. Trump told another aide that it “might not happen.”

This is a 180 for the president, who was all-in on the public execution just last week. “Absolutely, I approved,” he said then.

Now, after a wave of bipartisan backlash, that tune has changed.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Senator Thom Tillis, and Representative Adam Scott were a few of the Republicans who also expressed their opposition to livestreaming Hasan’s execution.

“The concern would be that it would create a video that would be a recruiting tool for future terrorists,” Johnson said in a CBS News interview over the weekend. “I wouldn’t be watching it if it was aired.… [but] that’s outside of my lane of course.”.

“But I need to tell the White House what some of my colleagues think about that, and not everybody’s in favor of the idea.”

“Hasan should face the death penalty, but making his execution public and streaming it? Beyond disgusting,” Senator Thom Tillis said Thursday. “Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America.”

“I absolutely support the sentence of death, but live-streaming executions is what jihadists do. America is better than that,” Representative Adam Scott chimed in the next day.

Hasan, a 56-year-old former Army psychiatrist from Virginia, killed 13 soldiers and wounded 32 others when he attacked the Texas military post in 2009. His execution date is set for December 3.

Johnson made his position known during a CBS News interview over the weekend.

“The concern would be that it would create a video that would be a recruiting tool for future terrorists,” Johnson said. “I wouldn’t be watching it if it was aired … [but] that’s outside of my lane of course. But I need to tell the White House what some of my colleagues think about that, and not everybody’s in favor of the idea.”

Hasan, a 56-year-old former Army psychiatrist from Virginia, killed 13 soldiers and wounded 32 others when he attacked the Texas military post in 2009. Last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed the Pentagon’s plans to livestream Hasan’s execution by military firing squad.

“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” Hegseth said at the time.

Multiple Republicans expressed their distaste for the decision.

“Hasan should face the death penalty, but making his execution public and streaming it? Beyond disgusting,” Senator Thom Tillis said Thursday. “Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America.”

“I absolutely support the sentence of death, but live-streaming executions is what jihadists do. America is better than that,” Representative Adam Scott chimed in the next day.

Hasan’s execution date is set for December 3. It is unclear what platform, if any, will agree to livestream it.

During the initial leg of his nationwide tour of half-full high school gyms, the president has been in a “foul mood,” one person with knowledge of his behavior told The Washington Post Monday.

Trump is still speaking in rooms that are packed with supporters—seeing as he’s purposefully touring in deep red areas—but this time around, the venues are smaller, and the vibe is different. Trump’s speaking events don’t feel so much like pep rallies as they do stops on a farewell tour.

Trump is a lot less popular now than he was the last time he hit the campaign trail. The president has even become a liability to some Republican candidates. Ahead of his visit to Syracuse on Friday to support the New York Republican gubernatorial candidate, conservative radio host Bob Lonsberry urged him to cancel, according to the Post. “Stay away, Mr. President,” he wrote on social media. “The last thing Bruce Blakeman needs is a visit from you.”

The Post reported that Trump “combines political strategy with his personal preferences,” jumping between races that need a boost and just stumping for his buddies. His team has also struggled with finding venues of appropriate size and security level, as well as accommodations for the president. “He does not like to stay overnight except at his own properties,” the paper found.

Plus, Trump is 80 years old now, and he’s slowing down. And perhaps it’s beginning to sink in just how close to impeachment he really is, should Democrats regain control of the House and Senate.

Mark Mitchell, an independent pollster and former Trump supporter, told the Post that if the president isn’t impeached following the midterm elections, it’s not looking likely that he’ll hit the campaign trail again.

“It’s the last time he’s really going to be able to do this in full force,” said Mitchell. “A 30-day blitz of the country to do these rallies again when he’s the most unpopular president—it just doesn’t really make sense.”

“There have been now five audio leaks from a private fundraiser you attended on September 24 published by various media outlets,” Fox News host Alica Acuna asked Sunday. “Are you concerned that they all came from the same, and are you figuring out who did it? But then also, it raises some flags … over your thoughts, publicly and privately, over the president and Washington.”

“Look, I’m not worried about it at all,” Paxton replied. “You can look at my record, you can look [at] what I’ve done over the last 12 years. I’ve supported President Trump, I love President Trump. We’ve worked together on many many issues, he’s been at work extremely hard to help me get elected. And I really appreciate him.”

“Just because they were able to clip a few things doesn’t mean that’s actually what I meant. So let’s just go back to the record, not this little game that James Talarico has played the whole time, which is ‘let’s not talk about Ken Paxton’s actual record’.… Let’s muddy the water and try to trick people into believing he’s something that he’s not, which is a real Texan.”

Paxton is framing direct quotes that he said to his own supporters in confidence as a “little game.” The reason he has to justify his relationship to Trump is because he himself was critical of the president.

In previous leaks from the event last month, Paxton called Trump a drag on his campaign and said Trump’s war on Iran was raising prices and making it harder for him to campaign. He also claimed that Washington, D.C. was controlling his campaign from afar, and told people depending on federal benefits programs to “suck it up” and prepare for cuts. All of this makes him sound much more like a Never Trump Republican than the loyalist he claims to be.

Talarico—who was born and raised in Texas—is currently virtually tied with Paxton ahead of the November midterm elections.

Perry Bacon: Good morning. I’m Perry Bacon. I’m the host of Right Now on The New Republic. I’m joined by Elizabeth Saunders. She’s a professor of political science at Columbia University. She’s been a regular guest talking to us about her specialty, which is how US policymakers decide and work on foreign policy. So we’ve had her on a few times. Elizabeth, thanks for joining me again.

Elizabeth Saunders: My pleasure.

Bacon: So I’m going to go a little bit around the world, not too many places, but I want to hit some various news items that we’ve talked about. When you were on during the Iran war, the US and Israel’s decision—the Iran war we’ve been in, when it started, you talked about, as it started going on, that Trump’s choices were between escalation, meaning really trying to destroy Iran, or capitulation.

My perception is he’s actually chosen, in some ways, a weird third course, which is do not solve the issue, allow gas prices to go up, and kill his political party. That was not an option most presidents think to—most presidents would’ve been constrained by, oil prices are killing my party, I want them to win. He doesn’t seem to care. Even George Bush in ‘06 cared about those basic dynamics.

So do you still see that capitulation, escalation as where things are going, or how do you see how he’s handled Iran now?

Saunders: So I still think his choices are humiliation and escalation. I put everything you just said in the humiliation bucket. And if you believe The New York Times and The Atlantic and other outlets that reported yesterday, he’s had the Pentagon draw up and then rejected a bunch of escalation options that he may or may not use before the midterms, may or may not use after. So escalation is still apparently on the table. We’ve sent another carrier.

And I would just add to that, that the humiliation is a slow accumulation of things, including an underappreciated fact, I think, which is that the United States does not currently have an aircraft carrier in the Indo-Pacific region, which is pretty shocking if you follow US defense policy.

Now, you might say that aircraft carriers might not be the most useful tool in the Indo-Pacific, but if you believe the idea that we have an interest in the Indo-Pacific, and we’ve had carriers there indefinitely, the fact that we are stretched so thin that we had to pull the last remaining one out is a pretty shocking fact.

I think what is new about the Iran war is that there have always been other actors who could shape the way this goes. But now they’ve acted, and Donald Trump is no longer in charge of the on/off switch of this war, right? Say, by some miracle, we get a deal with Iran tomorrow, which is not going to happen, but for argument’s sake, the Houthis will have something to say about that, right? And they are an Iranian proxy with an awful lot of agency, compared to even other Iranian proxies, and so they’ve been striking airports in Riyadh and Saudi Arabia.

So this has unleashed forces that are no longer—Trump’s access to the off switch, which is full humiliation but stops the escalation maybe, is increasingly tenuous, if it exists at all.

Bacon: But a war we haven’t won and that has killed him politically is humiliation in a certain sense, right?

Saunders: Yes. I would say that’s Vietnam. And the midterms in 2006 with the Iraq War I think is only a partial analogy, for a variety of reasons. But I would say that was humiliation, and then Bush chose a course to escalate, to get to some kind of outcome he could declare a victory. And that may still happen after the midterms, which is what Bush did.

Bacon: But Trump has been hinting at escalation for months now, so my guess is he doesn’t actually want to do that, right?

Saunders: Yeah. His credibility is completely destroyed. I think that was when he backed off of his first civilizational threat.

I do want to just make a quick point about this really troubling and strange story in the UK. The bombers that were pulled very suddenly from RAF Fairford, which is a Royal Air Force base in the UK that had been hosting US bombers, and they were very suddenly taken out because of this apparent plot against the base.

And the details of this story are really odd, and it probably means there’s more that hasn’t actually come out. But the UK and the US have said that Iran is somehow behind this in some way, and we don’t know how directly.

Just imagine for a minute if this had been a plot that had blown up. There’s some thought that maybe they were mimicking the Ukrainian attack on Russian bombers, right? They use drones, they blow up some American bombers, and they kill American airmen who are stationed at the base, of whom there are many.

Unless it was by accident, I really have a hard time imagining that would not have provoked a massive American and British response. I don’t think that the reporting on this has even quite grasped—if that had happened, it would’ve been the biggest story in the UK in decades.

Bacon: Interesting.

Saunders: And would raise all sorts of questions. I don’t think most Americans are aware of just how much damage has been done to our Middle East bases. It’s really shocking. But those are forward bases close to Iran. Psychologically, blowing up a UK air base and killing Americans and British soldiers and destroying bombers, where you’d have lots of media coverage, it’s just a little odd.

And so the reason I say that is because surely Iran, which for all its many evils as a regime, has been very careful about exactly what it has done. And so this would have been crossing a line that is way over the line, right? It’s the equivalent of—the Russians apparently tried to bomb a train carrying Boris Johnson a couple weeks ago. I still wonder if that was a mistake in targeting, because that’s such an escalation.

So if you play the logic through, I’ve never been that worried that Trump would use nuclear weapons, because I just don’t think he would in the end. But there are some things he hasn’t done short of nuclear weapons that he could do.

He would maybe then actually fulfill his civilization-ending threat. So it’s so odd that I do wonder how real it was, or what stage, or who’s really behind it. And so I just find the reporting around it a little strange, given the magnitude of what would have happened.

Bacon: I’m glad you brought it up. I hadn’t really followed it. We talked about Greenland last time I talked to you, and so now we have some kind of security agreement. Was that humiliation as opposed to escalation, what happened with Denmark and Greenland, or something more complicated?

Saunders: I think what it is basically is like asking for your regular allowance from your parents at gunpoint, and then enduring all the costs of having done that, right?

Bacon: Of having used the gunpoint.

Saunders: So I think they got plenty of things out of it that maybe are good, an improvement on the status quo. For example, if Greenland becomes independent, it agrees that all the things in the agreement stay. So there’s no connection between Greenlandic independence and US national security access. That’s a change. From a US national security perspective, one could say that’s a win.

On the other hand, almost everything in the agreement they could have just negotiated without these dreadful verbal attacks, and the fears of real attacks on a US NATO ally. And the cost of that—this is what caused Mark Carney to say we are in the midst of a rupture. The costs of that, the loss of trust, it was way out of proportion. It was unnecessary, and they probably could have gotten it for free.

Bacon: Was Biden pursuing a policy like this? Do we need to have more access to Greenland than we had before, our military and so on? I never understood the rationale entirely.

Saunders: Yeah, it is true that the Arctic is a far more important area than it used to be. I think nobody would disagree with that, because the Russians and the Chinese transit. There are no Russians in Greenland, right, other than undercover. But it is very strategic. It’s the path the missiles would fly, the shortest path.

And so that’s why you got a lot of early warning, and you might want more of that. But this just would’ve been an under the radar issue that was negotiated with Denmark and Greenland. And I wonder if it was because Trump really wanted to be able to say he bought Greenland, right? So he could enlarge. There was never any reason why it had to be part of the United States in order to get any of these things. They’re separate questions, really.

Bacon: One area where he’s been successful in a certain sense would be in South America, the removal of Maduro and the sort of takeover of Venezuela, which appears that Marco Rubio is running the country now. So that policy has actually worked out the way Trump wanted. So I wanted to talk about then the context of Brazil.

In this election, it appears that the Trump allies have finished ahead in the first round. Looks like Bolsonaro’s son is probably going to win the presidency. So in a certain sense, has Trump succeeded in reshaping South America in his way, or is that more where things were going regardless of Trump?

Saunders: So, stipulating that I’m not a Latin American politics expert and don’t pretend to know the details, I think from what I’ve read from commentators, this was very much a surprise. Which means it was probably closer. This is not like a wave. On the other hand, incumbents are just disliked everywhere right now, whatever flavor they are.

Bacon: Spain. Britain. South America. Hungary. Yes, exactly.

Saunders: And so voting out whoever’s in is the—and I think that you would know better than I, but from what I’ve seen in polling in other places, like Minnesota, that’s true of domestic politics in the US. If there’s a Democratic incumbent, they’re not going to do as well as the average Democrat who isn’t an incumbent. So I think some of that is accounting for what happened.

I don’t even know how much Trump really put effort into this particular election, as opposed to the Javier Milei election in Argentina, in part because there wasn’t an economic crisis that offered him the opportunity to do that. I think the implication, though, which is disheartening, is the narrative around Brazil had been, they had a January 6 and they solved it, in the sense of, they jailed Bolsonaro, and he couldn’t run again.

Bacon: He was jailed and he couldn’t run again, both.

Saunders: Both, right. They handled it the way a lot of people wish we had handled our January 6. And their Supreme Court was a part of that. And so for that to have happened and then to get this—the people still get to decide, and they apparently have decided to bring back a Bolsonaro.

Bacon: But if Donald Trump Jr. was the president in November 2024, that would not have been a reassuring outcome compared to Donald Trump winning. You’re like, “Both were bad.”

Saunders: Exactly, yes. Those are the choices, and the people have spoken. It’s democracy. But there is this idea that a democracy should not actually allow criminals to stand for election, that you are allowed to draw lines about who is eligible. So I don’t know enough about the son to say if he’s—

Bacon: If he’s actually the—exactly.

Saunders: But let’s just assume that he’s innocent of any outright criminality and is just a kind of far-right figure. Oh, you there?

Bacon: I can hear you, yeah.

Saunders: Yeah, sorry, my screen blacked out for a sec. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that this is still in some way what the people want, right? And there’s only so much you can do. When you have an explicit threat against the Constitution and violence like January 6 and their equivalent, they addressed it, and this still happened. So maybe it’s just anti-incumbency that explains it, but it’s still disheartening.

Bacon: Because your point is that, as far as we know, Trump was not super involved in winning this election. I remember JD Vance flew to Hungary before the election actually happened. We think Trump was, as far as I can tell, less involved in the result in Brazil, obviously less involved than they were in controlling Venezuela. Your point is this election is about Brazil and not really about Trump in any sort of formal way.

Saunders: I think so. That’s my perception, and I may be wrong. But I think the fact that in Hungary you had a far-right incumbent who had been around for a long time, it fits the pattern, right? And although I understand that it’s now considered kind of a done deal that he will win, it’s not as though this was a landslide. But it’s still very disheartening.

Bacon: I’ll finish with Marco Rubio’s speech in Greece. I’m having a hard time summarizing it, so just tell me. I guess this generally fits into, like, the West needs to defend its civilization from the others, from the inferior. He didn’t quite use the word inferior, but it was clearly implied. I guess this is America first abroad, or nationalism abroad, but more formally stated. What did you make of the speech?

Saunders: I turned it off, actually, after I started, and I read some of the coverage after.

Bacon: It was clearly something he wanted to—this was a high-profile speech. It was important to him. Not sure if it was important to Trump, but I think it’s important to him.

Saunders: And I think this is part of him trying to position himself as Trump’s heir, outbidding JD Vance for this kind of civilizational stuff. I think the old Marco Rubio in another life would’ve probably, if he had gone to Greece at all, would’ve made a speech about democratic values. And I think there’s a lot of, but the slickness and the backdrop—

Bacon: It was very presidential. It was all—

Saunders: An announcement. Yeah, it was very, yeah. And I think Dan Drezner had a really good—he’s play acting at oratory, or something like that.

Bacon: I’ve seen oratory as well, so yeah.

Saunders: So I think what’s so odd about it is there’s hardly any diplomacy in it, right? He’s just going there to be able to have these clips and show them. And he is the national security adviser and the secretary of state, the nation’s top diplomat, right?

Every time I post on Bluesky about him, I always say the nation’s top diplomat, because I just do not think we can forget that he does this in the name of the United States. He is supposed to be the top diplomat. And diplomats for sure do things that are performative. That’s part of their job, is the pageantry.

But it’s just not clear who this was aimed at, and what the positive benefit to the United States of going over there and basically saying, “Your civilization is ancient and wonderful,” which they agree with, but they don’t want weaponized in this way, “and you’re letting it be polluted by these people who don’t look like me or you.”

It’s bigoted and it’s many things, but it’s not diplomatic. And there’s why to do that in Greece, right? Be undiplomatic when you go visit an adversary.

Bacon: I guess the idea is Greece is the cradle of—I think that’s what he was getting at. “Today we find ourselves at a crossroads. The next decade will write the story of the next century. The course we take will determine whether the West maintains its place at the head of the world or resigns itself to a future of atrophy, servitude, and decline. We’ll either choose to act now or lose the choice to act at all.” I guess in some ways I read the speech as being a more articulate version of what Trump says, with better speech writers.

Saunders: Not that much better.

Bacon: Not that much better. Fair enough. He’s trying to give a grand speech. That’s what I’m trying to get at, the idea is to say something grand, but I’m not sure if he’s saying anything particularly interesting. Is he saying anything interesting?

Saunders: No, he’s basically doing the same thing that Vance did at the Munich Security Conference. Vance is doing it the first year, and then Rubio did it at the Munich Security Conference this past year, 2026. It already feels like 10 years, right?

Bacon: This has been a long two years.

Saunders: And Rubio’s speech at Munich got a slightly warmer reception, because it was viewed as a recommitment to Europe in some way. But it was still a weird speech. And this one, it’s just, what was the point of it, right? Other than for him to be able to give a grand speech that features mostly himself.

And servitude to whom, right? It’s one thing to give a speech to say, “We are fighting...” Lots of presidents and secretaries of state have given speeches that are exploiting some historical—think of Reagan at Pointe du Hoc, right? The boys at Pointe du Hoc.

Stirring oratory, and it’s really about a fight between good and evil. But the evil there is the Nazis, and by extension the Soviet Union, which is clearly an adversary of the US. Who is he talking about other than immigrants?

Bacon: I think he’s talking about Muslims coming to Europe. That’s the obvious part. But they’re not really a threat.

Saunders: They are not a regime.

Bacon: They’re not a regime that’s going to take power.

Saunders: That’s what I was going to say, exactly. And so the idea, it’s such an ugly image, and doesn’t resonate with any diplomatic priority of the United States other than the Trump administration’s priority to put this at the beginning of their national security strategy, right? Whatever happened to countering China?

Maybe that’s not your priority, but that has been the priority. Whatever happened to countering Russia, helping Ukraine stay sovereign? It’s just, why this, why now? It’s ugly. And it’s not as though Europe doesn’t realize that it has—you can believe that Europe is not adequately controlling its borders.

Bacon: Which a lot of European leaders on the far left and the center and the far right all think already.

Saunders: Exactly. And you can think that the southern border in the US is a problem that isn’t solved yet without wanting to see ICE shooting people in New York, as they did last night. So it’s just not clear what the point of this is. Europe is well aware of its immigration issue. And so I have to conclude it’s a way of outbidding on ugliness.

Bacon: Interesting. I mostly do domestic politics, and that’s not really your focus, but I’m curious, what’s your sense of—if the midterms go the way we think they are going to, which is the Democrats could win a lot of House seats, maybe win the Senate, and anyway it looks like there’s a rejection of Trump by the electorate. That’s what it looks like we’re headed for.

We can discuss the details of that, but I think the polls suggest we’re going to have a rejection of Trump. How does that affect anything we’ve talked about? Broadly or specifically, are there any foreign policy changes you think result from the electorate? Because Trump doesn’t have to abide by the election, doesn’t have to do anything about it, but do you think it might change anything?

Saunders: First, I think Greenland is going to be very happy that it concluded this deal before the midterms, because the thing that I really worry about is a cornered Trump lashing out, right? Traditionally, late in the second term, lame ducks go for foreign policy. They want a legacy thing.

Trump has swung so many times at that pitch already, that what’s left? He isn’t going to be able to buy Greenland and add it to the US territory. He hasn’t defeated Iran, and isn’t going to. Or at least not on terms that we would accept as legitimate, at a cost that’s acceptable. He apparently wanted to do another grand deal with Kim Jong Un, and Kim Jong Un ghosted him. So I don’t know. And he already has his photo op from that.

So if you look around the world at the big legacy foreign policy projects that he could spend his energy on, and the advantages of the presidency on, which are still massive, it’s hard to tell. And so what’s left is, if he’s under investigation, even with the pardon power and all of that, if he feels like—animals are dangerous when they’re cornered, or humans are dangerous when they’re cornered. So what could he do when cornered? He could do something non-nuclear but heavily escalatory in Iran.

Bacon: That’s not great.

Saunders: Cuba is the other one.

Bacon: Those are the—

Saunders: So I see the midterms as only—Trump is a high variance presidency, right? On any given day, the range of things that may happen is just very wide. But a Democratic Congress after these midterms, under the global conditions right now, widens it even more. Nothing would surprise me. Maybe he will undo the Greenland deal. He undoes deals all the time. Wouldn’t surprise me. It seems less likely to me than some other things.

Bacon: And will the Republican Party take any lessons from this, non-Trump? I guess we’ve already answered the question in some ways, because Rubio giving the same speech JD Vance did, the “fuck the rest of the world” speech, would suggest that we’re not changing there either.

Saunders: Yeah. I think you answered your own question with that one. But I think Bill Clinton tried to solve Middle East peace at Wye River. He apparently wanted to go to Pyongyang himself, and neither of those things came to fruition, but there was a lot of activity at Wye River.

Bacon: The Iran deal happened with Obama in the last couple years.

Saunders: Yeah. And I’m having—maybe ending the Korean War. But he’s had opportunities to do that already, and it’s not clear what leverage he has there. I don’t know. Maybe he’ll just pull a rabbit out of a hat.

Nothing would surprise me, but to me, Iran and Cuba seem the most likely, just because that’s where we have assets in place that would be available, right?

Bacon: I’ll finish on, what are you working on, anything you want to tell people about, or are you writing anything that we should look at?

Saunders: I’m going to write with Dan Drezner a piece basically about what will happen after the midterms, for Foreign Affairs, hopefully. Not sure exactly when that will happen.

But yeah, I’m working on a bunch of things. Working on some stuff about Europe’s reaction and what’s rational about it and what’s not, in terms of defense spending. And starting a new project trying to think through what is the blob, what isn’t the blob.

Bacon: The blob, for people who don’t know, is the bipartisan foreign policy establishment. That word also has a non-meaning, but yeah, similar.

Saunders: Yes, exactly. And it’s bandied about in ways that are just imprecise, and so trying to—

Bacon: Yeah, imprecise is what I’m trying to say.

Saunders: Yeah. So trying to understand—

Bacon: The blob is the Ben Rhodes term, right?

Saunders: That’s what it came from originally. It’s Ben Rhodes’s term. Yes. But lots of people have used it, or some variant. And there’s real backlash against it, and there’s cost. The apparent elite impunity, that’s a real phenomenon.

But I think you also have to understand why we have such a thing as an establishment. What is that? And might it have a place in a democratic society, paradoxically?

Bacon: Wait, the people who do foreign policy at Brookings and then come in and out of government, is that the idea, they’re the blob?

Saunders: It’s more like the revolving door, right? The soft landings, which in the extreme can look like giving a job to somebody who started a war. But there’s lots and lots of people below that who—

Bacon: Who might just be experts in their field, in country X.

Saunders: And once you start a war, you obviously don’t want—there’s people who work on civilian harm, there’s people who work on lots of dimensions of the war that you would like to be handled expertly, right? Even if you opposed it in the first place. So I would call it more like an elite ecosystem.

And we can think about—to me, everything is trade-offs, right? Fine, imagine a world where you get rid of the entire establishment. That has costs too, right? Would you ever get people going back in, investing their expertise, and devoting a career in government if they didn’t have a safe place to land, and they were in fear of prosecution and all that, right? So it’s lowering the stakes of democratic politics for foreign policy officials, to be in a democracy and take risks and handle issues like foreign policy that are pretty tough.

Bacon: I know you’ve written about elites, but your work is not necessarily in defense of elites. Your work is almost to understand elites more, in a more sophisticated—we’re in this anti-elite culture, and that’s bipartisan across the world, in the US, racially. And I think your work, my perception is, is not necessarily to say elites are great, but to say maybe we should understand the elites and their own thinking more precisely.

Saunders: Yeah, and also career incentives, right? You have to be able to make a living. There’s nothing wrong with a career incentive, or even partisan. Take members of Congress. Everybody’s always talking about members of Congress playing politics with national security, right, for their own political gain. Isn’t that what we want them to do?

Part of the problem we have right now, and I have written about this in a Foreign Affairs piece, we need more politics in our foreign policy. The problem we have right now is there’s no incentive to have expertise that pays politically, right? It has to pay politically for you to be seen as an authoritative voice on foreign policy who has a foreign policy position that isn’t necessarily reflexively with your party. It used to be that you could be a Sam Nunn, right?

Bacon: Oh, I see what you’re saying. I get it.

Saunders: Anything nuclear had to go through Sam Nunn in the late part of the Cold War. And it meant that sometimes he was with the Democratic president, sometimes he wasn’t, and Jimmy Carter and the SALT II Treaty is an example.

The real thing I’m working on is trying to think about what comes after, right? How do we think about elites and expertise, which we all on some level reflexively dislike, but I think of it as, we can’t live with them and we can’t live without them, right?

Bacon: Those words are so different, because I blanked when you said it, because I was like, I don’t necessarily like elites, but I like expertise. But those things are obviously tied together.

Saunders: They’re related. And it’s uncomfortable to think about, but we do have a different kind of elite running the Pentagon right now, but it’s not an experienced elite with expertise that you need to run the Pentagon. And we’re witnessing in real time the costs of that, right?

So you can say that the blob, or make arguments about how they got us here—I would definitely say in my work that elite politics has costs, right? In my book, elites do sometimes make it easier to go to war, but they also are a source of accountability. And if you take them away, or take away their ability to hold each other and the president accountable, you’ve really lost something.

And I think that’s the big difference between Trump 1 and Trump 2. Jim Mattis, John Kelly, trying to think who else. The sort of, quote unquote, “adults in the room” from Trump 1. In some tellings they’re part of the blob, and so they deserve some of the blame for the things that happened that brought us Trump. On the other hand, they showed what elite constraint really can be.

They stopped Trump from doing a lot of his most extreme impulses. And so now we see a completely unconstrained Trump, because there’s no blob—I don’t like the term blob, because I think it’s imprecise, but just as a shortcut. There are no establishment figures. None. Bessent is maybe the closest, and he even has seemed to—The Wall Street Journal had all this reporting this week.

So I think a lot about, it’s trade-offs, right? Nothing is all good or all bad, right? Except the Nazis. But in a democracy, you have trade-offs. If you want to delegate something that’s specialized, requires expertise, diverse expertise, different countries, different issues.

It’s not just one kind of expertise, right? Like bond market expertise. You need a group of people who feels like they can earn a living and respect the alternation of power, and go in and out, and feel that is a viable path within the democratic system.

Bacon: So that might be a—I should talk to Ben Rhodes. I’m guessing on the career path of foreign policy, this might be a place of disagreement. I agree with you that I’m in a career, I think careers matter, I get that. But I do think the critique has become that the revolving door is bad, and that term itself has become fraught, because to me, working at Brookings and then working for the government is different than working for a defense contractor.

But I can see where you gain expertise from the defense contractor too. It’s not necessarily inherently immoral, and the contractor might pay more. People have to pay their bills, and so on.

But I do think it’d be more precise—because Ben Rhodes himself is working at some kind of foreign policy organization to earn income, or maybe he does the podcast. I don’t know. But inevitably, I think the point is, you do have to have a job where you’re not in government, and the question is probably, are you in government to therefore get a job outside of government?

Saunders: It’s a longer conversation. He has pointed out, I think rightfully, and this is the part where I don’t defend—elites make all kinds of mistakes, and they introduce all kinds of—my book’s conclusion is that basically we have a hawkish bias in our foreign policy because of elites, which is more or less what he’s saying, right?

But it’s trade-offs, right? The issue is, OK, so what do you want to do about it? You could just get rid of all the elites, and we’re witnessing that. Doesn’t seem that great right now.

Bacon: How do we rebuild the—

Saunders: Yeah, what is an ecosystem where—political science is basically about what costs are you willing to tolerate. Tolerating some mistakes, which may have been genuine, like they tried really hard and they just got it wrong. Robert Jervis, who’s the most famous scholar of decision-making ever, had a lot of sympathy for policymakers, because they’re dealing with difficult things under fog of information and war and so forth, right?

They may just make a bad call. They may not be biased. They just may make a bad call and get unlucky. How do you set up a system of accountability that can hold people accountable for really egregious failures that they should have seen coming, versus giving people the space to make decisions under highly uncertain conditions?

Bacon: But the context here is 2024, right? Joe Biden ran a foreign policy on Gaza a lot of people don’t think was effective and ended up not working quite well. And so what do you do with the implementers of that policy? I’m not saying you feel that way, but some people feel that. I think that’s the conversation we need to have right here.

Saunders: Yeah. I think it’s also just thinking about the complete hollowing out of foreign policy expertise in the government right now.

Bacon: In the government right now. In Trump.

Saunders: Yeah. And how do we think about rebuilding it in a way that doesn’t demonize expertise? Because demonizing expertise is part of what’s gotten us here. In addition to the failures of elites, demonizing expertise is a big problem, right?

Bacon: Although is the blob critique slightly different? I don’t think Ben Rhodes debates—he wants USAID to come back in some form.

Saunders: Yes, of course. But they’re related in a way that is often not acknowledged by blob critics. They’re only highlighting one piece of it. So I’m trying to put the whole thing into trade-offs.

Bacon: Oh, I see. Anytime we’re talking about the blob, in some ways—that’s why we use the establishment as sort of blanche, because I don’t know that word can become—like, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund is surely a part of the civil rights establishment. There’s no way—they’ve been established for a long time. But I would never criticize them, because they, to me, are defending poor African Americans in the South’s ability to vote. I’m trying to take the issue aside here.

Saunders: Or even think of the political parties’ infrastructure, like the RNC and the DNC, which at the moment are just totally hollowed out entities. Julia Azari has said strong partisanship and weak parties, and nobody likes the RNC. You want the opposite. But the absence of a strong RNC is what got Trump the nomination in 2016, because there was no coordination.

Bacon: And it means that Elon Musk has more power in political parties than the actual parties do.

Saunders: Yes. So elites stepping in and having a strong role, that has upsides and downsides. And I think we have had a sclerotic establishment in foreign policy. I think some of the critiques about just defending the status quo reflexively are right, and that’s a function of the system having gotten out of whack. But that’s very different from saying we shouldn’t have an ecosystem at all. No blob-like ecosystem at all.

Bacon: So what the blob should look like is probably not what you should headline with either.

Saunders: Or what’s the system? And it’s also not only a function of what the people inside the blob believe. A lot of the debate is about the substance, which is important.

Bacon: Yes, of course.

Saunders: Liberal internationalism, is that the thing that got us where we are? Or is it a militaristic mindset? And then there’s debate about that, right? But on some level, I just want to abstract away from all of that, because it’s not clear to me that just injecting some different ideas is going to work without some structural thinking about the benefits of the system. What counts as going too far in establishment reform and accountability, right?

And we think about this in tons of other contexts in our democracy, right? Just the justice system, like how much, what the line for prosecuting people is. Which of course tolerates a certain amount of tax evasion, or whatever the issue is. So it’s not as though we can’t do this as a society.

We just don’t think of—this is the first thinking about foreign policy in this democratic society kind of way. If you think that it contributed to how we got here, then we should think very seriously about the costs and benefits of that system and how to reform it, and not just say we need some new thinking, right? New thinking is a dime a dozen.

Bacon: Yeah. The challenge is, and this is why I respect you for doing this, there’s not a lot of people who are in a place to suggest anything other than, elites, the blob, the establishment are bad. Because if you’re running for office, or even you on a TV show, or you on a podcast, if you want to become famous, defending any elite even a little bit is not in your incentive structure right now.

Saunders: And I’m not defending elites.

Bacon: I’m not saying you are. You’re creating more nuance.

Saunders: This is pretty abstract institutional reform kind of stuff, but that’s the business we’re in, political scientists. That’s why it’s helpful to be able to take a step back and think about, what are the things about this that could be destabilizing if you went too far, right? And I think we actually have the answer to that.

We are witnessing a massive global shock. Things we don’t talk about: the Iran war has completely upended British politics, right? Because they don’t have any fiscal space anymore to solve their extremely difficult—they just got a new prime minister, because the previous one didn’t have a vision. This one has a vision. He can’t do anything because of the Iran war.

So we are witnessing the cost of just wholesale getting rid of expertise and experience as an input into decision-making. That’s clearly too far. Where is the optimal—

Bacon: There’s a lot of people I talk to about this, because to me the presidential campaign is a time for people to bring out ideas. So I want one of the 90 southern candidates we have who are Democrats to run on, “I’m going to rebuild the government.” But my worry is they’ve all been told cost of living, affordability. You’ll sound elite if you mention the word democracy. All you can say is gas prices and grocery prices, and I think that’s not the—

Next year should be, like, I’m hoping people like you have influence.

Saunders: No, I don’t have any influence, even within my own house.

Bacon: I hope they’re reading things other than—the government making the country more affordable broadly is actually very challenging. It is not necessarily the only thing the government should be doing, and rebuilding our foreign policy and our government capacity is a really big thing, and I’m hoping some candidates talk about that.

But I think their consultants are going to be telling them voters only care about jobs and gas, and I think that’s dismissive of voters, who I think do care about more than just that.

Saunders: Yeah. The only thing I would say is, as terrible as some of this destruction has been, it’s one thing to talk about it at a point like 2016 when all those institutions were still intact, right? It’s really hard to reform an institution except under conditions of crisis, or when it’s been destroyed.

Bacon: And now we have both.

Saunders: And now we have both, or one or the other depending on the issue. Like, USAID has been burned to the ground. And so if you believe we need to have new foreign aid, this is the time to think about the trade-offs of how you rebuild it. But I have no influence. All I can do is the incremental, “All right, your idea for how to reform this, here’s where it sits on the trade-offs. Are you willing to tolerate this cost or that?”

It’s about choosing which cost. There’s never a perfect solution to these problems, right? Giving countries foreign aid will always have some perverse effects on its economy and incentives of its politicians. So do you just not want to give foreign aid? You design a system that has features, and they’re imperfect, and this is politics, right?

Bacon: All right. Good to see you. Thanks for joining me.

Saunders: Take care. Thank you so much.

Bacon: Bye-bye.

Donald Trump’s choices in Iran remain “humiliation or escalation,” says Elizabeth Saunders, a Columbia University professor who studies U.S. foreign policy. In the latest edition of Right Now, Saunders argues that little has changed strategically since the start of the U.S.’s conflict with Iran. It’s still not clear how the U.S. can force a regime change or any other major shift by Iran, unless Trump launches a super-aggressive attack, which he does not seem inclined to do. Saunders also discusses the new security agreement between the U.S, Denmark and Greenland, the first round of the presidential elections in Brazil, and the major foreign policy address Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered last week in Greece.

The issue was raised to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation.

“Money that was allocated by Congress to Customs and Border Patrol was used to purchase roughly $20 million in ads that have run on networks.... It’s touting President Trump’s accomplishments and also him personally,” host Margaret Brennan said. “The president has since said his political action committee will pay for future ads.… What about the past spending? Will U.S. taxpayers be reimbursed for the money that was spent on this?”

“Any time we can do a public service announcement and brag about America, I’m all about it,” Mullin replied. “You have so much negative media that’s out there … constantly controversy … I think 99 percent of the coverage of President Trump is negative—”

“So no reimbursement of the $20 million?”

Mullin ignored the question and continued on.

“We have the most secure border in our nation’s history. Fentanyl deaths are dropping. Drug apprehension is gaining speed every single day. And we should be bragging about what’s happening inside America,” he said. “I commend the opportunity of President Trump to give us the opportunity to brag about America.”

“OK. So no reimbursement. Secretary Mullin, thank you,” Brennan concluded.

That is your money. The president has funded two different hype videos for himself, running them multiple times on multiple channels as a contentious midterm election draws nearer. There’s the strange “Love Me” ad, which debuted late September on Fox News during Jesse Watters Primetime, and the “Final Battle” one in which a voiceover of the president promises to “demolish the deep state,” “expel the warmongers,” “drive out the globalists,” and “cast out the Communists.” The commercials have drawn criticism from even Republican senators for their use of DHS funds.

The ads aren’t even convincing the people who paid for them, as 86 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s use of taxpayer funds on the commercials.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes ordered the National Park Service Monday to halt all tree removal on the East Potomac Golf Links, after the agency cut down dozens of trees over the weekend.

In a court filing Friday, the Department of the Interior declared its intention to cut down more than 500 trees “that do not contribute to the historic landscape.” Its plans included shearing 169 trees from one “heavily overgrown” area on Saturday alone.

Reyes blocked that plan Monday until 7:00 a.m. the following day or until she issues another order. She will also hear an emergency request Monday from a group of preservationists for a 14-day restraining order on tree removal at the course.

The tree clearing is part of a plan to transform the public golf course into an exclusive, high-end one. The venture is just one of the many expensive renovation projects the president has set on in the capital region—without receiving any congressional or legal approval.

In May, Reyes pumped the brakes on the renovation plans after the D.C. Preservation League intervened to stop tree removal. The group has good reason not to trust the Trump administration after the president demolished the White House’s East Wing and made clear his intentions to destroy the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts because he wasn’t allowed to plaster his name onto it.

The raid was part of a criminal investigation into the Minnesota Democrat’s immigration paperwork, according to Fox News Digital, which was filled out by her late father when she was a child.

“Today in the Washington, D.C., area, Homeland Security Investigations executed a judicially authorized search warrant secured by the Department of Justice. This enforcement action is part of an ongoing federal investigation,” a Department of Justice spokesperson told Fox.

The first Somali-American lawmaker and one of the first Muslim women in Congress, Omar has been a regular target for Donald Trump. The president has repeatedly accused her of financial fraud without providing any evidence for those claims. Now Trump’s smear campaigns have developed into full-out weaponization—and with just weeks left until the midterm elections.

Omar has been an outspoken critic of Trump’s policies, including his massive cuts to social services, blatant voter suppression tactics, support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and sweeping crackdown on immigrants that has killed two U.S. citizens in her state.

Trump has previously suggested that Omar is under investigation by Vice President JD Vance’s anti-fraud task force aimed at gutting federal programs in blue states. At a midterm campaign rally in Tennessee Saturday, Trump railed against Omar, making it clear he was more interested in attacking her ethnicity than her politics.

“She comes from Somalia. They don’t have a government, they don’t have police, they don’t—all they have is crime and squalor. And she comes into our country and she says, ‘My Constitution allows me.’ She’s talking about our Constitution,” he said. “What they’ve done to Minnesota, these people from Somalia, what they’ve done to Minnesota should never be allowed.”

Omar is up for reelection in November, and she is favored to win her race. Former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance noted on X Monday that, less than a month out from the midterms, “We are within the period before an election where DOJ doesn’t take overt steps in an investigation that might influence its outcome.”

“Another hard norm out the window,” Vance said.

This story has been updated.

It’s hard to remember as the world burns around us, but there was a moment when E.A. (and its sister philosophies rationalism and longtermism) was ascendent. It was quickly amassing capital, adherents, and political power. In just a few short years, it went from a few quirky thinkers and writers trying to logic their way to solving morality to a coalition with substantial financial, media, and lobbying capacity. 

While Bankman-Fried may have become effective altruism’s most notorious adherent, he was far from alone. Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and Skype founder Jaan Tallinn remain firmly in the E.A. camp, and Peter Thiel and Elon Musk have both publicly embraced and funded parts of the movement (although their overall giving doesn’t graft as cleanly onto the philosophy). LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman has also described his approach to philanthropy similarly to E.A.  

That ascendence was, in no small part, fueled by Silicon Valley titans’ patronage and proselytization. And a key reason for that is that the central premise of (especially longtermist) E.A. is just a hop, skip, and a jump from a moral permission structure that nakedly celebrates wealth and excuses opulence as steps on the path to a more just future. Bankman-Fried himself admitted as much in a candid exchange with a journalist after his business empire imploded; the altruism he championed was all about cloaking the scramble for wealth and power as something noble. 

This is in no way true of everyone who takes interest in or subscribes to E.A., and it’s important to remember that those who are able to season their effective altruism with a dose of epistemic humility do often fund worthy projects. But the totalizing moral structure that shields the machinations of the powerful is a crucial dynamic to make sense of how we got to our current political moment, with tech oligarchs running amok, major financial realignment, and all-encompassing AI storylines. Because while the impulse to do altruism, and make it effective, can help galvanize works rooted in good intentions, our would-be overlords took that to start paving the proverbial road to hell.

At its core, effective altruism posits that, given scarce resources, the most ethical course of action is the one that maximizes the “returns” that can be generated from those scarce resources. Usually, the “returns” in question are measured in things like lives saved, disease incidences avoided, people educated, or other noble goals. But the returns can also be monetary, which is part of why E.A. is extremely useful to the ultrarich seeking to amass power. 

The obvious assumption here is that there is an objective way of accounting for those returns and an objective way to “weight” doing good that benefits different people. One of the more common instincts among effective altruists is to consider all human lives equal. On its face, that sounds obviously correct! But it can quickly lead to counterintuitive conclusions. 

Take for instance a charity that runs a program integrating ex-cons into communities’ workforces at an expense of $10,000 per week. An E.A.-style analysis could take this program and compare it to a famously cost-effective intervention like bed nets to fight malaria and mosquito-borne disease—which costs around $2 to $5 per net and can save a child’s life for every 600 nets distributed—and conclude that this facially worthy cause is actually bleeding resources away from more effective forms of altruistic intervention. And in that framework, career development to integrate people back into their communities is not only suboptimally moral but could even be immoral because that work takes on the opportunity cost of children’s lives. In the hypothetical above, that $10,000 a week could instead be spent on malaria nets and save as many as eight lives a week.

So, to a stickler E.A. analysis, community service missions can be actively harmful because it would be more moral to spend the money elsewhere. This sort of thinking is not universal among the movement’s adherents; it is entirely possible to recognize the limits of this economics-style optimization problem as a philosophy. But when that possibility is pushed out of mind, or actively attacked, such analysis can rapidly lead to some very unsavory moral positions.

Take, for instance, Sam Bankman-Fried, who subscribed to the E.A. movement’s more radical offshoot, longtermism. In SBF’s mind, spending a dollar to help save a life today would be a waste when that dollar could instead be invested in the development of new technologies that could theoretically save thousands or millions of lives in the distant future. With enough navel-gazing, SBF appears to have convinced himself that a utilitarian course of action could include purchasing the island-nation of Nauru and setting it up as a doomsday bunker from which a select few effective altruists could repopulate the planet after an apocalyptic scenario. Deranged, eugenic, and laughable, you might say, but if you give an insular group of E.A.s enough time and space to stew in their own juices, just about anything can seem rational. 

Think back to the fundamental idea that we can objectively decide how much to “weight” the good done to different individuals. Any attempt to refine such an analysis runs into the problem that the “solution” to your optimization problem will be different depending on how weights are assigned. And you can get better results if you prioritize certain subpopulations. For example, if you have limited funding for cancer research, you will get wildly different resource allocations depending on if you weight each life the same versus if you prioritize maximizing years lived post-treatment. If everyone counts the same, there will be comparatively more funding flowing toward cancers that impact older adults. If we weight by years of life post-treatment, the focus will be much more on pediatric cancer. 

Naturally, either of those is colorably better than the current market-based approach to research and development that sees more investment in erectile dysfunction treatment than, say, endometriosis. But if it feels a little gross to be pitting different communities of cancer patients against each other, that’s because it is. It is also necessitated by any system that purports to “solve” moral quandaries. And it feeds into the more unsavory tendencies among E.A.s. 

There are broadly three buckets of destructive ways of thinking that effective altruists are predisposed toward, all downstream of this necessity to determine the relative moral worth of helping different populations with a fixed pool of resources: deference to notions of a chosen elite, justification of the centralization of power and wealth, and wanton disregard for human well-being and agency. 

It’s here that I have to introduce you to Eliezer Yudkowsky, AI theorist, Peter Thiel associate, Harry Potter fanfic writer, and movement figurehead. Yudkowsky, often referred to simply as “Yud” by those in the know of AI research and E.A. thought, views himself in a messianic light, to the point that when one supporter (Scott Alexander, an E.A./rationalist thought leader in his own right) tweeted a comparison of him to Jesus Christ, he responded with a hypothetical conversation where he condescends to the Lamb of God. If you have developed and propagated a moral framework that is objectively more correct than the Son of God, though, it follows that you have the moral high ground, elevated well above that puny peak at Mount Sinai where Moses received his ethical framework. 

Yudkowsky’s epic screed, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, is a common entry point to the world of rationalist and E.A. thought, and has been deployed as a recruiting tool to bring new people into the movement. At more than 600,000 words across 122 chapters, the alternate Harry Potter story, doled out in pieces over five years, follows the titular character as he uses rationalist thinking to engineer new types of magic, wielding his upbringing by an Oxford philosopher to demonstrate the power of rational thought. Arthur C. Clarke famously posited that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”; Yudkowsky’s take is basically that sufficiently rational thought will enable the creation of technology that functionally is magic. 

This messianic sense of self is not confined to Yudkowsky. One of the most long-standing critiques of the broader E.A. space is that it insists on totalizing and moralizing across every part of life to insist that there is an objectively correct way to live. And that people who don’t follow that path are hence wrong. 

Australian philosopher Peter Singer, one of the ethical pioneers of E.A. thought, gave a TED Talk in which he argued that a blind American should not be given a guide dog through philanthropy, because it uses funds that could have a much greater impact in treating blindness in developing countries. Similarly, philosopher Eric Friedman wrote that he would be “angry” at people donating to St. Jude, the pediatric cancer treatment hospital, when the same money could go further if it were diverted to a different pediatric cancer center (again in the developing world). 

And while St. Jude does have its own issues with arguably bloated overhead and advertising costs, this mode of analysis would say that you shouldn’t fund any pediatric cancer wards in rich countries as long as there is a more cost-effective alternative elsewhere in the world. Remember earlier, when pitting cancer patients against each other felt like a reach? Some people actually do that. The end point of all of this is that unless you are the objectively most worthy of help, any assistance given to you is not just suboptimal but deeply immoral.

To a certain cadre of extremist, egomaniacal E.A.s, their vaunted ability to be the only ones capable of clearly seeing these trade-offs is reason enough for them to be a chosen elite. They need to lead because most people don’t have the stomach to come out and say that children in rich countries don’t deserve help with their cancer. Instead, only this group has the right combination of intelligence and objectivity to usher society into the future. And here is the juncture where some E.A.s go down the road of eugenics, believing that the intentional breeding of humans for desirable traits gets a bad rap. Incidentally, people who follow the tenets of effective altruism and rationalism just happen to have the traits for which they want to select. For some, their superiority is not just intellectual but biological. Which leads to dabbling in long-discredited race science and writing off entire populations.

This innate superiority feeds directly into the second set of dangerous thinking endemic to certain corners of E.A.: the justification of massive concentration of wealth and power. If some people are just better leaders because they are smarter and more objective, then it is preferable for those people to control resources and direct decision-making. This is, as University of Chicago philosopher Brian Leiter noted to the New York Post, part of why tech titans love E.A.; “There’s no talk about higher taxes, redistribution to a more progressive income tax, anti-trust investigations or more regulation of their businesses.” In fact, tax-based redistribution could actually be worse for society if it takes money away from the altruists who could steer it toward worthy causes more efficiently. 

This exact problem is compounded by “longtermism.” Recall that the central premise of E.A. charitable calculus is that we can do the most good by being agnostic about how near or distant a person is; the entire idea is to weight only by who is most deserving and would make greatest use of the help. Longtermism extends this line of thinking into a fourth dimension: time. 

If good deeds done in an indeterminate future time frame could be just—or more—ethical than anything done now, then there is a point at which amassing wealth now to spend later can be presented as more useful than just doing good things now. This is the justification of the “earn to give” mentality modeled by Sam Bankman-Fried. He had to get filthy rich, you see, because then he can take all that money and better the world on the back end. 

Vanilla E.A. already teaches that we should set aside our own personal relationships and care about people regardless of where they are. Longtermism says that we also have to care equally about when people are. And there is practically no level of disempowerment or disinvestment that cannot be justified when you are weighting eight-odd billion lives against a theoretically infinite number of people who might exist in the future. 

Here’s where the wanton negligence toward humanity can kick in. Once you break down the social bonds built by relationship and community first and foremost to the people closest to us, it’s much easier to reduce human life to an abstract agglomeration of discrete beings that exist outside of the world as we know it. Suddenly, the inclination to be willing to burn the Earth to fuel space colonization makes a lot more sense. You might doom most of the population in the near future, but there is infinitely more net utility once the entire galaxy’s resources are able to be tapped to fuel future lives. This is basically an argument Elon Musk, noted fan of E.A. gospel What We Owe the Future, has been making for years. 

Moreover, once you divorce ethics and altruism from the social and communal relationships that they’re traditionally grounded in, you move away from a focus on channeling resources toward helping living breathing people. Instead, you can justify takes that, actually, insects are more important to help because they have some form of consciousness and vastly outnumber us. The least extreme iteration of this is animal welfare and veganism activism that comes out of E.A. spaces, pushing for greater acceptance of animals as beings worthy of altruistic treatment as well. The most extreme is intertwined with frontier AI development’s quest to create new artificial beings. That version is the crucial evolution of Elon Musk’s older take about space colonization. Our species is just a biological “bootloader” for a one-day interstellar artificial superintelligence. 

It is easy to see how noble intent can pave the way to these outlandish ethical positions. We probably should care more about the way we treat animals. But that doesn’t mean that choosing to fund a program to help children orphaned by natural disasters is unethical because the money would be more effectively spent preserving ant colonies. The reason why we intuitively help the people closest to us is not just an ethical lapse, it’s because we have different moral responsibilities depending on how we relate to people. 

Maybe AI will become conscious and colonize distant stars. But it is the height of ego and folly to predict that it necessarily will happen and that, therefore, we need to prioritize our potential robotic progeny over the people around us in the here and now.

Not all, or even most, people who dabble in E.A. thought fall into these moral traps, but it’s common enough that there are observable patterns of behavior. More importantly, the people who do fall into these tendencies seem determined to engineer the end of the world as we know it. 

Effective altruism prides itself on being nonconformist and willing to break with public opinion. Many of its adherents seemingly relish being outside the mainstream. It legitimates their view that they are apart from “normies” who are shepherded towards rote philosophical positions. 

That’s how you wind up with Yudkowsky being spoken of in the same breath as someone in a “sex cult” and an important thought leader in AI alignment. 

Some expat critics of E.A. who left the movement have a different acronym: TESCREAL, or transhumanism, extropianism, singularitarianism, cosmism, rationalism, effective altruism, and longtermism. Basically, the argument is that Silicon Valley has been taken in by a compulsion to strive for biologically evolving beyond the current nature of the human race (transhumanism plus extropianism), achieving a technological  innovation that renders previous human ways of life obsolete and results in integrating humanity with machines (the singularity), the achievement of immortality through consciousness transfers (cosmism), improving human decision-making by centering objectivity (rationalism), and that we have an ethical responsibility to deploy resources in the way most likely to do the most good (E.A.), not just for the people who exist but for those who could exist in the future, as well (longtermism).

The TESCREAL argument lays out the case that much of the tech world has become dedicated to obsessive focus on the potential of human extinction and the necessity of achieving a science fiction–esque future. 

The business plan here will look familiar to anyone who has tracked the promises figures like Sam Altman have continually made. Promise that technology is being developed that will fundamentally change life for the better, cure cancer, and usher in a post-scarcity society. In the meantime, build up huge reserves of money and political power. And then justify the costs being borne in the deployment of technology as a necessary evil to usher in a brighter future.  

The entire E.A. worldview has been a microcosm of Silicon Valley’s political framework, which is why it was so expedient for figures like Elon Musk and Dustin Moskowitz to promote it. Bundled into a single philosophy, you have the groundwork to validate elites’ self-importance, justify the amassing of power and wealth, and excuse nearly any antisocial behavior through commitments to the future. 

To the powerful people who invested in spreading the gospel of effective altruist thought, these quirks are features, not bugs. A philosophy that confirms that those wielding power and resources are actually heroes fighting a cosmic battle for the future allows for oligarchs to justify the undermining of democratic institutions, the hoarding of wealth, and callous treatment of humanity. 

One last time, it’s worth bearing in mind that this mentality is not universalizable across everyone who finds E.A. to be valuable. Initiatives like Giving What We Can are a way for people to genuinely put their money where their mouths are. For plenty of people, the weird, deeply anti-human takes are a bridge farther than they’ll ever take the philosophy. But for Silicon Valley titans, these predilections are a crucial element of why they find this worldview to be useful—to their own ends, at least. 

Once you have a framework that validates your role as the builders of a new, better world, it justifies serving as pallbearers of what we currently know as human civilization. And once you accept that your movement is an elite that must be nurtured into stewards of the future and that this destiny is more important than anything else in the present, it becomes totally reasonable to do things like buy castles for your thinkers’ enrichment. 

Now we’re at a juncture where the people who helped effective altruism make it big, people like Musk, are in conflict with the elements of the movement who have kept out of the worst rabbit holes. Some see the singularity as inevitable, and creating artificial consciousness as an ethical imperative. Some see real people as being worth helping. When your philosophy lionizes elites and excuses their greed, of course they’ll help fund it. But now the chickens are coming home to roost, and it’s becoming more apparent that the indulgence of power is the reason those people were on board in the first place. Their altruism is devoted purely to laying claim to a future that merely aligns with their own desires.

What’s more, Donald Trump has personal ties to one of the Brazilian oligarchs who is most directly responsible for the ongoing destruction of the Amazon, and Trump actually hosted him in the White House on August 20.

And yet the mainstream U.S. media is ignoring the rising danger to the Amazon. Ominously, climate scientists have warned that increased destruction will push the vast rainforest toward a “tipping point,” after which recovery will be difficult, if not impossible. 

Here, briefly, is the science behind the warnings. The Amazon rainforest is our planet’s biggest carbon sink. Its 2.3 million square miles of thick vegetation pull dangerous carbon dioxide from the global atmosphere, and safely store it in the forest’s thick vegetation. Burn the forest, and carbon dioxide, the worst of the greenhouse gases, remains in the atmosphere, damaging the climate everywhere on the planet. 

In recent years, climate scientists point out that some 17 percent of the Amazon has already been burned or otherwise destroyed. Estimates are that 20 to 25 percent would be the tipping point, after which the end result will be treeless savannah and scrubland. Naturally, these predictions are not facts, but as Thomas Lovejoy, the great American scientist and environmentalist who devoted his life to the Amazon, used to say, “Multiply the risk of a catastrophe by its disastrous consequences, and you will see that inaction is impossible.”

Once you witness the aftermath of the rainforest destruction, you will never forget it. Take, for instance, the construction of BR-317, the two-lane highway that runs southwest from the city of Rio Branco in Brazil’s western state of Acre to the Bolivian border. Once, triple-canopy forest reached right to the highway’s edge on both sides. Now, green pasture stretches into the far distance, with occasional dead tree trunks and blackened stumps a reminder of what happened. Once, you would have struggled to peer more than 50 feet into the forest. Now, you can see for miles. 

These days, huge herds of dewlapped, humped, white Brahma cattle roam across the huge fazendas, or ranches. Patches of sickly orange-brown soil are the giveaway; the topsoil is actually shallow and not fertile. In the rainforest, falling vegetation from the thick forest cover is regularly recycled into new forest growth. Destroy the original dense tree cover, and the rainforest dies. 

Of course, along highway BR-317, the rainforest’s rich and interdependent insect, bird, and animal life has also retreated into the far horizons. From time to time, you might see a couple of parrots; they sometimes fly in matrimonial pairs. On a rare occasion, you might catch sight of a dazzlingly blue morpho butterfly dancing along the highway. But the life form you are most likely to notice is gray-headed vultures. 

Xapuri, a small town along the highway, was once the home to Chico Mendes, the legendary environmentalist and rubber-tapper leader who was murdered back in 1988. The local ranchers who later burned the forest killed him first, to get him out of the way. Several books have been written about his life; he is also the subject of an excellent feature film.  

Destroying the trees to create pasture for beef cattle is one of the main reasons the rainforest is dying, and powerful cattle ranchers are one of the major supporters of the far right in Brazil. Flávio Bolsonaro, the current candidate, is a stand-in for his father, Jair, who was president from 2018 to 2022 (and is presently in prison for plotting to overthrow the incumbent president, Lula da Silva, who defeated him in the 2022 election). Under the elder Bolsonaro, rainforest destruction had accelerated dramatically, as the fazendeiros, or large-scale ranchers, had demanded. After Lula won, the burning dropped 34 percent in his first six months in office.

Another contributor to rainforest destruction is JBS, the gigantic global foods company that originally started in Brazil but which has now expanded, including into the United States. JBS is the world’s largest meat-processing company. Environmentalists and others have credibly accused it of exporting meat from Brazilian pastures that replaced stretches of burned-out rainforest. JBS denies the allegations, but Senator Ron Wyden held a series of hearings from 2021 to 2023, and he concluded that JBS “was turning a blind eye as parts of its supply chain burn down the Amazon, push the world toward climate catastrophe, and undercut American ranchers who play by the rules on international trade.” Human Rights Watch also reported in 2025 that JBS “may have exported beef ... sourced from illegal ranches.” 

It was one of the principal owners of JBS, Joesley Batista, who met Donald Trump face to face in the White House on August 20. Batista apparently successfully lobbied Trump to lower U.S. tariffs on imported Brazilian beef, in an effort to reduce consumer prices in the United States. But you can bet that Trump never raised the fate of the Amazon—nor will he, if Flávio Bolsonaro wins on October 25. 

Defending the Amazon rainforest is a dangerous business, and the killing didn’t stop with Chico Mendes. A 2022 report by Global Witness found that more than 1,700 environmental activists had been murdered in the previous decade across the global south. Brazil was in first place, with 342 killings. Indigenous people are among the victims. A remarkable 2022 film, The Territory, actually documented one such murder.

Cattle ranches are not the only threat to the Amazon. High global gold prices have stimulated feverish efforts to invade the forest, as Amazon Watch, the influential U.S.-based environmentalist organization, warned last May. Large mining corporations, and the individual artisanal miners called garimpeiros, are both to blame. Amazon Watch indicted “a predatory logic that turns rivers into sludge, strengthens illegal networks, and deepens violence.”

There is unfortunately yet another threat. Rising global demand for soybeans is also triggering rainforest destruction.

Under President Lula, a Brazilian government agency called IBAMA fought hard to protect the forest. IBAMA agents are authorized to carry weapons, and they do often get into gunfights with forest destroyers. If Flávio Bolsonaro wins, he and his allies in the Brazilian Congress, which will be dominated by the far right, will surely neuter the agency. What’s more, for now the Brazilian Constitution bans industrial mining in Indigenous territories. But the fear is that the incoming far-right majority will change the law. 

Amazon Watch’s program director is Christian Poirier. His organization, like the others in the global environmental movement, regards the news from Brazil as a true climate emergency: “The Trump administration is openly sympathetic to the Bolsonaros, and has been working to subvert and interfere in Brazil’s election. We need to vote in a Democratic Congress in November, and then push it to put the brakes on Trump’s pro-Bolsonaro, anti-rainforest moves.”

Andrew Miller is Amazon Watch’s advocacy director, in Washington, D.C. He recognizes that certain progressive members of Congress, like Representatives Delia Ramirez and Mark Pocan, are already taking a direct interest in the Brazil environmental crisis. But he warns that Congress is also afflicted by what is called “climate hushing.” 

“It’s crazy,” he says. “Studies show a measurable decline in the number of press releases and public statements about the environment coming out of Congress. The number of congressional interventions on the climate is decreasing—at a time when the actual global crisis is greater than ever, and growing.” 

From the beginning of the transformation of the United States into an industrial power, the tycoons, politicians, and judges formed the best-funded union in American history, a cartel that used its bottomless collective pocket to divide and conquer workers—all while promoting the myth of rugged individual success. The collusion of corporate and government interests to suppress worker power has been a constant down the decades, from Jay Gould cutting wages and firing union workers in the 1880s; to the Colorado state militia setting ablaze an encampment of strikers’ families in Ludlow in 1914, killing 11 children; and through thousands of more or less bloodily suppressed labor protests in between. Any history of socialist actions—union drives, strikes, demonstrations, political runs—is incomplete without the story of this ferocious, unequal reaction. And it’s vital for an understanding of Debs himself, of how and why a man would hurl himself time and again into the teeth of this enemy.

An elusive, often frustrating hero, Debs was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1855, to immigrants from Alsace in northeastern France who ran a grocery store catering to their local French community (in other words, they stocked wine). Gene, his four sisters, and baby brother were raised to be skeptical of organized religion and to question American society’s entrenched inequalities. In the overwhelmingly white Midwest of Debs’s childhood, these were primarily economic. The Civil War was a distant roar, but the downturn that followed affected the family finances enough that 14-year-old Gene quit school to work for the railroad—then barreling across the open plains, transforming remote, windswept way stations into smoke-choked cities, home to a brand-new working class.

He began by scraping the grease off the side of trains, then painting the stripes on the engines. At 16, he became a “fireman,” shoveling coal alongside the engineer driving the locomotive—sweaty, strenuous, dangerous work. He lost his job when the railroad boom of the early 1870s crashed and plunged the country into depression, but Debs still identified as a railway man. In early 1875, he became a charter member of the local branch of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen—a secretive, exclusive fraternity priding itself on “benevolence, sobriety, industry.” These proto-unions supported their “brothers” and families after accidents, although many workers no doubt felt like the man who said, “I would prefer my limb instead.”

As the economy continued to bubble and burst through the late nineteenth century, the vast expansion of the railroads across the country drew in huge numbers of workers, who knew their importance to America’s industrializing project. As an alternative to exclusive craft unions and fraternities, the Knights of Labor, founded in 1869 in Philadelphia, preached a vision of a “cooperative commonwealth” that would welcome everyone, Black and white, male and female, whether they worked in fields or factories, kitchens or coal mines. The Knights emphasized community as much as battle, with picnics, dances, newspapers, and study groups. Their vision of the labor struggle as a shared, joyous culture would, in time, resonate with American socialists, but few leaders grasped how vital that joy really was.

Eugene Debs’s union activism was, by contrast, conservative and cautious. He distanced himself from the strikes that were becoming more frequent, widespread, and violent, and in 1885, at 29, he was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives as a Democrat. There, he fought to introduce a bill to make railroad companies liable for worker injuries, only to see it quashed by the business-friendly state Senate. Tired of the compromises, he served out his two-year term quietly, and did not seek reelection. Debs did not really want to govern; he wanted to run, and run, and run.

As his political star rose, Debs began courting Kate Metzel, a friend of his sister’s, who came from a community of politically radical German immigrants. The two married in June 1885. Their relationship rested on shared ideals, but her personality remains shadowy. Few private letters or diaries survive, although Gude suggests, fairly, that their life together did not unfold as either of them expected. They could not have children, and Kate spent much of her mature life at home in Terre Haute caring for her elderly mother and her motherless nephew. She was a rock for her husband as he roamed, but the cost to her own soul is lost to history. For Debs, home and family were “the sustaining element,” as he wrote his sister, giving him the strength to continue his work of lecturing, writing, and travel. But this rosy view ignored the widening rift between his two closest allies, Kate and his devoted younger brother, Theo, each of whom was growing increasingly jealous of the other’s influence over Debs.

Gude describes Debs’s conversion to socialism as a “transformation of the soul,” which he declared publicly on New Year’s Day 1897. He had shed the doubts and compromises of his previous organizing, given up the slow work of bargaining for scraps and winning by inches. His vision now was Manichaean: good versus evil, socialism versus capitalism, humanity versus the “reign of gold.” And it was a particularly American vision. As Gude describes it, Debs’s rhetoric fused nationalist and Christian mythology with Marxism, evoking the spirit of Christ and the fire of the abolitionists. It was a brew that appealed to crowds wherever he spoke. The era of political oratory made stars of the unlikeliest speakers, whose photographs or transcripts can barely convey what felt to audiences like an electrical current. Eugene Debs would spend the rest of his life spreading the gospel of this new political religion, and critics and followers alike would frequently compare him to Jesus Christ.

The socialist movement Debs joined contained many factions, and plenty of leaders more pragmatic than Debs, like the more intellectual Victor Berger, who built a solid socialist base in Milwaukee, and was unafraid of compromise for the sake of gaining political power. Nobody in the Socialist Party, however, could challenge Debs’s star power. His first of five runs for president came soon after his conversion, in 1900. On a tiny budget, the candidate had to do the work single-handed, riding the rails for months at a time to lecture to audiences large and small, curious, hostile, and indifferent. In 1908, he traveled from Chicago to the West Coast in a train dubbed the “Red Special,” decked out with flags and snowing the stops with leaflets. The itinerary was relentless. A typical September morning saw him leave Des Moines, Iowa, at 6 a.m. with a schedule of four stops, and four speeches (and at least six more impromptu stops), before the train chugged into Kansas City, Missouri, in the middle of the afternoon, ahead of a speech that evening. Debs was generally blunt about his purpose: to spread the socialist gospel, not to actually make it to the White House.

In those early years of the new century, the makeup of the country’s workforce changed dramatically, and horrors of industrial labor and living conditions—especially the employment of children—became a widespread concern. Middle-class Americans began to press for regulation and government intervention, for reform within the system. To Debs’s disgust, the bombastic Teddy Roosevelt attracted their attention and votes as a Progressive, despite his coziness with big business. His popularity showed that capitalism had left behind its most rampant phase and was now having to engage in public relations.

Yet the promise of reform did little to cool labor energies in the new century. Strikes became bigger and bolder, from the mines of Minnesota to the garment factories of New York City, and the militant rhetoric of the Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW, founded in 1905, spooked the plutocrats into fierce reprisals. For a brief moment there was an alliance, under the banner of socialism, between well-heeled, reform-minded Americans and fiery rebel workers—potently symbolized by the marriage of WASP millionaire J.G. Phelps Stokes to activist Rose Pastor, a Jewish immigrant cigar worker who became famous as the Lower East Side’s answer to Cinderella. It all pushed Debs and the socialists to the crest of a wave in 1912, the year they garnered almost a million votes for the presidency.

Debs was proud that “the Socialist Party was the first party to make the political discovery woman is a human being,” and he was a staunch supporter of women’s autonomy, from their right to vote to their freedom to access birth control. Yet he did not fully grasp the connection between capitalism and patriarchy drawn by activists like Rose Pastor Stokes, the IWW’s teenage star Elizabeth Gurley ­Flynn, and flame-haired Kansas speaker Kate Richards O’Hare, who appear here in brief cameos. It was one thing to fight for higher wages, and quite another for those wages to depend on granting a factory foreman access to your body. (According to Gude, among the abuses that sparked a 1909 walkout at the Pressed Steel car plant in Pennsylvania was a system in which workers had to offer up their wives and daughters as bribes to keep their jobs.) Socialist feminists went further, however, in showing how sexual coercion on the job reflected patriarchal dominance in society at large. Was Debs, with his habit of visiting brothels during his long stretches living away from home, and his emotional dependence on women who were not his wife, really capable of understanding what socialism meant to women? How far was he willing to share power with them—or anyone?

Early in his career, Debs moved cautiously on what was known as the “race question,” seeing it, as many Northerners did, as a Southern problem, and one that class solidarity would in time solve naturally. But the brutalities of Jim Crow disillusioned him, and by the time The Birth of a Nation was enthralling white audiences across the country in 1915, he was spitting blood. In a letter protesting the film’s racist distortions of history, he went so far as to call out the sexual violence inflicted on enslaved women, writing that, if truly told, Black history “would be replete with scenes infinitely more cruel and damning” than those in the film. His outrage was so rare that it was reprinted in a number of Black newspapers, and put him in contact with the rising new generation of “New Negro” activists in Harlem. Gude argues persuasively that this is where the energy and the optimism of socialism migrated after Debs’s death, smack in the middle of the rip-roaring capitalist ’20s—to Harlem, and then into the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Debs understood capitalism as a scourge that reached beyond America’s borders. He railed against U.S. empire-building and warmongering abroad, whether in Cuba in 1898 or in Mexico in 1914, when President Wilson sent troops, as Debs put it, to die “fighting for Rockefeller and his class.” That was April. By late summer, what was then called the European War had engulfed the foreign policy agenda. Debs joined the chorus protesting “preparedness,” the military buildup that was the pet cause of his old adversary Teddy Roosevelt. But when Wilson, reelected as the peace candidate in 1916, swept the United States into the war the following spring, the repercussions for protesters and leftists were immediate, and crushing. The Espionage Act criminalized dissent, while vigilantes calling themselves the American Protective League hauled off suspected draft dodgers in unmarked vans. The battered IWW was broken, and the thriving socialist press abruptly silenced.

In June 1918, Debs gave a speech in Canton, Ohio, in defense of socialism. He denounced war in general as a tool of the oppressors, and urged the crowd to remember that they were human beings, with minds and souls to develop, not wage slaves or cannon fodder. Two weeks later, the 62-year-old was arrested and charged with violating the Espionage Act, and sentenced to 10 years in prison. In 1920, two years after the end of the war, he mounted his fifth and final presidential run from his Atlanta prison cell. After President Harding commuted his sentence the day before Christmas in 1921, Debs used his experience of incarceration to write about the horrors of the prison system, especially the way it robbed poor Black boys of their future. But his health was shot, and less than five years after his release, America’s leading socialist died at the age of 70.

Almost immediately, arguments over his legacy began. His ability to inspire listeners in every corner of the country, to connect and convince them that he cared about them and had a balm for their pain, was powerful, but fundamentally at odds with the movement’s democratic ethos. Debs himself worried that socialism could not grow by following a powerful leader, but at the same time he wasn’t willing to give up the spotlight. There was always another audience.

Gude grapples throughout his book with this contradiction in Debs, the grandiose visionary and the man who craved constant affirmation, and whose heavy drinking at times meant that he needed a junior party member to get him to the stage on time. After a failed run for Congress in 1916, he plunged into an emotional affair with a married woman several years his junior, with whom he exchanged passionate letters up until the end of his life. In his final years, he embraced alternative health therapies and wrote enthusiastically to his brother from one sanitarium of the powers of such wellness cures as cold plunges, touching grass, and avoiding processed foods. These human peculiarities of Debs resist a clear narrative, and apparently did nothing to undermine his followers’ faith. He didn’t connect with people by confessing his own failings, but clearly his flaws helped him toward his spirit of nonjudgmental humanism, which allowed him to meet his fellow human beings where and how they were.

For all his wide knowledge across the vast range of American working lives, Eugene Debs was a Midwesterner at heart, and his politics belonged to Terre Haute, a small town under a big sky, rather than socialism’s urban hotbeds, Chicago or New York City. Zohran Mamdani’s election as mayor of New York isn’t explained by Debs, although he quoted him in his inauguration speech (“I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity”). There’s perhaps a more pertinent line of inheritance from the “sewer socialists” of Milwaukee, who proudly got their name by installing a sewer system in the sanitation-deprived town, to Mamdani’s equally unglamorous, useful project of filling potholes across the city. Action, not oratory.

The international socialists who inspired Debs at the start of his conversion were wildly excited at the prospects for American labor. How far might a nation go that had no kings to depose, no entrenched hierarchies to uproot, a country so young and iconoclastic and resource-rich? It was a disillusion as brutal as the mines and the mills, to see how powerful the pushback would be. The promise of American socialism is still unfulfilled, but this is a country in which almost anything can be resisted, rethought, and reinvented. Even politics. Even capitalism. Perhaps the story of Eugene Debs, told as meticulously as this, shows us that reinvention will not come from a single leader, no matter how inspiring, but from the collective resistance, and joyful community, of ordinary people.

His execution, by hanging, was set for sunrise that mid-August day. A crowd of 20,000 gathered; vendors sold candy, popcorn, Coca-Cola, and watermelon; some men climbed utility poles, and parents held their small children aloft, for a better view. The Louisville Courier-Journal enthused: “Kentucky is already famous for her hospitality. Her Derby parties are known all over the country. Her hanging parties should have an even wider fame. Most people are interested in horse-racing, but all people are interested in death.”

Coverage was national and intense. The northern papers were horrified by this macabre spectacle (here’s a photo of the scene). The people of Owensboro resented the way they were portrayed. But the state legislature and the governor had enough of a conscience that not long after, they passed a law outlawing public executions. And the hanging of Rainey Bethea was, by most accounts, the last public execution in the United States (the Death Penalty Information Center’s website says that one more took place, in Missouri in 1937).

In either case, it’s been nine decades, nearly a century, since the United States of America or any of its states decided that turning the killing of a human being into a public entertainment was a good idea. France banned the practice soon thereafter, in 1939. In the U.K., public execution was outlawed back in 1868. In 2025, according to Amnesty International, just two countries carried out public executions. The theocrats in Iran held 11, and the Taliban in Afghanistan hosted six. And that’s the company in which Pete Hegseth—the testosterone-obsessed, man-boy “war” secretary—wishes to place the United States of America.

Donald Trump has done a lot of repulsive things as president and taken this country down moral sinkholes most of us never thought we’d encounter. But if he approves the livestreaming of the execution of Nidal Hasan—and Hegseth’s announcement last week was just a recommendation; Trump said over the weekend that he will decide—it will easily be the most depraved thing he’s done.

Hasan’s crimes are sickening. He killed 13 people, including a pregnant woman, and injured 32 more when he opened fire at Fort Hood, Texas, on November 5, 2009. I’m an opponent of the death penalty, mainly because there’s just way too much evidence that our justice system wrongly convicts people. Since 1972, 203 people sentenced to death in this country have been later exonerated. I’ll admit, though, that in cases of premeditated mass murder like this one, where the crime was unspeakable and the guilt is clear, I don’t lose much sleep when I learn that the perp will be put to death.

But televising it is barbaric. Turning the killing of a human being, any human being, into a spectator sport is about as sick as it gets. The United States of the mid-1930s was not exactly a progressive Eden, to say nothing of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. A Black man was lynched in the state just two years before Bethea was put to death. But even in that place and at that time, people in positions of power knew that killing a person for public amusement was one moral bridge too far and moved to outlaw it.

It’s not too far for Hegseth. The man who has overseen a disastrous war that has cost you and me $45 billion and 81 aircraft worth more than $3 billion thinks it’s a grand idea. He laid it out last week to some right-wing “news” outfit called Real America’s Voice. A “no-brainer,” he said. “It hadn’t been since World War II since we’ve done that. Well, I kinda like the mentality we had in World War II. Which was win.”

Where does one even begin? As if turning murder into a piece of theater is on par with the global fight to stop fascism. As if taking a human life on TV is a “win” comparable to the defeat of Hitler. What kind of monster talks like this?

At another point in the interview, Hegseth gave away what really makes people like him seethe. Of Hasan’s act, he said: “Remember what Obama called it? ‘Workplace violence’? I mean, that’s what we’re up against.” Wow. Did Obama really say that? “Workplace violence” is Andy Bernard punching a wall, not a religious extremist executing 13 innocent people and perpetrating a bloodbath.

But Obama never personally uttered the phrase. In the shootings’ immediate aftermath, he called them a “horrific outburst of violence.” Instead, the Pentagon categorized Hasan’s act as an incident of workplace violence until it much later decided to call it what it obviously was, an act of terrorism (Hasan shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he opened fire). So that’s what’s eating at Hegseth here—that a Pentagon full of beardos and weirdos, no doubt acting at the behest of a commander in chief who would never meet Hegseth’s perverse definition of manhood, was engaged in a bunch of low-testosterone wokery until he came along.

One can agree with Hegseth on that score that if one wishes. But it doesn’t excuse, nothing excuses, livestreaming the event. It still may not happen. JD Vance threw a little cold water on the idea over the weekend, announcing that it wasn’t a done deal and in any case he wouldn’t be watching. Trump, in his remarks, left the door open for an about-face.

If it does happen, though: Can there be any doubt there will be watch parties—mini-Owensboros, so to speak—all over the country, or at least certain parts of it? And remember: This will take place on December 3, during the first week of Advent, in between the Sundays dedicated to hope and peace.

I wonder what Hegseth—who fancies himself a devout Christian and sports a tattoo saying “Deus Vult” (God wills it), which was a rallying cry among the Christian crusaders massacring Muslims—makes of that little piece of irony. Or the irony that adheres in the fact that he wants to punish an Islamic religious extremist by doing something that will link the United States of America arm-in-arm with what are almost surely the two most extremist theocratic Islamic regimes in the world. One doubts that irony has occurred to him. And of course it will elude Trump. Our hope is that one of those plastic-faced denizens of Mar-a-Lago might point it out to him in time. And if not, December 3 will take its place as one of the darkest days in modern American history.    

While the White House has been issuing a torrent of threats—including promises to use “economic force” to annex Canada, and hints at other more direct methods, like forced annexation—Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has been quietly hunting for new suitors. For over a year, The Wall Street Journal reports, he has been exchanging sweet nothings on long-distance phone calls with the leaders of the Old Continent. Canada, he teases foreign leaders, is open for business. Its huge tracts of land are just waiting to be exploited—its amber grain, pink potash, and hot natural gas overflowing in abundance. And with generous new tax incentives to rival even American corporate giveaways, it’ll even pick up the check. We’re just like America, he hints—only sweeter.

It would seem Europe got the message. In her State of the Union address to the European Parliament in September, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, if anything, came on too strong. Tearing the corset of EU precedent, she proposed a wholly invented new category of “associate member” for Canada. “We share one ocean, one set of values, one way of seeing the world,” she fawned. “And we will now build our shared future as well.”

What, exactly, “associate member” would mean is anyone’s guess; officials on both sides soon played it down with mild embarrassment. In his response, Carney referred only to “an alliance for the future.” Some members of the European Parliament responded with the bitterness of a rejected suitor. “It was an absurd and unrealistic knee-jerk reaction,” Siegbert Frank Droese, a far-right German MEP, lamented. Europe simply wanted “the closest possible” relationship, President of the European Council Antonio Costa clarified. “I don’t think we should get too bogged down with words and labeling,” Mark Camilleri of the Canada EU Trade and Investment Association told me, channeling the consummate bachelor.

In Carney’s Don Draper–esque world of jet-setting luncheons and grenadine ties, this was a play well-executed. Just look, he seemed to say. They’re throwing themselves at us. His oblique references to America’s boorishness on the world stage—“economic integration is now being weaponised, and tariffs are being used as a means of pressure”—likewise hit their mark. “Laughable,” Trump huffed, before striking the paternalistic note of the bitter ex. “If it’s a good intention, that’s fine,” he said. “If it’s a bad intention, we’ll put very heavy tariffs on Europe.”

For most Canadians, this is all a fantasy worthy of fan fiction. Many Canadians, especially of Carney’s urbane class, have long nurtured the aspirational notion that they are closer in character to Europeans than to their neighbors to the south. They tend to look fondly on a welfare state. Their genteel gradualism, born of their lengthy breakup with Britain, makes them natural partners for slow, set-in-their-ways European institutions; their common-law conventions make them reluctant rebels, studious observers of norms and traditions.

This makes Canada a particularly appealing ally: reliable and rich, not to mention well-resourced. Canada has long vowed that its friendship comes with access to the critical minerals, uranium, and gas Europe sorely needs. Carney has even forsworn his nation’s traditional “ick” regarding militarization as he pours money into defense to spur economic growth. In mid-September, he promised “to produce millions of drones within the next two years,” signing a 100-year pact to arm Ukraine against Russia—offering a deeper commitment to that conflict than anyone in Europe has been able to muster.

A well-armed, well-funded Canada offers Europe more than just resources: It is also strategically positioned to see the continent through the next century of war and warming. As long as it maintains sovereignty over the Northwest Passage (a fact the United States has long denied), it controls the only Arab- and Russian-free route from Europe to Asia, offering secure shipping no matter the EU’s stance on Israel, Ukraine, Iran, or America’s next war.

All to say, it is no surprise Europe leaped so quickly to the idea of Canadian “associate membership.” After all, a diplomatic coup with Canada would also help cover a growing rot at the heart of the European Union: its own ambivalence toward expansion. With a lengthy line of corrupt economies and shaky democracies waiting at its door, the EU’s regulatory bouncers can’t even relax the rules enough to woo the likes of Iceland, which voted down nonbinding negotiations in August in a high-profile rebuke to Eurocrats. For Europe, too, Canada represents something fresh—a new, deeper, more harmonious relationship, free from the baggage of past disappointments.

But what, you might ask, would Canada gain from flirting with a club its own members want to leave? In some conservative corners, news of Carney’s surprise European romance prompted alarm from those fattened on a drip-feed of Brexit-style panic. Pierre Poilievre, Canada’s nonentity of an opposition leader, issued dire warnings of becoming Europe’s “twenty-eighth state” and falling victim to “reckless European-style immigration.”

Those fears are deliberately naïve—any labor mobility agreement would require painstaking negotiations with each of Canada’s 10 provinces and three territories. But it did not stop Canada’s more affluent and liberal-minded communities from fantasizing about a future of visa-free work and travel, or other supposed fruits of Carney’s flirtation: lower tuition at Europe’s universities, fancier cheese, better wine. The potential dowry was hard to deny—hundreds of billions in European funds and investments, unlocked; a chance, finally, to sell Canada’s family jewels to the right sort of buyer.

Canada had long since signed on to the more feasible aspects of this exchange. It still struggles to fill its quota for some tariff-free European food products under a free-trade agreement signed in 2016 (and still unratified by 10 EU states). Italian wine is already cheaper than Canadian on many liquor store shelves. Canada long ago signed onto Europe’s $106 billion research fund, Horizon Europe, and its defense procurement agreement, SAFE. It remains to be seen what more could actually be done in terms of formal ties with the continent, besides slightly cheaper exchanges to the Sorbonne for the children of Canada’s wealthiest families.

In reality, what Europe offers Canada is something far less tangible: an implication. Europe’s interest in Canada shows there is a new deep-pocketed benefactor willing to slot into the role being vacated by a self-destructing United States. “What happened in Strasbourg this week very much also has to be seen as a sign signaled to an American audience,” Achim Hurrelmann, director of Carleton University’s Centre for European Studies, told me in September. There is a growing realization on both sides of the Atlantic, in no small part prompted by Carney’s repeated calls for a new global order, that the United States will not fully recover after Trump; that this new phase of American bellicosity and dysfunction may be a generational phenomenon. As Carney made clear in his lauded speech at Davos, he sees the solution as an alliance of “middle powers,” a global nonaligned movement of capable, middle-class democracies—a normal kids club, rich and stable enough to stand up to the world’s bullies.

It’s perhaps a little damning that the European Union, once thought a possible global hegemon in its own right, was among the first on Carney’s invite list. Carney has been explicit: His goal is not to seriously challenge U.S. power by crafting a new “great power rival … with better manners.” Rather, it’s to insulate his country—and, if you take him at his word, the civilized world—from the more insane impulses of America’s increasingly unhinged government—like the sudden defunding of USAID.

In this sense, Carney’s priority areas for collaboration are revealing: AI policy, financial services, and defense are all still overly dependent on rules and systems designed in America. The companies that dominate those fields are, of course, also based in America. As its rules on data protection and its standardization of charging ports show, one thing the European Union can still do is use the weight of its sizable consumer market to dictate the rules of the capitalist game, as it is currently trying to do in several areas, most notably tech regulation. Part of Carney’s calculus is the bet that this can also work in state procurement.

There are reasons to be skeptical. Carney’s bid for closer ties with Europe comes at a time when the continent’s governments—and the EU itself—are struggling to resist a tidal wave of right-wing populism. Any substantial agreement may see Carney shaking hands with Germany’s first far-right chancellor since the last one shot himself in a bunker. While Trump is addled and ineffectual, the far-right in Europe is operating with a genuine democratic mandate—at least, as long as there is any democracy left.

But it’s quite possible that Carney simply doesn’t care. Like a true banker, he has already demonstrated a remarkable agnosticism regarding the origins of the dollars he hopes will build his nation by buying its assets. Attendees at a high-profile investment summit in Toronto just before his trip to Strasbourg included prominent Trump donors, alongside state-backed wealth funds from China, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. In the pitch book was the usual offer of mines and pipelines, but also key strategic assets like airports, rocket launchpads, and fiber-optic lines. Carney drew the ire of Canadian progressives for his willingness to sell out the country’s few remaining public assets. But he appears to be a true believer in trickle-down economics: Enriching a class of highly mobile, global investors, he seems to reason, will make Canadians wealthier so long as they are enriched on Canadian soil.

That should offer some consolation to Americans worried about their place in the world, or their special relationship with their neighbors to the north. Get yourself a few billion dollars in assets, and even the debonair likes of Carney will still fling open the doors, lay out the family china, and attempt to woo you from your wallet. It’s also a sad indication that, like many partners in abusive relationships, Canada may not be able to resist crawling back to the United States if it puts on a serious show of being reformed. “That’s a question that I’ve heard Europeans ask,” Hurrelmann told me. “What happens when the trade war is over? Will Canada still be interested in these types of things?”

The answer to that question is hard to discern while Trump continues blustering from the White House. Like many genteel Canadians, Carney likely may have an inclination to lean away from America anyway—from its increasingly crass politics, debased culture, and unrestrained greed. Canadians may be more American than they like to admit, but they are not as American as America is now. Another few years of accelerating decay may simply be too much to come back from. For now, at least, Canada is exploring its options—and it doesn’t seem inclined to wait around. Jilted lovers seldom do.

The piece wastes no time: In short order, we’re introduced to “a former prosecutor forced off a high-profile murder case for peeking at the defense team’s strategy documents,” a “onetime gambling executive” with a sideline in promulgating “conspiracy theories about the Las Vegas massacre in 2017,” and a “Florida activist” whose “activism” included being jailed for several weeks for “hacking a local election system.” The long and the short of it is that the agency, once stocked with skilled professionals, is now chock-full of people who ordinarily wouldn’t pass the smell test for public service. Somewhere, a pool is missing its cess, and they might want to check whether it ended up at the DOJ.

Much has been made of the way the Trump administration, returning to power with Project 2025 as its guiding manifesto and Elon Musk as its chainsaw-wielder, went to war with the civil service in the hopes that it could be ground down by purging the dedicated civil servants who’d previously staffed whatever posts were relevant in keeping us free of cyclospora. This Times story is covering the other side of the equation: The full Trumpian takeover isn’t just about firing people en masse. Frankly, it’s not merely about placing people loyal to the cause in top positions. It’s about stationing borderline lycanthropes in powerful positions.

Daniel Flickinger, who began working on the division’s education cases earlier this year, was forced out of his job at a Birmingham, Alabama, law firm in 2020 after suggesting—to the disgust of his bosses—that George Floyd was fortunate to have died in a “fentanyl- and methamphetamine-numbed strangulation” because “it meant being worshiped in a nationwide funeral.”

Peter Feaman, a veteran lawyer from Florida hired in early 2025 as a senior counsel, has a history of far-right political statements. In a May 2021 post on social media, he accused the “diabolical” Democratic governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, of forcing citizens into getting the “mark of the beast” (a coronavirus shot).

This isn’t going to be a temporary problem by any means. The idea that the Trumpers who’ve come to Washington might take their leave if and when the federal government comes under Democratic control is a hopeful notion, but I worry that some of the true believers aren’t just here visiting; they intend to stay. That’s certainly the sense that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—who’s gone to great lengths to stuff the agency under his control with all manner of cranks and quacks—strove to convey at last week’s MAHA Summit in Washington, D.C. As Mother Jones reported, Kennedy “proclaimed the changes he’s wrought to HHS are permanent, and praised his allies in the movement for helping to make them happen.” “Even if I got hit by a truck tonight,” he bragged, “HHS will never go back to what it was before.”

When it comes to government agencies that have suffered the most from this Trumpian takeover, none are as complete or as concerning as the Department of Homeland Security. On its best days, DHS is a walled garden of cops all hotboxing themselves with reactionary politics. Under Trump, it’s essentially become a hive of outlandish herrenvolk propaganda, pumping neo-Nazi memes into the social media bloodstream—the better to recruit the sort of person who might want to inflict terror on the streets of American cities.

As The New Republic’s Melissa Gira Grant documented, DHS’s tainted origin as a post-9/11 agency with a monomaniacal focus on Muslim extremism—and with a storied history of downplaying the threats of white nationalism—has only grown even more corrupted by the second coming of Trump. “We are doubling back around the same circular path,” Grant observed, “where agencies such as DHS downplay white nationalist violence, both potential and actual, while they draw recruits from those same ranks.”

For a future Democratic president, the challenge of righting the ship of state will not simply be a matter of reviving the federal workforce and bringing competent professionals back to the perches they once occupied. It will be a matter of fumigation, as well—or, to use a better term, lustration, which Yale Law professor Dina Francesca Haynes, writing immediately after the first Trump administration, defined as “the process of vetting and removing from public service those who engage in or support extremism or seek to undermine democracy.”

Lustration, Haynes explained, “has been carried out or proposed in many countries attempting to pull themselves from the wreckage of fascism, genocide, and nationalism.” As Haynes described, the idea is that for a country to successfully “move forward” from its authoritarian past, “it must rid itself of corrupt public servants by vetting them, and potentially dismissing from employment and cancelling pensions of those who harbor such deep bias that it would be impossible for them to fairly and impartially exercise the discretion they have been granted by virtue of their position in public service.”

This is something that those of us at The New Republic have already begun considering as a necessary bridge back to a functioning democracy. In fact, as The New Republic’s Matt Ford pointed out as he gamed out what a future president could do to gut ICE, Trump himself has already provided the working blueprint for a quick and effective purge of any Trumpian fifth column that might remain gummed in the gears of government after the president leaves office. A future president can claim the same “vast powers to decide the fate of federal agencies,” including terminating employees, cutting funding, and transferring staff and programs to other agencies.

Elsewhere, Ford also suggested that a future Democratic president make use of the power Trump claimed for himself to “reduce headcounts through a reduction in force, perhaps by firing every agent hired since 2024.” As Ford opined at the time, the administration’s “decision to drastically reduce hiring standards for incoming ICE agents would more than justify such a sweeping action.” That the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division is studded with people who shouldn’t be managing a Pizza Hut, let alone prosecuting civil rights offenders, suggests there is ample room to expand these principles of lustration throughout a Trump-tainted civil service.

As I’ve said before, the right way to think about the Trump administration and its wholesale operations across the federal government is to accept the fact that it is essentially a criminal syndicate, dedicated to self-enrichment and political corruption. The next Democratic administration should have accountability on its mind, and a commitment to rooting out the Trumpian rot that’s infected the civic architecture of this great nation. It might be that the most useful thing the Trump administration has accomplished in its odious lifetime is to provide the playbook to right its wrongs and dismantle Trumpism permanently.

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

Vance’s strange invitation came during a Friday rally in his home state of Ohio for embattled Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

“[Vivek] Ramaswamy is running against a crazy person,” Vance said. “Amy Acton, I have to be honest with you, I don’t know that much about her, other than she was the woman who wanted to mask all of our two-year-olds and keep them from going to school.” Acton served as the head of the Ohio state Health Department from 2019-2020.

“Now I did promise Amy that I would meet her at a bar later,” Vance continued. “I understand that she’s into that sort of thing. So I’m gonna try to get to know her a little bit better.”

This is yet another shot in a cheap GOP smear campaign to convince Ohio voters that Acton is some raging alcoholic and drug addict. The Ohio Republican Party has run ads calling Acton “unstable” and violent based on a 911 call from 2019 in which her daughter said she was “drinking and throwing things” while on medication, arguing with her stepfather in their home. Police arrived, made a report, and nothing came of it. Seven years later, and it’s the Ohio GOP’s primary dirt on Acton, with Vance even sampling the low-hanging fruit.

Acton denies that she has ever had a drug or alcohol problem. She and Ramaswamy, the hedge-fund billionaire and failed pharmaceutical startup founder, are locked in a fairly close midterm race for the governorship.

The Treasury Department announced that the U.S. would waive sanctions on Russian diesel sold to the global market until April 2027. In a post on Truth Social, Trump claimed that Russia would “immediately” supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel fuel to the American and global marketplace. Russia agreed to supply another 500,000 tons in November and then “1,000,000 tons thereafter,” Trump added.

Javier Blas, the energy and commodities columnist at Bloomberg, observed that these commitments to the United States were too small to make a “meaningful impact” on the nationwide surge of diesel prices.

In reality, 300,000 tons is equivalent to only 2.2 million barrels, Blas wrote in a post on X. To give you an idea of just how little that really is, before the U.S. attacked Iran, an average of 3.6 million barrels of refined petroleum products traveled through the Strait of Hormuz every day. Now only 677,000 barrels of refined products are moved through the essential trade passageway every day.

Meanwhile, Russia will get the right to sell its oil globally. Congress last month passed a sweeping sanctions bill, which Trump signed, punishing countries that purchase Russian oil. Now it seems the United States is one of them.

If Trump thinks his latest move cozying up to Putin will potentially help in the upcoming midterm elections, he has another think coming.

The event, which takes place in Phoenix, Arizona, from December 17 to 20, will again be headlined by Vice President JD Vance. Former press secretary Karoline Leavitt, former White House adviser and far-right activist Steve Bannon, former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, anti-transgender activist Riley Gaines, former presidential candidate Ben Carson, right-wing provocateur Nick Shirley, former Representative Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump Jr., Erika Kirk, and a host of other prominent voices on the right will also be speaking.

Notably absent from the list of esteemed speakers is Tucker Carlson, as he was a large part of the reason last year’s AmeriFest—the first since TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk’s assassination—was largely unsuccessful. Carlson got into a back-and-forth with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro in 2025 after Shapiro called him and Candace Owens “charlatans who claim to speak in the name of principle but actually traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty.”

Carlson responded by attacking Shapiro’s fealty to Israel, and the entire event became a stark representation of the serious rifts within the conservative movement. This year will follow what will likely be an unsuccessful midterm election performance by the Republican Party, which may in turn impact the nature of the event.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions cutting the court off from any U.S.-based financial services, technology companies, and U.S. currency. The Trump administration set a six-month timeline for U.S. companies to wind down their business with the war crimes tribunal. 

“We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate against us,” Rubio said in a video statement on social media. “The United States and the American people are not subject to the jurisdiction of this fake ICC.”

Rubio has previously argued the court has become “radical and extreme,” though Trump has outright admitted Rubio’s campaign against the ICC is meant to protect Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  

U.S. officials maintained that these sanctions had been in the works for months, and the timing so close to the Nobel Prize award ceremony was merely coincidental, according to the Associated Press. But these sanctions are exactly the kind of petty behavior we’ve come to expect from a president who’s spent years begging for the prestigious award.

Instead, the award went to Navi Pillay, a South African human rights lawyer with a decades-long career. Last year, Pillay led a United Nations commission that found the Israeli government had committed a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The Nobel committee said Thursday that Pillay had been “instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted.”

Pillay took an immediate shot at Trump after she learned she had won the award Friday. “Thank you very much. If you clap a little bit more I may share this prize with Trump,” she said, causing the room to erupt into laughter. 

Trump attacked the ICC after it issued arrest warrants against Israeli government leaders, including Netanyahu, for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Since then, the U.S. has sanctioned court officials and prosecutors, as well as other international leaders who document and speak out about Israel’s crimes, including U.N. Special Rapporteur for Palestine Francesca Albanese.

The 42-year-old was previously the senior communications adviser at Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social; a frequent commentator on Fox News, Newsmax, and CNN; and a former employee of Fix California, a nonprofit founded by former acting director of national intelligence and longtime Trump ally Ric Grenell.

The news of Zacharia’s ascension to the White House inner ring was first reported by The New York Times and confirmed by CBS News.

As a media commentator, Zacharia has shared her most extreme takes, including that the abortion pill mifepristone came straight from Nazi Germany.

“The abortion pill, Mifepristone … is connected to the manufacturer of the deadly gas Zyklon B, used in the World War II concentration camps,” she wrote on X last fall. “Zyklon-B was originally used as a pesticide and marketed by the German Corporation for Pest Control, now known as Detia Degesch GmbH. Degesch, in which German chemical company I.G. Farben had a 42.5% interest and on whose board of 11 it had five seats, was the sole producer of the gas. According to the New York Times, ‘I.G. Farben played so important a role in Hitler’s war machine and in the Holocaust that it came to be called “the devil’s chemist.”’ It manufactured Zyklon B, the gas-chamber poison, among many other products, and its factories exploited more than 35,000 slave labourers, many from Auschwitz. It even built a concentration camp of its own to improve efficiency.”

It’s not clear where she came up with this deranged conspiracy, as mifepristone was actually developed by a French scientist and not approved for sale in France until the 1980s. The corporate history Zacharia hinted at is much more complicated: The company that developed Zyklon B was eventually, after decades of mergers and spin-offs, taken over by the multinational pharmaceutical company Sanofi. Sanofi also acquired the company that manufactured mifepristone, Roussel Uclaf, in the late 1990s.

Aside from her paid media gigs, Zacharia also had a brief stint working under ex–Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, working as a spokesperson for the agency between February and March, according to her LinkedIn.

In that time, Zacharia attacked Senator Richard Blumenthal on social media, accusing the Connecticut Democrat of spreading “fear-mongering lies” about ICE’s takeover at airports. In the same post, she lauded the agency’s arrest record, claiming that it was “heroic” for removing “violent criminal illegal alien predators.”

But she wasn’t always so opposed to immigrants. From August 2012 to June 2013—shortly after she obtained her J.D. from Pepperdine Caruso Law—Zacharia worked as the manager of fundraising and communications at Compassion for Migrant Children, a nonprofit dedicated to helping the children of immigrant workers.

Zacharia will replace Karoline Leavitt, who exited the role in August to join Fox News as an on-air contributor.

The comms expert certainly has her work cut out for her. Zacharia will walk into a Trump administration that is already drowning in an ocean of scandals, battered by recent tidal waves that include reports of Trump officials assisting pro-Russia governments, the president’s repeat invitations for Iran to strike American cities, taxpayer-funded propaganda, and the White House’s decision to cancel $810 million in congressionally appropriated funds, which critics have argued violates federal law.

Only time will tell if she is capable of straightening up the mess.

This story has been updated.

Hegseth confirmed Thursday that the Pentagon plans to livestream the military firing squad execution of convicted Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan. Obviously Democrats were outraged by the plan, but even a few Republicans weren’t on board with turning state-sponsored murder into a spectacle.

North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis said that Hegseth’s decision was “beyond disgusting.”

“Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America,” he wrote in a post on X. In his new book, Tillis wrote that confirming Hegseth was the “biggest regret” of his career.

Georgia Representative Austin Scott also opposed the decision. “I absolutely support the sentence of death, but live-streaming executions is what jihadists do. America is better than that,” he wrote on X, referring to the violent Islamist ideology.

In a response to Hegseth on X, former Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger put it more bluntly: “There will be a day, and soon, when nobody will acknowledge even knowing you.”

Meanwhile, Laura Loomer, the self-proclaimed Islamophobe who advises the president, voiced her support for the plan straight out of an extremist’s playbook.

“[Hegeseth] is amazing. Truly amazing. I can’t wait to watch Nidal Hasan’s live-streamed execution for his act of Islamic terrorism. We are very lucky to have [Hegseth] ! I voted for more dead jihadists!” she wrote on X. In reality, she voted to make our country more like the violent regimes she claims to hate.

Internationally, public executions are rare, but they still occur in Afghanistan and Iran, according to The Guardian. In 2025, the Taliban carried out six public executions, and the Islamic Republic carried out 11.

A new report from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune shows that Paxton has taken almost 1,000 trips out of state since 2015, accompanied by Texas police each time at a cost of $3.3 million to his constituents. His security detail alone cost $24,000 a month, while his predecessor Greg Abbott’s cost $7,400 a month. Of those 1,000 trips, research only linked 138 of them to actual business. In fact, Paxton didn’t even record them as such.

Paxton took 53 trips to Florida, 24 trips to Utah—where his family trust owns properties—and 19 trips out of the country, all on the taxpayer’s dime. Paxton did not offer any specific explanation for his lack of business records for the trips.

“Throughout his career, Ken Paxton has faced numerous security threats stemming from his courageous work as Attorney General fighting on behalf of the people of Texas,” said his office in a statement. “Those threats are a direct result of him taking on the cartels terrorizing Texans and some of the nation’s most dangerous violent criminals.”

Beyond being a blatant misuse of public funds, especially given how many trips he took to his properties, this is a sign that Paxton cares more about his political office and its perks than he does about his actual constituents, who are paying for those perks.

“If you’ve got all these extra trips, it becomes ethically and morally problematic,” former National Association of Attorneys General executive director Chris Toth told ProPublica. “The ethical question is whether a legitimate security function has effectively become a taxpayer-funded subsidy.”

Paxton has been followed by crises of his own making for the entirety of his time as attorney general, as well as his candidacy for Senate. From his indictment and suspension to his alleged affair and subsequent divorce, and then his controversial, leak-filled Senate campaign, the GOP couldn’t have chosen a weaker candidate to field against James Talarico in Texas to defend its Senate majority.

A fresh blow to this notion came this week with an NBC poll finding Trump’s approval with Latinos sinking to 27 percent, and Democrats leading among them in the generic matchup by 59–35. But such polls capture only half the story. The other factor to consider? Latino turnout.

A new analysis by the Democratic data firm TargetSmart—which we obtained before its release—demonstrates something striking: As of right now, the Latino share of the early vote is dramatically outpacing where it was at the equivalent moment in both 2022 and 2024.

Here’s the truly wild finding: The raw number of early Latino votes is outpacing the raw total of them at the same point in 2024. That’s a surprise, because 2024 was a presidential year, when voter turnout is traditionally much higher, especially among nonwhites. Yet more Latinos have voted as of now—in this midterm—than at this point in the last presidential cycle.

TargetSmart’s analysis looked at the 229 counties across the country that are currently reporting early votes, mostly concentrated in states like Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Virginia, New Jersey, and Florida.

Here’s the first key finding on vote share:

As you can see, as of October 8, Latinos comprise nearly 8 percent of the early vote in those 229 counties, substantially higher than the percentages in 2022 and 2024, per TargetSmart’s analysis. Those gains amount to big numbers, as the second key finding on raw vote totals shows:

That graphic is remarkable. As of October 8, according to the analysis, nearly 112,000 Latinos have voted, versus the approximately 106,000 who cast votes by the same time in the presidential year of 2024.

“While it’s still early, it’s incredibly unusual to see any group outperform presidential turnout at this point in the cycle,” Tom Bonier, a senior adviser at TargetSmart, told me. “Latino turnout tends to drop more in midterms. So seeing this early surge suggests we’ll potentially see historic levels of Latino engagement.”

What’s driving all this? The economy is likely the primary driver: The NBC poll found 74 percent of Latinos nationally disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy. Latinos prefer Democrats to Republicans on the issue by 21 points—a huge turnaround from 2024, when Trump narrowly led Kamala Harris among Latinos on it.

But immigration also looms large. NBC finds 69 percent of Latinos disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration and 58 percent disapprove on border security. Even the Republican pollster who helps conduct NBC’s poll says the issue is a big factor driving Latinos to Democrats.

Indeed, TargetSmart’s analysis also finds that many counties with the largest spikes in Latino turnout are also ones subjected to high-profile ICE activity. “Communities that have been directly impacted by ICE actions are generally seeing the largest increases in turnout,” Bonier said.

Here is a big caveat: We’re at the outset of early voting, so we’ll know more when early-vote tallies arrive from states like Texas, California, New York, and Pennsylvania, which will shed light on the Texas Senate races and many House races concentrated in those states.

Nick Ahamed, managing director of Equis Research, also cautions against reading too much into the early vote because we can’t be certain how it’ll break down. But Equis research finds that Latinos comprise more than 10 percent of eligible voters in 20 competitive House districts and more than 20 percent in a dozen of those districts. Given the NBC poll showing Democrats with a 24-point lead among them, Latinos could heavily influence the outcome.

“If Democrats regain Latino support at levels we’re seeing in the polling, we expect Democrats to win in many of those 20 districts,” Ahamed told me. He noted that Equis research also shows Trump’s handling of costs and immigration are key drivers of Latino interest in voting.

MAGA as a movement probably has plenty of staying power even if the midterms are a disaster for Trump. But nonetheless, all this could matter a great deal for 2028. Even with Democrats winning congressional power, Trump will still have his ICE army at his command. While one hopes ICE will be partly constrained by Democrats in Congress, it’ll still have a huge pile of money and lots of heavy weaponry. And Trump will still control immigration policy.

Yes, Latinos constitute a swingy constituency and Democrats can’t take them for granted in 2028, even if they win big this fall. But it’s hard to see JD Vance recapturing many of them as long as they continue getting brutalized by Trump’s economy and deportation paramilitary. This Latino move back to Democrats, if it becomes a full-scale shift, may deal a blow to MAGA long past the midterms.

Trump and MAGA have pulled off some astounding political sleight of hand. They have openly advertised that their ideological goal is ethnic cleansing, recruiting ICE agents and saturating official government communications with explicit white-nationalist appeals. Yet they also succeeded for a time in selling this agenda to Latinos as purely about law enforcement and public safety. This straddle was critical to sustaining notions of MAGA as a multiracial movement.

But Trump’s catastrophic economic failures and violent anti-immigrant horrors have rendered that balancing act impossible to sustain. We can’t be certain all this is driving the Latino early voting surge, but it sure looks plausible. If this early trend holds—and if Latinos help deliver a resounding Democratic victory—that chart on raw vote totals will have captured what may be the beginning of the end.

A tell-all published Thursday by Vanity Fair revealed the glitz and glam of Miller’s over-the-top parties, which have at times included donkeys, food trucks, hibachi chefs, a mechanical bull, and dozens of famed guests. 

It’s not uncommon to find nearly all of the presidential Cabinet in attendance, either. Frequent partygoers include the Rubios, the Hegseths, the Burgums, as well as FBI Director Kash Patel and his fiancée, Alexis Wilkins. The high-flying guest list has sparked jokes that the Trump administration might need a “designated survivor” to outlast Miller’s soirees, according to one regular attendee who spoke with Vanity Fair.

But whereas the Capitol wives of old would throw bipartisan get-togethers to bridge the divides of Washington politics, the Millers appear to be hiding from their detractors. Sequestered at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall—where they moved to escape the protests plaguing them in their old neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia—the Millers have found a way to revel and play away from public ire.

“They need to do something to blow off steam because they’re not welcome in public,” another party guest told the magazine. “They can’t go to any venue without being assaulted. They have to do this stuff in Camelot.”

But accepting an invitation from Katie Miller doesn’t necessarily imply a fondness for the couple. At least one longtime Trump ally told Vanity Fair that Stephen Miller’s despotic reputation is a part of the calculation.  

“I’ll say I love her publicly, but the truth is I can’t fucking stand her,” the ally said. “But if she asks you to go on the podcast, or come over for dinner, you say yes, because Stephen Miller is the second-most powerful person in the world.”

“I wanna push back on a couple things. The Mayor yesterday did a press conference.…He said that ICE ‘has killed more of our neighbors than they claim to have saved.’ That’s a direct quote from the Mayor last night,” Mullin said with anger in his voice. “Just for a record here: Right now ICE has in detention 258 illegals that are wanted for murder charges just in New York alone.… [the mayor’s] words are dangerous, and incite hostility. It doesn’t help.”

Mullin points to Mamdani’s view on ICE—which the vast majority of Americans share—as harmful rather than the violent actions of ICE itself. On Thursday, ICE shot and wounded 28-year-old Dominican man Oscar Belgal in the neck while he was driving with a 5-year-old child in the backseat in New York City’s Marble Hill, discharging seven rounds at Belgal. ICE claims he “weaponized” his car against them after they boxed him in. Mamdani unsuccessfully negotiated for Belgal’s release.

According to Mamdani and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, Belgal was rushed by plainclothed ICE officers with their guns already drawn.

“They wore construction vests and masks that concealed their faces. There was no reasonable way to identify them as ICE agents,” Mamdani said.

Mullin’s comments were not well received.

“His words are dangerous and incite hostility—says the man in charge of the masked, armed, thugs violating Constitutional rights, and attacking and killing people in the streets,” Executive Director of the Campaign for New York Health Melanie D’Arrigo wrote on X.

At least 40 people have been shot by ICE since the start of Trump’s second term, with 11 of those being fatal.

Nothing Mullin or anyone from DHS leadership says should be taken seriously. Whatever statistics Mullin spouts are easily outweighed by the images Americans have seen of masked, disguised federal agents roaming their streets, terrorizing and killing their neighbors. ICE agents dressed in construction gear ambushing a man and firing at him seven times with a child in the car in the middle of the day is absurd, and Mullin has no real justification for it—leading him to deflect to Mamdani.

In a presidential memo Wednesday, Trump announced that he’d set up a committee to oversee an investigation into whether Cook had made false statements in connection to one or more mortgage agreements.

“As President, it is my job to ensure the laws are faithfully executed, including by firing subordinates who cannot be trusted to tell the truth and follow the law,” he wrote.

Of course, Cook isn’t really Trump’s subordinate. In June, the Supreme Court blocked Cook’s removal, finding that the government had not afforded her due process. The ruling temporarily preserved the Federal Reserve’s independence.

But that hasn’t stopped Trump from trying to oust Cook. In August, White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino informed her that the Trump administration was once again “considering” removing her from her position.

It’s been more than a year since Trump first claimed that Cook—the first Black woman on the Federal Reserve board—had committed mortgage fraud by having two primary residences. Cook refused to step down and sued, stating that “President Trump purported to fire me ‘for cause’ when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so.”

Notably, Trump’s own mortgage agreements appear to match the same criteria his Department of Justice has used to go after Cook, as well as Trump’s other perceived enemies, former Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell, Senator Adam Schiff, and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Trump said the new committee will meet next month to “consider the evidence and allegations against Governor Cook.” Cook has not been charged with any crime.

Inside Washington

Why Kansas might do the unthinkable and vote blue

A perfect storm could be brewing in Kansas to elect a Democratic senator for the first time since 1932. Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton’s skills as a candidate, experts say, combined with uniquely bad conditions for the state’s farmers, could be the right ingredients for an upset. The problem is numbers: Registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats in the state almost two to one.

“If there was ever a chance to elect a Democratic senator, this is it,” said Dan Glickman, who served as agriculture secretary under President Bill Clinton and represented Kansas’s 4th congressional district in the House for 18 years. A large part of that is because of Hamilton’s biography. As pastor of the Church of the Resurrection, he leads the largest Methodist congregation in the country, consisting of 24,000 members. Hamilton estimates that some 9,000 of those are Republicans, 9,000 are Democrats, and between 6,000 and 7,000 are independents.

“Being a pastor of a massive church, you have to be a pretty darn good politician to keep your job,” Glickman said. “There’s probably more attention on the pastor than there is on the governor or the senator.”

Recent polls have shown a shockingly close race. Some, like a YouGov poll conducted at the end of September, found Hamilton up three points against his competitor, incumbent Republican Senator Roger Marshall. An obstetrician-gynecologist, Marshall has held the seat since 2021. He recently came under fire when The New York Times reported that he had sued more than 700 patients who carried unpaid bills, and 81 of those patients were arrested. When the Times asked about the arrests, Marshall’s campaign said that judges issue warrants, not doctors.

Marshall, who is endorsed by Trump, is also struggling under the weight of the president’s expensive tariff policies and the war in Iran. Trump is deeply unpopular even in red Kansas, where he is 15 points underwater. Democrats are betting some conservative farmers, as a result, could stay home, and some might even vote blue, giving Hamilton an opening to unseat Marshall.

“A lot of times, farmers tend to keep their politics close to their chest,” said Nick Levendofsky, executive director of the Kansas Farmers Union. “But I am hearing a lot of rumblings all across not just the state of Kansas but across the country.” Levendofsky joined 250 farmers from all around the U.S. for the National Farmers Union legislative fly-in to Washington, D.C., in September. “You could feel the tension when we went to USDA, when we went into these meetings with members of Congress.”

With the fall harvest season underway, the increased costs of diesel and fertilizer caused by the Iran war are now hitting extra hard. Harvesting equipment requires diesel. And in the next few weeks, Kansas farmers who grow winter wheat will begin planting, requiring more diesel and fertilizer. “It’s a double whammy,” Levendofsky said. Diesel price hikes are likely to add an extra $20,000 to $30,000 to a grain farmer’s expenses this year, estimated Gregory Ibendahl, a professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State University. Farmers, who are price takers, have no way to pass that expense on and will simply have to eat the extra cost.

That doesn’t necessarily mean farmers will turn on Marshall, Ibendahl cautioned. “The administration is very good about having extra ad hoc payments beyond the typical Farm Bill payments,” he explained, which can help farmers make ends meet. Marshall may very well benefit by association with President Donald Trump in the eyes of farmers receiving those funds. 

But meanwhile, Kansas ranchers are deeply frustrated by Trump’s policies on beef imports. In 2025, Trump announced a plan to bring Argentine beef into the country to lower grocery prices. In late August, Trump announced a plan to ease tariffs on beef imports through the election, drawing the ire of Kansas cattle ranchers. “The answer to increasing prices in grocery stores isn’t selling out American farmers and ranchers to buy votes in November,” Glenn Brunkow, president of the Kansas Farm Bureau, told the Kansas Reflector at the time. Both Marshall and Hamilton criticized Trump’s decision.

Now Hamilton is traveling across the state, including through its more red, agriculture-heavy counties, trying to connect with the kinds of voters who haven’t elected a Democratic senator in nearly a century. “We haven’t elected Democratic senators in a long time,” Glickman said, “but there’s no reason that can’t happen this time.”

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

The drip-drip-drip of leaks from Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton’s remarks at a private fundraiser continues. This time, The Texas Tribune reports that Paxton, when asked about the federal deficit, said legislators will need to make “some reasonable cuts to mandatory spending.” Mandatory spending, the Tribune’s Kayla Guo notes, is made up largely of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, while in the most recent fiscal year, “much of the rest covered aid to lower-income families, such as food benefits and unemployment insurance, and a mix of retirement and disability benefits for federal workers and veterans.” Paxton didn’t elaborate on which programs he’d axe, at least in the clip that was shared with the Tribune. 

James Talarico’s team quickly posted the news to X on Thursday, saying, “Ken Paxton plans to cut Social Security and Medicare. He’s telling seniors to ‘suck it up’ while he owns 15 homes and increases his net worth up to $27 million.” Paxton, meanwhile, has reacted to the news by affirming his support for Social Security and saying that “the fake news keeps spinning the same cherry-picked audio to mislead Texans and take my words out of context. I have never said I would take away entitlements from those who deserve or earned them.” (Note, however, the suggestive wording at the end of that sentence.)

Elsewhere:

• Millions are under hurricane warning as Isaias approaches the Gulf Coast on Friday. This has been an unusually mild hurricane season so far—which has been a very good thing, because both disaster preparedness and weather forecasting are in an unusually chaotic state following two years of budget cuts and unusual leadership decisions under the Trump administration. Republican Governors Kay Ivey of Alabama and Ron DeSantis of Florida have already declared a state of emergency in select counties, and Governor Brian Kemp has declared an emergency for the state of Georgia.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

At Policy Matters Ohio, George Boas argues against the recently implemented 90-day gas tax suspension, saying it’s “misguided in at least three critical ways: It will have only a small, temporary impact on gas prices; it drains the budget at a time when schools, childcare, and healthcare are already badly underfunded or facing massive federal cuts; and it fails to address the root of the problem.” Better proposals, he adds, would include “targeted property-tax relief for Ohioans who need it most,” “strong consumer protections and data-center regulations to keep Ohioans from bearing an unfair share of rising electricity costs,” affordable childcare, pro-worker legislation, and more. 

Data for Progress released a new survey that found 67 percent of voters “say they support the U.S. having a refugee program”—a number that jumps to 90 percent for people who personally know a refugee. The survey also found widespread opposition to recent immigration enforcement actions.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Good Week: Road salt

Maine’s Senate race has given the nation no end of agita, but it finally delivered a moment worthy of the outsize attention when Susan Collins, bragging that she’d convinced Trump to stand down on his plans to put a tariff on road salt, was hit by this rejoinder from her Democratic opponent, Troy Jackson: “We can’t eat road salt.” Jackson is no paragon of charisma, so we hesitate to call it a zinger. But the humble de-icing material conjured the kind of relatable, of-the-moment idea that usually eludes the grasp of an inanimate object. Could it be a game-changer? Elections have hinged on dumber things, that’s for sure.

Bad Week: Kimberly Guilfoyle

From the moment a pair of wayward Canary Island mastiffs thrust her into the public consciousness, no one could have imagined the story arc of U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle—the onetime paramour of Gavin Newsom turned “Mar-a-Lago face” cautionary tale. Now we’re left to wonder: Does her story end here? This week, a trove of private leaks revealed that she’d been attempting to do some Trump administration favor-trading in return for a $100,000 donation straight to her Amex card to pay a bill. It raises a host of questions: What could she have blown that kind of money on? How much of that was spent on the latest pan-Hellenic couture from Zeus+Dione? And most importantly, who hates her enough to leak this stuff? If you’re that person, contact us on Signal.

—Jason Linkins

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

How many U.S. states allow death by firing squad? (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

—Michael Tomasky

The Georgia representative practically drowned under reports of his team’s ties to extremism during his first debate against Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff Thursday, unable to bat away the various white supremacist connections within his orbit.

“Mike Collins has brought dishonor to our state through his personal bigotry and his widely documented ties to white nationalists,” Ossoff said in his opening remarks.

At least four of Collins’s former staffers and aides have been accused of extremist affiliations. They include Collins’s former chief of staff Kip Talley; former digital director William Paul (the son of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul); and a former intern, Preston Parra, who has frequently shared Ku Klux Klan and Nazi images to his personal social media account, including an image of himself clad in the white supremacist group’s hooded uniform.

“You hired half the Third Reich to staff your office,” Ossoff remarked at one point.

But the hate bled even closer to home: CNN revealed in July that Collins’s son-in-law, David Alan Scheer II, was a white supremacist influencer who had shared vitriolic, extremist messaging across the internet.

Collins, however, could not seem to confront the allegation head-on without blaming his Democratic opponent.

“That’s my family. The craziness that Jon Ossoff has been spewing out there—I actually had a person put in jail this weekend because he not only wanted to kill my son-in-law but he wanted to kill me,” Collins said when asked directly about his son-in-law’s social media activity. “I’ve condemned racism, antisemitism, hate. I don’t care where the source is, and I tell him that too. It’s wrong.”

Collins then made a false equivalence between his son-in-law’s hateful messaging and Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed and left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, complaining that Ossoff had not condemned either.

Ossoff’s response: “Imagine running for the U.S. Senate while neo-Nazi propaganda is disseminated to an audience of millions from your home. That’s Mike Collins.”

The Democratic incumbent also railed against Collins’s own track record, recalling when Collins “cheered on” a group of young men that harassed a Black woman at the University of Mississippi with monkey sounds, and that Collins himself had “amplified neo-Nazi propaganda.”

“If John Lewis were marching today,” Ossoff said, “Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club.”

In a violent incident Thursday afternoon, plainclothes federal immigration agents fired at least seven rounds into a car in Marble Hill, a residential neighborhood of New York City. Inside the vehicle sat Oscar Belgal, a 28-year-old Bronx resident and a five-year-old boy, believed to be his son, Gothamist reported. Belgal was shot in the neck and hospitalized, and the child was reportedly unharmed.

Wired identified Brendan Cuni as one of the ICE officers present during the incident. Photographs from the scene showed Cuni in the aftermath of the shooting, wearing a high-visibility yellow construction vest and carrying an AR-15–style rifle. He was disguised as a construction worker, and was in no way identifiable as a federal agent.

Cuni has been named in multiple lawsuits alleging violent arrests in New York City and beyond, Wired reported. Last October, a Bronx man claimed that Cuni tripped him hard enough to crack a tooth and used a Taser on him six times while he was already handcuffed on the ground. In November, Cuni was involved in an arrest in Queens where ICE agents reportedly tackled and shocked a man with a Taser. In December, Cuni was deployed in Minneapolis as part of Operation Metro Surge. Activists allege that he was among officers who forced a pregnant woman to the ground, though this was not confirmed by Wired. During his stint in the Midwest, prosecutors charged a man with assaulting Cuni, but a judge found there was “weak” evidence, and no other agents could corroborate Cuni’s story. In at least three separate cases, judges have found issues with Cuni’s statements or arrest paperwork.

Protesters gathered outside of the local hospital where Belgal was taken. “Don’t forget, don’t forgive, Brendan Cuni shot a kid!” they chanted, according to a video shared on X by The Intercept’s Noah Horowitz.

At a press conference Thursday night, Democratic Representative Adriano Espaillat said that he’d attempted to visit Belgal in the hospital but had been blocked by federal agents. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that ICE had taken Belgal into custody and that his discussions with President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to have him released had been “unsuccessful.”

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security claimed that Belgal had a previous criminal conviction, multiple prior arrests, and ties to a violent gang.

At least America is now fully starting to recognize what a moral cesspool Donald Trump and his cronies have made of this country. A new poll out from Pew has Trump’s approval at 30 percent and his disapproval at a stunning 68 percent. Can he get into the 20s before November 3? It sure seems that way. Does he really think, as The Atlantic reported this week, that bombing Iran before the election will help his numbers? He’s really so delusional as to believe that escalating a deeply unpopular war would lead to people rallying around the flag?

Against all this, most Democratic elected officials still haven’t found the right words to encapsulate all this corruption and rot. One Democrat, though, continues to stand out above all the others. If you haven’t yet seen some of the clips of Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff’s evisceration of his GOP challenger in last night’s debate, you need to watch them. The guy is a virtuoso—Bernstein with a baton, Jordan with a basketball.

The imperishable line that will be remembered, I think, for a long, long time, came when Ossoff said of Representative Mike Collins and his white supremacist and far-far-right ties: “It’s not just that you’ve hired half the Third Reich to staff your congressional office,” but you’re supporting policies that are “robbing your constituents to pay your donors.” Then came another killer, which is also so good that it would be the takeaway line for most debaters: “If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery, Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club.”

That’s how you do it, folks. And make no mistake: It took some guts for Ossoff to decide to make his central attack on Collins his racism. There’s no guarantee, even in 2026, that a liberal Jewish Democrat could make that stick against a Republican in the state of Georgia. But Ossoff has pressed the point of Collins’s bigotry relentlessly. This is not someone who consulted polls and focus groups and listened to consultants telling him to keep the focus on Collins’s position on prescription drug prices. This is someone who asked himself, What is my opponent’s core moral flaw? and who went right at it with both barrels.

He’s almost certainly going to win, and possibly by a lot. And in doing so, in making his opponent’s bigotry his central line of attack, he’s doing something too many Democrats are gun-shy about doing these days: He took aim right at the heart of MAGA-ism, and he’s doing it without qualification or equivocation. And that’s why so many Democrats are so impressed by him.

As I wrote of Ossoff back in August, after his delicious barb about “Natalie” (Harp, the Trumpy amanuensis): “He understands that in today’s media environment, you have to create conflict to generate attention and buzz, and you have to do it in a way that stands a chance of going viral.” He did that last night, but he also did even more. Saying “half the Third Reich” is, among other things, really funny. It’s wildly hyperbolic, of course, but that too is the point.

It’s the kind of rhetoric the right has been using against Democrats for many years now. Back in 2004, I recall the right-wing Club for Growth launching a broadside against Howard Dean saying that he should “take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times–reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont, where it belongs.” No Democrat would ever have said then that George W. Bush should “take his tax-cutting, government-hating, beer-swilling, brisket-eating, pickup truck–driving, Branson-loving right-wing freak show back to Texas where it belongs” anymore than any Democratic president would have suggested—twice in one week—that maybe Iran should bomb Birmingham or Tulsa.

That just wouldn’t work in reverse, for reasons having to do with which Americans the media deems to be “real.” But what does work, when Trump’s at 30 percent in the polls and more than half the nation is disgusted with him, is doing what Ossoff is doing: making moral cases against Republicans’ very obvious and offensive moral failings.

He says he has no interest in running for president. Who knows. And of course if he does run, we’ll have to take stock of his positions on a busload of issues. But liberals can be too focused on positions, and on candidates, especially presidential candidates, passing a range of litmus tests. Ossoff is from Georgia, not Massachusetts, so he has to be careful about some stuff. He may not check some boxes. But his rhetoric suggests that there’s a potential unchained Ossoff somewhere in there just waiting to burst out, an Ossoff who might be willing to take more aggressive positions while seeking national office. For now, while he’s not the front-runner in the 2028 polls or the betting markets, he is for my money the person most likely to catch fire and be satisfactory to enough progressives and enough moderates to bring the party together after what will probably be another fractious primary.

In the meantime, let’s just appreciate what he did last night. Democrats, we need more of that.

The former South African judge and United Nations human rights high commissioner gave an impromptu speech at Nuremberg Court in Germany, where she was attending an academic and legal conference after she received the news.

“Thank you very much. If you clap a little bit more I may share this prize with Trump,” she said. The room erupted in laughter.

Trump has been practically begging for a Nobel Peace Prize for years, especially since it was awarded to then-President Barack Obama in 2009. Last year, he phoned Norway’s Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg “out of the blue” to ask about the possibility of acquiring the prize, using tariffs as a cover for their discussion.

“Considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS,” Trump said in another message to Norway Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, “I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”

Last October, Trump told the press “They gave it to Obama for absolutely destroying our country,” during an Oval Office meeting with Finnish President Alexander Stubb. “My election was much more important.”

This year, Trump has pretended to stop caring about the award altogether, although that may change when he gets wind of Pillay’s comments.

“Just to be at this venue.… Your applause means a great deal to me. You don’t want to receive an award, prize, or anything, unless the public agrees that you deserve this. So that’s how I appreciate your applause today,” Pillay said in her remarks. “Being a lawyer and a judge, I still want to verify [this announcement]. I think it’s very appropriate that I’m with friends and colleagues, all of whom support human rights. The last thing I did [was] the delivery of the report on Gaza naming what’s happening there as genocide.”

Amazing moment. Navi Pillay has received the Nobel Peace Prize ! https://t.co/HL3r1PJzLO We are at the Nuremberg Court; I cannot think of a stronger symbol for her Nobel prize. We are all so thrilled! This is her first reactions upon hearing the news: https://t.co/Crbj6XdiyQ

— Agnes Callamard (@AgnesCallamard) October 9, 2026

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

Donald Trump has been furious at Fox News for many months now, and he just raged at the network again this week. But his fury is backfiring. We’re now learning that the White House and senior Republicans waged a behind-the-scenes campaign to get Fox to stop covering Abdul El-Sayed the way it had been, because it was making him into a stronger candidate. That’s humiliating enough, but it also captures a lot about Trump and MAGA right now: the belief that Fox should function as their twenty-four-seven propaganda operation, the shock that many voters aren’t perceiving El-Sayed in accordance with MAGA smears, and the ways in which all these manly MAGA men devolve into pathetic whiners when the going gets just a little hard.

Jennifer Rubin, editor in chief of The Contrarian, has a good piece all about MAGA whininess today, so we’re talking to her about all of it. Jen, always good to have you on.

Jennifer Rubin: It’s great to be here, Greg.

Sargent: So Trump’s been in a fury with Fox News for months. He hates their polling, which shows Democrats on the cusp of winning Senate races in deep red states. This week Trump raged as follows: “Fox News spends more time covering the jihadist and Democrat candidates than they do the good old-fashioned Republicans. All they talk about is Democrat jihadists like El-Sayed.”

Trump slammed Fox’s Martha MacCallum for a softball interview, and he also slammed Fox for not covering his rallies to his liking. Jen, your thoughts on all that?

Rubin: Well, Trump is very upset that Fox is trying to save him from himself, and trying to save the Republicans from this grossly unpopular president. It is true. They are madly cutting away from his rallies, because they are so nuts. They are so discordant.

He is blowing up New York and San Diego. He is railing on unregulated data centers, which is the kiss of death for candidates. He is going off on veganism. He is so nuts, so out of control, that Fox does not want to put him on. Their rationale is, we’ve got to elect Republicans. We can’t have them seeing our crazy commander in chief.

Sargent: Yeah, what’s funny about that is that Trump is completely incapable of imagining that showing Trump’s rallies might hurt Republican candidates. That to me is really amusing. In Trump’s head, all attention is good. You’re winning when you’re the center of attention. But he is the kiss of death for many of these candidates now.

Rubin: Exactly. His poll numbers have fallen off the cliff. And on all of these issues that he keeps repeating—if Republicans adopt them, they go down in the polls and they get killed. Data centers, not popular. Trump insisting affordability is not a real issue. If Republicans say that stuff, they get laughed at.

And you know who thinks Trump is bad? JD Vance. JD Vance is no longer using the world’s-greatest-economy line. He is beginning to tiptoe away and say, well, we know things are hard, give us another shot. He can see the writing on the wall.

He may be a radical racist, but he’s not stupid. He can read the polls. And with Trump’s demise and the demise of the Republican Party, he can see his own 2028 prospects evaporating.

Sargent: Here’s where the stuff about Fox News gets really rich. Axios reports that Republicans have privately griped to Fox for months over their coverage of El-Sayed. They say this helps El-Sayed, complicating their efforts to portray him as out of the mainstream. And White House officials privately reached out to Fox this week to complain about that interview of him.

Jen, let me translate this. What they really mean is, if Fox lets El-Sayed talk, it becomes a lot harder to smear him as a scary radical jihadist, because people see who he actually is, right?

Rubin: That’s right. And this is the beauty of candidates like El-Sayed, like Pete Buttigieg, who can go on Fox, because they debunk the lies and the smears. So you’re right. It wasn’t that it was a particularly softball interview. It was just that he steamrolled right over her.

And all the lies that they live with, the crazy conspiracies, the smears—when they hit reality, when you actually see the candidate, when you hear the candidate, anybody, even a Fox viewer, can tell that this is just a lie.

Sargent: There’s another great detail from this reporting. Top GOP operatives repeatedly contacted Fox executives and producers, complaining that Jesse Watters of Fox had commented on El-Sayed in a way that could allow him to portray himself as moderate. Again, translation: by all means, Fox News, don’t tell the truth about this guy. We can’t win the election if you do that. I just love it.

Rubin: It also shows, by the way, the degree to which not even Fox can keep up with the lies and the smears. Trump is so far out of reality, and the MAGA view of Democrats is so divorced from reality, that they can’t possibly construct any kind of, quote, news program that follows the plot. It’s impossible.

The Democrats have, I think, been so down on themselves and on their brand that they failed to realize how utterly insane and incapable the Republicans are of constructing a narrative that makes any sense.

Sargent: Absolutely. And I want to play an ad from Mike Rogers, who’s the Republican opponent of El-Sayed in Michigan. Listen to him talking here about Trump’s tariffs and his trade war with Canada. This is Mike Rogers, the Republican.

Mike Rogers (voiceover): Drinking a Labatt and watching the Red Wings, man, it just doesn’t get any more Michigan than that. And here in Michigan, we know that Canada is not our enemy. We need to end this tariff war.

Sargent: That’s really remarkable stuff, Jen. He says straight out that interdependence with Canada is a good thing, and Canada is not the enemy that Trump is depicting. Of course, you might note something here, which is that Mike Rogers doesn’t happen to mention who is starting this trade war with Canada, who’s conducting this trade war with Canada.

He forgot to mention that part. It’s his party that’s doing it. It’s the leader of his party. But still, that is a real sign of Trump’s toxicity, if in a Midwestern state the Republican has to aggressively become Mr. Globalist all of a sudden.

Rubin: Exactly. And this is happening all over the place. Look at the Republicans who are running against the war that they’ve repeatedly voted to give Trump a blank check to operate. So now they want the war to end. Now they don’t like the trade war. What’s next? Saying the big bad bill was a rotten thing?

I mean, this is what happens. They are now caught in what you and I have been saying all along. These positions are politically untenable. They’re not just untenable in blue areas. They’re untenable in red states, in red districts. No one’s in favor of these policies, and they’ve backfired.

So what’s next? I want to get out of the war because Trump has driven up gas prices? Well, that would be honest, but unfortunately they haven’t voted that way.

Sargent: Well, yeah, I mean, a number of them are essentially trying to adopt that as their position. In your piece, you identified a pattern in which a lot of manly MAGA figures are getting quite whiny as this election approaches. One example you gave is JD Vance begging voters to give Republicans a second chance. You also pointed out that Ken Paxton, the Republican Senate candidate in Texas, recently complained that he’s not in charge of his own campaign. As you pointed out, James Talarico is supposed to be the low-T guy, but Paxton’s claiming he’s helplessly controlled by others. That’s just crazy.

Rubin: And Trump is the worst of them. Now his favorite complaint is, there are reports—and we’re going to throw these reporters in jail—for saying there are empty seats at my rallies. He says, no, people are moving down to fill in the seats. Wait a second. How do you fill in a seat if it’s not empty? That logic escapes him.

But this is what happens when the, quote, strongmen meet reality. Suddenly they are humiliated. They are perceived as weak, as unpopular, and they are becoming unglued. And we are seeing this. So now they whine. They complain. They go running to Fox.

I’m sorry, but maybe the reason that a lot of white men are no longer turning out is that they don’t like all this crybaby activity. His own ability to respond to the criticism is so degraded, because his mind is turning to shit, that he is unable to even mount any kind of comeback. No wonder Fox won’t put him on the air.

Sargent: So you mentioned the strongman dimension to all this, and I want to pick up on that. Like, you see this same dynamic at play with all these depictions of Donald Trump as this manly, virile young figure—like all these memes that paste these young muscular bodies on Trump’s head.

And meanwhile, he’s falling asleep at meetings. I mean, that is like the perfect example of the sort of weirdly brittle strongman politics. The image of it is always so brittle and shaky, and just cracks up at the slightest bit of probing, right?

Rubin: And that’s why they have freaked out at the criticism over Natalie Harp. She is there to try to boost his ego, to keep him, I don’t know, on track, or to keep him from completely losing it. But now she looks like a nursemaid. She’s there to kind of soothe him and keep him going, pat him on the head, make sure he doesn’t lose control.

This is the complete devolution of a party that, as I say in the piece, has marinated in toxic masculinity for years. They have gone after trans kids. They’ve slammed Democrats for feminizing the country and for feminizing the military. But who sounds like a bunch of whiny little girls? And I want to apologize to whiny little girls, because they don’t sound this bad.

Sargent: Well, Pew had a new poll that we should talk about, because it sheds a lot of light on this. It finds Donald Trump’s approval rating now at 30 percent, which is the lowest of his second term.

Jen, I think we’re getting into the twenties maybe pretty soon here. What do you think?

Rubin: I think we’re getting into George Bush territory. Not only are his poll numbers low, but he is dragging down the entire party. This particular poll has the generic lead for Democrats at eight. We’ve seen other polls where it’s double digits. And even more frightful for Republicans is the enthusiasm gap.

That poll had some very frightful numbers about how strongly people in the two parties feel about getting out to vote, how important it is for their party to control the House. And once those numbers drop off and Republicans don’t show up, a whole slew of seats then come into play. If they don’t show up, they can’t win.

And that’s why the DCCC—that’s the group that elects Democratic House members—keeps expanding the map. That’s why independent analysts like Charlie Cook now have Kansas as a true toss-up in the Senate. The wheels come off the bus.

We talked about this a few weeks ago, Greg. The self-fulfilling prophecy of negativity, of doom and gloom, of embarrassment, that Donald Trump is hitting your party. And I think this Pew poll shows that in spades.

Sargent: So you brought up the enthusiasm numbers in the Pew poll. I’m just going to cite those. Pew finds that Democratic supporters are 14 points more likely than Republican supporters to say they’ve given the election a lot of thought. They’re seventeen points more likely to say they’re extremely motivated to vote this year.

These dynamics are all connected to one another. The Trump rallies going off the rails—I think that that’s really starting to get a lot of Republican voters to sort of say, you know what, man, I can’t do this anymore. This guy is too nuts.

Now, I think we should probably acknowledge that that door wouldn’t have been opened if he hadn’t fucked up the economy so badly with the tariffs and the war and everything else, and if he hadn’t screwed up everything so badly.

But that door is open now. Now that he’s screwed that all up, Republicans are now willing to take a bit of a harder look at Trump. I think that’s what’s happening here.

And I don’t want to overstate this. I don’t think the percentage of Republicans that are willing to look frankly at Trump is all that high. But there is a non-trivial number out there that are going to this place.

In fact, a recent Fox News poll found in Texas that non-MAGA Republicans actually disapprove of Trump now, and they are also demobilized. They’re not that enthusiastic about voting. So these are real dynamics, Jen.

Rubin: And you’re beginning to see coverage in the legacy media that Republicans don’t want to go out and knock on doors. Republicans don’t want to volunteer. We’re not talking about the mega-donors. We’re talking about ordinary people who make up the backbone of a party.

If you don’t have people who, a month before, want to listen to the news, let alone volunteer, you’re going to have some real trouble. And there are going to be people who look like they’re in safe seats now, because the numbers don’t look so dire. But if 5 percent, 7 percent more Republicans don’t show up, that’s going to sweep in a whole bunch more Democrats.

Sargent: It is. And just to wrap this up, your piece went very big picture on this by tying this to strongman politics as a general matter. As you pointed out, what we’re seeing here is kind of like a microcosm version of what you see with authoritarian movements—when the sort of facade of strength and power starts to crack, it really starts to fall apart rather quickly. Can you talk about those dynamics?

Rubin: Absolutely. You know, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who has looked at strongmen in her book about fascism, really makes the point that there’s a moment in which the wheels come off the bus, the lies don’t work, the mistakes become too apparent, and as a result you see this kind of crack-up.

Two things happen, and they’re both happening now. On one hand, the leader becomes unglued and starts saying a bunch of crazy shit. And the other thing is, they become much more aggressive, much more confrontational.

Now we hear that there are more people he wants to arrest. Cassidy Hutchinson is now on the potential list of indictees. He is coming after people because they are frustrated. There are reports that FBI agents are very upset because they, quote, want indictments. Indictments for what? Around what crimes?

So it is this frenzy of panic that has overtaken the Trump regime. On one hand, they become whiny, crybabies, desperate, saying all kinds of absolutely batshit, nutty stuff. But they also become much more aggressive, much more violent, much more prone to misuse law enforcement. So Democrats—and I know they are preparing—but they’d better be ready for election day, because we’re going to see, I am sure, all kinds of legal shenanigans. They’ve already begun.

Sargent: Absolutely, Jen Rubin. And I’ve got to say, you know, with a little luck, Fox News will get bullied by Donald Trump into covering his rallies a whole lot more, right?

Rubin: Please, please, twenty-four-seven. And you know what? He shouldn’t just go to Red America. This Democrat is pleading with him. Please go to some purple districts. Go to more states that are in play. Please let us all see him. The great leader needs to get out more where it matters.

Sargent: Exactly. Jen Rubin, it’s always a great pleasure to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on.

Rubin: It’s fun, Greg. Thanks so much.

Newsom has aligned himself with the uberwealthy on two major fronts. He has strongly opposed a ballot initiative that would impose a one-time 5 percent tax on the assets of California billionaires. The measure would almost certainly pass if it had vocal backing from Democratic politicians in the state. But lacking that support, polls suggest it might fail. In addition, Newsom pushed Attorney General Rob Bonta and other Democratic attorneys to cut a deal with David Ellison (son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison) and his company Skydance, instead of continuing litigation to stop or stall Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. Newsom’s public wariness about the attorney generals taking a tough line against the merger inspired other California Democratic politicians to adopt the same stance, undercutting the leverage of Bonta and his colleagues. The attorney generals ended up dropping their opposition to the merger after a few minor concessions from Ellison and his firm.

Newsom has cast these moves as being in the interests of his state’s residents. After all, Ellison threatened to move Paramount’s headquarters away from California unless Bonta and the other attorneys general blessed the merger, potentially costing thousands of Californians their jobs. (Ellison’s Skydance acquired Paramount last year.) Newsom and other critics of the billionaire tax say it would raise money initially but ultimately would rob California of revenue, as the superrich leave the state en masse.

In reality, the economic case for the governor’s stances isn’t clear-cut. Sure, Ellison isn’t moving Paramount’s headquarters from California for now, but I would expect the company’s workforce in the Golden State to be drastically reduced in the next few years. That’s what companies that merge do—claim redundancies and lay off thousands of people. Ellison has already written a memo to employees of the newly merged company hinting at significant job cuts to come.

Also, we should consider the economic effects for Californians (and other Americans) who aren’t employees at Paramount’s headquarters. Will the costs and options for people who watch movies, streaming television, and other products offered by Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery get better or worse now that a rival company has been removed from the market? I predict worse. Will actors, television writers, and others in the entertainment industry get more or fewer opportunities with one less competitor for their services? I would bet on fewer.

In terms of the billionaires’ tax, I have no doubt some billionaires would move. But there have been numerous studies of the effects of increased taxes on superrich individuals. They often don’t back up their threats to move. Their homes, families, country clubs, and other cherished possessions are still in the place where they made their money. California has great weather and is the center of numerous industries. All the billionaires there aren’t going to flee.

And the specifics in California make the case for the proposed wealth tax even stronger. California billionaires pay a tax rate of about 0.2 percent on their wealth each year, according to an analysis from economists Jasper Boll, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman. That’s significantly less than the proposed tax. “Even if one fourth of all billionaires left, it would take 100 years for the income tax loss to match the revenue from the wealth tax. In the extreme case where all billionaires left, it would take 25 years for the income tax loss to match the revenue from the tax,” the economists say.

But while the economics here are at least a bit complicated, the democratic implications are not. They are simply terrible. Ellison put Bari Weiss in charge of CBS News, where she has both shifted the network decidedly to the right and forced out many of the company’s top journalists after they wouldn’t abide by her Trump-friendly direction for the network. By acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery, Ellison now controls CNN, perhaps an even more important news institution in today’s America than CBS. Ellison is letting current CNN editor in chief and chairman Mark Thompson remain in his post, instead of bringing in Weiss or one of her allies to run the network. But that shouldn’t reassure anyone. Thompson and everyone else at CNN have seen how Weiss has run CBS with Ellison’s blessing. They have to assume his journalism vision is pro-Israel, anti-anti-Trump, and pro-billionaire. CNN employees are likely to self-censor to avoid drawing Ellison’s ire.

Yes, I know that fewer Americans watch television news than ever. But outlets like CNN and CBS still matter, because they have reputations and brands that carry a lot of weight, as well as large, experienced staffs whose coverage influences what shows up on social media. What stories about the antidemocratic tendencies of Trump and the Republicans won’t be covered by CNN because of Ellison’s leadership? (Remember that Weiss initially blocked a 60 Minutes report on the horrible conditions in a prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration sent immigrants from Venezuela.) What negative stories about Trump will be whitewashed? How negatively will Democrats skeptical of Israel be covered? (In Ellison’s defense, CNN anchors Dana Bash and Jake Tapper in particular are already quite hostile to critics of Israel and don’t need their new boss to push them there.)

It is shocking and incredibly stupid that one of the most prominent politicians in a pro-democracy party has helped allies of an authoritarian acquire a major news outlet. Has Newsom not studied how autocrats across the world censor critical content by ensuring media is owned by people friendly to them? Has he not seen how Ellison and Weiss have led CBS?

And it’s not just CNN. HBO, TNT, and numerous media properties are part of Warner Bros. Discovery and therefore now Ellison’s empire. The movie Sinners was distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures; John Oliver’s show Last Week Tonight airs on HBO. A wide array of anti-racist, progressive, pro-democracy content and personnel is now under the thumb of Ellison. I predict that Ellison and his team will either block some of that content or force it to be more pro-Trump, or at least less anti-Trump. Has Newsom not considered this, or does he consider his (likely misplaced) hopes of saving a few thousand California jobs more important?

The billionaire tax doesn’t just raise revenue. It’s a way to both underscore the prodigious, excessive wealth of billionaires in the United States today and limit their ability to use their wealth to influence politics. One of the main reasons our democracy is eroding is the alliance between right-wing politicians and billionaires like Elon Musk. And there is finally a grassroots movement to confront the oligarchy, best illustrated by the nationwide, bipartisan resistance to AI data centers. This ballot initiative being defeated in California, one of the most liberal states in the country, would be a huge blow to that movement.

That’s why it’s so galling and, again, stupid for Newsom, one of the most prominent Democrats in the country, to be joining the effort to kill the wealth tax.

Why is Newsom doing the billionaires’ work for them? The main reason is probably ideology. He’s a typical California establishment Democrat. Such Democrats, including Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi, tend to be generically “liberal” and supportive of gay rights and abortion rights. But they often aren’t progressive on economic issues, especially when it comes to challenging corporate power and the wealthy.

Secondly, there’s 2028. Many of the superrich don’t like the current Republican Party but are also wary of progressive Democrats and greater regulations on corporations. They would love a Democratic Party led by a billionaire-friendly figure and might pump in tens of millions of dollars to boost such a candidate during the primary. If Newsom is auditioning for anti-MAGA millionaires and billionaires, his moves this year help him.

So, either Newsom doesn’t appreciate the danger of billionaires and mega companies, or does understand it but is ignoring all of that to help his presidential campaign. I’m not sure which explanation for his moves is the correct one. I also don’t care. Either way, Newsom has shown, even before he officially declares his presidential candidacy, that he isn’t the right person to lead the Democratic Party. Maybe that was already obvious. Remember that Newsom’s first major move after Trump won a second term was to yuck it up with Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon on the governor’s podcast. Newsom has bad political instincts, and as his pro-billionaire moves show, he’s terrible on policy too. Democrats who were considering him as a 2028 candidate should have one word for the California governor: Next!

At the moment, the SEC has two commissioners, both Republican. These are the Trump sycophant Paul Atkins, who serves as the SEC chairman, and the reliably pro-business Mark Uyeda, whom Trump appointed acting chairman before Atkins took office in April 2025. During Trump’s first term, Jim Chanos, a billionaire investment manager who predicted a year in advance the collapse of Enron, pronounced that America had entered “the golden age of fraud.” That was premature. In his second term, Trump is much more energetically pardoning financial fraudsters, and his SEC is more aggressively reducing transparency and slashing enforcement.

Even in the best of times, Republican administrations are much less keen than Democratic ones to enforce the nation’s securities laws. But Trump is taking moral laxity to stratospheric new levels. Perhaps Trump became more hospitable to white-collar felons after becoming one himself. Perhaps Trump is neutering the SEC so he doesn’t have to look over his shoulder whenever he trades stocks on insider information or uses his office to reward investors in his crypto business. Whatever the motive, going forward, our unitary executive will be able to indulge financial criminality more freely with a unitary SEC.

To help you understand how appalling this SEC rule change is, bear with me while I explain how the regulatory process works. You have Cabinet agencies like the Commerce Department or the Interior Department, and you have independent agencies like the SEC, the Federal Trade Commission, and the National Labor Relations Board. Cabinet agencies are always headed by a single political appointee who answers to the president. Independent agencies are usually headed by a commission, or board, typically consisting of five Senate-confirmed commissioners (or board members). These commissioners serve staggered fixed terms, typically five years. When a sitting commissioner’s term ends, the president nominates a new one, but in doing so he must limit to a bare majority (typically three) the slots filled from his own party. For the remaining slots, he must nominate a person from the opposing party.

In practice, a president seldom must wait very long before an independent agency is controlled by a majority from his own party. An unfriendly Congress may resist confirming some commissioner or other on partisan grounds, but such standoffs are typically resolved when an additional commission slot opens for the opposite party. You want your guy? Then vote for my guy.

Trump, of course, famously lacks impulse control, and he doesn’t like waiting even a little bit to win a majority at any given independent agency. Consequently, he’s experimented with not nominating anybody to an independent agency if the next in line is a Democrat, or, alternatively, firing sitting Democrats. Sometimes he’s done both. Firing a sitting commissioner without cause was, until this past June, illegal under the Supreme Court’s 1935 Humphrey’s Executor decision, which said President Franklin Roosevelt lacked the power to fire, without cause, a seriously obnoxious Republican commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission named William E. Humphrey, before Humphrey’s term ended. Humphrey obligingly dropped dead while his case made its way through the courts, but Humphrey’s heirs continued it on the grounds that he was owed back pay, which the final decision granted them. (Hence, “Executor.”)

Ninety-one years later, however, a unitary-executive-besotted Supreme Court ruled in Trump v. Slaughter that Trump was perfectly free to fire, without cause, Rebecca Slaughter and Alvara Bedoya, two Democratic appointees to the Federal Trade Commission, before their terms ended. By extension, Trump is now free to fire any commissioner of almost any independent agency simply for being a Democrat. Thus far (not counting Cook) Trump has fired at least 21 Democrats (five of them his own appointees!). Through either firings or refusing to nominate a replacement when a Democratic term expires, Trump has managed to deprive the SEC, the FTC, and the Commodities Future Trading Commission of a single Democratic member.

The CFTC, which has neither a statutory quorum requirement nor an internal rule defining a quorum, represents Trump’s beau idéal. It’s operated for nearly one year with a single commissioner, Michael Selig, an enthusiastic cheerleader for crypto, prediction markets, and sports betting. “The era of political lawfare, debanking and regulation by enforcement is over,” Trump’s solitary cop on the commodities beat said in August. “Innovators … are welcomed to the White House, not railroaded to the big house.” In the CFTC we see unitary executiveship at its most uninhibited. Even before Selig got there, CFTC enforcement actions in 2025 were down 80 percent compared to the previous decade, according to NPR’s Luke Garrett.

The only independent agency still insulated from Trump under Trump v. Slaughter is the Federal Reserve, where the commissioners are called governors. In a separate ruling issued the same day, Trump was barred from firing the Fed Governor Lisa Cook. The legal justification for letting Trump fire Slaughter, Bedoya, and 19 other Democrats but not Cook was, as I understand it, the following:

Because we say so.

Apart from some mumbo-jumbo about the Second Bank of the United States, the justices enunciated no distinction between the Fed and every other independent agency. This reactionary majority simply values the Fed—where political meddling could put its stock portfolios at risk—much more highly other regulatory agencies.

Trump v. Slaughter freed Trump to stop independent agencies in their tracks. But depriving them of a quorum turns out to be too clever by half, as I pointed out a month after Trump returned to office. That’s because Trump needs these agencies able to function so they can overturn regulations and rulings left behind by President Joe Biden.

A nice illustration came in June when Trump’s new best friend Jeff Bezos lost two Amazon cases before the National Labor Relations Board because Trump had denied the NLRB a quorum. In one case, an administrative law judge had to uphold a Biden precedent, and in the other case the NLRB actually possessed a quorum but followed a genteel board tradition not to overturn any precedent by fewer than three votes, which it didn’t have. Three months later, the NLRB had a quorum sufficient to reward Bezos and Amazon with three legal victories in two employee misclassification cases in which Amazon truly had no leg to stand on.

For Trump, the lesson should be: Play it straight! Nominate commissioners in timely fashion and you won’t have to wait long to get your working majority. Rush the process by firing commissioners, or by not nominating new ones, and you may deprive yourself of the quorum necessary to overturn Democratic precedents and do the business lobby’s bidding.

But the SEC’s new maneuver points to a third option: the one-person commission.

Even before the rule change, the SEC’s quorum requirement was, at least formally, fairly lax. Under a 1995 rule, three votes constituted a quorum if that agency had three or more commissioners. If it had two commissioners, or even one, then two or one could constitute a quorum on a sort of emergency basis. However, if the number of voting commissioners in a particular case was reduced by one or more recusals, then a minimum of two votes was still necessary to establish a quorum. This seemingly minor exception had the practical effect of imposing in nearly all instances a three-person quorum.

Let me explain. Recusals (that is, nonparticipation based on a conflict of interest) are extremely common at the SEC because so many commissioners come from the world of finance. In 2013, The Wall Street Journal estimated that more than half the SEC’s enforcement decisions required recusals from one or more commissioners. Given such a conflict-clogged environment, the SEC couldn’t until now easily tolerate many vacancies. The practical result was that the SEC almost never made a ruling with fewer than three commissioners—and if there was a single instance in which it ever made a ruling with only one commissioner I can’t find it.

John Reed Start, who was an SEC lawyer at the time the 1995 rule was implemented, wrote on LinkedIn that its provisional allowance for a quorum of two or one commissioners “was a stopgap, nothing more, and everyone assumed five commissioners would eventually be in place.” Indeed, according to Robin Wigglesworth of the Financial Times, with one exception (a six-month period in 2008) the SEC has never in its 92-year history operated without a member of the minority party.

In essence, the new SEC rule routinizes what was previously only a theoretical one-person quorum and renders unnecessary the appointment of any minority-party commissioners. The White House need no longer fret about the composition of the SEC. Trump can not only stop nominating pesky Democrats; he can stop pushing any SEC nomination through what Nate Silver predicts will be a Democratic Senate.

SEC Commissioner Uyeda’s term lasts through much of 2028, and if nobody is nominated to succeed him it can be extended through the rest of Trump’s presidency (and perhaps several months into the next). But if Uyeda’s term isn’t extended—or if Uyeda must recuse himself from this or that case—SEC Chair Atkins can act as Trump’s one-man quorum for the remainder of Trump’s presidency, because Atkins’ term doesn’t end until 2030. Granted, under Trump v. Slaughter, any Democrat who succeeds Trump can (and probably will) fire Atkins promptly on January 20, 2029. But if a Republican succeeds Trump, Atkins could end up running the SEC as a one-man band for years.

You can’t pull this trick at every independent agency, because for some—the NLRB, for instance, or the Federal Communications Commission, or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission— the enabling statute specifies a three-person quorum. The 1934 statute that created the SEC, however, imposed no quorum requirement; the previous quorum requirement, dating to 1995, was simply a rule, and rules can be changed. Big rule changes require a period of public comment, so the SEC decided this was a little rule change that didn’t require public comment. But of course it isn’t a little change at all.

When the president commands a majority at an independent agency, that agency makes decisions in at least rough accordance with the president’s views. Why, then, should we care whether members of the opposite party are present to register dissent? Because, Senate Banking Committee Democrats wrote the White House in June, “a full slate of commissioners and board members can bring a range of perspectives to policies that shape our markets.”

This may strike a discordant note in the current political environment, but there’s practical value in being compelled to listen to the arguments of people who disagree with you. That’s why independent agencies were set up to include minority-party representation. When the president is as corrupt as Trump, the minority-party function extends to bearing witness. Thus Caroline Crenshaw, the last Democrat on Trump’s SEC—she left this past January—was able to alert the public the previous May, “We’re playing a game of regulatory Jenga…. The tower remains standing when you pull out a block or two here and there. But, how many blocks can you pull before the tower gives way?”

In a September 30 letter to the SEC, a shareholder activist named James McRitchie quoted several past and present SEC commissioners about the virtue of the SEC’s bipartisan structure. One of them, ironically, was Uyeda, who I presume must have voted in favor of the SEC’s new rule change (otherwise it would have deadlocked 1–1). Here’s what Uyeda said:

The Commission is structurally designed to promote regulation that is the product of consideration by five individuals with different perspectives. The underlying statute that created the Commission requires that the commissioners come from different political parties, with no more than three being from the same party. I view this arrangement as creating a basic bargain that the SEC will enjoy a degree of independence....

Amen. But what changed Uyeda’s mind after he spoke these words? The presence of a Republican in the White House. Uyeda delivered the above remarks in 2022, when Joe Biden was president and Uyeda was a lowly minority-party SEC commissioner. Now that Uyeda’s aligned with the White House and the SEC has gone almost a year without any minority-party commissioners, I suppose he’s come to appreciate the peace and quiet. But Uyeda will rediscover the virtues of “different perspectives” when Democrats retake the White House. When that happens, Democrats should honor independent agency norms, restore space for the opposition, and above all abolish the one-person quorum.

Hannah Pingree, a former speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, rightly attributed these rising costs in part to the global energy crisis caused by President Trump’s war against Iran. “We need to end the war,” she said. “That might bring relief.” She also called on the state and federal government to provide more funds, especially to help low-income families. The usual solutions. But then she went one step further.

“I do believe deeply in weatherization and efficiency programs,” she said. Pingree formerly co-chaired the Maine Climate Council, an advisory group that created the state’s ambitious climate plan, and she noted that she helped create Maine’s quasi-state energy efficiency agency, which Republican nominee Bobby Charles “wants to get rid of.” She added, “I believe investing in efficiency, continuing to install heat pumps, which help people get off foreign oil ... will long term save us money and make us more energy independent.”

The magic words here, believe it or not, are “heat pumps,” which Mainers have adopted at a rapid clip thanks in part to Pingree’s championing. And notably in her answer, she did not utter two other words that have bedeviled the Democrats: climate change.

Since Trump’s return to the White House, a debate has roiled the Democratic Party about “climate hushing”—the accusation that politicians are deliberately not talking about climate change. This is a real phenomenon, and it’s driven by the belief, sowed in part by the consultant class, that the subject alienates voters. But as the Maine race shows, climate change is on midterm ballots all over the country—even if those exact words aren’t being spoken—because of its connection to voters’ wallets.

Rising gas and electricity prices are top of mind for many voters—second only to the affordability of health care, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll published Tuesday. That’s a huge problem for the Republicans, not merely because they’ve been in power amid the price spike, but because their president is directly responsible for it. In addition to Trump’s war in Iran, his war on climate policy has put extra pressure on the global oil supply by taking so many alternatives off the table. Energy Innovation, a California think tank, released data last week showing that policy changes since he took office—like canceling wind, solar, and other clean energy projects—would raise household energy costs by thousands of dollars through 2040.

Trump is also perhaps the country’s most prominent supporter of one the biggest villains in this year’s elections: data centers, which are rapidly proliferating across the country to support the artificial intelligence boom—and consequently increasing communities’ electricity bills. These energy-hogging monstrosities, many of which are powered by natural gas, also befoul the local environment and, yes, contribute to climate change. Voters in Maine, Michigan, Colorado, Arizona, and beyond might not be opposing them for that reason—or at least not only for that reason—but there’s no doubting the net benefit to the planet of that opposition.

Welcome to the new political landscape, in which climate and cost of living are no longer politically incompatible priorities—rather, a productively messy coupling. As utility bills rise, the cost at the pump gets prohibitive, and rural America is invaded by data centers, it’s clear that environmental and economic issues are so intertwined that it no longer makes sense to talk about them as separate issues.

The shift counters conventional wisdom: Political consultants and pundits have in recent years warned that climate was divisive and that Democrats should instead stick to “affordability.” David Schor, an influential pollster, said in 2021, “When you talk about climate change, you sound like a weird, very liberal white person.” Democrats weren’t talking that much about climate change anyway, but largely heeded this advice, even when making climate-forward policy. President Biden hardly bragged about his considerable investments in renewable energy, the whole package of which was branded as the “Inflation Reduction Act” to advertise (somewhat misleadingly) an economic impact.

Trump’s 2024 victory only made matters worse, apparently convincing even more elected Democrats that talking about climate change is at best ineffective, and at worst damaging. The warnings from consultants and pundits intensified. The Searchlight Institute, run by Adam Jentleson, Senator John Fetterman’s former chief of staff, released a report a year ago titled “The First Rule About Solving Climate Change.” That rule is, “Don’t Say Climate Change,” because while “battleground voters overwhelmingly agree climate change is a problem, addressing it is not a priority for them.” Socialist geographer Matt Huber, writing in The New York Times in May, suggested that Democrats emulate candidates who avoid the subject to win back the working class: “The kinds of policies they support—for example, public investments in infrastructure like housing and electricity—will help address climate change, but there is little reason for politicians like them to focus on the issue anymore.”

Many Democratic candidates, even some insurgents on the left, are finding their own path through this thicket. Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has gone on Fox News and flatly stated, “I’m not going to defend the Green New Deal.” But he has called for a moratorium on data centers, to protect not just ratepayers but the environment too. “Keep the data centers away from our Great Lakes,” he said recently. He’s perhaps avoiding climate change as a political issue, but he’s showing how we can’t silo the well-being of nature from our own. It’s all connected.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is perhaps the foremost example of a Democrat who’s threading this needle. He ran on an affordability platform last year before it became a buzzword among Democrats, and he doesn’t talk much about climate or the environment—but he has been working to expand bike lanes and make buses free, which will save New Yorkers money and reduce car emissions. The socialist mayor has a 60 percent approval rating, more popular by far than any other New York politician.

It’s hard to argue with success. Still, drawing the connection between climate and affordability more explicitly—as some, but too few, Democrats are doing—will help build an even bigger constituency for the policies that address both problems, and will sharpen the Democrats’ line of attack on the Republicans. And there are ample other opportunities to make these kinds of connections on the campaign trail. For instance, a new study by Food and Water Watch found that over the past decade household water costs have increased by 62 percent. Privatization, federal disinvestment in water systems, and climate change are all factors, the group said. The biggest increase—a staggering 177 percent—was in New Hampshire; take note, 2028 presidential primary hopefuls.

Climate change is not a toxic subject for voters. It’s just not a top priority: A recent Environmental Voter Project poll of likely voters in eight Senate battleground states found that just 23 percent of Democrats and 19 percent of independents consider “climate change and pollution” to be a top-three issue. However, the same poll also found that voters are more likely to support candidates who want to transition away from fossil fuels, and that “they wanted politicians to spend more time talking about climate change and pollution (59 percent), rather than less (17 percent).” In other words, voters themselves are coming out against climate hushing.

Digger begins with the eponymous Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise), an aging oil baron with a heavy drawl, caring for his cat, who is clearly dying though Digger won’t admit it. In the middle of this ordeal, he discovers that his drill site in Antarctica—which he has criminally mismanaged—is setting in motion a series of environmental cataclysms. The American president (John Goodman) and his Cabinet descend on Digger’s sprawling mansion to make a plan—not to save a single soul but, rather, to skew global opinion in their favor.

As Digger and President Compson stand and gaze out of a picture window, a tree falls over on its side. It would appear to be another instance of environmental collapse, except that, moments later, a giant human hand reaches out and rights it. Be prepared, for the remaining 90 or so minutes of the movie, to feel left out, to find that you are, by design, the last to know what is really going on.

The Social Reckoning, on the other hand, delivers pretty much what a news-literate Sorkin fan might expect. The sequel picks up over a decade after Sorkin’s The Social Network, in which Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook and looked bad doing it, and critiques Facebook as a global power and an international threat. Sorkin, the screenwriter for both, takes over the directorial reins here from David Fincher, and Zuckerberg is now played by Jeremy Strong. Jesse Eisenberg chose not to reprise the role, telling Variety that he didn’t “want to be associated with that character.” In the film as in life, it’s Zuckerberg’s company and its technology that have taken on a worrying momentum of their own, appearing ever more capable of AI-powered mass destruction. Can a single whistleblower force the hand of a trillion-dollar company and set in motion radical change?

Both Digger and The Social Reckoning begin their stories of ego-fueled disaster at a point in the narrative when it is too late for any of the characters to stop it. They each approach the problem of too-late storytelling from their preferred modes. Sorkin turns in a trademark love letter to journalism, Iñárritu a satire of satire that moves between cerebral and bizarre. Just as Sorkin favors principled stances, stylishly delivered, Iñárritu makes a meal of moral ambiguity, but both films revolve around bad men and a lot of monologuing.  

Digger is the story of Digger Rockwell, but it is also a production of a play called Fossil Fools, centered on a character named “Digger Rockwell.” Most of the scenes in the film are in fact rehearsals for that play, and the others show us the drama behind the scenes. That is the film’s first twist, but it isn’t its last, and once revealed, it seems both obvious and impossible. Certainly, the viewer of a play would not witness the proceedings as we do, moving through the rooms of Digger’s mansion (antique, but still tacky), or experience a suspenseful pan from the person looking to what they are looking at. When the production is paused or halted, a network of elaborate, high-resolution screens are moved through space by faceless extras.

It is an unsettling trick, which only partly works. Generously, one might argue that the disorientation is intentional: The vast, inhuman scale of climate change is not just an environmental crisis but a representational one, as writers like Amitav Ghosh have explained. Iñárritu grapples with this in Fossil Fools, when the men in charge can only understand the size of the ice shelf that is racing toward Europe by comparing it to the size of American cities (Philadelphia, Boston). Digger dismisses out of hand the initial crack in the glacier, because it is only 30 times the size of his penis.

At its most lively, though, the play-within-the-play invites us to watch the actors hustle to their marks, scurry off in the darkness, shed their costumes with necessary speed. Goodman plays the most repulsive role in a universe full of stiff competition, a cancer-stricken president who believes himself to be the savior of the world but would be hard-pressed to name his favorite Bible verse. Riz Ahmed turns in the most moving performance as scientist Dr. Nirav Ganesh, executing hairpin turns from broad humor to quiet agony; his curtain-call robot dance is also quite good.

Then there’s Cruise, who is tasked with holding together the film’s two plots, and whose star presence is never absent. The indestructible Tom Cruise has been saving the world for decades, most recently defeating an AI antagonist in Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning. As Digger, he throws back to his roles as a greasy motivational speaker in Magnolia or a foul-mouthed Hollywood executive in Tropic Thunder; they might not have the power to end the world, but they are sure going to make things worse before they go.

But when we see Cruise playing “Curtis Markson,” the actor who plays Digger in the play, we also get a brief look at Cruise as the meticulous, perfectionist, demanding creative who has notes for everyone, even the makeup artist. Of course, it’s a look at, never into, the star himself; it only draws on those elements that the Cruise team would approve (not the other stuff). Over and over, Digger teases us with the prospect of something real, only to offer more stagecraft.

If this sounds like a punishing two hours at the cinema, it’s because the movie probably thinks you deserve it. The play presents the offices of the European Commission as a sterile white set, full of angry extras whom Digger bluntly confronts. You “bask in the comfort of your unsustainable life,” he tells them, adding, “You demand, and I supply!” The figure of Digger is decidedly an antihero, but the mob is fairly repellent too. The European Commission scene feels like a demented Frank Capra fantasy in which Jimmy Stewart’s Mr. Smith goes to Washington in order to drill, baby, drill. No wonder Markson doesn’t know what this play is saying.

“It’s funny and it’s stupid and it’s scary and it makes no goddamn sense!” crows the show’s creepy, red-headed producer (Jesse Plemons). Some of that is true, at least. It is also hostile, clever, too clever, abstract, chilly, angry, and bored. All of this would be forgivable, even impressive, if it was also exciting.

With its layered storytelling and the connections between the play and the mysteriously shrouded present, their present and our own, Digger is more than it seems. It is possible that, like Fossil Fools, it will even stand the test of time. But if annihilation is around the corner, as this film persuasively imagines, you might not want to spend your precious remaining hours watching Tom Cruise use his pinky nail to feed tuna to an animatronic cat.

Where Digger has its ice shelf, the 2010 film The Social Network had a person, and that person was Mark Zuckerberg. When the Winklevoss twins visit Harvard president Larry Summers to explain that Zuckerberg has stolen their idea for a social networking platform, Summers is dismissive and snide. When they suggest this idea could be worth millions, he replies, “You might be letting your imagination run away with you.” 

No one sees Zuckerberg coming, because no one has the imagination or the hunger of this prickly dweeb from Westchester County, and Sorkin cannot help but throw some begrudging admiration his way. “You’re not an asshole, Mark,” says one of Zuckerberg’s young attorneys. “You’re just trying so hard to be.”

Eisenberg’s squinting, surly adolescent has aged into a bopping, smirking twerp who cannot find a necktie to suit his sallow complexion. (His poor, poor professional dresser.) In The Social Reckoning, Strong, an unrepentant Method performer, captures Zuckerberg’s smugness and impatience, though the film is not interested in some of his specific quirks (the aborted political run, the mixed martial arts hobby). Throughout the film we see him prepare to testify before Congress, with the help of a professional crisis manager (Wunmi Mosaku) and associate turned public detractor, Charlie (Bill Burr), who has been improbably called on to serve as a resource. Charlie and Mark argue at length about whether it is Facebook’s job to police deliberate misinformation. “Harm, I promise you, is fucking imminent,” Charlie warns.

With all its focus on preparation, The Social Reckoning, like Digger, is consumed with the act of rehearsal. The fact that the characters are simply honing their performances infuses their words and actions with an air of unreality: Whether they’re discussing climate apocalypse or right-wing indoctrination, there’s a sense that this is all practice and that the real dangers are happening somewhere off-screen. Characters hide behind their scripts: Zuckerberg flatly repeats that Facebook is the public square, Facebook is a corkboard, even as he skews the Facebook algorithm toward “meaningful social interaction,” an internal euphemism for “outrage bait.” Users, fed toxic slop, rehearse increasingly extremist political or self-harming beliefs until, finally, they are radicalized or broken.

No longer the surly, squinting teen to whom we had private access, Zuckerberg has grown into an impenetrable billionaire and a public figure, so he is no longer required to make sense. And, like Digger and the powerful men who surround him, Zuckerberg’s sense of scale is warped by greed and the dick-measuring contests of Silicon Valley. When he is presented with the option to put in safeguards to avoid inflammatory, dangerous speech, the only downside being a 1 percent reduction in users, he snaps, “Do you know what one percent is at scale?”

Zuckerberg has ceased to be the smartest guy in the room, and so Sorkin redirects his attention to journalist Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) and Facebook employee turned whistleblower Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison). Political reporter Horwitz moves to The Wall Street Journal’s Bay Area office to cover the Facebook beat, despite his knowing nothing about social media or technology. (His boss, played by Betty Gilpin, is a foul-mouthed, His Girl Friday–style delight.) Coming home from a bad date with a Facebook bro, Frances sees Jeff’s message on her LinkedIn and impulsively responds.

She has become concerned about the dangers that Facebook poses to teen mental health, and about the ways the algorithm had been redesigned to direct users toward extremist hate groups. For a long time, she has been trying to convey her troubling findings to other members of the Civic Integrity committee; all she has received in return is the nickname “Cassandra,” a reference to the woman in Greek mythology cursed with visions of the future and never be believed when she shares them.

Haugen and Horwitz have their own mantras to rehearse, drums to beat; Haugen in particular. “You and I aren’t on the same team,” Haugen recites, ad nauseam; she believes in the “mission” of Facebook. Haugen is a squarely adorable Sorkinian invention, a blunt and scowling heroine game to do Anora cosplay when she wants to go incognito in public. (On one trip to his hotel, she dresses up in a black bustier.) Meanwhile, Horwitz asks his source the right questions and waits patiently, blue eyes wide and warm, as she ties herself in knots. She mocks his love of old movies and calls his banana daiquiris “a dumb drink”; he teases her, approvingly, for being “mean. Like, scary mean.” It plays more like a 1990s romantic comedy than a corporate thriller.

This fictionalized near-miss love story is there because the audience needs something to look at during the film’s lengthy scenes of exposition. When the two aren’t flirting, they are explaining journalistic ethics and Tech 101 to one another, and, more importantly, to us. The bulk of the film’s run time is dedicated to these conversations, sometimes enlightening but mostly rudimentary rundowns of how social media works. These only underscore who this film is for: social media luddites, middlebrow legacy media fanatics, and Facebook obsessives who, in Horwitz’s words, don’t even realize the drink has been spiked.

The Social Reckoning lacks the cinematic dynamism of The Social Network or even of Digger, which, for all its shortcomings, is wildly visually inventive. Digger is ostensibly about a play but works like a movie, while The Social Reckoning is a journalism movie that feels like a play, and a didactic one at that. The most compelling sequence comes when the action cuts between two threads: Haugen, having quit her job, snaps pictures of sensitive internal documents before she loses access to the Facebook server; Zuckerberg is panic-stricken on January 6 as Trump supporters storm the Capitol, and staffers in his war room beg him to lock Trump out of his account.

Are these moments meant to be happening at the same time? Or is it more of a thematic montage, placing the patriotism of a whistleblower next to the horrors of bloodied flags and Zuckerberg’s infuriating facial expressions? I’m not sure precisely what Sorkin means here, but at least the movie is showing us something instead of just telling.

The Social Reckoning ends on a muddled hopefulness, with Haugen testifying before Congress—unlike Zuckerberg, she is seemingly unrehearsed, frank, drawing on just a few cute notecards. The closing title cards detail Facebook/Meta’s recent $17 billion settlement with 47 states, alongside the company’s renewed commitment to zero fact checking. It also refers to the enormous influence Facebook once exercised over the circulation and consumption of news, citing a 2018 Pew Research Center study finding that 43 percent of adults read about current events on the site. The music is triumphant, as is Haugen’s proud, abashed expression. The good guys’ victory is far from secured, but, as Horwitz says earlier of a basketball game on television, “the game’s not over.” 

We must continue to mistrust and talk over those who would tell us, in Digger’s parlance, that “compliance is freedom.” Better, as the 2023 nuclear dramedy Asteroid City urged, to “keep telling the story.” For Iñárritu, storytelling is a vehicle for catharsis and distraction and not much else. The Social Reckoning, with all its cuteness and misplaced pomp, isn’t ready to roll over and play dead. It may be too late to reverse years of tech-induced harms, but there is still time to unfriend a few billionaires.

The president turned to Truth Social Thursday to dispel fears surrounding his recent taunts to Iran, insisting via a social media post that he had not invited “the enemy to bomb San Diego and Los Angeles.”

But he did. Three times.

Trump first told the world that Iran should bomb the two major Californian metropoles during a midterm campaign rally in Grand Island, Nebraska, on Monday.

“I want to see a tremendous victory,” Trump said then. “You want to see a tremendous victory because it verifies all the things we did. And again, remember, with the war, it’s just artificial. It’s a little bit high. It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe.”

“They can take out a city. Let them take, let them take out Los Angeles; let them take out San Diego,” Trump continued as the packed-out arena cheered. “That’s—this is a very small price to pay, and it’s going to be over with very soon. It’s essentially almost over with.… But it’s going to end very soon. And it’ll end one way or the other. And your gas and your gasoline and all of the things.”

Trump repeated the threat on Wednesday in Texas, where he told another fawning MAGA crowd: “I said it the other day, let them hit a missile into San Diego or Los Angeles.”

For whatever reason, while speaking with reporters that same night, Trump felt compelled to solicit a foreign adversary to attack America for a third time.

“I say it all the time, let’s see what would happen if Iran ever did anything to Los Angeles or San Diego. I’m talking about through missiles. You want to see problems, let them hit Los Angeles or San Diego,” Trump said.

But writing on his social media platform hours later, Trump claimed that reports of his own words were the result of “fake and artificial news” and that the comments were made in relation to the “temporary increase in the price of Gasoline,” which he suggested online was “a small price to pay for Iran not having a Nuclear Weapon.”

“And, if you want to see a big price, can you imagine what it would be like if they bombed San Diego and/or Los Angeles? All I was doing was making a comparison between paying a little more, for a short time, for Gasoline, versus the bombing of our Major Cities,” Trump wrote, adding that “everybody knew that.”

If Trump actually did mean to discuss the country’s current military efforts and its corresponding (and unfortunate) toll on oil and gas prices, then his attempts to do so were so bizarre and confounding that their sole communicative success was in denigrating the office of the president.

Inside Washington

Virginia’s 5th congressional district is rural, evangelical, and red. But, in a testament to how difficult 2026 is for Republicans, Democrat Tom Perriello just might have a fighting chance.

“It is somewhat surprising that, at least based on the polls, the Democratic candidate is polling so well,” said Alex Keena, a professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University. “And then on the other hand, it’s probably not surprising at all, given what’s going on in this cycle.”

Farming is a cornerstone of the local economy, and the district is also home to Liberty University. Since the district’s new lines were drawn in the 2020 redistricting process, Democrats haven’t considered it a particularly viable target. President Donald Trump won the district by 12 points in 2024, and Republican incumbent John McGuire defeated his Democratic opponent by 15 points. Even in 2025, which was considered a good year for Virginia Democrats, Governor Abigail Spanberger received just over 46 percent of the vote in the district.

But, as Keena suggested, things are different in 2026. McGuire was leading Perriello 51 percent to 45 percent among likely voters in a recent Washington Post–Schar School poll, with a 4.6 percent margin of error. Though that still puts the Republican in the lead, experts say it’s a slimmer margin than expected, and Perriello has a chance. Like voters in the rest of the country, residents of Virginia’s 5th district are feeling the knock-on effects of Trump’s war in Iran. The district is a mix of blue college towns and red farmland, and those farmers have been hit hard by the increasing costs of fertilizer, gas, and other goods.

Trump helped boost McGuire’s campaign in 2024 as a form of revenge against Representative Bob Good, the district’s then-representative. Good, a staunch conservative and former chair of the Freedom Caucus, supported Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in the 2024 Republican primary, drawing Trump’s ire. 

The decision to replace Good in 2024 is part of why Perriello has a chance now, Keena said. “Members of Congress are most vulnerable in that first reelection cycle,” he explained. Good could have stayed in office, building a reputation for himself among constituents. Instead, McGuire is a newcomer and comparatively unfamiliar to voters in the district. “This is kind of like the chickens coming home to roost for a president who likes to make erratic decisions and likes to use his endorsements to air grievances and punish people,” he said.

Perriello, on the other hand, has a reputation within the district. He represented the 5th district from 2009 to 2011. The district was a bit different then, before the most recent round of redistricting, but experts say he’s still a known entity in the area. He’s been campaigning hard: On Monday, he campaigned for more than 24 hours straight in what he dubs, “24 Hours of Tom.”

“The original idea was, I knew that people were working a double shift to support their own families. I wanted them to believe I’d work a double shift for them in Congress, and that became this idea of the 24 hours of campaigning,” Perriello told The New Republic on Wednesday. In the 26 hours that he campaigned, he hit every county in the district. “We want to make it clear that I am running to represent every part of this district, not just the blue areas.” During the early morning hours, Perriello said, he rode along with Charlottesville police, met with emergency responders, and joined farmers who were getting to work at 4 a.m. He also met with truckers refueling at gas stations; one explained that it cost $3,000 to fill up his tank. The cost of living crisis, Perriello said, makes voters “particularly angry because these were man-made problems, and those men are Donald Trump and John McGuire.”

Data centers have, unsurprisingly, become a key issue in the race. Virginia has the country’s highest concentration of data centers, and it is also the proposed home of the Valley Link Transmission Line, a high-voltage electric line that would traverse 115 miles across the state. Perriello has made data centers, AI concerns, and utility costs a centerpiece of his campaign and hopes it will pay off with voters who see data centers as a physical manifestation of their fears around AI and affordability. “The voters are way ahead of the political parties on AI,” he said. “You have issues like the Valley Link Transmission Line and data centers that are uniting people across very different kinds of politics.”

Perriello said that communities should be the ones to decide whether companies can build them in their backyards. “Where communities don’t want data centers, we should help them fight the data centers. And where communities want them, we should fight to get them the best possible deal,” he said. “But it is really hard to find communities that want them.” McGuire, meanwhile, has said that communities should decide whether a data center is built, but that the U.S. must beat China in the fight for AI dominance.

Experts who spoke to The New Republic emphasized that, despite the favorable political circumstances, the odds are still in Republicans’ favor in Virginia’s 5th district. But there’s a larger story at play. “Democrats can win the House without Virginia five,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington. But “the fact that Virginia five is increasingly seen as competitive speaks to what a challenging environment Republicans are facing this fall.”

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

The Minnesota Star Tribune’s Allison Kite and Briana Bierschbach pen a fascinating report on the shifting politics of northeastern Minnesota, which used to offer strong support to the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party but “has become harder for Democrats to hold” and could be key to Republicans gaining the upper hand in the state’s tightly balanced legislature. Republican candidates are playing up issues like immigration and fraud, while Democrats such as state senator Grant Hauschild—looking to defend himself from a second-time challenge from Republican Andrea Zupancich—are “betting that health care and childcare will matter to voters, too.” Democrat Aaron Schweiger, currently running against sitting state Representative Natalie Zeleznikar, similarly “said Trump has effectively pulled rural voters away from Democrats based largely on ‘cultural issues,’” and material ones could push them back into the blue. Meanwhile, everyone’s trying to claim the high ground on data centers.

New York’s 1st congressional district candidate Chris Gallant gives The New York Times an interview for the ages: “‘I mean, all my friends know I’m kinky’ as hell, he said, using a saltier word. ‘I make Christian Grey look like amateur hour.’” Times reporter Jacob Bernstein was accompanying the Democrat to the shooting range and had asked him about the photos that the New York Post publicized last month, from when Gallant posed for a “San Francisco fetish brand” in 2010. Gallant initially called it a “coordinated political hit” but has opted to own the vibe.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

On Thursday at 1 p.m., the Center for American Progress will hold an online discussion with Eric Zwick and Owen Zidar, authors of the recent book The Everywhere Millionaire, about how business ownership became the “main path to wealth in America, and what that means for the future of tax policy and the American Dream.” New York University professor Lily Batchelder and Amy Hanauer of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy will also join the discussion, which will be moderated by Corey Husak, with introductory remarks from Emily Gee.

A new poll from Data for Progress finds 56 percent of likely voters think “the government should invest more” in public housing, with strong majorities backing extreme weather resilience, energy efficiency, and clean water and air as factors to be considered in constructing such housing. The organization concludes that voters generally support the components of the so-called “Green New Deal” for public housing—just not necessarily by that name.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Here’s Why That’s B.S.

Destroying Los Angeles is a “small price to pay”?

Watch TNR’s Edith Olmsted unpack the speech in which Trump seemed to suggest it would be okay for Iran to nuke southern California.

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

Who was the United States of America’s first ambassador to France? He’s a pretty famous guy.

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

—Michael Tomasky

Katie Wiles, daughter of Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, works for a political lobbying firm that has a $35,000-per-month contract to represent a small self-governing territory in Bosnia and Herzegovina known as Republika Srpska. She traveled there as recently as August.

A photograph circulated by Evi Kokalari, a conservative Albanian American activist, showed the younger Wiles wielding a rifle and standing next to a man that CBS News identified as Željko Budimir, the interior minister of Republika Srpska. The image appeared to have been initially posted to Wiles’s Instagram story with the caption “mostly work + some serious fun!”

Continental Strategy, Wiles’s employer, confirmed to CBS that she traveled to Republika Srpska in August, but said she has not lobbied the U.S. government on its behalf. Yeah, she probably wouldn’t have to do much—her mom would do it for her. As of Thursday afternoon, Wiles’s page on her company’s website was inaccessible.

This news comes as MAGA world has turned its ire on two of the president’s closest advisers, Chris LaCivita and James Blair, who took time out of their presumably busy pre-midterm elections schedules to travel to the Balkans to assist in that territory’s elections. The two men were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars each to provide counsel on voting issues to the government, which is led by far-right nationalists. Republika Srpska is closely aligned with Russian President Vladimir Putin and has made a considerable effort to make inroads with Trump and his allies.

Both LaCivita and Blair are connected to Susie Wiles—but even the famed “ice maiden” reportedly couldn’t protect them from the White House’s ire. Trump tried to distance himself from his beloved strategists, claiming that Blair and LaCivita were “outside consultants,” but his chief of staff’s child may be harder to disown.

Congratulations to all six individuals for realizing that the president can be very easily bought. 

Sergey Brin, Google co-founder, current Gemini AI head

Google’s parent company, Alphabet (which Brin co-founded), donated $22 billion to the Trust for the National Mall, a fund that will help construct Trump’s White House ballroom plan. The donation was made as part of a settlement in Trump’s January 6–related lawsuit against YouTube. Google separately  donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. Brin himself donated half a million dollars to the Republican National Committee last year, and spent more than $100 million in an effort to kill California’s proposed wealth tax. 

These donations don’t include other clear links between Google and Trump, like the tech company’s decision to hire Trump ally Carlos Trujillo’s lobbying firm, Continental Strategy, to lobby the White House.

Jensen Huang, NVIDIA CEO

Huang donated an unspecified amount to the construction of President Trump’s $300 million White House ballroom last year, and attended a $1 million-per-plate dinner at Mar-a-Lago. His company, NVIDIA, also announced it would be pledging $1 billion to Trump’s Genesis Mission AI project on Thursday morning, shortly before Huang received his award. 

Lisa Su, president and CEO, Advanced Micro Devices

Su’s AMD company donated $1 million to MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, and pledged to give 15 percent of its processor sales revenue from China to the Trump administration.

Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, xAI CEO, X Corp. CTO

Musk, who also served as a quasi-member of the Trump Cabinet as head of DOGE, has extensive financial connections to the Trump administration. In 2024, he wasn’t just Trump’s largest donor, he was the biggest political spender in the entire country, shelling out $277 million directly to Trump and other Republican campaigns. Musk helped form Trump’s America PAC and ran a $1 million election “lottery” scheme to pay Republican voters. 

Michael Dell, Dell Technologies founder, chair, and CEO 

Dell and his wife gifted the Trump administration $6.25 billion to the president’s “Trump accounts” program for children. 

Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO

Nadella’s company, Microsoft, contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and an undisclosed amount to his White House ballroom. 

Trump has disclosed millions in stock trades in the companies run by all six individuals.

All hurricanes lash rain as a fundamental part of the storm system, but the president suggested Thursday that there was a difference between a cyclone and what he described as a “water hurricane.”

“I will tell you personally, because I was involved, we had a hurricane—one of the great water hurricanes of all time—delivered more water than at any time that we can remember on record,” Trump said in the midst of a speech intended to celebrate Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Starlink technologies.

Yet somehow it’s not the first time that Trump has leaned on the bizarre phrase. The president previously pitched the idea during a presidential campaign stop in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, in October 2024. He lamented the role that water had played during Hurricane Helene—a Category 4 storm that ravaged the state and simultaneously sparked Trump’s interest in dismantling the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“I must’ve been the first [to visit the area], I followed that storm right in,” Trump said two years ago. “But I saw the devastation, I came back the following week because I didn’t want to get in, it was a travesty, it was a vicious, it was water, the water was the worst we’d ever seen, it was a water hurricane, that’s what it was.”

Pretty much everything Trump said about hurricanes at the White House’s Science: A New Golden Age summit Thursday was blatantly dishonest and, ironically, logically unsound. Despite the damage it wreaked, Hurricane Helene was not the most severe rainfall event in U.S. history. That distinction would go to Hurricane Harvey, which battered portions of Texas and Louisiana across eight days of rainfall in 2017.

He was also not involved. Trump visited the Tar Heel State once to formally acknowledge the wreckage, making three stops across North Carolina on October 21, 2024—nearly a month after the storm had passed.

“The power of nature. Nothing you can do about it, but you got to get a little bit better crew in to do a better job than has been done by the White House. It’s been not good. Not good,” Trump said at the time.

The storm inspired an unfounded MAGA conspiracy that the Biden administration was utilizing FEMA funds to assist undocumented immigrants. But even after North Carolinians voted Trump back into office, the Trump administration made it remarkably difficult for the state to access the emergency relief.

Instead, the Trump campaign initiated a GoFundMe where Americans could privately donate cash (on top of their taxes) to help rebuild the damaged regions of North Carolina. They managed to raise $7.7 million, but that money effectively disappeared within a year.

Trump’s team distributed the money to a handful of Christian charities with close ties to the president, including Mtn2Sea Ministries, Water Mission, Samaritan’s Purse, the Clinch Foundation, and Sweetwater Mission. As religious entities, none were legally required to publicly disclose their expenditures, making it next to impossible for the press, the communities in need, or those who donated to actually track down the dollars.

Hurricane Helene killed at least 250 people across seven states, making it the second-deadliest storm to hit the mainland in U.S. history. More than 100 of those fatalities happened in North Carolina.

The state is still dealing with the fallout of the storm: state officials are still working to provide internet and housing assistance for thousands of people that lost their homes to the hurricane, according to a factsheet released by Governor Josh Stein’s office in September.

Speaking to Jack Posobiec for Real America’s Voice on the USS Abraham Lincoln Wednesday, Hegseth was asked about the decision to execute Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist who shot and killed 12 soldiers and one civilian in 2009 on the base before being shot, wounded, and arrested. President Trump approved Hasan’s death by firing squad to take place December 3, the first such military execution in over 60 years.*

“Of course we’re going to do it at Fort Hood. We’re going to do it on a Thursday, we’re going to do it at one o’clock, which is when he did it, and it’s going to be soldiers with rifles executing the firing squad,” Hegseth said. “We know what it is, it was a radical Islamist attack in uniform inside the ranks, and so he’s going to get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be, and we’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”

A Pentagon official later confirmed that the execution will be livestreamed. Current Army regulations allow for at least two media outlets to be present for the execution. No legal execution has ever been broadcast live in the U.S., and the country’s last public execution was in 1936.

Since he was convicted of a military crime, Hasan’s execution required approval from Hegseth and then Trump, which was granted. Trump’s Department of Justice doesn’t want this to be the last firing squad execution. In April, the DOJ announced it was bringing back federal firing squads for death penalty sentences. President Biden had paused all executions and commuted the death sentences of 37 prisoners to life without parole as he was leaving the White House.

* This story has been updated to clarify the last such execution.

Still, the best joke about the Nobel in those 11 years was one we didn’t write. In 2016, the Swedish Academy awarded world literature’s most prestigious honor to Bob Dylan, who promptly did everything he could not to accept it. This was funny in part because we had predicted that Dylan would not win the prize—not that year, and not ever. But this couldn’t lay a glove on the bigger joke that Dylan had won at all. It was a lesson in humility that we’ve carried with us ever since: The Nobel Prize in literature is always funnier than anything we could write about it. 

It was a lesson we should have already learned. In 2007, cameras ambushed Doris Lessing outside her London home as she was coming back from grocery shopping. She had just won global literature’s biggest prize, the assembled journalists excitedly told her. “Oh Christ,” she responded. She had already won “every bloody one” of Europe’s prizes. The Nobel, she sighed, completed the “royal flush.”

Lessing was as expertly deadpan and awkward as the best of British comedy. It wasn’t entirely clear if she was irritated because she won the Nobel Prize, because she was impatient to put away her groceries, or because her house was surrounded by the worst and most obnoxious people on earth (British journalists). What was clear, even then, was that this kind of thing likely would not happen again—anyone currently laureate-worthy (even William Vollmann) would almost certainly carry a cell phone while shopping (even while doing the kind of shopping Vollman does). In any case, it was a great video—and one we thought would never be equaled, let alone surpassed, in the annals of Nobel announcements. 

This video of Japanese fans reacting to the news that Haruki Murakami had—once more—gone un-laureated on Thursday morning is just as perfect and every bit as funny. It may be even better: 

Video: A Haruki Marukami mega fan reacts with sadness to the announcement that his favorite novelist did not win this year's Nobel Prize for Literature. In their haste to create an announcement sign, someone misspelled the name of the winner, Anne Carson. https://t.co/uip4EoL0uX

— Jeffrey J. Hall 🇯🇵🇺🇸 (@mrjeffu) October 8, 2026

An anguished man holds up his arms in genuine pain while desperately clinging to a sign attesting to his love for Murakami (and wearing his favorite author’s signature item of clothing—a T-shirt that is a little too loud). Then the camera pans to an older man wearing a ridiculous pink beret, sitting next to a younger one wearing a Forrest Gump T-shirt. Then the camera cuts again, to a woman holding a white board containing the name of the winner of the 2026 Nobel Prize in literature: “Ann Carson,” the Canadian poet. Her name is actually “Anne,” though that misspelling only pushes an already perfect video into the pantheon.

The torment, the stupid T-shirts, the sense of absolute, absurd devotion: It is exactly like a crowd scene you would see in the middle of a college football bowl game. It’s genuinely funny. This is what it’s all about. (It is also—down to the Forrest Gump shirt—exactly what Philip Roth went through every year in early October as he sat in his agent Andrew Wylie’s office at the crack of dawn waiting for a call that would never come.)

Despite our history of bad calls, we remain as certain as ever that Murakami will never win the Nobel Prize, and this video only makes us more convinced. The problem isn’t that Murakami writes exclusively to jazz on pristine 180-gram vinyl or that he does so surrounded by perfect, bespoke beechwood furniture. Nor is it that the Swedish Academy is biased against cat people (they prefer Labradors) and jazz (they have penciled in Yung Lean for 2050’s Nobel), or that they do not appreciate the challenge of achieving truly al dente pasta (they only eat meatballs). The nonexistence of rich and rewarding friendships with women in Murakami’s work and its suffocating sterility may even be points in his favor. 

The beautiful video of Murakami’s fans ripping up their (frankly ridiculous) T-shirts gets at the real problem: Murakami will never win because he’s in another tier of influence than practically every other “literary” novelist. The iteration of the Nobel Prize in literature that has been in place since the scandal-plagued annus horribilis of 2018 is serious and refined and uninterested in fandom and mania. It is inarguable and unimpeachable. It does not approve of people rending their garments on behalf of their favorite novelist (who has, incidentally, published an entire book about his garments).

Carson, for what it’s worth, is inarguable and unimpeachable, a consummate laureate for a Nobel Prize now exclusively bestowed on the consummate. The honorific attached to the work of the two scientists who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry a day earlier also applies to her writing: It is devoted to “solving the mystery of life’s asymmetry.” Abstract, intertextual, genre- and form-bending, Carson is technically a poet, though that term only goes so far. When Carson was informed by the Swedish Academy that she had won the Nobel Prize, she was at her home in Iceland, where she is a citizen. She told them she was there “listening to the wind.” 

Writing about music may be like dancing about architecture, but listening to the wind is actually what Anne Carson has done over and over again in more than 20 works written across four decades that have been described as “poems,” “novels,” “plays,” and “librettos,” among other descriptors. But “Anne Carson listens to the wind” is closer to the truth, which is probably ineffable—or at least only capable of being described by Carson herself. 

Take Nox, among her most famous works, which is a suite of interconnected poems published in an accordion-like fold-out box. The box is not a gimmick: It’s essential to the work itself, which is devoted to the death of her brother. (It is also really hard to describe without visual aids—specifically a box—so you’ll have to trust us.) Carson has always been committed to form—box-shaped and otherwise—but naturally she has other preoccupations: grief, longing, and, as Carson writes in The Gender of Sound, the way that patriarchal culture puts “a door on the female mouth.” That door, Carson writes, has been present “from antiquity to the present day,” which gets at another feature of her work, a deep and explicit interest in classical literature, and the way that it continues to reveal great continuities despite thousands of years of social upheaval.  

Carson, if it’s not already clear, is an unusually tactile writer. This is true both literally (see the aforementioned box) and in a more expansive sense: In nearly all her work, Carson has shown an interest in getting beyond form and even language. When she says she is out there in Iceland listening to the wind, she’s being as honest as the wind herself—and not just because Iceland is among the windiest places in the world, windwise. (According to unconfirmed reports, Carson is currently in discussion with New Directions about the feasibility of packaging a new prose poem in a wooden box that will contain authentic wind from Hvannadalshnúkur. If the supply chain holds, look out for Hvannadalshnúrtúre this winter, retailing at $89.99, though that price may fluctuate based on the openness of the Strait of Hormuz.) 

Carson’s whole deal—ruminative, form-bending, wind-obsessed—makes her an especially fitting winner in 2026, the year artificial intelligence entrenched itself in intellectual life and began (or continued, if you assume that James Patterson has had a prototype LLM churning out dozens of fast-paced thrillers since the 1990s—though, don’t worry, his collabs with Bill Clinton and Mr. Beast were all produced the old-fashioned way) to strangle book publishing. To present a thorough list of 2026 AI literary controversies we’d probably need to ask Claude for help, which would sort of undermine our point.

In any case, it’s already obvious that publishing has proven to be highly vulnerable to AI scams, deceptive writers, and corporate hacks trying to optimize and scrape the life out of literature. It will get worse before it gets better, which makes writing like Carson’s work particularly appealing. There’s no way Anne Carson, author of The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos, is going to be captured by the machines or turned into a Hulu microriginal. Carson is not just averse to literary celebrity but reluctant to do any publicity at all, something that is practically heroic in the current environment—her reticence makes Doris Lessing look like Joyce Carol Oates. (Which isn’t to say that she’s averse to modernity. There are surprising flickers of contemporaneity in a lot of Carson’s work, and until her win this morning she was most infamous in 2026 for a London Review of Books ode to Rosalía.)

Like Lessing, Carson has her (wrong) detractors, and their ranks will certainly grow in the coming weeks. In a stinging 2024 piece in The Nation, the classicist and Odyssey translator (and The Odyssey hater) Emily Wilson compared Carson to two writers: the Instagram poet Rupi Kaur and the Hulu novelist Margaret Atwood. That is, to be fair, the kind of thing that we used to do when we wrote articles handicapping the Nobel betting odds every year, especially in that column’s later, more Don Rickles–infused era. As far as hating goes, one can only respect it. (“Zaniness”? OK, sure. We would have said her prose made Sigur Rós’s lyrics seem intelligible. And that her next book would be an improvement because it would contain no words at all—though it would be “contained” in a perfectly carved ebony box. And also probably something about the whole Rosalía thing.)

Maybe we’ve gotten soft, but we don’t really believe any of that. Zany or not, Carson is notable because she’s sui generis. They broke the mold when they made her. (Shattered Fragments of the Mold is currently on backorder. Each fragment comes packaged with a sliver of the other kind of mold, harvested from the fjords of Iceland. Cannot be moved across state lines.) 

Both the lovers and the haters can agree that Anne Carson is an original, a macro one, even as the Nobel Prize in literature itself has become increasingly predictable. As the Swedish journalist, novelist, and ace Nobel watcher Jens Liljestrand noted to us Thursday morning, over the past 10 years, the prize has consistently rotated between men and women and Europeans. Bettors have noticed this, which is why Carson, Canadian-born and female, rocketed up the betting odds in the hours before the announcement. (Odds are next year’s winner will be a European man: Congratulations, Mircea Cărtărescu! And more importantly, congratulations to his fans—when he wins you have my word that I’ll buy both of you shots.) 

As the post-scandal years roll past, it’s becoming clearer that the Nobel Prize in literature is now solely the province of a fairly narrow set of practitioners of high literature who possess a sterling reputation and attract modest sales. Not too long ago, you could count on some weird thrills and variations—a highbrow but still popular writer followed by a French litterateur whose novels depict a man who finds himself returning again and again to a woman he met once, during the war, when things were harder, but also simpler, when one could feel the tectonic shifts of history and the tobacco-stained breath of politics on the wind. There’s not so much of that going around these days. More than it’s ever been, the Nobel Prize is targeted to graduate students and booksellers, which is to say the unemployed and the underemployed, but also the broodily bespectacled. 

That is not to say it has been without conflict. The decision to award Carson was controversial within the Swedish Academy, according to the Swedish literature podcast Gästabudet. While you should generally discount anything you hear from podcasts, unless the speaker is Bill Simmons and the subject is a Miramax film about poker from the late 1990s, we have heard similar rumors from Scandinavia, though they’ve all come secondhand and have to be qualified as “gossip.” That fractiousness, real or otherwise, isn’t especially surprising given the realities of the prize, which can only be awarded when the majority of the 18-person Swedish Academy agrees on a candidate. 

It seems likely next year’s Nobel will follow the pattern and be awarded to a man, most likely a European man. Still, the (rumored) infighting could mean that the winner will be a compromise candidate aimed at smoothing over internal divisions, which could point to a swerve, like when the then-unknown Abdulrazak Gurnah won in 2021, or someone “safe,” though what that means in practice is anyone’s guess. 

What next? Every fall, like clockwork, articles that should have been tweets pop up bemoaning the fact that numerous great writers never won the Nobel Prize in literature: Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Vladimir Nabokov, Virginia Woolf, and Jorge Luis Borges all died un-laureated, as did Philip Roth, if you’re into that kind of thing. These tired exhortations are often presented with a whiff of forbidden truth: Big Nobel is trying to conceal something important from you. The Nobel Prize in literature is actually not a comprehensive prize for Best Book People, these articles insist.

Well, yes. There are many reasons why these writers didn’t win (in order: horny, goofy, horny, Jewish, horny, woman, Argentinian, Philip Roth), but above all they didn’t win because the Nobel has historically eschewed the concept of the “laundry list.” Way back in 1901 when the first prize was awarded, everybody knew that Tolstoy was canonical, which is one reason why it was given to Sully Prudhomme, a melancholic French poet who lived in obscurity and died less than eight years after his selection as Literature’s Next Top Guy. If the Nobel has not always favored the esoteric, eccentric, and noncanonical over the canonical, it has at least attempted to balance the obvious and the surprising. To put it somewhat differently, it has often proceeded from the presumption that the literary canon is always in flux and that no one can be really sure which writers will be deemed important in 100 years’ time. 

Today the Nobel seems trapped between its newfound consistency and its old-school tendency toward novelty, rewarding writers who fit the bill (even if they provoke controversy within the Academy) but still tend toward various kinds of marginality. For now that means no to Murakami and yes to Cărtărescu. Perennial betting favorite Can Xue will probably win in a couple of years and perennial betting favorite Salman Rushdie probably will not. Fair enough.  

In 2023, after Jon Fosse won the Nobel, we noted that the prize was “so back.” Two years later, after László Krasznahorkai won it, we opined that it was “boring now,” more or less for the same reasons that excited us when Fosse won. Like the Nobel, this column contains multitudes. 

Punchbowl News reports that the Department of Justice wants to criminally indict Hutchinson, accusing her of lying to the January 6 committee about what she saw that day in 2021. The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division presented evidence to a federal grand jury on Tuesday and is expected to present additional evidence and witnesses in the coming weeks, unnamed sources told Punchbowl. NBC News confirmed the report. Hutchinson, who worked for former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, has not yet received a subpoena from the grand jury.

Republicans have been calling for Hutchinson’s prosecution for years, with Representative Barry Loudermilk referring her to the DOJ in March and House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan signing off on it. In 2022, Hutchinson testified that President Trump wanted to join his supporters and march on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, but his aides and Secret Service detail said it wasn’t safe.

Hutchinson said that Trump then tried to grab the steering wheel of the presidential limousine, and when a Secret Service agent grabbed his arm, he grabbed the agent’s neck. Hutchinson also testified that Trump wanted his armed supporters to march that day, and said Meadows overheard the president say Vice President Mike Pence “deserves it” in response to the MAGA faithful chanting “Hang Mike Pence” at the Capitol.

The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division usually handles discrimination cases, and it’s not normal for the office to oversee a case of lying to Congress. The division has resorted to hiring questionable candidates to fill vacancies, including lawyers convicted of crimes themselves. These substandard lawyers will hopefully have a tough time convincing a federal grand jury to pursue revenge against one of Trump’s perceived enemies, who simply testified on what she witnessed on January 6.

Vance was fielded the question at a press conference in which he announced that Microsoft and other tech firms would be temporarily suspended from sponsoring H-1B visa workers seeking green cards.

“Oh man.... It’s a hard term to define these days because very often socialism … classically, you would think socialism is about prioritizing workers. And yet in reality, most of the self-described socialists running across the United States of America are going to howl about this announcement today, which is prioritizing American workers over foreign workers. So I don’t know what the term means anymore,” he said.

“I think in reality what it actually means in the American context is that you wanna replace American workers with foreign workers and you want boys to play in girls’ sports. That’s what unites the socialists that I see running across the United States of America today.”

There are quite a few different definitions and perspectives on socialism. There are the so-called “sewer socialists,” like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who believe that Americans should have “whatever they need to live a dignified life” and that it is “the government’s job to deliver on that.” The more specific, classical definitions go beyond filling potholes and housing affordability, advocating for a future in which wealth is redistributed from a small minority of elites to the working class. It can have both market and non-market models and takes various economic and social formats.

Regardless of what you think socialism means, it is certainly not “replacing American workers with foreign workers” and wanting boys to play girls’ sports.

This was a confusing, unintelligent answer from a man who’s supposed to be quite smart. What does Vance have to lose by just answering the question in good faith, especially as someone uniquely positioned to answer it? I bet Secretary of State Marco Rubio would have had a more interesting response.

* This story previously misstated where Vance got his law degree.

The Department of Homeland Security shot down a plan to construct immigration detention facilities that were more humane, a government contractor told NPR News Thursday.

At a meeting with the DHS deputy director, the contractor pitched constructing a FEMA-style camp, believing that would be more humane than building megaprisons inside of warehouses. But his company’s plan was rejected.

“No one that we spoke to at DHS was for this idea whatsoever. The deputy director told us point-blank that they had pushed back very hard on it. Everybody knew warehouses are horrible places to put people,” the contractor told NPR.

The contractor believed that the directive to construct facilities with the worst possible conditions came from the White House itself—specifically Stephen Miller, who was not present at the meeting.

“Miller did not want the facilities that were comfortable. He did not want facilities that were humane. We were told point-blank that that was not what the administration wanted,” the contractor said.

“Steve Miller certainly seemed to make that point to everyone that he wanted it to be cruel. This was what Miller had stated to the DHS at that time, to the DHS director and deputy director. What surprised me was just how adamant the people were that it was going to happen. Damn the consequences. I would say in 25 years of working with the U.S. government, I’ve never been in that position before.”

White House spokesperson Lauren Bis told NPR that the contractor’s comments were “false hearsay allegation(s) from someone who has never even met or talked with Stephen Miller,” and that the comments were “defamatory.”

Under Miller’s leadership, ICE has subjected tens of thousands of people—including U.S. citizens, lawful immigrants, and immigrants with no criminal convictions—to overcrowded rooms, unsanitary conditions, insufficient food and water. Immigrants have been denied adequate medical care and legal counsel, and were even locked in cages. As of earlier this week, 28 people have died in ICE custody in 2026. In 2025, ICE reported 33 detainee deaths, the highest in two decades.

“This has opened the floodgates,” a person close to the White House told Politico Thursday. “The knives are now fully out for these two.”

Donald Trump tapped both men to oversee his midterm advertising campaign. But LaCivita and Blair were not stateside last week amid the Republican blitz, instead visiting a small self-governing territory in Bosnia and Herzegovina known as Republika Srpska ahead of its regional elections, according to several sources that spoke with The New York Times Tuesday.

Republika Srpska is closely aligned with Russian President Vladimir Putin and, according to the Times, has made a considerable effort to make inroads with Trump and his allies.

Blair and LaCivita were paid well for their time and, presumably, their connection to the president, receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars through a Washington-based law firm affiliated with Republika Srpska’s government.

Trump, for his part, was apparently unaware of the duo’s travel plans. In a post on Truth Social Wednesday, Trump immediately tried to distance himself from his beloved strategists, claiming that Blair and LaCivita were “outside consultants” and “do not work for me.”

Yet the sudden disownment is a convenient revision of Blair and LaCivita’s broad influence on the MAGA movement. Both have held significant positions within Trump’s orbit: Prior to running the president’s midterm spending campaign, Blair served as Trump’s White House deputy chief of staff. LaCivita worked as the chief strategist of Trump’s primary super PAC, MAGA Inc., and later became chief operating officer of the Republican National Committee.

Both are also connected to chief of staff Susie Wiles—but even the famed “ice maiden” reportedly couldn’t protect Blair and LaCivita from the White House’s ire.

“[Trump] has been livid for awhile over how things have been heading, and he hates nothing more than when people make money off him, especially when those people abandon him like this,” another person close to the president told Politico, noting that Trump could “could cut them off forever” if the situation continues to go south.

But outside of the White House, political strategists have viewed LaCivita’s and Blair’s disembarkment as a sign of Trump’s troubled waters.

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie explained to Politico that “if your top political advisers are not paying attention to the midterms and instead are paying attention to taking money off the table in a foreign country, that seems to indicate to me that they’ve moved on from Donald Trump as their top priority, and I think you’re going to see a lot of that.”

Others were simply stunned by Blair’s and LaCivita’s foreign affairs. James Carville, who worked on former President Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, told Politico that the entire scandal was “jaw dropping.”

“Everything I did, I cleared with the White House,” Carville said. “When I saw this I did one of those sitcom spit takes.”

Vance singled out Yale University, Harvard University, Stanford University, Brown University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California, Davis, the California Institute of Technology, Arizona State University, and the University of Pittsburgh at a press conference, saying that the government would be investigating them. 

Vance said the Trump administration believes that these institutions exploit the J-1 visa program, which allows foreign students to work and conduct research in the United States. The investigation will also include a team examining visa fraud. 

“Something weird is going on at these universities,” Vance said. “They’re using these visas way too much. They’re using them to undercut the wages of American grad students and American researchers, and it simply has to stop.”

In the same press conference, Vance defended tech CEO Elon Musk’s contributions to the country as a positive example of a foreign student. Musk came to the U.S. on a J-1 visa as a student but never enrolled in the Stanford University graduate courses his visa was tied to, instead working illegally on a tech startup. 

“It’s one thing if you were to bring in a person like Elon Musk. I think 99 percent of American citizens look at somebody like Elon Musk or Lisa Su, the CEO of AMD, and say, obviously, ‘If that person wants to come in and build something great in the U.S., we support that,’” Vance said, before attacking companies and institutions who hire foreigners as accountants and pay them far less than American citizens. 

A reporter pressed Vance about Musk, noting that he didn’t build his companies overnight, and asked how the government would determine if a prospective immigrant was the next Musk. 

“Does the person coming in fill a position that simply cannot be filled by an American worker? That’s question number one,” Vance said. “Question number two, very importantly, is this person a truly elite human being, are they truly bringing in a special set of skills, and abilities, and work ethic, and competence?” 

Vance seems to be trying to thread a needle by saying some foreign students are OK but others are not. Musk committed the very fraud the Trump administration claims to be trying to combat. But the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX is the world’s richest man, supports Trump, and has racist ideas about immigration, so he gets a pass. 

Vance criticized Microsoft while announcing the tech company would be temporarily suspended from sponsoring H-1B visa workers seeking green cards.

“We obviously want you to thrive in the United States of America. We want people to invest in the United States of America. Particularly the American technology sector, we’re the bigger boosters of your industry. We want you to continue to grow and to employ … American workers,” Vance said at his Thursday morning news conference. “So our message to Microsoft is, ‘You’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers. You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants.’”

This is a common argument against the H-1B work visa program, which allows foreign professionals to work in the United States.

Vance was questioned about the ironic timing of his comment just minutes later, and tried to have it both ways.

“You had some harsh words for Microsoft at the top of your speech just then,” a reporter raised. “In that case, why is President Trump awarding the nation’s top technological medal to the CEO of Microsoft this afternoon?”

“Microsoft is a great American company, and we have a great relationship with them, they do a lot of important things. They also laid off 6,000 American workers while replacing them with 6,300 H-1Bs,” Vance replied. “And our message to Microsoft is not that we wanna harm your company, it’s that we want your company to thrive, but we want it to thrive by employing and empowering your fellow Americans.”

The last time Vance waded into the H-1B debate he ended up dragging his wife, Usha Vance, the daughter of Indian immigrants, into the fray.

“You can believe on the one hand that there’s a lot of fraud in the H-1B system, while also believing that there are people who have come to the United States in the past who have enriched this country. And look, I’m married to the daughter of immigrants from India, and, you know, I love my in-laws.… They’ve been great contributors to the United States of America,” he said at a Turning Point USA event last spring. “But I also think when you become an American citizen … one of the obligations of citizens is that you have to think about the best interest of the country, and not the country you came from before.”

Vance seems to have applied that thinking to Microsoft today—perhaps without running it by Trump first.

The conservative media behemoth publicly defended its reporting this week, rebuking a wave of Republican backlash that began after host Martha MacCallum interviewed Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in August.

“Someone didn’t necessarily like that,” Fox News Media president Jay Wallace told Axios Thursday, seemingly referring to Donald Trump. “But that’s what we do.”

For years, Fox News blurred the line between legitimate news coverage and conservative entertainment. The network veered toward sycophancy once Trump entered office the first time, offering buddy-buddy interviews to the presidential Cabinet while dampening the reach of critical stories such as the Epstein files. (Fox News mentioned the prolific child sex trafficker hundreds fewer times than its major broadcast competitors.)

But apparently, Republicans got too comfortable with Fox’s bent knee. Once network executives decided to air interviews with Democratic competitors—such as El-Sayed—the floodgates opened.

First, the outcry was private. White House aides put in calls to the network, complaining that Fox’s angle on El-Sayed would only help him in the tight Michigan race.

But the fury bubbled to the public sphere this week, when Trump decided to take the issue to Truth Social.

“FoxNews spends more time covering the Jihadist and Dumocrat candidates than they do the good old fashioned Republicans, the people that have saved America, and are making it great again,” Trump posted on Truth Social Tuesday.

Trump further claimed that MacCallum had offered El-Sayed a “softball interview.”

“She never interviews me like that. They don’t show my record breaking Rallies the morning after, but others do, and that’s what MAGA is watching. Fox is promoting the Dumocrats, not the Republicans and MAGA. They have totally lost their way!” he added.

Republican strategists also chimed in. Jason Roe, a Michigan-based GOP operative, told Axios that the network was doing El-Sayed a “favor.”

“It’s only helping him reach center-right voters,” Roe said. “But they are in business to make money, and he attracts eyeballs.”

In another post Wednesday evening, Trump went full Islamophobe, referring to El-Sayed as “Mohammed” (the candidate’s full first name is Abdulrahman) and deriding him as a “Terrorist Sympathizer.”

El-Sayed responded to the attack Thursday morning, arguing that Trump is “not just attacking me.”

“He’s attacking all of us. He thinks so low of us. He thinks he can use my name and my faith to distract us from the suffering his policies are inflicting on us at the pump, at the grocery store, and at the doctor’s office. He thinks we don’t know any better,” El-Sayed wrote on X. “It’s time for change.”

The so-called “Operation Safe California” has not been formally announced yet, but two sources told the Washington Examiner Wednesday that operations have been underway for several days.

One source told the outlet that officers were “told to go after anybody, they can pick up anybody.”

The Examiner suggested that means that federal agents will target any undocumented immigrants, not just people with criminal records. There is no evidence to suggest that ICE has ever been so discerning.

News of this secret operation comes as early voting began this week in California, which has been a consistent target for punishment by the Trump administration. Voting rights groups cited an ICE detention that took place in Santa Maria, California, on Monday in the same area that voters had to pass through to reach a ballot drop box.

This latest surge of ICE activity comes more than a year after federal agents descended on Los Angeles in June 2025, which led to widespread protests and violent encounters with law enforcement. Of the hundreds of people detained as part of those raids, seven in 10 people had no criminal convictions.

A second source told the Examiner that “management want numbers.” Last year, White House deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller instructed ICE to arrest 3,000 immigrants a day, a demand that has overwhelmed the agency and resulted in inhumane and degrading detention practices. Now it seems, the Trump administration plans to turn up the temperature.

David Milstein, an aide to U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, was running cover for the Israeli government, suppressing reports critical of Israeli actions, The New York Times reports. Milstein, according to several unnamed sources, quashed reports from the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem documenting Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank—including against Americans.

Milstein sent a cable from the embassy to Washington praising Israel for cracking down on Israeli settler violence, when in reality, embassy staff had drafted a report saying that the Israeli government wasn’t taking action. After Congress raised concerns about how Israeli authorities and settlers have killed nine American citizens, Milstein suppressed another embassy report, hindering lawmakers from investigating further.

Milstein also demanded any communications from the embassy’s section on Palestinian affairs go through him. This led to the embassy’s cables dropping from several per week to only a few per month, sources told the Times. They said that this kind of intervention is unprecedented for the embassy, and is preventing the U.S. government from getting accurate information about Israel from diplomatic channels.

Trump has rarely criticized Israel or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his second term as president, and he chose to appoint Huckabee, a Christian Zionist and staunch supporter of Israel, as ambassador. It’s not clear if Milstein’s actions have Huckabee’s blessing, but human rights groups and U.S. allies have raised concerns about all of these issues.

Last month, Canada, France, and the U.K. announced sanctions on Israeli settlements in the West Bank. That’s unlikely to happen in the U.S. anytime soon—and in fact the U.S. has threatened tariffs in response to the sanctions—but one would still expect U.S. diplomats to accurately document what is happening where they are stationed. In the case of Israel, however, the truth is actively being hidden.

Trump struggled to get through his address at a campaign rally in San Antonio, Texas, Wednesday night as his remarks were repeatedly interrupted by at least seven separate protesters.

As one demonstrator made his way out of the arena through the jeering crowd, a rallygoer in a red hat seized the protester’s shirt and yanked his hair, pulling him to the floor.

Other rallygoers appeared to intervene—but not the president of the United States. Instead, he basked in the roar of an angry crowd, wandering aimlessly around the stage. “Let me ask you a question, is there anything like a Trump rally? Is there anything like it?” Trump asked, smiling broadly.

In a separate incident, a rallygoer wearing a white cowboy hat stalked after two protesters as they were directed out of the arena. The rallygoer smacked one of the protesters’ baseball hats off and followed them threateningly, pumping his fists. He even appeared to lunge or kick one of the protesters, before being held back by a security officer.

Trump’s unwillingness to condemn his supporters’ violence (and in many cases, his decision to encourage it) is obviously nothing new. But the failure to address violence that unfolds before his own eyes is still shameful behavior from any leader—let alone the president of the United States.

Speaking at the rally, the president told demonstrators to “get the hell out of here,” and claimed they were “paid by enemies of our nation.” After the sixth interruption, Trump tried to laugh it off. “You know, I never talk about looks of a person, but those are really bad looking people,” Trump said.

“The growing out of this is part of the solution, and making some reasonable cuts to mandatory spending—you’re gonna have to do it,” Paxton said at the same donor meeting that three other leaks have sprouted from, as first reported by The Texas Tribune.

“There is no solution. That’s just the reality. We have to suck it up,” he continued. “From Republican presidents to Democrats, we’ve been spending like crazy. And no one seems to care. And it’s gonna bankrupt us.”

Just about everything Paxton has said behind closed doors suggests that he is both out of step with President Trump and out of touch with the average Texas voter. About 75 percent of the “mandatory” federal spending that Paxton is referring to is made up of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—crucial funds for millions of Texans already struggling with the rising costs Paxton himself has attributed to Trump.

“Ken Paxton has a lot of nerve telling working Americans to ‘suck it up’ and accept cuts to the benefits they’ve spent their lives earning,” said Gene Lantz, president of the Texas Alliance for Retired Americans. “There is no ‘reasonable’ amount to cut from the Social Security checks retirees depend on to pay their bills or the Medicare benefits they need to see a doctor and get their prescriptions.”

“At this point I wouldn’t be totally surprised if the next leak from this fundraiser is: ‘Honestly, you should probably just vote for Talarico,’” joked liberal podcaster Jon Favreau.

In previous leaks from the meeting last month, Paxton called Trump a drag on his campaign and said Trump’s war on Iran was raising prices and making it harder for him to campaign. Aside from the embarrassing amount of leaks, Paxton sounds like more of a “Never Trump” Republican rather than a willing Trump loyalist, as he portrayed himself during the primary election. This all comes as his long-awaited showdown with Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico draws nearer, with Talarico leading most polls by a small margin.

NEW @TexasTribune: Ken Paxton privately suggested he'd support cutting federal benefit programs, per new leaked audio. Asked about reducing the deficit, he said: “Making some reasonable cuts to mandatory spending - you're gonna have to do it." "We have to suck it up." https://t.co/mxmb45Me2o

— Kayla Guo (@kaylaguo_) October 8, 2026

This story has been updated.

The revelation came amid an attack Wednesday night against Texas Representative Henry Cuellar, who Trump apparently believed should have become a Republican after he received a presidential pardon last year.

Speaking at a campaign rally in San Antonio, Texas, Trump insisted that he never expects quid pro quos when it comes to presidential pardons. But he then proved that untrue minutes later.

“I made no deal,” Trump declared, recalling his exchange with Cuellar. “I didn’t say, ‘Oh, I’ll give you the pardons if you turn Republican.’ I didn’t say that. No, I could have done that very easily but—where a crooked politician would have done that.

“But I thought there would be a good chance that Cuellar might say, ‘Wow, he did something really wonderful, you know, somebody has a heart.’”

The president then suggested Cuellar had been villainized by the Democratic Party and that he would have been welcomed into the Republican Party with open arms “if we asked.”

Just moments later, Trump mused about how Cuellar’s daughters had “begged” the president to pardon their father, and wished that they had used the “same level of charm to convince their mother and father to do the right thing.”

“I guess I expected maybe he wouldn’t run, or maybe he’d run maybe as a Republican, I don’t know,” Trump said.

Trump had shared similar thoughts on Truth Social hours prior when endorsing Cuellar’s opponent. The president accused Cuellar of a “tremendous act of disloyalty” and said Cuellar was an “extremely ungrateful person.”

“Henry Cuellar is a LOSER who, right now, should be serving a long-term jail sentence with his wife in a top level penitentiary,” Trump added.

The FBI raided Cuellar’s home and office in 2022 as part of a federal probe into the Texas Democrat’s ties to Azerbaijan. Cuellar and his wife faced a dozen charges of bribery, money laundering, and conspiracy—including allegations that they improperly accepted $600,000 in bribes from the central Asian country—before Trump intervened. At the time, Trump chalked up the charges to an improper intervention by the Biden administration, suggesting that his predecessor had weaponized the legal system to punish Cuellar for criticizing America’s immigration processes.

Speaking at a rally in San Antonio Wednesday night, Trump doubled down on the outlandish fallacy that anyone complaining about high gas prices should consider the alternative: that Iran could strike Los Angeles or San Diego.

“But you wanna see trauma? You wanna see problems? And I said it the other day, let them hit a missile into San Diego or Los Angeles on the way. Let them hit—you wanna see a horror show, you wanna see problems? Let them hit San Diego. Let them hit Los Angeles. And you wanna see some bad things happen. You wanna see a country that would be in free fall,” Trump said. “We’re not gonna let that happen. We protect our cities, we protect our country.”

Trump made a similar remark at a rally in Nebraska earlier this week, where he said, “They can take out a city. Let them take, let them take out Los Angeles; let them take out San Diego. That’s—this is a very small price to pay, and it’s going to be over with very soon.”

Some viewers believed that Trump had issued an invitation to Iran to destroy two American cities. The rally crowd even burst into cheers when the president evoked the imminent destruction of California, a consistent target of his administration. But Trump’s team insisted that his comment was simply taken out of context: His “let them” comment was a warning of what could happen if the United States did not intervene, and that the “small price to pay” referred to high prices of goods and services.

“He was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped,” White House communications director Steven Cheung wrote on X.

Trump’s decision to revisit his controversial comment clarifies everything: Clearly he likes to evoke the destruction of these blue cities in order to illustrate his nonsensical point about high gas prices to crowds in red states. His dramatics are just another way to sidestep blame for high prices.

It’s worth noting that Trump’s fallacy is a false one. Multiple former Trump administration officials have contradicted the president’s claims that Iran’s nuclear program presented any imminent threat to national security. Trump himself claimed earlier this week that Iran’s nuclear program had been obliterated in June 2025, a full eight months before he ordered attacks in March 2026.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Guilfoyle urged Trump donor and former congressional candidate Eric Deters to send her hundreds of thousands of dollars, and in exchange she’d make sure the administration took special care of Deters and his personal tax issues. Guilfoyle is also the former wife of California Governor Gavin Newsom and ex-fiancé of Donald Trump Jr.

“You could just send it here. It won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express, that’s all that will show,” Guilfoyle wrote to Deters on July 3, 2025. “Please. And I have you down as one of my special guests for my hearing in DC on Wednesday.... I can get you in for a meeting on the matter we discussed please get back to me ASAP.”

“Honey please I need you to get this done for me today,” she said, referring to the payment. Guilfoyle was confirmed as ambassador just months later in September.

Deters claimed that while he and Guilfoyle exchanged texts and promises for months (“I will be your Trump ride or die, forever and ever,” she told him at one point), he never sent her any money.

Deters is the same former Kentucky GOP gubernatorial candidate who hosts the new defunct Freedom Fest in Kentucky. Guilfoyle was one of the event’s earliest headliners, as Deters paid her $300,000 to speak there starting in 2020. In 2024, Deters sought out Guilfoyle’s help with an extradition request for Abubakar Atiq Durrani, an Ohio doctor who fled to Pakistan after he was charged with defrauding insurers with unnecessary spinal surgeries on kids. Deters, who was representing the families of the children, ran into a problem with Durrani’s malpractice insurer, MedPro, which held it wasn’t liable for his actions. MedPro instead sued Deters for “a calculated scheme to extract payments” from the company, “at first through abusive litigation, and by ultimately outright extortion through threats of violence and murder and by blackmail against the company’s CEO.” The accusations—which Deters denies—led him to reach out to Guilfoyle, even telling her he’d pay her $1 million to get him a spot on Tucker Carlson’s show to draw attention to his situation.

Guilfoyle and Deters began to speak more frequently after her nomination as ambassador.

“Eric, I really wish you would stop papering all these things,” Guilfoyle wrote in one message to Deters. It’s really dangerous … and you could simply just call me on signal.” She even chastised him for speaking to a producer on her podcast about their deal, saying that “it’s unbelievable when we have a private arrangement with you that you would now CC a producer talking about money.... Do not say we have any arrangement. What a nightmare you’ll literally cost me my ambassadorship stop writing.”

Deters claims he didn’t end up making any payments to Guilfoyle and had “not received one favor.”

Guilfoyle’s attorneys deny that the messages between her and Deters are legitimate, and claim that if anything he owed her speaking fees from his defunct Freedom Fest. Deters denies that.

This is a massive ethics question that the administration will likely try its hardest to ignore, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio did before leaving for Greece.

“I’m not going to comment,” he told reporters.

Peter Ticktin, Peters’s attorney, said that she proposed that Trump seize ballots from across the country and conduct a hand recount, reports Kyle Clark of Colorado’s 9 News.

“It’s a good plan, and I do think that something like that is probably going to happen,” Ticktin said to right-wing podcaster Joe Oltmann in Colorado. “In the event that we have this kind of disaster, and everything goes wrong, and the vote is crazy, and the senatorial races put it up there to remove the president and the vice president, in that nightmare, should it come true, Donald Trump is not going to relinquish control again.”

Oltmann has called for the state’s top Democrats to be executed in the past, and said on the podcast that violence is going to be necessary. Ticktin said on the podcast that Trump should be in control of America’s weapons if the country descends into civil war.

“So, he’s got nothing to lose, the nation has nothing to lose, it’s better if we’re going to have a civil war of any sort that it would be martial law with our side in control of the armaments,” Ticktin said.

Normally, this kind of speculation would be written off as a conspiracy theory from the fringe. But Peters was invited to the White House for a meeting, and had her prison sentence for election tampering commuted after Trump put pressure on Colorado’s Democratic Governor Jared Polis. Trump is desperate to avoid a Democratic takeover of Congress after the midterms, and seems willing to entertain all kinds of crazy ideas.

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

Today we’re checking in on the state of play in the battle for the House of Representatives. New reporting indicates that Republicans have entered into a triage stage, meaning they’re giving up on some seats as all but lost, while urgently sending reinforcements to other ones that should be safe. These leaks are growing more humiliating for Trump, as they’re depicting a political environment that’s sharply deteriorating even as Trump keeps insisting his own numbers are better than ever. On top of that, the polling averages and the forecasts continue to trend toward Democrats.

To make sense of it all, we’re talking to Kyle Kondik, managing editor of the forecasting site Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Kyle, great to have you on.

Kyle Kondik: Hey, Greg.

Sargent: So the Fifty Plus One polling averages have Democrats up a clean eight points in the generic House ballot matchup. They have Trump’s approval down below 35 percent, a key threshold. Nate Silver’s website just declared this: “Democrats are in an excellent position to retake the House, and are also favored to retake the Senate.” Kyle, taking the Senate out of this, do you agree with Nate on the House there?

Kondik: Yeah, I do. You know, we’ll see where the ultimate seat gain lands, but things look very good for Democrats in the House. I mean, really, I think Democrats have been favored in the House the whole cycle. Redistricting added a curveball into all of that, although I think even at their worst point, the Democrats were still favored in the House.

And a lot of us were kind of waiting to see what happened after Labor Day in terms of the polling. And the numbers, if anything, have gotten better for Democrats since then. And you know, maybe you see some rebound for Republicans a little bit, but the picture looks pretty bleak for them in the House, and increasingly maybe in the Senate too.

Although I guess I personally don’t see a clear favorite in the Senate. I know that some of the sort of poll-based forecasts do. I’m not quite ready to go there yet, but it’s undeniable the numbers have been getting better.

Sargent: Well, let’s talk about Sabato’s Crystal Ball, your site, and how it right now ranks things. You guys have 16 Republican-held House seats as toss-ups, versus only four Democratic-held ones being toss-ups. You guys have another eight GOP-held seats as leans Democratic. So that’s at least 24 GOP-held seats that are quite gettable for Dems right now. Can you talk about that pool of seats and explain what that big picture means?

Kondik: Yeah. Look, I think, you know, again, particularly after Labor Day, we’ve been kind of steadily moving races toward the Democrats, sort of as we pick up on, you know, micro-level factors, but also in acknowledgment of what the macro, the big-picture factors are.

And I feel like our moves have generally been vindicated by some of the reporting. You know, Tom Kean in New Jersey Seven appears to be an underdog. He’s an underdog in our ratings. That’s just one of them. Another one is Nebraska’s Second Congressional District, which is Don Bacon’s seat. That’s one of few Harris-district Republican seats that the Republicans held in 2024. Don Bacon is retiring. That looks increasingly like a relatively safe Democratic pickup.

So again, there’s just been a lot of movement, to the point where I think for much of the cycle we were thinking maybe the Democrats are in the 220s. It is easier to imagine them getting into 230s now, I think.

I don’t think that’s exactly where we’re going to land. I’d probably be right around 230 at this point, best guess. But that’s only kind of trended upward for me over the course of the cycle.

Sargent: Well, I will say 230 is actually pretty striking, given that during the whole battle over redistricting, the mid-cycle redistricting efforts, the gerrymandering that Republicans did, it was really starting to look as if the Democratic gain would be much more trimmed. Democrats really sort of had to trim their sails. That was sort of the prevailing take. But 230, you’re getting up into wave territory, right?

Kondik: You’ve got to remember that the most recent House elections have produced very small majorities. So just 222 to 213 for Democrats in 2020. Then it flipped, 222 to 213 for Republicans in 2022. That was followed by just 220 seats for the majority for Republicans in 2024. So we’ve been in a period of very closely contested House majorities.

And the House map did get better for Republicans through the net effects of all the gerrymandering and redistricting that happened. And if this was a closely contested national election, you could see a world in which the Republican advantage on the House map that they have now, that that would have saved the House majority for them when otherwise maybe Democrats would win it.

But when Democrats are leading by eight or nine points on the House generic ballot, and you just see what’s going on in these individual House races—I think Republicans were hoping they could build a wall big enough to overcome a Democratic wave. That I don’t think has happened.

Sargent: Well, Republicans agree with you. Politico reports that Republicans are leaking that they’ve now entered into triage mode. Before we get to the details, I just want to read some quotes. One Republican operative tells Politico there are, “fires everywhere.” Another GOP operative says this: “If the bottom continues falling out like it has been, this will be worse than 2006.”

Kyle, in 2006, Republicans lost both chambers of Congress, including around thirty seats. If Republicans think that the situation could keep deteriorating to the point of something like that, it’s pretty striking, no?

Kondik: Yeah. And it’s also worth remembering that Democrats did really well in 2006. They won the Senate and the House, unlike 2018. But part of the dynamic in 2006 is that there actually were a number of swing-district Republican survivors. So like Jim Gerlach and Chris Shays—some old names from the past. Republicans had kind of blue-leaning or purple seats. But Democrats made it up because they won in some pretty red-leaning territory. And that’s what we’re watching for in the Senate.

And we also could be watching for that in the U.S. House, as Democrats are both defending some of their own incumbents in redistricted double-digit Trump seats, and also trying to flip some double-digit Trump seats. And they appear to have some opportunities to do that.

Sargent: And it seems like some of these dynamics are in place right now. You’ve got certain types of Republican survivor types still out there, like Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania, right? Maybe someone like him hangs on.

But at the same time, the national environment is so bad for Republicans that even as some of those types survive in some places, in other places, you know, Republicans go down in districts that are like Trump plus 10. Is that sort of what we could expect?

Kondik: Yeah. I’m going to be publishing something a little bit after this podcast comes out about, you know, the possibility that there may be no Harris-district Republicans left. There were only three in 2024. Brian Fitzpatrick is one of them. We mentioned the open seat, Nebraska Two—that’s another one.

And then Mike Lawler in New York Seventeen, who’s in a narrow Harris seat. And he’s in, I think, basically a toss-up race. I think Fitzpatrick is still favored. And then, because of redistricting, you also have a handful of other seats that became Harris-district Republican seats but are going to flip, like a bunch of seats out in California, for instance.

But even in the bad years for the president’s party, like 2018, there still were three Clinton-district Republicans, including Fitzpatrick back then too, who survived. So it would be historically odd for there to be no Harris-district Republicans. And again, I don’t think we’re quite going to get there, but it may be that there’s only one or two left.

Sargent: I just want to underscore the importance of that. You’re basically saying that if it’s a very good night for Democrats, it’s at least within the realm of possibility that Republicans have no House seats in districts that Kamala Harris won. Zero.

Kondik: That’s right. That’s right. Again, Fitzpatrick is the toughest one there. And again, I still think he’s favored.

Sargent: So Kyle, to get a bit more specific about what this triage mode means for Republicans. They’re now pulling money out of a number of seats that are the easiest tier for Democrats to contest, and putting more money into outer-tier races that are much, much harder for Democrats to win—meaning those are now in danger, and they’re giving up on these low-tier seats.

A couple of examples. National Republicans just cut their spending to Nebraska’s Second District. They’ve pulled out of New Jersey’s Ninth District. What do you make of those shifts?

Kondik: New Jersey Nine is a Democratic seat, but it is a Trump-won seat. That’s Nellie Pou’s district. That was a seat that swung—it’s heavily Latino, it’s like North Jersey—it swung pretty heavily to Republicans in 2024. Seems poised to swing back in 2026. And so I think Republicans are hoping to compete there, but it just never really developed.

And then Nebraska Two, we talked about, as a seat that’s, you know, historically it’s pretty hard for—you know, if the president’s party has an open seat in a hostile midterm that the other party won for president, that’s a seat that they generally will end up losing.

Sargent: Well, I’ll tell you what really struck me as well, Kyle. Republicans just added more money to Kentucky’s Sixth District, which Trump won by 15 points.

Kondik: It is interesting that that race is now kind of more on the battlefield. We have it as leans Republican. So we still favor the Republicans there, but we had it as likely as of, I think, a few weeks ago. And the outside spending is kind of telling that it’s a pretty hot race.

Sargent: They need to send—meaning Republicans need to send—big-time reinforcements in to defend a Republican-held district that Trump won by 15 points.

Kondik: Yeah. And look, think about this too. The president’s approval rating is maybe twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two points underwater, maybe more, maybe less, depending on the poll you look at. A district that Trump won by fifteen—in 2018, his approval rating probably would have been positive in a district like that. Maybe just narrowly, but because his net approval was about minus ten around the time of the 2018 election. Minus twenty, his approval is probably underwater in a Kentucky Six.

And again, there are going to be some people who disapprove of the president but who vote Republican in their, you know, local House and Senate race. But you do see a big battlefield, and I think part of it is just the president’s approval rating being so low.

Sargent: And we’re seeing him underwater in states where he won by double digits as well.

Kondik: Yeah, and that’s something that’s also been striking about the Senate races this year compared to 2018. Because if you go back and look at the exit polls of the big Senate races—you know, the Republicans did pretty well. I mean, they ended up coming out of that cycle with one extra seat. They had lost the Alabama special election in late 2017, but they came in with, I think it was, 52 in 2016, and they came out of the cycle with 53.

And if you look at the exit polling in those big Senate races, Trump’s approval was usually positive in the key races. I mean, particularly in like a North Dakota or an Indiana or Missouri, that Republicans flipped.

But even in some of the more competitive kind of battleground races—this time it looks like the president’s approval rating is underwater in Alaska, and Ohio, Texas, and Iowa, which are all, you know, double-digit Trump states, where Trump would have had positive approval, I think, in the 2018 context.

Sargent: Well, can you step back and sum up the big picture right now? How deep into red territory are Democrats plausibly and credibly reaching right now? What tier of seats do you think they’re going to flip a number of? Is there some way to get a handle on this in a kind of postcard way?

Kondik: I think that coming out of this election, they’re probably going to hold several double-digit Trump districts. I don’t have a great handle as to how many, but particularly—there are those, like, three South Texas House seats that Democrats already hold two of, Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez. Bobby Pulido is also trying to beat Monica De La Cruz in a Trump-plus-eighteen seat.

And it seems like those kind of Latino-heavy districts are the ones that are going to swing, like, really strongly to the Democrats, more so than some other places. But that hypothetically could be three right there.

And you look around the map—like, what if they actually do win a Kentucky Six? Like, could they—you know, they did win a handful of those kinds of seats in 2018. I kind of wonder if they could actually get into double digits. That’s probably what it would take for them to get to 235 or more House seats.

But again, the environment is just pretty lousy for Republicans. Again, it doesn’t have to be that way. And you know, maybe there is something systematic about the polling that could be underestimating Republicans. But you take the numbers at face value, they’re just pretty poor for Republicans.

Sargent: Just to sum this up in another way, you expect Democrats to pick up a number of Republican districts right now that are Trump plus seven, Trump plus eight, Trump plus nine, and then maybe a handful more that are Trump plus double digits, right? Is that the size of it?

Kondik: Yeah. And again, it wouldn’t surprise me if ultimately the Democrats kind of stall out a few points short in, like, a Kentucky Six or something. Or, you know, maybe some of the other—Montana One is another one that they sometimes talk about. It’s another open seat. But the possibility exists to win a few of those seats anyway.

Sargent: Well, here’s where it gets even worse for Trump. Congressman Tom Emmer, a senior Republican, just admitted to Axios that Republicans are not going to win all the seats they’ve redistricted for themselves in this cycle.

Your outfit, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, is about to make some more ratings changes this week. I understand you guys will move Florida’s 25th District from toss-up to lean Democratic, and Florida’s 22nd District from lean Republican to toss-up. Those are two Dem-held seats in Florida that Republicans had hoped to flip. Those are your coming changes, right? Can you explain why you’re making these changes, and what their bigger significance is?

Kondik: Yeah, look. Republicans wanted to gain four net seats out of this new Florida gerrymander. We don’t really think they’re going to do that. And I think the one who’s probably best positioned to hang on is Jared Moskowitz, running in Florida 25.

Moskowitz, unlike many Democrats, is fairly pro-Israel. Florida 25 is roughly 25 percent Jewish. He’s probably a pretty good fit for that district. It was Trump plus nine, but it also voted for Biden by five. And so there is some old Democratic DNA there that Moskowitz could maybe kind of re-put-together in a much better year for Democrats. And so we’re going to have that one as leans Democratic. It’s some rating changes that we’re making soon.

And then Florida 22 is an open seat. You’ve got two relatively unknown candidates. The partisan top line is kind of similar to Florida 25, in that Trump won it by about 10 points, but Biden did narrowly carry it in 2020. So that’s another South Florida seat to watch.

And then Kathy Castor in Florida Fourteen. That’s still a toss-up. That’s a Trump-plus-ten-ish district in Tampa. Castor’s been around for a long time. Her mom is also a big fixture in Tampa-area politics. The mayor of Tampa’s last name is Castor, even though they’re not related. So there’s a lot of Castors down there in Tampa. But that also looks like a race that Democrats might be able to salvage in this environment.

Sargent: Well, just to sum this up, your best guess is Democrats finish the night with 230 House seats, and they have a shot at getting as high as 235 if it’s a very good night. Is that about right?

Kondik: Yeah, I think that’s right. That would be about where I would land right now, in sort of the 230-ish, maybe a little below, maybe a little above. And again, in my own assessments, that’s been kind of steadily growing just a little bit over time.

Sargent: Well, Kyle Kondik, it’s certainly interesting. Thanks so much for that big picture. It’s really great stuff.

Kondik: Thanks, Greg.

Data centers are an excellent symbol for the Halloween season—sinister in every way. They combine the ugliness of strip mining, the creepiness of a CIA op, and the affront and destruction of a military invasion. They’re hard on the land. They’re loud. They’re built with exquisite tenderness for GPUs, and near total disrespect for human beings.

Finally, the output of data centers—artificial intelligence—has spectacularly failed to win American hearts and minds. AI now seems to exist chiefly so oligarchs can spy on us, confiscate our wealth, lay us off, and finally wipe us out altogether. 

No chatbot oozing charisma, let alone a charmless CEO, seems to be able to persuade Americans that AI has our best interests at heart.

With the midterms less than a month away, suspicion of data centers has reached a fever pitch. Sixty-nine percent of respondents to a September poll by NBC News oppose AI data centers in their areas, and 45 percent “strongly oppose” the buildouts. So candidates in both parties are running hard against them.

Political attacks on data centers reliably conjure a nightmarish extraction economy, in which the powerful are sucking the very life out of the people. “Big corporations gobble up energy to feed their data centers,” Ohio Democratic Senate candidate Sherrod Brown says on the campaign trail. “They devour your land. They suck up your water. They leave you with the bill.”

In Texas, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico echoed Brown on CNN: “These data centers are popping up in our communities, soaking up all our water, driving up our utility prices.” Talarico described Ken Paxton, his Republican rival, who used AI deepfakes in an attack ad last month, as “bought by the data center industry.”

This means that, in spite of promises by the AI companies, local electricity bills will almost certainly rise. After all, they’ve already shot up in U.S. states that have data centers, and the price hike is dramatic. Over five years, energy prices rose 41.6 percent in Pennsylvania and Ohio, which are studded with data centers.

The public’s pushback has been fierce, especially in contested districts. Twenty of the 43 most competitive House districts are contending with data center proposals, and protesters have managed to pause about a quarter of them.

As popular resistance to data centers has solidified, the political geography of the buildout has shifted. Most data centers built up through 2024 were erected in Democratic counties, while the new proposals, for the bigger centers, are mostly in Republican ones. This may explain why Republicans have turned so sharply on the buildout. According to Renshaw, support for data centers in their own communities was at +36 among Republicans in July 2025; by August 2026, it sank to −30.

This whiplash has caught at least 16 AI-boosting politicians off guard. These include House candidates in tight races across Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Virginia, along with Republican Senator Susan Collins and Republican Representative Ashley Hinson, candidates for Senate in Maine and Iowa. All have supported data centers in the past, and while some are trying to downplay their records, others are leaning into them. Republican Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, whom Newsweek recently ranked as the top data center booster in a competitive race, has told voters in his district that the U.S. “simply can’t afford to slow down the buildout.” With six in 10 Pennsylvania voters opposed to the centers, it’s Perry’s room-reading skills that might need building out.

There’s something especially satisfying about the oligarchs and their Republican friends crashing into, of all things, American democracy. Because while opposition to data centers could help decide the midterms, the midterms could also shape future data center policy, leading to pauses and moratoria. This would destabilize AI investment and undermine market gains. For the very rich, that’s the real apocalypse.

There is little point in arguing with Trump about crowd sizes because you can just look at the event photos—there are many empty seats. These rallies are also taking place at smaller venues than he’s used in the past, as noted in recent Daily Beast analysis. On Friday, Trump drew about 8,000 people to a basketball arena in Mobile, Alabama, that holds 10,000—whereas in 2015, he turned out more than 30,000 people to a football stadium in the same city. But perhaps the biggest problem of all is that he was in Mobile to begin with: Why is the president campaigning in deep-red Alabama when his party is fighting for its life in swing states?

Consider the hurricane-force headwinds facing the Republicans right now. The national average for a gallon of gas is $4.36, thanks in part to a foolhardy war with Iran that Trump started but has no clue how to finish. He’s also been waging a trade war with pretty much everyone, which is increasing the cost of myriad other goods. These self-inflicted wounds, coupled with ICE abuses and DOGE belligerence, have dragged down his approval rating to historic lows. No wonder the generic election ballot favors Democrats by more than nine points, according to Nate Silver’s weighted average.

So, again, why is Trump rallying in places like Mobile and Durant, Oklahoma? “I’m really here because, sometimes,” Trump said at Friday’s Alabama rally, “you’ve got to pay respect to the people that loved you right from the beginning.” It’s a good line, but the notion that Trump pays respect to anyone is laughable. He is simply going where he’s still wanted—where he still has hardcore supporters, and where GOP incumbents and challengers still benefit politically from being seen next to him. There aren’t many of those places left.

So maybe this is what panic looks like. Trump really only has one mode: frenetic activity, for the sole purpose of focusing attention on him. Even with the Republicans’ control of Congress in dire jeopardy, he’s more interested in his own adulation than his party’s survival. As The Atlantic’s Ashley Parker noted in a perceptive report on Tuesday, he “doesn’t seem to really care how Republican candidates fare in the midterms, but he’d rather they win than lose, if only because it would save him the headache of congressional investigations.”

Trump’s Greatest Hits tour gets at one of the odder dynamics in this year’s midterm elections. The race is all about Trump, directly and indirectly: about his political project and persona, yes, but also about how that project is currently affecting American lives (mostly badly). Trump is eagerly making the race about himself because that’s all that he knows how to do. Vulnerable Republicans, meanwhile, are doing everything they can to distance themselves from him—including breaking with him over Iran and immigration. But those efforts are often drowned out by the president himself.

Trump may talk about a “MIDTERM SURPRISE,” but his actions speak louder than his Truth Social posts and campaign statements. This week, he pulled government-funded political ads that were inescapable during the weekend’s NFL and college football games, claiming that they would be paid for from super PAC funds going forward (though that super PAC would not be reimbursing the government for more than $12 million already spent). He has started telling his supporters to vote by mail, even though he has falsely claimed for years that the practice is an engine of fraud. And he has started to get invested in races that Republicans shouldn’t have to worry about—like South Carolina’s Senate race, where he attacked Democratic nominee Annie Andrews, a cis woman, with an anti-trans slur.

That’s what panic looks like for Trump. For the rest of the Republican Party, they aren’t really hiding it. Iowa House Republicans were told “by their own pollsters,” per the very plugged-in Steve Deace, “that if you are in a +15 district you’re within the margin for error, if you’re in a +10 district you’re underwater, and that this might end being an even worse midterm environment than 2006.” You’re seeing these issues everywhere, including in many formerly safe red states: Kansas, South Carolina, even Mississippi. Polling misses are possible, but the vibecast is far more reliable: Thanks to interest rates, gas prices, trade wars, real wars, and Trump, these midterms are shaping up to be a historic bloodbath for the Republicans.

Trump will keep jetting from rally to rally, and keep jerking his arms as “YMCA” blares in ever-smaller venues. He will keep reciting old grievances about Hillary Clinton and newer ones about trans people and Canadians. He will keep doing what he’s always done because he doesn’t know how to do anything else. But there was a kernel to what he said in Mobile about seeking the company of the people who loved him all along. As he becomes more unpopular and his party’s panic grows, these cozy rallies are his safe space—the last remaining place where he is still adored, still funny, and still winning.

The book, titled So Ordered: An Originalist’s View of the Constitution, reads like an endcap to a 36-year judicial career. In the introduction, Alito explains that the book consists of “adaptations of speeches I delivered over a period of eighteen years, from 2007 to 2025” that were “not composed with the idea that they would eventually be woven together into a book.” Perhaps it is fitting that a book about originalism has very little new material in it. I jest only in part because at least some of these speeches have not been printed for the general public before.

The book release comes at a key moment for both Alito and the court. One looming question is whether and when Alito will retire. Polls show that Democrats are likely to retake the Senate in November’s midterm elections, which would likely prevent Trump from filling the vacancy with a nominee who shares Alito’s judicial outlook. If Democrats retake the White House in 2028, another opportunity might not come for six more years. In response to speculation, Alito ruled out retiring midway through the court’s current term earlier this week. Beyond next June is an open question.

In an interview with CBS’s Jan Crawford, Alito also ruled out the prospect that the Supreme Court would overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark 2015 ruling that struck down same-sex marriage bans nationwide. He was among the dissenting justices from the ruling 11 years ago and has not changed his position on whether it was correctly decided. But he has argued that the decision’s impact now counsels against overturning it.

“One of the important factors we take into account in deciding whether we should reexamine a past decision is the degree to which there has been reliance on the decision,” Alito explained. “Obviously a great deal had changed in the country as a result of Obergefell. There was a lot of reliance in various ways on the decision in Obergefell.” Overturning it now would call into question untold numbers of marriages, he suggested, with a cavalcade of other legal consequences that would follow.

A few right-wing legal groups and litigants have mounted legal challenges against Obergefell in recent years without success. Even those fringe efforts have caused some alarm on the left, amplified by the court’s willingness to revisit and rewrite other major precedents. Alito’s public disavowal of overturning Obergefell will likely end those efforts altogether for the foreseeable future. If he is not on board, then there certainly won’t be five votes among the other justices to pull it off, either.

Alito’s book, along with the interviews and an excerpt in The Wall Street Journal op-ed pages, dwells on these sorts of dilemmas for an originalist judge. “I describe myself as a ‘working judicial originalist’ and warn against various wrong turns that originalist judges should avoid,” Alito wrote in his book. He also described himself as a textualist, meaning “that, in my view, statutes should be interpreted to have the meaning their words convey in context.”

“True originalism sets out the proper method of constitutional interpretation,” Alito explained. “Provisions of the Constitution should be interpreted to mean what they were understood to mean by the public at the time they were adopted. And because we have a good Constitution, originalism generally produces good results. More than any other theory, it furthers the common good, and originalists should not be afraid to discuss good or bad results or originalism’s ultimate aim.”

Alito tried to define his approach to originalism via negativa. His metaphor imagined a highway with seven different off-ramps that an originalist judge could take to varying disastrous ends. One of his “off-ramps” is what he describes as “show-it-to-me-in-black-and-white originalism.” While originalists “must always start with the text of the Constitution,” he explained, “there are times when an important originalist principle is not set out explicitly but instead emerges from the very structure of the Constitution.”

This position is not really an originalist one, in the sense that nearly everyone has believed there to be implied powers in the Constitution since its ratification. Even early strict constructionists like Thomas Jefferson were willing to infer some unwritten powers, like when he agreed to the Louisiana Purchase even though Congress had no explicit power to acquire new lands. As an example, Alito first argued that this applied to the anti-commandeering principle, which holds that the federal government cannot compel states to exercise federal law enforcement power.

“That is an unmistakable inference from constitutional structure,” Alito wrote. Having established that motte, he then retreated to the bailey of a much less defensible inference. “The same is true, I would say, about the presidential immunity we recognized in Trump v. United States—an immunity, I should add, that applies to all presidents. In this context, the absence of explicit constitutional text is not decisive.”

Wait, what? Why not, you might ask? He doesn’t explain further. The section simply ends there, and he moves to the dangers of “Icarian originalism,” which he described as the danger of originalist arguments about the Constitution “that would have astonished those who ratified and framed those provisions.” (They resemble, in his telling, the Greek mythological figure Icarus.) His example for it is a single friend-of-the-court brief filed in Obergefell, but the off-ramp could very well apply to presidential immunity.

After all, there is no evidence that the Framers thought the president enjoyed any form of immunity for crimes committed while in office, let alone the sweeping immunity outlined by the Supreme Court two years ago. The Constitution’s text provides no explicit basis for presidential immunity. Nor does it provide an implicit basis for one: The Constitution provides for a limited immunity from criminal prosecution for members of Congress under certain circumstances, indicating that the Framers knew how to grant immunity if they thought it was warranted.

Nor did any founding-era statements support the concept of presidential immunity. Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion barely tried to suggest otherwise. He quoted one of the Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton to mean that the executive branch must be “energetic” in its actions. (I’ve discussed Roberts’s misunderstanding of this particular text at greater length elsewhere.) There is obviously a vast gulf of difference between having an “energetic” president and having one that must be allowed to commit crimes as a matter of course.

As for the original public meaning, there is even less evidence that the American people thought this was the Constitution that they ratified. The Federalist Papers themselves show how the Framers went to great lengths to convince the American public and their state legislatures that the new federal government would preserve liberty and avoid tyranny. Founding-era Americans could hardly have believed that they were being asked to approve a Constitution where presidents could take bribes for pardons or start illegal wars without any risk of future prosecution. They would have been “astonished” by the idea, to say the least.

Alito did not write the majority opinion in Trump v. United States, nor did he pen a concurring opinion. But we can infer his own approach from how he questioned lawyers at oral arguments in the case. One question, posed to longtime Justice Department lawyer Michael Dreeben, involved a hypothetical scenario that sounds a little too familiar.

“If an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement,” he asked, “but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?”

This is not an originalist argument. It is also not a constitutional argument—nor is it even a legal one. I would struggle to even call it a policy argument. To take Alito’s musings at face value, the policy in question would be that a president must be given the power to commit crimes without fear of prosecution because he might be prosecuted in the future for his crimes. This scenario would apply to exactly one president to date in American history. Alito insists in his book that presidential immunity is “an immunity, I should add, that applies to all presidents,” not simply Trump—as if critics’ real objection was that Democrats wouldn’t be allowed to commit crimes too.

Even the name of this off-ramp to defend presidential immunity—“show-it-to-me-in-black-and-white originalism”—is derisively defensive toward the court’s critics. The court could not show in black and white from where in the constitutional text this new principle sprang, and they know it. Maybe that is why the book ultimately reads like a barely disguised effort by one justice to convince all of us—and perhaps even himself—that the court’s own wings aren’t melting.

The basic task of The New Dark Ages is made all the more difficult by the fact that Marriott, a journalist for The Times of London, is working on already well-trodden ground. “It seems that every few weeks, a new article or video on the literacy crisis goes viral,” the writer Jared Henderson recently observed. “Whether this is a video on YouTube, an article in The Atlantic, or a post on Substack, the message tends to be more or less the same. Americans are reading less; college students struggle to read whole or difficult texts; early childhood education is in decline.” And as we all know—or think we do—our phones are mostly to blame.

The New Dark Ages isn’t fully reducible to those claims—slim as it is, it does, rather ambitiously, try to tell readers the story of reading and give an account of why reading still matters in a world of technological upheaval. But the account is troubled. Readers without their wits about them—for writing is a trickier business than Marriott lets on—will leave the book misled not only about the present state of reading, but about the nature of the real threats our new technologies pose to it and about reading’s fundamental value.

Neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf, whom Marriott references often, is of course right that reading has been “our species’ bridge to insight and novel thought.” Sadly, though, as The New Dark Ages demonstrates, the books we read often fail to deliver either.

Nothing about mass literacy should be taken for granted. It is deeply strange, to begin with, that we have written language at all. “Spoken language comes naturally to us,” Marriott explains. “Reading and writing do not.” Every time we make use of the written word, we’re hacking visual processes we evolved to make sense of the physical world—to read faces, to assess our surroundings, to find and avoid becoming food. The practice of using our eyes to create and absorb systems of language instead is so difficult and so weird, in fact, that, as best as we can tell, and as Marriott reminds us, it’s been invented no more than four times in our 300,000 years as a species.

The written word, moreover, has been an arcane and esoteric tool for most of its history. Egyptian hieroglyphics, obscure to all but trained Egyptologists today, were just as indecipherable to as much as 99 percent of the ancient Egyptian population. Though Latin texts shaped Western civilization, estimates of literacy in ancient Rome, as Marriott writes, “usually land on a figure of 10 or 15 per cent.” Everywhere written language came into use, it was first mastered and maintained by humanity’s first learned elites—priests and philosophers, princes and politicians. And those who lived and labored under them continued making do with oral culture—verbal communication and the explanation and interpretation of the wider world “through ballads, songs and traditional wisdom passed from one generation to the next.”

That’s partially because texts were initially difficult to produce and share—our first books were handwritten, carefully and painfully, by cranky scholars and scribes. Writing, one monk scribbled in the margins of a medieval tome, “is excessive drudgery.... It dims your sight, it twists your stomach and your sides.” That labor made books prohibitively expensive—even the grandest libraries of the Middle Ages held only several hundred volumes—and nearly sacred to the few who could read them. “In some places in Europe stealing a book was a crime punishable by death,” Marriott writes. Thomas à Kempis “advised readers to take ‘a book into thine hands’ as if it was ‘the Child Jesus.’”

The innovation that finally brought books to the wider world deepened their power by reducing their value. Gutenberg’s printing press, invented in the mid–fifteenth century, allowed books to be mass produced for broad audiences on the cheap. Within a few centuries, Europe was drowning in them and an ocean of other texts besides: official documents, pamphlets, flyers, newspapers, magazines, and more.

While near-universal literacy was still many, many years away, it’s thought that at least half of those living in Europe’s most literate societies—including, per the evolutionary biologist Joseph Henrich, “the Netherlands, Britain, Sweden, and Germany”—could read by the mid–eighteenth century. And our first literary celebrities were already being minted—figures respected and renowned not just for what they wrote, but for how much they read. Samuel Johnson, author of the most influential English dictionary of his day, read so hungrily, for instance, that his biographer James Boswell recalled him once “eating dinner with a book wrapped up on his knee in the tablecloth so he could resume reading the moment he had finished his meal.” No work was too random, and no interest was too far-flung or obscure—from Don Quixote to books on Icelandic natural history. He also left many of those books proudly unfinished. “Asked whether he had actually read a fashionable new book in its entirety, he famously replied, ‘No, Sir, do YOU read books THROUGH?’”

Johnson’s habits, extreme as they were, illustrate how reading changed as more texts became available and literacy widened. Once the domain of a privileged few who revisited the same texts and ideas repeatedly, reading was expanding to a broader public who wanted to read omnivorously. And they had access to a wider range of material than ever. A voracious reader could skip between a travelogue, a newspaper, “scandalous romance” novel, and a “scurrilous political pamphlet” as they pleased. The very availability of so much literature invited curiosity and encouraged skepticism, making the scientific and philosophical advances of the Enlightenment possible—“Europe bristled with pedantic pens ready to rout out mysticism or bogus thinking,” Marriott writes, and the weighty abstractions they wrestled with would have been impossible to communicate, systematize, and analyze in preliterate society.

Closer to the ground, literacy also newly empowered the masses. “To most of our ancestors books would have been symbols not of liberation but of oppression: the mysterious sources of the authority of those at the top of the social order,” Marriott writes. The printing press and the reading public who emerged after its invention changed everything—moving us from a world where “knowledge and its interpretation was tightly controlled by those in positions of power” to one in which knowledge could be understood as “something you could go out and explore for yourself.”

Marriott’s summary of this history is breezy, accessible, and charming. He does, in places, break a promise not to unduly romanticize writing, which he describes as an inherently serious and solemn task. “Writers,” he tells us, “painstakingly go over their thoughts until they have worked out the best version of what they want to say.” That claim could have used another pass—obviously, writers are often lazy, illogical, and incoherent. But, more soundly, he also disavows the idea that “reading makes you a good person,” since history is “packed with well-read monsters.”

Here and there, Marriott even goes as far as to disclaim the idea “that literate cultures are superior to so-called ‘oral cultures’ without writing,” though it’s not obvious what all the fuss in the book is supposed to be about if literacy isn’t, on the whole, significantly better than illiteracy. “Literacy involves losses as well as gains,” he offers. “For instance, Joseph Henrich tells us, becoming literate diminishes our ‘ability to identify faces.’” These passages are about as convincing as messages read at gunpoint, given what he contends about literacy most everywhere else—“society,” he also writes, “is a better and more rational place thanks to the advancement of reading.” And indeed, it’s clear in multiple places in the book that Marriott imagines a sizable mob of progressive readers ready to do him in for having the temerity to say reading and writing are good. Advocates for literacy, he warns, have to confront fashionable “squeamishness about seeming to uncritically laud the achievements of that unfashionable enterprise, ‘Western civilisation.’”

That angst about the reception of an argument for logging off and reading books indicates rather strongly that Marriott, as he freely admits, spends entirely too much time online. Apart from startup founders and grasping grifters who boast that they’ve traded books for sped-up podcasts, chats with Claude, and apps that will give you the gist of The Art of War for $9.99 a month, real disagreement that reading matters is rare anywhere on the political spectrum. The idea Marriott should be working hardest to defend isn’t the idea that reading is good but the idea that reading is dying.

The evidence he assembles will be familiar to those already following literacy discourse. Surveys suggest reading for fun is on the way out—in the U.K., for instance, “more than a third of adults say they have given up the habit.” The books that people do read seem to be getting worse—“self-help, romance, detective stories and young adult fiction” dominate bestseller lists, whereas in the 1960s, novels like “Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Saul Bellow’s Herzog and Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard” flew off bookstore shelves. “Astonishingly, in 1950,” Marriott notes, “the critic Lionel Trilling’s collection of literary essays The Liberal Imagination was a bestseller in America, shifting more than 100,000 copies in hardback alone.”

After year-on-year improvement “for almost the entire twentieth century,” IQ scores seem to be declining in the developed world. College professors are even more depressed about their students than usual—one tells him that she’s “given up trying to teach George Eliot’s Middlemarch and James Joyce’s Ulysses,” and she doubts her students will make it through Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. And our politicians, as exemplified by President Donald Trump, are even more stupid, “lacking any ability to think beyond the moment-to-moment goldfish-brained chaos of likes, trends and memes.”

Given all this, it is obvious to Marriott that the literacy crisis is real. “If our politicians seem lightweights, our public discourse trivial to the point of dysfunction, and our culture stale and repetitive, it is in large part because books and newspapers have been replaced by ubiquitous screens,” he contends. And though he discusses the way television has been eroding reading habits for decades, the screen that troubles Marriott the most is, of course, the smartphone. “There has simply never been a technology like the smartphone,” he writes, adding that, while other inventions have competed with reading for our attention, the distractions and entertainments offered up by the smartphone are infinite and largely brought to us by algorithms engineered to swallow up as much of our time as possible.

Depressing as much of the material Marriott assembles might be, however, the evidence that reading is doomed is thinner than he implies. He writes, for example, that in the United States “reading for pleasure declined by 40 per cent in the first two decades of the twenty-first century.” That’s a figure from a 2025 paper analyzing data from the American Time Use Survey, which found that the proportion of Americans who reported reading for pleasure on the average day fell by 40 percent between 2003 and 2023. But 20 years ago, not many Americans were reading on the average day in the first place. The proportion of Americans reading for pleasure over this period peaked at 28 percent in 2004, while it reached its lowest point in 2023, at 16 percent. And as The New York Times’ David Wallace-Wells recently observed, the same 2025 paper found that the average amount of time Americans spend reading books each day declined by less than six minutes.

Crucially, these figures only pertain to books and printed materials. If books and the printed word really are losing ground, it’s partially because the internet and the smartphone have besieged us with competing texts to read—as anyone who’s tried to bat away the noise of emails, messages, notifications, news alerts, and tweets to settle down with a book knows. But the 2025 paper doesn’t capture any of that—the American Time Use Survey data it was based on didn’t explicitly categorize reading on the internet as a form of reading for pleasure. “Our reading measures are thus unlikely to have included activities, such as reading blogs or the news online,” the paper’s authors noted, “which may be a form of reading for pleasure.” If we exclude many or most of the things people now read for pleasure—online newspapers and magazines, social media posts, texts from family and friends—the statistics on reading for pleasure are going to look rather grim.

It is certainly true, as Maryanne Wolf has written and as Marriott notes, that the act of reading online differs substantially from reading in print. Our screens seem to encourage certain bad habits. “When reading on a screen,” he says, “the eye moves through a passage of writing in an idiosyncratic ‘zigzag style,’ as readers ‘rapidly ‘word-spot’ through a text” and “dart to the conclusions at the end.” Plenty of data suggests that processing information and retaining it are harder when reading a text on a screen rather than in print—and that is before one even factors in all the distractions of life online. For those and other more pecuniary reasons, few professional writers today, this one included, would turn down a return to a world in which printed books, newspapers, and magazines were dominant again, if such a thing were possible.

But given that it isn’t, we owe it to ourselves to think clearly and soberly about how people are reading today and how their reading might be improved. And people are, in fact, reading on the internet and on their phones. One needn’t believe reading DMs and reading Proust are the same to suspect there’s something fundamentally unsound about rooting our literacy debate in statistics that would count an adult revisiting The Very Hungry Caterpillar as reading but totally ignore any engagement at all with, say, an article like this online.

Marriott maintains, though, that the smartphone should be understood primarily as “a conduit for passively watching videos,” adding that “as the journalist Derek Thompson puts it, ‘nowadays everything is television.’” But this is an oversimplification. The short-form video app TikTok has fewer users than the messaging service WhatsApp. And all told, according to a report by the digital consulting firm Kepios, Americans over the age of 16 spend less than two hours a day on average watching video online altogether, with short-form video taking up less than an hour of that time. Even though social media now competes with books for our attention, it is by no means clear that people are reading books less because they’re vegetatively glued to videos on their phones instead.

The surest thing we can say about the impact of the internet and the smartphone on the written word so far—and the feature that most distinguishes them from television, the radio, film, and the photograph—is that they have made reading, and writing, more central to regular communication for more people than ever before in human history.

There’s also been good news lately for the printed word. As Wallace-Wells points out, more books are sold today than a decade ago, and the number of independent bookstores in the United States has also increased by 70 percent since 2020. And, perhaps surprisingly, that data from the American Time Use Survey suggests young people may be driving part of that trend. “Young Americans are—according to this survey, at least—reading more than they did a couple of decades ago,” he wrote. “In 2003, for instance, Americans ages 15 to 24 read 8.4 minutes a day; in 2016 they read 7.8 minutes a day; and in 2022 they read 11.7 minutes a day.”

Those figures sit oddly alongside the much-discussed drop in K-12 test scores over the last several years, which Marriott naturally references:

One of the most striking trends is the downward trajectory of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test scores. PISA tests are an important international metric that tracks the proficiency of fifteen-year-olds in reading, maths and science. Scores began falling in 2012 (significantly, as a report in the Atlantic noted, “students who spend less than one hour of ‘leisure’ time on digital devices a day at school scored about 50 points higher in math than students whose eyes are glued to their screens more than five hours a day”). And in the United States, by 2024, literacy and numeracy skills as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) had declined to their lowest level for twenty years.

Now as important as numeracy is—and as connected to literacy as it might be—it is not the subject of this book. And reading scores, at least in the United States, simply do not tell the story Marriott suggests they do. It is true, as he notes, that students have been doing worse on PISA’s reading assessment recently—on average, scores in the affluent countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development dropped by about 10 points between 2018 and 2022. But in the United States, which ranked sixth out of the 36 OECD nations evaluated in 2022, reading scores dropped by only a point, from 505 to 504—the very same average score American students earned in 2000.

Internally, the reading scores of our own NAEP, last administered by the National Center for Education Statistics in 2024, do show that our national reading scores have dropped at each tested level since 2019—from 220 to 215 for fourth graders, from 263 to 258 for eighth graders, and from 285 to 283 for twelfth graders. But these are dips on a 500-point scale, and the NAEP also notes that reading scores for fourth and eighth graders haven’t changed significantly since 1992. Scores for twelfth graders have dropped about 10 points in that time—that should be a call to action, alongside the evidence that progress in reading for younger students might be stagnating. But proof that reading is dying, this is not.

As dramatically as technology has changed, Marriott’s rendering of the state of literacy would have been recognizable to worried Americans decades ago. If headlines are to be believed, reading has been in crisis for some time. Anxieties about literacy were high in the 1980s, for instance, thanks not only to the publication of Neil Postman’s jeremiad about the coarsening effects of TV and movies, Amusing Ourselves to Death, in 1985 but to the publication that same year of the book Illiterate America by progressive education activist Jonathan Kozol. “One out of every three adult Americans,” the latter’s cover declared, “cannot read this book.” That figure came from a 1973 University of Texas study, which also found that “25 million Americans could not even read the poison warnings on a can of pesticide, a letter from their child’s teacher, or the front page of a daily paper,” Kozol added. In 1986, an article in The New York Times reported that, to the frustration of education experts, estimates of illiteracy had come to range “from less than a million to more than 100 million.” All the hubbub culminated, in 1991, with the National Literacy Act—which authorized new adult literacy grants, and whose opening clauses settled on an estimate that “nearly 30,000,000 adults in the United States have serious problems with literacy.”

By then, worries about the literacy of American students had begun to overtake lingering worries about adult literacy. In 1991, The Atlantic published an essay on college preparedness titled “The Other Crisis In American Education” by Daniel J. Singal, then a professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Much of it should sound markedly familiar to readers of both Marriott’s book and more recent dispatches on literacy by Rose Horowitch in The Atlantic. “When a national poll in 1989 asked professors whether they thought undergraduates were ‘seriously underprepared in basic skills,’ 75 percent said yes and only 15 percent said no...,” Singal wrote. “It’s not that freshmen in 1991 are unable to read or write. Most of them possess what the National Assessment of Educational Progress calls ‘satisfactory’ skills in this area. But is that enough for college?”

Singal’s experiences in the college classroom seemed to suggest not. “Countless times I have been amazed at how little students have managed to glean from a book I know they have read, to the point where they are often unable to recall the names of prominently mentioned figures,” he wrote. “So much escapes them; even those of above-average ability absorb no more than a dusting of detail from a printed text.” A friend at the University of Michigan similarly reported to him that students were incapable of engaging meaningfully with newspaper columns by Walter Lipp­mann. Worse still, a professor at Berkeley had encountered putatively literate and educated students “in her upper-level course on American social history” who were “unable to differentiate between the American Revolution and the Civil War.”

Even at Harvard, a dismayed English professor found that students vaguely “aware that someone oppressed someone else” generally couldn’t recall “exactly what took place and they have no idea of the order in which it happened.” A colleague of his, the director of expository writing, added that the average incoming student there had

a “utilitarian command of language” resulting in sentences that follow a simple subject-predicate, subject-predicate format with little variation or richness of verbal expression. Harvard, of course, gets the cream of the crop. Those of us teaching at lesser institutions would be happy with utilitarian but serviceable prose from our freshmen. More often we get mangled sentences, essays composed without the slightest sense of paragraphing, and writing that can’t sustain a thought for more than half a page.

That piece came amid a drive to reform K-12 education, animated in part by disappointing test scores. A five-point slide in NAEP results for twelfth graders between 1992 and 1994, National Assessment Governing Board chairman William T. Randall said in 1995, suggested that “reading—as a skill, as an information gathering process and as a recreation—is in serious trouble.” Many policymakers in the late 1990s and early 2000s would come to agree, even though, as Jeff McQuillan’s 1998 book The Literacy Crisis observed, reading scores overall had been stable or increasing for decades by then.

The history of the written word over the last century has been marked not only by profound technological shifts but by profound shifts in our expectations. Decades after so many of us should have been killed off, evidently, by inscrutable cans of pesticide, we live today in a society that is, inarguably, hyperliterate—albeit one where years of progress on literacy may have finally stalled. We’re right to wonder why and work toward getting ourselves back on track. The certainty that the bottom has already fallen out of reading as a skill, in The New Dark Ages and elsewhere, seems to be a product less of material facts about the state of literacy than of fuzzy, unrepresentative memories—of eloquent orations by public figures, appearances from authors like James Baldwin and Gore Vidal on talk shows, sales figures for The Liberal Imagination, and the like.

These were the zeniths of a world that will never return. Those of us who have committed our lives to the written word are right to miss them. But some of the changes in literary culture Marriott describes haven’t necessarily been changes for the worse. He ruefully cites, for example, an analysis in The Economist that found “sentences in popular books have contracted by almost a third since the 1930s.” In this shortening he sees evidence that, for today’s smartphone-addled readers, “long sentences and the sophisticated ideas they often convey are just not easy to grapple with.” But the notion that long, winding sentences are meaningful and usefully sophisticated in themselves was rightly challenged by many writers in the early twentieth century and onward. The shortening of sentences has surely been, at least in part, the product of changes in literary style among the very literate, including the rise of literary modernism and a drive toward clarity and precision.

But beyond that, long sentences and sophisticated ideas were likely even more difficult for the general public to absorb in 1930, when a report from the secretary of the interior estimated that as many as 15 million to 20 million Americans, then about 12 percent of the overall population, were too illiterate even to read the Bible or write a letter. Per census figures, just over 4 percent of the population at the time, including more than 16 percent of racial minorities, had no ability to read or write in any language, English or otherwise.

In 1930, incidentally, The Washington Post ran an article about an innovative program in South Carolina—“the first State-wide effort of its kind in the history of the country”—aimed at tackling that problem. “The method employed for teaching the pupils is simple,” it reported. “The name of the illiterate is grooved into a soft substance with a hard pointed instrument, and then the pupil is required to trace the outline until he becomes proficient in writing his name. Later the pupils will probably be taught how to write more than their names, and then an effort will be made to teach them to read.”

That story points us to another potential explanation for the declining complexity of written texts. Competing technologies that have won an increasing share of our investment and attention are a major part of the story. But if popular books, political speeches, and many of the other texts we consume today seem simpler than they would have in 1930 or 1970, we should also be asking ourselves whether that simplicity might be a symptom of increasing literacy—the consequence of a shift from texts written by and for narrower audiences of gifted, highly educated, or dedicated readers and writers to texts written by and for a widening literate public of hundreds of millions who, thanks to compulsory education, have become mediocre to fine at both skills.

That elevation of the masses to mere competence with the written word is nothing to sniff or sneer at, whatever its effects on literary style and culture. In fact, it is, in all probability, modernity’s greatest triumph. The question now is whether we can do even better.

While Marriott often traffics in hyperbole, he is right to be gravely troubled by the tech industry. Its efforts to profitably addict us and our children to its products must be opposed. But we’ll stand little chance in this fight if we don’t understand the industry’s methods and what, precisely, the innovations are doing to us. Marriott doesn’t. At times, this actually undermines the strength of his arguments against them. “We live in a world that is almost compulsively archival,” he claims early in the book, for instance. “In the twenty-first century, everything is recorded. Every draft of every irrelevant unsent email is automatically saved. Our phones are packed with thousands of pictures of holidays, nights out and pointlessly photographed dinners (the same salad from five slightly different angles).”

As internet archivists, researchers, and journalists have discovered with deepening alarm over the last decade, this overstates the web’s stability dramatically. Every day, vast tranches of writing and other online content are being lost forever—or being deliberately erased for cost savings and profit. And one of the newly appreciated advantages of a culture built on mass printing is that materials that only exist digitally on the servers of impersonal companies might be far more insecure and ephemeral than physical texts that, at least conceptually, can be protected and duplicated once they’re in the hands of readers who care about them.

But, more significantly, the nature of the screen’s allure eludes him. Television, Marriott contends, following Postman, first captured our attention not only by dazzling us with imagery our books and printed materials couldn’t compete with, but by giving us the world in interesting, but contextless pieces. “A TV producer might express nature by showing an individual tree, mountain, or stream,” but can’t examine the meaning of nature in the ways that an author can. “It is simply in the nature of TV to deal in disconnected bits of reality rather than to theorise about it as a whole,” he argues.

I don’t think you would enjoy this book if I wrote the entire thing chyron-style: SMARTPHONES DESTROYING SOCIETY … DEMOCRACY IN PERIL … MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE LIKEABLE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ESSAYIST … NEIL POSTMAN VINDICATED. On screen, enhanced by the appeal of attractive news anchors, dramatic music and exciting images, this kind of disjointed communication is thrilling and almost effortless to watch—even if you don’t really have much of a clue what is actually going on in the Middle East. If the written word imposes order on the world, the screen tends towards disorder.

The smartphone, to Marriott, is the apotheosis of this tendency toward disorder, subjecting us constantly to “a nihilistic tornado of content.” “It has been estimated that the average TikTok user may scroll through as many as 260 videos in the space of about half an hour,” he writes, subjecting the user to “a thousand disconnected and disordered fragments of information” and resulting in a “heap of broken images out of which it is impossible to construct any rational picture of the world.”

But this isn’t really how social media works at all. The algorithms that give us the images and writing on our screens are designed to create steady, predictable streams of content that we want—not chaos, but consistency. TikTok in particular excels at gathering enough data over time to determine the kind of person a user is and serving them an engrossing mix of content that tightly fits their profile. Political junkies of the left and right are sent to the appropriate pundits. Those who hate seed oils and vaccines get their health and wellness influencers. Beauty-conscious Zoomers get their Korean skin care. There are TikTok users getting regular updates on the sexploits of the AI-generated characters on Fruit Love Island, and there are TikTok users being served the same set of forgotten performances on The Ed Sullivan Show over and over again.

We’re hooked to our smartphones, as we were hooked to our televisions before them, because the content on them is palliative, not disorienting. Yes, the notifications buzz and ping at us incessantly, but we’re becoming accustomed to them in the very same way we got used to repetitive and never-ending tickers of “breaking” news. The world, or worlds, that we’ve grown used to having at our fingertips—through the buttons of remote controls and the glass of our iPhones alike—are, for the most part, simpler and evidently more comforting than the real one. This may be why so many of us sleep with our phones not far from our pillows—why it doesn’t strike us as oddly as it should that people leave televisions on to hum away silently in waiting rooms or while they do chores.

This is also what makes it profoundly strange for Marriott to write that, while books “can even console us,” a smartphone “very rarely does”—engineered as smartphones are, as he understands them, to make reality seem incomprehensible. The advantage of books, he writes, is that they’re capable of rendering the world “as a comprehensible whole, not as a whirling snow-storm of fragments.” But he has it exactly backward. It’s our screens that give us the impression, necessarily an illusion, that we’re seeing the whole world and what really matters in it—sound and vision and an infinite web of interlinked text delivered to our eyes and ears, perhaps in real time, all at once, without the work of extrapolation, synthesis, and imagination required to read bare text on a printed page. It is impossible to read a printed book, no matter how well-written, how long, and how tightly argued, with the belief that all reality lies within your hands. The smartphone convinces its users of this easily.

It was the former world of books and print, not the world of screens, that was the world of fragments, partiality, and disorienting, incomplete abstractions. And what we ought to miss the most about it are the ways it forced us—even physically, in the weight of the texts we carried—into an understanding that making sense of ourselves and the world around us is a struggle, not a matter of settling into the right channel or feed, and that our knowledge is often incomplete. The viewer of a tree on a screen thinks, if only for a second, that they have really seen a tree. A reader who comes across a passage about trees has to imagine it, conceptualize it, compare it to another description, or go out into the world and find it. And unless they are particularly skilled, writers who have made a pass at describing trees may find themselves in trouble—it is difficult to make the reader see what they see, think what they think, and feel what they feel through text alone, especially when they are in competition with the readers’ own intuitions, senses, and habits of mind.

All told, reading and writing matter because written language complicates the world as often as it clarifies it. Indeed, it often helps us make sense of it by convincing us the world is not as simple as it outwardly appears. And as Marriott suggests in the book’s more grounded moments, the written word has been fundamentally Promethean in character—it has shaken peoples out of their complacency and into new ways of thinking and seeing the world, for good and for evil.

But this is all the more reason to resist the implication that the world is getting worse because people are reading fewer books. “When I was sixteen it seemed obvious to me that the world was fated to grow ever more rational,” he laments. “I have lost my fervour now.” Yet appeals to reason and sound argumentation have only been part of the story of reading. As Marriott remarks himself, “scurrilous stories, grubby pornographic gossip and libels” were “just as important to damaging the absolute authority of European monarchies” as the rational argumentation of Enlightenment philosophers.

In truth, reason has its work cut out for it in any medium. The value of the written word lies not in an intrinsic tendency toward the rational but in its intrinsic difficulty—difficulty measured not in the complexity of any given text but in the basic demand writing makes of us to turn to resources beyond our eyes, ears, and experiences for an understanding of the world. The data on reading that Marriott and many others have pointed to suggests, so far, that we live in societies where fewer people may want to read seriously and with sustained attention, not a world in which people are now less capable of doing so than in the past. If so, that is nonetheless a problem. But it’s not one that will be solved if we understand the fight for reading primarily as a technological battle that has already been half or mostly lost.

We need a new literacy for the present and a world that has been irrevocably changed from the reading world we took for granted decades ago, not a pining for older forms that will never be dominant again. We need to discover how to read seriously not only on the printed page, but also on our screens, which will entail convincing the public that serious, difficult reading is worth their time. All the more dauntingly, we’ll have to do so without making the untenable promise that a life of reading will deliver them a world that seems more intelligible, orderly, and satisfying.

The case for reading isn’t that it simplifies life but that it vivifies and deepens it. In this Marriott does, to his credit, offer his readers a model reader to look up to: the sixteenth-century essayist Michel de Montaigne, who once said the things that mattered most to him were “variety and the enjoyment of diversity.” Marriott enjoys the way Montaigne “joins stray ideas together, leaps from one subject to another and asks weird questions,” and his ability to include in a single essay “subjects as diverse as sneezing, seasickness, farting, Socrates, amphitheaters, the Spanish conquest of Peru, the Roman general Mark Antony and more.” Montaigne’s motto, “Que sais-je?” means “What do I know?”—a sentiment Marriott admires: “It is the motto of a man of the age of print, whose books showed him that nothing could be taken for granted any more.”

While the dawn of print opened up seemingly endless possibilities for men like Montaigne, the man Marriott describes is also, very probably, one who would have loved reading the internet, and thought seriously about how readers might fight, against all odds, to think for themselves and make the most of the digital age. That is our grave and heady task. That is the nature of our crisis and the nature of our opportunity. “Even in the worst-case scenario,” as Marriott writes, “reading and a cultural reverence for reading will be around for a while yet. And that means those of us who value books and reading still have a chance to make our case.” He’s right. But we’ll need a better case than his.

The 31-page complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, accuses Donald Trump of personally directing the advertisements. The DNC has asked the court to intervene in the scheme to stop the ads and the flow of public funds that has buoyed their creation and proliferation.

More than $12 million in government funds have been spent on the pro-Trump ads since September, according to the ad-tracking service AdImpact. The Department of Homeland Security had previously set aside $20 million for the dubious expenditure, the Associated Press reported late last month.

The administration ultimately created four adverts to glorify Trump, framing the MAGA leader as a centerpiece of American resistance. One 30-second commercial, set to JMSN’s track “Love Me,” framed Trump as the bastion of American strength and resistance against foreign foes.

The refrain, “love me,” was played repeatedly while images of Trump flashed across the screen, and text appeared reiterating Trump’s claim that “America will never be a communist country.”

“He is the toughest, most resilient person that I’ve ever met and nothing is going to stop him from fighting so hard for the country that he’s lost,” UFC President Dana White can be heard saying towards the end of the clip.

All four ads were accompanied by an unusual disclaimer: “Paid for by the U.S. government.” One appeared to use footage from a 2024 spot for Trump’s presidential campaign.

Trump practically confessed to the arrangement on Monday, relenting to public backlash via a Truth Social post in which he said he would no longer use taxpayer money on the adverts.

“The Radical Left is upset with the fact that I am taking Ads, which I consider to be a positive promotion for our Great U.S.A., and paying for them with U.S.A. money,” Trump wrote. “This is a rather standard thing to do but, rather than doing that, although nothing will make them happy, I have decided to do the Patriotic Ads, among others, and pay for them myself, and with money I raised for MAGA, Inc.”

He did not, however, mention if he would use his coffers to reimburse the American people.

Speaking with reporters outside the White House on Tuesday, Trump insisted that “the ads were really good” and a “promotion for the country” rather than a promotion of himself.

Vice President JD Vance also defended the commercials, claiming on Monday that the messaging was “not partisan.”

“We’re trying to tell a story about how great the United States of America is,” Vance said.

The DNC, however, disagreed. In their complaint, the political committee argued that the “political propaganda ads” were an attempt to resuscitate Trump’s “historically low approval ratings and avoid widespread Republican defeats in the 2026 midterm election.”

The ads, according to the group, followed a broader pattern of behavior in which Trump has repeatedly attempted to center himself in the midterm cycle, effectively turning Election Day 2026 into another referendum on his popularity.

In recent months, Trump has attempted to bribe Americans with a $5,000 handout (if Republicans win), made himself the center of an unprecedented two-day Republican midterm convention, and repeatedly instructed voters to act as if he’s on the ballot.

Yet all of those things have only proved to hurt Republican odds, as resentment grows against Trump due to the dragging Iran war and the rising cost of living.

This story has been updated.

The Palm Beach County Office of the Supervisor of Elections confirmed to the Tampa Bay Times Wednesday that it had wiped Trump’s personal info from public facing voter registration records. In doing so, it made private data relating to Trump’s home and mailing addresses, his birth date, his party affiliation, and email address—data available on voting Americans in nearly every state. The change will make it more difficult to ascertain when Trump votes by mail versus in person.

Trump had asked the agency to remove his information earlier this year, but the office told the Tampa Bay Times that it did not review whether the request was actually legitimate. As it turns out, it was not.

A public records law, signed by Governor Ron DeSantis in June 2025, allows certain public officials to remove their personal information from the public facing state system. That includes members of Congress as well as a smattering of specific elected positions, such as the governor, lieutenant governor, chief financial officer, attorney general, agriculture commissioner, state representative, state senator, property appraiser, supervisor of elections, school superintendent, school board member, mayor, city commissioner, and county commissioner, according to the text of the law.

Notably, the list does not include the president.

Local lawmakers couldn’t help Trump make his request legitimate even if they wanted to: State representatives won’t meet again until March, waylaying the chance to introduce an amendment that could retroactively and specifically include him.

Trump’s request came by way of a notarized document, in which he claimed he was eligible as a state public officer. The form was notarized by Chamberlain Harris, a 26-year-old White House aide whom Trump promoted last year to deputy director of Oval Office operations and subsequently appointed to a four-year term on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, overseeing Kennedy Center construction (or demolition) projects. Harris was also one of three women in the Trump administration to receive a $45,000 bonus from the president as a “cash gift for the holidays” last year.

“I could’ve done very bad things to Hillary Clinton. I could’ve done very, very bad things to Joe Biden. I could’ve done very bad things to Barack Hussein Obama,” Trump said in the Oval Office Wednesday after being asked whether he believes Democrats will try to impeach him if they win back the House and Senate. “I thought it was inappropriate to do so because you have to treat the office of the presidency with respect. Then I found out that they impeached me. Twice. And … I can do whatever I want, if I want. They’ve done some very bad things.”

“He’s telling you exactly how he sees his power. Now apply that to an election he’s desperate to control,” Democracy Docket wrote on X.

This is just the latest in a long list of vindictive threats the president has made towards his political enemies, from former FBI Director James Comey to Senator Adam Schiff. He accused Obama of treason this past May. But this recent admission is his most brazen to date, particularly given that it comes right before an extremely consequential midterm election that will also usher in his lame duck period.

While his “Trump Accounts” for American children were receiving praise from venture capitalist Brad Gerstner, the president struggled to keep his head from drooping, waking up when he was told “thank you.”

Trump later perked up when a reporter asked him if had spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding a plague outbreak in Siberia, and the president happily pointed out that Wednesday is Putin’s birthday.

“I have a call set up. Today is his birthday. Today is Vladimir Putin’s birthday, I’m sure you’re gonna celebrate it. Are you gonna celebrate his birthday? No, I have a call set up,” Trump smirked, his voice sounding hoarse.

The octogenarian Trump has fallen asleep in public dozens of times during his second term as president. Only last week, he fell asleep after announcing a new steel plant in Iowa, and his moments of senility keep adding up. Despite all of that, he remembered Putin’s birthday and thought it was important to mention. Is Trump’s planned phone call really about the plague, or will he congratulate the Russian dictator on many happy returns? Judging by Trump’s mental and physical condition, as well as his past deference to Russia, it could very well be either.

“The heroes of the West are those who choose to remain faithful to their duty precisely when it is most difficult and painful to do so,” Rubio waxed. “We take the West’s conception of these things—heroism, honor, duty—we take these things for granted. We assume that these somehow are universal to all people in all times and in all places. They are not. They are the product of a distinct character, a distinct character which arose here—and shaped the whole story of the civilization that came after it. The civilization that we must fight to defend today with the same passion as our forefathers did.

“Over time, we in the West came to feel ashamed of the very things that made us exceptional. We felt embarrassed that our achievements set us apart from the rest of the world,” Rubio continued. “Our prosperity somehow became a source of guilt. We no longer believed we deserved and had earned our greatness. The word nationalism became a dirty word. And so we tore down our monuments, we condemned our own history, and in too many places we taught our children to be ashamed of the countries they would inherit. In the process we opened our borders, and outsourced our industry, and allowed our militaries to wither and to decay. And with every passing year, we seem to outsource more of our sovereignty.”

Rubio went on to warn against immigration, amplifying the xenophobia that is a central tenet of both the MAGA movement and the larger international far-right.

“We have built a model of that with our partners here in Greece. In our defense partnerships, in energy and technology, in our shared ambition to secure Europe’s borders from the threats of mass migration,” he said.

Those on the far-right, including Elon Musk, praised the speech—while others pointed to it as a possible sign of Rubio’s long-suspected intentions to run for president in 2028. Either way, the incendiary address reaffirmed the aesthetic importance of ancient Greece to right-wingers.

“This is the classical understanding of politics—and of statecraft—that the Trump administration hopes to reclaim. Reclaim not just for our country, but for the whole of our civilization,” Rubio continued. “We believe that Europe can awaken from its long slumber and rekindle the fire that was lit here millennia ago.”

The Phoenix New Times reports that Bernadette Greene-Placentia, the Democratic nominee in Arizona’s 8th congressional district challenging incumbent Republican Representative Abe Hamadeh, reported being hit over the head this summer in a dark parking lot in Sun City, Arizona, just after 2 a.m. on a Friday as she walked to the damaged sign. She awoke to her rapist pulling his penis out of her, she told the publication.

He said, “—ic bitch, not a very good fuck,” Greene-Placentia said to the New Times, which she filled in her head as “Democratic bitch.” She’s not clear on what exactly he said.

One leg was out of her jeans, and she remembers swinging her leg after another man approached. She heard him say, “Not even worth it,” before he left the scene. She was left face-down in the parking lot, her SUV still running with the trunk open. Greene-Placentia doesn’t remember putting her jeans back on, closing the SUV’s trunk, or leaving the scene to return home.

“It’s just these little tiny flashes of things that I do remember,” she said to the newspaper. “As much as I don’t want to remember, I’ve tried very, very hard to remember more stuff. But that’s where I’m at.”

Greene-Placentia said she had stopped to fix her campaign signs late at night numerous times previously, sometimes with her husband, Alex Placentia, or a campaign staffer. She hasn’t done so since she was raped. She thinks she suffered a concussion, and reported being covered in bruises after the attack.

Initially, Greene-Placentia tried to forget about being attacked, but said she decided to report her assault because she campaigns on fighting for the people of Arizona, “and I didn’t feel like I could keep saying that if I weren’t also fighting for women that are victims of sexual assault.” She told her campaign staff about it the following Sunday, and her husband on Monday. Two weeks later, she reported the rape to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, according to a police report.

For two days after the assault, Greene-Placentia was “missing in action,” her campaign manager Isaiah Lopez and her husband told the New Times. She vaginally bled for three days after the rape, according to the police report. She said she was a “very angry person” for days and weeks afterward.

“I want a fucking rematch. I want to call them out. I want to like, go on TV and say ‘Let’s go again and don’t come at me from behind,’” she told Lopez and her husband. Her campaign held a staff meeting at a gun range because she felt so angry.

Hamadeh has yet to comment on the alleged rape, but in July, he defended right-wing influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate, who are accused of strangling women unconscious and raping them and face charges of sexual assault, sexual exploitation, and child pornography in Europe.

Greene-Placentia is vowing to press ahead with her campaign.

“I need to let women know that it’s okay to talk about it,” Greene-Placentia told the New Times. “We’re asking people to stand up and donate or volunteer. We’re asking those folks to be uncomfortable, as [Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes] says; then I have to be willing to be uncomfortable too.”

The admission came by way of a campaign video call with his supporters Tuesday evening, during which Marx shamelessly confessed that he pushed his wife against a door supposedly to teach her a lesson about self-defense.

“Show the before and after; they don’t want the full truth—that my wife was fake-crying, suckered me in,” Marx told his donors. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh are you OK?’ and she does a spinning back kick into my [groin].

“I was like, ‘OK, you actually can protect yourself,’” Marx recalled.

Marx’s wife, Eileen, then appeared on camera, placing her arms around his neck while claiming that she did a “rear choke” defense.

Both Marx and his wife have black belts in karate.

“People have called us the real Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” Marx claimed, referring to the 2005 blockbuster starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. “How many wives actually grab a backpack and put a tomahawk, night vision, put a grenade in their coat pocket—we’re not normal.”

“I’d do it again,” he proclaimed. “I’d do everything again except get close to her to let her kick me, because she’s sneaky.”

Marx similarly admitted to the allegations during a local radio interview on Friday, claiming that he had shoved his wife “just to startle her” and reiterated that she was “fake-crying.” In the same interview, Eileen Marx said she did not believe the rough encounters with her husband constituted domestic abuse but that they had instead reminded her that she does “need to train.”

“What he did—eight years after that, I got my first-degree black belt,” Eileen Marx said, noting in other portions of the interview that she grew up in an abusive home, and that the incident with her own husband had inspired her to start teaching women’s self-defense classes.

“This was nothing like domestic abuse. This was a karate lesson in our house,” Eileen Marx told the radio show.

Marx has repeatedly claimed that the media has unfairly pegged him as a domestic abuser—but in truth, Marx has been telling variations of this story for years, some much more disturbing than the latest iteration. In 2021, the former Marine turned priest laughed while recalling “grabbing her and slamming” his wife after she suggested that he could protect her.

“It was a decent push,” he said at the time, beaming. “She hit that and started crying, bent over, facing the opposite way.”

Still, that’s not the only abuse allegation facing the Republican gubernatorial hopeful: Marx has also been accused of throwing his toddler across a room and pulling a knife on a psychiatrist attempting to treat him.

On the radio, Marx said both stories were true.

Recalling the incident with his small son, Marx said he “grabbed” his son because the child was “hurting his sister.”

“I picked him up, launched him, onto his bed,” Marx said. “That’s when he started crying.”

Marx said he initially shared the story as a warning for young fathers who are struggling to parent and do things “they don’t want to do,” urging people to get psychiatric help.

“I did not hurt my son,” Marx insisted.

The couple are the co-founders of All Things Possible ministry, an entity that critics have derided as a “potentially dangerous” operation, according to a September report by The Guardian. In the last year, the group has funded out-of-state surveillance projects and hired private security contractors. It is also connected to a “network of other self-appointed sex-trafficking rescue groups whose leading figures have attracted significant controversy,” according to The Guardian.

Marx was the chair and president of All Things Possible until his bid to become Colorado’s next governor commenced last October.

In June, Marx claimed during a local TV interview that he was forced to kill someone when he was seven years old. When pressed if he had killed more people, Marx responded: “Does it matter?”

The New York Times reports that the office has resorted to hiring lawyers with criminal records, misconduct allegations, and a love of conspiracy theories to fill the void left by the departure of nearly 300 career, nonpartisan employees following the start of President Trump’s second term and his hiring of conservative activist Harmeet Dhillon to lead the bureau.

Among the new hires is David Michael Levin, a conservative lawyer who was convicted of hacking into the Lee County, Florida, election system in 2015 and 2016 as a political stunt. Levin later served a 20-day jail sentence with two years of probation. DOJ policy allows for people with misdemeanor convictions to be hired after a seven-year gap, but apparently interfering with elections was still not a red flag.

Last month, another court ordered Levin to pay more than $200,000 in damages after finding he had engaged in fraudulent misrepresentation and civil conspiracy in a case involving insurance fraud.

Another prosecutor hired by the office, David Vandenberg, had a history of complaints of volatile and angry behavior toward his colleagues as an assistant district attorney in El Paso, Texas. A local judge even barred him from a courtroom for dressing down a court official. He is now facing animal neglect charges.

Former gambling executive James Breslo, who used to host the podcast Hidden Truth, also joined the DOJ under Dhillon’s leadership. His podcast attacked Alcoholics Anonymous in an episode titled “AA Kills,” examined UFOs, and hosted bigot Laura Loomer, who pushed unproven claims that the 2017 Las Vegas strip mass shooting was a plot by the government or religious terrorists.

Another hire, Daniel Flickinger, lost his job at a Birmingham, Alabama, law firm in 2020 for saying in a Facebook post that it was good that George Floyd died in a “fentanyl- and methamphetamine-numbed strangulation” because “it meant being worshiped in a nationwide funeral.”

Dhillon has defended these people and the other 130 new hires during her tenure, saying in a statement, “For years, the civil rights division recruited from a narrow pipeline of progressive activists and called it excellence.”

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

Meanwhile, Dhillon has willingly joined the Trump administration’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion, even dropping multiple school desegregation cases.

Inside Washington

Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez has made quite the reputation for herself in Congress. She wanders the halls in outfits noticeably more stylish than those of her colleagues and crusades for issues like removing Red Delicious apples from school lunches, allowing pictures to be used in legislation, and culling sea lions. She’s also drawn the ire of Democratic leaders for siding with Republicans on key votes.

Now, Gluesenkamp Perez is facing a tight race in one of the most important districts for Democrats to hold this year, Washington’s 3rd congressional district. She was just one point behind her Republican opponent, state Senator John Braun, in a recent poll of 500 likely voters—well within the poll’s margin of error. Five percent of those surveyed remain undecided. The swing district voted for President Donald Trump in all three of his elections, while also voting for Gluesenkamp Perez in two of those elections. A plurality of voters surveyed, 35 percent, consider themselves more independent than aligned with either party. 

In the state’s open primary in late August, Braun received 39.7 percent of the vote to Gluesenkamp Perez’s 36.4 percent. Gluesenkamp Perez’s progressive challenger, Brent Hennrich, garnered 16.7 percent of the vote. Experts say that Hennrich voters are likely to vote for Gluesenkamp Perez, though some could stay home if they strongly oppose some of her more controversial votes—like her support for Israel or her “yes” vote on the Trump-backed SAVE Act.

“In some ways, I would call her a throwback,” said Mark Stephan, an associate professor of political science at Washington State University, about Gluesenkamp Perez. “It used to be that representatives around the country, going back 30, 40, 50 years, were Democrat, Republican, but they were also really tuned into their district.” 

Braun, he said, reflects this same district-focused governance. “In some respects, he is the slightly conservative reflection of MGP,” Stephan said. If elected, “I think he would do basically what she’s done but be slightly more conservative about it.” 

Before facing Braun, Gluesenkamp Perez twice beat Republican Joe Kent, who served as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center from 2025 to 2026. But, said John Horvick, a senior vice president at DHM Research, “John Braun is not Joe Kent.” Stephan echoed that. Kent, he explained, “tried to run what I would call a national Republican campaign, meaning that he just tried to appeal to Republicans as Trump voters, as Republicans writ large, and didn’t focus as much on the local stuff.” Braun’s focus on local issues makes him a more competitive opponent for Gluesenkamp Perez.

The local issues that Braun and Gluesenkamp Perez focus on are as varied as the district itself. The district covers the southwest corner of the state, just across the river from Portland, Oregon. Its biggest city is Vancouver, which is surrounded by the Clark County suburbs. But the district also includes rural apple orchards and industrial communities. One such community, Longview, suffered a major industrial disaster in May, when a chemical tank at a paper mill imploded during a shift change. Eleven workers died. In the aftermath of the disaster, Gluesenkamp Perez was present in the community at press conferences and conversations with local leaders. She also spearheaded a bill to restore funding for the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, which is the agency in charge of identifying the cause of the deadly implosion. It’s unclear how the disaster and its aftermath will affect the race, Stephan said; it depends on whether Longview residents think Gluesenkamp Perez did enough to support their community. 

Another example of Gluesenkamp Perez’s focus on local issues is her crusade against sea lions. Killing these animals, she says, is necessary to protect endangered salmon and steelhead runs in the area. She has pushed for the district’s Native American residents to kill sea lions directly, rather than relying on expensive federal removal programs. She’s also focused on supporting right to repair policies and played up her work in an auto shop.

Experts stressed that the district could swing either way, particularly with a strong Republican candidate like Braun. But Gluesenkamp Perez’s ability to buck the party when necessary could be a major boon to her reelection. “She is willing to throw some mud and poke her finger in the eyes of the Democratic Party,” Horvick said. So far, that’s been a winning strategy in southwest Washington.

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

A KFF poll released on Tuesday finds voter trust of Democrats over Republicans when it comes to managing health care costs has grown since its last survey in April. Back then, 37 percent said they trusted Democrats and 26 percent said they trusted Republicans. Now those numbers are 42 percent and 22 percent. It’s reasonable to assume that the effects of the Obamacare subsidies that Republican lawmakers opted to let expire, as well as projected premium increases next year, are affecting those numbers. Also interesting is that 66 percent of respondents said they support Medicare for All, although that number can change depending on whether they’re presented with arguments for or against this type of policy. 

Speaking of health care, sort of: A New York City aesthetician recently pleaded guilty to a series of federal charges related to her importing “bootleg Botox” and administering it to clients, one of whom was subsequently hospitalized. It’s illegal for aestheticians to administer Botox in New York, but this is not the first aesthetician to be accused of shooting people up with a counterfeit. Incidentally, in 2025, a Republican-sponsored bill to prevent aestheticians from administering Botox without medical supervision passed the Texas House by an over three-to-one margin with bipartisan support and unanimously passed the Texas Senate, only for Republican Governor Greg Abbott to veto it, calling it “unnecessary and overly burdensome” for businesses. The most recent poll of the Texas gubernatorial race shows Abbott and Democrat Gina Hinojosa neck and neck: Hinojosa’s three-point lead was within the margin of error.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

At 5 p.m. on Wednesday, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace will hold a virtual event discussing the implications of Israel’s upcoming elections. From the event summary: “What will the Israeli election reveal about the country’s changing political landscape? Might a new government represent a change in Israel’s approach to Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and the broader region, or largely continue the trajectory of recent years? And what might the outcome mean for Israel’s relations with the Palestinians, its neighbors, and the United States?” Speakers will include Maha Yahya, Aaron David Miller, Nathan J. Brown, Amjad Iraqi, and Tahani Mustafa.

On Thursday at 8 a.m., Center for Strategic and International Studies writer Jasmine Sun will join Wadhwani AI Center director Aalok Mehta for a webcast discussion about the backlash to data centers, in which the two “unpack what’s driving the opposition movement, where Washington and Silicon Valley diverge from the rest of the country, and how the AI infrastructure buildout might influence voters in November.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Book of the Week: Blockers: Rebels in the Deep State

By Michael Lewis

THE GIST: A spiritual sequel to The Fifth Risk, which explored the disruptions to the federal bureaucracy that accompanied Trump’s first term, Blockers is Michael Lewis’s look at the second Trump presidency, focusing particularly on Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

PRAISE: “Blockers,” writes Tim Wu, a Columbia professor and author of The Attention Merchants and The Curse of Bigness in The New York Times, “is a warning that our politicization of everything is a tremendous curse and a reminder that, especially in a country of the size and complexity and power of the United States, there is much that government does, or should do, that ought to be quietly nonpartisan.”

CRUISING THE INDEX: “God knows the efficiency of that particular effort,” Lewis writes about DOGE’s gutting of a program that assisted refugees. “No one inside DOGE seems ever to have bothered to ask.” This is a common refrain as Lewis reports the gutting of USAID, the destruction of much of the U.S. government’s science and environmental funding (including much of its wildfire prevention capacity), and more. Everywhere you look in Blockers, there is destruction. More often than not, it is being done by people with no knowledge or curiosity about what government does, on the orders of people (specifically Musk, Trump, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick) with even less knowledge or curiosity about what government does.

TNR’S QUICK CRITICAL ASSESSMENT: This is perhaps Lewis’s angriest book—no small accomplishment given his long history of detailing the arrogance and stupidity of the U.S. financial system—and also maybe his most tragic. It’s a story about horrific damage to the U.S. government. That story is not over.

—Alex Shephard

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

A rare multiple choice question! Journalist Jacob Weisberg has just published Profiles in Cowardice, which looks at eight prominent Americans who’ve failed to stand up to Donald Trump. The book is a twist on John F. Kennedy’s 1956 Profiles in Courage, which profiled eight senators for courageous moves across history. Which of these senators is not included in JFK’s book? 

A. John Quincy Adams

B. Daniel Webster

C. Nelson Aldrich

D. Robert Taft

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

—Michael Tomasky

The security officers were contracted through multinational private security company Prosegur, according to a Raw Story investigation.

Prosegur has a history of alleged human rights violations, including an incident as recent as 2024 in which the company’s Brazilian subsidiary reportedly prevented indigenous people from accessing food and medical care at a nearby town, per an assessment by the Ethics Council of the Norwegian Government Pension Fund.

Prosegur’s guards are currently located at USPS facilities in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Indianapolis, Phoenix, San Diego, and Tampa, according to internal memos obtained by Raw Story.

One postal contractor that spoke with the digital outlet said she was “alarmed” that the armed security guards were predominantly confined to “deep blue states or swing states.”

Frank Albergo, the executive director of the Postal Police Officers Association union, said that the armed guards were deployed at facilities with more than 1,000 employees.

“No one from the postal service will be supervising these armed guards. It will be completely a private contractor who controls these armed guards, so you basically have private contractors in and around ballots without any federal control. To me, that’s crazy,” Albergo told Raw Story.

“It just could be a red flag. Will it have an impact on the election? Who knows? But you certainly could argue that it has an effect,” Albergo continued. “It might give Trump an excuse to call into question the integrity of the election. That’s the problem. It’s the perception of it.”

Cathy K. Purcell, a senior public relations representative for USPS, told The New Republic Thursday that the introduction of armed guards at its facilities “has absolutely nothing to do with elections.” She noted that the deployments have been “ongoing since last year.”

“These guards are deployed to provide security and act as a deterrent to criminals or employees who may wish to compromise the mailstream or potentially harm the people inside our facilities,” Purcell wrote in a statement. “Our use of armed and unarmed guards at these key government facilities is consistent with the use of armed and unarmed guards at other critical local, state, and federal government buildings such as hospitals and schools.”

Yet those with knowledge of Prosegur and its practices are still suspicious. Mark Ungar, a political science professor at the John Jay School of Criminal Justice in New York who has researched private security firms such as Prosegur, suggested to Raw Story that the company’s presence could afford the Trump administration a retroactive alibi.

“The Trump administration is clearly taking every step they can to control voting, and they’re going to use the Postal Service to do that,” Ungar said. “Any contract with Prosegur, any way that removes accountability from the American people of the Postal Service, which they’re already doing, I think, is concerning at the very least.”

Since the throes of the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump has repeatedly argued that the Postal Service should be dismantled to prevent mail-in voting—a practice that he has repeatedly accused of fraud despite zero evidence and his own apparent preference to vote by mail.

The Supreme Court buoyed one of Trump’s more aggressive voter suppression efforts in August, permitting the White House to move forward with new mail-in voting requirements and an executive order that transferred control of the mail-in voting process to “Trump lackey” (according to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold) Postmaster General David Steiner.

The judiciary decided the following month, however, that the new requirements would not affect the 2026 midterm cycle, effectively thwarting Trump’s eleventh-hour attempt to create a conservative edge in the race to control Washington.

Yet Steiner has already attempted to flex the power of his position. On Wednesday, Steiner informed the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that, under a new rule, the USPS would not offer ballot services to states that refused to hand over their voter rolls to the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, the president promoted mail-in voting to his supporters on Monday, urging them to cast their ballot however possible, briefly reversing course on his performative opposition to mail-in voting in the face of what looks like it will be a blue tsunami next month.

This story has been updated.

On Wednesday morning, another “Final Battle” commercial for the president aired on Fox & Friends, featuring a black and white clip of Trump walking while he references a “final battle.” It’s the same one that aired on September 27.

“This is the final battle. With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the Communists, Marxists, and fascists,” he says in the ad. “We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all.”

“Paid for by the U.S. Government” flashes at the bottom of the screen as the commercial concludes. The advertisement is virtually identical to a 2024 Trump campaign ad.

Trump announced Monday that his super PAC would pay for future ads, but it appears that’s not the case.

This commercial is the second installment of Trump’s effort to sway voters his way ahead of midterms. The administration is spending $20 million from the Department of Homeland Security budget to pay for them, claiming they’re necessary public service announcements. The first was that strange “Love Me” ad, which debuted late September on Fox News during Jesse Watters Primetime.

And these commercials aren’t convincing anyone. According to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, 86 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s use of taxpayer funds on the commercials. Even Republican Senators John Thune and Mike Rounds were critical, while Vice President JD Vance insisted that the ads were somehow “not partisan” and that they were “trying to tell a story.”

Whatever story that is doesn’t seem to matter ahead of midterms, as Americans struggling with rising prices need more than cool videos to assuage them.

In an email obtained by American Oversight, an ICE official whose name was redacted explained that the training had been reduced from four weeks of in-person instruction to just 40 hours of virtual courses, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. Additionally, training on real-world scenarios that officers might encounter in the field was eliminated entirely.

The email addressed to former ICE Director Todd Lyons and adviser David Venturella explained how the training had been “truncated” to meet demands that the course be shortened. Lyons resigned in May, and Venturella now leads the agency.

Since President Donald Trump reentered office, the number of local police departments collaborating with ICE has increased exponentially. Under the Biden administration, there were 135 active 287(g) agreements across 16 states. Now, more than 2,600 agencies are receiving compensation to assist in Trump’s sweeping deportation efforts, according to the Post. White House deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller demanded last year that ICE arrest 3,000 immigrants a day.

Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight, told the Post that some of the materials cut from the training would have helped officers understand whether they had a lawful basis to arrest someone in the first place.

“So for example, who is actually a citizen, what is their immigration status, what grounds could possibly justify seeking their removal?” Chukwu said.

The dangerous consequences of these changes seem obvious: less training will only sow more confusion and chaos during arrests, which will inevitably lead to violent encounters between civilians and law enforcement.

The nonprofit organization Democracy Forward obtained government documents showing a wide-ranging probe into the nonprofit groups. The documents also revealed deliberations within Homeland Security Investigations, which conducts investigations for ICE, to send undercover agents into the organizations.

“Future [undercover]-related operations may involve utilizing [undercover agents] to target identified organizations and engage in communications with these entities to substantiate recruitment methods and activities related to illegal alien voter registration,” stated one of the documents. These efforts “will support broader investigative and enforcement actions, leveraging [undercover] findings to initiate prosecutions and dismantle illicit facilitation networks.”

HSI focused on groups in the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Ohio, although it also looked into organizations in Minnesota, Washington, D.C., and New Jersey as well. There is no proof that HSI ever went ahead with using undercover agents, according to Democracy Docket.

The investigations involved using nonprofit search engines and other databases attempting to find “derogatory information” about them. HSI looked into at least 82 organizations in Pennsylvania, including the state’s branch of Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country’s largest civil rights and advocacy organization for American Muslims.

The efforts went beyond nonprofits, as HSI investigated state primary elections earlier this year, the documents revealed, trying to find “any notable trends or vulnerabilities in upholding election integrity.”

HSI’s efforts in Pennsylvania also included investigating Zumiez, a clothing brand that has worked with organizations like Voto Latino and Rock the Vote that encourage civic engagement among young people. Why Zumiez received scrutiny is unclear, as it is a national corporation with headquarters in Washington state.

All of the administration’s efforts seem to be an attempt to prove a long-standing conservative conspiracy theory that Democrats register noncitizens to vote to win elections. Despite the right’s repeated claims of rigged elections, the few actual cases of voter fraud appear to catch conservatives more than anyone else.

Speaking with reporters on the White House South Lawn Tuesday evening, the president appeared completely disaffected and uninterested in the matter, offering short replies about his approach to the worrisome outbreak.

However, in doing so, Trump also revealed that he hasn’t yet spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Have you spoken to President Putin about the plague in Russia?” one reporter asked.

“I have a call scheduled, yup,” Trump said.

“When is that call scheduled for?” the reporter followed up.

“Very soon,” Trump added.

When asked by another reporter if American intelligence agencies had more intel on the suspicious death, Trump relented that he was in “deep discussions” with U.S. officials and could speak about it “probably tomorrow.”

But Trump did not answer any other questions on the matter, including an attempt to specify if the timeframe for speaking with Putin was contained to sometime this week.

Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old laboratory technician who worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia, died of severe pneumonia on the night between October 1 and October 2. Russian health officials have not yet confirmed that her death was the result of pneumonic plague, or explained how she got ill, but her death sparked enough regional concern to place 200 people who had been in contact with Shipilova into quarantine.

Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s health watchdog, announced Wednesday that 90 percent of the people placed into quarantine had been released after thousands of lab tests came back negative for dangerous pathogens, according to Reuters.

The agency rejected assertions that the lab worker fell ill from exposure at her workplace, noting in a statement that Shipilova was vaccinated and therefore “immune to the dangerous infections with which she worked.”

The Palm Beach Post first reported last month on the president’s plans to turn his Trump International Golf Club in Palm Beach into a private, Camp David–style club for leaders and foreign dignitaries. In a September 3 letter to Palm Beach County commissioners, the president proposed that he would “provide access to all” club facilities at “no cost to the federal government.” While the Trump family owns the property, it lies on land leased by Palm Beach County, hence the gracious proposal letter.

The plans have appeared to progress significantly, with the county seriously considering the proposal, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

The president has long found Camp David to be undesirable for his tastes, saying in 2017 that he could only enjoy the historic retreat center “for about 30 minutes.”

“Just as Camp David, Windsor Castle, or the Elysee Palace are known worldwide, so too will the Presidential Golf Course in Palm Beach County,” attorney Harvey Oyer, who is representing the property, wrote in his letter to the county commissioners. “It would further cement Palm Beach County as one of the most recognizable brands and destinations in the world.”

“The property is minutes away from the Donald J. Trump International Airport, does not have buildings looming, does not have houses along the course, has great security features, is close to law enforcement, and happens to be a highly-rated golf course,” an anonymous White House official told the Post. “These are features that are necessary for any presidential retreat.”

This is the most corrupt president in modern history trying to use his own private property to replace a historic presidential retreat center—which is in perfectly fine condition and was more than adequate for every other president and diplomat before him. But while we may see this new property, which Trump intends to keep under his own company, as another grift, Trump is framing it as a “gift” and a “lasting contribution” to all future presidents, even offering to comp membership fees for them. Thanks. Now he’ll never need to leave Palm Beach ever again.

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

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

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

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

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

An eight-foot-tall statue covered in 23-karat gold leaf has been erected at the building in Strasbourg, France, showing a naked, overweight Trump being carried on the back of a much smaller man, while the president holds a golf club, a tiny world-shaped ball, and the scales of justice. The base is inscribed with the words “I am sitting on the back of a man. He is sinking under my burden. I will do anything to help him. Except stepping down from his back,” attributed to “The King of Injustice.”

The statue’s creator, Danish sculptor Jens Galschiøt, calls his creation The Orange Plague, and said it’s a satirical outcry against volatile U.S. environmental and foreign policy.

“Trump represents one of the greatest threats to the rule-based world order, democratic values, and our common effort to solving the climate crisis,” Galschiøt said in a statement. “We must address this issue and stand together against such destructive influence.”

“If someone is so thin-skinned that they cannot tolerate this sculpture being exhibited in the European Parliament, then they have no place on the world stage,” said Danish member of the European Parliament Per Clausen at the statue’s unveiling.

Trump has been mocked by statues before. Before the 2024 presidential election, a 43-foot-tall naked statue of the president toured the U.S., appearing in Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Nevada. The president’s supporters at the time called the statue “political violence.” Golden statues of Trump also appeared at the time in Portland and Philadelphia behind statues of naked women with the inscriptions, “In honor of a lifetime of sexual assault.”

More recently, statues and art installations addressing Trump’s association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have popped up in Washington, D.C. Trump himself usually avoids commenting directly on these satirical art pieces, instead condemning them through spokespeople. He has yet to comment on this statue in France.

“It’s the war, it’s gas prices.... It’s over $6 a gallon for diesel,” Paxton said at a donor meeting when asked what issues were “dragging” on him and his campaign, according to audio obtained by Axios. “People are feeling that pinch. So I’d say that’s probably the biggest problem … food prices, everything else.... That’s by far our biggest problem, and I think that’s why we’re having a hard time with numbers.” 

“How do you respond to it?” a reporter asked. Paxton went on to give his spiel on his tax cut plan called “Protecting the Texas Promise Plan.” He said he wants people to use it on everything from “gym memberships” to “GLP-1s.” 

He went on to note that he was essentially powerless to stop President Trump’s war on Iran—the very thing causing the problems he previously listed. “I have no control over the aspects [of the war]. So many of the factors of this federal race are uncontrollable. I don’t make the decisions, I don’t know what’s behind some of the decisions.” 

This is at least the third time Paxton has unknowingly been recorded sending either subliminal or direct messages to Trump in recent days. Just a week ago at a fundraiser, he told someone that Trump’s GOP midterm convention in Dallas was having a direct negative impact on his numbers. And two days ago, an audio was released of Paxton essentially saying his own Senate race was being operated by outside forces in Washington. 

“I’ve never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign and, like, what issues are going to matter because it’s all coming—you know—from D.C.,” he said last month. “I don’t control the message or what we’re doing.... I don’t have ability to change anything,” Paxton continued. “So I have to live with whatever I’ve got. So it is a challenge.”

This amount of leaks from one of the GOP’s most important Senate campaigns this cycle feels shocking, especially when each leak is Paxton indirectly blaming Trump for low poll numbers and affordability issues that he has to cover for. It seems obvious that he’s upset with the Trump administration—as he keeps confirming to donors over and over again.  

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 erupted in a crazed, manic tirade this week about the South Carolina Senate race. He raged wildly at the Democratic candidate, Dr. Annie Andrews, smearing her with an anti-trans slur and unleashing all kinds of dim-witted lies about her, to boot. Notably, this comes as a major GOP super PAC just poured $5 million into South Carolina to shore up GOP Senator Darline Graham. One Republican admitted that the GOP needs an “insurance policy” in the state, and two GOP-aligned pollsters have found the race to be very close.

We think the odds remain very long here, but now that Trump has signaled alarm about this race, we’re getting a download on it from Jalisa Washington-Price, a veteran South Carolina–based Democratic operative who heads the Democratic-aligned PAC Fresh Start. Jalisa, thanks for coming on.

Jalisa Washington-Price: Thank you for having me, Greg.

Sargent: So let’s start with the money. Axios reports that the Senate Leadership Fund, which is the leading Republican super PAC, is putting $5 million into this race as an “insurance policy.” One source told Axios: “We’re not taking anything for granted.”

Jalisa, two things. One, what does it say that they have to put this money in here, that they can’t take South Carolina for granted? And number two, are you seeing signs of their spending yet?

Washington-Price: Right. We haven’t seen signs yet, but as you know, we know that it’s coming, right? And South Carolina isn’t supposed to be on anybody’s battleground map this election cycle. But looking at the numbers, right, even right-leaning pollsters and polls show Annie Andrews in striking distance with Darline Graham, and a noticeable amount of undecideds still out there, right?

And that’s just not noise. Those are real numbers, that’s real enthusiasm that we’re seeing on the ground and hearing even from some of these pollsters that have been paying close attention to this race.

And the fact that Republicans are having to spend here, instead of being more competitive in these places that we were expecting, like in Michigan, you know, in some of these other states—it says a lot. And it’s also a warning sign for Republicans too, right? Like, what’s to come in November.

Sargent: Well, absolutely. So let’s talk about Trump losing it here. He viciously attacks Dr. Andrews, the Democratic challenger. She’s taking on Senator Darline Graham, who’s the [sister] of the late Lindsey Graham. Trump called her a vicious anti-trans slur twice and posted this:

“She is in favor of Transgender for Everyone, Open Borders, Defunding the Police, high taxes, a weak military, and will absolutely fight to take your guns away. She is against our Great Second Amendment!”

Trump also called her a low-quality person, while insisting Darline Graham is a high-quality one who can be trusted to have the right values. Jalisa, you just want to start by responding to all that?

Washington-Price: It’s unfortunate we have to respond to this and respond to the president’s comments. But as the saying goes, when you’re winning, you talk about your candidate, and when you’re losing, you talk about your opponent.

Trump’s post was almost all about Annie Andrews, and it tells you everything you need to know. When a conversation is about grocery prices and gas and health care, he knows he and the Republicans are going to lose that conversation and lose that discussion.

Sargent: Let’s talk about South Carolina for a sec. Trump won there by a whopping 18 points in 2024. Lindsey Graham won his last election there in 2020 by over 10 points. This is a red state. Can you just give us the rough demographic breakdown?

Washington-Price: So we have about three and a half million registered voters in South Carolina. Two out of three of those voters are white, and about one in four are Black, right? There’s no party registration in the state of South Carolina, so as of now, anybody can vote across lines in the primary. So it makes it hard for us to kind of track registered Republicans or Democrats in the state.

But what we’ve seen, particularly with the base of Democrats in South Carolina, Black voters—some of your voters in places like Columbia, which is a very Democratic county, somewhat of Charleston and in Greenville, some of your larger counties—you’re seeing the base very excited, not only for Annie Andrews but for Democrats across the state, right?

So you’re seeing that enthusiasm. You’re also seeing kind of the disenchantment with Republicans, and we like to call them non-MAGA Republicans, who are just tired of the fight. And they’re tired of, again, these culture wars that Republicans have been putting on our state, and they are ready for change.

And white voters, they make about six in ten for Darline Graham. And then we see about three in ten for Annie Andrews, according to the latest polls. And for Black voters, I think we have up to eight and nine out of ten for Andrews, which are real numbers, right? Like, those are real numbers. They’re showing real enthusiasm.

And we’re hoping to get those numbers up and really go after some of these undecideds. I think the last poll had about 8, almost 9 percent undecided, still out there and up for grabs.

And I know Annie Andrews, her team, as well as the [independent expenditure]—we are doing everything we can to talk to those voters and put the real issues in front of them, and really showing Annie Andrews’s credentials. She’s a pediatrician, she’s a mom of three. She’s fought her whole life for affordable health care, and she has a real plan to get South Carolina and this country back on track.

Sargent: So brass tacks here. If you get really, really good turnout among Democrats, and Annie Andrews gets 90 percent of Democrats, something like that, maybe even higher, does well with independents—what percentage of Republican voters does she have to get to win?

Washington-Price: Percentage of Republican voters that we believe she would have to get to—I think it’s a short answer, roughly about one in five Republicans, if we can give or take away from the Republicans, right? I think we would do well. So roughly we would need between 15 to 20 percent of Republicans to get over 50 percent.

Sargent: That’s hard!

Washington-Price: It is. It’s very hard, right? And we always knew it was going to be an uphill battle, right? But again, I think even going back to the primary—you know, South Carolina was a part of the conversation around redistricting, right? And we were one of the Southern states to reject redistricting in the state.

And one of the reasons I think that was, too, is because I think Republicans in South Carolina saw the enthusiasm and kind of the fire that that lit around Democrats. We had some of the highest number of early voters among Democrats, and particularly Black voters in the South, show up in our primary.

And those voters aren’t just going away, right? They’re continuing to be fired up. We’ve been continuing to fire them up and communicate to them, on top of trying to pull over some of the Republicans. And I think that has to be our goal and our strategy in order to win.

It’s not going to be easy. South Carolina has not voted for a Democrat in the Senate since Jim DeMint. And I can’t tell you how old I was when that was. So it’s also—if you see even, like, David Beasley, who came out publicly condemning—he was a Republican governor in South Carolina—he came out condemning Trump and his comments about Annie Andrews.

I think you’re seeing more Republicans even kind of create a permission structure for Republicans in South Carolina to say this is enough. We’re tired of this. It’s time for something new. And I think you’re going to see even more of that as we get closer to Election Day. It’s not going to be easy, but we are very optimistic about it. And I think Republicans see that too, right?

Sargent: Well, yes. And since you brought up David Beasley, who’s a former Republican governor of South Carolina, I just pulled up his response. He was quite condemnatory of Trump. He was quite strong on this. He said, “This is abhorrent. Elections don’t have to be about cruelty and lies. South Carolina deserves better.”

That’s strong stuff. David Beasley, I’m guessing, is a fairly well-respected former politician. Is there an outside chance that a sizable bloc of Republican voters listen to a retired Republican in the MAGA era, when Donald Trump is issuing his commands to them to see her as as trans or whatever the hell he thinks he’s saying?

Washington-Price: Yeah, I really do believe so, right? And it goes back to what I said early about some of these Republicans creating a permission structure for other Republicans to be able to vote for a Democrat. And I think David Beasley laid it out correctly. It’s like, there is no place for that type of rhetoric anymore in the political conversational landscape.

Again, Trump and these Republicans know, when you talk about the issues, you talk about affordability, you talk about health care, they lose every time. And that’s why he goes back to kind of these culture wars that he’s no longer winning. I think you want to see more Republicans come out publicly and get at some of this stuff too.

Sargent: Well, let’s talk about the polls. There’s Trafalgar, which showed Darline Graham up a hair, by 43 to 42, over Annie Andrews. InsiderAdvantage had a poll finding Graham at 46 and Andrews at 45. So both of those have the race at around a point, which is just unthinkable. And those are Republican pollsters, as well. Are you guys polling?

Washington-Price: We have a poll out in the field now, so we’re hoping it comes back soon.

Sargent: OK. And where do you guys think the race is right now, candidly?

Washington-Price: I honestly think we’re in two-to-three-point striking distance from Darline Graham. Even when you think about kind of the generational divide—I think even the last polling, and we’re seeing it on the ground, had every age group under the age of fifty breaking for Annie Andrews. Again, you think about enthusiasm, you think about who is excited and wanting to show up to the polls for a change, those are the demographics and that’s the age group that we know will show out, right?

And I think even if we can’t convert some of these Republicans, to your point, if we can get them to stay home and just, you know, throw their hands up with it, that’s a win for us. And it kind of goes back to the messaging that we are trying to drill home to these voters, right? Who is going to be best for your families, who’s going to be best for your future, your kids’ future?

And I think that’s what we’re seeing in the polling. I think folks believe that it’s going to be Annie Andrews, and that Darline Graham does not have a plan for the state, and that she’s just going to be a rubber stamp for Trump and his failed policies. And people are tired of that.

Sargent: Would you guys like to see some Democratic money come into the state from places like the Senate Majority PAC or from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee?

Washington-Price: We would definitely love to see it, right? And I think there’s a long-term play for South Carolina. If we can flip the seat for Annie Andrews, I think it sends a signal across the country. It sends a signal across the South that we are competitive and we can stay competitive.

Georgia and North Carolina have done it, and we are right in the middle of both of those states. We share media markets with both of those states. And we think, you know, any resources that come into South Carolina will benefit Democrats, and it kind of is an investment that is a long play for Democrats in the South.

Sargent: Well, it’s worth pointing out that both Georgia and North Carolina right now, those races have Democrats pulling away. In Georgia, it’s Senator Jon Ossoff, who looks like he’s basically on track to having this sewn up. In North Carolina, it’s Roy Cooper, who’s running for the open seat there. He also seems to have this close to sewn up. Republicans are pulling money out of both states.

I mean, as long as I’ve been following politics, if you had told me a while ago that the states where Democrats would be running away are Georgia and North Carolina, I would have looked at you like you were nuts.

Washington-Price: That’s right. Yeah, that’s right.

Sargent: And so the demographic story in Georgia and North Carolina is sort of similar.

Washington-Price: They’re very similar to South Carolina. That’s right.

Sargent: Well, I’m going to ask you about that, because Virginia’s the big success story. That’s the Southern state that really first kind of moved in this direction that we’re talking about, with population growth in the northern parts of the state, the D.C. suburbs, kind of slowly outnumbering the vast rural structures of the state.

You see something similar but a little less pronounced in North Carolina, with some other East Coast hubs kind of really developing and becoming more Democratic and kind of slowly catching up with the rest of the state, which is enormously rural and red throughout. Is something like that happening in South Carolina? What’s the process there?

Washington-Price: I think so, right? South Carolina is one of the fastest-growing states in the country. Like, that is something that has been reported within the year. And I think you’re seeing that for a number of issues.

We’re seeing folks moving from across the country to places like South Carolina because of the affordability crisis that’s happening across our country. And they’re looking for opportunities, they’re looking for cheaper childcare, they’re looking for, you know, some affordable housing.

But what does that mean for a state like South Carolina, with these new people that have maybe come from bluer states or maybe even come from more moderate states, right? Like, how do we engage them? How do we get them kind of baked into the political culture in South Carolina? And how do we get them to vote for Democrats? And I think that is the type of long-term investment that we’re hoping not only the party, but some of these committees also will see and want to tap into.

And we’re seeing it in places like Mississippi and Alabama too. I do a lot of work across the South, and some of that’s kind of the same story we’re seeing across the board. You’re having folks that are moving into the state. You’re also having people move back, right, from the state, who were born and raised there, maybe left because of a number of issues, but they’re moving back. And we have to be able to capture those folks, engage with them, and talk about issues that are important to them.

And I think it’s a real opportunity for Democrats. But it has to continue and start now. Georgia and North Carolina didn’t just happen overnight. It took some work. And there’s a host of people, including, like, Stacey Abrams, who is to thank for that.

But I think because of that, you know, we’re seeing what Democrats can do when they win in these Southern states. And I think we just have to keep hammering home on what it means for Democrats to win in the South.

Sargent: Well, Democrats need a Southern strategy long term, because of what’s happening with some of these demographic changes in the North.

Washington-Price: That’s right.

Sargent: Which is, you know, chipping away at their Electoral College strongholds.

Washington-Price: That’s exactly right.

Sargent: OK, so you guys, the Fresh Start PAC—you guys are going up on the air in coming days, right? How much money are you putting in, and what’s the ad?

Washington-Price: This first tranche of ads that is coming out is about health care. It’s really hammering in on Annie Andrews’s kind of credentials and her fight when it comes to lowering health care costs in South Carolina. I think this first ad—and I’ll send you the article too, Greg—but we want to put about $2 million behind the first ad, and we’re still raising money. We’re hoping we get some more money.

Between me and you, I maybe shouldn’t announce this, and this might be breaking news, but we also have some testimonials from Republicans who have been lifelong Republicans who are breaking away from the party and voting for Annie Andrews, the first time voting for a Democrat. But they’re tired, and they’re fed up.

Sargent: So these Republicans are going to be in these ads?

Washington-Price: Yeah. We have some testimonials with Republicans that are on camera, that are going to be in ads.

Sargent: Why don’t you give us one or two names? Nothing wrong with breaking news here.

Washington-Price: So one I can give you is—his name is Scott Singer. He was a former county councilman from Aiken County, which you could say is a mostly Republican county, or goes back and forth. It’s Joe Wilson’s district. But he was a lifelong Republican, and he is tired of the party. He has said that he’s voting for Annie Andrews this election cycle.

Sargent: And he’s going to be in your ad saying that.

Washington-Price: He’s going to be in our ad saying that.

Sargent: OK, well, listen, best of luck to you all. It’s going to be an uphill climb, but it’s certainly worth watching.

Washington-Price: It is. Greg, thank you so much for your time and having me on.

Why? For two reasons. First of all, the numbers, as eye-watering as they are, may be setting us up for disappointment, even if Democrats have a solid night next month. They simply seem too good to be true. According to polls and forecasts, the Democrats are virtually guaranteed to win back the House. Fairly progressive Democrats (Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed, Maine’s Troy Jackson) are leading in blue-leaning swing states. More centrist Democrats (North Carolina’s Roy Cooper, Georgia’s Jon Ossoff) are comfortably ahead in swing states that traditionally lean a bit red.

It gets better. Democrats seem poised to win several races in states that have been reliably red in the Trump era: Alaska and Texas Senate, Iowa governor, the Senate and gubernatorial contests in Ohio. They have an outside chance of winning the governorship in Texas and Senate seats in Iowa and Kansas too.

I’m not done. Democrats could win enough governorships and state legislatures that a majority of Americans live in states with a Democratic trifecta next year. A Black politician from Milwaukee (David Crowley) is favored to win the governorship in Wisconsin, overcoming long-standing resentment against the state’s biggest city. In Georgia, Keisha Bottoms has a real chance of becoming the first Black woman elected governor in U.S. history.

Twenty-one months ago, after Donald Trump won a second term, I would have been thrilled if just one or two of the things I enumerated above happened. Now, the polls suggest a blue wave that would even eclipse 2006 or 2018. If the polls are right, we are looking at a political earthquake akin to 2008, when America, including Indiana and North Carolina, chose a Black man to be president. Democrats winning statewide elections in Texas raises the prospect of the party being competitive in the state that delivers the most Electoral College votes (40) to Republicans, putting GOP prospects in presidential elections in peril. If El-Sayed wins, it will be even harder for centrist Democrats and Republicans to argue that a potentially transformative politician such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can’t be elected president.

Some data experts say that we should trust the polls; others argue that they might be inflating Democrats’ chances. In my view, polls are generally reliable, but they can’t predict the winner of a race that’s within three to five points—as many of these contests are.

I’ll admit it: I don’t have a data-based reason to doubt the polls. It just comes from covering U.S. politics for more than two decades and being a Black person in America. I will believe that a Democrat can carry Texas the moment that the Associated Press or one of the television networks officially declares that Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico or gubernatorial hopeful Gina Hinojosa has won—and not a moment before. After all, a Democrat last won a Senate race or gubernatorial race in Texas in 1990. I worry that animus against Black women and Muslims is an understated barrier for Bottoms and El-Sayed, respectively. I worry that too many voters in the South both love Trump and hate Black people for Cooper or Ossoff to win by more than a few points. I worry that Maine’s voters can’t quit Republican incumbent Senator Susan Collins, no matter how often she disingenuously claims to be deeply concerned by something Trump has done.

And honestly, to assume that the big blue wave that’s being projected won’t happen is probably better for my mental health. I was saddened when the 2016 and 2024 elections did not permanently force Trump out of politics and put a woman in charge of the country for the first time. I was dismayed at how close the swing states were in 2020, considering how terrible Trump’s presidency had been.

My advice for TNR readers and other liberals would be to assume that Democrats win 48 or 49 Senate seats, 225 House seats, and nothing major in Ohio or Texas. That’s not a prediction; it’s an exercise in setting expectations at a realistic but low level.

Here’s a second reason to be wary of the polls: They are creating expectations that the mainstream media might use against Democrats. In January 2025, if you told reporters at AP, The New York Times, CNN, NBC News, and other centrist news outlets that Democrats were going to win 225 House seats and 49 Senate seats in November 2026, they might have been skeptical Democrats would do that well. In January, I wrote a piece that was titled “Amazingly, the Democrats Have a Shot at a Senate Majority,” reflecting how unlikely that seemed even nine months ago.

Now, polls and election forecasts based on those surveys are projecting a much stronger showing for Democrats. The “median outcome” of the election is 242 Democratic House seats and 52 in the Senate, according to FiftyPlusOne, an election site run by G. Elliott Morris and other alums of FiveThirtyEight. Other sites view it similarly: 235 Democrats in the House and 51 in the Senate (Decision Desk HQ); 232/52 (VoteHub); 234/52 (Split Ticket).

If Democrats fall short of these projections, even if they win 229 House seats and 50 in the Senate, I am quite confident the mainstream media will revert to its preferred approach to covering politics: centrism/false equivalence/balance/both sides/“independence.” Centrist news outlets will use headlines like “Voters Dislike Trump but Aren’t Sure About Democrats Either,” “Americans Hate Both Parties,” “American Voters Deliver a Mixed Verdict.”

This is nonsense, of course. Trump is an incredibly unpopular president, so disliked that Republicans are struggling to win in Texas. He is also an authoritarian figure bent on eroding democracy, including the freedom of the press. But the mainstream media is still eager to cast itself as above the fray, neutral, and certainly not opposed to a president trying to destroy its industry. If neither Talarico nor Hinojosa wins, the media will likely not cover this election as the decisive rejection of Trump that it almost certainly will be.

So for now, I’m taking the polls seriously but not literally, to borrow a formation from earlier in the Trump era. I am confident that Republicans will do worse in Kansas, Texas, Iowa, and other red states than usual. I am sure that some Democrats will win by larger margins in many swing states than seemed possible two years ago. But I will be delighted and surprised if there are Governors Bottoms, Crowley, and Hinojosa or Senators El-Sayed or Talarico. It could happen, though. The polls in 2026 look as rosy for Democrats as 2008. They were right back then. They could be right again.

This was my first time back in Ukraine for more than 30 years. I had previously come in Ukraine’s first year of independence in 1992. Back then, I had been invited to spend the year as a visiting professor at Kyiv Mohyla Academy, which was opening its doors for the first time since Russian Czar Alexander I shuttered them in 1819. It was a time of great hope and aspirations for Kyiv Mohyla and for Ukraine, which was attempting to navigate its existence after centuries of czarist and Soviet rule. The same could be said for me and my fellow idealistic (primarily young) American and European lecturers: We had responded to the “people power” that swept Central and Eastern Europe at the time by volunteering to teach in universities across the region as a part of an organization called the Civic Education Project. This idealism was symbolized by Havel himself, who had transformed from dissident playwright to president of Czechoslovakia and then Czech Republic.

Now, in 2026, I came for two reasons: to give a commencement speech at Kyiv School of Economics, or KSE, one of Ukraine’s most dynamic higher education institutions, and to help oversee and teach in an educational program for advanced high school students called Language and Thinking (affectionately known as L&T) offered at KSE by Bard College, where I am acting president.

Bard runs L&T around the globe, from its main campus on Annandale-on-Hudson to seven prisons in New York state to our program at Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem. L&T is really the introduction to the liberal arts and sciences, involving a careful reading of texts and a variety of writing practices that emphasize the iterative process between ideas and the written word. Most of all, it is about voice and agency, helping students to understand that they have the capacity to develop and express their own perspectives and views, that they are empowered thinkers. It is, as I say in countries that offer more traditional education systems, the antidote to rote learning. One can imagine how powerful L&T can be for young people whose own voices are being crowded out by artificial intelligence and the endless noise of social media.

In the Ukraine iteration of L&T, students read everything from Antigone to the Ukrainian Constitution. In the classroom at KSE, what struck me was how the program offered a metaphor for many of the changes I have seen in Ukraine over these past three decades, a way of tracking the trajectory from Kiev, as it was known under Soviet rule, to Kyiv, which reflects the Ukrainian pronunciation and symbolizes independence and autonomy. When I was in Ukraine, just after independence, the region was still often referred to as fSU, former Soviet Union. The economy and culture still reflected the Soviet imprint, as well as centuries of Russian imperial rule.

Although the country was visibly at war following Russia’s full-scale invasion of 2022, and ubiquitous phone apps rang regularly warning of drone and missile attacks, the streets of Kyiv were bustling with vibrant café and restaurant life, something totally absent while I was previously there and the country was in the midst of post-Soviet economic collapse. More importantly, Kyiv had become visibly Ukrainian, instead of a mix of Soviet, Russian, and Ukrainian: The language I heard on the street and in the cafés was Ukrainian, not Russian, and the sense of patriotism, be it in the display of national symbols or the various forms of memorializing the war dead, was palpable.

In the early 1990s, I taught students who had been raised in the Soviet style. They felt that they would accelerate academically if they repeated what I, the professor, said, often in shockingly verbatim forms, offering long recitations of things I had said in class. It was extremely difficult for them to understand that I wanted to know what they thought. It just did not compute.

The students I taught this summer, many from Kyiv but also from frontline communities in the east and south, were remarkably different. These young people are the first generation shaped since Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014. They were unquestionably and unambiguously Ukrainian.

But they were also Ukrainians who experienced war on a daily basis. The course was in part a sobering search for normalcy that could be achieved by diving into texts. But this was not a simple escape or diversion. After just a couple of days, they were, like their country, confident in their views—their individual views—and determined to articulate them, even if they were a multivocal community.

Perhaps the most inspiring moment came when I taught Havel’s “The Power of the Powerless,” in which we interrogated something I have been thinking a lot about lately, which is “living in truth.” The essay is about pressures in post-1968 Czechoslovakia—that is, after the Soviets brutally put down the “Prague Spring” uprising—to, as it were, passively comport to and perpetuate the myths of the post-totalitarian order by becoming obedient agents of a hollow ideology.

That was not these students. For them, the daily realities of war are so present and raw that there is no space for artifice. Their engagement with social and political issues spoke to the heart of “living in truth,” which Havel described as “an attempt to regain control over one’s own sense of responsibility.” Their very act of participating in an educational program in the face of a massive assault by the Putin government that has attempted to impose a uniformity of thought and eviscerate any notion of academic freedom was itself an act of living in truth.

But their engagement was not simply an act of resistance. Their manifest nationalism and confidence in being Ukrainian did not mean that they were afraid to criticize the Ukrainian government: Many students were openly critical of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and sympathetic to anti-government protests that took place over the summer in response to the dismissal of young Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who is viewed as the architect of Ukraine’s massively successful drone strategy.

I couldn’t help but notice, moreover, that they were embracing their freedoms in ways that reflect back to us our own reluctance to fight for those freedoms in the United States: the freedom to learn, the freedom to think for oneself, the freedom to disagree in the classroom and in the public square.

For me this was a remarkable turn. When I had originally gone to Ukraine as I was completing my doctorate at Oxford, I was full of youthful exuberance and arrogance as I was teaching students about things like human rights and rule of law. Now, I was being reminded both of the ways in which so many in America today, both individually and institutionally, and particularly in positions of leadership, are willing, as Havel said, to “live within a lie.”

What would Havel think of the top officials at Florida International University, the home of the Havel Center for Human Rights & Democracy, after they sanctioned students for standing in silent protest while wearing “ICE OFF FIU” T-shirts, charging that they violated policies prohibiting “expressive activities” inside campus buildings? What would he think of the academic institutions that have expressed enthusiasm for the different versions of the administration’s “compacts,” or that are choosing to wave the banner of neutrality enthusiastically in order to avoid punishment from the regime, just as the greengrocer, the central character in the Havel essay, did in posting the sign, “Workers of the world, unite”? Would he think that they were perpetuating, as the greengrocer had, the ruling party’s ideology?

The antidote to the melancholy that I felt in reflecting on the transformation that had taken place in my own country in the decades since I first visited Ukraine was situated in the infectious idealism of my student, the chief organizer of the course, Yana Lahoda. Yana is a rising senior at Bard who is from near Zaporizhzhia, where Russians still occupy the nuclear power plant where her father worked. She still speaks Russian with her parents, who now live in Germany. But she is determined to be part of the effort to build a new Ukraine. The L&T program is only the first step in her plans: When she graduates, she intends to return to build an early college in Ukraine as a part of an effort to jump-start what she hopes is a civically robust postwar Ukraine. For her, living in truth is not a choice but a reality that exists in every fiber of her existence.

Havel wrote of young people who were “given every opportunity to adapt to the status quo, to accept the principles of living with a lie and thus to enjoy life undisturbed by the authorities,” and yet who “decided on a different course.” Yana’s determination, in the face of a genuine existential threat, was a stark reminder of the power of idealism, the importance of education, and the fact that courage is not simply manifested in broad public gestures but in small acts of resistance. Acts that so often begin with writing and with thinking.

Now in his seventies, Fukuyama’s new retrospective inadvertently reveals that it’s the liberal democratic model that seems unready for the next century. Able to see the flaws in his system but unwilling to countenance the type of politics that might transcend them, Fukuyama has produced a book emblematic of a “centrism” still proudly fighting the last brushfires of the twentieth century long after the wildfires of the twenty-first have swept by them. Apparently meant as a kind of valedictory statement, In The Realm of the Last Man announces not just the latest phase of Fukuyama’s career but the exhaustion of the ideas that career rested on.

This career, as he reveals in the book’s opening vignette, began in California, where he first arrived to take up an internship at the Rand Corporation in 1978. That position was part of a quest to avoid what Fukuyama calls an “overdetermined outcome”: becoming an academic. “While I was growing up,” he writes, “I told myself I didn’t want to be a professor,” a path he rejected even after getting his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1981. The son of first- and second-generation Japanese immigrants, Fukuyama came from an academic family. His father, Yoshio Fukuyama, was a congregationalist minister and sociologist who served on the faculty at the Chicago Theological Seminary and Penn State. His mother, Toshiko, herself the daughter of an economics professor and university president, had survived World War II in Japan before emigrating to the United States in 1949 to attend the University of Chicago.

Yoshio, his son writes, was a “committed liberal and pacificist,” the source of some tension as Francis drifted rightward during his college years under the mentorship of Allan Bloom (the classicist most famous for authoring The Closing of the American Mind). The elder Fukuyama had narrowly escaped internment by the U.S. government during the war thanks to a scholarship program that helped Japanese American students attend universities outside the military exclusion zones on the West Coast. His parents and siblings had not been so lucky, spending the entirety of the war unjustly incarcerated in camps in Colorado and Arkansas. Whether those experiences influenced his father’s views, Francis does not say; regardless, Yoshio “and his church were at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement and opposition to the Vietnam War.” Yoshio often suggested that his son had been “brainwashed” by right-wing professors, and during a visit to California in the 1980s wondered aloud whether Francis would ever leave the Department of Defense–aligned Rand and “get a real job” elsewhere.

Fukuyama would, eventually, become a professor like his father, the result of another transition in which Bloom played a key role. In 1988, while Fukuyama was working for the State Department, Bloom invited him to speak at the University of Chicago as part of a lecture series gloomily titled “The Decline of the West.” Fukuyama accepted, provided he could present a “more optimistic take.” His talk was called “The End of History?” and it was published in article form the following summer.

In the piece (which he later turned into a bestselling book), Fukuyama championed a new political order—that which emerged in the 1970s and 1980s as Cold War tensions ebbed and the welfare states of the West staggered under the weight of rising oil prices and slow economic growth. The new order was a fusion of two insurgent sets of ideas, often called “neoconservatism” and “neoliberalism.” The former responded to the declining Cold War by arguing for the U.S. to use its power to aggressively spread liberal democratic ideals across the world. The latter, meanwhile, proposed solving the economic crises of the period by gutting the welfare state to free the economy to innovate and grow.

Fukuyama, for his part, saw this moment as the end of a long process of human evolution, one spanning from the primitive societies of the Stone Age past to the advanced industrial economies of the twentieth century. This idea of human history as an evolutionary process was borrowed openly from Alexandre Kojève, a Russo-French philosopher famous on the continent for a series of lectures he gave on philosopher G.W.F. Hegel in the 1930s (and about whom Fukuyama had learned from Bloom). Building on Hegel, Kojève depicted history as a millennia-old battle for “recognition” between dominant groups—“masters”—and their subordinates—“slaves.” The masters would employ belief systems to justify their rule, while the slaves would, with time, develop new ideas that revealed the weaknesses in the masters’ system. The result of the conflict between the “thesis” of the master and the “antithesis” of the slave would be a period of conflict and confusion, before a new “synthesis” was born, fusing the old ideas with the new. This three-step process was destined to continue on repeat until a final structure emerged, one that equally distributed recognition between master and slave, removing the age-old sources of conflict by granting all parties the recognition they desired. Kojève believed just such an idea system had arrived with the emergence of liberalism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries—history had thus “ended,” not in the sense that there wouldn’t continue to be wars and historical events, but instead meaning humanity had reached its evolutionary end point.

Fukuyama’s career-making triumph was suggesting that the events of the late twentieth century indicated such an end might really be in the offing, pointing to Mikhail Gorbachev’s economic and political liberalization of the Soviet Union, Deng Xiaoping’s contemporaneous opening of the Chinese economy, and a wave of democratization and economic liberalization in the global south. The subsequent collapse of the Soviet empire seemed to further confirm Fukuyama’s thesis, transforming an obscure State Department staffer into an intellectual celebrity.

Finally accepting his scholastic fate, he took up an endowed chair at George Mason University in 1996. The first of several academic posts (including later positions at Johns Hopkins and Stanford), it was the beginning of a long and successful career as an academic, consultant, and public thinker. The “end of history” idea, meanwhile, came to define the age, as a dominant United States loomed over a globe seemingly destined to transform into one vast mirror image of America.

More nuanced a scholar than many other neoconservatives and pro-market idealogues, Fukuyama emerged from all this as one of the most talented defenders of this new post–Cold War order, his very reticence in its support seemingly signaling his reliability. Never an orthodox neoliberal calling for the complete deregulation of the economy, for example, Fukuyama remained an ardent supporter of economic liberalization—usually finding other causes, like “social trust,” a concept he wrote about a great deal in the late 1990s, to explain problems others might have attributed to money’s machinations. He was also relatively wary of the use of military force abroad and yet still signed two open letters urging the United States to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, one in 1998 and another, more significantly, in late September 2001.

It was with Iraq that things began to unravel. In private, Fukuyama was growing increasingly skeptical of what became George W. Bush’s March 2003 invasion of the country—hedging his bets in editorials and interviews over the course of 2002, suggesting that removing Saddam was justifiable but dangerous and that the U.S. should not proceed without U.N. support. He also reportedly warned, or cautioned, his friend and fellow neocon, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, against the invasion in a classified briefing in early 2003. He took a clear public stand against the war, however, only in 2004, after it was too late.

“The problem,” as he admits in the book, “was psychological … not a matter of policy judgment.” Though Fukuyama “knew full well that the intervention was likely to lead to huge unintended consequences,” he felt “a mental block against taking a public stand against the views of longtime friends” and allies like Wolfowitz, The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, and the columnist Charles Krauthammer. By the following February—as the situation in Iraq worsened and the invasion’s supporters continued to insist the mission was a success—Fukuyama had had enough, determining that his “friends … had taken leave of reality.” He would denounce the war in the pages of The New York Times soon after.

Fukuyama later broke even more decisively with neoconservative thinking in his 2006 book, America at the Crossroads, and would endorse Barack Obama in 2008. By this point, not only had neoconservatism lost its shine due to the disaster in Iraq, but so too had neoliberalism, thanks to the Great Recession that began with the collapse of Lehman Brothers that September. As he writes in the memoir, “The twin failures of the war and of the financial system did a lot to discredit conservative ideas about the uses of military power and of free markets, mistakes for which America paid a huge price.”

Fukuyama deserves a great deal of credit for abandoning his previous positions once it was clear they were wrong—a rare enough trait in academia, as well as the punditocracy—but, as a widely respected scholar who apparently knew better, staying quiet about the war seems a bigger mistake than he acknowledges in these pages. He also further tests the reader’s tolerance for his mea culpas by describing the isolation he suffered after being cast out of neocon social circles—recalling a silent and “a painful ride up … in an elevator to a party” with Krauthammer and his wife, for example—right before admitting his break with the movement was “nothing like having your brains drilled out by an opposing militiaman, or losing your legs to an IED.” It’s an odd juxtaposition, however humble the intention.

On the whole, Fukuyama does not seem properly chastened by the events of the past two decades—mixing a strange complacency about the deeper problems confronting liberal democracy with attacks on straw-men versions of those who seek its reform.

These issues appear to stem from his continued attachment to the end of history thesis. In his mind, the biggest problems of the world in 2026—Donald Trump and the rise of authoritarianism draw most of his attention—are part of the tribulations of the “last man” of his title. The “last men” (and “last women”) are all of us living today in liberal societies. We, Fukuyama argues, are the “last” because we live in a time and place when history has ended, where all the big questions have already been answered. This, he suggests, is fundamentally unsatisfactory for many, because an inherent part of being human is in fact the desire to be part of history, to struggle for causes larger than oneself. “When the world is actually in pretty good shape,” he writes, and “there are no great causes worthy of risking one’s life,” people start to get restless. Thus, they pursue “struggle for struggle’s sake,” taking apart a perfectly good political order in the foolish pursuit of an impossible perfection. The primary culprits here for Fukuyama are “the extreme right and left.”

While he reserves most of his ire for the MAGA right, Fukuyama is also unwavering in lecturing members of the (so-called) radical left. Much of the analysis on this score is thin and unreasoned. Though Fukuyama admits that the left focuses on problems truly in need of fixing—like economic inequality, climate change, and “the plight of Palestinian civilians … in Gaza,” for example—he still thinks most activists are motivated primarily by boredom. Of students protesting Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, he sniffs, “What they want is a break from their lives of steady but unheroic striving.” Ignoring the glaringly obvious differences between U.S. policy in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, he argues that if the protesters were serious about improving the world they would be “similarly outraged at the situation of Ukrainians besieged by Russia.”

In another sleight of hand, he proclaims that “virtually all progressive visions for an alternative to the current liberal order have been tried already,” or “have already been happily incorporated into present day social democratic welfare states.” (Never mind the work his ideological fellow travelers did to dismantle the midcentury welfare state decades ago.) Briefly acknowledging the desirability of a carbon tax, he also castigates “extreme environmentalists” and the very small “de-growth” movement, leaving the reader with the impression that the latter effectively characterizes the entirety of the environmentalist cause. On all these issues, he insists paternally, the real answer is not “radical change” but the “boring” work of “slow, steady … reform.” Who is going to bring about this reform if not the very people he is dismissing, and when and how it should be expected to arrive, are questions he leaves unanswered.

And herein lies the problem with the “end of history” as an idea: It’s an intellectual trap, limiting our ability to imaginatively confront the future. If the current form of liberal democracy is more or less the best we can hope for, then Fukuyama is right and no problem is worth too radical a reform. We must throw up our hands and simply wait for things to somehow, miraculously, get better—wait for the powers that be to have the spare time to fix up the small projects left unfinished in our otherwise well-founded post-historical home. Meanwhile, perhaps we can take up woodworking, one of the several hobbies (along with photography and flying drones) that Fukuyama describes in strange, avuncular asides that fill the book.

But as it is, the end of history thesis plainly fails to account for important features of our reality. As long as capital continues to dominate the worker, liberal society will be inherently unstable—as is the case today, thanks to four decades of neoliberal economic policy and the rampant inequality it created. End of history liberalism also hides another master-and-slave relationship that must be addressed: that between wealthy industrial states and those of the former colonized world. As long as the bond between affluence in the one and poverty in the other is obscured, the liberal synthesis will continue to generate destabilizing antitheses among the world’s poor and oppressed, in Gaza and elsewhere.

Finally, there is the dialectic between humanity and nature. The very idea of historical progress is premised on the flawed assumption that humanity has separated itself from its natural origins, that—as Kojève himself described it—human progress “creates … a non-natural World, a cultural historical human World” where “man lives an essentially different life from that of animals.” Such logic renders the environment a mere object for our disposal, an utterly plastic means to human ends, open to whatever purposes we seek to put it toward, whether they be rampant consumerism or launching rockets to the moon. Nature in 2026 is exposing that lie, forcing on us the recognition it deserves—whether as equal or master remains to be seen—flooding into our homes, melting our cities, and burning our fields.

Liberal democracy’s achievements should be cherished—yes—but they should not be embalmed. Reflecting on a long career tied to the idea, Fukuyama can perhaps still afford to live at the end of history. The rest of us cannot.

All that remains is for the House clerk to compile a list of new members from the certified winners of the November races. It is an administrative technicality, a rote task that has gone off largely without incident every two years since 1789.

At least it did before Donald Trump turned the Republican Party into an election-denying cult. Now it has become the latest tool in the GOP arsenal to overturn election losses. Following the Democrats’ triumph in November, House Speaker Mike Johnson replaced the nonpartisan House clerk with a MAGA loyalist. Citing allegations of election fraud, the new clerk announces that he will not accept the documents certifying Democratic wins in key races. As a result, the members-elect cannot take their seats. 

The Democratic National Committee unleashes an army of lawyers to challenge the move. But when the matter arrives before the Supreme Court, the Roberts majority, invoking the “political question doctrine,” rules that it cannot interfere in the internal operations of another branch.

And just like that, the Republicans have stolen the midterms.

According to election experts, this scenario, though unlikely, is entirely feasible. Worse, such a scheme might prove to be a dress rehearsal for the main event: a GOP gambit to overturn the 2028 presidential election. In 2020, Trump lost the election but tried to hang onto power regardless. Why would 2028 be any different?

Sure, Trump is barred from running for another term, but the Roberts majority might not see it that way. In any case, one would scarcely expect a different nominee to show more respect for the democratic process. That includes JD Vance. “If I had been vice president” in 2020, he once mused, “I would have told the states … that we needed to have multiple slates of electors”—a reference to an illegal scheme to keep Trump in office.

Freedom-loving people need to plan ahead to counter any Trumpian coup. Fortunately, there is an effective blueprint that we can follow.

The idea of the Trump administration successfully defying an election loss might seem fanciful. After all, these guys are not the sharpest tools in the shed. Perhaps they would try, but could they really pull it off?

They probably won’t. Even still, complacency is dangerous in the face of a cold-blooded autocrat who’s already challenged laws and defied norms willy-nilly. What Trump and his allies lack in brains, they make up for in power. He failed to reverse the 2020 election because the White House and federal bureaucracy were staffed by professionals who refused to go along with the plan.

That is no longer the case. The institutionalists who once stymied Trump’s authoritarian ambitions are long gone. In their place are MAGA flunkies committed to doing the president’s bidding. With their help, he could conceivably defy any resistance from Congress and the Supreme Court.

Leading experts agree that the U.S. has transitioned to authoritarianism during Trump’s second term. The days when constitutional checks and balances were enough to keep a rogue president in line are over. What’s more, defeating a Republican at the ballot box no longer guarantees that he will accept defeat.

Still, Trump is not some omnipotent demigod casting thunderbolts at will upon his hapless subjects. No dictator can rule without the people’s consent. Withdraw that consent, and he is just another guy with a spray tan and a chancy comb-over.

Nonviolent rebellion—the strategic use of protests, strikes, and similar methods—has paralyzed authoritarian regimes and forced despots from power the world over. It can work in America too.

Political scientists have found that nonviolent rebellion is the most reliable path from dictatorship to democracy. Decades of research point to four steps that successful rebellions follow.

Consider Serbia, where a handful of students launched a movement called Otpor! (“Resistance!”) that brought down strongman Slobodan Milošević in October 2000. The first step was to get organized. Members set up chapters in dozens of towns, trained volunteers in nonviolent resistance, and forged links with labor unions, nongovernmental organizations, independent media, and opposition parties.

Second, they used the dictator’s repression against him. Instead of trying to avoid it, they harnessed the public outrage that it sparked. This backfire effect proved to be their best recruitment tool.

Eventually, Milošević forced through constitutional changes that allowed him to run for another term. Soon after, he called an early election. When the votes were counted, he had lost decisively. But he was not about to heed the will of the voters. The movement had to ramp up the pressure, but how?

Protests can be effective at signaling public support. But they rarely damage a regime on their own. So the third step was to diversify resistance methods. The rebels complemented their protests with a general strike that brought the country to a halt.

The fourth and final step was to sweep away the dictator’s pillars of support. For months, the movement had been courting police officers, officials, and other regime insiders. When hundreds of thousands converged on Belgrade on October 5, Milošević’s loyalists saw the writing on the wall and abandoned him in droves. Even the police stood aside. He had no choice but to concede.

It was a stunning feat. But it would have been much harder to pull off were it not for Otpor!’s efforts to maintain nonviolent discipline. Pitched street battles with police might have galvanized Milošević’s allies to close ranks rather than defect. Such violence could also have sapped public support for the rebellion, preventing the backfire effect from working.

If the conventional political process is not sufficient to restore democracy, nonviolent rebellion remains the most effective tool. To counter GOP election theft, Americans might have to mount a rebellion of their own. The good news is that our fellow citizens have already produced one such movement during Trump’s second term.

When jackbooted federal thugs began forcing Minnesotans into unmarked vans, Minneapolitans responded. First, they got organized. Activist groups trained citizens in specific resistance tactics. They also established support networks for immigrant families who had been forced into hiding.

Second, they used the dictator’s repression against him. The sight of armed thugs manhandling children brought waves of new recruits into the resistance. By the end of January, local organizations had trained nearly 30,000 citizen-volunteers to monitor federal agents.

Third, they deployed a range of nonviolent resistance methods, including protests, boycotts, and the tracking of ICE agents.

As for step four—sweeping away the dictator’s pillars of support—Trump and his goons took care of that by themselves. The tragic killings of two resisters, Alex Pretti and Renee Good, proved to be a tipping point. Public anger over the shootings prompted numerous allies to break from the president. A leading GOP gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota dropped out of the race. Republican members of Congress spoke out against the roundups.

With the pressure mounting, Trump was forced to beat a public retreat. Gestapo enthusiast Greg Bovino was shown the door. Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem was relieved of operational responsibility and eventually sacked.

In the coming years, Americans might have to replicate this feat on a bigger stage. Only this time, the goal will be to reverse a stolen election. The four steps above offer a road map to victory. But the work starts now. If Serbia and Minnesota proved anything, it is this: The people determine whether the dictator rules—not the other way around.

In the latest installment of Senior Moment or Shocking Admission?, the president offered an outrageous defense against anyone complaining that his so-called “six-week war” had stretched on for more than seven months.

“We really ended it as soon as the B2 bombers hit, because that was the end of their nuclear [program], that was 95 percent of the reason we did it. Maybe 100 percent,” he said.

Trump was referring to a series of strikes using “bunker buster” bombs on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025. That was a full eight months before he ordered attacks in March 2026.

Clearly, those strikes didn’t actually end the war in the Middle East.

This particular comment is concerning in light of the Trump administration officials who have previously contradicted Trump’s claims that Iran’s nuclear program presented any imminent threat to national security.

If Trump’s initial bombing campaign had satisfied his desire for violence, then 22 U.S. servicemembers would likely not have been killed, hundreds more would not have been injured, and the Department of Defense wouldn’t have tried to cover it up. Multiple U.S. bases in the Middle East would still be standing, and the DOD wouldn’t have tried to cover that up, too. Hundreds of Iranian civilians, including dozens of school children, would still be alive. A U.S. battleship would never have been deployed for hundreds of days, leading to a number of attempted suicides. The Pentagon would not have spent more than $45 billion, and the U.S. military weapons’ stockpile would not have shrunk to dangerous levels.

If only Trump’s pissing contest with Iran had somehow ended before it ever started. Yes, if only.

In a two-minute video posted on social media, the supposedly nonpartisan agency decried “democratic socialist leaders” for calling to defund the police. The video included footage of multiple Democrats calling to defund the police, including former Vice President Kamala Harris, current and former Representatives Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush, and Ilhan Omar, and, of course, El-Sayed, who is running for office in November’s midterm elections.

“Not reform. Defund the police as policy,” the video’s narration stated. “As the path they said would keep you safer. In the cities that led the charge, the street told a different story. What followed was a complete failure.” There is little data that supports this, and crime rates have been in decline for years.

The video praised Patel’s leadership, and touted a major increase in the arrest of violent criminals. It’s worth noting that Patel has reportedly instituted a policy of double-counting these arrests with those made by other law enforcement agencies, and has faced criticism for his disastrous leadership.

Federal law clearly prohibits the use of government funds for campaign purposes, partisan political messaging, and propaganda. A wildly inaccurate attack ad against a Democratic candidate would more than count under all three of these categories—and it’s more than a little ironic that the FBI’s latest video preaching law and order likely violated federal law. But under the Trump administration, it’s clear that nothing will be done.

Recently, the Trump administration has used at least 5.6 million taxpayer dollars to buy a series of at least 15 campaign-style advertisements touting the president’s agenda ahead of November’s midterm elections. In order to make and air those videos, the Trump administration stole the money from the Department of Homeland Security, specifically from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Defense firm Andruil Industries is announcing that it is building a two-million-square-foot submarine manufacturing facility in Sparrows Point, Maryland, a deal that Moore helped put together and that is expected to create thousands of jobs. Trump is visiting the site and speaking about the investment on Tuesday and is barring Moore from speaking, the governor told The Baltimore Banner.

“That’s correct,” Moore said to reporters following a debate with his Republican gubernatorial opponent, Dan Cox. “I will not be there later on today. This was going to be a deal that we helped break. This is going to be the largest private investment that we have seen in over a decade inside the state of Maryland.”

“If the president of the United States wants to bring the circus in town and tell me that I’m not allowed to speak, despite the fact we were the ones that helped bring the deal, then I will let the circus be conducted while I go back to the work of the people of Maryland,” Moore added.

An unnamed White House official told CNN that Moore was “graciously” invited as a guest but didn’t deny that Trump was blocking the governor from speaking.

“It’s unfortunate that the Governor is now making a multibillion-dollar announcement about himself by throwing a tantrum over a federal initiative that will bring sorely needed jobs back to his state thanks to President Trump,” the official said.

Other Maryland Democrats, such as Representative Johnny Olszewski Jr., whose district encompasses the new facility, were scheduled to speak but pulled out after news that Moore wouldn’t be allowed to make remarks.

Trump has never been a fan of Moore, uninviting him from a bipartisan dinner that included nearly every other state governor, accusing him of committing electoral fraud, and blaming him for a sewage spill in the Potomac River. Meanwhile, Moore is leading his Trump-supporting Republican opponent, Dan Cox, in polls for November’s election.

Inside Washington

Maine’s 2nd congressional district, covering 92 percent of the state, is the largest congressional district east of the Mississippi River. And right now, the largely rural, white population is getting ready to choose between two candidates: Democrat Matt Dunlap, who is a progressive and an avid hunter, or Republican and former two-term Governor Paul LePage, who once said “tell them to kiss my butt” when asked about criticism from the NAACP. 

In the race to replace Democratic Representative Jared Golden, who isn’t seeking reelection, polling is mixed. Dunlap, a member of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s, or DCCC, Red to Blue program supporting candidates in close races, was up six points in a University of New Hampshire poll from late September. Other surveys, however, show a dead heat or LePage slightly ahead.

On Monday, Dunlap held a health care–focused press conference, amid a cost-of-living crisis exacerbated by the Trump administration’s war on Iran and tariff policies. These issues are a particularly powerful weapon against LePage, who vetoed Medicaid expansion six times as governor and called last year’s One Big, Beautiful Bill Act “the greatest thing that can happen to the Maine people” (LePage was referring to the bill’s “no tax on tips” provision, but the legislation also cut Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion).

Dunlap said that the cost of health care is one of the main issues he’s heard about from Mainers. In a conversation with The New Republic, he described a conversation with a resident who was considering selling their home to afford health care costs and another person whose insurance costs went from $560 to $2,700 per month when Affordable Care Act subsidies expired in December.

Mainers are also worried about the cost of gas and heating oil, which could hurt LePage like it hurts every other Republican candidate in 2026. Maine is more reliant on heating oil than any other state in the country, and prices have skyrocketed this year. “The first frost warning for much of the state is tomorrow night, maybe tonight,” said Mark Brewer, the chair of the Political Science Department at the University of Maine, which is located in the second district. “It’s cold here. Winters are long here.”

LePage has tried to distance himself somewhat from President Trump’s agenda. He came out against Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods and has emphasized his focus on affordability as governor. The district is historically conservative, and voted for Trump all three times he was on the ballot. But, said Amy Fried, a retired professor of political science at the University of Maine, “This district is one where people are OK with splitting their tickets.” She explained that, in election years past, it wasn’t unusual to see houses with signs for Trump, GOP Senator Susan Collins, and Democratic Representative Jared Golden together in one yard. “Or pretty much any combination you could think of,” she added.

Republicans in past elections have typically portrayed their opponents as out-of-touch leftists. So far, LePage has struggled to apply that playbook to Dunlap. “He doesn’t look like a wild-eyed radical in any way,” said Fried of Dunlap. “His personality is extremely even-keeled, and a friend of mine said the other day that he looks like an insurance salesman.” 

Asked about LePage recently telling Fox News Digital that the race is about “common sense versus crazy,” Dunlap seemed unfazed: “That’s what they say when they don’t have anything else to throw at you,” he told The New Republic. “MAGA Republicans,” Dunlap said, “are very good at demonizing and bringing up the wedge [issues] about the woke agenda and the Democratic Socialists of America.” But, he added, “I’m less susceptible to that because I hadn’t heard of the Democratic Socialists of America until we heard about the Mamdani campaign.”

Dunlap has also played up his experience as a fisherman and hunter. He’s a founding board member of the Maine Youth Fish and Game Association, and the former executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine. One ad shows him fishing, boating, hunting, and shooting a rifle. At the end of the video, he puts down the gun and turns to the camera, saying: “I’ve always defended our Second Amendment rights, and in Congress, I’ll do the same.”

“You can’t question his bona fides on outdoors kind of stuff, or guns,” said Brewer. “He can go toe-to-toe with any Republican on those issues.” Golden, who won this district four times, is a Marine Corps veteran who has similar credibility on guns, an important issue in the district.

Both Brewer and Fried echoed what polls have suggested: This is a tight race that could go either way. Brewer said that much could hinge on the support that Dunlap gets from national Democrats in the next month. He pointed to the DCCC’s apparent hesitancy to add him to the Red to Blue program—Dunlap beat out the DCCC’s preferred candidate in June, but wasn’t added to the program until late August—as a potential issue. “The support still, to me, doesn’t seem like what it would be, or what it could be, or maybe should be in this tight of a race,” he said. “I think he could use some more money.”

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

Early voting is now in progress across multiple states, having started on Monday in Maine, California, Nebraska, and Montana (although there it’s technically called a “late registration” period for absentee voting). New Mexico, Indiana, Wyoming, and Ohio begin on Tuesday, and Arizona starts on Wednesday. Early voting and early absentee voting (differentiated by whether a ballot is cast directly into a ballot counter) has been underway in Illinois and Minnesota for weeks. Several other states join next week. Pennsylvania technically doesn’t have early in-person voting, but it actually sort of does, since you can show up, get a mail-in ballot, and then hand it back. Voting rights advocates have typically urged people to vote early if possible, in part for convenience and to avoid lines, and in part so that there’s time to sort things out if there’s a problem. On Saturday, President Trump urged Republicans to vote early or by mail—measures he has previously opposed and tried to restrict.

As key Senate and House races in Texas, Maine, Iowa, Michigan, Alaska, Ohio, and more continue to dominate headlines, fewer people are watching California. But over the weekend, Bernie Sanders stopped by California’s conservative Central Valley to give Democrat Randy Villegas a boost in his attempt to unseat David Valadao in the race for California’s 22nd district. Ever since Villegas’s victory over moderate, DCCC-backed Jasmeet Bains in the primary, part of the narrative in this race has focused on whether Villegas is too far left for this “historically conservative, low-turnout area,” as CalMatters puts it. But as Sanders’s visit shows, Villegas isn’t running away from his progressivism. Dems have been fixated on beating Valadao for years, so if a progressive is finally the one to do it, it’ll be quite the story. While public polling in the 22nd has been almost nonexistent this cycle, a Democratic PAC poll in June showed Villegas up four points.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

The Natural Resources Defense Council issued a statement on Suncor v. Boulder, the big climate case the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for on Monday. Suncor Energy is asking SCOTUS to throw out the suit from the city and county of Boulder, Colorado, over the devastating damages of climate change, including from the Marshall fire in 2021. “Coal, oil, and gas companies have made trillions of dollars in profits from the sale of fuels that are driving the climate crisis. They have knowingly misled the public for decades” and lobbied to delay climate policies, said NRDC senior vice president for environmental health Matthew Tejada. “Now a staggering bill is coming due.… The fossil fuel industry has a responsibility to help pay for the damage its products have caused.”

On Wednesday at 4 p.m., the Center for Strategic and International Studies will host a webcast looking back at the anthrax postal attacks 25 years ago. Retired Maj. Gen. Paul Friedrichs will moderate a discussion between Wendi Kuhnert of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and former GOP Senator Richard Burr.

On Thursday, the Institute for Policy Studies will hold its 50th annual Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards, honoring Unidos MN and La Liga Sindical Obrera Mexicana for their work mobilizing “communities” to “defend their rights.” Unidos MN gained widespread recognition training people to document ICE abuses in Minnesota, and in recent months has shifted to getting out the vote for the midterm elections. La Liga, also known as the Mexican Workers’ League, is a relatively recent independent union—as opposed to the dominant so-called “protection unions” in Mexico that tend to favor employers’ interests.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Four Questions For: Aaron Eisenberg, political director for United Auto Workers Region 9A

Q: Who are you, and what are you working on right now?
A: Region 9A represents 50,000 active and retired members across New York, New England, and Puerto Rico. After notching some amazing victories in New York this year, right now, our priorities are electing our former member Troy Jackson to the U.S. Senate in Maine, training our members to run campaigns and run for office, passing local and state legislation to strengthen worker power, winning unemployment for striking workers, and making it easier to unionize.

Q: The UAW backed insurgent—and ultimately victorious—candidates like Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York primaries this year, while many established unions supported their opponents. What did the UAW understand about this political moment that others missed?

Political Trivia Question of the Day  

With Trump having visited Nebraska: A Nebraska Republican senator once defended a Nixon Supreme Court nominee criticized as mediocre by saying: “Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance?” Who was he? (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

—Michael Tomasky

According to his arrest report, 46-year-old Danilo Alves Silva was aggressively pacing between polling locations and interacting with people who seemed to be “in fear” of him at Miami-Dade College’s Kendall Campus. He was wearing an ICE costume that he allegedly purchased on Amazon, complete with a blue “ICE raid jacket,” an ICE hat, sunglasses, jeans, and tactical boots, according to the arrest report. His face was covered with a camouflage mask and he was speaking into a handheld radio.

When confronted by detectives and sheriff’s deputies from the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, Silva said that he was wearing the costume “so that I can come here to see people’s reactions.”

“The people were gathered and were clearly in fear that, as they portrayed it, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE agent was interfering with their election, possibly deporting individuals,” the arrest report reads.

Silva claimed that he himself was a Brazilian voter and he changed into the ICE costume after casting his ballot, apparently just to see what would happen. To make matters worse, he attempted to bribe law enforcement officers after his arrest, telling them, “I will get you paid if you let me go.”

Brazil’s closely watched presidential election is seen by many as a referendum on President Trump’s influence in South America, pitting right-wing Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of disgraced Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro, against leftist incumbent Lula da Silva. The election will move to a runoff in October.

This arrest comes amid widespread anxiety that ICE or other federal law enforcement officials at the polls may interfere in voters’ ability to cast their ballots on America’s Election Day, less than a month away. FBI Director Kash Patel himself hasn’t ruled out sending the bureau’s agents to voting locations in November, ostensibly to prevent “violations of the law,” though their presence would more likely frighten and intimidate voters. Impersonators like Silva could have the same effect.

Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal are asking what happened to the “18-karat gold ring encrusted with 321 diamonds and 75 gemstones that the Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC) gifted to President Trump,” in a letter addressed to the director of presidential gifts, the head of the General Services Administration, and the archivist of the United States.

“To date, we are not aware of any public reporting indicating the current location of the ring,” Warren and Blumenthal wrote in the letter, first reported by Newsweek. The AWDC, which represents the diamond trading industry in Antwerp, Belgium, delivered the ring to the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Bill White, a few weeks before the White House announced that European diamonds would be exempt from tariffs.

Warren and Blumenthal said when they asked the AWDC if the gift was a bribe to Trump, they were told it was a gift to the American people, not the president. The organization denied any connection between the tariff exemption and the ring, estimated to be worth close to $30,000, in a statement in August.

“The discussion about U.S. import ‌tariffs was entirely separate from [the gifted ‌ring],” the organization said.

In July, the White House claimed the ring had not been presented to Trump, the senators wrote. Federal law states that gifts given to the president by anyone other than a foreign government have to be screened, categorized, and evaluated by the White House Gift Office.

“If a gift is made to the President personally, it may be retained by the President, while those made out to the government of the United States are cataloged and distributed to the appropriate government agency,” Blumenthal and Warren’s letter states. “The circumstances in which AWDC gifted this ring, and the lack of clarity about its disposition, raise significant questions about whether the President has in fact accepted the ring as part of a quid pro quo agreement to reduce diamond tariffs.”

Trump has a history of taking gifts that are ethically questionable at best, like that luxury private jet from the government of Qatar. His lack of transparency could mean that the ring has been hidden away in the White House or one of his estates.

In a post on Truth Social Tuesday, the U.S. leader claimed that “what’s happening in France is nothing less than out of control mass migration.”

“This isn’t about schools, this is about Islam wanting to take over a once great Country!” Trump wrote.

But there’s no evidence for that. Since September 17, students, parents, and teachers in 40 French cities have collectively closed hundreds of high schools in protest of poor classroom conditions and deteriorating schools, demanding smaller class sizes and better funding for the country’s educational system.

Since then, portions of the nationwide demonstration have directed some of the anger toward police brutality and the racism underlying it. Protesters have been spotted with signs reading “ACAB,” an anti–law enforcement slogan that stands for “All cops are bastards,” and “We are all antifascists.” Others have been spotted with signs expressing anger at France’s government, as well as the National Rally, the country’s far-right party.

Immigration has not been a part of the conversation in France—but that hasn’t stopped far-right American thought leaders from weaponizing the protests for their own political gain stateside.

Ex-InfoWars host Alex Jones, who still owes Sandy Hook victims $1.4 billion for claiming the school shooting never happened and instead was staged by child actors, shared images of people on fire during the protests last week, falsely insisting that the demonstrations were a “racial uprising against the indigenous whites” in France.

In another post, Jones said that there were “dead bodies everywhere” as a result of the protests. In truth, zero deaths have been reported—although one student in Lens reportedly lost his hand after picking up a stun grenade fired by riot police, according to Al Jazeera.

Fox News host Tomi Lahren suggested that the protests should be a “cautionary tale” for Americans, fabricating a connection between the student protests and a supposed problem with diversity.

“This is something we’re learning from Europe, and we would be wise to learn from Europe: They decided they wanted to have open borders,” Lahren said on-air Saturday. “When you let so many people come into your country, leech off of your system, then the people who are from there are going to at some point get upset.”

But the conservative perspective appears to be completely divorced from or entirely uninformed by reality—at least according to the people present in the streets.

“Young people are worried about their future, and we can understand them,” Mickaël Sauvage, a 50-year-old aerospace worker and union member who attended the protests, told The New York Times Tuesday. “The trap is that the government is pushing them to violence, so that public opinion will turn against them and their demands won’t be heard.”

Murdock is stepping down after 18 years at the federal agency because, as he wrote in a bombshell resignation letter obtained by The Guardian and Public Domain, “We are headed in the wrong direction.” A self-described conservative Christian, Murdock makes it clear in his resignation letter that the Trump administration’s impact on the Interior Department, and its blatant disregard for environmental regulation, has gone too far.

“Simply going fast and breaking things is not, in my view, the solution,” Murdock wrote. “Flooding the zone with shit is a strategy for producing a shitty country.”

Murdock went on to list actions outside the Interior Department that most concerned him, both as a citizen and an attorney: “Masked federal agents; the abandonment of Afghan allies; pardons and payouts for rioters and those who supported them; the rapid dismantling of USAID; our military likely committing war crimes; plus, a president who demeans the dead and sees himself as Jesus comprise a partial list of the instances that have left my mouth agape.”

The longtime lawyer also cited specific experiences he had over the course of his career. He was especially concerned by a statement from Matt Giacona, the acting director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, who announced to the public that the Trump administration was “upholding the highest environmental standards” soon after completing a large oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico. The administration explicitly bypassed federal regulations in the Endangered Species Act, Murdock wrote, and Giacona lied about it with impunity. “I have seen my supervisors behave in ways that I would never have expected,” Murdock wrote.

In a response statement, a spokesperson for the Interior Department reaffirmed the agency’s devotion to Trump’s agenda. “One former employee’s personal disagreement with the Department’s policies does not transform lawful policy decisions into an ‘assault on the rule of law,’ nor does his inflammatory rhetoric make his opinion accurate,” the spokesperson said. “The Department stands firmly behind its work to implement President Trump’s agenda consistent with federal law.”

Murdock is the latest in a string of federal officials resigning in protest against the Trump administration. The Interior Department alone lost thousands of workers following Elon Musk’s DOGE escapades last year.

“I walk away from the stable salary and benefits of a government job and my retirement likely becomes less lucrative and more complicated,” Murdock wrote. But that calculation is worth it, he wrote—“I will preserve my integrity. Thankfully, the arithmetic is easy.”